Valve has delisted Dolphin from Steam after receiving a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice from Nintendo. In late March, the developers of Dolphin, an open source emulator that can run most GameCube and Wii titles, said they were planning to bring the free app to Valve’s storefront later this year. In a May 26th legal notice seen by PC Gamer, Nintendo's legal team asked Valve to remove Dolphin from Steam, claiming the emulator violates the company’s intellectual property rights.

"Because the Dolphin emulator violates Nintendo’s intellectual property rights, including but not limited to its rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)’s Anti-Circumvention and AntiTrafficking provisions, 17 U.S.C. § 1201, we provide this notice to you of your obligation to remove the offering of the Dolphin emulator from the Steam store," the document states.

With the notice, the Dolphin team has two options on how to move forward. It can either file a counter-claim with Valve, arguing the emulator doesn’t violate the DMCA as claimed by Nintendo, or it can choose to comply with the takedown notice. If the team files a counter-notice, Nintendo would have two weeks to decide whether to file a lawsuit. As PC Gamer notes, it’s unclear if the company actually intends to pursue legal action against Dolphin. However, if a case were to go to court, it could have far-reaching implications for emulators. For the time being, the Dolphin team says it’s deciding what to do next.

“It is with much disappointment that we have to announce that the Dolphin on Steam release has been indefinitely postponed,” the Dolphin Emulation Project said Friday. “We were notified by Valve that Nintendo has issued a cease and desist citing the DMCA against Dolphin's Steam page, and have removed Dolphin from Steam until the matter is settled. We are currently investigating our options and will have a more in-depth response in the near future.” As of the writing of this story, you can still download the Dolphin emulator from the project’s website and GitHub page. The Dolphin team did not receive a direct takedown notice from Nintendo.

Twitter has withdrawn from a voluntary European Union agreement to combat online disinformation. In a tweet spotted by TechCrunch, Thierry Breton, the bloc’s internal market commissioner, said Twitter had pulled out of the EU’s “Code of Practice” against disinformation. “You can run but you can’t hide. Our teams are ready for enforcement,” Breton said, referring to the EU’s Digital Services Act. As of August 25th, the DSA will require “very large online platforms” like Twitter to be more proactive with content moderation.

Twitter does not operate a communications department Engadget could contact for comment. Before Elon Musk's takeover last October, Twitter signed onto the EU’s Code of Practice against disinformation in 2018, alongside companies like Facebook parent Meta, Google and TikTok. While the Code is voluntary, the EU announced in June 2022 that sticking to the agreement would count towards DSA compliance. As TechCrunch notes, Twitter’s decision to withdraw from the deal just three months before the EU starts enforcing the DSA would appear to suggest the company plans to skirt the bloc’s rules on content moderation.

However, ignoring the DSA could turn into an expensive fight for Twitter and Elon Musk. The legislation allows EU officials to hand out penalties of up to 10 percent of global annual turnover for infractions, with the potential for fines of up to 20 percent of worldwide turnover for repeat instances of non-compliance. The European Commission has also said that repeat non-compliance could lead to the EU blocking access to offending services.

Ron DeSantis was supposed to take to Twitter Spaces today to officially announce his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Unfortunately, for the governor of Florida, it appears Twitter was not prepared for the influx of people who were waiting to listen to the announcement. Shortly after the Space went live, the call dropped and DeSantis has yet to say he's running to become the president of the United States of America. "We've got so many people here that I think we are kind of melting the servers, which is a good sign," said Republican megadonor and Elon Musk confidant David Sacks said during a moment when the Space briefly returned before dropping again.  

Musk’s decision to personally give DeSantis a platform should put to bed any questions about his politics. Since his takeover of the platform last October, the billionaire has repeatedly engaged with and enabled fringe far-right voices. At the start of December, Twitter reinstated the account of Andrew Anglin, the creator of the white supremacist website The Daily Stormer. Before that, Musk elevated conspiracy theories about the attack on Paul Pelosi. More recently, he has publicly attacked Anthony Fauci and George Soros. In helping DeSantis announce his presidential bid, Musk is aligning himself with a politician who has signed legislation that has restricted access to abortion and banned transition care for minors.

Before today, Twitter, under its previous leadership, had never so directly engaged with a presidential candidate. At most, the platform's user-facing political outreach involved an election hub that pointed people to information on how to vote and livestreams devoted to debates between presidential candidates. Now the company plans to give former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson a platform.

