Technology

Josef Fares has strong opinions. The director of Hazelight Studio — whose latest co-op game, It Takes Two, is out today — rocketed into the spotlight at The Game Awards in 2017 with an off-the-cuff, impassioned speech about the joys of interactive video games that culminated in his meme-worthy “Fuck the Oscars!” line. Years later, Fares (who, ironically enough, started off as a filmmaker) is still standing firm on his pro-game stance. “Look, my background is a filmmaker. The whole thing with ‘fuck the Oscars’ was actually kind of special,” he tells The Verge. “One, you have to remember when I was there on the set, everybody was talking, ‘Oh this like the Oscars, it’s like the Oscars.’ And I was like ‘Fuck the Oscars!’ because I was actually saying ‘Fuck the Oscars — because we should celeb...

YouTube has temporarily demonetized multiple David Dobrik channels after allegations of sexual assault were made against a former member of his Vlog Squad, Insider reports. Three of Dobrik’s channels have been demonetized; David Dobrik, David Dobrik Too, and the channel for his video podcast, Views. As well as Dobrik’s channels, YouTube has also demonetized Durte Dom, the personal channel of the ex-Vlog Squad member at the center of the allegations. “We have strict policies that prohibit sexual harassment on YouTube and take allegations of sexual assault very seriously,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement. “We have temporarily suspended monetization on David Dobrik and Durte Dom channels for violating our Creator Responsibility policy.” “We have strict policies that prohibit sexual...

Razer says it’s planning to ship its concept reusable N95 face mask. Unveiled back in January, Project Hazel includes active disc-type ventilators, Chroma RGB lighting, and voice projection. The face mask is also transparent, allowing for lip-reading and the ability to see facial cues when you talk to people. “We were thinking, this is a concept project and is this going to be relevant when vaccinations and everything has been rolled out,” says Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan in an interview with Yahoo Finance. “We are going to proceed in making it a reality and ship the smart mask.” Razer’s Project Hazel mask.Image: Razer Razer’s smart mask made its surprise debut at CES 2021 earlier this year, with detachable and rechargeable ventilators and a glossy outside shell made of waterproof and scratch-...

In the middle of Congress’ first hearing of the year with the chief executives of Facebook, Google, and Twitter on Thursday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted out a poll. It was just a question mark with two answers: yes and no. It was an obvious troll directed at the lawmakers questioning Dorsey, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai over the roles their platforms have played in spreading misinformation and inciting a violent insurrection at the US Capitol earlier this year. With limited time for questioning, the members would interrupt the CEOs’ responses, asking for “yes” or “no” answers or nothing at all. But while the hearing was focused on finding solutions for some of the most serious free speech conflicts in history, Dorsey’s tweet symbolized just how seriously e...

Sony’s “Play at Home” initiative continues with a huge stack of excellent games, including Astro Bot Rescue Mission and Subnautica, that are free to own for a limited time. No PlayStation Plus membership is required, meaning you can keep these games forever. From now through April 22nd at 11:59PM PT, the following titles will be free to claim for PS4 and PS5 users: ABZÛ, Enter the Gungeon, Rez Infinite, Subnautica, Astro Bot Rescue Mission, Moss, Thumper, and Paper Beast. The last four games require a PSVR headset to play. PS5 owners will need a PlayStation Camera adapter to use the headset with the console. Sony plans to offer more games as part of the initiative until sometime in June. Currently, Sony is offering Ratchet & Clank, which PS4 and PS5 owners can redeem at no cost until M...

In Oranmore, a small town in County Galway, Ireland, you can now get a taste of a possible, instantly-gratifying drone delivery future. In a newly announced partnership with Irish drone delivery company Manna, Samsung is promising delivery of its smaller electronics like phones and smart watches “within three minutes” when ordered by someone in Oranmore from Samsung’s Irish online store. Manna uses “custom-developed aerospace drones” to complete deliveries, according to Samsung’s announcement. The drones’ ability to travel at speeds over 60 kilometers per hour (around 37 miles per hour) seems to be what guarantees those aggressive delivery times, though only operating within a two-kilometer radius from their dispatch center probably helps too. Samsung and Manna aren’t exactly breaking new ...

