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Bose Buys Audio Rival Skullcandy
Bose sees the company as a way to reach a wider audience.
Bose Is Buying Skullcandy. It’s Not as Weird as It Sounds
By keeping Skullcandy in Park City, Utah, Bose is betting that skate cred and budget pricing will reach listeners it’s been missing.
Bose acquires Skullcandy to help it reach a wider audience
Skullcandy will remain a separate brand under Bose.
Scientists reconstruct face of man who lived in Ecuador 3,000 years ago
Skulls discovered in Ecuador's Andes fueled theories about the origins of ancient Americans; a new facial reconstruction supports an Indigenous ancestry, but researchers say DNA testing is needed to settle the question
Scientists Examine 5,000-Year-Old Skulls and Uncover a Disturbing Secret of Egypt’s First Kings
Serving Egypt’s earliest kings may have carried a deadly cost, and overlooked skull injuries are giving a century-old suspicion new weight. Some of Egypt’s earliest royal tombs at Abydos are surrounded by hundreds of smaller graves. When Flinders Petrie excavated the site in the 1920s, he suspected that so many people could not have died
Science Missed the Giraffe’s Only Relative Until 1901
Science ignored the okapi for centuries while Indigenous communities in the Congo knew it well, and even after a skull reached London in 1901, researchers struggled to explain what they were looking a...
Science Missed the Giraffe's Only Relative Until 1901
Science ignored the okapi for centuries while Indigenous communities in the Congo knew it well, and even after a skull reached London in 1901, researchers struggled to explain what they were looking at. Today, this elusive giraffe relative faces threats that make it harder than ever to find, count, or protect.
Ubisoft plans cuts at German studios, adding to wave of workforce reductions
Ubisoft is planning to reduce its workforce in Germany, where it operates a trio of studios, by about 100 workers, Game File has learned. The company wants to offer employees buyouts to, should enough people accept, avoid having to lay anyone off. “In Germany, we initiated discussions with the Works Council last week regarding a proposed voluntary departure plan across Ubisoft Dusseldorf, Ubisoft Berlin & Ubisoft Mainz,” a company rep told Game File. A “works council” is a union-like group representing employees. “The voluntary plan is the primary measure being proposed to support the intended organizational changes,” the Ubisoft rep added. The company declined to confirm the scale of the potential headcount cut. Of the impacted studios, Mainz might be the best known to the public. It leads development of the Anno series and shipped the well-reviewed strategy game Anno 117: Pax Romana in November 2025. Berlin and Dusseldorf operate as support studios within Ubisoft’s creative network. Berlin recently supported the development of Rainbow Six Siege and the Rayman Legends Retold remake. Dusseldorf also contributed to those projects, as well as The Settlers and Ubisoft-branded escape rooms. Dusseldorf is the biggest of the three studios, with some 400+ workers, compared to just over 100 at the other two, a source familiar with the reductions and the teams told Game File. More than half of these new reductions of about 100 people are expected to happen at Dusseldorf. The planned cuts were announced at a town hall for the German studios on Tuesday of last week. In an email follow-up, the studio group’s managing director, Benedikt Grindel, said the cuts were intended to “best position our German studios for the future... with a clearer focus on their role, capabilities and organizational setup needed for the work ahead.” The email was an echo of the past. In January 2025, Grindel had emailed the Ubisoft developers in his region (or studio “zone”) to explain that a round of 185 cuts at the time, including about 65 at Dusseldorf, were “essential to improve our operational efficiency and ensure the long-term sustainability of our studios, the zone and the company.” A half-decade of continued job cuts Ubisoft has been aggressively cutting its headcount for years. At the end of September 2022, it had 20,729 workers. By the end of March 2026, that total was down to 16,590. Studio management is trying to trim costs as it grapples with a changing industry and a drought of releases, let alone hits. The company announced earlier this year that it had reduced its costs since 2022 by “nearly €325 million” ($362m) and planned to lower them through 2028 by another €180 million ($200m). In June the company said it was closing down its Winnipeg and Belgrade studios and cutting roles in its Barcelona team. Even commercial and creative success hasn’t spared studios from this ongoing company-wide contraction. As Game File was nailing down details around the proposed cuts in Germany, Ubisoft management was informing workers of cuts in its Singapore studio, which shipped a hit remake of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag this past July. Some 70 positions in Singapore are being eliminated “to align the studio with upcoming production needs,” per a company rep’s statement to Game File. In