After indie narrative horror game Horses was banned from Steam two years ago, it put the studio, Santa Ragione, at risk of closure. Studio cofounder and Horses producer Pietro Righi Riva had to make a difficult phone call to the game’s director, Italian filmmaker Andrea Lucco Borlera. “I was terrified for him,” Riva said in an interview with The Verge. “This was his first game and he put so much work, so much passion, so many years, and it was supposed to be his big breakthrough.” But Horses has broken through even without Steam. Riva’s detailed accounting of the game’s multiple storefront bans caught the attention of journalists, developers, and curious gamers eager to see just what was so objectionable that the game couldn’t be sold on Steam alongside the likes of Sex Standing or Sex with Hitler 2. That attention has made Horses the video game cause célèbre of the moment, catapulting it to bestseller status on GOG.com.But while this all sounds like a happy ending, Riva isn’t ready to breathe easy just yet. “I’m relieved because with all this attention, I’m probably going to be able to give back most of the money [roughly half of $100,000] that I had to borrow,” he said. “But we’re not out of the [woods] yet, no.” Horses is a short, crunchy-looking game, boasting Dreamcast-era graphics with gameplay that’s no more involved than clicking things to put them in and take them out of your inventory. And while Santa Ragione has had success with Saturnalia and Milky Way Prince before the bans, it was largely a little-known developer. Riva is aware of how that looks, acknowledging that the bans have been instrumental in Horses punching through the noise.“There is no way the same kind of interest would have happened,” he said. And despite that first difficult call, Riva says Borlera is quite pleased at what the bans have done for his game. “He’s extremely happy with the reception that the game is getting,” Riva said. “People are reading into the game and […] engaging with it in a way that he hoped.”“There is no way the same kind of interest would have happened.”That engagement, though, isn’t enough to make up for the access Steam could have provided. While Riva is grateful for the support of gamers and storefronts like GOG, it’s not enough, and he’s still very much in fear of Santa Ragione’s future. “Even with all the publicity, all the reporting, all the reviews, everything else,” he said. “This still does not compare to the kind of audience we would have on Steam.”Steam has an outsize influence on the PC video game market. The indie studios that cannot afford the costs of porting their games to consoles are at the mercy of Valve’s vague, capricious, and often inconsistent moderation whims. Though Horses has found a roundabout way to relative success without it, Riva said that journey has been traumatic, affecting not just him and his team but his peers and future projects.“I think there is going to be, in my case, and in other people’s case, a certain degree of self-censorship,” he said. “It’s terrifying, and it’s going to make people make safer and safer games, me included.”

The sheer convenience of using it makes many pick smart devices and sensors off the shelf. When the cost starts compounding, most folks hit the brakes on their dream smart home project. Also, I realized that I was locked into a smart home ecosystem. If you’re willing to build a smart home from scratch or a few devices, I recommend using ESPHome and Home Assistant together.

Pantone's color of the year for 2026 is white - sorry, Cloud Dancer. Pantone announced the shade on Thursday, and describes it as a "discrete white hue offering a promise of clarity." The accompanying image shows a person with cropped hair in billowy white clothing, arms outstretched over a background of clouds."PANTONE 11-4201 Cloud Dancer encourages true relaxation and focus, allowing the mind to wander and creativity to breathe, making room for innovation," the company writes. But all I can see is a recession indicator.This is the third year in a row where the Pantone color has slid more and more into unobtrusive, dispassionat …Read the full story at The Verge.

Modern gaming, in my opinion, is poetically chaotic. On one hand, you have billion-dollar juggernauts like GTA VI and StarCitizen. These are massive games whose shadows alone make the ground tremble. On the other hand, you've got unexpected wildcards that barge into the conversation, seemingly out of nowhere, and that's what Ananta is.

