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Ubisoft reportedly plans to repurpose an Assassin’s Creed Valhalla expansion into a standalone release. According to Bloomberg, the company is working on a game codenamed “Rift.” What started life as DLC for the latest entry in the company’s long-running historical franchise apparently morphed into a full game sometime late last year.

Per Bloomberg, the game will star Basim Ibn Ishaq (pictured above), a character that appears in Valhalla. What’s more, it won’t be a massive open-world game and will instead focus more on stealth gameplay. Ubisoft may release Rift either this year or in 2023.

According to Bloomberg, Ubisoft made the decision to repurpose the expansion to fill out its near-term release schedule. The company plans to release Rift before Assassin’s Creed Infinity, the project that’s supposed to turn the franchise into a live online service like GTA Online. As the outlet notes, several Ubisoft projects have struggled in recent years. We haven’t seen Beyond Good and Evil 2 since 2018, and exactly a year ago this month, Ubisoft delayed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake indefinitely. And we may not see those release anytime soon either. Beyond Good and Evil 2 is reportedly stuck in pre-production after five years of development. 

The Wolf Among Us 2 finally has a release window. The revived Telltale Games team has announced that its long-in-the-making sequel will be available sometime in 2023. There's a new trailer to match, and this clip sheds more light on where this precursor to Bill Willingham's Fables is headed.

The trailer intersperses Fabletown sheriff Bigby Wolf's explanations of his methods in an AA-style meeting with a bust against Dorothy's companions from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Suffice it to say the fusion of a gritty, modern world with mythical characters is as strange yet seamless as ever — Wolf is still a hardened yet fantastical beast, and his targets aren't exactly the innocent creatures you remember from Oz.The Wolf Among Us 2 is set six months after the first season, and promises plenty of drama when a new case gets the NYPD involved.

The sequel should arrive roughly a decade after the original Wolf Among Us premiered in 2013, and reflects a troubled birthing process that included Telltale dissolving in 2018 (thus cancelling WAU season two) and getting a second chance from LCG Entertainment in 2019. It's also symbolic of the development team's return to form — Telltale itself is building an adaptation of The Expanse, while former Telltale staffers at Dramatic Labs are working on Star Trek: Resurgence. Telltale as you first knew it is long gone, but it may still have an outsized effect on the gaming industry.

Nearly a year after introducing Reddit Talk, the company is expanding its live audio chats to desktop and adding several new features to make the conversations easier to find and participate in.

When it first launched last April, the audio chats were only available on mobile and Reddit users had to listen in live if they wanted to catch the conversation. That’s now changing, though, as Reddit Talk is now available in desktop browsers, and chats are now recorded so users can stream the conversation after it’s ended. Reddit is also adding commenting abilities, so participants can chime in without having to use the “raise hand” feature and wait for the moderator to open their mic.

Finally, Reddit is trying to make the audio chats easier to find by adding a “live bar” to the top of the app that highlights conversations happening in real time, similar to the way Twitter pushes live chats in Twitter Spaces to the top of its users’ timelines.

Reddit

With the expansion, Reddit is pushing live audio to be a more central part of its platform. It’s not clear yet just how widely used Reddit Talk is, but in a blog post the company says that it’s seen “250% growth in daily active listeners.” The company also notes that more than 1,000 subreddits have enabled the feature so far, including r/cryptocurrency, r/wallstreetbets and r/space.

Four Democratic senators and House representatives have called on several government departments to stop using Clearview AI’s facial recognition system. The Government Accountability Office said in August that the Departments of Justice, Defense, Homeland Security and the Interior were all using the contentious technology for “domestic law enforcement." Sens. Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley and Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Ayanna Pressley urged the agencies to refrain from using Clearview's products and other facial recognition tools.

“Clearview AI’s technology could eliminate public anonymity in the United States,” the lawmakers wrote to the agencies in their letters, which were obtained by The Verge. They said that, combined with the facial recognition system, the database of billions of photos Clearview scraped from social media platforms "is capable of fundamentally dismantling Americans’ expectation that they can move, assemble or simply appear in public without being identified."

