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The Supreme Court on Friday allowed a petition of the Centre and transferred to itself pleas, challenging the imposition of 28 per cent Goods and Services Tax on e-gaming firms, from nine high courts for an authoritative pronouncement. A bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra allowed the transfer plea of the Centre and asked it to file the response to the pending petitions of online gaming companies by April 20. It also appointed a nodal counsel, who will collate records in the case and now the pleas will be taken up for hearing in the first week of May. Many online gaming firms like Dream 11, Games 24x7, and Head Digital Works had moved the top court challenging the GST imposition. Earlier, the top court had stayed the Karnataka High Court verdict quashing the GST intimation notice to the tune of Rs 21,000 crore issued to an online gaming firm.
Twitch, a popular video service, will shut down its struggling business in South Korea, a decision its chief executive blamed on allegedly prohibitively expensive costs for operating in the country. In a blog post announcing the company's plan this week, Dan Clancy said the network fees the company has been paying to South Korean internet operators were 10 times more than in most other markets. He did not provide specific numbers to back such claims. We've made the difficult decision to shut down the Twitch business in Korea on February 27, 2024, Clancy said in the post. Twitch was able to lower costs by limiting video quality, he said, but our network fees in Korea are still 10 times more expensive than in most other countries". A platform popular with video game fans, Twich downgraded the quality of its video services in South Korea to a resolution of 720 p from 1080 p in September 2022, citing a need to reduce costs. Later that year it blocked South Korean streamers from upload
U.S. highway safety regulators have closed an investigation into Tesla allowing video games to be played on centre touch screens while vehicles are moving. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says in documents posted Tuesday that Tesla disabled the feature called passenger play with an online software update in December of 2021, under pressure from the agency. The agency said in documents that removing passenger play resolved its concerns about distracted driving that could be caused by the feature. The software update covered more than 580,000 vehicles from the 2017 through 2022 model years. One month after software update went out, Tesla reported that 97% of the vehicles had received it. The agency said it opened the investigation in December of 2021 after getting a complaint from a Tesla owner that games could be played by the driver while the vehicles are moving. The investigation was opened to assess the driver distraction potential. It says in documents that