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Rejoice now, ye Tarnished. Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco has released an update that sorts out an issue where the game would not save your progress on PlayStation 5 if the console crashed or if it lost power while in Rest Mode. Before the release of patch 1.02.2, the company told players they could ensure their progress was saved by manually exiting Elden Ring. Now, you don’t have to take that precaution.

The update is also available on PC and promises to at least partially address that version’s well-documented issues with stuttering and framerate drops. “Fixed an issue where the graphics card was not being used, resulting in slow performance,” the patch’s changelog notes. Among other bug fixes, the patch solves an issue that would cause Elden Ring to crash under certain circumstances when players fought the Fire Giant boss.

Epic Games is continuing its habit of buying creator-friendly companies. The Fortnite developer has announced plans to acquire the online music platform Bandcamp. The move will help Epic build a "creator marketplace ecosystem" based on "fair and open" platforms, according to the companies. Bandcamp will still run its standalone store and community, and co-founder Ethan Diamond will continue to lead its operations.

The two didn't say how much the deal was worth or when they expected to finalize the arrangement. Bandcamp has grown over the years and has paid musicians close to $1 billion so far, Diamond said.

The move follows a string of creativity-related acquisitions at Epic, including ArtStation, Cubic Motion and Sketchfab. While a music platform is an unusual purchase, it reflects Epic's evolution from a purely game-oriented company to one that produces visual effects tools for shows like The Mandalorian and turns games into creative platforms. While Bandcamp's exact role at Epic isn't known, it could easily help artists in various mediums profit from their work.

In what should come as a surprise to no one, Carl Pei’s Nothing has reportedly been busy at work developing a smartphone. According to TechCrunch, the startup plans to announce the device by sometime next month. Details on the phone are sparse, but it’s said to borrow design cues from the company’s Ear 1 wireless earbuds. Specifically, it will reportedly incorporate the “elements of transparency” found on Nothing’s first product. TechCrunch reports Nothing showed off the device to industry executives at Mobile World Congress, currently underway in Barcelona, Spain.

Beyond those details, the outlet doesn’t say much about the phone itself. But given Pei’s past involvement in OnePlus, that might be enough to get smartphone enthusiasts excited. After all, for the seven years that he was involved with the company, OnePlus released some of its most talked-about phones, including the OnePlus One, 3T and 6, and built a devoted fanbase on the back of its design and software philosophies.

Don't try to play Destiny 2 on your brand new Steam Deck — you won't like the outcome. As Reddit users and GamesRadar have noticed, Bungie has warned it will not only kick out players who try to run the game from a Steam Deck or other SteamOS devices, but ban those players who try to circumvent that restriction. PC players have to use an active copy of Windows, Bungie said.

Bungie didn't initially say why it forbids Steam Deck use. We've asked the company for comment. It shouldn't have anything to do with Sony's plans to acquire Bungie, however. The studio is still independent, and CEO Pete Parsons maintained that game development would continue for multiple platforms.

The decision might instead revolve around code integrity. Bungie added BattlEye anti-cheat technology to Destiny 2 in 2021, starting with the recently-ended Season of the Lost. While BattlEye worked with Valve to add support in Proton (the code that lets Windows-based Steam play on the Steam Deck and SteamOS), that doesn't mean Bungie was satisfied with the trustworthiness of that anti-cheating implementation. Reddit user floatingatoll speculated that Linux's open system boot approach still left opportunities for cheaters.

Whatever the reasoning, the news won't be heartening if you're a Destiny 2 fan. You'll either have to install Windows on your Steam Deck (not a realistic option at present) or buy an alternative like the Aya Neo or GPD Win 3 if you insist on fighting the Darkness from a handheld PC. Still, this isn't a complete shock. Valve made clear that not every game will run on the Steam Deck, and D2 just happens to be one of the more prominent examples.

It's official: Apple just sent out invitations for its first event in 2022 and it will happen on March 8th at 10am PT. The invite, which usually offers subtle hints as to what we can expect, features the words "Peek performance." That's right — "peek" not "peak." The company is expected to launch the next-gen iPhone SE and iPad Air, along with new Macs. According to a Bloomberg report, an M2 chip may also be coming as part of the transition to Apple Silicon. 

