It’s never exactly easy to pull the plug on a social media account you’ve had for years. For many of us, our accounts are filled with years of photos, memories and memes that aren’t easy to part with ,even if we are ready to stop the daily scrolling habit. For Facebook, Instagram and other Meta-run services, deleting an account entirely isn’t necessarily straightforward, either.
And even though all the services are run by the same company, there isn’t one centralized way to delete all your Meta-associated accounts. The good news is that removing these accounts is in many cases a lot easier than it has been in the past, even if there are sometimes a few extra steps involved. Keep reading to find out exactly how to delete your Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus accounts.
First, download your data
Regardless of your reasons for wanting to leave your accounts behind, it’s worth it to take the time to download all your data before you delete them for good. Downloading your data will ensure you have a record of your prior posts, messages, photos and other activity.
These data archives look a little different for each service, but in general they contain your previous posts, a record of what accounts you follow, your messages and even some of your past activity on the services. Some, like Facebook, will even provide a record of what the site’s advertisers know about you.
In other words: it’s a lot of data. And it may not seem like a lot of that is worth hanging onto, but if you’ve used an account for years it’s a good way to preserve a record of your past photos, videos and other posts. (Though you should also be prepared for it to surface some data you might not want to remember, like conversations with former partners or cringey college photos.)
On Facebook, you can access your archive from: Settings & Privacy -> Settings -> Your Facebook Information -> download your information -> request download.
On Instagram, it’s More -> Settings -> Privacy and Security -> Data download -> Request download.
On WhatsApp, it’s Settings -> Account -> Request account info. (Of note, WhatsApp’s reports don’t include the content of your actual messages. If you want to preserve a copy of your messages, you’ll need to export your chat history on each message thread you wish to hang onto.
On Messenger, downloads have to be initiated through the mobile app. On both Android and iOS, go to Account Settings (located in the “chats” tab) -> Your Facebook Information -> Download your information. You’ll then be able to specify a few aspects of the data, like the media quality, data format and date range you want the download to cover.
For Oculus and Meta Quest users, you can use the “download your information” tool linked here.
Once you have your data archives stashed away, you’ll be ready to permanently nuke your accounts. Though, like the data downloads, it can take up to several days for the process to be complete.
How to delete Facebook
Dado Ruvic / reuters
Before you permanently delete Facebook, a word of caution: nuking your account will also nuke third-party accounts where you’ve also used Facebook to log-in. In some cases, you might be able to recover them via the app’s support channels, but there’s no guarantee. Follow the steps here to review which apps and websites you use Facebook as a log in.
Likewise, if your Oculus account is linked to your Facebook identity, then deleting your Facebook will also permanently delete your Oculus account, including your past purchases. (Of note, Meta now allows VR users to create a separate “Meta account” that doesn’t rely on Facebook.)
Once you’re sure you’re ready to delete, you can find the option from Settings & Privacy -> Settings -> Your Facebook Information -> Deactivation and Deletion -> Delete Account -> Continue to account deletion -> Delete Account
However, even after you’ve smashed the final “delete” button, Facebook notes that it still takes around 30 days for your information to be purged entirely. That also means that if you do happen to change your mind within 30 days, you can cancel the request. According to the company, it can take up to 90 days for the deletion process to complete, though your profile and other info won’t be visible to others on Facebook during that time.
How to delete Instagram
Wachiwit via Getty Images
For Instagram, you need to go to the “delete your account” page, which can be found here. From there, you’ll have to select a reason from the drop-down menu, and enter your password.
As with Facebook, Instagram notes that it can take “up to 90 days from the beginning of the deletion process to delete all the things you've posted,” though posts won’t be visible to others on the platform during that time.
How to delete Facebook Messenger
If you delete a Facebook account, your Messenger account will also be permanently deleted so you don’t need to go through extra steps if you’ve already purged your Facebook presence. But it’s also worth noting that simply deactivating your Facebook won’t affect your ability to use Messenger or other users’ ability to find you on the app.
If, however, you happen to use Messenger without an associated Facebook account, you can delete your account via the app. On Both iOS and Android: Account Settings -> Delete Your Account and Information and enter your password.
How to delete WhatsApp
WhatsApp accounts can be deleted directly from the app via Settings -> Account -> Delete My Account. The app will then prompt you to enter your phone number. As with facebook and Instagram, the company says the full deletion process can take up to 90 days.
How to delete an Oculus or Meta account
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
As noted above, if you used Facebook to login to your Oculus account, then deleting Facebook will take care of it. If, however, your Oculus login was separate, you need to log in to your account on Oculus’ website from a browser, then navigate to My Profile -> Privacy Center -> Delete Your Oculus Account.
Of note, this process will only work until January 1, 2023, when Meta will force all Oculus accounts to migrate to the new Meta accounts mentioned above. For those newer Meta accounts, you can delete your presence by heading to auth.meta.com/settings, logging in, selecting “delete your account,” entering your password again and choosing “delete your data.”
Again, keep in mind this will prevent you from using your VR headset, and will remove any past purchases you’ve made.
This year was a bit of a reset for the entertainment industry, with more people returning to theaters and more must-watch TV shows hitting streaming networks. That's a fairly major change from 2021, when many movies hit services like HBO Max on the same day as theaters. But if you've gotten used to catching up on everything on your couch, don't worry — there's still plenty to watch over the holidays. (And be sure to check out our recommendations from last year, which are still good, I swear!)
