Sony just announced an interesting feature coming to the PS5 that should streamline the whole process of wrangling people into a multiplayer game. The new tool will let you invite people into a game even when they aren’t at a console or using the PlayStation app. The system generates a link, via the app, that can be shared anywhere online. When the recipient clicks the link, they will be able to hop into a multiplayer session. You don’t even have to be friends. Easy peasy. That sure beats having to send out a lengthy numerical code (side-eyes Nintendo.)

The obvious use case scenario here? You meet some people online via social media and want to jump into a game quickly, without having to pass usernames back and forth. Sony says you’ll be able to “start playing together right away.” The tool will also generate a QR code along with the link, which is something PS5 owners are already familiar with when it comes to multiplayer games. 

There are some caveats. This feature isn’t coming until later in the year and it’s only for PS5 games. Sony also warns that some titles may require an update before everything works seamlessly. Of course, most PS5 games require a PlayStation Plus subscription to use multiplayer, and those subscriptions went up in price last year.

Sony has even developed a custom live widget for multiplayer invites in Discord. When you share a link via Discord, the widget automatically refreshes to show whether or not a multiplayer session is active or not, so you won’t jump into an empty lobby to watch tumbleweeds roll by. Just like the forthcoming invite tool, the Discord widget is only available for PS5 games.

Sony

Finally, the company’s working on a related tool that will let people share their PlayStation Network profile on any messaging or social app by generating a link on the PlayStation app, similar to how the aforementioned feature will work. This is also coming later this year.

Block appears to be squarely in the government’s sights. Prosecutors from the Southern District of New York are reportedly probing extensive compliance lapses at the parent company of Square and Cash App. NBC News says a former Block employee has handed over documents to federal authorities, painting a picture of how the company failed to gather required risk-assessment information from customers and subsequently processed illegal transactions.

The documents allegedly show that Block greenlit multiple crypto transactions involving known terrorist organizations. Furthermore, Square reportedly processed thousands of transfers involving nations under economic sanctions. “From the ground up, everything in the compliance section was flawed,” the whistleblower allegedly told NBC News. “It is led by people who should not be in charge of a regulated compliance program.”

Most transactions allegedly involved credit cards, dollar transfers or Bitcoin and weren’t reported to the government as mandated by law. In addition, Block reportedly refused to “correct company processes” when notified of the breaches.

The investigation follows a separate report from NBC News in February highlighting two different whistleblowers who flagged the same issues at Block. They cited “questionable Cash App transactions with entities under sanction by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, operations known to sell personal information and credit card data for illegal purposes, and offshore gambling sites barred to U.S. citizens.”

The practice allegedly spanned multiple years. NBC News says it reviewed around 100 pages of documents from the whistleblower involving people or organizations in countries under US sanctions, including Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. Some of them were reportedly from as recent as 2023.

Block

The whistleblower claims Block’s management was aware of the alleged offenses. “It’s my understanding from the documents that compliance lapses were known to Block leadership and the board in recent years,” Edward Siedle, a former SEC attorney representing the whistleblower, told NBC News.

The whistleblower says that, besides senior management, Block’s board was told about the compliance issues. Coincidentally or not, several board members made unexpected exits recently, including former US treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, who resigned in February, and Sharon Rothstein, who had been on the board since 2022. Block told NBC News that they were leaving to devote more time to other activities and that their exits weren’t “a result of any disagreements with the company on any matter relating to the company’s operations, policies or practices.”

Federal authorities have taken a greater interest in modern financial platforms in recent years after at least some of them had become something of a Wild West. Of course, FTX’s fraudulent practices and subsequent collapse led to a seismic decline in the cryptocurrency industry. Although it isn’t clear if the feds have gotten involved, Elon Musk’s X (the husk of what was once Dorsey’s Twitter) reportedly violated US sanctions by accepting blue-check subscription payments from terrorist organizations.

The bad news? It’s the beginning of the month, so rent is due. The good news? Sony just revealed the PlayStation Plus games lineup for May, and there are some serious standouts. The lineup includes Ghostrunner 2, Tunic, Destiny 2: Lightfall and EA Sports FC 24. Most of these games are available for both PS4 and PS5, except Ghostrunner 2 which is only for PS5 players.

So let’s start with Ghostrunner 2. It’s a brutally difficult, yet consistently engaging, first-person slasher with a fast-paced traversal mechanic that recalls games like Mirror’s Edge. You will die often, our reviewer died 164 times on one level, and you are likely to love every second of it. Perishing isn’t that big of a deal, as there are checkpoints just about everywhere and you can respawn instantly with the press of a button. It’s also a blast, offering a “satisfying gameplay loop that's hard to walk away from.”

