FIFA is building on the video assistant referee (VAR) technology that's playing an increasingly important role in soccer. At this year's edition of the Arab Cup, which starts on Tuesday, the organisation will test tech designed to help officials assess whether players are offside, marking the most important trial of the system to date.

The offside rule is supposed to prevent players from lingering too close to the opponent's goal. In a nutshell, if an attacking team plays the ball forward when a teammate is ahead of both the ball and the second-to-last defender (including the goalkeeper), that's a foul. In the 2020-21 English Premier League season, 32 goals were ruled out for offside after VAR review.

The semi-automated offside system collects up to 29 data points 50 times per second for each player, according to the BBC. Between 10 and 12 cameras will be installed under the roof of each stadium. The system will use limb-tracking data to calculate the offside line at the moment the ball is played (i.e. the "kick point"). If it detects an offside offence, it will alert a replay operator, who can review the incident almost in real-time.

“The replay operator then has the opportunity to show it immediately to the VAR,” Johannes Holzmüller, FIFA's football technology and innovation director, said. “At the FIFA Arab Cup, the Assistant VAR, at a dedicated offside station, can immediately validate and confirm the information.” The VAR can then tell the match referee about the decision.

The system could catch offside fouls faster than the current VAR setup, helping games to flow more smoothly. All going well, the tech could be used at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The system has been trialed in England, Spain and Germany. There were plans to test it more broadly last year, but the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted those.

“Technology is very important and useful in both the pre-match preparation and the decision-making process during matches,” FIFA's chief refereeing officer Pierluigi Collina said. “In an offside incident, the decision is made after having analysed not only the players’ position but also, their involvement in the move. Technology – today or tomorrow – can draw a line but the assessment of an interference with play or with an opponent remains in the referee’s hands.”

The next season of Fall Guys starts on November 30th and the beans are getting into the party spirit. Developer Mediatonic took inspiration from festivals, carnivals and the circus for season six. New obstacles include a water balloon cannon, vacuum tubes, a circular version of the infamous seesaw and a platform that flips vertically after a certain length of time. What's more, there are trapezes that players can swing from.

There are more crossover costumes on the way in season six. Between December 1st and 5th, you can complete challenges to earn a Sackboy skin — the adorable PlayStation mascot is a perfect fit for Fall Guys. In addition, the Fame Pass, which players level up during the season, includes two rad costumes depicting Jin Sakai from Ghost of Tsushima.

Meanwhile, cross-progression is coming to the battle royale platformer in season six, building on the cross-play feature that arrived in May. So you'll be able to access all of your costumes and other cosmetics across PlayStation and Steam. In addition, PC players will be able to select custom usernames again instead of whatever moniker Fall Guys generated for them.

As such, you'll soon need an Epic Games account to play Fall Guys. Epic bought Mediatonic earlier this year, and Rocket League and Fortnite use the Epic account system for cross-progression too.

You'll need to select a primary Fall Guys account, which is the first one that you link to an Epic account. Although you won't lose costumes, nameplates and so on from either platform, you'll only retain your season progress, crowns, shards and kudos from your primary account. So, it's probably best to spend your crowns and kudos on your secondary account before the new season starts.

Mediatonic also notes that if players have different costumes and DLC content across both platforms, they should contact the support team after linking to their Epic Games account. The team will transfer over those items, so you won't lose them. In addition, all players will receive a bonus of 10 crowns.

During the season six showcase, Mediatonic didn't mention when the Nintendo Switch and Xbox versions of Fall Guys will be released, even though they're still supposed to arrive by the end of the year. However, the developer did provide a peek at an upcoming round that features invisible beans.

You'll likely have to keep using Peacock if you want to stream Premier League games. As Bloombergnotes, NBCUniversal has signed a six-year deal keeping it as the Premier League's official US broadcast partner. The arrangement gives NBC Sports access to all 380 matches each season until 2028. The pact also gives NBC sole rights for Spanish language coverage.

The two didn't say how this would affect Peacock's coverage. However, the Premier League highlighted Peacock as a platform that could reach "every home" with internet access. NBC Sports became the Premier League's American partner in 2013 and will have its existing agreement until May 2022.

There's a real chance Peacock will continue streaming many (though not all) of those games. Bloomberg pointed out that Premier League matches have been one of the few reliable sources of viewers for the fledgling service — the renewed deal could keep them watching and out of the hands of rivals like ESPN, which made a bid for Premier League rights. This could also drive free Peacock users to the Premium tiers currently needed to watch the league's games online.