Those lawmakers have been trying to "prohibit biometric surveillance by the federal government without explicit statutory authorization" over the last couple of years. Jayapal introduced a House bill last year to that effect. The legislation has been referred to the Judiciary and Oversight and Reform committees. Sen. Ron Wyden also introduced a bill last April aimed at blocking law enforcement and intelligence agencies from buying data from Clearview AI. The Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act drew bipartisan support, but has yet to move forward in the Senate.

Other federal agencies, including the Departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs, have used or planned to use facial recognition technology, according to the GAO report. The Inland Revenue Service said this week it will ditch a facial recognition system it was using for verification purposes, following a backlash fromlawmakersand others.

Clearview, meanwhile, has been the subject of investigations, lawsuits and scrutiny in the US, UK, Australia, Europe and elsewhere. In November, the company was fined £17 million for breaching UK data protection laws. 

A report last year suggested that employees from more than 1,803 government bodies, such as police departments and public schools, used Clearview's services without approval. The company's CEO, Hoan Ton-That, said in the past that Clearview had contracts with thousands of 2,400 police agencies and departments. Some jurisdictions and law enforcement departments have banned the company's tech.

In 1955, Harry Olson and Herbert Belar created the world’s first electronic synthesizer. Little could they have known then how much their invention would change the way people make music. From a song like Blue Monday from New Order to Midnight City from M83, so many era-defining tracks from the past few decades wouldn’t have been possible to record without synths in all their various forms. In honor of that legacy, Moog Music is launching a new documentary series. Dubbed Giants, it will tell the story of some of the people who helped shape both synths and electronic music as an art form.

You can watch the first episode starting today on Moog Music’s YouTube channel. It features Herb Deutsch, the co-creator of the Moog modular synth, talking about, among other things, how he and Bob Moog met. The footage of Deutsch talking is broken up with archival images and clips. It’s all pretty standard stuff, but if you’re a music nerd, you’ll want to check out the video.

In future installments of Giants, Moog has promised to feature individuals like Daniel Miller, the founder of legendary British music label Mute Records, and Bernie Krause, who alongside Paul Beaver, helped introduce people like George Harrison to electronic music. If you want to keep up with Giants, Moog suggests signing up for its newsletter.

Hyper-capable AIs have been beating us at our own games for years. Whether it’s Go or Jeopardy, DOTA 2 or Nethack, artificial intelligences have routinely proven themselves superior competitors, helping advance not only the state of gaming arts but also those of machine learning and computational science as well. On Wednesday, Sony announced its latest addition to the field, GT Sophy, an AI racer capable of taking on — and beating — some of the world’s best Gran Turismo players.

GT Sophy (the GT stands for “Gran Turismo”) is the result of a collaboration between Sony AI, Polyphony Digital (PDI) and Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), as well as more than half a decade of research and development.

“Gran Turismo Sophy is a significant development in AI whose purpose is not simply to be better than human players, but to offer players a stimulating opponent that can accelerate and elevate the players’ techniques and creativity to the next level,” Sony AI CEO, Hiroaki Kitano, said in a statement Wednesday. “In addition to making contributions to the gaming community, we believe this breakthrough presents new opportunities in areas such as autonomous racing, autonomous driving, high-speed robotics and control.”

Utilizing as novel deep reinforcement learning method, the research team taught its AI agent how to control a digital race car within the structure of the GT game, helping Sophy to understand vehicle dynamics and capabilities, as well as racing tactics like slipstreaming, passing and blocking overtakers and basic track etiquette.

“To drive competitively GT Sophy had to learn to control the car at the physical limit, optimize for braking and acceleration points, as well as find the right lines that squeeze the last tenth of a second out of the track,” Michael Spranger, COO of Sony AI, said during the presentation. “But raising also means that you're not alone on the track, so Sophie has to find lines to pass opponents, taking into account the opponent's reaction, as well as complex, aerodynamic interactions between cars.”

Sony trained its AI using deep reinforcement learning to optimize its ability to stay on track. “Sophy observes the environment, such as the car speed and acceleration, the relative position, of course borders and opponents, as well as the progress of the car along the track,” Spranger explained. “Based on these inputs, GT Sophy learns to take actions, such as using a throttle steering or braking.”