Tunic is somehow both critically-acclaimed and underrated. This top-down isometric adventure is an absolute gem, with gameplay that brings to mind old-school Zelda adventures. By old-school, we mean really old-school. Tunic is most similar to the very first Zelda game for the NES, as there are no objective markers, no towns filled with cute villagers and not much by way of a story. You are just plopped into the world and tasked with exploring. The puzzles are tough and the combat can be even tougher. It’s nearly as polished as a Nintendo title and the protagonist is a cute fox. What’s not to love?

EA Sports FC 24 is the latest entry in the company’s flagship soccer series. There are more than 19,000 fully licensed players, 700 teams and 30 leagues, including the men’s and women’s UEFA Champions League. This is actually the first time in franchise history in which men and women can be on the pitch together. That’s pretty neat. It features crossplay with Xbox Series X/S, PC and Xbox One.

Destiny 2: Lightfall is an expansion that adds grappling hooks to the game’s arsenal. There’s a new Darkness subclass called the Strand and plenty of updated perks, weapons, armor and more. It’s also set in a neon metropolis, which is a nice change of pace. This was actually the first Destiny 2 expansion released after Sony bought Bungie.

All of these games will be playable on May 7. Ghostrunner 2, Tunic and Destiny 2: Lightfall will be available for download until June 3, and EA Sports FC 24 until June 17. To that end, April’s PS Plus games are about to hit the chopping block. You only have until May 6 to download Immortals of Aveum, Minecraft Legends and Skul: The Hero Slayer.

May includes another treat for PS Plus subscribers. The sidescrolling Metroidvania Animal Well, the first game published by popular YouTuber Dunkey, is a day-one release on May 9. 

For better or (mostly) worse, the only way to fully increase the storage of an Xbox Series X/S is to use a proprietary expansion card. Three and a half years into the consoles' lives, there remain only two official solutions: Seagate's Storage Expansion Card and the WD Black C50. It's a limiting situation, but if you're tired of deleting and reinstalling games to create space, versions of each card are at least a little cheaper than usual right now. The 1TB WD Black C50 is on sale for $125 at Amazon, while the 2TB Seagate Storage Expansion Card is down to $230 at Amazon and Best Buy.

The former is $5 more than the lowest price we've ever seen, but it's still $25 off the card's usual street price. We'll note that Seagate's 1TB model has technically dropped as low as $90 a few times before, but those offers have typically sold out extremely fast; as of this writing, that drive costs $140. The discount on the 2TB Seagate card, meanwhile, matches the best price we've tracked. That one normally goes for $250. Since WD doesn't sell a 2TB card, it's also the highest-capacity option you can buy. Both of these discounts equal the prices we saw during Black Friday last year.

To reiterate, these aren't great prices in the context of the wider storage market. Sony lets you upgrade the PlayStation 5 with a much wider range of traditional M.2 SSDs, almost all of which are available for significantly less per gigabyte. The top pick in our PS5 SSD buying guide, for instance, currently costs $90 for 1TB or $158 for 2TB. This is despite the fact that consumer SSD prices have generally increased over the past few months.

If you own a recent Xbox, though, you don't have much choice. You can use a standard external drive to store Series X/S games or run backwards-compatible titles from the Xbox One and older consoles, but the only way to play current-gen games is via internal storage or one of these official cards. That said, the cards themselves are just about as fast as that internal SSD, and setting them up is a breeze: You simply plug the tiny device into the Xbox's expansion slot, and you're good to go. The sticker shock is the one major negative, but these discounts should lighten the load somewhat. 

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One of the main reasons it has been difficult to recommend the $500 Quest 3 VR headset over the $200 Quest 2 is a lack of exclusive titles, as most games have to support both models. This means we haven’t really seen the power of the Quest 3 yet, but the tides are turning. Meta just announced Batman: Arkham Shadow, which is fully exclusive to the company’s newest headset.

It looks like this title is actually set in the pre-existing Arkham universe, but it's not being developed by franchise steward Rocksteady Studios. It’s being created by Oculus Studios and a developer called Camouflaj, which made the surprisingly great Iron Man VR experience. The track record is pretty spotty when it comes to other developers playing in Rocksteady’s sandbox, but the inclusion of Camouflaj makes me cautiously optimistic.

There’s a trailer, seen above, but it's devoid of any actual gameplay. For that, we’ll have to wait until Summer Game Fest in June, according to Geoff Keighley. The trailer does indicate the presence of a little-known member of Batman’s rogues gallery called Ratcatcher. He controls rats to commit crimes. It’s a whole thing.