early 2024, a large team in the Singapore studio launched the multiplayer pirate game Skull & Bones. It performed poorly but has been supported with regular content updates since. Many of Ubisoft’s studios around the world are heavily subsidized via regional grants and tax breaks. Singapore had been among them for years, but received no such local assistance in the 12 months ending this past March. News of the Singapore cuts broke today alongside word that Ubisoft is also proposing the closure of RedLynx, pending negotiations with officials. The Finnish studio behind the motorbike series Trials was founded in 2000 and sold to Ubisoft in 2011. As reported by VGC (and corroborated by Game File), Ubisoft management told employees it could not come up with a new, sustainable assignment for RedLynx. The 2025 workforce at Ubisoft Dusseldorf were straight-up cuts. This time, Ubisoft is hoping the reductions at its trio of German studios will largely come from workers taking a payout to leave. The company offered such voluntary dismissals at its Massive Entertainment studio (The Division) a year ago. For the German studios’ buyouts this time around, Ubisoft and the Works Council had discussed a formula that’d pay a worker’s monthly salary multiplied by 1.5 and by the number of years they’ve worked at the company, according to Game File sources. The formula is still subject to negotiations with the Works Council and has not yet been part of an official offer to workers. It could be adjusted up or down, and it could be supplemented with additional bonuses. Asked about the floated payout formula, a Ubisoft rep told Game File, “The terms of a potential voluntary departure program remain subject to negotiation with employee representatives. No final agreement has been reached, and we won’t comment on specific proposals while discussions are ongoing.” Game File is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe Item 2: Epic’s AI adventures Epic Games (Fortnite, the Unreal engine) is all-in on using AI to try to transform the way it makes video games and game-making tools. It’s leaders appear to be undeterred by any resistance among gamers and some game developers around generative AI—and instead emboldened by advances, particularly in AI-assisted programming. A recap of the last three days: On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Epic management told workers last week that development of an upcoming game combining Star Wars and Marvel characters would be “AI first.” Employees would be expected to use AI models such as Claude to code the game. A manager told Epic’s developers there would be “[n]o more hand-written code” and that art for the game would be “generated with full AI workflows,” per the outlet. Just ahead of that story running, Epic founder Tim Sweeney tweeted: “We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration. The aim isn’t to do the same stuff with fewer people, but to enable everyone here to build MORE and BETTER stuff, and to bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal.” In a follow-up, Sweeney predicted that most game development processes would be at least three times faster a year from now than they were in January 2026, thanks to AI. To a person on X who told him he was failing to read the room, Sweeney said: “Much of the room wants it to be 2016 again, but it’s not. Our job, as the provider of tools and technology to much of the industry, is to design for the present that is and the future that will soon be.” On Wednesday, Epic announced it was releasing a faster launcher for its Epic Games Store marketplace. It did so by stating in a blog post as clear as could be that the launcher is an AI-enabled, vibe-coded project: Programming is hard. So, instead of doing that, we vibe coded a new Epic Games Launcher that’s way faster and more responsive than the current one, and has a new look. Programming is hard? That was unexpected phrasing from a company founded by a legendarily great programmer. Back in 2011, Sweeney told me that he’d picked up programming quickly as a kid and rejoiced at the power it gave him. “I could look at any program that anybody else had written and, with enough effort, build something cooler.” Item 3: The Xbox Labs experiment (and one of the people behind it) Microsoft’s Xbox division, which is flooding the zone with announcements lately, yesterday revealed a new internal tech-tinkering team called Xbox Labs. In the words of Xbox boss Asha Sharma Labs is “a small group of game makers, engineers and scientists whose job is to turn emerging ideas into things our players and developers can experience.” Conventional wisdom coming out of the announcement is that Labs is a team that’ll focus on ideas driven by generative AI. In her announcement, Sharma cited some of the dizzying achievements in tech and gaming over the past month as AI agents and other AI tools have been deployed to swiftly figure out how popular games work, then rebuild them and mix them up. She mentioned seeing ”games rapidly decompiled and rebuilt to run on hardware they were never originally designed to support” and said “[p]erhaps more surprisingly, we’ve seen many of the