Perhaps the best piece of media I've seen this year, Station Eleven is an adaptation of Emily St. John's novel about a society-collapsing swine flu epidemic. Wait, don't run away! While the series may evoke the worst of our COVID experience at first, it also transforms into a hopeful tale about the power of stories (and pop culture!) and human connection. It delivers something we could all use right now: Hope.
Tuca and Bertie Season 3
After being unceremoniously canceled by Netflix in 2020, the cartoon duo of Tuca and Bertie found a new home on Cartoon Network last year. The third and (unfortunately) final season of the series aired this year, and it remains a delight. Created by Lisa Hanawalt and executive produced by Raphael Bob-Waksberg (BoJack Horseman), it follows a pair of friends as they deal with life, love and simply existing in their '30s.
Also on HBO Max:
The White Lotus (Season 2): Mike White's series on the exploits of privileged resort guests, this time in Sicily instead of Hawaii, remains a delight.
Harley Quinn (Season 3): This show remains one of the best DC series currently airing. Tune in for a comedic and more adult spin on your Batman faves.
Yes, it's another Star Wars show, but Andor ended up being one of the biggest surprises of the year. Created by Tony Gilroy (who helped transform Rogue One into a stellar film), it centers on Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), a small-time thief with a healthy distrust for the Empire. The show follows his journey towards becoming a member of the rebels, and in doing so it also serves as a blueprint for taking down authoritarian systems.
Fire of Love
Katia and Maurice Krafft were a rare couple, two expert volcanologists who were also madly in love. They dedicated their lives to documenting active volcanoes, often by directly confronting lava flows, rock explosions and acid lakes. Fire of Love unearths their original footage to show just how far they went in the name of science. But it also paints a portrait of a truly rare couple, one whose contributions we still owe much to.
Also on Disney+:
Tales of the Jedi: A short animated series that gives us a bit more backstory on Ahsoka Tano and... Count Dooku? If you've been interested in the Star Wars cartoons, but don't want to slog through tons of old episodes, this is a good start.
Bluey: This remains the best kids show on TV. Bluey's latest season is as funny and poignant as ever. It's the rare show that can teach both kids and their parents.
Cyberpunk 2077 had a notoriously rocky game launch, but the setting of Night CIty was always compelling. Edgerunners is an anime spin on that universe, centering on a plucky street kid who finds himself equipped with a military-grade spine implant. You know, typical teenage stuff. Will his newfound power keep him on the wrong side of the law? And will he ever get revenge against the people who ruined his life? The show doesn't do much new, but it features genuinely compelling characters and some of the best animation in recent years.
The Midnight Club
Mike Flanagan can do no wrong. The talent behind Midnight Mass, Doctor Sleep, and the excellent “Haunting of…” horror shows on Netflix has now set his sights on a Christopher Pike adaptation, and the results are glorious. The show, co-created by Leah Fong, follows a group of terminally ill teenagers as they tell spooky stories and explore the supernatural mysteries of their hospice mansion. It's a meditation on the power of storytelling, but also yet another Flanagan exploration of the value of life.
Also on Netflix:
Wednesday: Come to see Tim Burton finally get his shot at The Addams Family, stay for Jenna Ortega's perfectly deadpan performance.
Can an award-winning chef truly come back home and save his family's beleaguered sandwich shop? Or is he just trying to work through the death of his brother the only way he knows? The Bear captures the energy and madness of kitchen life better than any TV show — forget all the glossy stuff you've seen on Chef's Table. But amid the insanity, it's the story of a found family banding together to mourn and save the place they all love.
The Dropout
What makes Elizabeth Holmes tick? This series, which stars Amanda Seyfried as the notorious Theranos founder, paints a more complete picture of Holmes than the 2019 HBO documentary The Inventor. We see Holmes' early life, as well as her initial connection with Sunny Balwani (Naveen Andrews, perhaps the best TV adaptation glow-up any South Asian man can hope for). After proving her smarts in college, she sets off to build the world's best blood testing machine with Theranos. We all know how that went. When the hype around Theranos starts to fall apart, The Dropout turns into a fascinating portrait of self-deception.
Also on Hulu:
Fleishman is in Trouble: Toby Fleishman is going through a divorce. But as he starts to rebuild his own identity, he also needs to deal with the wreckage of his marriage (and find his missing ex-wife).
Taking the idea of work/life balance a step too far, Severance follows a group of people who’ve received a procedure that completely splits their memories between home and office life. The result is two completely separate personalities within the same body, both trapped in their respective cages. Severance is a bit of a slow burn, but it’s a fascinating exploration of corporate control akin to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. (Be sure to check out our interview with the creator of the show, Dan Erickson, on the Engadget Podcast.)
Pachinko
An adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s 2017 novel, Pachinko follows a Korean family across several generations starting in 1917 and reaching into the late ‘80s. We see a young fish seller fall in love and make her way to Japan as an outsider, while her grandson struggles to maintain his identity in the pressure-filled business world. Pachinko has almost everything you’d want in a family epic: Children struggling to live up to their parents’ standards, forbidden love and the constant threat of generational trauma. Also, it has one of the best opening sequences of the year.
Other things to watch
The Good Fight (Paramount+): Over its six-season span, The Good Fight tackled the insanity of our current social and political environment better than any other TV show. It’s first and foremost a legal procedural, but coming from the minds of Michelle and Robert King, it ends up being so much more.
