platforms

The AI ​​microdrama industry is going so fast that the platforms themselves let you create (and monetize) your own series

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The microdrama industry is growing steadily. And of course, those generated by AI grow much faster. So much so that the demand is already leading to the creation of tools that allow the viewer to generate their own programs. The StoReel platform has built a tool designed exactly for that, and it already pays whoever uses it. The results are not yet perfect, but it is inevitable to wonder what will happen when anyone (in theory) can be showrunner. Choose your own microdrama. At the end of June, StoReel presented Canvasa tool that turns a microdrama script into a complete series: characters, settings, voices and editing generated by artificial intelligence from start to finish. The web TheWrap tried it firsthand with a parody of the Prime Video series ‘Off Campus’: four episodes, four days of work and 288 credits ($150) just to generate the characters, with additional payments every time one did not fit the desired look. How things turned out. The result was half convincing, it seemed. There are very competent shots and others with that artificial point that reveals the synthetic actor: strange pauses between phrases, glances that are held too long, some jumps raccord where a character changes position without the camera justifying it… And even with those flaws, StoReel does not sell it as a mere experiment: it has just closed a financing round of 34 million dollars and builds its business model around what it calls PUGC, that is, professional user-generated content. Anyone can produce a series and charge for it if StoReel decides to distribute it. The first successes. The numbers used by the company itself help to understand the bet. Its ‘OMG! My Snowwhite Is a Man’, produced entirely with AI, reached a cost per installation (what the company pays in advertising, crossed with each new download) of $4.63 compared to the usual $8-10 for its live-action series. And its catalog of more than 80 series generated with AI retains 22% more audience after a week than its traditional productions. These are figures from StoReel itself, so you have to take them with a grain of salt, but they perfectly explain why the company prefers to pay its audience rather than expand its staff of scriptwriters. Origins of the micro. Microdrama, one- to two-minute episodes designed to be watched in one go on a mobile phone, is a type of digital content that was born in China under the name duanju and now has been conquering markets outside of Asia for more than a year. Sector figures vary greatly depending on who calculates them. Phylicia Koh, partner at Play Ventures and investor in StoReel, estimates the global market at $14 billion and compares it to the disruption that ‘Roblox’ caused in video games. Axios, on the other hand, calculated that the business outside of China had a turnover of $3 billion in 2025, almost triple that of the previous year. This appetite also explains movements of much larger platforms: Disney+ is going to start experimenting with its own vertical videos to retain an audience that no longer wants to sit for two hours in front of a screen. StoReel, however, goes further: it wants to turn its own audience into a staff of scriptwriters. It’s not the first. StoReel is not the only company that has brought artificial intelligence into the writers’ room. Holywater, the Ukrainian company behind My Drama, launched its own tool more than a year ago: My Muse turns stories from its book catalog into series with the help of models like Midjourney or Runway, but the process is in the hands of filmmakers specialized in AI selected by the company itself. StoReel’s tool boasts even greater openness, although with nuances: the tool refused to generate characters with the exact faces of the ‘Off Campus’ actors when TheWrap asked it to, a limit that StoReel presents as a safeguard against lawsuits over image rights. The system, however, did not raise any objection when the script generated for the experiment reproduced Elle Kennedy’s novel ‘Immune to You’ (third in the saga on which Prime Video is based) almost scene by scene.’ At some point in the process the last name of the author mentioned on screen changed, from Steinbeck to Steinberg, without TheWrap being able to explain whether it was a model error or an attempt to avoid rights problems. In Xataka | One-minute episodes, crazy plots and millions of views: welcome to the era of microdramas

