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When a train disaster disrupts one of Europe's busiest corridors, what happens to airfares? In Spain, the answer became uncomfortably clear after the Adamuz rail accident sent flight prices soaring. The accident killed 46 people and knocked out the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed AVE line. Airline Iberia has now responded by capping economy fares on the route at EUR 99 per trip through February 19, a move it first applied to Madrid-Andalusia flights in January after the same accident made rail travel to cities like Málaga and Seville impossible. The airline operates up to 14 daily flights in each direction on the Madrid-Barcelona route, giving it significant capacity (and pricing power). Business class and Puente Aéreo fares remain untouched.As reported by El Periódico, the price cap didn't materialize in a vacuum. Spain's Consumer Affairs Minister Pablo Bustinduy announced that the government plans to impose mandatory price ceilings on alternative transport during infrastructure emergencies, calculated from the average fare in the month preceding the disruption. The goal, as Bustinduy put it, is to ensure "nobody can profit extraordinarily from an emergency or necessity."TREND BITEIberia's fare cap sits at the intersection of crisis response and brand strategy. When essential infrastructure fails, the companies that control alternatives face a binary choice: extract maximum value from captive demand, or demonstrate restraint and bank the reputational dividend. Iberia chose the latter. For brands operating in sectors where demand can spike overnight due to external shocks energy, logistics, travel, telecommunications the calculus is shifting. Voluntary restraint now buys goodwill and may stave off heavier-handed regulation later.
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Marketing and Advertising
Another day, another wave of gaming layoffs. Today it's Riot Games with the announcement that it's cutting jobs on its pair-based fighting game 2XKO. For context, a representative from Riot confirmed to Game Developer that about 80 people are being cut, or roughly half of 2XKO's global development team. "As we expanded from PC to console, we saw consistent trends in how players were engaging with 2XKO," according to the blog post from executive producer Tom Cannon. "The game has resonated with a passionate core audience, but overall momentum hasnt reached the level needed to support a team of this size long term."The console launch for 2XKO happened last month. Cannon said the company's plans for its 2026 competitive season have not altered with the layoffs. He added that Riot will attempt to place the impacted people at new positions within the company where possible.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/riot-games-is-laying-off-half-of-the-2xko-development-team-215423279.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
House Judiciary Committee member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) has asked the US Department of Justice to turn over all its communications with both Apple and Google regarding the companies' decisions to remove apps that shared information about sightings of US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers. Several apps that allowed people to share information about where they had seen ICE members were removed from both Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store in October. Politico reported that Raskin has contacted Attorney General Pam Bondi on the issue and also questioned the agency's use of force against protestors as it executes the immigration policy set by President Donald Trump. "The coercion and censorship campaign, which ultimately targets the users of ICE-monitoring applications, is a clear effort to silence this Administrations critics and suppress any evidence that would expose the Administrations lies, including its Orwellian attempts to cover up the murders of Renee and Alex," Raskin wrote to Bondi. He refers to Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were both fatally shot by ICE agents. In the two separate incidents, claims made by federal leaders about the victims and the circumstances of their deaths were contradicted by eyewitnesses or camera footage, echoing violent interactions and lies about them that occurred while ICE conducted raids in Chicago several months ago. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/doj-may-face-investigation-for-pressuring-apple-google-to-remove-apps-for-tracking-ice-agents-212145181.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
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