Shock News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Today is Christmas and, as expected, most businesses and governments have shut down for the day and people are enjoying a holiday. Yet artificial intelligence developments have found a way to emerge even today. In a shocking development, the parent company of Paytm, One97 Communication, has fired more than 1000 employees. The underlying reason behind the Paytm layoff is reported to be the AI advancement of the company that has caused a few positions to be surplus to requirements. This and more in today's AI roundup. Let us take a closer look.

 A study has found that people who performed online searches to verify the truthfulness of a piece of possible misinformation actually ended up believing it due to "poor quality results" from search engines.

Forget the debate over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie because it obviously is and there are more pressing matters: Like, is What If…?’s Die Hard-spoofing Christmas episode actually a better Iron Man 2 than Iron Man 2?

Want to give your daily Wordle a boost with our tips and tricks? Or maybe you'd really like someone to tell you exactly what the answer to the December 24 (918) game is without making you work for it. Whichever way you want to play, you'll find all you need and more (even a clue written especially for today's puzzle) right here. 

A Dragon Ball Z fan has spent seven years animating a gameplay concept for Raging Blast 3, which combines elements from several different Dragon Ball games and looks shockingly close to the real thing.

Monopoly Slots combines the iconic Monopoly board game with the immersive nature of a Vegas casino to make for a mobile game like no other. It’s tempting to spend all day playing it, and while that would be nice, it’s impossible without a good source of free coins.

Few works of historical fiction have been so imaginative in premise, yet so dull and lackluster in execution. Freud’s Last Session puts a powerhouse pair of actors, Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode, in the shoes of two renowned real-life figures, Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis, as they engage in theological debate. But the resultant conversation, based on the play of the same name by Mark St. Germain (who co-wrote the screenplay with director Matthew Brown), would be laughed out of a high school philosophy club. Despite the caliber of its performers — especially Hopkins, who’s in the most fascinating phase of his career with works like The Father and One Life — Brown’s film is an utter dud.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director, Naoki Hamaguchi, has said that there's one scene in the game that's going to make players "lose their minds".

Originally set to drop the gaming bombshell in December this year, the release forecast has taken an unexpected detour. The Rainbow Six mobile release was postponed and is now rescheduled for the fall of 2024, specifically in September. That’s right, almost a year later than the initial estimate.

Garfield is making a return to the silver screen next year with The Garfield Movie, with Chris Pratt voicing the lasagne-loving feline himself. However, that movie won't be the end of Garfield's exploits in the future, as it was revealed that a video game spinoff is currently in development, which will more than likely release before or alongside the movie's launch.

The third of the new Ultimate Universe books drops in March, with writer/artist Peach Momoko's hotly-anticipated Ultimate X-Men putting a whole new spin on Marvel's mutants. It looks fantastic and is backed up by new issues of both Ultimate Black Panther and Ultimate Spider-Man.

A new game in the Five Nights at Freddy’s series is coming to Roblox — or rather, it already did, accidentally, in what franchise creator Scott Cawthon called “one of the most baffling, insane, things to ever happen in my ten years of working on FNAF.”

Even though every new installment in the Final Fantasy series isn't connected to the one that came before it, there are always elements you'll find in every single game. You'll always meet a Cid and crystals are always involved. There are also always chocobos. Big old birds that the occupants of Final Fantasy's worlds use as mounts. They're pretty adorable too, hence them being turned into corduroy plushes you can now pre-order.

It is now official: In a farewell message to employees, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has confirmed that he will be leaving the company.

By Veerender Singh Jubbal on

Phoronix has published their review of the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H "Meteor Lake" CPU against the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U in Linux which gets utterly demolished across 370 tests in both performance and efficiency.

Ex Machina director Alex Garland looks like he will try to do the impossible when his new film Civil War hits theaters in 2024: depict a second civil war in the United States without directly engaging with the politics of why that war is taking place. It’s not hard to see why Garland might want to avoid thorny connections between the movie and the very real politicians and political groups openly calling for succession and open conflict in the United States. Maybe he believes there’s enough value in the arresting visuals of a modern America under siege.

