The second-gen Razer Kishi mobile gaming controller is now available for iPhone. As with the Android version Razer revealed a few months ago, the gamepad costs $100. You can order it from Razer's website.

The biggest change from the first Kishi is to the mechanism that holds the two sides together and keeps your phone in place. Razer has ditched the flexible bridge in favor of a sturdier sliding version (similar to the setup used by its rival, Backbone). This makes Kishi V2 compatible with all modern iPhones —namely iPhone 6S and later handsets, as well as both iPhone SE generations. What's more, if you remove the rubber inserts, you may be able to keep your phone's case on when you slot it into place.

Additionally, Razer has swapped out the switches, replacing the V1's membranes with the microswitches from its Wolverine V2 console controllers. "This delivers advantages in actuation responsiveness, comfort and tactile feedback," Razer claims. Meanwhile, there's now a Share button on the front and two additional programmable buttons next to the triggers.

Users can set up those buttons in the Razer Nexus app. You'll also need that app to share your gameplay on YouTube or Facebook when you hit the Share button. Moreover, you'll be able to find supported games through the app, which you can launch with a dedicated gamepad button.

The Kishi V2 works with cloud gaming devices (including Xbox Cloud Gaming and Google Stadia), remote play apps for consoles and PC and iPhone games that support MFi controllers. There's a Lightning port for passthrough charging but, sadly, no 3.5mm headphone jack.

ARM has filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm and subsidiary Nuvia over alleged trademark infringement and a breach of some license agreements. It wants certain Nuvia CPU designs to be destroyed, as well as "fair compensation."

Qualcomm bought Nuvia last year to leverage the latter's custom processor cores for its chips. According to the filing (which was obtained by The Register), Nuvia used licensed ARM tech to build the cores. ARM claims Qualcomm did not obtain the necessary permission to transfer and use the licenses it granted to Nuvia.

ARM asserts that Qualcomm's acquisition of the company resulted in Nuvia breaching its licenses. As such, ARM terminated those licenses earlier this year. It added that, as a result, Qualcomm and Nuvia are obliged to stop using and destroy any ARM-based technology that was developed under the licenses. Additionally, ARM argues that Qualcomm plans to continue using its trademarks to market and sell products containing Nuvia cores without having permission to do so. 

"Because Qualcomm attempted to transfer Nuvia licenses without ARM’s consent, which is a standard restriction under ARM’s license agreements, Nuvia’s licenses terminated in March 2022," ARM said in a statement. "Before and after that date, ARM made multiple good faith efforts to seek a resolution. In contrast, Qualcomm has breached the terms of the ARM license agreement by continuing development under the terminated licenses. ARM was left with no choice other than to bring this claim against Qualcomm and Nuvia to protect our IP, our business, and to ensure customers are able to access valid ARM-based products.”

This is a significant development as Qualcomm is one of its key customers. Qualcomm built its name on ARM-based processors, after all. And adding to the confusion, Qualcomm still has its own license with ARM, under which it can build custom cores with the latter's architecture. It's not clear what overlap, if any, might exist between the licensing agreements made to Qualcomm and Nuvia.

"ARM's lawsuit marks an unfortunate departure from its longstanding, successful relationship with Qualcomm. ARM has no right, contractual or otherwise, to attempt to interfere with Qualcomm's or Nuvia's innovations," Qualcomm told The Register in a statement. "ARM's complaint ignores the fact that Qualcomm has broad, well-established license rights covering its custom-designed CPUs, and we are confident those rights will be affirmed."

Valve wants to help Steam Deck owners and folks interested in picking up the device easily find out what games can actually run on it. Through its verification program, it hopes to let people see at a glance whether a game is compatible. Although it will be a long process to test every game (assuming it goes that far), Valve just passed an important milestone. The company has now certified 5,000 games as Verified or Playable on Steam Deck.

If Valve slaps a Verified label on a game, the Steam Deck should be able to handle it with few, if any, issues. Should Valve determine that a title is Playable, it will work, but there might be a few caveats or niggling issues. On the other hand, Valve has listed nearly 2,000 games as Unsupported, according to SteamDB, meaning they probably (or definitely) won't work on Steam Deck. 

