Media and Telecom Sector

TikTok and ByteDance agreed to pay $400 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit alleging the platform violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting data from users under 13 without parental consent since 2019. The DOJ sued in 2024 after a Federal Trade Commission investigation found that TikTok had knowingly permitted children to create accounts and interact with adults, and continued to do so even after a 2019 settlement with Musical.ly—TikTok's predecessor—required safeguards to prevent underage signups. The company changed registration policies in ways that made it harder to verify user age, and maintained children's data for targeted advertising despite internal warnings about the presence of young users. The settlement does not require TikTok or ByteDance to admit wrongdoing. As part of the deal, TikTok has implemented age-related controls, enhanced parental oversight tools, and additional safeguards for younger users. The agreement comes days after Bloomberg reported that TikTok had intentionally disabled an algorithmic safeguard designed to limit exposure to harmful content for roughly 10% of U.S. users, drawing criticism from lawmakers including Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal.

Riot Games will end active development of 2XKO, its League of Legends fighting game, in December 2026, citing insufficient player retention to justify continued spending. The free-to-play 2v2 fighter launched in early access on PC in October 2025 and reached PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in January 2026, but player engagement flatlined despite content updates featuring new characters and a PvE mode. Riot said the game costs substantially more to operate than it generates, and that even bright moments—releases of Akali, Senna, and Thresh, plus competitive events—produced no sustained trajectory change. The studio had already cut roughly 80 developers from the team in February after launch momentum fell short. Servers will remain online indefinitely and offline play will continue. Before shutting down active development, Riot will release two final champions, Lux and Samira, through December 2026, then move to maintenance mode with bug fixes only. The company is refunding all purchases made before August 20, unlocking the entire champion roster for free, and offering a $39.99 cosmetic bundle. Ranked lobbies will be disabled; casual matchmaking will persist. The 2XKO Competitive Series runs through end of 2026, after which community organizers can run offline and online events under Riot's guidelines. This marks the latest high-profile live-service shutdown—Sony is stripping live elements from an in-development Horizon multiplayer title, and Remedy is winding down FBC: Firebreak.

Charter Communications completed its $34.5 billion acquisition of Cox Communications, creating a cable operator serving roughly 38 million customers across 45 US states, after the California Public Utilities Commission approved the deal last week. Cox Enterprises, Cox's parent, received approximately 46 million Charter shares (via 33.6 million common units valued at $5 billion, $6 billion in convertible preferred units, and $4 billion in cash), leaving it with approximately 26% ownership of the combined company on a fully diluted basis. About $12 billion of Cox debt and finance leases will remain outstanding at Charter subsidiaries. Concurrently, Charter closed its acquisition of Liberty Broadband, retiring 38.6 million shares it previously owned and issuing 33.9 million new shares to Liberty shareholders, a net decrease of 4.7 million shares; Charter assumed $840 million of Liberty Broadband net debt and $180 million of preferred equity. The combined company will adopt the Cox Communications corporate name within a year but operate under the Spectrum brand across all markets by mid-September. Charter's Chris Winfrey remains CEO and board member; Cox Enterprises' Alex Taylor becomes chairman, and Eric Zinterhofer (formerly Charter's chairman) becomes lead independent director. By mid-September, Spectrum will extend Charter's pricing, packaging, and product suite—including the Xumo Stream Box, ad-supported video services, and the Spectrum TV app—to Cox customers, and will offer one free year of mobile service to Cox broadband customers not already on Cox Mobile. Spectrum will transition all Cox offshore sales and service to the US within 18 months and set a starting wage floor of at least $20 per hour for sales and service staff in Cox markets.