Gangs of London (AMC+): Now on its second season, Gangs of London is one of the most brutal crime shows on TV. It’s part gangster epic, part martial arts smackdown (it comes from Gareth Evans, director of The Raid films). While the plot becomes increasingly ludicrous, it’s worth a watch just for the sheer ambition of its action sequences, many of which go far harder than anything we’ve seen in American films lately.
Online multiplayer has become part and parcel with many video games these days, but finding something you can play on the couch with a loved one has gotten tougher. If you’re looking for some cooperative fun, though, we can help. Below are 25 of the best couch co-op games we’ve played across the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox and PC. Note that we’re focusing on genuine co-op experiences, not games that have local multiplayer but aren’t truly cooperative in practice. (So, no Mario Kart or Jackbox.) Even still, our list encompasses everything from platformers and puzzlers to RPGs and arcade shooters.
Super Mario 3D World
Nintendo
You know the broad strokes of any Super Mariogame by now. Within the series, though, 3D World stands out for using a largely fixed camera and levels that are more semi-3D than the totally open spaces of games like Super Mario Odyssey or Super Mario Galaxy. There are still many items to grab and secrets to uncover across the characteristically charming, brisk and inventive stages, but everything you can find at a given moment is right in front of you, which encourages you to look closer and move from foreground to background.
Co-op play can be chaotic, but 3D Worldowns that. You and up to three buddies share lives but are scored on your individual performance, with the leader at the end of each level getting a literal crown placed atop their head. This makes for a sort of competitive co-op mode, one in which a particularly devious “teammate” could straight-up grab you and chuck you off a cliff in an attempt to secure their high score. The adventure only has to be as spicy as you and your partners want it to be, though; if you aren’t playing with a group of sickos, 3D World should be an exciting update to a familiar Marioformula.
Like most Donkey Kong Country games, Tropical Freezeis a 2D platformer that’s both structurally straightforward and aesthetically gorgeous. Donkey Kong is not Mario: He has a more immediate sense of gravity to him, so when he leaps, he comes down hard. But the platforming is uniquely deliberate as a result, and the way the game leads you from one stunning scene to the next, even within the same stage, is a delight.
Tropical Freezecan get difficult, particularly during some later boss fights, but a “Funky Mode” in the Switch version eases things slightly. If you have a Wii or Wii U, meanwhile, this game’s predecessor, Donkey Kong Country Returns, is just as great, if not better.
If Donkey Kong is Mario’s brutish animal pal, Rayman is the eccentric French buddy he visits when he’s overseas. Rayman Legends is a more out there 2D platformer than the Nintendo properties above: Instead of the pristine environments and perfect geometry of a Mario or Donkey Konggame, here everything is a bit more abstract, cartoony and crass. (There are more fart sounds, for one.)
The moment-to-moment movement is a little less precise, too, but Legends still plays fast and light, with stages that are loaded with optional rooms and collectibles that invite your curiosity. This is an unpretentious game, a fun side-scrolling platformer that merely wants to be a fun side-scrolling platformer, and it becomes more enjoyable (and frantic) with friends.
Luigi’s Mansion 3is another ghost-hunting adventure starring Mario’s scaredy-cat brother, who this time must stomach his fears and use his “Poltergust” vacuum to rescue his friends from a haunted hotel. Its co-op mode isn’t available until an hour-ish into the story, but at that point, a second player can become “Gooigi,” a Luigi clone made of green goo with infinite lives (it makes sense when you get there). Though the game isn’t particularly tough, this setup gives you more freedom to mess around with puzzle and boss fight solutions without having to start over repeatedly.
Luigi’s Mansion 3 has some frustrating elements more generally – controlling that ghost-gobbling vacuum can be annoyingly imprecise, and backtracking through previously-conquered areas can get tedious – but the creative level designs and Pixar-esque animation give it a distinct personality compared to other Nintendo games. It’s a silly and usually satisfying time, one that’s especially well-suited for kids.
Clubhouse Gamesis a compilation of 51 classic tabletop games, from Yahtzee and Connect Four to shogi and nine men’s morris. Not every entry in the collection supports couch co-op, but most do, and almost all are made easy to grasp.
Apart from being accessible, though, Clubhouse Gamesstands out for the quality of its curation. The included games span cultures, time periods and even modes of play; some are built on skill or patience, others on abstraction or chance. When you first boot up the game, you’re asked to identify your “heart’s desire,” and there’s a fair bit of detail on each game’s origins and history as you go along. Taken as a whole, this is a game that recognizes play itself as a kind of universal connection. But even ignoring all of that, Clubhouse Gamesis a fun, chill time, much like busting out a favorite board game.
BoxBoy! + BoxGirl!may not look like much, but this minimalist puzzler from Kirby makers HAL Laboratory has the kind of simple pleasure and regularly inventive design you’d expect from a Nintendo-published game. In its two-player campaign, you play as Qbby and Qucy, two walking boxes with the ability to grow additional boxes out of their heads. Your goal is to get from point A to point B, using those boxes to cross gaps and navigate various obstacles along the way.
The catch is that you can only create a certain amount of boxes at a time, so you and your partner often have to think outside the box (sorry) to find a safe way past. You’ll start off making basic bridges, but the bite-sized levels quickly build on themselves with a stream of new ideas. Eventually, you’ll find yourself using boxes as makeshift grappling hooks, shovels, laser-blocking shields and more, all in ways that quickly make sense. Simply beating the game isn’t that difficult, but collecting the tricky-to-reach crowns tucked away in each stage brings a greater challenge for those who want it.