The best platforms to share expenses on subscriptions legally in Spain

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Let’s tell you the best platforms to share expenses on subscriptions completely legally. They are all platforms that work in Spain, and are used to pay for family plans together and, thus, the subscription is cheaper than if you pay for it on your own. Digital families are always a good method to share a subscription and make it cheaper for everyone. And although many platforms try to combat them, it is still a widely used method. But if you don’t want to spend time asking your friends who wants to share a specific subscription, these platforms help you share it with strangers from all over the country. Spliit One of the pioneering and leading platforms in subscription sharing. French and created in 2019, it connects users who want to share with those who want to join a multi-user subscription. The platform charge co-subscribers a commission of 5% + 99 cents each month. For example, if the offer is 4 euros per month, you will pay 5.19 euros. Subscription owners are charged 25% of the transaction amount, with a maximum of 1 euro only the first month for each new co-subscriber. The owner publishes the ad, and those who want to co-subscribe have a search engine with all the subscription services, and with the offers in each of them. Sharingful The great Spanish alternative to create digital families. Its strong point is that everything is entirely in Spanish, from the interface to the support, although the commissions are higher than other alternatives. The platform automate paymentsalthough its catalog of services that you can share is a little lower. Even so, it offers support for sharing just over 30 digital platforms, including major streaming services. It has mobile applications, the system automatically renews your access, and also allows you to cancel at any time. Sharesub The great French alternative to Spliiit, a shared subscription service that operates mainly in Europe. Its model is the same, account owners publish their free places, and other users can join paying their proportional part of the total. Monthly payments are automated, and it has over 500 subscription services available. Its great incentive is that does not charge commissions to those who share the places in their accountsand a 5% commission plus 0.90 euros is applied to subscribers, which is already included in the price that the platform shows you. Together Price An Italian platform with consolidated presence in Spainand that also connects groups of users to share the cost of multi-user plans. It works like the others, allowing you to share the free spaces of your subscriptions or pay to access one of them. In addition to the usual streaming services, it offers music, cloud applications, video games, office automation and even design tools. Commissions are always added to the final price so that you don’t get any surprises. GoSplit A fairly large Asian platform that works like its European competitors. It offers around 200 services spread across several categories, and everything is done instantly. Of course, it receives many complaints for problems with customer servicerefunds and inactive groups, so be careful. Forums and social networks The large Spanish forums are also used to search for threads where there are users who are looking for “digital family” to share their accounts. Here, normally a group is created in a messaging app and everything is managed there. Of course, it is recommended that the person managing each account be trustworthy. In addition to that, you can also find WhatsApp or Telegram groups where accounts are shared, or even go to groups where you have friends and talk directly to them, even being able to go one by one asking questions. If your friends trust you, no one will be bitter about paying a little less. Splitwise This is the most popular expense sharing app in the world. We put it at the end because it is not explicitly used to share a subscription, although it can be used to manage the division of expenses if you are going to share a family account with your friends. Its operation is simple. First you create a group and add the subscription with what it costs per month. The app then keeps track of who owes what to whom, simplifying cross-debts, especially in cases like share multiple subscriptions in your group of friends and let each person manage one. In Xataka Basics | The best apps for Android 2026: new, essential and hidden gems

The long waits between seasons of series have doubled in five years. Some platforms have turned it into a strategy

