The Verge

Playasia, a popular retailer for buying video games, toys, and more from Asia, says that it does not expect" the Trump administration's planned import rule changes on Chinese-made goods to apply to game-related orders" because those orders will not include Chinese-manufactured goods." On May 2nd, the Trump administration is planning to end the de minimis [...]

The PC gaming platform GOG is adding a bunch of classic Star Wars games to its preservation program, which aims to keep older games playable on modern systems. The games joining the program include: First announced last November, GOG's game preservation program includes 162 DRM-free games, such as Breath of Fire IV, Diablo, System Shock [...]

DHL Express is resuming shipments of packages valued over $800 that are bound for consumers in the US, Reuters reports. The international shipping company had suspended the shipments last week due to a surge in formal customs clearances" amidst the Trump administration's sweeping tariffs on international goods. Effective today, business-to-consumer shipments valued between $800 and [...]

In 2019, DJI insisted to me that it wasn't killing off the Phantom, its iconic line of oft-imitated drones that turned the Chinese company into the powerhouse it is today. And yet, DJI has just announced the end of life for its final two Phantom drones - the Phantom 4 Pro and Phantom 4 Advanced [...]

Less than 48 hours after announcing an update to GPT-4o that promised improvements in "both intelligence and personality," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the chatbot had become "too sycophant-y and annoying." In an April 27th post on X, Altman said fixes to GPT-4o's personality would be coming "asap." After the update rolled out, users began [...]

The power elites have a Signal group chat, too - and the ones that seem to be reshaping the government, according to a recent report, are the ones Marc Andreessen created to bring the American right wing and the technocracy together. Semafor's Ben Smith published a massive article on Monday detailing an ecosystem of private, [...]

Apple's App Store review yet again let at least one unofficial mobile port of a hot new game slip through - this time, for Blue Prince. But shortly after we published this article, the port that we found disappeared from the App Store. In a joint post on Monday, Blue Prince's developer, Dogubomb, and its [...]

Kickstarter is launching a new Tariff Manager" tool that will allow creators to apply a surcharge to projects after their campaign has ended, as spotted earlier by 404 Media. The tool is supposed to help creators deal with rising costs" and import fees as a result of President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs. If a creator's [...]

OpenAI is improving ChatGPT's web search capabilities to make the AI chatbot a more useful tool for shopping. People already use ChatGPT to do research around products, but before these updates, ChatGPT didn't make it easy to understand up-to-date prices or see visual images of the results, Adam Fry, OpenAI's ChatGPT search product lead, told [...]

WhatsApp's web-based client may soon get voice and video call functionality built in, reports WABetaInfo. Currently, WhatsApp users who would like to make calls to others have to either rely on the mobile app or the PC or Mac app on desktop. However, WABetaInfo discovered new call buttons appearing on the web client, which means [...]

It's clay court season in tennis, and instead of questioning the judgments of chair umpires, some players are now questioning the decisions of complex software - specifically electronic line-calling (ELS) systems, which are increasingly tasked with determining whether a ball is in or out. German tennis star Alexander Zverev became the latest to dispute the [...]

The GitHub repository for The Homebrew Channel (HBC), a popular piece of software used on hacked Nintendo Wiis, has been archived. Its maintainers are accusing the creators of libogc," a software toolkit HBC relies on, of stealing both Nintendo-made and open-source code and presenting it as their own, according to a ReadMe posted to the [...]

Three Democratic senators are sounding the alarm over brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies' ability to collect - and potentially sell - our neural data. In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Maria Cantwell (D-IN), and Ed Markey (D-MA) called for an investigation into neurotechnology companies' handling of user data, and [...]

If all you need is a reliable tablet for everyday tasks like streaming, checking email, or browsing the web, Apple's latest entry-level iPad delivers good value - and right now, it's more affordable than ever starting at just $299 ($50 off) with Wi-Fi at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. This is its lowest price to [...]

If you're an Android user who has been staring longingly at the wrists of people with smartwatches, but haven't had the impetus (or the cash) to buy one yourself, this may be your chance. The last-gen Google Pixel Watch 2 is currently on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Google for about $149, a savings [...]

Headphones had existed for well over 50 years by the time Sony's Walkman debuted in 1979, but the portable cassette player helped popularize the technology by miniaturizing it. km5's new Lightwear Headphones Hp1 feature a minimal design similar to the one shipped with the Walkman over 40 years ago, but upgraded with wireless capabilities and [...]