biggest games in the world have been remixed into the source code of another.” (Minecraft plus Elden Ring, for example, or Fortnite + Super Monkey Ball + Overwatch + Diablo + others.) Sharma also cited the work of Windows PC games being ported to run in browsers, a seeming reference to a recent AI-assisted fan port of Halo. Or perhaps Call of Duty or GTA. Sharma didn’t use the specific term “AI” in her memo, but she came close, citing AI “agents” and their potential for game-making tools that Labs could help craft: I think XBOX has an important role to play here. Coding became the first major workload for agents because they can write, run, and test software. Games share many of those same properties, and people spend more than 72 billion hours a year playing XBOX games, roughly five times the estimated time spent writing code worldwide. We’ve spent 25 years learning how to make great games, and I want our game makers to help shape what these new technologies make possible. As we learn, we’ll share the tools we build with developers across the industry, just as we always have. When I asked an Xbox rep if Labs was an AI-centric team, they said genAI was not the focus, describing it as having a broader mandate for using new tech in new ways in gaming. As an example, they pointed to Xbox’s recently launched disc-to-digital gaming usage rights program. Microsoft didn’t specifically name anyone involved full-time in Xbox Labs yesterday, but on social media and LinkedIn, I spotted Adrian Mato IDing himself as leading the creatio of tools at Labs and talking up the launch. Mato first caught my attention in late September, when he said on X that he was “starting to build a new team at Xbox focused on products and tools for how games get built and distributed as agentic tools become more capable.” At the time, he framed AI-based tools as a supplement to traditional game dev tools. “I don’t think we need to replace them,” he said. Since then, he’s publicly shown interest in AI and in games. He’s recently spent some of his X feed marveling at the power of AI agents and praising the lighting in the latest Gears of War. Following the Labs announcement yesterday, he enthused about the Xbox Labs’ stylish landing page. He wrote: “We built some fun tools to art-direct shaders in real time, experimented with interactive ASCII art, and sprinkled in lots of tiny details. “Move your mouse to leave a colorful trail that reveals the original footage, or interact with the video to trigger bursts of particles. “A lot of love went into making it all feel just right. “More to come”
Retro-Style He-Man Beat-'Em-Up Finally Hits Up PS5 and PS4 in February
By the power of Grayskull
What Killed Europe’s Ancient Wild Cattle? Scientists Find a Disturbing Answer
The fate of Scandinavia’s aurochs warns conservationists worldwide that curbing hunting alone may not save species facing depleted genetic diversity and fragmented habitats. The cattle on today’s farms descend from aurochs, wild animals that once roamed much of Europe, Asia, and northern Africa. They disappeared from Scandinavia thousands of years before the species became extinct
Skull Of An Extinct Crocodile Found In The Rocks Used To Build The Pyramids, Most Distant Fast Radio Burst Yet Discovered, And Much More This Week
All the biggest science news stories of the week.
Hot Ticket: Sugar skulls, spooky fun and Greek traditions
Opa! A taste of Greece: Bring your appetite and dancing shoes to downtown Galveston this weekend as the 42nd Annual Galveston Greek Festival serves up two days of authentic Greek
New crocodile species found in rocks of Egypt's Great Sphinx
A skull from the now extinct ‘Herugavialis cairensis’ was discovered in the 1920s—and is also missing part of its nose.
Skulls Buried Around Egypt's First Kings Reveal Evidence of Human Sacrifice 5,000 Years Ago
Modern forensics gives us a new understanding of an ancient mystery.
Modern forensic science uncovers human sacrifice in ancient Egypt
Reinvestigation of mass burial sites around royal tombs finds evidence of fatal blunt force trauma on skulls
Domestic violence research highlights overlooked links between head injuries and mental health
Domestic violence can leave a lasting injury that cannot always be seen: damage to the brain. Strangulation or choking and blows to the skull—some of the most common forms of this abuse—can cause physical ...
Free Play Days – FARCRY 6, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Skull and Bones, The Crew Motorfest
This weekend, Polterguys: Possession Party is available this weekend for XBOX Game Pass members, while WWE 2K26 and Wildgate are free for all. Jump in!
Stop treating your daily-driver Linux PC like a science experiment
I learned the hard way that your main computer shouldn't be a lab—here is why boring is better for your daily driver.
Archaeologists Opened a Tomb Sealed for 600 Years—and Found Gold, Bones, and a Blood-Red Skull
Inside Chan Chan, experts found an elite mausoleum left behind by the Inca’s greatest rivals.
New study finds the human brain may be 'two existing neural systems' packed into one skull
"Having the brain as one organ would probably be more efficient."