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Some cases of recent successful series in which a more than proven trend is detected: ‘Stranger Things’ took more than three years to launch its fifth season. ‘Separation’, almost the same time for his second. ‘Wednesday’ was not the fastest series either. The pattern is so clear that they have even given it a name. And for once we can’t put all the blame on the pandemic or the writers’ strikes (although they played a role in getting us to this point). The figures. Ten years ago, the average wait between seasons of original series on the main streaming platforms was 10 months. In 2025, this figure reached 21 months, according to a Ampere Analysis report published in May 2026. This analysis covers 1,611 original series on very diverse platforms, such as Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount+ and Peacock. The firm has dubbed the phenomenon “the Stranger Things effect.” It was seen coming. But although the pandemic is not the final cause of this phenomenon, its impact is indisputable in the paradigm shift. The gap between seasons was already growing slowly until the 2020 pandemic he shot her 12 to 16 months in a single year. After that, the data relatively stabilized until the strikes of writers and actors 2023 caused the second big jump: from 17 to 21 months between 2023 and 2024. In 2025 the trend stabilized, for now definitively. But you have to understand the context beyond “the industry was paralyzed by the pandemic.” For example, in 2022 we were at the height of the “streaming war”, and the large platforms published 599 seasons of original series, that is, more material than in the entire period 2015-2019. Granted, the pandemic had devastated more than one economy in the industry, but that volume of production also exhausted human resources, studies and calendars. When the forced shutdowns came, first due to the pandemic and then due to strikes, the bottleneck was inevitable. The counterpart: it works. The point is that contrary to what common sense might dictate, the report detects that the series that returned after more than thirty months of hiatus (that is, two and a half years) registered the highest search activity on the internet in the month of release. For example, ‘Stranger Things’ accumulated a 300% increase in views during the second half of 2025, before the premiere of its final season, with an especially strong rebound from the first season: it was new viewers discovering the series and fans reviewing previous episodes. ‘Wednesday’ and ‘Separación’ almost doubled the average engagement on their platforms. Movies on television. There is a possible reading of this data: the model of the blockbusters cinematographic films has migrated to television. If a highly anticipated movie in a franchise generates expectations months before its release, a highly anticipated season of a series does too, in a way that a routine annual release does not. Which is combined with another reason: sometimes highly complex series (effects, script, post-production, cast, as is the case with the three mentioned) require more time. The case of the second season of ‘Separation’ and its multiple rewrites It is significant. That is to say, just like blockbusters, there are series that require more filming time than average. Because of this, they take longer to see the light, but they also generate more expectation because the public expects the wait to be compensated with more spectacle. The risk. This practice can generate anticipation, yes, but there is a danger for the platforms that Ampere specifies: “Streamers need to balance production deadlines for big titles with a constant flow of content. Long gaps can generate anticipation around star titles, but they can also encourage audiences to cancel subscriptions and return only when their favorite series are back.” It is the phenomenon of churn and returnthat is, canceling a subscription and renewing it when the series returns, something that from the point of view of monthly income, is basically the same as not being subscribed. Generate excessive expectation or ensure a loyal and expectant audience, accustomed to an almost continuous supply of episodes, as is happening, for example, with ‘The Pitt’? Virtue lies in the middle ground, possibly: neither stretching the rope until it breaks nor suffocating the viewer with excess content. Late for that last one, on the other hand. In Xataka | 29 years later, Netflix has become the television it promised to replace. That’s why Wall Street has punished her Ampere analyst Christen Tamisin put it this way in the report: “Streamers need to balance the production timelines of big titles with a constant flow of content. Long gaps can generate anticipation around flagship titles, but they can also encourage audiences to cancel subscriptions and return only when their favorite series are back.” The paradox does not have a simple solution: reducing the wait can mean compromising the quality that, precisely, turns these series into events.

Tomorrow one of the platform’s main action heroes returns to Prime Video, although he does so in an unexpected format

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When Amazon closed ‘Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan’ in July 2023, the fourth and final season left one character with accounts settled. John Krasinski had spent five years playing a CIA analyst perpetually misplaced in a world that surpassed him. Few expected him to return to the character so soon and, above all, to do so in this way: ‘Jack Ryan: Covert Warthe first film derived from the series, arrives this Wednesday, May 20 to Prime Video. When Amazon premiered the series in 2018, the streaming It was still an incipient phenomenon. Amazon needed a high-budget action product, and opted for this well-known CIA analyst who had already had four previous performers: Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine. Krasinski stayed with the character throughout the television run, allowing the character to be developed in greater detail than his previous incarnations. The series was a success: 37% of Prime Video users watched the series during the first month. In 2024, Amazon MGM Studios announced the production of a film that would continue the series. The last time we saw Ryan star in a feature film was in ‘Jack Ryan: Enter Shadow’ in 2014, with Chris Pine. Here, Krasinski is joined by Sienna Miller as an MI6 agent. The plot follows Ryan, removed from the action but dragged back when uncovers a corrupt black ops unit known as Project Starling. The film arrives at a peculiar time for Prime Video. “The platform has built a very solid action ecosystem in recent years, with series like ‘Fallout’, ‘The Boys’ and, above all, ‘Reacher’, the epitome of that subgenre of thrillers and action.”for parents” to which Jack Ryan also belongs. The third season of ‘Reacher’ accumulated 54.6 million global viewers in its first two weeks. It is not surprising that Amazon has already suggested that ‘Covert War’ is not an end, but a new chapter. In Xataka | Today on Prime Video, the conclusion of the best series from the creator of ‘The Sandman’ comes with a radical surprise in its duration