During Donald Trump's years as president, the public got used to seeing a US leader use Twitter as a personal megaphone. The former president was banned from the website in 2021 in the aftermath of the January 6th US Capitol riot. Last November, Musk appeared to make the decision to reinstate Trump’s account on the results of a Twitter poll. The company reinstated Trump’s account on November 19th, 2022, but even with some attempted public coaxing from Musk, the former president has not tweeted since before his ban.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

One of the best surprises of 2020 is about to get a sequel. On Wednesday, Sony revealed Ghostrunner 2 during its latest PlayStation showcase. The company showed a brief trailer highlighting the game's cyberpunk setting. According to the PlayStation Blog, Ghostrunner 2 is set one year after the events of the first game. Players will once again play as Jack, but by the sounds of it, they can expect a vastly more expansive experience this time around. Publisher 505 Games says the game will feature more challenging combat and platformer sections, with levels that allow for more player freedom. You will also get dialogue choices that will allow you to get a better sense of the game's world. Oh, and did I mention you'll get to drive a motorbike in Ghostrunner 2? The game will arrive on PlayStation 5 later this year.       

It's not a handheld console, but Sony is preparing to release a device that will allow PlayStation 5 users to stream their favorite games to a portable display. Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan shared the existence of "Project Q" on Wednesday during the company's PlayStation Showcase. He said the device would allow PlayStation gamers to stream any PS5 game, excluding PlayStation VR2 titles, over WiFi and the company's Remote Play protocol. The device features an 8-inch "HD display" and "all the buttons and features" found on a DualSense controller. Ryan did not say how much the device would cost but promised Sony would share more information about Project Q soon. 

The rumors were true, Konami is remaking Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. On Wednesday, Sony shared a cinematic trailer for the upcoming game during its PlayStation Showcase. The teaser didn't offer any gameplay footage, but it did show protagonist Naked Snake before the events that transform him into Big Boss. No word yet if Hideo Kojima is involved in the project. Kojima famously had a very public split from Konami after the release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. The "coming to PS5" card at the end of the trailer makes clear the game will be a multiplatform release. Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater does not have a release date.

Separately, Konami announced Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1, a collection that will bring together Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater in the fall of 2023. Konami released the original Snake Eater on PlayStation 2 in the fall of 2004. One year later, the company released an expanded version of the game, known as Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. That version of the game added a third-person camera to the game and the first iteration of Metal Gear Online.      

Big changes are coming to the Peloton app. As of today, the software offers three different standalone subscription tiers. To start, there’s a new free option, with no credit card required, that comes with access to more than 50 classes – though live workouts are off the table. It joins Peloton’s existing service, which will be known as App One. For $13 per month, App One grants you access to nine of Peloton’s 16 “modalities,” meaning you can watch the company’s pilates, yoga and outdoor running classes. However, the tier limits you to just three equipment-based cycling, treadmill and rowing classes per month, with scenic and lanebreak variants excluded. For unlimited access to those, you will need to pay for Peloton’s new App+ subscription, which costs $24 per month.

Effectively, the change means those who used the Peloton App to enjoy the company’s cycling and treadmill on their non-Peloton equipment will need to pay more to keep doing that. If you’re a current annual subscriber, you will continue to have access to all of the classes Peloton offers through its app until your membership renews. At that point, you will need to decide if you want to upgrade to the App+. Even with today’s change, it’s worth noting the Peloton App won’t replace the company’s equipment subscription, which will you will still need to access its classes on your Bike, Tread or Row machine.

Separately, Peloton is adding tutorials for strength training. The company says the app’s new “Gym” component features “self-paced, whiteboard-style” classes for those who prefer exercising outside of their home. The service will be available in the coming days, with the new App+ tier launching in the US, Canada, Australia, German and UK.

Beginning later this year, Phoenix area residents and visitors will be able to hail Waymo taxis through Uber, thanks to a new “multi-year” partnership the two companies announced on Tuesday. The pact will see a “set number” of Waymo vehicles made available to Uber users for rides and deliveries. The announcement comes after Waymo recently doubled its Phoneix service area to 180 square miles. Waymo spokesperson Katherine Barna told The Verge the robotaxis the company is making available to Uber users wouldn’t be exclusive to the platform. Phoenix residents can continue to turn to the Waymo One if they want an autonomous ride somewhere.

