Clips of what appears to be Grand Theft Auto VI have hit the internet, possibly spoiling aspects of the game ahead of Rockstar Games' deep dive debuting on Netflix next week and its long-awaited launch in November.

I've seen three clips seemingly showing off the game, though two have been pulled from the site I saw them on "due to a copyright claim." The first clip (now removed) was a quiet scene that mostly focused on Jason Duval, one the game's two protagonists, shooting a basketball into a hoop. Another clip (also removed) featured more of the crime-focused gameplay you'd expect from GTA, including Duval hitting a person with a wrench, a …

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OpenAI is announcing security updates following the July news that its AI broke out of a sandboxed environment and accidentally hacked Hugging Face, including improvements to its research environments, monitoring, and alignment techniques. The company had already put the brakes on a new model, Astra, that it thinks could have "critical" cybersecurity capabilities, and the company says it instituted a two-week pause in reinforcement learning (RL) training on its "latest models intended for deployment" while it tightened up security. The company's "largest planned frontier RL run remains on hold."

For its frontier model research, OpenAI now r …

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Sony's Pulse Elevate wireless gaming speakers are launching on November 12th and will cost $219.99, the company announced on Tuesday. Announced nearly a year ago, the speakers are compatible with a PS5, PlayStation Portal, PC, and Mac, and they include "studio-inspired planar magnetic drivers" that offer "lifelike sound across the entire audible spectrum," Sony says. They also include a built-in mic for voice chat, Sony's PlayStation Link low-latency tech, and charging docks for topping up the batteries.

The Pulse Elevate speakers come in two colors, black and white, and preorders begin on September 1st at 10AM ET in the US or 10AM local t …

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Apple is once again overhauling App Store rules in the European Union, which the company says will resolve its "disagreements with the Commission over business terms and alternative distribution." As part of the changes, every developer that distributes apps will be moved to a single set of business terms, and digital transactions for apps distributed outside of the App Store will be subject to a Core Technology Commission fee of 5 percent.

The new terms go into effect on October 1st. They will include a 26 percent commission for App Store apps that use Apple's in-app purchase system, or a 20 percent fee for developers using alternate payme …

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Reddit is trying out a new way for people to take in content on Reddit: by turning text posts into audio / video content. As part of an experiment, some posts are being adapted into videos that use AI voices to read the text of the main post and some comments. The video highlights the text as it's read by the AI voice, and under the video, a note says that it's a "Real conversation voiced by AI."

An old post in r/boardgames from eight years ago with 101 responses to a request for good road trip games that adults will like is an example of Reddit's AI at work. Instead of the usual text thread, it has the main question above a three-minute vi …

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Analogue and Supreme are teaming up to release metallic versions of the Analogue Pocket handheld in red and gold as part of Supreme's fall / winter 2026 collection.

Here's how they're described on Supreme's website:

Metallic portable handheld multi-video-game-system. Unibody aluminum with 24K Gold-plated and custom red glossy finishes.

They also have a Supreme logo on the front and the back. I dig the colors, but not the logos. (But I'm not really a Supreme guy.)

No price is currently listed on the website for the handhelds. We've asked Analogue and Supreme how much they'll cost. A standard Pocket costs $239.99.

Supreme's fall / winte …

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Arguably the coolest new photo feature for the Pixel 11 lineup is Google's new Camera Looks, which process image data differently at the sensor level to produce photos that don't have that "smartphone" look. The result is new styles like "Digi," which mimics the style of photos taken by older digital cameras. But to use Camera Looks, at least initially, you'll need to have one of Google's Pixel 11 phones.

"Our latest camera updates are only available on our latest devices," Google spokesperson Alex Moriconi tells The Verge. "We're always looking to bring experiences to more users, but have nothing to share at this time." That last sentence …

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In a new filing in its long-running legal dispute with Epic Games, Apple has proposed a structure that would allow it to collect fees on digital purchases made via external links that don't use the company's in-app purchase system. Epic has already responded, saying that Apple's request is "far outside of the bounds" of the court's guidance.

Right now, Apple cannot take a commission on external purchases after California district court judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled in April 2025 that the company "willfully" didn't comply with her 2021 Epic Games v. Apple injunction. However, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel said that Apple should …

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Netflix plans to shut down two of its gaming studios, as reported by Game File and Variety, as it makes a bigger shift toward party games and titles streamed to TVs.

One of the studios being shut down is Night School Studio, creators of the Oxenfree series. Netflix bought Night School in 2021, and it just released a horror experience called Unhinged for TVs and launched a mobile game in 2025 tied to Black Mirror. The other studio that's set to close is Helsinki-based Moonloot Games, which was created in 2022.

Netflix's big push into TV-based games kicked off late last year and was a pivot from a mobile-focused approach that featured presti …

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Another OpenAI executive is departing. Denise Dresser, who joined OpenAI as its chief revenue officer in December after serving as CEO of Slack, will be leaving in the "coming weeks" to "pursue other opportunities," she said in a team note posted to LinkedIn. Dali Rajic, president and COO of Wiz, will be taking over the CRO role, OpenAI says.

Dresser's departure is just the latest in a string of major exits. Earlier this week, special projects lead and former COO Brad Lightcap announced he would be leaving. (Dresser had taken over some of Lightcap's work when he moved to the special projects role.) Former AGI chief Fidji Simo and former CMO …

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2K is launching a new AAA game development studio, Small Axe Studios, with an ambitious goal: to build the company's "next blockbuster sports franchise," according to a LinkedIn post.

