As Big Tech pours countless dollars and resources into AI, preaching the gospel of its utopia-creating brilliance, here's a reminder that algorithms can screw up. Big time. The latest evidence: You can trick Google's AI Overview (the automated answers at the top of your search queries) into explaining fictional, nonsensical idioms as if they were real.

According to Google's AI Overview (via @gregjenner on Bluesky), "You can't lick a badger twice" means you can't trick or deceive someone a second time after they've been tricked once.

That sounds like a logical attempt to explain the idiom — if only it weren't poppycock. Google's Gemini-powered failure came in assuming the question referred to an established phrase rather than absurd mumbo jumbo designed to trick it. In other words, AI hallucinations are still alive and well.

Google / Engadget

We plugged some silliness into it ourselves and found similar results.

Google's answer claimed that "You can't golf without a fish" is a riddle or play on words, suggesting you can't play golf without the necessary equipment, specifically, a golf ball. Amusingly, the AI Overview added the clause that the golf ball "might be seen as a 'fish' due to its shape." Hmm.

Then there's the age-old saying, "You can't open a peanut butter jar with two left feet." According to the AI Overview, this means you can't do something requiring skill or dexterity. Again, a noble stab at an assigned task without stepping back to fact-check the content's existence.

There's more. "You can't marry pizza" is a playful way of expressing the concept of marriage as a commitment between two people, not a food item. (Naturally.) "Rope won't pull a dead fish" means that something can't be achieved through force or effort alone; it requires a willingness to cooperate or a natural progression. (Of course!) "Eat the biggest chalupa first" is a playful way of suggesting that when facing a large challenge or a plentiful meal, you should first start with the most substantial part or item. (Sage advice.)

Google / Engadget

This is hardly the first example of AI hallucinations that, if not fact-checked by the user, could lead to misinformation or real-life consequences. Just ask the ChatGPT lawyers, Steven Schwartz and Peter LoDuca, who were fined $5,000 in 2023 for using ChatGPT to research a brief in a client's litigation. The AI chatbot generated nonexistent cases cited by the pair that the other side's attorneys (quite understandably) couldn't locate.

The pair's response to the judge's discipline? "We made a good faith mistake in failing to believe that a piece of technology could be making up cases out of whole cloth."

I try to play as broad a swathe of games as I can, including as many of the major releases as I am able to get to. Baldur's Gate 3 garnered near-universal praise when it arrived in 2023, and I was interested in trying it. But when I watched gameplay videos, the user interface seemed distressingly busy. There were far too many icons at the bottom of the screen and my brain crumbled at the sight of them. I am yet to try Baldur's Gate 3.

Two years later, I had similar feelings ahead of checking out Overwatch 2's Stadium, a major new mode for a game I play nearly every single day. Blizzard gave members of the press a spreadsheet that detailed all of the possible upgrades and powers for each hero, as well as a list of modifiers that any character can use. With two dozen or so unlockables for each of the 17 heroes that will be in Stadium at the jump and about 70 general upgrades, that's hundreds of different options Blizzard is adding to the game all at once.

As I scrolled through the list, I was surprised that a feeling of dismay washed over me. I started to worry that Stadium might not be for me.

Figuring out how to combine the items and powers in effective ways for so many different characters seemed completely daunting. It doesn't help that I'm growing tired of more and more major games having RPG elements with deeper character customization. Taking some of the decision making out of my hands by giving a character a defined set of abilities and weapons with no stat or gear upgrades to worry about is more my speed.

Thankfully, Blizzard has some good ideas on how to welcome players into this new mode. And, as it turns out, once I actually started playing Stadium, my anxious feelings swiftly melted away and I had a great time with it.

Blizzard bills Stadium, which will go live for all players as part of season 16 on April 22, as the third pillar of Overwatch 2. It will nestle alongside the Competitive and Unranked modes and only be available in a ranked format.

Stadium is a very different take on Overwatch 2. For instance, it has a more sports-like presentation. Thanks to some tweaks to maps that seem a little out of the Apex Legends playbook and a new, looser announcer, it feels a bit more like a spectator sport than the lore-infused Competitive and Unranked formats. The maps in Stadium are either new stages or condensed versions of existing ones, with rounds typically lasting just a few minutes each.

