Glen Schofield, the co-creator of survival horror game Dead Space, has is leaving Striking Distance Studios. He will be replaced by current Chief Development Officer Steve Papoutsis as CEO. Schofield conceptualized Dead Space when he was with EA, before leaving the company and founding a couple of game studios. One of them is Striking Distance, where he created The Callisto Protocol, which people have been calling the spiritual successor to Dead Space since it was still in development. Like the older game, Callisto is also in the survival horror genre, except it was generally panned by critics. 

Engadget's Jessica Conditt was optimistic after playing an hour-long preview of the title, which turned out to be best portion of the game that suffered from glitches and unwieldy mechanics as a whole. Meanwhile, the Dead Space remake EA released shortly after Callisto's launch won over critics and old fans alike. 

Striking Distance Studios' parent company Krafton, which had poured over $160 million into the game's development, was originally hoping to sell 5 million copies of Callisto this year. However, it lowered its expectations to 2 million units after seeing how it performed in its first few weeks. The company likely won't be able to recoup its losses and has laid off employees over the past months. 

Krafton told Bloomberg, though, that Schofield's departure is voluntary and that he intends to "pursue new opportunities." Striking Distance's chief operating officer and chief financial officer are also leaving the company voluntarily, the company said. It's unclear where Schofield is headed next: His LinkedIn still lists the studio as his current place of employment. "Creating Striking Distance Studios has been an incredible journey and I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved with The Callisto Protocol, a game close to my heart," he said in a statement. "While pursuing a new adventure is exciting, leaving SDS is bittersweet, but I know the studio is in excellent hands." 

Uber Eats will finally catch up with its peers and start accepting food stamps as payments for grocery deliveries. Starting next year, users will be able to pay for fresh groceries using their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits from right within the app. The service is also working with Managed Medicaid and Medicare Advantage plans so that people with flexible spending account (FSA) and Flex cards can use them to pay for eligible items, such as fruits and other healthy foods. It also sounds like Uber is adding more "relevant waiver payment" methods nearer launch. 

By accepting these forms of payment, Uber Eats is making fresh produce and other quality food items more accessible. It could especially benefit seniors and other people who have mobility issues, as well as those who live outside town centers and don't have ready access to transportation. Uber Eats is just the latest restaurant and grocery delivery service accepting SNAP payments, though. Instacart has been accepting food stamps since 2020, starting with a partnership with the grocery chain Aldi. In June, DoorDash announced that it was also accepting SNAP payments in partnership with 4,000 groceries and convenience stores across the US.

Uber Eats

Before these new payment methods become available, Uber Eats will launch a new AI-powered assistant later this year. Users will be able to chat with the assistant to discover new cuisine, find deals on restaurants and groceries, as well as to quickly reorder meals.

OpenAI is gearing up to roll out the third version of DALL-E, its text-to-image AI system, which reportedly improves its predecessor's capabilities and can generate results within the ChatGPT app. The company demonstrated how the new iteration integrates with ChatGPT to The Verge, and it showed the publication how users can ask the chatbot to write a lengthy and detailed prompt the image AI can use. 

OpenAI told Axios that DALL-E 3 is "significantly better" at being able to grasp a user's intention, especially if the prompt is long and detailed. If a user can't articulate what they want in a way that can maximize the image generator's abilities, then ChatGPT can help them write a comprehensive prompt for it. In the demo to The Verge, DALL-E produced four results for a prompt asking for a ramen restaurant logo in the mountains within ChatGPT. 

DALL-E 3 was also designed to be better at creating elements its predecessors and other AI generators are having trouble with, such as depictions of hands and texts in images. And it's supposed to have better security measures — the company said it trained the new DALL-E ignore certain words in prompts that could lead to explicit or hateful images.

In addition, OpenAI has implemented measures that could prevent future potential lawsuits. The current version of DALL-E can generate images in the style of living artists, but the next version was designed to decline requests asking it to mimic their work. Artists will also be able to submit work they own through a form on the website and ask for it to be removed.

OpenAI plans to release DALL-E 3 next month to ChatGPT Plus and enterprise customers. The new image generator will then make its way to OpenAI's research labs and API customers sometime this fall, but the company has yet to announce its general public availability. 

Max has revealed that it's giving subscribers access to live sporting events for free — for a limited time anyway — confirming a previous Bloomberg report about the offering. The streaming service formerly known as HBO Max will launch the Bleacher Report (B/R) Sports Add-On tier on October 5. It will give audiences access to all the live sporting events airing on Warner Bros. Discovery's linear networks, including NBA, MLB, NCAA, NHL and US Soccer matches. The add-on is launching just in time for MLB's National League Division Series, the regular NHL season and NBA Opening Night.