“The View” star Alyssa Farah Griffin details 3-month-old baby’s skull surgery, says newborn will wear helmet for 1 year
“Having to sign off on him getting a blood transfusion and all that was so scary,” the former Donald Trump White House staffer said of son Justin Griffin.
Stars & Skulls Grades for Steelers-Patriots
Things did not go well for the Pittsburgh Steelers in a 20-3 loss to the New England Patriots on Sunday, […]
Fossil tooth analysis confirms Tyrannosaurus rex was warm-blooded
By using fossil teeth, scientists measured T. rex’s body temperature for the first time. They found evidence of an active, warm-blooded predator.
Cannibalism returned to the menu multiple times in Neolithic Europe
Bones collected from three caves in Spain reveal how cannibalism came back over thousands of years.
A 300,000-year-old jawbone from China refuses to fit neatly into the human family tree — and a reconstructed million-year-old skull is now suggesting our major ancestral branches split hundreds of thousands of years earlier than we thought
The fossil record is forcing scientists to rewrite when and where human ancestry split into separate branches, upending decades of assumptions about our evolutionary path.
Ransomware negotiation tactics have turned into a business process
Intel 471's Dave Ross breaks down ransomware negotiation tactics, from victim profiling and test decryptions to multi-extortion pressure.
Warhammer 40k: Space Marines Codex Moves 16 Units To Legendary Status!
Some universe-shaking changes are coming for Space Marines this fall. Just an hour after the reveal of the new Outrider Captain, a full preview of the new Codex: Space Marines is here! The studio kicked things off with a brief video overview of what to expect, so take a few minutes to watch and let’s […]
Scientists discover new 'immune hubs' in skull bone marrow
In mouse skull marrow, 'immune hubs' that actively defend the brain have been discovered. Similar cells exist in human skulls, but their role remains unclear.
Scientists say the human family tree may need a major rewrite
The human family tree may be due for a major rewrite. Researchers argue that Australopithecus and Paranthropus should be folded into the genus Homo because new fossils have blurred many of the traits once used to separate them. The proposed shake-up could provide a simpler, more accurate picture of our surprisingly complicated evolutionary past.
Scientists Discover a New Organ Hiding in The Skull
And it could help us fight brain cancer.
Newly-discovered immune hubs in our skull may keep our brain healthy
We may have clusters of immune cells at the back of our skull that help ward off conditions like brain cancer
3,500-year-old skeletons challenge what scientists thought they knew about syphilis
Ancient remains from Vietnam suggest diseases like yaws may have been passed from mother to child thousands of years ago, a form of transmission often assumed to indicate syphilis. The discovery could overturn how scientists interpret ancient infections and complicate the long-running mystery of syphilis’s origins.
Halo: Campaign Evolved's 'death barriers' and ungenerous out-of-bounds restrictions are making the 42 skull grind a real bore
42 skulls, 10 terminals, and an out-of-bounds auto-death that is frustrating even the most seasoned reclaimers.
Skullcandy’s New Wireless Headphones Have So Much Bose in Them
There are three technologies in the Crusher 1080 ANC that have never been in a non-Bose pair of wireless headphones before.
Skullcandy’s bass-boosting Crusher headphones now come with Bose’s ANC
Skullcandy’s new headphones are the first to feature a collection of Bose’s technologies.
Skullcandy Crusher 1080 review: Haptic bass meets whisper-quiet ANC
Skullcandy’s new flagship Crusher 1080 headphones blend Bose audio and big bass.
Skullgirls Dev Accused Of Misconduct Working On Avatar Fighter
Paramount confirmed that the former Skullgirls and Indivisible CEO 'holds a position as an individual contributor' on its upcoming game
Halo: Campaign Evolved Skulls confirmed for LASO Xbox achievement
Halo Studios has now confirmed exactly which of the 42 Skulls in Halo: Campaign Evovled are needed to unlock the game's LASO achievement.
This dinosaur fossil captures the final moments of a T. rex attack
A fossilized Edmontosaurus skull with a Tyrannosaurus tooth still embedded in its face has given scientists rare evidence of a dramatic predator-prey encounter. The discovery suggests the giant carnivore delivered an incredibly powerful face-to-face bite, offering new clues about how Tyrannosaurus hunted.
