Category: Gaming

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, whose company makes Fortnite and tools for other developers, including Unreal Engine, called out Apple and Google as “gangster-style businesses” engaged in illegal practices while speaking at a Y Combinator event on Wednesday. The executive also emphasized how the big tech companies’ practices directly affected his own business by scaring…

Epic Games acquires Loci to introduce automated 3D tagging

April 2, 2025

Epic Games announced on Wednesday the acquisition of Loci, an AI platform for automated tagging 3D assets. The deal will help creators with the labor-intensive process of tagging as well as to help detect potential intellectual property (IP) violations. Loci, which uses computer vision models to understand 3D content, automatically tags 3D assets, making content…

The Nintendo Switch 2 release date is June 5

April 2, 2025

Nintendo unveiled new details on Wednesday about its hugely anticipated Nintendo Switch 2 gaming console, which will be the company’s first new console since the Nintendo Switch was introduced in 2017. The Nintendo Switch 2 will be released on June 5. As its name suggests, the Switch 2 is an upgrade on the Nintendo Switch.…

Roblox partners with Google on ads

April 1, 2025

Google on Tuesday announced a new partnership with gaming company Roblox, which will allow advertisers to purchase and scale Roblox’s Rewarded Video and other immersive ad formats. That means marketers who want to reach the younger Gen Z audience that dominates the platform will be able to use Google Ad Manager to place their video…

Nintendo used its new app to announce the ‘Legend of Zelda’ movie release date

March 28, 2025

Nintendo announced on Friday that its live-action “The Legend of Zelda” movie will premiere on March 26, 2027. It’s a little weird to announce this the day after a Nintendo Direct livestream, where the gaming company usually unloads all of its recent news. But that was intentional. The company wants fans to download its new…

Krafton acquires controlling stake in Indian gaming studio Nautilus Mobile for $14M

March 27, 2025

Krafton, known for its titles PUBG and BGMI, has acquired a controlling stake in 12-year-old Indian mobile gaming studio Nautilus Mobile.

With the Switch 2 coming, Nintendo is working on Virtual Game Cards for cross-device portability

March 27, 2025

Nintendo announced on Thursday that it is working on Virtual Game Cards, a feature that makes digitally downloaded games more portable across different devices. With the highly awaited Nintendo Switch 2 on the horizon, these Virtual Game Cards will make it easier for users to port over their existing Switch games to their new devices.…

Browser-in-the-Browser attacks target CS2 players’ Steam accounts

March 25, 2025

A new phishing campaign targets Counter-Strike 2 players utilizing Browser-in-the-Browser (BitB) attacks that display a realistic window that mimics Steam’s login page. […]

Valve removes video game demo suspected of being malware

March 21, 2025

Valve removed a video game called Sniper: Phantom’s Resolution from Steam after users reported that its free demo contained malware.

Steam pulls game demo infecting Windows with info-stealing malware

March 21, 2025

Valve has removed a game titled ‘Sniper: Phantom’s Resolution’ from the Steam store following multiple user reports that indicated its demo installer actually infected their systems with information stealing malware. […]

Blockchain gaming platform WEMIX hacked to steal $6.1 million

March 18, 2025

Blockchain gaming platform WEMIX suffered a cyberattack last month, allowing threat actors to steal 8,654,860 WEMIX tokens, valued at approximately $6,100,000 at the time. […]

Roblox releases its open-source model that can create 3D objects using AI

March 17, 2025

Roblox announced Monday that it’s launching the first iteration of its 3D model, dubbed “Cube,” to allow creators to create 3D objects using generative AI. The company also launched an open-source version so anyone off the platform can build on it. Announced last year at Roblox’s annual developer conference, the company is demoing Cube at…

Google introduces new developer tools and titles for games on mobile and PC

March 13, 2025

Google announced new features around PC and mobile gaming today ahead of the Game Developers Conference (GDC), including new titles, control customization, and developer tools for making mobile games available on PC. The company first introduced Play Games for PC in 2022 in the beta phase. Over time, it has introduced the program to various…

Skich launches an alternative app store on iOS in the EU

March 13, 2025

Skich, a Tinder-like app for discovering mobile games, announced Thursday the launch of a new marketplace to put it in closer competition with alternative game stores like Aptoide and Epic Games. Skich Store, a new alternative mobile games store, will be available for iOS users in the European Union. The company plans to begin adding…

Wolf Games, backed by ‘Law & Order’ creator, uses AI to create murder mystery games