The post doesn't explicitly say what sport this new game will focus on. But an image included in the post features what appears to be a mockup soccer badge, indicating that Small Axe might be making a soccer game that goes head-to-head with EA Sports FC. The Small Axe website also lists senior staffers with experience working on EA's FIFA series (the former name of EA Sports FC), including studio head Aaron McHardy, who once led that franchise.

Small Axe was …

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Nintendo's first Fire Emblem game for the Switch 2 is structured in an ambitious way. Unlike the well-loved Three Houses, a strategy game that tasked you with pledging allegiance to a specific faction and seeing their story all the way to the end, the new Fortune's Weave lets you swap between four heroes and their compatriots so you can tackle multiple storylines at once. With Three Houses, I only ever played one path and never went back to experience the others. I hoped that the new game's structure would be a way to see everyone's stories in one playthrough.

After playing 26 hours of Fortune's Weave, which launches on September 17th, I've …

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It's almost time for the Made by Google keynote, where the company will show off the brand-new Pixel hardware it announced today. Like last year, it'll be a celebrity-packed live show, though Trevor Noah is hosting instead of Jimmy Fallon. If the 2025 show was any indication, today's broadcast might be something of a cringefest.

If you've been following tech news this morning, you already know a lot about the new Pixels. Press and creators were able to publish extensive hands-on impressions of the new hardware hours ago, and you can read our coverage of the Pixel 11 phones, their new camera features, the Pixel Watch 5, and more right now.

…

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Kinetic Publishing, a new indie publisher from the development team behind the co-op horror game Phasmophobia, just hosted its first games showcase, and it includes five ambitious new titles set to release in 2027 and 2028.

Perhaps the most significant announcement from Kinetic's show is that it's publishing the next game from Telling Lies and Immortality creator Sam Barlow, titled Precognition. (Barlow previously revealed the game as "Project C.") Like other Barlow titles, Precognition will feature FMV-sequences and nonlinear storytelling. Here's the setup:

Players take on the role of Diana, a woman who discovers she can receive vision …

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Twitch users can now opt out of allowing their content to be used to train Amazon's generative AI models. Opting out means that "your streams, VODs, clips, stream chats, and pictures and text on your channel" won't be used in "future training" of an Amazon AI model "whose purpose is to generate or synthesize text, audio, images, or video," according to a Twitch support page.

Other "AI-supported" features like captions and safety tools will still function if you opt out of generative AI training. However, if you participate in a chat on another person's stream, "their opt-out preferences govern if that chat can be used for training," Twitch …

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Amazon is fully stepping back from MMOs. After saying last year that it would be halting "a significant amount" of its work on first-party AAA games, "specifically around MMOs," Amazon will be handing over live operations of Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark in the West to other companies, according to announcements on Wednesday. Throne and Liberty will be taken over by FirstSpark Games and NC in Q4 2026. Lost Ark will be run by Smilegate starting in early 2027.

When Amazon announced the broader strategy shift in October, the developers of a third MMO, New World: Aeternum, announced plans to stop offering new content updates. As of January, y …

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After a former lead writer claimed Saber "replaced me with ChatGPT," CEO Matthew Karch now claims, "Neither Saber nor Unigine have replaced any writers with AI," for the Rideshare "Stimulator" game announced last month, developed by Unigine.

The writer, Stella Sacco, says differently, however, posting on Bluesky that "I was lead writer on this one! And Saber replaced me with ChatGPT midway through development. All the passenger voices were AI too. Either they changed direction at some point or they're not disclosing it on Steam."

Saber describes Rideshare "Stimulator" as an "immersive driving simulation game that puts you behind the wheel …

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Meta has launched a Threads app for Meta Quest VR headsets, the company announced on Tuesday. The launch follows Meta bringing the app to its Ray-Ban Display AR glasses last month and the recent news that the platform has crossed 500 million monthly active users.

It seems like a pretty full-featured app. Meta says that with the Threads VR app, you can do things like browse feeds, make posts, like and reply to posts, visit profiles, search, and watch videos - you know, Threads stuff.

"We designed the new Threads app for Meta Quest to make using VR more social than ever," Meta says. "Whether you want to keep up with conversations during a ga …

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Bluesky has added a new feature that lets you hide reposts from a specific person in your feeds. The tool might be helpful if you want to stop seeing reposts from that one person who clogs up your feed with reposts of things you don't care about. If you follow me, I may be that person, I'm sorry. I try not to be.

You can hide reposts from individual users by going to their profile, clicking the three dots button, and selecting the option to "Hide reposts in feeds." (X offers a similar toggle.)

Bluesky also says that it's launching a beta feature that will automatically add post numbers to threads. For long threads, it could be a useful w …

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It's that time of year: On Wednesday, Google is set to host its annual Made by Google hardware launch event for Pixel gadgets. Google itself has already teased new slab-style and foldable Pixel smartphones, but leaks also indicate that the company could announce updated watches, a new color for familiar earbuds, and perhaps a brand new AirTag-like item tracker.

However, unusually, Google's event is taking place in the evening: It kicks off on Wednesday at 6PM ET / 3PM PT instead of in the early afternoon or mid-morning, like many other tech events. And this time it has a celebrity host in Trevor Noah.

Even more strange: As noted by 9to5Goo …

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