On paper, Stadium is a more tactical spin on Overwatch 2, though with a vastly different approach than the likes of Valorant or CS:GO. Neither of those games really landed for me (I retired from Valorant with a very modest undefeated record), adding to my concern that I wouldn’t gel with Stadium.

This is a best-of-seven, 5v5 format built around customizing your hero during a match with various upgrades. What's more, this is the first time players can opt for a third-person view at all times. The first-person view is still there if you prefer it.

It's a little redundant to think of Stadium as Blizzard's answer to Marvel Rivals. It's been in development for over two years — it was conceived before Overwatch 2 even debuted and long before Marvel Rivals siphoned away a chunk of the player base. Still, it's hard not to make the comparison.

Blizzard Entertainment

There's a lot to drink in here. Ahead of my hands-on time with Stadium, I asked game director Aaron Keller how the Overwatch 2 team designed the mode to avoid making it feel too overwhelming and how the developers hoped to ease players into Stadium.

The team has done a few things with the aim of making the transition "a little less intimidating" for both long-time players and newcomers to the game, such as having a tab with example builds in the Armory, the pre-round shop where you select your upgrades. "If you want to, when you're playing a hero for the first time, you can just click through a custom, designer-built set of powers and items that you can unlock over the course of that match," Keller said. "It takes a little bit of what can be an overwhelming decision-making process out of your first-time experience, but you'll still be able to feel yourself grow in power."

Restricting the initial roster of heroes to 17 out of 43 can help players get to grips with Stadium, Keller suggested, though Blizzard will add more characters to the mode each season (newcomer Freja will join Stadium after the midseason update). The lack of hero swapping could also be a boon here. "All you're really gonna have to focus on is what your hero, your team's heroes and the enemy team can do over the course of that match," Keller said.

The lack of hero swaps did seem odd at first. One of the things that initially drew me to Overwatch was that each character had a defined set of abilities. The idea of being able to switch to a different hero to counter a particular menace on the enemy team was such a core part of the Overwatch experience for so long, but that faded over time. The switch to role locks (which restricts each player to only picking a hero in a certain class) and the new perks system, which incentivizes sticking with one character over the course of a match to unlock useful upgrades, have diminished the freedom of swapping to any other hero at any time.

In Stadium, rather than hero swaps, the answer to countering a pesky opponent is optimizing your build. "A lot of Stadium takes place during combat, but it's just as important to be able to put a strategy together around what you're unlocking in the Armory," Keller said. "It becomes much, much harder to do that if you can't predict what the heroes are going to be on the enemy team from round to round."

To help players from feeling like they're unable to deal with a certain enemy (such as having a D.Va that couldn't normally block a Zarya's beam), players will be able to put together counter builds in the Armory.

"We've got anti-barrier builds you can use. We've even got anti-beam builds that are available to different heroes," Keller said. "If you're going up against a Zarya, there are some things that you, or people on your team, are going to be able to do to counter that."

Through the Armory, you can unlock up to four powers. These are powerful and/or ridiculous abilities that you can pick from every other round. These are locked in for the duration of a match.

One power sees Ashe's ultimate cost slashed in half, but when she deploys B.O.B., he's just a little guy with lower attack speed and durability. Mini B.O.B. is just far too adorable for words. Another power lets Kiriko players spawn an AI-controlled clone of the support for a few seconds after she teleports.

Along with powers, there are items. These are purchased with earnable currency and can be swapped out before each round. You get some currency at the beginning of a match and earn more by playing well — dealing damage, scoring eliminations, healing allies, collecting a bounty by taking out an enemy who's crushing it and so on. Common and rare items boost your stats, but epic items are the ones you want. These are the more expensive upgrades that you unlock more of the longer a Stadium match goes.

Mei has some really great tweaks, such as the ability to move faster if on ground that she freezes, being able to remove a burn effect with her chilling primary fire and turning into a rolling ice ball that damages opponents. One enemy I faced used a combo of Mei's ice ball and ice wall to trap me, with both abilities damaging my hero at the same time. I'm stealing that strategy.