Starfield's speedrunning community has been turned on its head thanks to a humble YouTube comment. 

Rocksteady Studios and Warner Bros. are trying to contain Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leagueleaks, including major story spoilers and unannounced playable characters, as details on next year’s game spread across the internet. The leak, some of which appears to have come from an alpha test of the game, is upsetting not only its developer and publisher, but fans of Rocksteady’s Batman games as well. Some story spoilers, while unconfirmed, could have major implications for Rocksteady’s “Arkham-verse.”

Remember the guy with the balls so big he sued Amazon and JRR Tolkien's grandson, claiming they infringed on his Lord of the Rings fanfic with the Rings of Power TV series? In a shocking turn of events that no one (except literally everyone) saw coming, he lost badly and now owes the Tolkien estate $134,000 in legal fees.

2023 is almost at an end, and if you find yourself wondering what you've done with yourself over the past 365 days, the Steam Year in Review is here to fill you in with a rundown of the games you played, the achievements you earned, and other bits of gaming-related trivia.

A huge Starfield speedrunning breakthrough came about thanks to a YouTube commenter who discovered a skip by accident.

It turns out we could have had more Obsidian games of Bethesda’s properties, if Bethesda had only said yes.

AI has some concerning implications for our tech-driven future—but, like a lot of concerning new advances in technology, it's also being used for memes. Like Plankton from Spongebob sing Maneskin's Beggin' with shocking conviction.

So you're a scientist who works in one of those science-fictional giant underground research facilities—your Black Mesa, SCP Foundation, The Loop, what have you—and the day arrives where the big science catastrophe goes down and everyone's dying left and right and there's a horrible cascade of alternate dimensions and weird aliens pouring in. That's the setup for Abiotic Factor, an upcoming solo to six-player survival game that you can playtest for free, right now, via Steam.

Fortnite is at peak popularity right now, following an outrageously successful OG season, and the launch of various new games, including LEGO Fortnite and Rocket Racing. With the holidays upon us, many had been looking forward to Epic Games’ annual WinterFest, where historically it’s introduced a cosy cabin for players to hang out in and unwrap presents.

Embracer Group has made good on its promise, deciding the fate of UK-based TimeSplitters developer Free Radical Design after a consultation process that concluded on 11th December. Or at least we have to assume so, the embattled company hasn't made an announcement or anything; Free Radical's website is simply gone, with a message left behind that reads: «404 Company Not Found [sad smiley face]»

Blizzard has posted upcoming class tuning for the next weekly reset which includes buffs to Mages, Windwalkers, Warlocks, more nerfs to Havoc DH and Sin Rogues and much more!

The Last of Us blew up in popularity when it first launched, so it wasn’t shocking to see a sequel release. However, some fans were a bit surprised that The Last of Us Part II Remastered is already hitting the marketplace. Despite being released just a few years ago, the remastered edition will likely sell quite a few units. Fans who want to dive into this game all over again might be surprised to see Ellie’s last name. It’s not a massive revelation. There have been a few instances in the past that point towards Ellie’s last name being Williams.

Let's not beat a dead horse. Miles Morales' new Evolved suit isn't popular. But the assumption was that, since it's an Adidas brand deal, Adidas designed it. That's not exactly the case, as it turns out.

Epic Games came out victorious in the monumental legal battle against Google over the company's monopoly over the Android app marketplace and alleged the company used off-handed tactics to keep its control over the space thereby denying a fair chance for others to participate in the business on an equal footing. The San Francisco jury on Monday, December 11 unanimously delivered the decision in the Google antitrust case, deciding Google's tie between the Google Play app store and its Google Play Billing payment services was illegal, and Project Hug deals with game developers and OEMs, which dictated the distribution agreement were all noncompetitive. Now, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has given an interview explaining the details of the lawsuit and the main reason why the company lost against Apple but managed to win against Google.

Jenn Wexler’s holiday horror movie The Sacrifice Game is full of surprises. The story, about a group of killers hoping to enact a demonic ritual at an elite boarding school at Christmas, feels a little like a home-invasion thriller, and a little like other period-piece boarding-school horror movies, from the classic Suspiria to Simon Barrett’s Seance. (And coincidentally, a whole lot like 2023 critical darling The Holdovers.)

