Last week, Epic and Lego announced their intent to build "a space in the metaverse" for children. Today, Sony and KRIKBI - the investment company behind The Lego Group - announced that they'd each invested $1 billion (around £769m) in Epic Games to aid more broadly with "the company's vision to build the metaverse." As always, all of this is more fun if you replace the word "metaverse" with, for example, "Habbo Hotel." I don't doubt that children will spend a lot of time in virtual spaces in future. It's just that it's the school holidays in the UK at the moment and I have Covid, so my six-year-old and I already spent most of the day in the metaverse called "Kirby And The Forgotten Land". It's a videogame, sure, but we've also spent a lot of time expanding its town and hanging out there to play the fishing minigame. A metaverse, therefore.

  The parent company of Dungeons & Dragons developer Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro, announced Wednesday it is acquiring D&D Beyond, one of the franchise’s most popular officially licensed digital toolsets and online storefronts. Wizards said on its official website it has “no plans to stop supporting D&D Beyond,” and all purchases made by consumers will be honored going forward. D&D Beyond is the creation of Curse, and launched in 2017. The platform is, at its core, a web application and mobile app that provides players and Dungeon Masters (DMs) with the tools they need to play D&D in person or online. Features include a character builder, a character sheet, and a digital dice-rolling function. For DMs, it allows users to purchase official campaign books and other materials digitally for use inside the app. Prices for D&D books are traditionally more or less the same on D&D Beyond as they are on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and at your local game store. D&