Considering the last iPhone SE was launched in 2020, it does seem like an updated model is overdue. Apple's compact, sub-$400 handset is one of the last remaining to still have a home button on the front below the display. It also has a single rear camera, and generally feels like a throwback to phones from five years ago. This year's model may bring Face ID and 5G support, with a design that could be similar to 2018's iPhone XR. 

Apple launched updated MacBook Pros in October, powered by its then-new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. But it appears the company is already ready to bring M2-devices to us, with filings for several Macs having popped up in the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) database.

Whatever Apple is announcing, we will be covering the news and will also have a livestream following the company's keynote to discuss what was unveiled. Be sure to join us on the Engadget YouTube channel then to get your burning questions answered.

Following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine last week, the West has united over its condemnation of the aggression and has enacted broad economic sanctions against the nation. A financial fallout is already occurring with the ruble losing 20 percent of its value against the dollar nearly overnight, and which could fall even further as sanctions progressively excise Russia from the international monetary system. The pecuniary shockwaves created by these sanctions are likely to impact every strata of Russian society with far reaching consequences for the Roscosmos space program and the continued safe operation of the International Space Station.

These “strong sanctions,” US President Joe Biden stated at a press conference last Thursday, will impose “severe costs on the Russian economy” in an effort to “strike a blow to their ability to continue to modernize their military. It’ll degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program.”

Economic sanctions are an ancient form of interstate arm twisting and have been used extensively throughout the 20th century by nations in effort to elicit specific behaviors from their neighbors. What sets this round apart is its breadth, which targets some 600 billion dollars worth of Russian assets. Russia has been cut off from the SWIFT international payment system and its central banks’ assets have been frozen in the US, EU, and UK — as have those of Putin’s upper echelon. Airports and seaports across the West are now closed to Russian commercial travel while imports of Korean “strategic items” as well as American computers, semiconductors, lasers, navigation and avionics — all vital components to Russia’s space program — have been banned.

Russia has issued retaliatory sanctions against Western companies of its own. On Wednesday, Roscosmos announced that it will not launch the next round of 36 OneWeb internet satellites that was scheduled for liftoff March 4th from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Those satellites will not get into orbit, Roscosmos officials threatened until the UK-based company meet two demands: that the UK government sell its stake in OneWeb and that the company guarantee that its satellite constellation will not be used in a military capacity. OneWeb has yet to respond publicly to the demands.

"Russia’s actions are an immediate danger to those living in Ukraine, but also pose a real threat to democracy throughout the world," US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement Thursday. "By acting decisively and in close coordination with our allies and partners, we are sending a clear message today that the United States of America will not tolerate Russia's aggression against a democratically-elected government."

Despite the economic curb stomping the Russian people are about to endure on behalf of Putin’s cartographic quarrel, NASA remains optimistic that the sanctions will not adversely impact ongoing collaborative space programs, like the running of the ISS.

The ISS has, from its start, been a joint US-Russian effort. Originally born from a foreign policy plan to improve relations between the Cold War foes after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the conclusion of the Space Race, the International Space Station would not exist if not for Russia’s collaboration. Soyuz rockets helped bring ISS modules into orbit and, following the Space Shuttle’s retirement in 2011, served as the only means of getting astronauts into orbit and back, at least until SpaceX came along. Of the station’s 16 habitable modules, six were provided by Russia and eight by the US (with the rest sent up by Japan and the European Space Agency). Jus last summer , Russia successfully launched its largest ISS component to date, the 813-cubic meter Nauka science module.

Dmitry Rogozin, Director General of Roscosmos, himself still personally under sanctions due to the 2014 Crimea incident, voiced an alternative opinion in response to the news.

“Do you want to manage the ISS yourself,” he pointedly asked in a series of tweets Thursday. “Maybe President Biden is off topic, so explain to him that the correction of the station’s orbit, its avoidance of dangerous rendezvous with space garbage with which your talented businessmen have polluted the near-Earth orbit, is produced exclusively by the engines of the Russian Progress MS cargo ships.“

“If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the United States or Europe,” Rogozin continued. “There is also the option of dropping a 500-ton structure to India and China. Do you want to threaten them with such a prospect? The ISS does not fly over Russia, so all the risks are yours. Are you ready for them?”

The “uncontrolled deorbit” remark appears to be a direct reference to Russia’s threat to not provide one of its Progress MS cargo ships to assist in the space station’s retirement at the end of the decade. On Saturday, Roscosmos dismissed all 87 Russians working at Europe’s Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana and suspended launches of the Soyuz-ST rocket from there in protest of the sanctions.