Reddit was one of the last refuge platforms for Internet users. You just took a step in a worrying direction

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The social network Reddit has become the best source of human data on the internet. It is in fact one of the few remaining refuges from that “human network of networks” with which it all began, but this singular and anarchic social network has just taken a disturbing step: wants to force you to install their app when you use it from your mobile. uncomfortable notice. Millions of people use Reddit daily on their mobile, but in recent days they have encountered an uncomfortable message: a notice that forced them to use the Reddit mobile application instead of being able to continue using the browser to enjoy the famous thematic subreddits. There are many those who they have warned of the problem with diverse messages in the forums of the platform. In one of the most popular subredits, r/technology, the message that talks about the topic has nearly 20,000 positive votes and 4,200 comments. What Reddit says. Company spokespersons indicated at Ars Technica that Reddit has launched a test “for a small subset of mobile users that encourages them to download the app after visiting the site. These users are already familiar with Reddit and we have seen that the experience is much better for them on the app.” Personalization = data collection. The platform argues that if users take advantage of the app they can have a tailored news thread and better searches, but criticism has not been slow in coming. The Ars Technica editor who wrote on the subject himself commented how this notice has also reached him—not us, perhaps because we are not in the United States—and this sounds disturbing. And it sounds like that because it is just how apps like TikTok, X or Instagram work, which have managed to polish their content recommendation algorithms so that the user ends up condemned for doomscrolling. And that would point to Reddit’s ambition that we simply do nothing but be on Reddit. The danger of making your users angry. It is ironic that a platform like Reddit, which has always largely depended on the traffic brought to it by Google, decides to break with that way of reaching its forums. Those responsible for the platform seem to be confident that its content is essential enough for its users to convince them to download and use the app. The question is whether this will not cause an exodus of users. A small solution. Apparently is it possible avoid the message if we clean and we empty both the cache and the cookies of the mobile browser that we use to browse Reddit. This temporary patch can help you continue using Reddit directly from the mobile browser you use. Wall Street rules a lot. This apparent degradation or evolution of the service certainly seems to be aimed at maximizing profit. By going public, Reddit has to prove to shareholders that it can generate growing revenue. And if you can lock users into your official app, you can ensure that no one (including AI) can access that valuable content without going through your controls. Image | Brett Jordan In Xataka | Reddit, nude scenes and a forum out of control: this is how a Dane ended up being convicted in a case that sets a precedent

12 premieres this week on Netflix, including the return of one of the platform’s most successful franchises

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We cross the midway point of May, and we do it in a big way, with two premieres that are among the juiciest of this week in streaming: the return of ‘Berlín’ with a second season that recovers the most filigree and elegant side of ‘La casa de papel’, and ‘Flow’, one of the best animated films of recent years. And it is not the only thing that the most popular platform has in its portfolio this week. series Berlin and the Lady with an Ermine The second installment of the, for now, only spin-off of ‘La casa de papel’ announced by Netflix (we will have to see what those already announced next steps are in the franchise expansion) takes us to Seville: a great Andalusian businessman commissions Berlin, again played by Pedro Alonso, to steal ‘The Lady with an Ermine’, the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci that arrives in the city for an exhibition. Berlin believes that it is better to rob the thief himself, and sets up his usual gang: Michelle Jenner, Tristán Ulloa, Begoña Vargas, Julio Peña Fernández and Joel Sánchez, who are joined by Inma Cuesta as an unpredictable and temperamental Sevillian. Premiere: Friday, May 15 Nemesis More robberies, more suspense and more tension with this series about the confrontation between two men who, despite being on opposite sides, share more than they imagine: an obsessive detective and a sophisticated thief expert in high-profile robberies. But they both share something that makes them more similar than they want to admit: they want to protect their families using the only means they know. Matthew Law and Y’lan Noel lead the cast of this series co-directed and produced by Mario Van Peebles. Premiere: Thursday, May 14 Other series Devil May Cry (Season 2) – Tuesday, May 12 Secrets of sport – Tuesday, May 12 Gallitos (T2) – Wednesday, May 13 Between father and son – Wednesday, May 13 Soul mates – Thursday, May 14 The Middle – Friday, May 15 The SUPERgeeks – Friday, May 15 Movies flow One of the most extraordinary and celebrated animated films of recent years, premiered in Cannes in 2024, and winner of the Golden Globe for Best Animated Film and the Oscar in the same category, becoming the first Latvian film to win an Academy Award. It stands out for being completely rendered with the free and open source software Blender, and for not containing any dialogue. The film tells the story of a cat, a dog, a capybara, a ring-tailed lemur and a secretary bird who travel together through a surreal, dreamlike landscape flooded by water, in a world in which human beings have disappeared. An allegory about cooperation in days of adversity, more than necessary in these times. Other movies Marty, Life is short: The documentary – Tuesday, May 12 The crash – Friday, May 15 In Xataka | Netflix premieres today the dystopian series that has risen to the throne of the best in history in six seasons