How former Dallas Cowboys player Jaylon Smith ‘cracked the code' in business
FRISCO — He opened the front door himself — the 30-year-old who has taken a sledgehammer to the trope about NFL players going broke. There’s Jaylon Smith, shuffling about as “So Amazing” by Beyoncé and Stevie Wonder resonates through his 5,000-square-foot home. His 9-year-old dog, Achilles, meanders. Follow the former Dallas Cowboys linebacker into his office, past the golden skull…
77 headless skeletons found in a field date back 7,000 years
The carefully arranged Neolithic remains show signs of skillful skull removal.
'A Fundamentally New Threat': Researchers Develop New AI-Powered Worm That Might Be Unstoppable
A team of researchers have shown how a self-replicating AI agent can take over a computer network at almost no cost.
Bronze Age 5-year-old's skull found in Uzbekistan is the oldest known evidence of surgery in Central Asia
A child's 4,000-year-old skull found in Uzbekistan has signs of trepanation, making it the oldest evidence of surgery in Central Asia on record.
This prehistoric fish may explain how animals first walked on Earth
Scientists have peered inside the skull of a 380-million-year-old Antarctic fish that was closely related to the first animals to walk on land, revealing surprising clues about how life began its move out of the water. Using advanced neutron imaging, researchers discovered that Koharalepis jarviki had features suited for living near the water’s surface, including openings in its skull that may have helped it gulp air and a light-sensitive organ linked to day-night rhythms.
'Game of Thrones' star Hannah Murray had psychotic episode during time in wellness cult, was rushed to hospital
'Game of Thrones' star Hannah Murray has detailed her time spent in a wellness cult, when she had a psychotic episode that felt like 'giving birth through my skull' and was rushed to the hospital.
Warhammer Skulls 2026 — all Xbox reveals and announcements from the show
New game announcements, updates, crossovers... there were plenty of reveals for Xbox fans during this year's Warhammer Skulls. Check out everything here.
'Warhammer 40k: Chaos Gate - Deathwatch' Announced, Featuring Elite Xeno-Hunting Specialists
On the 22nd, during the 'Warhammer Skulls 2026' showcase, Games Workshop unveiled 'Warhammer 40k: Chaos Gate - Deathwatch,' a new title developed by Complex Games and to be published by Frontier Developments.
Warhammer Skulls 2026 – All The News and Updates for XBOX
Warhammer Skulls returned today for its 10th anniversary – bringing news and updates on Warhammer games, plus discounts to be enjoyed across XBOX platforms.
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Deathwatch Announced at Warhammer Skulls 2026
Fresh from Warhammer Skulls comes confirmation that the well received strategy game Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters is getting a sequel all about the Deathwatch.
Everything Announced at Warhammer Skulls 2026
Check out all the game announcements, updates, trailers, and reveals from Warhammer Skulls 2026.
Warhammer Skulls 2026 Showcase Streams Live and We're Detailing All the Latest News, Reveals, and Game Updates From the Event
Warhammer Skulls is back! The showcase event for all things Warhammer video games promises to deliver big news on everything from Space Marine 2 to Darktide, and we'll be reporting live on all the announcements, reveals, and updates.
‘Still shakes me’: Contractor recounts finding human skull in S.C. business
A contractor found human remains on Tuesday in the crawl space of a South Carolina business.
‘Still shakes me’: Contractor recounts finding human skull in crawl space of Rock Hill business
The remains were discovered around 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday at a business along Oakland Avenue near North Trade Street.
T. rex’s tiny arms may have evolved for a surprisingly brutal reason
Why did T. rex have such tiny arms? Scientists now think it’s because its giant head became the ultimate hunting tool. Across multiple dinosaur groups, stronger skulls and crushing jaws evolved alongside shrinking forelimbs, especially in predators hunting enormous prey. In other words, once the bite became deadly enough, the arms may have stopped mattering.
There's a hidden 'third eye' buried in your skull – and scientists think they've finally worked out why | BBC Science Focus Magazine
Far from a spiritual metaphor, a new theory is shedding light on the bizarre evolutionary quirks that gave us a hidden third eye
Stunning 150-million-year-old stegosaur skull rewrites dinosaur evolution
A spectacular dinosaur discovery in Spain is giving scientists a rare new look inside the world of stegosaurs. Paleontologists uncovered the best-preserved stegosaur skull ever found in Europe, belonging to the iconic plated dinosaur Dacentrurus armatus, which roamed Earth around 150 million years ago. Because stegosaur skulls are extremely fragile and almost never survive intact, the fossil is helping researchers uncover previously unknown details about how these armored giants evolved.