Blizzard Entertainment

Orisa, meanwhile, can use her javelin spin to fly a short distance. Ana (the best hero in the game) can cast her powerful Nano Boost through walls and to multiple allies. Soldier: 76 can get a short burst of his auto-aiming ultimate after damaging an enemy with his Helix Rockets. This is just scratching the surface of the items on offer, and the options can compound on each other to make abilities wildly powerful.

"I mostly just want to present a space for players where they feel like they can take the elements they really love about the other core modes that we have and just push them. Find that character that speaks to them and just push it as far as they can," senior game designer Dylan Snyder said when asked what would make the team's work on Stadium feel like it paid off.

"If we start seeing people sharing builds around and saying 'guys, I found this, this is the answer in this scenario, check this out.' They do write-ups on that, to me that's a win. Any numbers or metrics aside, to me, that's the mark of something that has landed with people."

Overwatch 2's practice range is there for a reason

I'm glad I took some time to play around with all of the heroes in the Stadium version of the practice range before hopping into a match. I started to get a feel for what each hero could do with maxed-out example builds. Certain abilities can quickly become very powerful if you pick powers and items that complement each other. When I hopped into matches, I made a conscious choice to stop worrying about understanding everything and to embrace the side of Overwatch 2 that I love the most: full-blown chaos.

Relying on the example builds was a big help at the outset. By focusing on those — and selecting the items that I felt would be the most effective at any given time — I didn't have to overthink anything. Just quickly pick a power and some items and try to enjoy myself, before switching to more powerful items as soon as I had a chance. That was my strategy.

Because of that, I've been having an absolute blast with Stadium so far. Playing around with all the new stuff you can do as all of the heroes is far more engaging than I've expected. Piling every resource into survivability as a tank or weapon upgrades as a damage hero makes sense, but each hero has a ton of flexibility.

For instance, I could have gone all in on upgrading Ashe's Dynamite. But having a second Coach Gun charge to simultaneously blow up a trio of additional sticky explosives that can spawn when Ashe's Dynamite detonates was very impactful. I picked up quite a few kills with that trick.

Blizzard Entertainment

My favorite upgraded ability so far is being able to fly while using Reinhardt's charge. He can soar across nearly half a map in a few seconds. It's absurd. Not even flying heroes are safe from Reinhardt barreling them into a wall.

I'm a bit more mixed on the third-person view. It does have a lot of advantages, such as a wider field of view and peeking around walls. Until now, I've often had to use a dance emote to secretly peer around a corner. A lot of players will also appreciate being able to get a better look at the skins they've worked so hard (or spent so much) to unlock.

But I think some of the game's tactility is lost in third-person mode. In that perspective, Reinhardt feels a little slower and the satisfying smack of his hammer when it clatters an enemy feels less impactful. It's also a little jarring to switch from a third-person view to aiming down a rifle's sights with Ashe or Ana. So, although the third-person perspective works well for heroes like D.Va, Kiriko and Lucio, I'm glad the first-person mode is still an option.

Meanwhile, Soldier: 76 feels completely overpowered as things stand. He's been an ever-present in my matches and those playing as him usually ended up with the most currency out of everyone in the lobby. But that's the kind of thing the developers will be keeping a close eye on. It'll be even tougher to balance Stadium than the other modes, and doing so will be an ongoing process.

When I first started playing Overwatch in 2016, it took me several weeks to get my head around all of the heroes' abilities and how they could be combined or countered. It's going to take me a while to fully understand all of the new stuff here given the multiple layers of complexity, but I'm happy to just relax and have fun, and passively absorb all of the information instead of poring over it like I'm studying for a test.

Despite my initial reservations, I can see myself sticking with Stadium for a while. I've seen some wild stuff already, and things are going to get more bananas in the coming months as Blizzard folds more heroes into the mode. Plus, the Overwatch 2 I know and love is still there. If I ever feel too overwhelmed in Stadium, I can always retreat to the comfort of my beloved Mystery Heroes.

The next title out of Capybara Games — the studio behind Super Time Force, Below and Grindstone — is a competitive, online puzzler with real-time strategy and color-matching mechanics, live updates and a seasonal narrative shaped by players. It’s called Battle Vision Network, and it’s heading to PC and mobile devices in 2025.