The 3D platformer It Takes Two is one of the few full-scale, narrative-driven games that’s exclusively designed to be played in co-op. As such, it takes care to avoid the trappings of many co-op experiences: It rarely asks both players to do the same thing at the same time, and thus it rarely makes one person carry all the weight. It constantly throws new concepts at you, and while some levels can drag a bit, its bouncy movement feels good throughout.
Its saccharine yet oddly dark story isn’t as satisfying: Few games make divorce seem like a happy ending as much as this one, and you’ll probably never want to hear the words “Dr. Hakim” again by the time you’re done. But if you can ignore the dialogue, It Takes Two delights more than it doesn’t.
The first-person puzzler Portal 2 launched more than 11 years ago, but it recently received new life with a Switch rerelease. Either way, its sharp writing and cleverly layered puzzles more than hold up today. Co-op play takes the form of an entire separate campaign – it’s not as big on story as the solo mode, but it still does a fantastic job of gradually teaching you how to think spatially. It also ensures you and your partner actually communicate. There’s no way to play on PS4 or PS5 nowadays, but on PC, you can download a range of community maps for a greater challenge, too.
Streets of Rage 4faithfully revives the classic series of early ‘90s, side-scrolling beat ‘em ups from the Sega Genesis (which remain fine co-op playthroughs themselves). You move to the right, position yourself efficiently and pulverize waves of bozos with a flurry of punches, kicks, throws and special moves. The hand-drawn animation style and bouncy soundtrack are both great, and most set pieces convey the “rage” part of the title effectively. This isn’t the most ambitious game, as it largely aims to hit high notes from 30 years ago, but it provides the kind of thrill, style and refinement any good beat ‘em up should.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is a Lego-ified romp through the nine mainline Star Warsfilms. Like most Lego games, it’s dead simple to play – collect the things, bop the bad guys – but that makes it something just about anyone can pick up and enjoy. The best thing it has going for it is its sense of humor, as its abbreviated remakes of each film are loaded with cutesy gags and in-jokes. (One favorite: wandering around Cloud City and finding the room where Lando Calrissian keeps his hoard of capes – and a heroic portrait of himself.)
There’s an absurd amount of side quests and collectibles beyond the narrative bits, but most of those are repetitive, and Skywalker Saga’s systems, while fun, aren’t meaty enough to make optional content all that interesting. Still, if you stick to the main stuff, you should find Skywalker Saga to be a good-natured love letter to some inherently goofy films.
Stardew Valley has exploded in popularity since launching back in 2016, and it’s easy to see why: More than just a laid-back farming sim a la Harvest Moon, it’s an escape, an engrossing alternate life where you’re allowed to putter around your farm, mosey through town, and take life slow, free from the burdens of aggression and competition. You and a friend can share a farm and divide up tasks in co-op, but the game isn’t fussy; if one of you would rather fish, explore the beach or simply sit around your house, it’s okay to do your thing. And if you’d rather ruthlessly optimize your land for profits, that’s an option, too. Just note that you’ll need to build a cabin for your partner if they’re joining an existing farm.
Halo: The Master Chief Collectionbundles remastered versions of the first six mainline Halo games, which continue to provide tighter control and pacing than most first-person shooters that've launched in the decades since. The original Halo’s campaign in particular remains essential. While some of the later narratives here go completely off the rails – looking at you, Halo 4 – the general tone still strikes the right balance between goofiness and badassery. The newer Halo Infinitesadly dropped couch co-op altogether, but there’s still good fun to be had driving Warthogs and dual-wielding space guns in the classics. Just be aware that local multiplayer is only available on Xbox, not PC.
Divinity: Original Sin 2is a massive isometric CRPG for those who look back fondly on fantasy series like Ultima or Baldur’s Gate. It has loads of dialogue, deep character customization, and challenging turn-based combat (by default, at least). It’s not a game you’d play casually – a playthrough can last well over 100 hours, and it’s more than willing to throw a mountain of mechanics at you, regardless of whether you’re able to keep up.
If you want to dig into something dense, though, Divinity’s complexities are ultimately rewarding, and its world is wonderfully reactive. Its approach to co-op is also unusually thoughtful: You and a partner can go through the entire campaign locally, but you’re distinct characters, and neither of you have to follow the other’s lead. Indeed, part of the fun is in the ways your “buddy” could undermine your adventure, taking up a quest with contradictory aims or killing an important NPC. It asks: What’d happen if your RPG party members behaved like actual people? The answer: a mess, potentially, but a thrilling one. Just note that local multiplayer is unavailable on the Switch version of the game.
Untitled Goose Gameis a simple puzzle/stealth game that gets a lot of mileage out of its premise: You are a goose, and your only goal in life is to aggravate the residents of a little English village. If the idea of dragging a groundskeeper’s rake into a lake, pulling a seat out from under an old man right as he goes to sit down or generally honking at everyone in sight sounds funny to you, it’ll probably give you a good laugh.
The actual game part of the game doesn’t have much variance to it – you’re largely trial-and-error-ing your way through a checklist of troll-y activities – but it’s all appropriately silly, and it ends quickly enough to not run its joke into the ground.