Stunning fossil discovery in Ethiopia rewrites human origins
A stunning fossil discovery in Ethiopia shows that early Homo and a previously unknown Australopithecus species lived together around 2.6 to 2.8 million years ago. The find overturns the classic “ape-to-human” progression and paints human evolution as a crowded, branching tree with multiple species coexisting. Scientists dated the fossils using volcanic ash deposits and are now investigating what these ancient relatives ate and whether they competed for resources.
Assassin's Creed Black Flag Remake Gets Absurd Treasure Hunt
Edward Kenway and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Sarah Longwell: Susan Collins may sit ‘on a throne of skulls of her enemies,’ but she’s facing an opponent unlike any before
Scientists discover a hidden brain “cleaning” effect triggered by movement
Scientists have uncovered a surprising link between simple body movement and brain health: every time you tighten your abdominal muscles—even slightly—your brain may gently sway inside your skull. This subtle motion, triggered by pressure changes in connected blood vessels, appears to help circulate cerebrospinal fluid around the brain, potentially flushing out harmful waste.
Brain Scans Reveal a Surprise About Neanderthal Intelligence
There's more that unites us.
Scientists Discover 479 Gene Variants Shaped By Natural Selection In The Last 10,000 Years
Natural selection in an unnatural world.
Scientists believe birds’ skulls hold clues to inner lives of long-extinct dinosaurs
Early birds were like ‘T rex reincarnated’, says scientist who believes avian skulls offer insight into dinosaurs’ behaviour
Blood vessels found in T. rex bones are rewriting dinosaur science
Dinosaur DNA may still be out of reach, but scientists are uncovering something almost as exciting—ancient blood vessels hidden inside fossilized bones. In a massive Tyrannosaurus rex nicknamed Scotty, researchers discovered a network of preserved vessels within a rib that once fractured and began healing 66 million years ago. Using powerful synchrotron X-rays from particle accelerators, they were able to peer inside the dense fossil without damaging it, revealing intricate, iron-rich structures left behind by the healing process.
A crushed fossil revealed a dinosaur that shouldn’t have existed
A badly mangled dinosaur skull, once forgotten in a drawer, turned out to be a rare and important discovery. Reconstructed by a Virginia Tech student, it revealed a new species of early carnivorous dinosaur with unusual features never seen before. The fossil suggests some dinosaur groups were wiped out during the end-Triassic extinction, not just their rivals. It may represent one of the last survivors of an ancient dinosaur lineage.
Scientists found a baby dinosaur hidden in rock and it is surprisingly cute
Scientists uncovered a rare baby dinosaur in South Korea and named it Doolysaurus after a famous cartoon character. Using cutting-edge CT scans, they discovered hidden bones—including a skull—inside rock much faster than traditional methods. The young dinosaur, possibly fluffy and lamb-like, even had stomach stones that reveal it ate a mix of plants and small animals. The discovery suggests many more dinosaurs may still be hidden in Korea’s rocks.
'Pieced Together': Art show features traditional, unique quilt designs
A new exhibit called “Pieced Together” at Skull City Studio showcases 28 quilts by 14 artists, blending traditional American quilting with diverse and lesser-known styles to highlight the craft’s creativity
New dispute emerges around Subnautica 2’s early access release
Lawyers for the ousted—and now partially reinstated—leadership team of Unknown Worlds, the studio behind Subnautica 2, are crying foul over news that the game will be released into early access in May. The release announcement earlier this week was made improperly, potentially “damaging the game and sowing additional confusion among the Subnautica community,” the lawyers said in a letter sent on Tuesday to Vice Chancellor Lori Will of Delaware’s Court of Chancery. In their letter, the lawyers also floated the idea of asking Will to find Krafton in contempt of the court’s ruling. The letter was sent just one day after Will’s bombshell ruling that publisher Krafton had breached its contract with Unknown Worlds’ executive team, when it fired them last June. The new issue isn’t necessarily the May early access timeframe, but how the news was announced. The letter and Krafton’s response have not been previously reported. A quick recap of prior events: Subnautica 2 is an unreleased, underwater survival adventure and the most-wishlisted game on Steam. Last year, longtime Unknown Worlds CEO Ted Gill, along with studio co-founders Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire, were fired by Krafton. They swiftly sued, saying the publisher had terminated them to avoid paying out up to $250 million in potential performance-based bonuses. The studio leaders had hoped to earn that with an early access release of the game, which Krafton had blocked. The publisher argued in court that Subnautica 2 wasn’t ready, which the ousted execs disputed. On Monday, Will ruled that Krafton had violated its contract, firing the execs to avoid the performance payouts, and that it had to reinstate Gill and give him full authority over any early access release for Subnautica 2. On Tuesday, IGN reported on a new memo issued that day to Unknown Worlds staff by Steve Papoutsis, the