March 12, 2025

Elliot Wolf, the executive producer and son of “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf, is entering a new venture aimed at engaging true crime fans. He, along with co-founders Andrew Adashek (CEO) and Noah Rosenberg (CTO), are developing Wolf Games, a new startup that leverages AI to generate daily murder mystery games. The company also…

Pokémon Go maker Niantic is selling its games division to Scopely for $3.5B

March 12, 2025

Supercharge your brand visibility with an exhibit table at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

March 10, 2025

From October 27-29, TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 will bring together over 10,000 startup pioneers, VC leaders, and tech enthusiasts at Moscone West in San Francisco—the epicenter of innovation set to reshape the future of technology. What’s in it for your startup? A golden opportunity to put your innovation in front of an eager audience for all…

Microsoft appears to be working on 3D gaming experiences for Copilot

March 10, 2025

Microsoft appears to be working on 3D gaming experiences for Copilot, its AI-powered chatbot platform, according to a new job listing. The listing, published this week, seeks a senior software engineer based in Beijing specializing in 3D rendering engines, particularly engines typically used to build web browser-based video games (Babylon.js, three.js, and Unity). “Are you…

People are using Super Mario to benchmark AI now

March 3, 2025

Framework’s first desktop PC is optimized for gaming and local AI inference

February 26, 2025

Framework, the company that is better known for its modular, repairable laptops, just released its first desktop computer. It’s a small desktop PC that punches above its weight. The most interesting part is what’s inside the device. Framework is one of the first companies to use AMD’s recently announced Strix Halo architecture, also known as…

Anthropic’s Claude AI is playing Pokémon on Twitch — slowly

February 25, 2025

On Tuesday afternoon, Anthropic launched Claude Plays Pokémon on Twitch, a live stream of Anthropic’s newest AI model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, playing a game of Pokémon Red. It’s become a fascinating experiment of sorts, showcasing the capabilities of today’s AI tech and people’s reactions to them. AI researchers have used all sorts of video games,…

Anthropic used Pokémon to benchmark its newest AI model

February 24, 2025

Anthropic used Pokémon to benchmark its newest AI model. Yes, really. In a blog post published Monday, Anthropic said that it tested its latest model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, on the Game Boy classic Pokémon Red. The company equipped the model with basic memory, screen pixel input, and function calls to press buttons and navigate around the…

Fake CS2 tournament streams used to steal crypto, Steam accounts

February 22, 2025

Threat actors are exploiting major Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) competitions, like IEM Katowice 2025 and PGL Cluj-Napoca 2025, to defraud gamers and steal their Steam accounts and cryptocurrency. […]

Pokémon Go maker Niantic is reportedly selling its games division

February 19, 2025

Niantic, the company behind the popular augmented reality game Pokémon Go, is looking to sell its game development business, Bloomberg reported. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Cracked Garry’s Mod, BeamNG.drive games infect gamers with miners

February 18, 2025

A large-scale malware campaign dubbed “StaryDobry” has been targeting gamers worldwide with trojanized versions of cracked games such as Garry’s Mod, BeamNG.drive, and Dyson Sphere Program. […]

Hackers planted a Steam game with malware to steal gamers’ passwords

February 18, 2025

Researchers found that PirateFI was never designed to be a real game, but a vehicle to infect gamers with malware and steal their passwords with an infostealer called Vidar. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Gamemaker Polymath aims to make learning math as enjoyable as Roblox

February 17, 2025

As gaming platforms like Roblox and Minecraft continue to grow in popularity among young children, and with platforms like YouTube consuming hours of their daily screen time, edtech companies face challenges in capturing their attention. Polymath aims to tackle this by combining gamified mechanics inspired by these popular games with adaptive math lessons to make…

Can sim drivers make the shift to F1? Max Verstappen thinks so

February 16, 2025

Motorsports have long been a pay-to-play arena, with young drivers spending thousands of dollars just to get started in karting. Four-time Formula One champion Max Verstappen knows this all too well, but he also sees a way to change it through sim racing, a virtual form of car racing that closely replicates real-world racing. It’s…

Malicious PirateFi game infects Steam users with Vidar malware

February 14, 2025

A free-to-play game named PirateFi in the Steam store has been distributing the Vidar infostealing malware to unsuspecting users. […]