Chicory: A Colorful Tale is an open-hearted adventure game set in a world of talking animals, where the wielder of a magic paintbrush is tasked with literally filling the land with color. You play as a sprightly dog who becomes that wielder. What follows is a cozy adventure in the vein of Zelda, but with a twist: You can use the brush to paint over the environment, at any point, anywhere you want, in various colors and patterns. This turns a somewhat familiar game into something of a digital coloring book, one that remembers your markings in time as you go along. Chicory is exceedingly gentle and never suggests you’re doing it wrong, so if you want to spend 45 minutes ignoring the story and painting trees purple, you can. There are tons of accessibility options on top of that.
In co-op, player one still controls the pace of progression, but player two gets another brush with all the same abilities. On top of giving a second set of hands to deal with the game’s various puzzles and boss encounters, this lets you both create a shared impression on the world, like two kids sharing crayons on a children’s menu. The narrative gets heavier than the cutesy art style suggests, exploring themes of self-doubt, impostor syndrome and other struggles that can come with creative work. But it’s refreshingly earnest throughout. If you’re looking for a warm, caring, but still goofy co-op experience, Chicory is worth a shot.
Spiritfarer is a management sim not unlike Animal Crossing, but with some light platforming elements. Like Chicory, it’s generally relaxed, sincere and low-stakes, but occasionally devastating in the way it puts a friendly face on adult themes. Here, you play as Stella, a young woman who becomes tasked with ferrying freshly deceased souls into the afterlife. This mostly involves exploring the seas on a big boat, doing quests and gathering and crafting resources to make passing on more comfortable for the many characters you get to know. Player two joins in as Stella’s pet cat, Daffodil, who can’t trigger quests but can otherwise help with platforming and management tasks.
Spiritfarer’s sim elements can sometimes feel monotonous, and the way the game addresses death head-on can be sad, but it stands out for being as much about love and care as sorrow. If you and your partner are into management sims and aren’t afraid of shedding a tear or two, there’s beauty to be found here.
The Overcooked! games set you and up to three friends as chefs tasked with preparing various meals on a timer. In theory, this is as simple as grabbing the right ingredients, preparing them properly, then sending the finished plate off on time. But as the orders keep piling up and parts of the levels start to conspire against you, your ability to scramble and communicate under pressure becomes increasingly put to the test. There’s a non-zero chance your partner will call you an “idiot sandwich” by the time you’re done.
With its adorable looks, Overcooked! knows what it’s doing, but fighting through the anxiety of its most chaotic levels brings a particularly comical sense of accomplishment. The All You Can Eat edition here includes the original Overcooked!, the (superior) sequel Overcooked 2!, and all their DLC. It also adds an “assist mode” that lets you ease up the timers on each order, which, yes, kind of defeats the point of the game, but also might be necessary if you and your friends start screaming at each other over cartoon fish chopping.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetimeis a vibrant space shooter in which you and up to three partners must collectively navigate a chunky battleship through levels packed with baddies and other obstacles. There are eight panels for controlling the ship’s engine, shields and various weapons, but each player can only man one station at a time, so you have no choice but to scramble and communicate to keep your shared body alive for as long as possible. The net effect isn’t unlike Overcooked!, then, but if you don’t mind a little stress, Lovers is effective in the way it makes you and your buddies work toward a common goal.
The run-and-gun shooter Cuphead is a stunner, with a lovely soundtrack and luscious animation that combine to make the whole thing feel like a playable cartoon from the ‘30s. (It’s no wonder there’s now a TV show based on the game.) Somehow, the story, about a pair of talking cups who make a deal with the Devil, fits the art style like a glove.
Actually playing Cuphead, meanwhile, is an exercise in punishment. It is brutally difficult, with several intense boss fights that demand serious concentration. Playing it in co-op makes it even tougher, as those bosses gain more health, and having two characters jump around can make the action more chaotic. That said, the challenge is not cheap, and overcoming each fight brings the expected wave of catharsis. If you have a bit of a masochistic streak, it’s worth a go. A recent DLC expansion only adds to the beautiful mayhem.
Spelunky helped popularize the trend of modern 2D platformers with roguelike elements – i.e., games where you mostly start from scratch upon death. Spelunky 2, released about a decade later in 2020, essentially polishes the original game’s formula.
Like Cuphead, neither of these games is for the faint of heart. Traversing their caves while avoiding the many death traps within is like descending into cartoon Hell. But again, it’s a (mostly) fair and legible challenge, if you can stay patient. The procedurally generated levels keep exploration from feeling totally rigid, and the frankness and pure speed with which death can hit you gives everything a morbid sense of humor. Couch co-op can feel somewhat unnatural at times – everyone has to stick near player one to stay on camera – but having a partner or three to revive you is a relief, provided you don’t accidentally blow each other up first.
Ikaruga is more than two decades old at this point, but it remains a crown jewel among shoot ‘em ups. It takes a simple idea – every enemy and projectile in the game is either white or black, and you have to change your ship’s color accordingly to survive – and makes the most of it across five meticulously crafted stages. It’s another notoriously difficult one, but there’s not an ounce of fat on it, and its central mechanic forces you and your partner into a near-perfect state of concentration. If you’re craving an arcade-style shooter, it’s still a rush. And if you get sick of dying, know that recent releases have added more accessibility settings, including the option for infinite continues.
Wizard of Legendis a top-down, 2D dungeon crawler with an emphasis on speed. It’s another skill-based roguelike, but letting your arsenal of spells fly and figuring out how to best chain attacks with your partner is a joy. Simply moving around is pleasingly kinetic, and the pixelated art style is kind on the eyes. It’s probably not enough to convince the roguelike-averse to hop aboard, but Wizard of Legendis a good one of those all the same.
