Atari is acquiring retro game specialists Nightdive Studios

A screenshot from Nightdive’s upcoming System Shock remake. | Image: Nightdive Studios

Atari has announced that it’s buying Nightdive Studios, the developer behind several remasters of classic games like Quake and Doom 64 as well as the upcoming System Shock remake. In a press release, Atari said it plans to use the acquisition to “enrich its large library of owned IP... leverage Night Dive’s proprietary technology, and utilize Night Dive’s publishing capabilities to support Atari’s retro-focused growth strategy.”

The acquisition comes just months after Atari released one of its most complete retro game collections to date, called Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, and it seems to hope Nightdive will help with similar remasters in the future. Its press release specifically calls out the studio’s proprietary Kex engine,...

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Belkin’s backpedal exposes Matter’s inherent tension

The Verge

The news that Belkin is pausing its promised Wemo Matter products illustrates an underlying tension in the new smart home standard: the conflict between developing for the greater good and keeping all your eggs in your own basket.

Matter is a connectivity standard that lets smart home devices talk to each other directly, locally, and securely across any platform. It re-engineers the foundations of the smart home and levels the playing field for manufacturers. Instead of spending time and money making their devices work with multiple platforms, companies can put those resources into creating innovative features — who you work with is no longer as important as what you can do.

Before the smart home, who paid attention to what brand their...

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Alleged $40 billion crypto fraudster Do Kwon said to be arrested in Montenegro

Do Kwon, the founder of Terraform Labs and creator of the collapsed stablecoin Terra, has been arrested in Montenegro, which was first reported through social media posts by Montenegro Minister of the Interior Filip Adzic on Twitter (where he’s unverified, whether by Twitter Blue or legacy means), and on Facebook (where he is verified, but Facebook’s blue checks have been wrong before).

Yonhap News in Koreareports police are waiting for fingerprint confirmation that the person arrested is actually Do Kwon.

We are in the process of defending ourselves in multiple jurisdictions - we have held ourselves to an extremely high bar of integrity, and look forward to clarifying the truth over the next few months

— Do Kwon (@stablekwon) S...

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Anker’s MagSafe-friendly 622 Magnetic Battery (MagGo) drops to a new all-time low

Anker’s 622 Magnetic Battery (MagGo) comes with a folding kickstand. | Image: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

There’s nothing more frustrating than a phone running out of battery while you’re enjoying your spring break sightseeing. Thankfully, though, we found a terrific deal on an updated version of Anker’s 622 Magnetic Battery (MagGo) today, one of our favorite MagSafe-compatible battery packs. Right now, the small and portable charger is available at a new low of around $42 ($28 off) at Amazon or direct from Anker with offer code WS7DNFPXBT.

Anker’s 7.5W magnetic charger can juice up newer MagSafe-equipped iPhones wirelessly via its built-in Qi pad, yet it also comes with a USB-C port for wired charging. It offers nearly double the battery capacity of Apple’s own MagSafe Battery Pack at less than half the price, too, not to mention a built-in...

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Tim Sweeney explains how the metaverse might actually work

Tim Sweeney. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Epic’s CEO, alongside executive VP Saxs Persson, talks about the future of virtual worlds and what needs to happen for the metaverse to really come to fruition.

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Cyberpunk 2077 is getting film-like path tracing with new Overdrive Mode in April

Image: Nvidia

CD Projekt Red is releasing a technology preview of a new Cyberpunk 2077 ray tracing mode next month. Path tracing, also known as full ray tracing, will be enabled in the game on April 11th, which will bring even more accurately simulated light to the role-playing game.

Path tracing is film-like rendering that’s been used by studios like Pixar to create incredible visuals in movies. Visual effects artists use path tracing for film and TV graphics, but it’s incredibly GPU-intensive for video games. CD Projekt Red is using Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) upscaling technology to bring this full ray tracing mode to Cyberpunk 2077.

Image: Nvidia

A comparison between ray tracing, path tracing, and regular...

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Apple’s Tetris movie has no idea what it wants to be

Taron Egerton as Henk Rogers in Tetris_._ | Image: Apple

Director Jon S. Baird’s Apple TV Plus Tetris movie is a textbook example of a biopic that has no idea how to make its story pop.

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How to play the long game, with New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien

Photo illustration by Alex Parkin / The Verge

Can Wordle, The Athletic, and NYT Cooking bring the Times bundle to all of America?

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The Linus Tech Tips YouTube hack is the latest in a line of crypto scam breaches

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Popular YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has been hacked this morning, with the channel’s 15.3 million subscribers seeing videos for crypto scams instead of tech hardware reviews. It’s the latest breach in a series of high-profile YouTube accounts being hacked, with scammers regularly gaining access to prominent accounts to rename them and livestream crypto scam videos.

