This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week. The 2026 World Cup is breaking streaming records around the world: Brazil’s CazéTV YouTube livestream of that country’s opening game against Morocco surpassed 12 million concurrent viewers, a new milestone […]
Now that Bungie has moved on from Destiny 2, the game studio is being hit with its latest round of layoffs. In a statement posted on X, the studio said that “we are announcing a reduction in force as we reorganize Bungie.” No specific numbers were revealed. But in a separate statement, Hermen Hulst, CEO […]
I wasn’t surprised when I got the call that my dad was dying, even though we’d been estranged for many years. He’d suffered addiction for decades and eventually ran out of time, which also meant he ran out of time to reconcile with me. About 15 years after we stopped talking, my aunt and uncle […]
Rockstar Games has finally given Grand Theft Auto VI a price ahead of the game’s November 19th launch. But while announcing that the game would cost $79.99, Rockstar also confirmed that the physical versions of GTA VI won’t include a disc, and instead will only contain a download code inside the box. Not only is […]
If League of Legends and Valorant players have the right hardware and elect to opt into “pre-boot security mechanisms and Windows’ own native protection features,” then, starting today, they can switch the Vanguard anti-cheat software from always-on to one that’s “on demand.” With “Vanguard Pre-Check,” the kernel-level driver won’t launch when your system does, according […]
The biggest Switch 2 exclusives so far have largely been about scale. Mario Kart World introduced a wide open continent to race across, Donkey Kong Bananza let you smash basically everything around you, and Pokopia brought an expansive Minecraft-style creative experience to the Pokémon universe. Star Fox is different. A remake of a Nintendo 64 […]
Netflix, A24, Focus Features, and Warner Bros.’ Clockwork have all reportedly decided to pass on picking up Artificial – director Luca Guadagnino’s new biographical drama about OpenAI cofounder / CEO Sam Altman – for distribution deals. And while Neon and Mubi are still said to be interested in the film, this situation makes it seem […]
As part of the latest evolution of its gaming initiative, Netflix has made a big push into cloud-based games you can play on your TV, much in the same way you’d watch a movie or show on the service. So far, these games have been pretty tame. Things like trivia, party games, and a weirdly […]
This is not a review of the MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus, the first gaming handheld available with Intel’s new Arc G3 Extreme handheld gaming chip. Now that my colleague Sean Hollister is done reviewing the Steam Machine, I’ll let him go deep on the new Claw at some point in the future. This […]
Valve’s Steam Machine finally has a price: a whopping $1,049 for the 512GB configuration or $1,349 for the 2TB version. And those are without bundled controllers, which drive up the cost more. The prices are so high in part because Valve isn’t subsidizing the hardware, and the company has already indicated that the component crisis […]