Subscribers in the US will be able to enjoy the add-on at no additional charge, whether they're paying for the ad-supported or the ad-free membership options, until February 29, 2024. After that, they'll have to start paying $10 a month for access. In its report, Bloomberg said that the company discussed using the March Madness college basketball tournament as a selling point for the new product. The tournament begins shortly after the promo period ends and could be compelling enough for fans to pay for the add-on for at least a couple of months, seeing as it ends in April. 

In addition to live game coverage, the sports add-on also gives viewers access to all of WBD's live pre- and post-game programming. They'll be able to watch video-on-demand content, as well, including Bleacher Report's highlights, sports documentaries and vodcasts featuring sports personalities and athletes. 

Unity's decision to start charging fees each time a title using its game engine is installed was understandably met with furor and talks of class action lawsuits. In response to the bomb Unity dropped, Terraria developer Re-Logic has stepped in to promote and support alternative open-source game engines that developers can use instead. In a post on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, Re-Logic called Unity's move "predatory" and "unequivocally condemn[ed]" the fee changes proposed, as well as the "underhanded way they were rolled out."

"The flippant manner with which years of trust cultivated by Unity were cast aside for yet another way to squeeze publishers, studios and gamers is the saddest part," the developer continued. Re-Logic said that a simple public statement wasn't sufficient, so it's donating $100,000 each to the open-source game engines Godot and FNA. It will also continue supporting both projects by giving them $1,000 each every month going forward. 

Terraria is wildly successful and has become one of the best-selling video games over the years and across platforms. While Re-Logic can afford a donation like this, it's not the company's responsibility — and the community knows it, based on the amount of positive responses its announcement received. 

Unity first introduced its new "Runtime fees," which it intends to implement on January 1, 2024, a week ago. The fees will vary depending on what plan a developer uses. A Unity Personal and Unity Plus subscriber, for instance, will pay 20 cents per install after reaching $200,000 in revenue from the past 12 months and 200,000 lifetime installs. Days after its initial announcement, though, Unity backtracked and promised changes to the policy. It also explained that the owners of subscription services, such as Microsoft when it comes to Game Pass, will have to pay the fees and not the developers themselves. At the moment, the exact details of Unity's Runtime fees remain unclear, but it promised to release an update very soon. 

Bethesda's roadmap for the fiscal years starting in 2020 and ending in 2024 has made its way online as part of the unredacted documents leaked from the FTC v. Microsoft case. The list contains games we're already expecting from the developer, but it also includes previously unannounced titles. One of the them is a new entry for the Doom franchise entitled Doom Year Zero, which was scheduled to come out int the current fiscal year. Meanwhile, Bethesda had Dishonored 3 listed with the rest of the games planned for release in the fiscal year of 2024. It was also aiming to release a sequel to the paranormal adventure game Ghostwire: Tokyo in the same period. 

Seeing as Bethesda has yet to announce these titles, it's unclear if they will be launched according to the developer's original plans, or even if they're still coming out all. Other than the aforementioned games, the roadmap for FY 2024 also lists Fallout 3 Remaster and an unnamed licensed IP game. Oblivion Remaster was listed for FY 2022, but it has yet to be released.

In a letter from the same cache of leaked documents wherein Microsoft Gaming chief Phil Spencer talked about how much he wanted to acquire Nintendo, he also mentioned that the tech giant was in talks to buy Bethesda parent company Zenimax. Bethesda officially became part of Xbox in 2021 after regulators approved the purchase — something that may or may not happen for Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition. The tech giant announced last year that it intended to purchase Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, but regulators in the US and EU have opposed to deal — at least in its initial formulation — due to concerns it could limit competition within the industry.

Microsoft

Microsoft Gaming chief Phil Spencer wanted to acquire Nintendo so bad, he considered it a "career moment." One of the leaked documents from the FTC v. Microsoft case was an email Spencer sent to the company's Chief Marketing Officers Chris Capossela and Takeshi Numoto in 2020. The executive talked about how Nintendo was the prime asset for the tech giant in gaming, which is Microsoft's best bet for consumer relevance. He was confident that if there was an American company capable of acquiring Nintendo, it was Microsoft. However, Nintendo was apparently sitting on a "big pile of cash" that made it unlikely to go looking for buyers. 

Spencer added that Nintendo had a board of directors that had not pushed for increases in market growth in ages. He explained that it might change in the future, though, as one of Microsoft's board of directors — investment company ValueAct Capital — had been "heavily acquiring" Nintendo shares and had been "fully supportive" of an acquisition if the opportunity arose. 

Microsoft has a long history of trying to acquire the Japanese gaming giant. When Bloomberg published an in-depth oral account of how the Xbox came to be for its 20th anniversary in 2021, it was revealed that the company asked Nintendo if it was willing to be acquired — and got laughed out of the room. "They just laughed their asses off," Xbox co-creator Kevin Bachus said. "Like, imagine an hour of somebody just laughing at you. That was kind of how that meeting went." Microsoft also reportedly asked Nintendo to let it take care of hardware so it could focus on games, but it ultimately failed to convince the company to do a merger. 