Those numbers suggest Valve has tested at least 7,000 Steam games on the system. There's a long way to go to check all of them, though, since there are well north of 50,000 titles on the platform. It's worth noting that many of the games currently labeled as Unknown work just fine on Steam Deck, even without a Verified or Playable sticker.

Valve uses four criteria to check Steam Deck compatibility. It assesses whether a game has controller support (and an onscreen keyboard when needed) or any compatibility warnings. It also looks for support for the screen's native 1,280 by 800 resolution and if the game has any issues with the Proton compatibility layer Valve employs to run Windows games.

There's now a vast library of games that will work on Steam Deck, more than most people can possibly play in a lifetime — you might have a shot at getting through them if you can tear yourself away from Vampire Survivors for long enough. This should come as more good news for those waiting on a Steam Deck delivery after Valve ramped up production in the last few months. If you reserve one now, you should still be able to get a Steam Deck by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Valve has revealed the top 10 most-played on Steam Deck for August. The list includes Elden Ring, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered, MultiVersus and, yes, Vampire Survivors.

Snap has confirmed reports that it will lay off around 20 percent of its employees — approximately 1,300 people — to reduce costs. The company has also canceled most original Snapchat shows (save for the long-running politics and news series Good Luck America) and shelved other projects. For one thing, Snap said it's putting games and mini-apps into maintenance mode. It will also sunset the standalone Zenly and Voisey apps to focus on Snapchat's Snap Map and Sounds features.

On the hardware front, Snap is "narrowing our investment scope in Spectacles to focus on highly differentiated long-term research and development efforts." In addition, the company has halted further development of its Pixy selfie drone only a few months after it started selling the device.

Snap said in a note to investors that the layoffs, project cancellations and other restructuring will save the company approximately $500 million in the annualized cash cost structure relative to the April-June quarter (for which Snap posted lackluster earnings results). The figure includes a $50 million reduction in content costs. The restructuring costs will be around $110 million to $175 million. Approximately $95 million to $135 million of that will likely be incurred in adjusted operating expenses, mostly in the current quarter.

"Unfortunately, given our current lower rate of revenue growth, it has become clear that we must reduce our cost structure to avoid incurring significant ongoing losses," Snap CEO Evan Spiegel wrote in a letter to staff. "While we have built substantial capital reserves, and have made extensive efforts to avoid reductions in the size of our team by reducing spend in other areas, we must now face the consequences of our lower revenue growth and adapt to the market environment."

Speigel noted that the company is restructuring around three pillars: community growth, revenue growth and augmented reality. "Projects that don’t directly contribute to these areas will be discontinued or receive substantially reduced investment," he added. 

Snap has been feeling the brunt of a broader economic slow down. Its share price has slumped by 80 percent this year (though it rebounded slightly following news of the layoffs and restructuring). So far in 2022, the company's year-over-year revenue growth is eight percent, which Speigel said is "well below what we were expecting earlier this year." However, the Snapchat+ subscription service is off to a positive start, with more than a million users signing up within the first month or so.

Meanwhile, company's leadership team has a fresh look. This week, its two top advertising executives departed for Netflix, which will soon start offering an ad-supported tier. Snap has promoted its former senior vice president of engineering Jerry Hunter to the position of chief operating officer. It will also bring in Ronan Harris, Google's UK and Ireland vice president and managing director, as president of its Europe, Middle East and Africa division.

Three and a half years after Chinese tech conglomerate NetEase snapped up a minority stake in Quantic Dream (of Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human fame), it is gobbling up the rest of the developer. NetEase didn't reveal how much it's spending to buy out the studio, which will be its first in Europe.

After Quantic Dream formally becomes a NetEase subsidiary, it will continue to operate independently as a studio and publisher of first- and third-party titles. Additionally, it will be able to tap into NetEase's game development capabilities.

The studio has a couple of projects in the pipeline. Last December, it provided the first peek of Star Wars Eclipse, which is set in the High Republic era of a certain galaxy that's far, far away. Earlier this month, during Gamescom, it revealed it's publishing a game called Under the Waves. Parallel Studio is developing that title with the help of Quantic Dream's motion-capture, animation and voice-recording knowhow.