This isn’t the first time that Batman donned a VR headset. Back in 2016, Rocksteady released Batman: Arkham VR. The game was praised for being immersive, but dinged for being just an hour long. Hopefully, this one is a bit longer, though I’m actually into short VR experiences that are done really well. There’s only so much time to wander around the house like a doofus with a headset attached to my face.

While this is certainly the highest profile Quest 3 exclusive, it's not the first to be announced. Starship Home is a mixed-reality adventure that looks like it should have been a launch exclusive for the Vision Pro. The horror-tinged Alien: Rogue Incursion isn’t quite a Quest 3 exclusive, as it's also releasing on Steam and PSVR2, but it is a “next-gen” VR game that doesn’t have to run on the antiquated Quest 2. All three titles will be released by the end of the year.

Another day, another company tests Apple's resolve. This time, it's TikTok allegedly violating the company's rules for apps, with the video platform seemingly allowing some users to purchase its coins directly from its website. TikTok has apparently given some iOS users the option to "Try recharging on tiktok.com to avoid in-app service fees" — namely Apple's 30 percent commission on purchases.

According to photos shared on X (formerly Twitter) by David Tesler, co-founder of the app Sendit, TikTok is prompting users to save around 25 percent when purchasing coins (used to tip creators) thanks to lower third-party service fees. They can then use Apple Pay, PayPal or a credit or debit card to complete their transaction. It's unclear why only some users have access to this circumnavigation; one hypothesis is the feature was turned on for individuals who previously purchased a large number of coins.

Apple notably kicked Fortnite off its app store in 2020 after Epic Games introduced discounts on the game's currency for anyone who directly purchased it. The incident set off a multi-year legal battle, with Apple reinstating Epic Games' developer account in March after the European Union began looking into the situation. More recently, Apple has faced pushback from Spotify and rejected updates that would have displayed the music streamer's pricing and allowed in-app plan purchases. 

LinkedIn, the professional network known for job listings and unsolicited career advice, is jumping into gaming. The platform is officially introducing a set of Wordle-style puzzle games, weeks after they were first spotted in the app.

The company is starting with three games: Pinpoint, a word game where players must guess the theme that ties a series of words together; Queens, a puzzle game that’s a bit like a cross between Sudoku and Minesweeper; and Crossclimb, a trivia game that involves guessing a series of four-letter words and placing them in the correct order.

LinkedIn describes them as “thinking-oriented games,” though the format will likely look familiar to fans of The New York Times Games app. Each game can only be played once a day, and players can share their score with friends in cute emoji-filled messages reminiscent of the “Wordle grid.” The service will also keep track of “streaks,” to encourage players to come back every day. Given the similarities, it shouldn’t be surprising that games were developed by LinkedIn’s news team, which recently hired a dedicated games editor.

Games have been a boon for The New York Times since it acquired Wordle in 2022, and other publications have tried to emulate that success with their own lineup of word and puzzle games. I asked LinkedIn’s editor-in-chief and VP of Product Dan Roth if the company was inspired by the success of Wordle and the NYT’s Games app. He said that the inspiration was actually much older: “the very first crossword puzzle” in the New York World newspaper more than 100 years ago. He added that there aren’t currently plans for a standalone gaming app.

“These games aren't designed to be just played,” Roth told Engadget. “We're not getting into the gaming world to get into the gaming world. The idea is games that can help you think differently and connect with your network.”

You can try out the new games on LinkedIn.

Ring makes a camera for pretty much every corner of your home but, until now, has never gone near one with a motorized base. That changes today with the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam that, as the name implies, lets you spin the unit around 360 degrees to keep up with what’s going on. The new unit has a tilt range of 169-degrees and offers color HD video no matter the lighting conditions. You’ll get all of the usual features with a standard indoor cam, including motion alerts and two-walk talk, plus the extras that come with a Ring subscription.

Given the tendency for folks running AirBnBs to covertly film their guests, there’s a built-in hardware kill switch. A mechanical shutter can be slid over the front of the camera, and Ring promises that both the video and audio feeds will be disabled until the cover is moved back. The company is also aware its usual range of colors, or lack of, might cramp your style if you’re buying one for the living room. That’s why this unit will be the first to launch in black and white, but also three new colors: Blush (pink), Charcoal (grey) and Starlight (off-ish white). These new colors will also come to Ring’s standard second-generation indoor camera in due time.

The new Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Camera is available for pre-order today for $80 and will begin shipping on May 30.