“To learn,” he continued, “Sophy gets a positive signal — a reward — when things are going well, when it is making focus on the track and overtaking other cars. [Sophy receives] a negative signal when things are not going well through continuous interaction with the game.”

The initial results were impressive, with Sophy beating 95 percent of the humans pitted against her within the first two days of training. What’s more, the AI continued to shave time off of her splits throughout the following week. In an exhibition race Wednesday against some of Japan’s top Gran Turismo drivers — with four Sophy variants going up against a quartet of humans — the AI took the checkered flag and two of the top four positions on the game’s Lago Maggiore circuit. The winning AI agent began the race in pole position and stayed there through all three laps, eventually beating the pack by more than five seconds. The AIs were not running on rails, however, as evidenced by one agent misjudging a passing attempt then understeering through a turn and promptly running head on into the wall and out of competition.

“This is not just a technical breakthrough project,” Sony Group CEO, Kenichiro Yoshida, said during Wednesday’s press event. “It really is about bringing AI into the hands of the game developers who are going to build new experiences for the players.”

Players will soon be able to pit themselves against Sophy, and potentially have her on hand as either an in-game driving coach or in-race teammate. Gran Turismo 7 for the PS4 and PS5 will be released on March 4th and Sony executives expect the AI to be added in a future update.  

On Wednesday, Samsung held its first Unpacked of 2022. The event saw the company spend approximately an hour talking about updates to its Galaxy S and Tab S product lines. While it was mostly a by-the-numbers affair spoiled by pre-release leaks, Samsung still came out swinging with one of its strongest device lineups in recent memory. Here's everything the company announced at Unpacked.

Galaxy S22 Ultra

Samsung

After skipping a year, the Galaxy Note is back in all but name. The S22 Ultra is the successor to the Note 20 we never got in 2021. All the things that made the Note stand out are accounted for in the S22 Ultra. Not only does it come with Samsung’s S Pen, but there’s a space for the stylus built right into the phone. It’s also the company’s most capable phone to date. It features a 108-megapixel primary camera, the latest 4-nanometer chips from both Samsung and Qualcomm and up to 12GB of RAM. The phone is available to pre-order today, starting at $1,200. Samsung will ship the S22 Ultra and everything else it announced on Wednesday on February 25th.

Galaxy S22 and S22+

Samsung

Samsung’s Galaxy S22 and S22+ may not look that much different from the phones they’re about to replace, but the company has included a handful of notable upgrades in both devices. To start, they feature a new 50-megapixel main camera that has a sensor that is 23 percent larger than the one found on the S21 and S21+’s 12-megapixel shooter. Samsung has also made the phones more resilient with Corning’s new Gorilla Glass Victus+. At the same time, the company is attempting to reduce its environmental impact by making some parts of the phone from recycled fishing nets. The S22 and S22+ will start at $800 and $999 when they go on sale later this month.

Galaxy Tab S8, Tab S8+ and Tab S8 Ultra

Samsung

Alongside new phones, Samsung announced a fresh slate of high-end tablets. The new Tab S8 and Tab S8+ come with the fastest processors Samsung has ever included in its slate devices. For the first time, Samsung is also introducing an Ultra variant of one of its tablets. The Tab S8 Ultra features a massive 14.6-inch AMOLED display with 2,960 x 1,848 resolution and a 120Hz dynamic refresh rate. Oh, it also has a notch to accommodate its dual front-facing cameras. Pre-orders for all three models open today. They start at $700, $900 and $1,100, respectively.

Everything else

Samsung

For much of Unpacked, hardware took center stage, but Samsung also had some software-related surprise up its sleeve. To start, the company announced its Galaxy phones and tablets would support the new live sharing feature in Google Duo. That’s a tool that allows you and whomever you’re chatting with to view the same notes, photos, videos and more at the same time. The only catch is that live sharing is currently only supported by Galaxy and Pixel devices, so it’s not something that will work if your friend or a family member has an iPhone or a different make of Android device. Samsung also said it would support its new devices, as well as the Galaxy S21 family, with up to four years of Android updates. 