Assault Android Cactus is an especially intense twin-stick shooter. You and up to three friends play as little androids charged with surviving hordes of robot baddies on a space freighter. (The tone is much more campy than gritty, thankfully.) Its tension derives from the fact that each android runs on a continuously depleting battery; if emptied, it’s game over. Since you can only replenish that battery by defeating waves of enemies, it behooves you to play aggressively and keep moving. The nonstop rush of baddies, gunfire and power-ups Cactus throws at you is exhilarating, and it’s heightened by quick-burst levels that rarely sit still. Plus, while this isn’t an easy game, it’s far from unfair, with most of the challenge coming from chasing high scores.
Wilmot’s Warehouseis a clever little game about organizing an ever-growing warehouse. At the start of each level, you get a batch of colorful boxes, which you must gather and tuck away on a timer. Exactly how you organize them is up to you. When the timer ends, customers will start requesting certain products within the warehouse, and the challenge becomes retrieving the corresponding boxes as quickly as possible.
The game, then, is coming up with a system that will let your specific brain remember where everything is and adapt to new box types as they roll in. There’s a frenzy to completing orders, and a dark undercurrent to the idea of two warehouse workers being scored as they fulfill this many orders and strive this hard for efficiency. (The latter is made particularly clear in the game’s sudden ending.) In the abstract, though, Wilmot’s Warehouse makes a soothing game out of our unending desire to create order from chaos.
Escape Academy is, in essence, a series of digital escape rooms. You work with a partner, combing for clues, deciphering codes and solving puzzles to get out of a locked room within a time limit. Like the real thing, it can result in some shouting, but it encourages constant communication and ultimately provides a sense of empowerment. The puzzles themselves are varied, but maybe a touch too easy, and the overarching narrative is (mostly) just kind of there. But if you and a partner have been itching to try a real-world escape room, Escape Academyshould serve as a charming substitute for a couple of afternoons.
Dyson’s Zone is a headset-visor that processes the air you breathe and pumps it, well, into your face. Now we know the price ($949!) and launch date (March 2023), the company invited press to strap the baffling device on and test it a little more extensively.
In a dark blue with copper accents, it looks a little subtler than the press images. But it’s still going to turn heads. The Dyson Zone is not designed to protect against COVID-19 or other viruses, as it does not seal to your face. The air purifier filters have a dual-layer design with potassium-enriched carbon to capture acidic gasses. The company claims the filters will block 99 percent of particles, including those as small as 0.1 microns for "filtering city fumes and pollutants." However, you can use inserts like an N95 mask attachment – also offered by Dyson.
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He asked users if he should step down, and they decisively voted yes.
Elon Musk put his own leadership of Twitter on the line at the weekend. "Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll," he tweeted. The poll ended and 57.5 percent of users voted "Yes," compared to 42.5 percent who voted no (with 17,502,391 votes) – a decisive 15-point margin. It remains to be seen if (and how, and when) Musk will abide by his poll, as he has yet to issue any comment about the results. Shortly after publishing the vote (and when it was already tilting toward Yes), he tweeted "as the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it."
The vote follows a flurry of activity on Twitter after it announced a sudden rule change prohibiting users from linking to competing platforms and banning several influential users soon after. A massive backlash ensued, prompting an apology from Musk, who also tweeted that "going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes." Then, in yet another poll yesterday, @TwitterSafety asked users whether it should "have a policy preventing the creation of or use of existing accounts for the main purpose of advertising other social media platforms."
If you were looking for a late (and spendy) Christmas gift for your favorite Engadget newsletter editor (hi, me), Square Enix has you covered. To celebrate the Pixel Remaster series’ arrival on Switch and PlayStation, the company is selling a limited-edition bundle of all six entries in the Pixel Remaster series – Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI – as well a vinyl soundtrack set, a 128-page art book and a set of pixel art figurines. A mere $260 to make my Christmas.
In time for holiday shopping, we’ve updated and expanded our guide to the best Switch games, covering all the major games that have wowed us since the console’s launch. Sure, there’s Zelda and Mario in here, but there’s also a bug knight, a witch with guns on her shoes and a skateboarding world to explore.
Instagram has been placing a bigger focus on Reels this year, and that extends to how users create their 2022 Recap – whether you want it to or not. Select at least three photos or videos and Instagram will automatically stitch these together into a Reel with narration templates from the likes of Bad Bunny, Priah Ferguson and DJ Khaled. Hopefully, those can be toggled off, too.
Reels have been a major focus for Meta over the past year. Across Instagram and Facebook, the company now says Reels are played over 140 billion times every day. Meta has been bolstering its answer to TikTok by making it easier to create Reels, launching an in-app Reels scheduler and ways to post to Reels from third-party apps.
Europe has hit Facebook owner Meta with a complaint that its Marketplace classified service is unfair to competitors. By tying its main social media site to Marketplace, it has a "substantial distribution advantage" over rivals, the EU Commission wrote in a press release.
