Safety Net Creator Playbook Trending Now Mashable Selects Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Getting Technical with Mashable Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Say More Versus In My Bag Mashable @Home All Series EA shuts down BioWare, the gaming studio behind'Mass Effect' and'Dragon Age' Another major gaming studio is shutting down. The move comes not long after EA's sale to the Saudi PIF. Alex Perry is a tech reporter at Mashable who primarily covers video games and consumer tech. Alex has spent most of the last decade reviewing games, smartphones, headphones, and laptops, and he doesn't plan on stopping anytime soon. He is also a Pisces, a cat lover, and a Kansas City sports fan.

Epic Games is going all in on AI for game development. The studio has been working on games for Disney, but sources told Bloomberg that its upcoming release has been delayed in order to use more AI for its creation. The publication reported that one of the game's directors informed the team that the project would be adopting an "AI first" production plan. "No more hand-written code," the internal message stated, as well as ordering all art for the project to be "generated with full AI workflows." The publication's sources said this new approach was not universally well-received by the devs, with some employees allegedly hoping that the request wasn't totally serious.

US prosecutors just charged a man with smuggling NVIDIA chips to China, and government officials are saying the company isn't doing all it could to stop the illegal activities, Bloomberg reported. Earlier this year, officials released a surveillance video showing someone using a red hair dryer to peel serial number stickers off NVIDIA server boxes in an effort to sneak AI chips to China. And yesterday, federal authorities arrested a man named Greg Lui for smuggling servers containing 300 million worth of AI chips to China, in violation of US export laws. Those efforts reportedly show how an expanded network of criminals is attempting to reroute NVIDIA's AI chips to China, profiting from Washington's export controls that make the contraband silicon valuable. NVIDIA says it has abided by the rules and the company has never been accused of abetting smuggling.

The legal battle over whether prediction markets are a form of gambling has overshadowed something else entirely: They're already a new form of media. Every day, a newsletter from the prediction market Polymarket hits my inbox with a subject line that could easily come from any number of politics-focused newspapers or magazines. Recent entries include "Houthis Reveal New Precision Strike Capabilities," "BREAKING: Trump Unveils Green Energy Beam," and "World War I, 2.0?" These dispatches are roundups with breathless summaries of the day's top stories, linking out to corresponding Polymarket markets--yes, this thing will happen; no, it won't. As far as business news analysis goes, the newsletter is not exactly Bloomberg's, or even Emily Sundberg's --but it's recognizably a commercial editorial product, and one that plays an important role in the prediction market ecosystem.

Mashable Selects Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Creator Playbook Look Up Back to School Say More Trending Now Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age Switch Off Mashable Voices Safety Net Versus All Series Where is Gemini 3.5 Pro? Timothy Beck Werth is the Tech Editor at Mashable, where he leads coverage and assignments for the Tech and Shopping verticals. Tim has over 15 years of experience as a journalist and editor, and he has particular experience covering and testing consumer technology, smart home gadgets, and men's grooming and style products. Previously, he was the Managing Editor and then Site Director of SPY.com, a men's product review and lifestyle website. As a writer for GQ, he covered everything from bull-riding competitions to the best Legos for adults, and he's also contributed to publications such as The Daily Beast, Gear Patrol, and The Awl. At the Google I/O event in May, CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the company's newest frontier model, Gemini 3.5 Pro, would launch in June .

Creator Playbook Trending Now Say More Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Switch Off Mashable Voices Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List In My Bag All Series John Ternus used his first day as Apple's new CEO to preview a phenomenal iPhone launch and to thank predecessor Tim Cook. Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and . All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers.

Plus: Trump's EPA aims to exempt data centers from disclosing air pollution. If the desire to limit kids' use of technology was once a subcurrent, it has become a raging flood. Countries around the world are banning children from social media. Schools across the US are ditching iPads and Chromebooks for actual books. Kids themselves seem to be embracing this tech skepticism too: the hottest gadget for Gen Alpha is a vintage Sony Walkman. A surprising--maybe troubling--number of people who work in big tech also keep their kids at arm's distance from technology.

Plus: AI has designed new viruses from scratch for the first time. The theory claimed that, under the guise of combating disinformation, a sprawling constellation of government agencies, academics, civil society groups, and Big Tech platforms was suppressing conservative and populist speech online. What began as a relatively niche conspiracy theory from the far right was able to--and continues to--influence a wide range of actions by the second Trump administration. In myriad ways, the idea of the censorship-industrial complex, or CIC, explains the logic behind how the administration operates both at home and internationally. Over the past nine months, and Type Investigations have traced how the theory came to influence the country's most powerful individuals. We found that it took off in 2023, driven by a handful of individuals, with support from a close-knit group of right-wing organizations and media outlets--and an internet activist named Mike Benz at its center.

Meta's Muse Spark 1.1 AI model accessed the internet from its supposed-to-be isolated testing environment and hacked into a third-party service. Andy Stone, Meta's spokesperson, has confirmed the incident to Bloomberg after The Information reported about the breach. Stone said the model was able to access the internet due to a misconfiguration in the testing environment by the company's evaluation partner Irregular. After gaining access to the internet, it then exploited a security vulnerability in a third-party service, "in a matter similar to previously reported instances with other companies." It was also due to a misconfiguration by Irregular that Anthropic's models were able to leave their testing environment and hack into three organizations.

Qualcomm is planning to raise its prices by a percentage in the double digits across its products, according to Bloomberg. The company is one of the biggest makers of smartphone processors in the world and dominates the Android landscape, with most companies using its products to power their flagship models. Among the devices that are powered by Qualcomm processors are Samsung's Galaxy series phones, including its latest foldables, the the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, Fold 8 and Flip 8. Its processors also power Microsoft CoPilot PCs, as well as wearables like smart glasses in Meta's Ray-Ban collection. As you can tell, Qualcomm's price hikes could have a big impact on pricing across brands and devices in several categories. Bloomberg says Qualcomm has already sent letters to its customers informing them about the upcoming changes.