Battle Vision Network feels like an encapsulation of Capy’s sensibilities over 20 years as an independent game studio. It’s adorable in a Saturday-morning-cartoon kind of way, kind of like OK K.O.! Let's Play Heroes. It relies on color-matching tactics, much like Grindstone. It has music from longtime Capy collaborator Jim Guthrie (Sword & Sworcery, Below) and Grindstone composer Sam Webster. And finally, it’s a one-on-one puzzle fight, similar to Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes. In the announcement video for BVN, director Dan Vader described the new game as a spiritual successor to Clash of Heroes with an emphasis on multiplayer combat.

BVN has unlockable units with special abilities and a roster of customizable characters. The environments in BVN are outlandish and bright, packed with alien creatures, enthusiastic astronaut spectators and at least one talking skeleton. There are a handful of intergalactic teams in the game, each with a specific vibe, captain and engagement style. Every season players will determine the champion by battling under the banner of their preferred team and racking up points in a shared pool, affecting stats, events and narrative outcomes for everyone.

Capy is building BVN to be accessible but deep, with hours of replayability baked into its design. Netflix will distribute the iOS and Android versions of the game, meaning it should be available to all Netflix subscribers at no extra charge.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!

Simpler Times, the game that’s sweet like honey on a summer’s day, is out right now. Simpler Times is a soft and slow exploration game set in a supremely cozy bedroom, featuring a lifetime of memories to uncover and a soundtrack of soothing lo-fi music. Simpler Times is available on Steam.

The game takes place over four seasons, as the protagonist, Tania, clears out her childhood bedroom and looks back on her life. Her room is compact, with a wide bay window, a desk, a bed and a record player, which controls the game’s soundtrack. Players have to physically swap out the vinyl to keep the lo-fi beats going: remove the record, select a new one, slide the arm back and forth, drop the needle down. The process is meditative and rewarding, just like the rest of the game.

Indie studio stoneskip and publisher iam8bit announced Simpler Times’ surprise launch during the Day of the Devs showcase, which is part of Summer Game Fest. We played the demo at last year’s SGF and found it to be the coziest game of the show.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!

The team behind Furi and Haven is back with something completely different and seriously intense: Cairn. It’s a rock-climbing simulator set on the face of a lethally steep mountain, starring an alpinist who’s determined to be the first person to reach its summit. Players can climb literally everywhere in Cairn, and the challenge lies in maintaining balance and stamina moment-to-moment. If you don’t, the climber falls and dangles on their tether, expelling a scream of frustration. It’s kind of like GIRP, but incredibly elegant and super hardcore.

Cairn is a “survival climber,” according to The Game Bakers, and it includes moments of slow mundanity among the extreme physical exertion. As they ascend, players are able to establish a limited number of checkpoints by screwing pitons into the rock, and choosing where to place these is a critical aspect of the game’s strategy.

The Game Bakers debuted Cairn during the Summer Game Fest opening show. Its development team includes sound designer Lukas Julian Lentz, who worked on Cocoon, and audio director Martin Stig Andersen, whose previous projects include Limbo, Inside and Control. It's currently scheduled for a 2025 release on PC and consoles.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!

Somehow, it's already been almost a year and a half since the first season of The Last of Us arrived on HBO. Things are well underway with the second season, and we've known for a while that it won't premiere until 2025. We still don't know exactly when to expect it (though given that they're well into shooting, an early-year debut isn't out of the question), but we do now know that season two will only have seven episodes.

In an extensive interview with Deadline, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann (director of the two The Last of Us games that Naughty Dog has released for various PlayStation consoles) confirmed the shorter season. "The story material that we got from Part II of the game is way more than the story material that was in the first game, so part of what we had to do from the start was figure out how to tell that story across seasons,” Mazin said to Deadline. “When you do that, you look for natural breakpoints, and as we laid it out, this season, the national breakpoint felt like it came after seven episodes.”

That said, Mazin said that season three will likely be "significantly larger" — we don't know if that's from a scope perspective or running time perspective, but it's an interesting thing to broadcast given that we're still six months minimum away from season two premiering. And Deadline also confirmed that season two will have at least one extra-long episode, much like the 90-minute series premiere and the 70-plus minute episode focused on Bill and Frank in season one.