The Rabbit R1, a pocket-sized AI virtual assistant device, runs Android under the hood and is powered by a single app, according to Android Authority. Apparently, the publication was able to install the R1 APK on a Pixel 6a and made it run as if it were the $199 gadget, bobbing bunny head on the screen and all. If you already have a phone and aren't quite intrigued by specialized devices or keen on being an early adopter, you probably didn't see merit in getting the R1 (or its competitor, the Humane AI Pin) in the first place. But this information could make you question the device's purpose even more. Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu, however, denied that the company's product could've just been released an Android app.

In a statement sent to Android Authority, Lyu said: "rabbit r1 is not an Android app." He added that the company is aware that there are "unofficial rabbit OS app/website emulators out there" and is discouraging their use. "We understand the passion that people have to get a taste of our AI and LAM instead of waiting for their r1 to arrive," he continued. "That being said, to clear any misunderstanding and set the record straight, rabbit OS and LAM run on the cloud with very bespoke AOSP and lower level firmware modifications, therefore a local bootleg APK without the proper OS and Cloud endpoints won’t be able to access our service. rabbit OS is customized for r1 and we do not support third-party clients. Using a bootlegged APK or webclient carries significant risks; malicious actors are known to publish bootlegged apps that steal your data. For this reason, we recommend that users avoid these bootlegged rabbit OS apps."

Android Authority admitted that Spotify integration and other features probably wouldn't work when the R1 is installed on a phone, because it was created to run on the company's specialized firmware. However, it promised a follow-up story delving deeper into the subject. 

The R1 has the capability to book you an Uber, find you titles to songs stuck in your brain or look for recipes that can incorporate ingredients you have in your fridge, among other things a virtual assistant or an AI chatbot can do. When Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu introduced the R1 at CES 2024, he demonstrated how it can be trained to do a variety of other tasks when he taught it to generate an image using Midjourney. Engadget Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low found it more fun and accessible than the $700 Humane AI Pin, but she remains skeptical about the usefulness of AI devices overall. It may still be too early to tell whether they have the potential to become a must-have product for your daily life or the high-tech equivalent of single-use kitchen tools. We're already in the midst of testing the R1 and will publish a review soon to help you decide if it's worth giving the product category a chance. 

Beats today announced the Solo 4, a $200 set of familiar-looking cans with significant upgrades inside, even if they look almost entirely the same as the Solo 3.

At this price, the Solo 4s don’t have any active noise cancellation and, according to Billy Steele, who tested the new headphones, they sound a bit thin. However, sound is generally improved, and the boost to 50 hours of playback (along with USB-C) is a major improvement over the predecessor. They’re available to buy now.

Engadget

Beats also surprised us with new sub-$100 Solo buds, wireless (non-ANC) earbuds with 18 hours of playback. One focus is comfort, with ergonomic acoustic nozzles and vents assisting with audio performance and relieving the pressure on your ears. The Solo Buds will be available in June for $80.

— Mat Smith

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Instagram algorithm overhaul will reward ‘original content’

And penalize low-effort aggregators.

Instagram is overhauling its recommendation algorithm for Reels to support and increase “original content.” It could greatly impact aggregator accounts and other accounts that mostly report other users’ work. The company is also changing how it ranks Reels to boost smaller accounts.

The app’s changes around “original content” could be pretty immediate. Instagram says it will actively replace reposted Reels with the “original” clip in its suggestions when it detects two pieces of identical content. Aggregator accounts that “repeatedly” publish posts from others will be penalized even more harshly. I’ve come across many accounts (often through Reels) that are simply the same viral clip (that isn’t even original) posted and reposted as far as I was willing to scroll. These changes could shrink the chances of coming across lazier content like that.

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FCC fines America’s largest wireless carriers $200 million

It’s for selling customer location data.

The Federal Communications Commission has slapped the largest mobile carriers in the US with a collective fine worth $200 million for selling access to their customers’ location information without consent. AT&T was ordered to pay $57 million, while Verizon has a $47 million fine. Meanwhile, Sprint and T-Mobile are facing a penalty with a combined amount of $92 million, as the companies merged two years ago. Apparently, the carriers sold “real-time location information to data aggregators,” and this data ended up “in the hands of bail-bond companies, bounty hunters and other shady actors.”

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The Instax mini 99 is an instant camera that's cool

But it’s more like a Polaroid.

Engadget

Fujifilm’s Instax cameras have been around for a while, but the new Instax mini 99, which was released this month, looks more like my X-T2 and other Fujifilm models than yet another plasticky Polaroid. From a distance, it looks like a pricey digital camera, but it costs only $200. It also has modes and filters to customize your tiny instant photos. That flexibility, combined with the understated look, makes for an instant camera I might actually buy (and use).

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