In many places, you can call up a neighbor or local pizza parlor just by dialing seven numbers, as long as you have the same area code — but that ability will soon be going away, in order to make the National Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Crisis Lifeline easier to reach. If you live in one of the areas where the change is taking place, you’ll soon have to dial 10 numbers whether you’re making a local call or not. Each cellular carrier has a support page explaining the change (we’ll link to all of them below, and a list of the area codes will be included at the end of the post), but the basic gist is that, starting October 24, 2021, anyone trying to call a local number using only seven digits will be met with a recording telling them to hang up and try again with the full area code. ...

Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries smashed a piano into pieces to record sound effects, the studio revealed in a new blog detailing many aspects of the game’s audio production. I really recommend watching the video of the piano-smashing at the top of this post. It’s quite satisfying. But 343’s audio team didn’t just use the piano as a target for various blunt instruments. Before they smashed it, they placed a subwoofer on the piano to use it as a resonator. And after they had destroyed it, they put dry ice on numerous pieces of the piano’s remains, “which yielded a large offering of singing, bellowing, screeching and everything in between,” the developers said. Some of the resulting sounds are spine-chilling. (Interestingly, the audio team for Death Stranding also messed with a piano t...

Well, that didn’t take long. Zack Snyder’s Justice League: Justice is Gray, the black and white version of the film that hews closer to the director’s ideal vision for his superhero epic, is out today on HBO Max. Justice is Gray’s release was first teased last week. Outside of the notable lack of color, the film still streams in its now familiar 4:3 aspect ratio, which if anything, I’ve fully come around to since the initial hullabaloo around the “integrity-preserving” choice. Your mileage with the new black and white color scheme, on the other hand, may vary. The dramatic death that opens the film plays a lot stranger when Batman and Wonder Woman seem like they’re watching from some kind of grayscale blur, rather than the original film’s blasted-out ruins. You can judge the potential loss...

Gaming platform Rec Room is now a unicorn, valued at $1.25 billion during a recent funding round of $100 million. It appears to be one of the first, if not the first, virtual reality-focused startup to achieve unicorn status, a notable feat since Facebook’s landmark acquisition of Oculus VR for $2.4 billion in 2014 helped established the modern VR business. Founded in 2016, Rec Room is a free app that lets players build custom virtual spaces and games that can be played across various platforms. The Seattle-based company launched on Steam as a VR-focused platform, and in 2018, expanded to non-VR platforms. It’s now available on Xbox, PlayStation, iOS, and PC. CEO Nick Fajt said in an interview with The Verge that VR usage on the platform climbed over the holiday season due in part to sales...

People who missed out on the first 3D-action Ninja Gaiden games released in the aughts (and that other one that we don’t really talk about from 2012) will have a chance to play all three this coming June in Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection, announced for Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PS4. But sadly, the first two entries in the trilogy will be based on the Sigma re-releases that originally came out on PS3 and PS Vita, not their definitive versions (Ninja Gaiden Black for the original Xbox and Ninja Gaiden II for the Xbox 360) because the team says their source code went missing. Citing a recent Famitsu interview (via Kotaku), a staffer from developer Team Ninja told the publication that “there are only fragments of the data that remain. We couldn’t salvage them.” So, it’s not that the comp...

Etsy shoppers browsing the site for Asian artwork this afternoon may been greeted with something else: recommendations for topless photos of Asian women. The issue was first pointed out by an Asian American artist on Twitter, who The Verge is not naming due to harassment concerns, who had erotica recommended above one of their listings. The Verge was able to find several listings where Etsy placed recommendations for erotic photos of Asian women above or below entirely unrelated products with “Asian” in the title. A cute black-and-white illustration of a girl in bed has a row of erotic photos placed above it as recommendations. A collage of illustrations of Asian women has a section beneath it titled “You may also like” that features two rows primarily containing erotic photos of Asian wom...