The main Linus Tech Tips channel was breached earlier this morning, with several live videos broadcast before the hacker started making old private videos public. The account was eventually suspended, presumably as YouTube employees work to restore it. Other Linus Media Group YouTube channels, including Techquickie and TechLinked, have also been breached and given new...

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How to watch this morning’s TikTok ban hearing

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew is set to testify before Congress for the first time on Thursday, facing some of his app’s most dogged opponents in an attempt to mitigate a nationwide ban attempt.

For more than three years, TikTok has been operating under the threat of a potential ban in the US. Now, with more than 150 million American users, the threats have escalated into legislation and an ultimatum from the Biden administration. Thursday’s hearing with the GOP-led House Committee on Energy and Commerce could be Chew and TikTok’s last shot at convincing lawmakers that the app is safe.

“TikTok has never shared, or received a request to share, U.S. user data with the Chinese government. Nor would TikTok honor such a request if one were ever...

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Rewind’s new feature brings ChatGPT to your personal information

Rewind’s “ChatGPT For Me” feature is a chatbot with access to all of your stuff. | Image: Rewind

The idea of a personal search engine is a powerful and enticing one. What if there were an app that knew everything about my meetings, my tasks, my browser history, my email, and everything else and could help me comb through it to find the stuff I care about? Sounds super helpful! Also, in an era of increasing surveillance and the ongoing monetization of our every thought and action, sounds like a terrifying hellscape dystopia!

There’s probably a middle ground in there somewhere that works. That’s what Rewind.ai is trying to find with the feature it’s launching today. It’s called “ChatGPT For Me,” and it’s a GPT-4 chatbot that you can use to interact with all the information Rewind’s app collects about you.

(Rewind, if you haven’t...

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Snap launches a new business to help retailers with AR shopping

Example of the ARES footwear try-on feature. | Image: Snap

For years, Snapchat has allowed you to try on new lipstick shades, hats, and outfits from major retailers. But starting today, you’ll be able to apply these Snapchat-powered capabilities in other apps.

Snap just announced a new business unit, AR Enterprise Services (ARES), that’ll equip retailers with tools so you can try on clothes, jewelry, and more from various brands — all from the comfort of your home.

The new ARES business aims to help retailers increase conversions and reduce return rates with augmented reality shopping tools. To this end, ARES will provide its customers with professional services, including product marketing to customer support. That’s in addition to tools included in its first solution — the “Shopping Suite” —...

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Lego 2K Drive lets you build a custom racing car brick by brick

Image: 2K

Lego 2K Drive is a new open-world racing game from Visual Concepts, the studio best known for its annual licensed WWE and NBA sports games. As you’d expect from a game set in the Lego universe, there’s a strong emphasis on customizability, with the game offering over a thousand unique Lego pieces to let players build the exact vehicle they want to race in.

Although Lego 2K Drive is an open-world racing game similar to the Forza Horizon series, it also seems to incorporate some elements of the kart racing genre. Its press release describes it as an “off-the-wall experience” featuring “unique power-up abilities.” The game is set in Bricklandia with multiple themed regions, collectibles to discover, and mini-games to play in addition to...

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Tesla’s Wireless Charging Platform does what AirPower couldn’t

You don’t have to be a Tesla fanatic to appreciate the convenience of this Cybertruck-inspired multi-device charger. You just have to be willing to spend $300.

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Lenovo’s high-end Legion Slim gaming laptops get new AI chips to ‘optimize cooling’

This is the Legion Slim 7i. | Image: Lenovo

Lenovo has announced some of the top laptops that its Legion gaming arm will release in 2023. Among them are refreshes to the 16-inch Slim 7, Slim 7i, Slim 5, and Slim 5i as well as a new Slim 5 in a 14-inch size. These are, as the name implies, thinner and more portable devices than the beefiest gaming rigs on the market.

In addition to new processors from Intel and AMD, the devices include physical AI chips that power what Lenovo is calling its “AI Engine+.” This feature, Lenovo says, will dynamically adjust a system’s thermals to “optimize cooling on the fly and maintain maximum output with minimal noise.”

Whether this is a big deal will honestly depend on the impact it ends up having on performance. Were these laptops to deliver a...

