Respawn Entertainment has confirmed that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, the sequel to Jedi: Fallen Order that it first announced earlier this year, is happening. At the Star Wars Celebration event in Anaheim, the studio has revealed that Jedi: Survivor is a direct sequel to Star Wars: Fallen Order, which is an action-adventure game released back in 2019. Survivor is set five years after the events of its predecessor and will still feature the protagonist Cal Kestis (and his droid companion BD-1) as one of the last remaining Jedi in the galaxy that’s ruled by the Empire.

The studio said Jedi: Survivor will expand on the first game’s combat system — and perhaps improve on it, too. Some players weren’t quite fond of Jedi: Fallen Order’s combat and considered it a weak aspect of the game. Jedi: Survivor is scheduled to come out in 2023, with Electronic Arts aiming to get it out by the end of its fiscal year in March. Respawn is currently developing it for the latest generation of consoles, particularly the Xbox Series X|S and the PlayStation 5, though it will also be released for PCs. The studio doesn’t seem to have plans to release it for older consoles like the Xbox One and the PS4.

You can watch an official teaser for the upcoming game in the video below:

Less than a week before its scheduled date, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) have decided to withdraw a formal vote on unionization for Apple Store employees at Atlanta’s Cumberland Mall location. As first reported by Bloomberg, the union — which has recently invested heavily in organizing tech workers — opted to hold back as a result of what it called “Apple’s repeated violations of the National Labor Relations Act.” 

The withdrawal follows weeks of escalating tensions between Apple and its retail staff. Shortly after Cumberland had gone public with its intentions it was reported Apple had retained Littler Mendelson, the same law firm Starbucks — which is undergoing a wave of store unionizations — has engaged. The firm’s website states: “we excel in union avoidance.” Shortly after, Apple corporate began circulating anti-union talking points to managers and Atlanta workers claim they were being force into so-called “captive audience meetings,” a hallmark of union-busting campaigns. Earlier this week, audio leaked of an Apple VP, Deirdre O’Brien, expressing why she believed a union was a poor fit for the company. That message was reportedly sent to all 65,000 of Apple’s retail staffers.

In a statement today, CWA stated that Apple’s actions “have made a free and fair election impossible.” The group also expressed concern that COVID cases among the store’s staff might further jeopardize their ability to vote in person. 

One of the most significant reasons behind Cumberland staffers’ decision to organize has been simple economics. In talking with Engadget, one of the store’s workers, Elli Daniels, described stagnant wages that had failed to keep pace with either national inflation or local increases to cost of living. Notably, Apple has been one of the few companies to thrive under pandemic conditions, posting several consecutive record-breaking quarters. 

Perhaps in an effort to stave off unrest among retail staff (Cumberland is only one of the stores currently exploring unionization) Apple has stated it will increase pay to a starting wage of $22 per hour. “We are pleased to offer very strong compensation and benefits for full-time and part-time employees, including health care, tuition reimbursement, new parental leave, paid family leave, annual stock grants and many other benefits,” Apple told press today in a statement. (The pay increase, incidentally, was reported several hours after the aforementioned union-avoidance audio leaked to press.)

While an immediate setback, the withdrawal does not preclude CWA from attempting another union election — though it will have to wait at least six months to refile.

If you think of the metaverse as a mostly ephemeral concept, then you might not imagine what role physical movement and expression will play in its development. But as the panelists at the GamesBeat Summit session “Building the future of dance, expression and movement in games for the metaverse” pointed out, it may be more important than we think.

The panelists were Randy Eckhardt, music strategy and licensing consultant with Eckhardt Consulting, and Anthony Castoro, founder and executive chairman of HiDef Entertainment. To begin with, Castoro pointed out that physical movement can help transcend any language barriers in the metaverse.

“As we go on this journey, and we think about the products and things that we want to build, we really want to think about the things that unify us. Self-expression and human motion are perhaps the most fundamental form of communication that we have. It’s more universal than the spoken word,” said Castoro. “If we don’t speak the same language, we have a hard time communicating. But body language? We’re conditioned to see human motion and understand what we’re trying to convey.”

Eckhardt pointed out that several known metaverse platforms, such as Fortnite and Roblox, have changed opinions in the music industry about licensing to games. “When I was calling record labels in 1993 and saying, ‘We want music in our games,’ and they were like, ‘Wait, that’s not cool.’ But now, it’s kind of the opposite in a way. This is where kids want to go and hang out, do things, self-express, and find music.”

Castoro said that “figuring out” music in the metaverse is a priority for lots of companies: “What we’re seeing now is a lot of movement in the music industry to try to figure out how to let users interact with their content in a way that rewards the artist and the owners of the music rights in a commercially viable way, but is also viable for developers, publishers, and ultimately the end users. . . as that happens, it creates new opportunities for gameplay.”

They also agreed that the ultimate purpose of these innovations is to help users express themselves freely in the metaverse, as opposed to just following along to licensed music. “From an innovation standpoint, there’s things happening on the business model side, but also lots of room for innovation within the gameplay itself,” said Castoro. “How can we empower people to be able to express themselves through dance, as opposed to just copycat something in a workout-routine kind of way?”

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