Catch up on all of the news from Samsung’s February Unpacked event right here!

Dark Souls fans on PC will have to wait until after the release of Elden Ring before developer FromSoftware reactivates player-versus-player servers. The announcement comes after a hacker identified a vulnerability within Dark Souls 3 that allowed them to access the computers of multiple streamers remotely. When news of the exploit first broke, FromSoftware and Dark Souls series publisher Bandai Namco shut down the multiplayer servers of Dark Souls 3, Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls to investigate the issue. At the time, they didn’t say how long it would take to resolve the problem.

“Thanks to [the community], we have identified the cause and are working on fixing the issue,” the two companies said in an update posted to Twitter on Wednesday. According to From, multiplayer servers for the Dark Souls series won’t be back online until after February 25th due to the time needed to create a proper testing environment for each game. The studio promised to share more information as soon as it could. “We will continue to do everything we can to bring back these services as possible,” it said.

If you’re a fan of PvP combat in Dark Souls, it’s not great that you have to wait to enjoy that aspect of the game again. But if there’s a silver lining to the news, it’s that From and Bandai Namco say they’re working to address the vulnerability in Elden Ring ahead of the game’s release later this month. Hopefully, that means the highly-anticipated title won’t have any launch day issues.

Spotify isn't the only streaming service to face a dispute with comedians. Both Puck and The Verge have learned the estates of Robin Williams and George Carlin have sued SiriusXM's Pandora for allegedly streaming the comedy legends' jokes without full licenses. The late comedians' representatives claim Pandora only has the licenses to stream the recordings, not the jokes themselves — and it supposedly doesn't have "any copyright."

Williams' estate wants $4.1 million in damages for copyright infringement, while Carlin's is seeking $8.4 million. Comedians Andrew Dice Clay, Bill Engvall and Ron White have also made complaints, asserting Pandora hasn't provided a "fraction of a penny" for their work.

The estates claim Pandora confessed to having improper licenses in SEC filings between 2011 and 2017, predating SiriusXM's acquisition. In those filings, the service warned investors it couldn't guarantee the company would avoid "additional licensing costs" from rights groups for spoken-word comedy. Companies frequently include risk alerts like this in filings regardless of their licensing intentions, however.

We've asked SiriusXM for comment. Pandora isn't a stranger to license battles. It paid $90 million in 2015 to settle a fight over allegations it used a loophole to play pre-1972 songs without paying labels, and was sued in 2019 for supposedly displaying lyrics from Rage Against the Machine and Tom Petty without permission. But comedy licensing problems haven't had a firm test in court, according to Puck, and the outcome of the Pandora case could affect how Spotify and other services pay comedians for their work.

Call of Duty fans who've been worried what Microsoft's pending $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard means for the future of that franchise on PlayStation can breathe easy. That series and other popular Activision Blizzard games won't be exclusive to Xbox — even after Sony's existing agreements with the publisher expire. 

"Microsoft will continue to make Call of Duty and other popular Activision Blizzard titles available on PlayStation through the term of any existing agreement with Activision," Microsoft president Brad Smith wrote in a blog post. "And we have committed to Sony that we will also make them available on PlayStation beyond the existing agreement and into the future so that Sony fans can continue to enjoy the games they love. We are also interested in taking similar steps to support Nintendo’s successful platform. We believe this is the right thing for the industry, for gamers and for our business."

According to Bloomberg, Sony struck a deal with Activision Blizzard before the blockbuster merger was announced to bring the next two mainline Call of Duty games and a sequel to Warzone to PlayStation. Until now, it was unclear whether subsequent Call of Duty games would be released on PlayStation or if Microsoft planned to keep them on Xbox and PC only.

Smith made the announcement while revealing a set of Open App Store Principles that Microsoft is establishing for Windows and future gaming marketplaces it's building for games. He wrote that the company is bringing in the policies as it seeks regulatory approval for the Activision Blizzard deal and as governments "move forward with new laws to promote competition in app markets and beyond. We want regulators and the public to know that as a company, Microsoft is committed to adapting to these new laws, and with these principles, we’re moving to do so."

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