Valve removes Steam game that contained malware

February 13, 2025

Sony says PlayStation Plus members will get five-day extension after outage

February 9, 2025

After the PlayStation Network experienced a global outage that lasted for nearly a day, Sony says it will compensate PlayStation Plus subscribers by giving them an extra five days of service. The outage seems to have lasted from Friday evening until Saturday evening in the United States, with many PlayStation owners reporting difficulty loading their…

DDoS attacks reportedly behind DayZ and Arma network outages

February 6, 2025

An ongoing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack targets Bohemia Interactive’s infrastructure, preventing players of DayZ and Arma Reforger from playing the games online. […]

Little Umbrella’s next Jackbox-style game pits you and your friends against an AI game show host

January 30, 2025

Web-based party games are making a comeback, now with the infusion of generative AI. Among the startups joining the trend, the current forecast looks good for one startup, Little Umbrella, which leverages AI for its social party games. The company announced on Thursday its $2 million seed funding round. Little Umbrella plans to use the…

Microsoft lifts Windows 11 update block for PCs with gaming issues

January 30, 2025

Microsoft has removed a safeguard hold that prevented devices with Auto HDR enabled from installing the Windows 11 2024 Update due to gaming issues. […]

Resolution Games announces Battlemarked, an upcoming VR Dungeons & Dragons game

January 29, 2025

Last year, Wizards of the Coast and Resolution Games announced an exciting development: Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), the popular tabletop role-playing game (RPG), is being adapted for virtual reality. Until now, specific details about the new game have been kept closely under wraps. However, on Wednesday, the companies finally unveiled the official title and more…

Epic brings third-party titles to its mobile game store

January 23, 2025

Epic Games is adding third-party games to its mobile app store, and helping developers cover associated iOS fees. The company is launching a free games program, and will cover the cost for all titles from developers that participate in the program on iOS or iPadOS devices. With this program, Epic will roll out new free games…

Microsoft previews Game Assist in-game browser in Edge Stable

January 21, 2025

Microsoft has announced that Game Assist, its recently unveiled in-game browser, is now also available in preview for Microsoft Edge Stable users. […]

At the Microsoft Excel World Championship, selfies and a ‘hype’ tunnel

January 20, 2025

An arena. A hype tunnel, the kind through which NBA players typically streak. A competitor dressed in a jersey patterned with a six-pack abs. In a new piece, the New York Times takes readers to an event that organizers call the Microsoft Excel World Championship, a 40-minute, Las Vegas-based competition featuring 12 contestants — all…

FTC cracks down on Genshin Impact gacha loot box practices

January 17, 2025

Genshin Impact developer Cognosphere (aka Hoyoverse) has agreed to a $20 million settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over its gacha loot box monetization and is now banned from selling them to teens under the age of sixteen without parental consent. […]

Nintendo teases Mario Kart as first Switch 2 title

January 16, 2025

A console is only as good as its games. While Nintendo didn’t reveal anything in the way of specs for the forthcoming Switch 2 platform, the gaming giant showed off what appears to be the first game confirmed for the hybrid platform: a new take on the racing classic, Mario Kart. After all, it wouldn’t…

Nintendo unveils the Nintendo Switch 2

January 16, 2025

Nintendo shared the first images of the Nintendo Switch 2 in a video posted on YouTube. The successor to the widely popular game console will be simply called the Switch 2. As the name suggests, it shares the same design philosophy with a modular form factor. Right out of the gate, the video shows the…

Nintendo Switch 2 could be announced this week: The rumors (and facts) so far

January 14, 2025

With CES 2025 finally in the rearview, it’s time to move on to the next round of big hardware announcements. Rumors have emerged over the last few weeks, pointing to an imminent announcement for the next-generation of Nintendo’s wildly successful hybrid Switch console. In particular, word from industry stalwart Eurogamer (among others) pegs a January…

Stolen Path of Exile 2 admin account used to hack player accounts

January 13, 2025

Path of Exile 2 developers confirmed that a hacked admin account allowed a threat actor to change the password and access at least 66 accounts, finally explaining how PoE 2 accounts have been breached since November. […]

What’s behind ballooning video game budgets?