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Turtle Beach’s flagship gaming headset offers ‘unrivaled’ noise cancellation — for a price

Turtle Beach has some bold claims about the noise-canceling capabilities of its latest flagship gaming headset. | Image: Turtle Beach

Turtle Beach has announced the Stealth Pro, its latest flagship wireless gaming headset equipped with “unrivaled active noise cancellation” and a swappable two-battery system. The Stealth Pro is available to preorder today for $329.99, with a full release date set for April 23rd.

If you winced at the price, you’re not alone. That’s considerably more than rival flagship offerings like the Razer Barracuda Pro ($249.99). To justify it, Turtle Beach says the Stealth Pro is equipped with four internal microphones that can reduce noise levels by 25dB, which the company claims is “the most effective, competitively benchmarked noise-cancellation available in a gaming headset.” Users can customize their equalizer or noise cancellation settings...

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Can AI generate a way to pay for itself?

If we automate venture capital, will the hype generate itself? | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

The AI hype is marketing, baby.

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The FTC wants to ban those tough-to-cancel gym and cable subscriptions

Photo: Getty Images

The US Federal Trade Commission is proposing a formal ban on subscriptions that are simple to start but difficult to stop. This morning, it announced a notice of proposed rulemaking it dubs “click to cancel,” requiring companies to make ending a subscription equivalently simple to signing up for one. That includes letting people use the same method for both actions — so a business can’t, for instance, let someone sign up for a service online but make them call a phone number to cancel.

The rule has a couple of other provisions. Many companies try to keep subscribers by offering special deals or perks, and they’re still allowed to do that, but they must offer an up-front opt-out that lets customers bypass the sales pitches. They also have...

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Engwe M20 e-bike review: a budget Super73

Less than half the price of a Super73-ZX but with more inattention to detail.

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Canva’s got a massive update that should have Adobe worried

Image: Canva

Web-based design platform Canva is introducing a colossal suite of new brand management products and AI-powered design tools focused on helping entire workplaces streamline their content creation process. Announced today at Canva’s Create event, most of these new features are designed to make creating content like social media graphics, presentations, and advertising materials more accessible to those without professional design experience. The idea is this would leave graphic designers free to tackle more pressing tasks. The number of features announced is impressive and could challenge Adobe’s ubiquity in some offices.

A new Brand Hub is being added to Canva’s Visual Worksuite, providing tools meant to help users remain consistent with...

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Samsung’s photo “remaster” knows what this baby pic is missing: teeth

Dentists hate this one easy trick. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Samsung’s recently caught some flak after widespread reports that its camera software fakes zoom pictures of the moon, but things may be about to get way more unsettling. A Verge reader wrote in on Wednesday to tell us that the company’s software is adding teeth to pictures of their seven-month old daughter.

This reader says they recently got an S23 Ultra, and decided to try out the Remaster feature in Samsung’s photo-viewing app, Gallery. (It’s the default photo app for the phone, and the feature is available inside the camera if you visit your photo roll.)

They expected something like what Google Photos does, suggesting specific adjustments and filters, unbluring pictures, and the like. Instead, they got the results you can see below,...

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The SEC has put Coinbase on notice for allegedly breaking securities laws

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Coinbase execs revealed today that the crypto exchange has received a “Wells Notice” from the Securities and Exchange Commission, indicating that after an investigation, the agency’s staff plan to recommend some kind of enforcement action. That could include charges or lawsuits, but none of that has happened yet.

Last month, the SEC reached a settlement with Kraken over its crypto staking operation, where the company paid a $30 million fine and shut down US operations right around the same time it sent another Wells Notice to the crypto firm Paxos over its minting of the Binance USD (BUSD) token.

So what happens next? We avail ourselves of the court system to finally start to get some clarity for the crypto industry in the U.S....

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IFTTT now has AI-powered automations for paying subscribers

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

IFTTT, the productivity platform that lets users create automations across various apps and devices, has announced three new AI-powered services. The platform will now let users incorporate AI-generated social media posts, blogs, and summaries into their automations, but only if they subscribe to its $5 monthly Pro Plus plan.

IFTTT, which stands for “if this, then that,” is a service that lets users chain together a series of actions between devices and apps, called “applets.” This includes automations like adding songs from liked videos on YouTube to a Spotify playlist or receiving a notification on your phone about the weather every morning. But now, IFTTT’s adding another layer of automation to its service.

Its new automations — AI...

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SEC sues Justin Sun for his crypto schemes, along with Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, and Soulja Boy

Photo by Calvin Sit / Bloomberg via Getty Images

When we wrote about Tron founder Justin Sun and possible illegal activities within his cryptocurrency empire last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) declined to comment. Said one employee who spoke to The Verge, “If he breaks so many laws at such a rapid pace, it’d be impossible for anyone to catch up to him.”