Letterboxd was one of the last “clean” and community-focused platforms. Now the fear is that it will end

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Letterboxd has been the exception that proves the rule in the wild landscape of social networks for years: it is one that grows without sacrificing your communitywithout optimizing screen time by trampling on the quality of its users’ experience, without searching for viral content at all costs. Now, the Canadian company that controls 60% of the platform is looking for a buyer, and a question arises that has very short legs, because we already fear the little things that are coming. Where does it come from? Letterboxd was born in 2011 in Auckland, New Zealand, by Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow. It functioned as a digital diary where movie fans could record what they saw, rate it, and share it with whoever they wanted. Without feeds algorithmic (there is not much doomscroll on Letterboxd), no viral content from strangers, no (too much) intrusive advertising. Just movies, opinions and the formation of a community relieved to be able to leave the suffocating world of trendsthe hashtags and the influencers. The growth. For almost a decade it was a niche tool, but with the pandemic, Letterboxd grew from 1.8 million users in 2020 to 17 million in 2024. Nearly 100 million reviews were written that year. In 2026 it has reached 26 million members. All of that growth has occurred without the main feed ceasing to be chronological, more akin to a classic 2006 incarnation of Facebook than any current social network. She soon became known in the industry. A24 explicitly cited Letterboxd when talking about the strong theatrical debut ‘The brutalist‘ and directors like Michael Mann, Rian Johnson or Francis Ford Coppola they ended up using the platform as a genuine space to talk about your film-loving tastes. Tiny arrives. In September 2023, the Canadian Tiny (investor that owns very different brands, such as the AeroPress coffee machine manufacturer) acquired 60% of Letterboxd for between 50 and 60 million dollars. The founders retained a minority stake and continued at the helm, and users were promised independence and respect for what had made the platform grow, something that was broadly fulfilled. Some more advertising appeared, a movie rental service that was difficult to access and little else. Tiny leaves. Now, Tiny wants to go out. The company has contacted with possible buyers: Versant, parent company of CNBC and MS NOW, and The Ankler, a specialized media with which it already attempted an operation in 2025 that did not prosper. The reason is that Tiny’s shares have fallen since the acquisition of Letterboxd. Additionally, the platform was purchased through its venture capital fund. sign that Tiny always planned for a quick change of hands. The Goodreads precedent. It’s a similar case in terms of community, function, and size: Goodreads is the literary equivalent of Letterboxd, and ended up being acquired by Amazon in 2013, while also promising not to botch the platform’s user experience. Today we know that Amazon uses it to collect user data and it is true that it has barely touched it. But that has its negative impact: the design is practically unusable today, moderation does not exist and users are beginning to migrate to alternatives like The StoryGraph. The fear of shit. At this point we already know perfectly well what the term refers to, which has an almost academic status: the enshittificationcoined by Cory Doctorow, happens when platforms start by offering a good user experience to attract users, then they exploit them to attract clients with money to invest in the business and finally they also exploit those clients to maximize short-term profits. Letterboxd has lived outside that cycle longer than its rivals have. But each threat of a new owner sets off alarm bells again. Inframonetization. Letterboxd is clearly undermonetized compared to its competitors. Your generous level Free allows you to use the platform with almost the same features as the paid option and advertising remains surprisingly limited, without invading everyday use, as happens on X or Instagram. And they try things: interviews with actors and directors about their favorite films, rental service for little-known films, in-person events… all on a very small scale, almost more as a way of spreading the brand in small spaces than as an open form of monetization. That is, there is growth potential, and that is what might interest a buyer. That is precisely what generates concern among its community: activating these options too aggressively can destroy the value of genuine cinephilia that resides behind them. Letterboxd users are very active and sensitive, and we must not forget cases like Mubi, whose user base canceled subscriptions en masse after learning of the links of one of its investors with the Gaza war. Right to veto. There is a safety button that can prevent a company with interests other than its subscribers from coming to buy Letterboxd: Buchanan retains veto rights over any potential buyer, a condition that exists openly to preserve the original spirit of the platform. Its effective scope, of course, will depend on how much the original owner is willing to exercise it and what price that veto has in the final negotiation. In Xataka | “Caution: non-vegetarian content”: when disclaimers warn about absolutely everything

