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CyberConnect 2 has announced the closure of its Montreal studio by the end of July.

The Canadian extension was originally created in 2016.

“CyberConnect 2 will continue to grow and move forward thanks to the experience we gained in Montreal. Thank you for your understanding and we look forward to your continued support and guidance.” the company said on Twitter..

At the time of writing, CyberConnect2 website lists its head office, Tokyo studio, and Montreal studio, which employ 263 people.

It is not known how many employees will be affected by the closure of the Canadian studio.

Came back to my account after a few years because I saw this on Twitter.

Looking at the site and the information provided. I am 99% sure that this is a scam and will take your money and run away.

The site location is the CVS repository and the email address is temporary/discarded.

We all love deals, but it’s better not to risk it.

Spotify closes Heardle, a music guessing game he purchased inspired by Wordle last July for an undisclosed amount. Like wordle, hurdle offers players six attempts to guess a popular song – but instead of entering different letters to form words, players listen to the song’s intro to guess the artist and title. At the time of the acquisition, Spotify stated that Heardle would remain free for everyone. The company now says it will hear the sunset on May 5 as it seeks to focus on its other music discovery goals.

Changes are communicated via an in-app message on the Heardle website.

We understand that the decision to shut down Heardle was made because Spotify wants to devote more of its energy to finding music through recent in-app changes rather than Wordle-inspired gameplay off the platform.

last month, Spotify redesigned from its mobile app, which introduced new TikTok-style music and podcast discovery channels, as well as other features such as Smart Shuffle for playlist recommendations and a new option to automatically play podcasts, among others. Rolled out too on “I DJ” which finds out what kind of music users like and then plays those tracks for you. This feature also gets smarter over time the more you interact with it.

In light of these updates, Hurdle was no longer involved in Spotify’s overall music discovery efforts. Also, like many tech companies that have been subject to belt-tightening measures such as layoffs In recent months, there has been less financial incentive to participate in side projects, including, for example, a fun musical game.

However, at the time of the acquisition, Heardle was still quite popular. In March 2022, the game peaked at 69 million visits per month on desktop and mobile, according to analytics firm Similarweb. Shortly before the Spotify deal, those visits dropped to 41 million. The firm says visits continued to decline, likely making Hurdle’s ongoing maintenance no longer viable for Spotify.

In addition, with most Wordle craze is also on the decline After The New York Times bought the flagship word game last January, Hurdle’s own future prospects may have dimmed as well. We understand that Heardle has retained some of its loyal users since the deal closed, but Spotify will not comment on overall usage or repeat interactions with any specific metrics. However, it wasn’t until Spotify learned how Heardle players interacted with the game that the decision was made to focus the company’s investment elsewhere.

In the game, after users guessed the song, they could press a button to listen to the full track on Spotify. Perhaps not enough users did this, but simply left the game to play again later.

In other words, Hurdle ultimately didn’t help Spotify achieve its goals of improving music discovery. And with the redesign, much of what Heardle had to offer was now duplicating the company’s other music search features — and doing so outside of the Spotify app.

However, for those who enjoyed playing Heardle, today’s announcement that the game will soon be closed is hardly welcome news. Except, perhaps, those Forbes participants who had to write down daily answers and prompts, as well as numerous sites that ran Hurdle clones.

Spotify confirmed the closure of the game with a statement.

“After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to say goodbye to Heardle as we focus our efforts on other music discovery features,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch.

The website will display a banner for users to warn them of the shutdown, which will occur on May 5th.

We understand that Heardle did not have a dedicated team, so this will not affect either the reduction in staff or the reorganization.

We’re told that while Spotify is moving away from Heardle, that doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning other kinds of interactive experiences. Today, the company offers an interactive AI DJ feature and other features such as polls and Q&A that allow podcast listeners to interact with their favorite creators. It will also continue to invest in other gaming projects such as Roblox’s Spotify island, in-app gaming hub, and other Xbox and PlayStation integrations.

Earlier this month, Spotify also shut down another spin-off project with close Spotify Livelive streaming app and competitor to Clubhouse.