The extension won't thrill you if you were looking for more ways to stream the exploits of Chelsea, Liverpool and other top-flight teams. However, it at least provides some consistency if you were already a Peacock user or happy to watch on Comcast's various other platforms.

Cryptocurrency will soon be inescapable in Los Angeles, at least for a while. AEG has signed a 20-year rights agreement that will rename LA's Staples Center to the Crypto.com Arena. Yes, the Clippers, Lakers, Kings and Sparks will all play in a building named after a crypto platform — more forward-thinking than office supplies, but still a bit strange in 2021. The deal will make Crypto.com the official cryptocurrency partner for the Lakers and Kings, too.

You'll see the internal signage and some other branding when the Lakers play the Brooklyn Nets on Christmas Day, although the arena operators won't fully replace external signs until June 2022. You'll also see "designations" at other properties, such as LA Live and the Microsoft Theater, and there will be Crypto.com experiences at the entrance, main concourse and LA Live campus.

AEG chief Dan Beckerman characterized the deal as focusing on "the future," both for innovation as a whole and the community. That's somewhat ironic when cryptocurrency has been accused of hurting the environment, but Crypto.com has pledged to be carbon negative by late 2022 (if only through offsets).

The 20-year deal makes clear this isn't just a temporary marketing stunt. Even so, this is something of a gamble for both AEG and Crypto.com. They're betting that cryptocurrency is here to stay, and that Crypto.com will play an important role in the long term. Both are distinct possibilities when mainstream companies like AMC and Twitter are exploring uses of digital money, but a lot can change in the space of two decades.

Mozilla launched Firefox Relay as a free product that gives you five email aliases you can use every time you need to sign up for a random account online. Now, the organization has introduced a paid Premium tier for the service that will give you access to even more aliases. You'll get your own subdomain (yourdomain.mozmail.com) when you subscribe, and you'll be able to create an unlimited number of emails. The tier will also give you access to a summary dashboard with the emails you make, the option to use your aliases when you reply to messages and a 150 kb attachment allowance.

After you sign up for Relay, you'll have to install its Firefox extension to be able to take advantage of its features. Every time you visit a website that asks for an email address, the Relay icon will appear on your browser, and you can click it to generate a random address.The service will forward messages you get using your aliases to your primary email account, and you can block all messages from coming in or even delete the alias when it starts getting spam. 

In its announcement, Mozilla said it decided to introduce the paid option because lot of beta testers wanted more than just five aliases. It didn't say how much a Premium subscription will cost in the future, but it's offering the tier at an introductory price of $1/EUR1 per month for a limited time. At the moment, the option is only available in Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland.

The new mobile game Rocket League Sideswipe has launched into pre-season starting in Oceania with a wider rollout coming soon, developer Psyonix has announced. The car soccer game for iOS and Android was revealed earlier in March as a mobile, 2D version of Rocket League that lets you play solo or team up with a friend for two vs. two matches. 

Instead of the regular 3D Rocket League perspective, Sideswipe has a 2D side-on view, as the name suggests. It uses touch controls that are relatively easy to master, according to Psyonix, but will also offer advanced control mechanics for better players. As with the original, it will offer a ranking system for competitive modes with plenty of car customization options.

As the game trailer above shows, it looks to capture the spirit of the original game and actually crosses over in one way. As the developer detailed, logging in with your Epic Games account for online matches will let you earn extra XP across both Rocket League and Sideswipe. 

"Every time you level up in Sideswipe, you'll earn a 'Bonus Win' in Rocket League. Then, once you win an Online Match in Rocket League, you'll get extra XP for that Bonus Win. Bonus Wins can also be earned for Sideswipe by playing Rocket League, so enjoy the extra XP in both games," Psyonix wrote. 

Psyonix no doubt launched Rocket League Sideswipe in Oceania (Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia) to shake out any bugs, but confirmed that the game will launch globally before the end of the year. So far, however, it has yet to provide any details for a further rollout. 

Four years after shutting down, The Tomorrow Children is coming back. First announced in 2014, the game was a short-lived PlayStation 4 exclusive that spent a year in early access through the better part of 2017. Now, Q-Games, which led development on the title alongside Sony’s defunct Japan Studio, has obtained the intellectual property rights to The Tomorrow Children and plans to relaunch it.

“I am now tweaking and re-working parts of the game every week, and I hope everyone follows along and gets involved in this process,” said Dylan Cuthbert, the founder and director of Q-Games. “We plan to make quite a few changes for the better, and give The Tomorrow Children the re-launch it deserves!” Q-Games didn’t say when fans can expect to play the game again. It also didn’t mention anything about platform availability, but the relaunch will give both fans and new players alike a chance to experience the quirky game again. 

