Citi analyst Walter Pritchard started Slack Technologies (WORK) with a Neutral rating and $39 price target. Both Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOGL) see the productivity and collaboration software category as a strategic imperative and are investing, which will keep competitive pressure on Slack, Pritchard tells investors in a research note.

Sales of video games in Bethesda's "Fallout" series have surged across Europe, with 2015's "Fallout 4" reclaiming the top spot, Gamesindustry.biz's Christopher Dring reports. Sales of "Fallout 4" jumped 7,500% week-on-week across Europe, due to some heavy discounting on games in the "Fallout" franchise across all platforms designed to tie-in with Amazon Prime's (AMZN) "Fallout" television series, Dring says, citing GSD data. 2018's "Fallout 76," 2010's "Fallout: New Vegas," and 2008's "Fallout 3" rounded out Europe's weekly top ten as well, Dring says. The Fly notes that Microsoft (MSFT) acquired Bethesda in 2021. Reference Link

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Microsoft's Activision is dropping team entry fees for its professional Call of Duty League, and will return prior collected fees, as the esports industry faces profit challenges, Bloomberg's Cecilia D'Anastasio reports. A lawsuit this year from a former owner identified the fees as $27.5M per franchise. Activision is also offering the teams two-year minimum revenue guarantees, according to the report. Reference Link

In a regulatory filing, Alphabet disclosed that its CEO Sundar Pichai sold 22.5K shares of common stock on April 17th in a total transaction size of $3.54M.

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Microsoft's (MSFT) Rare said that its 2018 video game "Sea of Thieves," has achieved 40M players across Xbox, Windows 10 and Steam so far. The Fly notes that the game is set to release on PlayStation 5 (SONY) on April 30. Reference Link

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Truist raised the firm's price target on Alphabet to $170 from $158 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares. The firm is expecting the company to report "solid" Q1 results driven by "healthy" user engagement that continues to drive more ad spending across Search and Social, helped by an ongoing recovery in pricing. Conversations with digital ad agencies suggest that the momentum seen in Q4 was sustained in Q1 across Search and YouTube, though the management's commentary for Q2 may be cautious given the macro environment, with continued emphasis on investments in Cloud and AI, the analyst tells investors in a research note.

The U.K. plans to hold talks this month with Apple (AAPL), Meta (META), Alphabet (GOOGL) and others to push a voluntary charter granting parents more control of social media use by young teens, Bloomberg's Ellen Milligan reports. According to people familiar with the matter, ministers want to launch a consultation later this month to gauge ways of limiting the potential harm to children caused by social media, and the proposed voluntary charter may involve tech firms agreeing to alert parents when their children are repeatedly looking up disturbing content. Reference Link