It’s Wednesday and TikTok’s love life has come to an unromantic end, with the app pausing its short-lived dating feature after just one week.

GAME ON

The competition: PUBG: Battlegrounds is gearing up to join Roblox and Fortnite in the sandbox. As developer Krafton builds a world-creation engine called PUBG: Playgrounds, the game once known as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is launching a contest that will offer $95,000 in prizes to creators who launch experiences within PUBG.

For the PUBG: Battlegrounds UGC Contest, Krafton and video game mod distributor CurseForge are inviting creators to submit their worlds across three categories:

In each of the three categories, $25,000 will be split among the top ten finishers, with the first-place winners earning $10,000 apiece. Additional prizes of $2,500 will go to six community favorites, and ten mid-contest prizes worth $500 each will account for the remaining $5,000.

To submit, creators must register an account on CurseForge before signing up via the official contest page. Submissions will be accepted through September 2, with winners revealed on September 14. The 30 winning modes will be added to the PUBG: Playgrounds library.

The context: PUBG exploded onto the battle royale scene in 2017, rapidly amassing a user base that included more than three million players—and then Fortnite arrived.

Epic Games’ seminal title quickly became the defining platform in the battle royale genre, taking the wind out of PUBG’s sails. Further issues, including widespread cheating allegations, added insult to injury.

After Epic added Roblox-style creator experiences to Fortnite, however, Krafton began bringing similar changes to the PUBG community. The 2025 launch of a creator program signaled PUBG’s readiness to move beyond third-person, open-world shooter mechanics and become an all-around game creation platform. Now, that new functionality is available to PUBG players.

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MONEY MOVES

The earnings call: Spotify’s Q2 earnings call proved to be a rollercoaster for investors, with shares dropping 5% early on before rising 0.5% above pre-call prices.

It’s not difficult to see why shareholders experienced a few moments of uncertainty. CFO Christian Luiga told analysts that marketing and AI-related investments will drive roughly €200 million (~$230 million USD) in incremental operating expense for the full year, though he expects that growth to moderate in Q4.

Some of that investment seems to have been in a partnership with Merlin. Earlier this week, the digital music licenser and Spotify announced a deal that “enables artists on labels under Merlin’s Spotify agreement the option to participate” in Spotify’s upcoming pay-to-play AI remix and cover tool.

Spotify has also invested in developing things like “Personal Podcasts,” which it says will “generate short, private, personalized audio directly inside Spotify.”

While investors aren’t usually thrilled when a platform says it’s going to spend more, Spotify reassured shareholders that 25% of its users are already utilizing its AI features. The platform also credited "favorable podcast […] impacts" with helping push its profit margin to an all-time high. Revenue rose 14% year over year to €4.8 billion, powered by gains in Premium subscribers. Spotify said it now has 300 million Premium subscribers worldwide (with 7 million gained in Q2) and 777 million total monthly active users.

The plan: Spotify’s Q2 subscriber gain put it slightly below its projected 778 million. The platform also projected less user growth for Q3 than analysts expected, a slower pickup it blamed on “emerging markets” like India and Indonesia.

That slowdown is partly self-inflicted. Spotify co-CEO Alex Norström told Reuters the company is trading free users for paying ones in those regions through “sign-up changes, deprecation of old lower-end Android devices, carefully introducing some friction in the ad load with respect to increasing ad load and some limitations on our free tier.”

THE BIZ

The merch: iShowSpeed has something new in store for fans. The streamer has joined forces with Killer Merch to bring a collection of five t-shirts and one hoodie to over 500 Zumiez locations in the U.S.

That launch is well-timed, since Speed is fresh off his star turn at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. His high-profile collabs with sports stars built off the momentum he generated through high-profile tours in regions like Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Levant.

That hype doesn’t seem likely to die down anytime soon. A Killer Merch rep told Tubefilter that Speed’s collection registered the biggest day-one retail launch of any retailer Killer Merch has worked with thus far.

The context: Of course, successful brand collabs are nothing new for Speed. As the creator’s star power has become evident, companies across various industries have lined up to work with him. He’s traveled the world with Expedia, transformed into an anime character for Brian Robbins’ Big Shot Pictures, and stepped into the wrestling ring with the WWE.

Speed’s Zumiez collection isn’t Killer Merch’s first rodeo, either. In addition to supporting the launch of Danny Duncan’s Virginity Rocks line at Zumiez back in 2019, the commerce company has helped creators like Ninja and Hailey Welch break into physical stores like Spencer’s.

Other creators who have brought merch to Zumiez include Rhett & Link and Hila Klein—but in Speed’s case, the retailer forwent its standard operating procedure. Rather than first testing the creator’s brand in a handful of stores, the retailer dropped Speed’s apparel in all 560 of its U.S. locations right off the bat.

WATCH THIS 👀

The cameo: Ludwig Ahgren has made his royal debut as an NPC in the video game Road to Empress II. After streaming the first installment in the series last year, the creator promptly pitched himself to the game’s developers as an actor for their next title.

Now, that collab has finally panned out—and the footage of Prince Ludwig of Fuling doesn’t disappoint. While the game itself reportedly has a bit of an AI problem, fans can’t get enough of Ludwig’s platinum-haired character and his enthusiastic portrayal of a prince from a faraway land.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.