In two days the animated spin-off of the platform’s only powerful franchise premieres on Netflix: ‘Stranger Things’

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On December 31, 2025, Netflix aired the final episode of ‘Stranger Things‘. With it, the platform recorded its most viewed New Year’s broadcast in history and put the finishing touch to the platform’s most viewed series, exceeding 1.2 billion accumulated views. And four months later Eleven, Mike, Dustin and the rest of the Hawkins gang are back, but this time in animated format With new voices and a new showrunnerthis ‘Stranger Things: Stories from 85′ this one arrives April 23 to Netflix. And how is it presented when the main story has already closed? Well, going back to when it wasn’t yet: the series takes place in the winter of 1985, between the second and third original seasons. That interval existed in the canon, although it did not come without a technical problem: at the end of T2, Eleven closes the door to the Other Side. T3 starts in July of that same year. How do you fit interdimensional monsters into a story that takes place during the months when the door is sealed? Easy: Particles from the Other Side that escaped before the door closed have begun to mutate into different plant species in Hawkins, generating hybrid creatures like a “snow shark.” All of this comes from the original visual style of the illustrator Meybis Ruiz Cruz and which, through animation, Netflix has wanted to bring closer to series from the eighties such as ‘He-Man’ or ‘The Real Ghostbusters’, but without losing sight of more recent proposals such as the animated films of the Spider-verse or ‘Arcane’. ‘Stories of 85’ obeys the tactic of keeping a franchise alive once it is impossible to do so with the original actors, through formats that alleviate technical and distribution demands. If this experiment works, we will undoubtedly see similar attempts with series like ‘Wednesday’ or ‘The Bridgertons’, and that without leaving Netflix. And, of course, if it works it will also continue on this side: according to the new showrunnerEric Robles, there are ideas to cover many other intervals in the official series. You have to milk it from somewhere. In Xataka | 16 premieres on Netflix: this week, the new ‘Stranger Things’, a rare British series and the return of Charlize Theron

Years ago the series had more scenes. The platforms are cutting them without warning