Paramount+ is bolstering its soccer bonafides with the addition of another notable league. CBS Sports will be the exclusive US rights holder for the Barclays FA Women’s Super League (WSL) in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons, with 57 matches airing across Paramount+ and CBS Sports Network each season. Most matches will stream on Paramount+, but some will air exclusively on CBS Sports Network. 

The WSL, which currently airs on NBC platforms in the US, features 12 teams and it's the highest level of women's soccer in England. American soccer fans will surely recognize some players, including current USWNT member Tobin Heath, who plays for Arsenal. Recently retired USWNT legend Carli Lloyd spent some time on loan at Manchester City a few years back.

The WSL complements the existing plethora of soccer coverage on Paramount+, which includes the National Women's Soccer League, The Women's Cup and UEFA Women’s World Cup qualifiers. Paramount+ also streams games from the UEFA Champions League, CONCACAF national team competitions, Italy’s Serie A, Scotland's Premiership and much more.

Paramount+ now streams more than 2,000 live games a year. Meanwhile, T-Mobile subscribers can currently snag a year of access to the platform at no extra cost.

Last month, Konami dropped Pro Evolution Soccer in favor of the new free-to-play eFootball franchise with the promise of decent gameplay on the cheap. Unfortunately, the launch was nothing short of woeful, with bad player models, numerous glitches and an uproar over a $40 DLC that couldn't even be redeemed until a big version 1.0 update originally scheduled for this month.

Now, Konami is saying that this update is being pushed way back to spring of 2022. As such, it's refunding players who pulled the trigger on that DLC and forcing them to reinstall the game. "If you have pre-ordered the Premium Player Pack and wish to continue to play eFootball 2022, you will need to re-download the core game after the pre-order has been cancelled. We apologize for the inconvenience," the company wrote.

Konami

To make the game more usable in the near term, Konami released an update (v0.9.1) "to fix numerous bugs sequentially on each platform starting today (November 5th)," it wrote. Left unsaid there is the severity of the glitches, which make for some pretty cringe reading. Choice ones include "the referee may be shown as being trapped on the surface of the pitch," "pitch grass is not shown three-dimensionally," and "players may get caught up in the goal net when performing a goal celebration close to the goal." 

It's hard to be optimistic given the issues Konami has had with its football games, but the company did buy itself some more time. We now have to wait until spring 2022 to see if it can do anything to turn eFootball around.

While nothing can truly match the real thing, a number of stationary bike companies have tried to replicate the outdoor riding experience. A startup called Muoverti is the latest to take a swing with its TiltBikes.

As the name suggests, the machine can swing from side to side while you're standing and you can lean to turn a virtual corner. "You can balance and steer, accelerate and brake and fully engage legs, core and upper body," a narrator notes in an announcement video.

The on-pedal feel is said to mirror the physical forces of a real bike, such as gravity, incline and inertia. The electromagnetic resistance is controlled by an algorithm that updates a thousand times per second. This, according to the company, enables simulations of factors including drafting, angular wind speed and rolling resistance in real time.

TiltBikes are compatible with training apps including Zwift, RGT and Trainer Road. What's more, there are built-in gaming controls, so you can connect the bike to an Xbox and perhaps squeeze in some Riders Republic as you're getting a workout. The bike can pair with a smartphone, tablet or PC via Bluetooth too.

Muoverti

The frame is swappable, you can switch it out if you have different handlebar or pedal preferences to someone you share a TiltBike with, or go from a time trial setup to a mountain bike one. You'll also be able to monitor your workouts through a companion app that tracks more than 20 stats in real time.

These aren't exactly the first tilting stationary bikes on the market. Bowflex's Velocore, for instance, can stay locked in place or switch to leaning mode. Alternatively, you can put a bike on rocker plates for that side-to-side motion.

It appears Muoverti's goal is to bring together elements from other bikes and to elevate the experience. As it stands, some features that serious cyclists will be looking for don't seem to be available, such as vertical climb simulation, so it might be a better fit for more casual riders. Still, with its stylish frames, TiltBikes look a bit more like actual bikes than rival models.

Muoverti hasn't announced pricing for TiltBikes as yet, though given that some configurations don't include a display, they could prove less expensive than some other models. The company plans to ship the stationary bikes in 2022, giving you some time to find a decent wind machine to get the full outdoor riding effect.

Muoverti