"With its Facebook social network, Meta reaches globally billions of monthly users and millions of active advertisers," EU Antitrust Commissioner said in a statement. "Our preliminary concern is that Meta ties its dominant social network, Facebook, to its online classified ad services called Facebook Marketplace. This means that users of Facebook automatically have access to Facebook Marketplace, whether they want it or not." This all infringes on EU rules that prohibit the abuse of a dominant market position. The EU has the power to impose a fine of up to 10 percent of Meta's annual revenue and prohibit the behavior. Meta's head of EMEA competition said the "claims made by the European Commission are without foundation."
The Alert Slider and Hasselblad camera tuning are back.
OnePlus has revealed when it will formally show off its flagship products for 2023. The Cloud 11 event will take place in New Delhi, India, on February 7th. The company will showcase the OnePlus 11 5G, OnePlus Buds Pro 2 and more. Along with revealing the event date, OnePlus said it would bring a couple of fan-favorite features back for its next flagship smartphone. The OnePlus 11 will once again feature the company's Alert Slider, which offers an easy way to shift between silent, vibrate and alert modes.
In mid-November, Elon Musk said Twitter was working on a feature that would allow brands and organizations to identify accounts associated with them. A month later, the company has begun rolling that feature out. As first spotted by social media consultant (and former Next Web journalist) Matt Navarra, Twitter has added a new "Affiliate" badge that can appear alongside an account's verified checkmark. The purpose of the icon is to point you to the account's parent account if it's not the primary account of a brand or organization. For instance, if you visit the Twitter Support account, you can click on the badge to go straight to the main Twitter account. Brands now also have square profile pictures to further differentiate their presence on the platform.
Musk first announced the feature in the same week that Twitter made its first failed attempt at rolling out paid account verification. After the company began enrolling users into its revamped Twitter Blue subscription, verified trolls used the service to impersonate brands and celebrities. The situation was a nightmare for businesses like Eli Lilly. The pharmaceutical firm saw billions of dollars erased from its market cap after a fake "verified" account misled people into believing the company was making insulin free.
NEW! Twitter just added a new ‘Affiliate’ verification badge ⭐️😮
Brands will be able to verify other associated accounts as affiliated with their main Twitter account
Affiliate accounts show a miniture version of the main accounts avatar next to the verified check mark. pic.twitter.com/WlDHbrLUnT
Europe has hit Facebook owner Meta with a complaint that its Marketplace classified service is unfair to competitors. By tying its main social media site to Marketplace, it has a "substantial distribution advantage" over rivals, the EU Commission wrote in a press release.
"With its Facebook social network, Meta reaches globally billions of monthly users and millions active advertisers," EU Antitrust Commissioner said in a statement. "Our preliminary concern is that Meta ties its dominant social network Facebook to its online classified ad services called Facebook Marketplace. This means that users of Facebook automatically have access to Facebook Marketplace, whether they want it or not."
In addition, the Commission found that Meta imposes imposes unfair trading conditions on competitors that advertise on Facebook or Instagram. That essentially allows it to use "ads-related data derived from competitors for the benefit of Facebook Marketplace," it said. The practices, if confirmed, would infringe on EU rules that prohibit the abuse of a dominant market position. The EU has the power to impose a fine of up to 10 percent of Meta's annual revenue and prohibit the behavior.
In a statement, Meta's head of EMEA competition said the "claims made by the European Commission are without foundation" and that the company "will continue to work with regulatory authorities to demonstrate that our product innovation is pro-consumer and pro-competitive."
Last year, the EU Commission launched an antitrust probe into Facebook's classified advertising practices to determine if it broke competition rules by using advertiser data to its own benefit. The so-called Statement of Objects released today is a formal step in EU antitrust investigations, informing parties of complaints raised against them. Meta can now examine the documents, reply in writing and request an oral hearing to present their comments, according to the Commission.
Could the state of Twitter get any worse? Of course it can. While a lot of us were glued to the World Cup final, the social network made major policy changes, deciding to halt any kind of “free promotion” of competing social media sites. Or, at least, it did for a moment.
Twitter announced yesterday it would remove links to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Post and, er, Truth Social, from accounts whose "main purpose" is to promote content on those platforms. This includes links in Twitter bios and even, it seems, links to YouTube channels and profiles. The company would even restrict the use of third-party aggregators, like Linktree and Link.bio. Funnily enough, if you were willing to pay, you’d be fine. Twitter said it would continue to allow paid promotion for any of the platforms on its new prohibited list.
Twitter began enforcing the policy almost immediately. Yesterday, at 2:17 PM ET, Paul Graham, the founder of startup accelerator Y Combinator – and Silicon Valley royalty – said he was done with Twitter, following the rule change, and told his more than 1.5 million followers to find him on Mastodon. A few hours later, Twitter suspended Graham's account.
But then late last night, the official tweets announcing the link ban were deleted, as was the policy itself from Twitter’s website. So, well, we’re not entirely sure now. Musk also tweeted a poll asking if he should stick around as Twitter boss. At the moment, the answer is no.
– Mat Smith
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Riot Games has filed a motion with the court overseeing FTX’s bankruptcy case to end the seven-year sponsorship agreement the two companies signed last August. In a brief spotted by crypto critic Molly White, Riot says the exchange still owes half of the 12.5 million it agreed to pay in 2022 for the studio to display FTX branding at LCS events. Riot adds the disgraced firm will owe it another nearly $13 million in 2023.
In 2021, Apple was the frontrunner to secure streaming rights to the NFL’s Sunday Ticket game coverage. Now, a year later, the company has reportedly dropped out of negotiations. With Disney bowing out of the negotiations as well, the talks have become a two-horse race between Amazon and Google. Amazon’s Prime Video is already the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football for the next decade. Last year, The Athletic reported the NFL was asking for more than $2 billion per year for Sunday Ticket rights, at least $500 million more than DirecTV had been paying to air Sunday games.