A change to a Baldur's Gate 3 weapon that's a popular choice for cheesing bosses throughout the entire game appears to have gone undocumented by Larian, robbing one player of thousands of gold.

Following the disastrous launch of The Day Before, its developer has said it is working with Steam to make refunds available to all, and insisted it will receive no money from sales of the game.

Blue Eye Samurai is coming back for a second season at Netflix. The series debuted on Nov. 3, and got renewed a few weeks later. Netflix announced the second season on Monday with a short video.

In what I think is the biggest blunder in video game history, The Day Before developers, FNTASTIC, are shutting down. This has been confirmed through an official statement from FNTASTIC themselves, and honestly, I’m shocked but not surprised.

Greetings, Adventurers!

Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick has a huge update about System Shock Remake.

One of the more interesting things about WoW Classic's Season of Discovery (SoD) is how it's recaptured that vanilla feeling of going on little adventures. This is done mainly through its runes system. 

It’s no shock that people are looking forward to diving into the upcoming PC version of Final Fantasy 16. One of this year’s biggest RPGs, its dark fantasy story has been a huge hit with both series fans and complete newcomers since it launched for PlayStation 5 back in June.

Comments made by actor Christopher Judge at The Game Awards, who threw shade on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III's single player campaign, have stirred a whole new controversy over the Internet.

As a longtime fan of board games, it was shocking to me that I’d never played something from Arcane Wonders. My eyes were opened to all the fantastic games they have on offer at GenCon 2023, and over the past few weeks I’ve been making my way through their catalogue? Here are my two favourite titles from Arcane Wonder as of writing!

Alongside unveiling its latest foundation model, Gemini, and making big claims about its capabilities, Google also released a demo video on YouTube, where a user can be seen doing various activities on a table, and the AI was able to recognize it instantly and verbally respond. The shocking video was met with awe because no one in the industry has been able to achieve such results from an AI model so far, and likely nobody will for a long time - including Google. It turns out the video was not entirely real and Google edited the Gemini AI demo video and added elements to make it seem more advanced than it really is.

Earlier this week, Blizzard released the equivalent of a torture rack for Diablo 4's most masochistic players—The Abattoir of Zir (try saying that ten times really fast). It's meant to be an endgame activity designed for the hardest of the hardcore, a task you're "not really supposed to finish." Unfortunately, it hit a couple of speed bumps on the way out.

Larian Studios just had a great night at The Game Awards, with Baldur's Gate 3 winning Game of the Year over some fierce competition. But just as fans started to celebrate, they were shocked to find that Baldur's Gate 3 had popped up on the Xbox store with no warning, completely ready to play on Xbox Series X/S.

Fortnite’s more than just a battle royale game, a sandbox survival game with Lego, and a metaverse playground where you can watch a giant Eminem perform. It’s also an arcade racer now, thanks to the addition of Rocket Racing, a new game in Fortnite built by the team behind Rocket League.

Given that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse features hundreds of Spider-People and visits numerous different dimensions, it naturally has countless Easter eggs for fans to spot. We certainly did our best to catch them upon seeing the movie, but there were plenty we missed. And it turns out we are not alone in this, as director trio Kemp Powers, Joaquim Dos Santos, and Justin K. Thompson reveal that they themselves are still uncovering neat references today, months after work on the film was completed.

“Morbidcore” isn’t an established subgenre, but it’s not hard to imagine what falls into this category. These are games exploring life’s darker moments. Not for the sake of simply disturbing an audience, but instead, they’re stories communicating the more unsettling aspects of humanity — the parts we shy away from or refuse to acknowledge.

Finji is a developer and publisher best known for being associated with the likes of Tunic, Night in the Woods, Chicory: A Colorful Tale, which tend to feature a lot of colorful critters in more retro gaming genres…which made it a bit of a shock when their latest game was revealed at The Game Awards, that being a third-person action-adventure hack-and-slash game done in collaboration with Sweet Baby, who have worked on the likes of Alan Wake II and God of War: Ragnarok when it comes to narrative. Said game is called Usual June, and you can catch the first glimpse of it below.