In 2018, ex-Quantic Dream employees accused the company of fostering a toxic work environment, where sexism, racism and homophobia were present. Later that year, a French court determined the company unfairly dismissed a former employee who made allegations of workplace harassment, but that ruling was overturned in 2021. Quantic Dream, which won libel suits against publications that reported on accusations against it, has refuted notions that it has a “toxic atmosphere“ or allows "any kind of discrimination in the studio."

This acquisition marks the latest entry in a long, long list of studio buyouts this year. Among others, Sony has boughtDestiny 2 developer Bungie, Haven Studios and, to help set up a mobile gaming division, Savage Game Studio. Along with Tencent, it just acquired a sizable, but minority stake in Elden Ring studio FromSoftware.

Elsewhere, Embracer Group is continuing on its quest to seemingly snap up every developer it possibly can. And then, of course, there's Microsoft's blockbuster acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which is still pending. On that note, NetEase publishes Blizzard games in China, including Diablo Immortal, which it co-developed. 

When Australian woman Thevamanogari Manivel put in a Crypto.com refund request last year, she got far more than she bargained for. Manivel asked for a refund of $100 AUD (now worth around $68 USD). Instead, seemingly due to an employee entering her account number into a payment section of a refund form by mistake, the company dropped $10.5 million AUD ($7.2 million at current exchange rates) into her account instead.

According to a report from 7News (by way of The Verge) Crypto.com made the overly generous refund in May last year. However, it apparently did not identify the mistake until it carried out an audit in December, seven entire Gregorian calendar months later.

Manivel kept the money and reportedly transferred it to a bank account. A court granted Crypto.com a freeze on the account in February. The Guardian reports that most of the cash had been moved to other accounts by then, but those accounts were later frozen too. That same month, Manivel is said to have spent $1.35 million AUD (approximately $890,000) on a five-bedroom home and transferred ownership of it to her sister. A court has ordered the sale of the property as soon as possible and for the funds to be returned to Crypto.com with interest. The case will return to court in October.

Perhaps not too long ago, Crypto.com might have been more willing to write off the refund as a deeply unfortunate mistake. But the cryptocurrency market has been tanking this year and the company lost $34 million in a January hack. It also laid off hundreds of employees this summer due to the crypto downturn.

So, it's perhaps not too surprising that Crypto.com is trying to get the money back from Manivel. After all, it has a long-term arena sponsorship deal in Los Angeles, for which it's said to be paying $700 million over 20 years, and a Matt Damon to keep fed.

All the way back at CES in January, ASUS revealed a 17.3-inch foldable tablet PC called the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, which raised a lot of eyebrows. Soon enough, you'll be able to own the device, as long as you have a few thousand dollars to spare. ASUS announced at IFA 2022 that the foldable will start at $3,500 (£3,300 in the UK) and start rolling out globally by the end of the year.

The Zenbook 17 Fold has a 4:3, 2.5K touchscreen with a 180-degree hinge that folds to effectively create dual 12.5-inch, 1920 x 1280 displays with a 3:2 aspect ratio. The screen has a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, a 100 percent DCI-P3 color gamut, 0.2 ms response time, 60 Hz refresh rate, up to 500 nits of brightness and TÜV Rheinland-certified low blue-light emissions (ASUS says it has 70 percent lower blue-light levels than an LCD display).

There's Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support. The Windows tablet has four Harman Kardon-certified speakers. It also has a 5MP webcam, a color sensor and an HD IR camera that will allow you to login with a face scan.

The device comes with a full-size ErgoSense Bluetooth keyboard (with a built-in touchpad) that you can place on top of one half of the folded device. Alternatively, you can place the keyboard on your desk and keep the entire display visible.

The Zenbook 17 Fold is 17.4mm thin. It weighs 1.6 kg (3.5 pounds) without the keyboard and 1.99 kg (4.4 lbs) with the peripheral.

You can configure the system with up to a 12th-gen Intel Core i7 processor with Intel Iris Xe graphics, up to 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of NVMe M.2 SSD storage. Two Thunderbolt 4 ports allow for fast charging of the 75 Wh battery and they'll enable you to connect the tablet to external displays. The only other port is a 3.5 mm audio combo jack.