“We’re excited to offer another way for people to experience the enjoyable and life-saving benefits of full autonomy,” said Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana. “Uber has long been a leader in human-operated ridesharing, and the pairing of our pioneering technology and all-electric fleet with their customer network provides Waymo with an opportunity to reach even more people.”

Notably, the partnership sees two companies that were once rivals coming closer together. In 2017, Waymo parent company Alphabet sued Uber for stealing trade secrets. At the center of that legal battle was Otto, a self-driving truck startup founded by former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski. In 2018, Uber settled with Alphabet four days after the case went to trial. As for Levandowski, he was later charged and convicted of stealing materials from his previous employer. On the last day of his administration, former President Donald Trump pardoned Levandowski.

Tuesday’s announcement only alludes to that history, noting Waymo and Uber “have in their own ways each revolutionized access to mobility.” That’s not surprising. In 2018, The Information reported Uber, following its settlement with Waymo, was open to collaborating with the company. Last year, the two partnered to work together on autonomous trucking.

If you’ve been anywhere near a gaming forum recently, you’ve probably seen something about the state of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor on PC. Even in a year that has seen some abysmal PC releases – I’m looking at you, The Last of Us Part 1 — the latest from Respawn Entertainment stands out.

Performance is the big issue everyone is talking about, and it’s easy to see why. If you want to watch a deep dive into the game’s technical woes, check out some of the recent videos Digital Foundry and Daniel Owen have uploaded to their YouTube channels. However, the short version is Jedi: Survivor has all the issues that have plagued many a recent poor PC port.

Each time you launch the game, it puts you through a shader pre-compilation process that, frustratingly, doesn’t prevent stuttering. Jedi: Survivor also suffers from traversal hitching, meaning your frame rate will drop when you enter a new location. Annoyingly, these were issues that were present and never addressed in Jedi: Fallen Order. And unfortunately, there’s no amount of hardware that can fix those problems in Jedi: Survivor.

I’m playing the game on a PC with an AMD Ryzen 5600x and NVIDIA RTX 3070. My system is not bleeding edge but it’s also not a toaster. The thing is, there’s no combination of settings that leads to Jedi: Survivor producing a consistent frame rate due to how the game makes use of your system’s processor and available VRAM. Even players with RTX 4090 GPUs reported poor framerates at launch.

Adding to the performance issues is Jedi: Survivor’s status as an AMD-sponsored title. The game supports AMD’s FSR upscaling technology, but not DLSS and XESS. While it’s true you can use FSR with NVIDIA and Intel GPUs, Jedi: Survivor’s implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Even set to the “Quality” setting, the tech introduces distracting artifacts that take away from the game’s otherwise compelling presentation. FSR also does little to nothing to improve your framerate since the game is so CPU limited.

And then you have Jedi: Survivor’s settings menu. In short, the game features one of the least helpful settings menus I’ve seen in recent memory. It’s not properly coded for mouse navigation; none of the graphical options come with an explanation of what they do; and the game doesn’t even offer a hint of what kind of performance impact you can expect from tweaking specific settings. But the worst offender is Jedi: Survivor’s ray tracing options – or should I say, option, singular. Unlike nearly every other modern PC release, Jedi: Survivor bundles all of its RT features into a single toggle, meaning you can’t use less expensive ones like ray-traced ambient occlusion on their own.

What makes all these issues so frustrating is that things don’t have to be this way. In 2023, it’s not a secret what makes a great PC port, and there are plenty of examples studios can look to for inspiration. For instance, having played God of War 2018 on PlayStation 4 Pro, PS5 and PC, I think there’s an easy argument to be made that the PC version is the definitive way to play that game. In the case of Respawn, the studio doesn’t even need to look that far for an example of how to build a great PC port. In 2016, it released Titanfall 2: to this day, one of the best games you can play on PC.

EA had been somewhat dismissive of player complaints, suggesting that only a “percentage” of PC players are experiencing performance issues, and that some of those issues are due to people using high-end CPUs with Windows 10. In any case, EA said Respawn was doing its best to fix the game.