executive Krafton had put in charge of Unknown Worlds after the 2025 firings. In the note, Papoutsis said that Subnautica 2 had passed a key development milestone “last week” and that he and Krafton had determined the game “is ready for Early Access release in May.” This news appeared to catch the lawyers for Gill, Cleveland and McGuire by surprise. On Tuesday night, they sent a letter to Will expressing “serious concerns” about whether it would be possible to forge an agreement with Krafton consistent with the judge’s order. Papoutsis’ memo was a problem, they wrote. He didn’t have the authority to declare anything about Subnautica 2’s release. As of 9am ET on Monday, March 16, the effective date of Will’s order, Papoutsis wasn’t CEO of Unknown Worlds. Gill was. And, per Will’s order, only Gill could make Subnautica 2 release decisions. They continued: Krafton self-servingly announced the launch without any regard to its impact on the game, the team, or the community—let alone this Court’s Opinion. Announcing the release of a game is momentous, and it is typically accompanied by significant marketing activity, fanfare, and community coordination. And most importantly, the announcement is carefully designed to maximize excitement for the game. That entire process was supposed to be driven by Mr. Gill. However, in defiance of the Court’s Opinion, Krafton has now taken that away, further damaging the game and sowing additional confusion among the Subnautica community. The lawyers speculated that Krafton had “intentionally leaked” Papoutsis’ memo and then issued an official statement to confirm the leak. Game File is a reader-supported publication. My reporting is only possible through support from readers like you. To support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe On Wednesday, lawyers for Krafton defended their client in their own letter to vice chancellor Will, saying nothing they did violated her order nor showed contempt: Papoutsis’s message was simply celebrating the UW employees’ efforts toward a past event: Krafton’s pre-Opinion determination that Subnautica 2 was ready for Early Access release. There was nothing improper about conveying the results of the milestone review or thanking the development team for their dedication and talent. They added that Gill could still make his own call about Subnautica 2’s release: In his role as CEO, Gill will be able to assess independently his views on the state of Subnautica 2 and the appropriate release schedule; nothing in Papoutsis’s message alters Gill’s authority or discretion. Vice chancellor Will has not responded to the letters and doesn’t necessarily have to. Both parties were previously ordered by Will to confer this week and submit a proposed judgment consistent with her ruling. The letter from Gill’s attorney’s this week doesn’t indicate whether he would or would not support a May release for Subnautica 2. But it could limit his options. And, if Gill’s lawyers are right, the lack of marketing fanfare around the leak of the May date could dull the launch of the game. Any harm to Subnautica 2’s launch is an extra sensitive issue given the context of the legal dispute: millions of dollars of payouts are on the line, tethered to the scale of the game’s initial performance. In her ruling on Monday, Will noted that there was obvious “bad blood” between Gill’s side and Krafton but that the two would need to work together: “They can—and must—act in good faith to navigate their remaining contractual relationship.” Item 2: A new kind of couch co-op game A highlight of GDC each year is the Alt.Ctrl showcase that features games played with extremely experimental controllers. Perusing this year’s offerings last Friday, I found a game controlled with giant scissors, another with big toothbrushes and one that amounted to dumpster diving. My favorite was Pivot, a co-op game about collectively maneuvering a couch. It was developed by students at the University of Utah’s masters of arts and engineering games program. Players lift and tilt the physical couch in order to control the position of a virtual one. That virtual one is moving through an obstacle course on-screen, while being pursued by a giant skull. Developer Nishant Verma told me at GDC that the couch is made of styrofoam (this became more evident as I watched!) and that the name was a riff on an episode of the sitcom Friends. Item 3: In brief… 🚫 Ubisoft is laying off more than 100 workers at its Red Storm studio, as the North Carolina location known for decades for its Tom Clancy games, ceases in-house game development, VGC reports. 👀 On Monday, Nvidia’s revealed its DLSS 5 AI-driven graphics technology that purports to improve game graphics… and it has been roasted about it by the media and the online gaming public for the remainder of the week. The tech changed the faces of characters in footage from Resident Evil Requiem, Hogwarts Legacy and EA Sports FC, drawing accusations of giving carefully art-directed games the generic look of AI “slop.” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had said on Monday that “DLSS 5 is the GPT moment for graphics—blending handcrafted rendering with generative AI to deliver a dramatic leap in visual realism while preserving the control artists need for creative expression.” By mid-week, Huang was telling Tom’s Hardware that the new tech’s critics were “completely wrong” because game-makers could still “fine-tune the generative AI” to suit their game’s aesthetics.