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The seasons of the series streaming They are increasingly shorter, and not always by creative decision. Behind the cuts are skyrocketing production costs, subscriber retention strategies and, sometimes, decisions made from the accounting department and not from the writers’ table. The phenomenon is so broad that it also affects altered versions of classic series, eliminating scenes and changing soundtracks without warning. This episode is not how I remembered. You are reviewing a series that you already know and something goes wrong: a scene that you remembered clearly does not appear. Or the opening credits song sounds different. Or the final episode ends earlier than it should. It is not always a failure of your memory. Often, the version you see in front of you is not the same as the one you saw back in the day. This phenomenon has gained visibility in recent months thanks to users who document on social networks the differences between versions, and its scope is greater than it seems. The platforms of streaming They offer, in many cases and without realizing it, degraded or cut versions of series and movies. The reasons behind these decisions are multiple. Sustained contraction. Before entering into the phenomenon of cuts without notice, it is worth remembering some facts. According to the firm Parrot Analyticsthe average number of episodes per season on free-to-air television fell from 16.2 in 2018 to 11.8 in July 2024. On streaming platforms streamingwhich already started from shorter seasons, have also contracted: from 10.7 episodes on average in 2018 to 9.3 in the same period. Some studies talk that production companies and platforms are increasingly stingy when it comes to renewing or ordering series: they simply ask for fewer episodes. One last piece of information about this reduction: in 2025, the number of original series streaming fell by 11% year-on-year. Beyond those series that suffer, against the will of their creators, cuts in the number of their episodes (as it happened at the time with ‘The House of the Dragon’), there are cuts from series already broadcast. For example, the final episode of ‘Friday Night Lights’, which is now on Filmin (in its shortened version) had a duration of more than 60 minutes. When it moved to NBC for free-to-air broadcast, it was cut to less than 45 minutes to fit with advertising. Complete scenes are missing from this mutilated version. Here we can see a similar case with an episode of ‘The Bill Cosby Hour’ streaming. Music, another point of friction. The licensing rights for musical themes do not always extend to all platforms or expire after a period of time, which requires replacing original songs with others. When ‘The Wonder Years’ arrived on Netflix in 2011 after years of being blocked by rights issues, numerous songs had been replaced, including Joe Cocker’s iconic version of ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ that opened each episode. In ‘Dawson Grows’, Paula Cole’s original tune was replaced in streaming by a Jann Arden song; The fan outcry was so intense that Cole ended up re-recording his own song. It is a common problem, which has meant that legendary series like ‘Luz de Luna’ or ‘Búscate la vida’ have spent years without being able to be seen, not even in domestic formats (in the case of Chris Peterson’s legendary series, we are still waiting). The war of the formats. We’ve already talked about itbut it is not bad to remember that the image format has been manipulated on countless occasions to adapt it to widescreen televisions. The case of ‘The Simpsons’ is perhaps the most popularsince many jokes with the original square format of the first seasons were lost. Also The case of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ is popular‘, which in its panoramic format and retouched colors makes the illusion of night scenes from the original series disappear and allows the filming crew and sets to be seen. A disaster that can only be solved by going to the first editions on DVD before their “remastering”. What to do to solve it. One more time: do not completely rule out the physical format. Until now we were certain (video game fans have been suffering from this for years) that fluctuations in catalogs, even of material that you have purchased and that is theoretically yours, can play tricks on you. We are now convinced that the fact that a film is in a catalog today streaming It does not assure us that it will be within a year: reasons as spurious as saving fees or storage space for platform owners can lead to the elimination of thousands of movies and series. The only way to preserve a movie or series without anyone modifying it, to make sure that no one is going to cut it because they think you are not prepared to pay enough attention to it, is to have your own copy. In physical or digital form, but in a safe place. Until recently, keeping our DVDs, our CDs with games, our cartridges and our vinyl, our records with backup copies was something for nostalgic and paranoid people. Now it is a matter of preserving what the platforms continue to mutilate. In Xataka | Generation Z has found the remedy to streaming subscription fatigue: buying DVDs again

Video games have grown a lot this year. But the money goes to China, Roblox and the owners of mobile platforms