Google just announced that it will host a separate event ahead of I/O to discuss updates coming to Android. The Android Show: I/O Edition will land on YouTube and the Android website on May 13th at 10AM PT / 1PM ET and will feature Android ecosystem president Sameer Samat. That's a full week ahead of [...]

Power went down Monday afternoon in vast areas of Spain, crossing over into Portugal and France, causing widespread outages in homes and businesses and bringing transportation infrastructure to a halt. Lisbon, Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, and Valencia are reportedly affected. The outage began at around 12:30PM CET. Play has been suspended at the Madrid Open tennis [...]

Google is quietly building key features of its Play Games app, which lets you track achievements on Android games, directly into the Play Store, Android Police reports - signaling plans that the former may be headed for the infamous Google Graveyard. Coder and self-proclaimed APK teardown specialist AssembleDebug posted on X that Google hasn't made [...]

For millions of people, any one of the many unprecedented actions in the first 100 days of the second Trump presidency was enough to show that the US is barreling toward - or has already arrived at - billionaire-helmed fascism. Sure, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has indiscriminately fired thousands of federal employees [...]

OnePlus has reversed a big price hike for the Watch 3 and will sell the smartwatch for $349.99, OnePlus spokesperson Spencer Blank tells The Verge via email. That's $20 more than the price it was initially announced at, but a big drop from the unexplained $499.99 cost it debuted at on April 10th. Blank attributes [...]

Today, we have something special for you: A few days ago, I hosted a panel with FTC commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya at the IAPP Global Privacy Summit in Washington, DC. We recorded the discussion, and we're bringing it to you today. That's all pretty normal Decoder stuff, you might say - except these [...]

Nothing has announced the second phone under its colorful subbrand CMF: the Phone 2 Pro. Just like the first CMF phone, this is a modular handset with extra accessories you can screw into place. And also just like the first CMF phone, it's not getting an official US release. Buy the Phone 2 Pro by [...]

In less than 100 days the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been converted from a media and telecom watchdog into a bizarre, rights-trampling grievance machine built for one purpose: to coddle and protect the ego of President Donald J. Trump. Gone is the agency that used to occasionally care about whether broadband maps were accurate [...]

Tudum, Netflix's annual fan event showcasing all of its upcoming projects, is almost upon us once again. Today, Netflix dropped a trailer teasing some of what's going to be at this year's Tudum, which will stream live from the Kia Forum in Los Angeles on May 31st. On the film side of things, we can [...]

Squidge, splodge, splat: Skin Deep doesn't sound like most immersive sims. It doesn't sound like most video games. Close your eyes and what it aurally resembles is a slapstick cartoon with a healthy dollop of toilet humor. These sounds, though, bookend chains of effects that are pure video game magic. Take the splodge, produced when [...]

Ever wanted a mouse that could easily stick to your laptop as you carry it around? I can't say so myself - but one's launching on Kickstarter today that seems to do the job! I've been testing the $36 ESR MagMouse for roughly a week now, and I'm genuinely surprised we haven't seen anything like [...]

Elon Musk's expansive portfolio of companies could avoid more than $2.37 billion in potential legal liability due to his unprecedented influence over the US government, a new Senate report finds. The figure comes from a report assembled by Democratic staff for the Senate Homeland Security permanent subcommittee on investigations (PSI) probing the impact of Musk's [...]

A group of people sued Nike this week over its decision to wind down its virtual show project RTFKT last year. The buyers of the digital assets accuse Nike of causing the rug to be pulled out from under them," and say they wouldn't have bought its NFTs if they'd known they were unregistered securities," [...]

The OnePlus 13R is a particular kind of midrange phone for a particular kind of person. It's a pared-down version of the OnePlus 13 - which is a full-on flagship and a good one at that. And even though it shares a lot of the flagship DNA, the 13R lacks peace-of-mind features present on the [...]

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has flashy, thrilling battles, but the best thing about them is how you can twist the game's many systems to your advantage. The turn-based RPG combat might feel familiar, but it offers a lot of ways to customize your approach to battles so that you can do absolutely devastating amounts of [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 80, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, hope you had better luck than I did preordering a Switch 2, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about The [...]

It's been a busy week for Alien: Earth's marketing team, having released three new teasers over the last few days. The longest of them - titled "Gestation Complete" - spends two whole minutes on the gestation and birth of an alien creature. Another, "Crate," gives hints that Earth could be facing more than just a [...]

One of the most frustrating realities about modern technology products is that while so many of them can get exciting new features via the internet, they can lose them just as easily. That happened to owners of Nixplay smart digital photo frames this week when they were hit with a previously announced update the company [...]