The MyQ garage door controller is an accessory that can connect Chamberlain Group garage door openers to the MyQ app. The MyQ platform used to support more smart home integrations, but has increasingly become focused on those that require subscriptions. Garage door opener manufacturer The Chamberlain Group has launched a new version of the communication platform that powers its connected garage door openers - and it's bad news for smart home users. The new Security+ 3.0 platform, launching alongside Chamberlain's latest openers, shuts down the workarounds that third-party accessory makers such as Tailwind, Meross, and Ratgdo developed to let you integrate your garage door with Apple Home, Home Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and others. Instead, you're pushed into Chamberlain's ad-stuffed MyQ app and a short list of partners and integrations, nearly all of which require paid subsc …Read the full story at The Verge.

Warner Bros. has an infamous history of being bought by other companies and then quickly ending up back on the market after its new owners realize how difficult it is to capitalize on a legacy production studio's assets. Those challenges are part of what doomed WB's mergers with AOL and AT&T, who bought the studio in attempts to reinvent themselves. But WB's latest acquisition deal - this time with Netflix for $83 billion - feels like it has the potential to turn out differently because of how much of a major player within the entertainment industry the streamer has become. It also signals just how far Netflix has come: in less than two deca …Read the full story at The Verge.

Disney is bringing a “newly restored version” of the original, 1977 theatrical cut of Star Wars back to theaters on February 19th, 2027. It will only be available in theaters for “a limited time,” Disney says, and it’s being released as part of “Lucasfilm’s yearlong 50th anniversary celebration” for the franchise. Tickets aren’t on sale yet, but Disney says it will share details on when and where to buy tickets on StarWars.com.Disney initially revealed earlier this year that it would be bringing Star Wars back to theaters. Star Wars creator George Lucas has famously tinkered with what’s now called A New Hope, but a few lucky fans have already been able to recently see the first theatrical cut; The British Film Institute showed an original, 35mm release print of the movie in June at an event that featured an introduction from Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who confirmed that it was “in fact, the first print.”Ahead of the re-release of the first Star Wars, Disney is bringing The Mandalorian and Grogu to theaters on May 22nd, 2026. Another film, Star Wars: Starfighter, starring Ryan Gosling, is coming to theaters on May 28th, 2027.

Motherboard Wi-Fi has quietly become one of the most common marketing upsells in PC hardware as of late. Many mid-range and high-end boards from large manufacturers now include it by default, often at a noticeably higher price than their non-Wi-Fi counterparts. On paper, the appeal to convenience seems obvious, but once you look beyond it, the shortcomings can become much harder to ignore.

If you work in DevOps or systems engineering, you have probably noticed the slow and steady shift away from GUI dashboards. The industry spent a decade pushing you toward Electron apps for everything from Docker to Kubernetes, convincing you that heavy graphical interfaces were the only way to monitor modern infrastructure.

Many of us probably remember the monochrome weather displays of the 80s and 90s, letting us view the indoor and outdoor temperatures at a glance, often even the current relative humidity. What if you could build something just as nostalgic but with even more real-time weather details? This project only requires a few components to do precisely that, and you can likely create it in just a single afternoon.

2023’s iPhone 15 is the most recent that Trump Mobile offers. It's been well established that the Trump Phone doesn't exist. But that isn't the only phone Trump Mobile sells. It also offers a range of refurbished Apple and Samsung handsets that you can buy right now. You really shouldn't though.I was relieved reading Allison's coverage over the last two weeks to discover that not everything about Trump Mobile is a scam. It may have taken her a couple weeks to actually get a SIM card, but once it arrived it did work just fine - it's T-Mobile, after all. It made me realize that you could, if you wanted, get Trump Mobile coverage on a Trump Mobile-sold phone right now, so long as you don't mind that the …Read the full story at The Verge.

Pre-built NAS models are the default choice for a lot of people just getting into the NAS world. Popular brands like Synology and Terramaster offer a good starting point with great hardware and software combo that is ready to go. You just have to pop in a couple of drives, and you’d be good to go. You are greeted with an easy-to-use interface that holds your hand every step of the way. It feels more like setting up a Windows laptop than putting together your own desktop from scratch.