In Spencer's letter, he said it was "taking a long time for Nintendo to see that their future exists off of their own hardware." And then he ended it with a smiley face that seemed to indicate that he was willing to play the long game, though it's unclear if he still has plans to make another attempt at a merger. Microsoft's legal battle against the Federal Trade Commission will decide the outcome of the company's $69 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition. The company announced the massive purchase in early 2022, but the FTC filed a lawsuit to block the merger, which the agency says can harm competition in the gaming market. 

A Microsoft AI research team that uploaded training data on GitHub in an effort to offer other researchers open-source code and AI models for image recognition inadvertently exposed 38TB of personal data. Wiz, a cybersecurity firm, discovered a link included in the files that contained backups of Microsoft employees' computers. Those backups contained passwords to Microsoft services, secret keys and over 30,000 internal Teams messages from hundreds of the tech giant's employees, Wiz says. Microsoft assures in its own report of the incident, however, that "no customer data was exposed, and no other internal services were put at risk."

The link was deliberately included with the files so that interested researchers could download pretrained models — that part was no accident. Microsoft's researchers used an Azure feature called "SAS tokens," which allows users to create shareable links that give other people access to data in their Azure Storage account. Users can choose what information can be accessed through SAS links, whether it's a single file, a full container or their entire storage. In Microsoft's case, the researchers shared a link that had access to the full storage account. 

Wiz discovered and reported the security issue to Microsoft on June 22, and the company had revoked the SAS token by June 23. Microsoft also explained that it rescans all its public repositories, but its system had marked this particular link as a "false positive." The company has since fixed the issue, so that its system can detect SAS tokens that are too permissive than intended in the future. While the particular link Wiz detected has been fixed, improperly configured SAS tokens could potentially lead to data leaks and big privacy problems. Microsoft acknowledges that "SAS tokens need to be created and handled appropriately" and has also published a list of best practices when using them, which it presumably (and hopefully) practices itself. 

In a couple of weeks' time, Jack Dorsey will be running Square's business again. Dorsey founded the fintech company in 2009 before expanding its services and renaming it Block by the end of 2021. Square itself, the financial platform for small-to-medium businesses, became one of the businesses under the new company. Block also owns Cash App, installment payment provider Afterpay, website creator Weebly and a controlling stake in music streaming service Tidal. In February this year, Alyssa Henry was named the CEO of Square after years of serving as its EVP and head of its seller unit. Now, according to a regulatory filing seen by CNN, Henry is stepping down and leaving the company on October 2. 

Dorsey will take on the additional role as "Square Head" in addition to helming Block, though it's unclear if he will fill the seat permanently or will serve as a temporary leader until the next CEO takes over. "As CEO of Square, Alyssa Henry helped transform the business into a software-led technology company, guided the team during the uncertainty of global pandemic lockdowns, and expanded our breadth of services for small businesses around the world," a Block spokesperson told CNN. "Square is what it is today in large part because of Alyssa’s leadership and we wish her the best in her future endeavors."

Prior to joining Square, Henry led Amazon Web Services' storage services division and oversaw software development, operations, as well as inbound and outbound product management for several teams. Her LinkedIn page still lists Square as her employer and doesn't say where she's headed next. Henry's reason for departure also remains unknown, and Block didn't say whether it was connected in any way to the outage Square experienced a few days ago. As Payments Dive notes, Square was out for almost a whole day, leaving merchants unable to process payments. 

It's almost time for Amazon's annual fall hardware event, where the company typically announces a bunch of upcoming devices, including new entries for its ereader and smart speaker lines. On September 20, the company will stage Devices at its second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Amazon will not be streaming it to the public, but Engadget will be there to liveblog so you can follow along and read about its new products as soon as they're announced, starting at 11AM ET. 

Last year, one of the event's main reveals was the Kindle Scribe, a 10.2-inch ereader that comes with a pen that you can use to jot down notes on its 300 ppi display. It was launched with a retail price of $340 — and it still costs that much — but it's been on sale since. The company also announced a redesigned Echo Studio that features a new spatial audio processor, as well as a new Echo Dot with a larger driver, at the event. Plus, Amazon revealed a "no-contact" sleep tracker called the Halo Rise and a refresh of the Fire TV Cube. 

In the security department, the company announced two new cameras from Ring, along with the Spotlight Cam Pro and Spotlight Cam Plus. While those aren't quite out of the ordinary, Amazon is known to reveal more exciting devices at the event from time to time. In 2021, it introduced an Alexa-powered robot named Astro that can patrol your home, while it revealed a Ring drone that can fly around your house the year before that.