“I was not surprised, based on his previous behavior,” former space station commander Terry Virts told Time of Rogozin’s outburst. “This is what I’ve come to expect.”

Rogozin’s comments come more than seven weeks after NASA announced its intent to keep the ISS operational until 2030, though the American space agency and Roscosmos are still negotiating a new "crew exchange" deal, which would see astronauts and cosmonauts sent to the ISS aboard both American and Russian rockets. Russia’s obligations to the ISS officially expire in 2024 and, even prior to the invasion of the Ukraine, Russia was rumbling about pulling out of the project by 2025.

"The Russian segment can't function without the electricity on the American side, and the American side can't function without the propulsion systems that are on the Russian side," former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman noted to CNN. "So you can't do an amicable divorce. You can't do a conscious uncoupling."

As such, “NASA continues working with all our international partners, including the State Space Corporation Roscosmos, for the ongoing safe operations of the International Space Station,” the agency told Reuters following Rogozin’s rant. “The new export control measures will continue to allow US-Russia civil space cooperation. No changes are planned to the agency’s support for ongoing in orbit and ground station operations.”

However, Russia’s spacefaring future in the eyes of other ISS stakeholders is less clear. "I've been broadly in favor of continuing artistic and scientific collaboration," UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on the floor of the House of Commons Thursday. "But in the current circumstances, it's hard to see how even those can continue as normal."

More immediately, Roscosmos reported Monday that its public portal was under cyberassault. "A massive DDoS attack from various IP addresses has been carried out on the Roscosmos website for several days now. Its organizers may think that this affects something. I will answer: this only affects the timely awareness of space enthusiasts about Roscosmos news," Rogozin tweeted, while assuring that the safety of the ISS was not immediately at risk.

And since one cannot so much as utter the phrase “public crisis” without Elon Musk busting through a nearby wall like a mini-sub-slinging Kool-Aid man, SpaceX is of course getting shoehorned into this newfound global conflict.

On February 25th, Musk offered to have SpaceX step in and keep the ISS in orbit, should Russia refuse. The space station is currently where it is thanks to regular deliveries of propellant reactant by the Russian space agency but should those shipments stop, the ISS will be unable to counter the planet’s atmospheric drag and eventually slow into a capture orbit where it will fall to Earth. By taking over those delivery flights, SpaceX could keep the ISS aloft without the added hassle of outfitting a Falcon 9 to stand in for Russia’s undelivered deorbiting spacecraft. And even if SpaceX can’t do so, the engine attached to the uncrewed Cygnus supply ship that arrived on February 21st is powerful enough to give the ISS an orbital boost and temporary reprieve.

SpaceX is also bringing its Starlink satellite constellation into play over the contested region. On Saturday, Ukraine digital minister Mykhailo Fedorov took to Twitter requesting help from the satellite internet provider after a suspected cyberattack knocked the Viasat service offline. Less than 48 hours after Musk promised support, SpaceX delivered more than a dozen Starlink receiver dishes to the minister. “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine,” Musk tweeted in response. “More terminals en route.”

Starlink has launched more than 2,000 internet-beaming cubesats into orbit to date, a fraction of the more than 40,000 the company plans to eventually launch. CNBC reports that the company has more than 145,000 active subscribers as of January.

It would be imprudent at this point to predict how Russia’s invasion will pan out, whether the imposed economic sanctions will bring a quick resolution to the conflict or slowly strangle a fading world power. We can’t fully foresee the myriad implications emerging from these monetary decisions or how they’ll impact global collaboration and space exploration in coming years. But amidst this uncertainty and chaos we can take solace in knowing that life, aboard the ISS at least, continues unabated.

Capcom is upgrading a trio of Resident Evil games for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. Current-gen console versions of Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard are on the way with features including ray-tracing, 3D audio and support for higher framerates. There will also be haptic feedback and adaptive trigger support on the PS5's DualSense controller, so Mr. X and Nemesis might look and feel more terrifying than ever.

If you own any of the games on PS4 or Xbox One, you can upgrade to the current-gen versions at no extra cost when they arrive later this year. PC players will receive upgrade patches for all three titles.