In a thoroughly surprising announcement, World of Goo 2 is coming sometime next year, it was announced during Thursday's The Game Awards.

Who's in the Black Noir suit? Well, Eric Kripke already told us.

Rogue Trader puts the player in a position of elevated power in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, somewhere in between a governor, a ship captain, and a noble. The game continually asks you to make choices about what kind of Rogue Trader you want to be, and some of the options on display are utterly reprehensible. This is actually fantastic, because I’m a huge fan of RPGs that let you be a bad guy. Rogue Trader even goes one step further than most other games in the genre; you can be not just a bog standard bad guy, but an unspeakably petty tyrant that makes scenery-chewing villains like Cruella DeVille look downright reasonable and level-headed.

Larian recently revealed some more of the stats it's been sneakily gathering while we're playing Baldur's Gate 3. Among them, the revelation that 33% of Halsin romancers requested he boink them in bear form. Honestly, you people.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone Season 1 has finally launched on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. Fans of the battle royale have been waiting for the highly anticipated update to drop the brand new Urzikstan map. First revealed at Call of Duty NEXT, this fresh Warzone experience features an array of points of interest to explore, movement changes, a new battle pass, and much more. Within the Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone Season 1 battle pass are new weapons including the Stormender. This isn’t your traditional weapon as it’s actually more effective against killstreaks than enemy players.

Back in October Destiny developer Bungie shocked many industry watchers when they enacted a deep round of layoffs, although the move became more understandable when it was revealed Destiny 2 missed its 2022 revenue targets by a whopping 45 percent. Clearly, things are not going that well over at Bungie, but a new report from IGN’s Rebekah Valentine paints an even more dire picture.

Intel has revealed the truth about AMD's latest Ryzen 7000 mobile CPU family. Some models actually use old CPU designs with Zen 2 architecture, which dates back to 2019.

One month after a major round of layoffs impacted roughly 100 Bungie employees of 1,200, those remaining at the Destiny developer say the cuts, as well as other cost-cutting measures, came alongside an apparent scramble by studio leadership to avoid a total Sony takeover.

Larian Studios collects a lot of data—as plenty of studios do—about their player's habits in-game, and Baldur's Gate 3 is no exception. For example, it shared the game's most-played multiclasses back in September, leading to some interesting insights about how a strong character theme wins out over min-maxing power.

The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered is set to grace PlayStation 5 consoles next month, and fans can also look forward to experiencing three ‘lost levels’ — playable sequences cut from the original game. Speaking about these levels, director Matthew Gallant teased that they’ll help give “a full idea of what could have been.”

There's no doubt about it – Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has one of the best endings in cinema this year. Jaws dropped on the floor when it was revealed that not only is Miles Morales in the wrong dimension having been sent to Earth-42, but the Miles here is actually the villainous The Prowler. Since Spider-Man doesn't exist in this world, the city is riddled with crime, with Earth-42's Miles being right at the center of it as the villain.

The World First Fyr'alath the Dreamrender has been completed and plate wearers across the globe have begun their journey to obtain the legendary 2-handed axe, but how good is it compared to other weapons found in Amirdrassil? Our guide writers, Mandl (Blood DK) and Bolas (Retribution Paladin), break down the new legendary weapon to give a rough idea of how it works and it's relative value for both tank and DPS. Is it worth the countless hours of accumulating bad luck protection and small fortune of gold spent on materials to craft? Fyr'alath, the Dreamrender Legendary Axe Overview

The Last of Us 2 Remastered's director has commented on remastering the original game after just three years, while speaking on what the 'Lost Levels' offer.

One of the more fun threads that has been woven throughout the current run of Batman has been the return of Vandal Savage. While the Caped Crusader has had his hands full dealing with threats as varied as Failsafe, the Joker, Insomnia (remember him?) and Catwoman, Savage has been making big swings.

