An Android TV is a great source of entertainment. You get to enjoy all your favorite movies, series, sports, and whatnot. There are a bunch of apps for all that. But how many of you know that Android TVs are also good for your video calling needs? You can simply plug a camera and microphone into the TV or Android TV boxes to make your Android TV audio/video call ready. Google Meet is one of the apps that streamlines such an experience, but sadly it might be deprecated soon on the Android TV platform.

An APK teardown suggests Google Meet could soon be deprecated on the Android TV platform

Today, the news was first reported by Android Authority, all thanks to the findings of a popular code tinkerer, AssembleDebug. The publication reported that the Google Meet app could be in its last days on the Android TV platform. According to the latest report, AssembleDebug found some code strings in the latest update for Google Meet that suggest the app could soon be deprecated on the Android TV.

The code strings found during the APK teardown include some messages that hint towards the possible deprecation of the Google Meet app. One of the messages reads “Soon you won’t be able to use Google Meet on your Android TV to make calls. Click below for alternatives and to learn more.” While the other mentions “Meet on Android TV is going away.” It is important to note that the code strings mention the term “deprecation.”

There’s no confirmation from Google in this matter though

Are you wondering what the deprecation of the Google Meet app on Android TV would mean for you? Since the message in code strings is quite clear, the deprecation of the Google Meet app would mean you won’t be able to make calls using it on your Android TV. That’s not all, if you are in a corporate setup, hosting meetings won’t be possible in the near future. In fact, the app will be absent entirely.

However, you don’t have to worry about the deprecation of the Google Meet app. If you read carefully, there’s a term “Click below for alternatives” in the code strings. That means, that whenever the deprecation happens, you might get alternative apps for audio/video calls on Android TV.

All that said, there’s no mention of the upcoming change in Google’s documentation for setting up “Google Meet Calling.” Or, rather the company may not have updated the documentation yet. In any case, there’s no official confirmation about possible deprecation. Time will tell if Google keeps the Meet app on Android TV or deprecates it.

X only has to pay one last fine in Brazil to get its services reinstated, according to Bloomberg and CNBC. Supreme Court R has ordered the company to pay 10 million Reais, or around $1.9 million, for its non-compliance with Brazil’s court order for two days. Moraes added that the company’s return “depends solely on the full compliance with Brazilian legislation and the absolute observance of the court orders in respect of national sovereignty.” Specifically, Moraes fined X on September 19 for restoring its services in the country for some people despite a ban on the website. The judge also fined the company after X disregarded the ban for a second time on September 23 through Starlink.

X’s owner, Elon Musk, previously resisted Moraes’ order to take down and freeze several accounts that were allegedly spreading disinformation on the platform. Musk saw it as censorship and opted to close its operations in the country instead of complying. In response, Moraes ordered the nation’s internet providers to block the social media platform and to issue a new rule that anybody found to be accessing X through a VPN could face a daily fine of 50,000 Reais ($8,900). The court froze the Brazilian bank account of SpaceX’s Starlink internet service provider, as well. It ultimately withdrew 18.35 million Reais ($3.4 million) from Starlink’s and X’s account to settle previous penalties the Supreme Court had imposed on the social network.

A few days ago, however, X’s lawyers reportedly filed a document in court naming the company’s legal representative in Brazil, as Moraes had demanded. The website also removed the accounts the judge named in its initial directives and which he had identified as a threat to democracy, showing that it’s now willing to comply with the court’s orders. The New York Times reported back then that X had failed to submit all the necessary paperwork to get Brazil to lift its ban. Moraes’ statement that the company can “immediately return to its activities” after it pays this fine suggests that X got that squared away, and Brazilian users may be able to access the website soon.

Look North World today announced the latest UGC game released through its Creator Label: Tower of Heck: Super Only Up. Tower of Heck is a UEFN creation, accessible to all Fortnite players, and features a vertical obstacle course where sixteen players race to see who can reach the top — if any of them can. While climbing, players collect coins they can use to purchase upgrades for if (when, inevitably) they tumble back down to the bottom. The game launches today on Fortnite’s platform.

FarBridge developed Tower of Heck to be a playground for users to enjoy with their friends, though it’s not without serious challenges. The tower starts off relatively easy, with the difficulty ramping up the higher players go. There are no checkpoints, but the coins players collect and the upgrades they can buy at the bottom of the tower can quickly speed them back to their point of failure.

However, FarBridge executive producer Donald Harris told GamesBeat in an interview that it’s not that serious: “Part of the goal is to have those moments of seeing your friends misstep and just laugh as you watch them fall. The goal is to have a lot of fun and experience those goofy moments… It kind of brings us back to the olden days of game design: Design for fun first.”

Look North World raised $2.25 million earlier this year to help fund the Creator Label, which it uses to help publish and support original UGC titles. Tower of Heck is the latest UGC title to benefit from the Creator Label, which offers developers marketing support, technical advice and hands-on collaboration with the publisher, among other things.

GamesBeat spoke with Patrick Curry, FarBridge CEO, about the benefits of developing a game for a platform like Fortnite’s, and he cited the accessibility of the platform: “Games are usually very large productions, because they have to be. The economics demand that they are. But to be able to make a smaller, midsize game and launch it everywhere relatively quickly is really new and exciting to us. And with everyone in the world competing for players’ time and attention and eyeballs, being able to say, ‘Here’s a game. We know you own a device that can play it. And it’s free.’ You get a lot of mileage out of that.”

GamesBeat also spoke with Alex Seropian, CEO of Look North World, about its involvement with Tower of Heck: “This project is one of the areas where we are experimenting in new kinds of genres, creating original games, and sort of flexing that part of the business … . We are investing in exploring new kinds of play patterns and genres. We do look at this platform as the most efficient way to create new kinds of games, new IP, new game mechanics, because it’s fast and it’s less expensive. It’s a lower risk.”

Seropian also added, “In this industry, game take much longer, and they cost a lot more. The decision making process is vetted and the higher you go up that scale that the more risk is associated with those kinds of investments. Whereas in this space, I literally think anything is investable. We have way more things that we want to do than we could possibly do… In terms of making giving developers the opportunity to — dare I say — innovate, UEFN is amazing in that way.”

Curry added that Fortnite’s creative platform not only offers tools, but an audience of gamers as well: “We’ve been licensing Unreal Engine for years and making games in Unreal but then it was like, launch your game on Steam yourself, port it to consoles yourself, bring an audience yourself. Bringing the accessible tools and this audience who can see your game on the front page of Fortnite, hundreds of millions of people a month. That’s new and that’s very exciting.”