Sure enough, on the Monday after Jedi: Survivor’s Friday release, Respawn released a patch that promised performance improvements. I found the update increased my average frame rates but did nothing to address the game’s stuttering. The latest patch, released partway through last week, was supposed to address that issue, but I find the game will still slow down when I enter new areas. Respawn has promised additional updates are on the way that will supposedly further improve performance.

So how did we get here, and, who, if anyone, is to blame for the state of PC ports in 2023? Those are questions I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past few days. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers.

From a technical standpoint, there’s a reason PC ports were more competent during the eighth generation of consoles than at almost any other time in the past: it was easy. Or, at least, easier. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One saw the switch to x86 processors that were effectively less-powerful versions of what PC gamers had in their towers. It was also one of the longest generations in recent memory. It’s only in the last year or so that we’ve seen publishers like EA abandon cross-gen releases in favor of current-gen exclusives. On PC, that stability meant you could get away with using your components for longer. I bought an Intel Core i5 6600K in 2015 and only upgraded in 2021 after Red Dead Redemption 2 was too much for that processor’s four-thread architecture.

With the transition to PS5 and Xbox Series X, more care and attention needs to be given to PC ports. Current consoles are laser-focused on gaming, and don’t need to run Windows in the background. Then there’s the fact that, for the first time in a long while, the average gaming PC isn’t as powerful as a current-gen console. If you don’t believe me, look at Steam’s most recent hardware survey. The most popular GPU is the nearly four-year-old GTX 1650. Moreover, six- and four-core processors make up the majority of CPUs in use by Steam players, with eight-core ones represented in less than 20 percent of all systems. Put all this together and it becomes obvious that lazy ports just won’t cut it anymore.

As more current-gen games are released and those titles take advantage of everything the PS5 and Xbox Series X have to offer, I think we’re going to see more shoddy PC ports.

But a technological shift is only one part of it. Publishers are not blameless in this. Two of the worst PC ports released this year, Jedi: Survivor and The Last of Us Part 1, were pushed back to give their developers more time for polish. In the case of Jedi: Survivor, Respawn specifically called out the game’s performance as one of the reasons for the delay. EA decided against further delaying the game, knowing full well the state of the product it was about to release. In fact, EA even warned fans the game was coming in hot, tweeting two days before Jedi: Survivor’s release that a day one patch was the first of many updates it had planned. The publisher said future patches would fix bugs, improve performance and add more accessibility features.

Unfortunately, it is now business as usual for publishers to release an unfinished game and promise to fix it later. And for the most part, they’re rewarded for doing so, because there’s nothing the gaming community loves more than a good redemption story. Think of a game like No Man’s Sky or, better yet, EA’s own Star Wars: Battlefront II and Battlefield 4. All three were poorly received at release, but after months and years of hard work from the studios that created them, they’re now highly regarded.

I wish I could say things will get better soon, but in the short term, I don’t think we’ll see many improvements. It’s not impossible for a studio to release a technically competent PC port, but it takes time, resources and a publisher willing to make a game’s PC fanbase a priority. A fundamental change in how game publishers do business is needed, and that will take time.

Meta could turn to Magic Leap for help to stay ahead of Apple and other new entrants in the soon-to-be crowded AR space. According to the Financial Times, the two companies are in talks to sign a multi-year IP licensing and manufacturing pact. Details on the negotiations are few, but according to the outlet’s sources, a potential partnership is not expected to produce a jointly developed headset. Instead, a deal could see Magic Leap provide Meta with access to some of its optical tech. The partnership could also see the startup assist with manufacturing Meta devices, thereby allowing the tech giant to produce more of its VR headsets domestically at a time when there’s more pressure for US companies to lessen their dependence on China.

Meta did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request. Magic Leap told the Financial Times partnerships were becoming a “significant line of business and growing opportunity for Magic Leap.” Additionally, in a blog post titled “What’s Next for Magic Leap,” CEO Peggy Johnson said late last year the company had “received an incredible amount of interest from across the industry to license our IP and utilize our patented manufacturing process to produce optics for others seeking to launch their own mixed-reality technology.”

The timing of the report is notable for a couple of reasons. Meta is under pressure from investors to show something for all the money it has spent pursuing CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the future of computing. The company does not expect to make a profit from all of its metaverse projects for another few years. At the same time, it is burning about $10 billion annually on its Reality Labs division. Separately, Apple is widely expected to enter the AR headset market next month when the company holds its WWDC developer conference.