Guerrilla is working on more ‘epic solo adventures for Aloy,’ too.
A VR spinoff and Horizon Forbidden West expansion won’t be the last we see of Guerrilla Games’ Horizon universe. The studio has at least two more games in the works for the PlayStation franchise, including a multiplayer title. Guerrilla made the announcement in a recruitment tweet. Along with working on more “epic solo adventures for Aloy,” the star of the first two games, the studio has a separate team to create an “online project set in Horizon’s universe.” It added that the latter will feature new characters and a “unique stylized look.”
Fujifilm’s 40-megapixel X-H2 is the highest-resolution APS-C camera yet and the first with 8K video. It has a good balance between resolution and speed, with autofocus that’s good but not quite up to par with Canon and Sony. It has plenty of features for video, and the only drawback is rolling shutter, but even that’s not as bad as other rival APS-C cameras. Read on for our full review.
Yesterday Elon Musk launched another one of his famous Twitter policy polls, this time putting his own leadership on the line. "Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll," he tweeted. The poll just ended and 57.5 percent of users voted "Yes," compared to 42.5 percent who voted no (with 17,502,391 votes) — a decisive 15-point margin.
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
It remains to be seen if (and how, and when) Musk will abide by his poll, as he has yet to issue any comment about the results. Shortly after publishing the vote (and when it was already tilting toward "Yes"), he tweeted "as the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it." During the poll, Musk was seen at the World Cup in Qatar with former White House adviser Jared Kushner, live-tweeting the final between France and Argentina.
The vote follows a flurry of activity on Twitter. Yesterday, the social media site announced a rule change prohibiting users from linking to competing platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter rival Mastodon. That resulted in the ban of multiple users including Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, an early supporter of Musk's Twitter acquisition.
A massive backlash ensued, and shortly afterwards, Twitter deleted a blog post that had outlined the new policy. In yet another poll yesterday, @TwitterSafety asked users whether it should "have a policy preventing the creation of or use of existing accounts for the main purpose of advertising other social media platforms." The "No" votes currently command a 87 percent share from 224,365 users with 14 hours remaining.
While many people were turning to Twitter on Sunday to watch the World Cup finals unfold, the company introduced a new policy banning "free promotion" of competing social media websites. Moving forward, Twitter says it will remove links to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Tribel, Post, Nostr and Donald Trump's Truth Social from accounts whose "main purpose" is to promote content on those platforms. As a result of the policy, users can no longer use their Twitter bio to link to their other social media profiles, nor can they post tweets that invite their followers to follow them elsewhere. Additionally, the company is restricting the use of third-party aggregators like Linktree and Link.bio.
We recognize that many of our users are active on other social media platforms. However, we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter.
Twitter has announced through its Safety account that it has "identified several policies where permanent suspension was a disproportionate action for breaking Twitter rules." The website has already started reinstating accounts that were suspended for violating those rules, the tweet continued, and it will lift more suspensions every week over the next month. Twitter didn't specify the policies it's talking about and which accounts will be reinstated. But upon checking, the accounts of Mastodon and the journalists recently banned due to the website's new doxxing rules are up and running again.
To understand what happened, we have to go back a few days. The website banned several accounts over the past week, starting with @ElonJet, the account that tracked flights of Elon Musk's private jet using publicly available data. Other accounts that also tracked the planes of government agencies and high-profile individuals were banned, as well.
On his account, Musk announced that any account "doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended." In a follow-up tweet, he said that a car carrying his child was "followed by crazy stalker" and that he was taking legal action against Jack Sweeney, the college student who ran @ElonJet, and "organizations who supported harm to [his] family." As of this writing, the @ElonJet account is still suspended.
We’ve identified several policies where permanent suspension was a disproportionate action for breaking Twitter rules. We recently started reinstating accounts that were suspended for violations of these policies and plan to expand to more accounts weekly over the next 30 days.
Shortly after that, Twitter also suspended the account of its rival social network Mastodon when it tweeted a link to the account tracking Musk's jet on its own service. It's worth noting that Twitter seems to have started flagging posts containing the word "Mastodon" as "sensitive content" days before this happened. Users also found themselves unable to post links to Mastodon servers.
In addition to Mastodon, Twitter suspended the accounts of several journalists who report on Elon Musk and the social network itself. Most of them talked about Sweeney or linked to @ElonJet in some way, and based on Musk's responses to questions about the event, the journalists were suspended due to Twitter's new doxxing rules. One of the banned journalists, The Washington Post's Drew Harwell, posted a screenshot of the tweet that the website had flagged for doxxing: It was a report about Mastodon's suspension for tweeting a link to it service's own @ElonJet account.
Following the journalists' suspensions, Musk posted a poll asking people whether he should reinstate the accounts of users who doxxed his exact location in real time "now" or "in 7 days." The "now" option won, and Musk promised that those accounts will be restored. So far, Twitter has reinstated Harwell's account, along with the accounts of The New York Times'Ryan Mac, Mashable'sMatt Binder, The Intercept'sMicah Lee and CNN'sDonie O'Sullivan. Keith Olbermann's account is still suspended, and it's unclear if Twitter will lift @ElonJet's suspension in the coming days.