January 11, 2025

Why does it cost some companies hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a popular video game? A couple weeks ago, The New York Times blamed the never-ending quest to deliver more photo-realistic graphics— and it suggested the industry is beginning to see diminishing returns, leading to layoffs and studio closures. However, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier…

The new Atari handheld knows its market

January 10, 2025

CES isn’t much of a gaming show. Every year, however, a few notable products slip through the news deluge. Created in collaboration with My Arcade, Gamestation Go fits the bill. The handheld sports a 7-inch display and comes preloaded with north of 200 titles from various Atari generations. Of course, simply being portable game emulator…

Grand Games, the Turkish startup behind Magic Sort, drinks up $30M

January 9, 2025

Gaming startups, specifically those building casual mobile games, are very hot in Turkey right now, and today another one is announcing a sizable round. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Gamers can’t fathom how 6x CEO Elon Musk found time to best Diablo IV

January 8, 2025

On October 16 and November 20, Elon Musk tweeted videos of himself clearing the highest level of the Diablo IV video game in about 2 minutes. While Diablo IV has been out since mid-2023, the latest “season,” called The Pit, launched on October 7. Many asked: How did he find the time to do it…

SteamOS expands to other gaming handhelds with the Lenovo Legion Go S

January 8, 2025

SteamOS is slowly becoming an alternative to Windows for handheld gaming devices. After launching the Steam Deck with SteamOS, its own operating system, Valve is now partnering with third-party manufacturers so that they can release gaming handhelds with SteamOS support. On Tuesday, Lenovo unveiled the Legion Go S at CES 2025. Unlike its predecessor, the…

Google puts $1M into 3D design app Rooms after more than 1 million ‘rooms’ created

January 7, 2025

3D design app Rooms just landed more funding. Launched into beta in 2023, the app from ex-Google employees allows users to build and code interactive 3D rooms and mini-games using a library of more than 10,000 items, which can be further edited using the programming language Lua. Now, Google itself has invested $1 million into…

Peacock is experimenting with mini-games and short videos

January 7, 2025

As Peacock continues to trail behind major players in the entertainment industry like Netflix, TikTok, and YouTube, the streaming service is adopting strategies similar to its rivals with two new initiatives: mini-games and a short-form vertical video feed. The company previewed these experiments at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Monday. Starting this…

Acer’s new gaming handheld is ridiculously large

January 7, 2025

Acer unveiled two new gaming handhelds at CES 2025. The company clearly believes that bigger always means better, as it is pushing the physical limits of gaming handhelds with an enormous 10.95-inch display. Named the Nitro Blaze 11, the device comes with an AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS processor — a CPU originally designed for laptops…

Nvidia unveils $2,000 RTX 5090 GPU

January 6, 2025

As anticipated, Nvidia Monday kicked off its CES 2025 keynote by unveiling the new RTX Blackwell family of GPUs. The centerpiece of the line is the RTX 5090. The card bears a striking resemblance to its predecessor, but now sports, 92 billion transistors, 4,000 AT TOPS, 380 ray-tracing TFLOPS, and 1.8 TB/s bandwidth. The 5090…

AMD unveils new chips for laptops, desktops, and gaming handhelds at CES 2025

January 6, 2025

At CES 2025 in Las Vegas, AMD unveiled a slew of new chips destined for devices ranging from desktops to gaming handhelds. AMD is riding high coming into this year’s CES. The company commanded a 28.7% share of the desktop CPU segment in Q3 2024, up 9.6 percentage points compared to the same quarter the…

People are playing a new DOOM-themed CAPTCHA

January 1, 2025

CAPTCHA programs that are used to determine whether a site visitor is a person or a bot come in pretty standard formats. Think text distortion (where users type the characters they see in a box amid other squiggles); image recognition (you’re selecting, say, all the squares in a grid with a bicycle image); and checkbox…

TuSimple pivot from self-driving to AI animation is complete with CreateAI rebrand

December 19, 2024

TuSimple has completed its pivot away from autonomous trucking to AI animation and gaming with a rebrand. The company shall henceforth be known as CreateAI. The rebrand comes as TuSimple is embroiled in controversy over the company’s plans to move its remaining U.S. assets to China to fund the new business, which it initially announced…

Decart adds another $32M at a $500M+ valuation

December 19, 2024

A young startup that emerged from stealth less than two months ago with big-name backers and bigger ambitions to make a splash in the world of AI is returning to the spotlight. Decart is building what its CEO and co-founder Dean Leitersdorf describes as “a fully vertically integrated AI research lab,” alongside enterprise and consumer…

Agave, the startup behind Find the Cat, finds $18M

December 17, 2024

A startup out of Turkey that has built a hit casual mobile game where you have to find cats in Where’s Wally-style drawings of increasing complexity has found something else: $18 million in funding. Agave Games, the creator of Find the Cat, will be using the Series A to build out the team and to…

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