One of the Apple Intelligence features that hasn't been delayed is Visual Intelligence, which uses your iPhone's camera to identify and answer questions on whatever's around you in the world. It lets you snap a pizza restaurant storefront and find out its opening hours, for example, or point your camera at a plant and find [...]

When Google launched its long-awaited Find My Device network in April 2024, it arrived to... well, what's the opposite of "fanfare"? A slow network rollout and damning reviews dampened enthusiasm for what was supposed to be a wave of Android-powered rivals to Apple's AirTag. But a year's a long time in tech, and Google has [...]

Testimony this week from Google's antitrust trial shows that Google gives Samsung an enormous sum of money" each month to preinstall the Gemini AI app on Samsung devices, reports Bloomberg. Now that Judge Amit Mehta has ruled Google's search engine is an illegal monopoly, its lawyers are sparring with the DOJ over how severe a [...]

Wandering through Bionic Bay's dark alien world is unsettling and awe-inspiring. There are massive structures with no clear purpose and autonomous factories filled with whirring saw blades and devastating lasers. It's grim and unforgiving, with little light and harsh shadows that give everything a sinister tone. But then you step on a bomb and your [...]

Solid-state batteries are the future. They're more powerful, compact, safe, and sustainable than Lithium-ion alternatives, but true all-solid state batteries can't be mass-produced cost-effectively. That's why Kuxiu has gone semi-solid state for what it calls the "world's safest" power bank, while calling dibs on it being a world first. Kuxiu's $79.99 S2 Qi2 5000mAh MagSafe [...]

Every so often, Central Computers - one of the last remaining dedicated Silicon Valley computer stores - lets subscribers know it's managed to obtain a small shipment of AMD graphics cards. Today, it informed me that I could now purchase a $600 Radeon RX 9070 XT for $850 - a $250 markup. It's not alone. [...]

Donald Trump wants to mine the depths of the ocean for critical minerals ubiquitous in rechargeable batteries, signing an executive order on Thursday to try to expedite mining within US and international waters. It's a brash move that critics say could create unknown havoc on sea life and coastal economies, and that bucks international agreements. [...]

Interim DC attorney Ed Martin has written a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation - the organization behind Wikipedia - that calls into question its status as a nonprofit entity. In the letter, which was obtained by The Free Press, Martin claims he found that Wikipedia is engaging in a series of activities that could violate [...]

President Donald Trump recently announced that he would host a private dinner for the top 220 biggest holders of $TRUMP, the meme coin he launched days prior to taking office - and several U.S. Senators would like to know exactly why he's doing this. The dinner was publicly advertised on the $TRUMP coin homepage this [...]

Google is rolling out Gmail updates for mobile users across Android and iOS, with some design updates and new access to AI features. Android tablet and foldable owners will have a more flexible Gmail app interface that lets them drag the divider to adjust the list and conversation panes to whatever size they want in [...]

After stranding former US Agency for International Development (USAID) workers with devices holding sensitive information, the Trump administration says it will no longer physically collect their government-issued phones, laptops, and tablets. An email sent by USAID to workers on Thursday and obtained by The Verge says the devices will be wiped remotely, and then marked [...]

Chrome could eventually be up for sale, if the US Department of Justice gets its way in the remedies trial for US v. Google. And there are already buyers lining up at Google's door. Any potential sale might not happen for a very long time. The remedies trial is still ongoing, a decision in that [...]

Aravind Srinivas is battling Google to get his Perplexity AI assistant preinstalled on Android phones. At the same time, the CEO is refocusing his startup on what he predicts will be the next battleground in the AI race: your web browser. Perplexity plans to release its own browser called Comet next month, Srinivas tells me. [...]

On paper, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 doesn't seem to stand out amidst a recent wave of prestige RPGs, from the newly polished high fantasy of the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remake to the medieval warfare of 15th century Bohemia in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. For one, its fantastical conquests are set in a world reminiscent [...]

Last night, a new company called Slate Auto unveiled its first product, a spartan two-seat electric truck with a mere 150 miles of range and a world of possibility. There's no paint, no distracting infotainment screen, and no stereo or even radio. It doesn't tower over your average 12-year-old, and it may sell for under [...]

Japan's YKK, the world's largest zipper manufacturer (go ahead, grab the nearest zipper, it probably says YKK on the pull), has announced a prototype self-propelled zipper with a built-in motor and gear mechanism it can use to zip itself up at the push of a button on a wired remote. The days of being embarrassed [...]