We've known for a while that Mazin and Druckmann were going to spread The Last of Us Part II over multiple seasons, but it even sounds like the story could spin into a forth season. "We feel like it’s almost assuredly going to be the case that — as long as people keep watching and we can keep making more television — Season 3 will be significantly larger. And indeed, the story may require Season 4," Mazin said. 

While the plotting of The Last of Us Part II was fairly involved, with lots of flashbacks and multiple points of view, stretching it over three seasons seems like a bit much. But based on this interview, it sounds like Mazin and Druckmann have figured out exactly where they want each season to begin and end and what story beats it'll cover. Of course, the show hasn't yet even been renewed for season three yet, so all this is contingent upon continued success. Given that season one was one of HBO's biggest ever, that probably won't be an issue.

HBO

Finally, Deadline dropped a surprising tidbit about a potential third game in the series — specifically, it's still unknown if one will happen. Indeed, the publication says that "a new installment has not been picked up or put into development." That's a very strong statement, albeit one that isn't sourced directly from a quote or given any real attribution. If true, it means a third The Last of Us game could easily be more than five years away, if it ever happens. 

Druckmann did confirm that the show won't go beyond the what has been portrayed in the video games, unlike the HBO Game of Thrones series infamously moving beyond the novels it was based on (not that they had much of a choice). "As a fan, I’m thrilled that there might be a third Last of Us game," Mazin said. "As the co-creator of this television show, there’s no world where I would want our show to go beyond the source material that people have in the world." 

Hopefuly, Deadline just has its lines crossed about a potential third game — with Summer Games Fest just days away, there's a lot of buzz around what Sony's first-party studios, including Naughty Dog, might be planning to announce. The last bit of concrete news we got around the game series was that the planned multiplayer game set in the Last of Us universe was canceled.

For some dads, the stereotypical lawn chair and beer is not their happy place. They prefer movement to comfort, crushing goals over taking it easy. If the dad in your life doesn’t stop moving, gift him some gadgets to propel his training forward. This is workout gear we’ve tested and approve of, with smartwatches for tracking workouts, earbuds that stay put during serious training, helpful cycling add-ons and tools to help with recovery.

Summer Games Fest kicks off this week, with its titular game showcase starting Friday. Expect a string of SGF events, livestreams, YouTube trailers to follow… and maybe a Silksong update. Please? We’ll be reporting live from LA, offering our thoughts and impressions of many of the games at the event — especially if we get to play any of them.

We break down every event right here, but the biggest events include the Summer Game Fest Live on Friday June 7 at 5PM ET, the Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday June 9, 1PM ET and Ubisoft Forward Monday June 10, 3PM ET. Wait, was there something else on that day? Yes. But we can talk about that later in the week, OK?

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

The Tribeca Film Festival will debut a bunch of short films made by AI

TheraGun massagers are up to 17 percent off right now

The Acolyte is Star Wars at its best

WWDC 2024: How to Watch Apple’s keynote on June 10

The best everyday carry gear for dads

​​You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!

Max just raised streaming subscription prices again

$17 a month, please.

Today’s price rise is brought to you by Max, formerly HBO Max, HBO Go, HBO. The standard ad-free plan has shot up to $17 per month, with a yearly price of $170. This is an increase of $1 per month or $20 per year. The ultimate ad-free plan is now $21 per month or $210 per year. What’s on? New episodes of House of the Dragon premiere this month, but that’s about it. We should get the Penguin series in the next few months, Dune: Prophecy by the end of the year and The Last of Us season two at some point.

Continue reading.

Skydance’s Behemoth brings giant climbable monster fights to VR

Intuitive battles with titans that could squish you.

Mark Robinson

Skydance’s Behemoth is an action-adventure game that draws on the combat and physics of The Walking Dead games but focuses more on fighting and less on survival. While some parts of the demo made me feel a little queasy, running and evading a colossal monster didn’t. Maybe because I focused on a single objective — the giant monster — I felt… fine. Like SatC and recent Zelda games, you can scale this behemoth (if there’s the right texture of climbable surface). The game is coming to Meta Quest headsets, PSVR2 and PC this fall.