LeBron James becomes NBA’s all-time leader in career field goals made, sustains fourth-quarter elbow injury
LeBron James becomes NBA’s all-time leader in career field goals made, sustains 4th-quarter elbow injury
LeBron James, the NBA's all-time scoring leader, passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for another record.
Scientists Reconstruct The Face of a 3.7-Million-Year-Old Human Relative
See 'Little Foot' in amazing detail for the first time.
Science news this week: 'Spiderwebs' on Mars, tigers' return to Kazakhstan, and 2,000-year-old skull with permanently blackened teeth
Feb. 28, 2026: Our weekly roundup of the latest science in the news, as well as a few fascinating articles to keep you entertained over the weekend.
Triceratops had a giant nose that may have cooled its massive head
Triceratops’ massive head may have been doing more than just showing off those famous horns. Using CT scans and 3D reconstructions of fossil skulls, researchers uncovered a surprisingly complex nasal system hidden inside its enormous snout. Instead of being just a supersized nose for smelling, it likely housed intricate networks of nerves and blood vessels—and even special structures that helped regulate heat and moisture.
Neanderthals Mysteriously Collected Horned Skulls in a Cave, But Why?
Hominids are weird.
Skull of 'dinosaur from Hell' discovered with sword jutting from its...
"This find was so sudden and amazing, it was really emotional for our team."
'Absolute surprise': Homo erectus skulls found in China are almost 1.8 million years old — the oldest evidence of the ancient human relatives in East Asia
A new date for Homo erectus skulls found in central China provides new insight into how and when ancient human relatives reached eastern Asia.
Notepad's new Markdown powers served with a side of remote code execution
: Smug faces across all those who opposed the WordPad-ification of Microsoft's humble text editor
New study finds astronauts' brains change after space travel
Following spaceflight, the brain shifts "upward and backward within the skull", with sensory and motor regions showing the largest shift, the study found.
Why This Fish Actually Needs a Hole in the Head
A cavity in the middle of the rockhead poacher’s skull might be used like a maraca to produce sound, new research suggests.
Homo erectus wasn't the first human species to leave Africa 1.8 million years ago, fossils suggest
A new analysis of enigmatic skulls from the Republic of Georgia suggest that Homo erectus wasn't the only human species to leave Africa 1.8 million years ago.
11,000-year-old dog skulls reveal a hidden origin story
Dogs began diversifying thousands of years earlier than previously believed, with clear differences in size and shape appearing over 11,000 years ago. A massive global analysis of ancient skulls shows that early dogs were already adapting to different roles in human societies. This challenges the idea that dog diversity is mainly a product of recent breeding. Instead, it points to a long process of coevolution between humans and their earliest canine companions.
Scientists replayed evolution and found a surprise
Environmental change doesn’t affect evolution in a single, predictable way. In large-scale computer simulations, scientists discovered that some fluctuating conditions help populations evolve higher fitness, while others slow or even derail progress. Two populations facing different kinds of change can end up on completely different evolutionary paths. The findings challenge the idea that one population’s response can represent a whole species.
Thinking through what may be on tap in 2026
When the three-million-year-old bones of Lucy were unearthed in an Ethiopian valley in 1974, paleoanthropologists anointed her as the Eve to all of us. Though her skull was not big enough to accommodate our larger, homo sapiens’ brain, she was a genetic hominid. Although a few bone fragments of a greater age have been discovered […]
Science history: Anthropologist sees the face of the 'Taung Child' — and proves that Africa was the cradle of humanity
Over a century ago, anthropologist Raymond Dart chipped an ancient skull out of some rock from an ancient quarry — and revealed the face of an ancient human relative.
Science news this week: A human population isolated for 100,000 years, the biggest spinning structure in the universe, and a pit full of skulls
Dec. 5, 2025: Our weekly roundup of the latest science in the news, as well as a few fascinating articles to keep you entertained over the weekend.