Capcom released remakes of Resident Evil 2 in 2019 and Resident Evil 3 in 2020 on PC and previous-gen consoles. Those games and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard were all built on Capcom's own RE Engine.

Capcom

The Ukranian government wants gaming giants to join a tech industry crackdown on Russia following its Ukraine invasion. As Polygonobserved, Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has called on Microsoft, Sony and other gaming companies to "temporarily block" all Russian and Belarusian player accounts. He also asked eSports organizers to halt participation from Russian and Belarussian competitors, and to cancel any events planned for either country.

These moves would motivate Russians to resist the "disgraceful military aggression" in Ukraine, Fedorov argued. He believed technology could be the "best answer" to Russia's military hardware.

We've asked Microsoft and Sony for comment. Some game developers have already shown support for Ukraine. Cyberpunk 2077 creator CD Projekt Red, for instance, donated the equivalent of $232,000 to humanitarian efforts in the country.

It's not clear if Microsoft or Sony will take action. Russia isn't the largest market for either company (Sony's PS4 has mostly thrived in Europe and North America), but banning the country even briefly would still represent a significant move — that's many players who'd be kicked offline. Microsoft has already banned Russian state media, though, and they'd be joining companies like Apple that have halted at least some business. There may be pressure on the PlayStation and Xbox teams to act, even if they don't go as far as Ukraine might like.

Editors at the Russian version of Wikipedia say the country's communications regulator has threatened to block the site. They shared a notice from Roskomnadzor, which claimed a page about the Ukraine invasion includes "illegally distributed information," such as the number of Russian military casualties and those of Ukrainian civilians and children, according to Reuters.

The regulator demanded that editors remove that information from the article, which is called "Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022)." Roskomnadzor said that if editors don't comply, it will block all of Wikipedia in Russia. Currently, new and unregistered users aren't able to edit the article in order to protect it from vandalism.

The article includes casualty estimates from both the Ukrainian and Russian governments, as Motherboard notes. As of Tuesday, it included claims from Ukraine that 352 civilians and more than 110 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, while 1,684 civilians had been wounded. The country said Russia had sustained 5,710 Russian military casualties. Russia, however, claimed two of its soldiers and 200 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed.

Editors of Wikipedia's Russian site may add more sources for the information, but one told Motherboard they likely won't respond to the threat otherwise. Roskomnadzor has issued several other warnings to the site over the years.

"The invasion of Ukraine has resulted in the senseless loss of life and has also been accompanied by information warfare online," the Wikimedia Foundation said on Tuesday. "The spread of disinformation about the ongoing crisis affects the safety of people who depend on facts to make life-and-death decisions and interferes with everyone’s right to access open knowledge."

It added that it's "working with affected communities to identify potential threats to information on Wikimedia projects, and supporting volunteer editors and administrators who serve as a first line of defense against manipulation of facts and knowledge."

Since the start of the invasion, Russian regulators have restricted access to Twitter and Facebook. They have also demanded that tech companies remove restrictions on state media channels. Facebook, YouTube and TikTok all blocked RT and Sputnik in Europe. Twitter has placed labels on tweets from Russian state media outlets.

Meanwhile, the former head of Yandex's news operations has accused the Russian search giant of censoring information about the invasion. In a note to his former colleagues posted on Facebook, Lev Gershenzon urged them to "stop being accomplices to a terrible crime" and, if they were unable to do anything else to change things, to quit.

Roku is joining the ranks of tech companies dropping state-backed Russian media following that country's invasion of Ukraine. The company has confirmed to Politico that it's pulling the RT channel from its worldwide platform after initially removing it in Europe, where the European Union banned the media outlet along with another state-supported news agency, Sputnik.

In a statement, Roku said it was making a principled stand and rejected suggestions this might amount to censorship. The US Constiution's First Amendment lets private companies practice "sound, moral judgment" regarding the content they offer, according to Roku. It believed the US had to remain "fully united" for democracy and against misinformation.

RT and Sputnik are both understood to take direction from the Russian government and promote its agenda, including its justifications for invading Ukraine. RT had to register with the US as a foreign agency in 2017 following Justice Department attention.

The effort follows crackdowns on RT and Sputnik from Apple, Google, Meta and others. TV providers like DirecTV have also pulled relevant channels. These tech firms want to both show solidarity with Ukraine and demonstrate a quick response to misinformation campaigns, and it won't be surprising if others follow suit.