Continue reading.

AI workers demand stronger whistleblower protections in an open letter

Signed by 13 current and former workers with ties to Google, OpenAI and Anthropic.

A group of current and former employees from leading AI companies, like OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic, has signed an open letter asking for greater transparency and protection from retaliation for those who speak out about the potential concerns of AI. It says: “Broad confidentiality agreements block us from voicing our concerns, except to the very companies that may be failing to address these issues.”

In a statement sent to Bloomberg, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company is proud of its “track record providing the most capable and safest AI systems.”

Continue reading.

Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ) is back for more charity speed runs of classic and contemporary games. The 2024 edition of the marathon will stream from Minneapolis from June 30 to July 6 as turbo-gamers take on Alan Wake II, Halo 3 and the Super Mario RPG remake (among many others). The event’s first speedrunning dog will even make his triumphant return, taking on an SNES baseball game from 1994.

The festivities start with a pre-show event at 12:30 PM ET on June 30, followed by a run of the 1997 platform game Yoshi’s Story at 1 PM. The weeklong event wraps on July 6 with a quick play-through of the new Super Mario RPG remake for Switch at 11:05 PM, followed by a special finale.

The rest of the week is filled with old-school classics, recent AAA titles, oddball novelty games and excruciatingly difficult custom mods. The latter can be especially fun to watch as gamers execute well-timed jumps that would take most of us hours of practice to perform once, only they do a series of them on the first try on cue in front of a live audience.

A few runs worth eyeing include a late-night Alan Wake 2 speed-through (July 2 at 12:49 AM ET), The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (July 4 at 10:35 AM), Halo 3 (July 4 at 7 PM), Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (July 6 at 1:21 AM) and Super Mario World (July 5 at 5:50 PM). If the original SNES Mario adventure isn’t your thing, MrMightyMouse will perform a run of the game’s ROM mod Grand Poo World 3 on July 5 at 11:26 PM ET.

Games Done Quick / Wes "Fish" Chan

Peanut Butter the Shiba Inu, forever etched in the GDQ record books with his run of Gyromite at Awesome Games Done Quick 2024, will return at this summer’s event. He’ll help his human companion, JSR_, play the SNES title Ken Griffey, Jr. Presents Major League Baseball on July 4 at 8:35 PM. Who needs fireworks when you can watch the grand spectacle of a gamer dog playing a sports title from the 16-bit era for ham and cheese?

The event will raise money for Doctors Without Borders. The nonprofit offers medical and humanitarian care to people in over 72 countries affected by crises like war, disease, natural disasters, and inadequate healthcare. Last year’s SGDQ brought in over $2.2 million. The GDQ series has raised over $45 million for various charities. 

You can check out the week’s schedule here and stream SGDQ 2024 on the Games Done Quick Twitch channel, which is also embedded below. The fun kicks off on June 30 at 12:30 PM ET.

The prices of streaming services have been rising across the board over the last few years. One way to keep the costs down is by opting for a bundle. But there are other deals to be found, such as one that can save you $40 on an annual Peacock Premium plan ahead of a planned price hike. A year of the ad-supported tier can be yours for just $20 when you sign up using the code STREAMTHEDEAL. This deal is only available to folks in the US who aren't already Peacock Premium subscribers. You have until June 30 to take advantage of it.

While it might not get the same attention as the likes of Netflix or Disney+, Peacock is a solid streaming service with some notable original shows, such as Poker Face, Mrs. Davis, Ted and We Are Lady Parts. Fans of back-stabbing reality shows should enjoy The Traitors too.

What makes Peacock one of the best streaming services for many though is its sports offerings. Premier League soccer has been a staple of the platform since its debut and now many games stream there exclusively. If you take up this deal, your year of access will cover the entire 2024-25 season. Peacock is also home to major WWE events, US Open tennis and some NFL games as well.

There's also the small matter of the Olympic Games. Peacock will stream all of this summer's Olympic action live from Paris, including the opening and closing ceremonies and every medal event. Some events will be exclusive to Peacock. The platform is also introducing some new multiview features this time around to help you stay on top of things as much as possible.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.