It's a fairly expensive device that seems to include an early adopter tax. Since we haven't tested the Zenbook 17 Fold yet, it remains to be seen how durable the laptop is in practice. We know all too well the kinds of problems a company can run into when they make an all-screen foldable for the first time, though hopefully ASUS has learned from the issues Samsung had with the first Galaxy Fold.

ASUS

Snap is reportedly preparing to lay off around 20 percent of its staff. The company, which has more than 6,400 employees, will start letting people go on Wednesday, according to The Verge. Snap declined to comment to Engadget.

There will reportedly be cuts among the company’s hardware division, which recently halted development on the Pixy selfie drone. The report suggests a group that was working on tools to help developers build games and mini apps on Snapchat will be among the hardest hit by the cuts. Social mapping app Zenly, which Snap bought in 2017 and kept running independently, is expected to be heavily impacted. The advertising sales team will also be restructured, according to the report.

It’s been a rough year for Snap, which has seen its stock price fall by 80 percent since January amid a broader economic slowdown that has affectedmanynotabletech companies. Snap has said it would look to cut costs while bringing in fewer new hires. The company posted weak earnings results for the April-June quarter, which led to its stock dropping by 40 percent.

One recent bright spot for Snap is the $4 per month Snapchat+ subscription service, which offers early access to new features, such as seeing who re-watched a story and pinning a friend to the top of the chat history. More than 1 million people signed up in the first month or so.

Tom Hanks has leaned into one of his passions by creating a trivia game with the help of developer BlueLine Studios. Not only is it Hanks' first game, it'll be the only trivia title on Apple Arcade to date. Hanx101 Trivia will feature questions in several categories, including history, math, geography and food. You can try to beat your high score or face off against other players in head-to-head bouts and team matchups when the game arrives this Friday.

This isn't the first time Hanks has worked on an app for Apple devices. In 2014, he debuted Hanx Writer, a typewriter-themed writing app that became a hit on iPad. His production company also has an exclusive deal with Apple. Hanks' movies Greyhound and Finch are Apple TV+ originals.

Several other games are coming to Apple Arcade in September. One of them is Gris+, an updated version of the gorgeous indie hit. Apple named it the best Mac game of the year in its 2019 App Store awards and called it a "masterpiece in visualization and atmospheric storytelling." Apple Arcade subscribers can play it at no extra cost starting on September 30th.

Along with those, you'll be able to try arcade racer Horizon Chase 2 (September 9th, coming to PC and consoles next year) and Garden Tails: Match and Grow, a new match-three puzzler from Two Dots studio PlayDots (September 16th). Farming sim Farmside will join the Apple Arcade lineup on September 23rd, as will a long-in-the-works Shovel Knight game, Shovel Knight Dig. The latter will hit Steam and Nintendo Switch on the same day.

Truth Social, the social media platform backed by Donald Trump, is still not available on the Google Play Store. That's because Google has yet to approve the app due to violations of standards and inadequate content moderation.

The company informed Truth Social earlier this month about "several violations of standard policies in their current app submission and reiterated that having effective systems for moderating user-generated content is a condition of our terms of service for any app to go live on Google Play," a Google spokesperson told Axios. "Last week, Truth Social wrote back acknowledging our feedback and saying that they are working on addressing these issues.”

Devin Nunes, Truth Social's CEO, said last week that it was up to Google to determine when the Android version of the app would be available on the store. However, Google asserts that Truth Social will need to resolve the moderation issues first. Google reportedly has concerns over certain content on the platform, including incitements of violence and physical threats.

The platform does apply a label to some posts indicating that the content "may not be suitable for all audiences." However, at least some content alluding to violence does not feature the banner. 

Truth Social's iOS app debuted on February 20th. Two days later, it emerged that Truth Social was censoring some content and kicking out certain users, so moderation is not a foreign concept to the company.

Truth Social hasn't offered a web-based version of the service that Android users can try. Nor has it provided a way to sideload the app, even though there's nothing to inherently stop it from doing so. 

There are broader issues at the company, such as an investigation into how it became publicly traded. It's said to owe a vendor $1.6 million too. On top of that, two key executives resigned soon after the iOS app went live.