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The global video game industry had a turnover of around $185 billion in 2024 and continues to grow. But there is a catch: this growth does not reach the studios or the area that traditional players look at, those of the console wars and the old PC Master Race. Matthew Ball’s usual annual report leaves a less complacent diagnosis: revenue is concentrated in China, on platforms like Roblox and on the owners of mobile operating systems. The rest survive as best they can. The Old Times (2021): There is still talk about how great the year 2021 was for video games. It seems like it was yesterday when the pandemic (insert meme of Grandpa Simpson telling stories to the kids here) confined hundreds of millions of people to their homes, and games (mobile, console, PC, free, subscription) absorbed the benefits of that confinement. As Ball, CEO of Epyllion, analyzes in The State of Video Gaming in 2025the factors that drove that peak were an extraordinary sum of factors: mobile platforms, free-to-play models, games as a service, the cross play and new genres like battle royale and social play. Downhill. The flip side of that was a much bigger recession than expected: global spending on video games fell 3.5% in 2022 and barely recovered a few percentage points towards the end of 2024. According to the consulting firm MIDiA Research, the sector had enjoyed growth of 26.3% in 2020 and 9.8% in 2021, and the rebound was inevitable. According to Ball, the engines that had driven the industry between 2011 and 2021 stopped all at once: the smartphones They were no longer surprising with each interaction, social networks were paralyzed, the free-to-play was normalized. 6.5% of total gaming time in 2023 corresponded to new video games, says Ball, and only four titles shared half of that percentage. Layoffs in full force. He report also speaks how the sector’s layoffs since 2022 illustrate this adjustment: more than 44,000 jobs, 61% of them concentrated in North America. This does not mean that it is the end of the industry or that the same pattern is being repeated. crash 1983, as has been said (the industry is too diversified and globalized to repeat a systemic collapse of that magnitude). What we are paying is the cost of having built a structure designed for an industry in continuous growth during the pandemic. The Chinese monster. Ball puts on the table that global spending on video games grew by approximately $10 billion between 2021 and 2025. But… where did that money go? The report assures that to Beijing: about 4,000 million of that growth is from the Chinese market, and another 1,500 million are from titles developed in China sold in international markets. In total, Chinese publishers have racked up about half of global growth since 2019. And there are more data: Gamer spending in China reached $49.2 billion in 2024, with a base of 722 million active gamers, more than double the total population of the United States. China is already the first market in the world by income. Not foreigners. Very significantlythat market remains almost closed to foreign games. 84% of Chinese gamers’ spending goes on titles produced in China, and that percentage has increased, as unusual as it may seem: 20% of Chinese domestic spending goes on imported titles (a figure that also registered a decrease of 5% between 2023 and 2024). It is comparable to what happens with cinemawith local films devouring foreign ones at the box office. A situation favored by a combination of factors: First, the Chinese regulatory framework favors national titles through a licensing system; second, development costs are substantially lower than in the West; Finally, the work culture of the country’s studios allows for more intensive production cycles. You don’t have to dig far to find examples of great Chinese international successes: ‘Genshin Impact‘, from miHoYo, raised more than $3.5 billion in its first year70% outside China with a character design rooted in anime. ‘Honor of Kings‘, from Tencent, dominated the Chinese mobile market for years before making the international leap with adaptations of character names. AND ‘Black Myth: Wukong‘, developed with support from Tencent, sold ten million copies in its first three days launching in August 2024, betting on the opposite of assimilation: an unequivocally Chinese mythology without thematic concessions to Western taste. Roblox sweeps. The numbers sing: 70% of the growth of the video game market outside of China in 2025 was absorbed by ‘Roblox‘. Which is an infrastructure on which millions of creators build interactive experiences using the platform’s own tools. Players access it for free and spend real money on cosmetic items and access within these worlds, transactions that are carried out in Robux, the ecosystem’s virtual currency. Of every dollar spent,’Roblox’ historically retained around 70% leaving the creator with approximately 25 or 30 cents. In September 2024, ‘Roblox’ announced a new delivery model for paid games that increases the creator’s commission up to 70% on titles that sell for $49.99. What does this translate into? In 2024, ‘Roblox’ paid around $923 million to its creators (an increase of 25% compared to 2023), while its total revenue grew by 29% until reaching 3.6 billion dollars. Its intentions are colossal: CEO David Baszucki stated that the company’s goal is to capture 10% of the global video game content market. Some more questions. Just to finish outlining the portrait: ‘Roblox’ registers sustained net losses (a accumulated deficit of 3.5 billion) with the logic of the platform in the expansion phase, sacrificing immediate profitability. Some observers they point because ‘Roblox’ has become the video game equivalent of YouTube, a platform that extracts value from the work of its creators in the form of data, advertising and infrastructure. And one last thing: two titles on the platform (‘Blox Fruits’ and ‘Brookhaven RP’) each accumulate 60% of the monthly gaming hours of all of Electronic Arts. 30%. If the global video game market reached an all-time high in … Read more

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