Today, the SEC announced civil charges against Sun and eight celebrities, including Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, and Soulja Boy.

In a complaint filed Wednesday, the SEC claims the crypto entrepreneur engaged in market manipulation and the unregistered offer and sale of securities by dealing with his crypto assets TRX and BTT. The celebrities who touted the coin are being charged with not disclosing that they were...

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Apple’s AirTags are receiving a rare discount at Amazon right now

If you do the math, that factors out to just over $22 a pop. | Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

If you’re someone who has a penchant for losing everything you own — your keys, fanny pack, what have you — a set of ultra-wideband Bluetooth trackers is a good bet for keeping tabs on your belongings. And right now, Apple’s handy AirTags are on sale in a four-pack at Amazon and Walmart for $89.99, a slight $10 discount but one we seldom see.

If you’re unfamiliar with Apple’s hyper-accurate trackers, there are a couple of things to note. Even though you can detect them using an Android device, they’re really an ideal option for those already invested in the Apple ecosystem since they make use of Apple’s extensive Find My network to locate your lost items. They also carry an IP67 water and dust resistance rating and boast end-to-end...

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The biggest announcements from Epic Games’ State of Unreal 2023 keynote

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Epic Games has just wrapped its State of Unreal 2023 keynote, where it showed off new enhancements coming to Unreal Engine 5.2, stunning new MetaHuman technology, a big push to unify its disparate assets marketplaces, and Fortnite’s long-awaited Unreal Editor tools. Given the popularity of Unreal Engine and Fortnite, the day’s announcements could have a major impact on the games we play in the future.

Here are the biggest announcements from the show.

Epic showed off a stunning, foliage-filled Unreal Engine 5.2 demo

One of Unreal Engine 5.2’s biggest additions is new procedural generation tools, which Epic showed off in a gorgeous “Electric Dreams” demo that took place in a dense, foliage-filled forest partially created...

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Epic is merging its digital asset stores into one huge marketplace

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Epic Games’ next big plan for the metaverse is to unify all of its disparate asset marketplaces under one brand, Fab. The new store will include assets from the Unreal Engine Marketplace, Quixel Bridge, Artstation Marketplace, and Sketchfab, and Epic will give creators 88 percent of earnings on the store, like it does for the Epic Games Store.

“In the old days, every game developer built all of the content in their product from the ground up. Increasingly, content marketplaces such as Unreal Engine Marketplace and Unity’s Asset Store have provided huge libraries of content which game developers can license from independent content creators and use in their games,” Epic said in a blog post. “We think this trend will grow significantly as...

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Amid layoffs and lost games, Amazon Luna comes to Canada, Germany, and the UK

Image: The Verge

Amazon Luna, the cloud gaming service, is expanding to Canada, Germany, and the UK. I certainly didn’t have that on my bingo card.

Remember: Google Stadia is dead as a doornail, and Amazon Luna, the company’s rival cloud gaming service, wasn’t doing much better. It lost a lot of games, and that was after the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority estimated it had less than 5 percent of the cloud gaming market. Oh, also, Amazon’s in the middle of layoffs so brutal that even iconic camera review site DPReview is about to shut its doors.

But this? This feels like a sign that the company’s planning to take advantage of the gap left by Stadia instead of throwing in the towel.

Image: UK Competition and Markets Authority ...

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Epic is going to give 40 percent of Fortnite’s net revenues back to creators

Image: Epic Games

Epic Games is trying to make a better economy for Fortnite creators with what its calls “Creator Economy 2.0,” which it announced at its State of Unreal keynote on Wednesday.

Previously, Epic creators participated in the company’s “Support-A-Creator” program. In the program, creators were issued individual codes, and if somebody bought something in the Fortnite store with that code, that creator would get 5 percent of your purchase. But the significant downside of that model is that creators would have to promote their code and just hope that people would remember to use it when making purchases.

Fortnite generates “billions” of dollars of revenue per year from purchases of outfits and items from the game’s in-game shop, Saxs Persson,...

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The Writers Guild of America is reportedly open to AI

Image: The Writers Guild of America

While we’ve already seen the adoption of AI tools go hand in hand with layoffs for writers in other industries, the Writers Guild of America is reportedly ready to embrace the disruptive technology so long as it doesn’t directly impact how creators are credited and paid.

Variety reports that, amid ongoing contract negotiations between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the WGA this week floated a proposal that would welcome scripts created with the help of AI tools. Under the proposal, AI-generated content would not be considered “literary material” or “source material” — two key specifications within the WGA’s minimum basic agreement that partially determine how credit...

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