Baldur's Gate 3's new difficulty setting is so tough that even Tactician veterans are having a tough time getting anywhere with it. 

Would you believe me if I told you Assassin's Creed Mirage is already down to $35? Okay, fair enough, it's not the biggest shock in the world. But, it does indicate that there's a virtue to waiting out select game releases in order to get the best price possible. What's more shocking about this deal is that Mirage has already had a reasonable discount, quite recently in fact. It was $10 off and down to $40 during the Black Friday sales -- which means Black Friday is a lie and a sham (tell me something I don't know).

Games giant Rockstar has shown the world its first official glimpse at Grand Theft Auto 6.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become the buzzword of 2023, with the world's biggest companies launching their suite of AI services not just for consumers, but for businesses as well. While AI technology has been growing for some time, it is safe to say that this revolution really kicked off when OpenAI launched its AI chatbot ChatGPT in November 2022. Since then, rapid advancements have taken place in the field, with companies like Microsoft and Google releasing their AI services. AI for business has also become highly sought after, with companies leveraging the new tech to grow their business and offer more services to consumers. However, OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap thinks this technology is overhyped. He also revealed some details about the shock resignation and the eventual return of CEO Sam Altman.

Thanks to her healing magic, Shadowheart is tasked with keeping the party alive in Baldur’s Gate 3. These are the best Feats for Shadowheart to select in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Amazon has released the first trailer for its upcoming Fallout TV series.

Welcome back, Black Noir. The mysterious member of The Seven is glimpsed briefly in the first trailer for The Boys season 4 despite seemingly being killed off – and it’s got some comic book fans worried that the Prime Video series will copy the comic’s divisive identity reveal.

PlayStation has been emailing console owners with news that Discovery content will be removed from your library as of December 31, 2023. This includes all Discovery-licensed content you may have on your PlayStation 5, even the content you have paid to own.

2023 has been a year to forget for PC manufacturers. After the work-from-home boom and seemingly endless global political and economic instability, a slowdown was always likely to happen. But if a new analysis from Canalys is to be believed, 2024 is shaping up to be a much better year for the PC market.

Stardew Valley developer Eric «ConcernedApe» Barone has emerged from a month of silence to say that he has made «a ton of progress» on the upcoming 1.6 update for the beloved indie farm and life sim.

India is being applauded for following a path of digitalization and introducing the revolutionary digital payment mode UPI. However, digitalization has also led to some serious UPI fraud and crimes. In a concerning trend, Himachal Pradesh has seen a shocking surge in cybercrime complaints. Officials have reported at least one complaint every hour which includes cases of UPI fraud, job fraud, sextortion, and blackmailing. Know what officials have reported about these cybercrime cases.

Amazon’s Fallout TV series has got its first teaser trailer, and a release date, with the studio confirming the series will be available to stream from April 12th. The series focuses on a Vault Dweller from Vault 33 making the way to the surface, learning to survive in a new world 200 years after the bomb’s fell.

The next entry in Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto franchise is returning to the Miami-inspired locale of Vice City. That means a new, high-fidelity version of the city, and if Grand Theft Auto 5’s San Andreas was any indication, it will be packed with references to the metropolis that inspired it.

For those who enjoyed Paramount Plus’ Halo series, you’re in luck. You can watch all eight episodes of its first season for free on YouTube. Furthermore, the date for the next season might have leaked a bit early.

A team of artificial intelligence (AI) researchers has successfully exploited a vulnerability in OpenAI's generative AI model ChatGPT, as per a study published by them. Researchers used a simple prompt to trick the chatbot into revealing personal information of individuals including name, email address, phone number, and more. Surprisingly, the study claimed that the team was able to repeat the exploit multiple times to extract 10,000 unique verbatim memorized training examples. The extracted personal information is believed to be embedded deep into the system's training data, which it should not be able to divulge, and is a major privacy concern.

Popular artificial intelligence (AI) image generator, Stable Diffusion, perpetuates harmful racial and gendered stereotypes, US scientists have found.

Baldur's Gate 3 developers have seeming certified one of the community's most beloved characters as 'canon' with the game's new epilogue.