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The number of gamers across the globe is on the rise, and now half of the world's population plays video games.

There are now an estimated 3.7 billion people that play video games, analyst firm DFC Intelligence said in a new market report. The new figure indicates that the number of gamers worldwide has risen by 700 million people in the last 3 years. Back in 2020, DFC estimated that more than 3 billion people played video games.

Interestingly enough, DFC Intelligence says the global figure isn't as powerful as it seems. Out of the 3.7 billion gamers, only about 10% of them, or 370 million, are responsible for generating most of the industry's revenues.

OpenAI has announced a new bug bounty scheme whereby intrepid security buffs who find flaws in ChatGPT will be rewarded with payments.

The company will pay up to $20,000 for the discovery of bugs by white hat hackers and security experts.

As you might guess, then, this isn't about everyday folks stumbling across a dodgy response from the chatbot, and then flagging that as a bug (which it might be, technically).

Today Arkane Studios inadvertently kicked off another controversy for the gaming brand, and the PR fire is spreading rapidly.

Microsoft has confirmed that the next first-party Xbox game will come with a big performance caveat. Redfall, the new co-op survival shooter from Dishonored and Prey developer Arkane, will not be able to hit 60FPS on the Xbox Series X at launch.

Redfall will instead be locked to 30FPS at launch on both the Xbox Series X (4K 30FPS) and Xbox Series S (1440p 30FPS). Arkane says a 60FPS performance mode will be "added via game update at a later date." Gamers have responded with significant push back, with countless quizzical responses asking how the first-person shooter can launch without hitting the expected frame rate spec.

One of Sony's best-selling first-party PlayStation games is leaving PS Plus, and it might be a bad strategy for long-term subscription retention.

Today Sony revealed which games are coming and leaving its PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium subscription service tiers in May. The departing games lineup includes a surprising title: Spider-Man, one of the PlayStation 4's best-selling first-party games from Insomniac Games, will be taken off the PS Plus Games Catalog next month.

"As part of our normal content refresh, Marvel's Spider-Man, Resident Evil, and NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 will be among some of the titles leaving the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog in May. Members with Game Catalog benefits can still play by May 15," Sony said on the PlayStation Blog.

Twitter is just embarking on a big AI project with significant ramifications for the future, according to a new report that reckons Elon Musk has some serious plans underway to take on the ChatGPT juggernaut.

This comes from Business Insider, which puts forward the claim that Musk has already bought around 10,000 GPUs, as well as having recruited a pair of AI experts (from DeepMind, an Alphabet outfit now involved in the development of the Google Bard AI).

The idea is to build an AI of the large language model (LLM) variety like ChatGPT, but this venture is still very much in the early days for Twitter, according to one of the sources tapped by Business Insider.

Windows 11 just received a new cumulative update, and it brings in a feature some folks aren't all that happy about.

The traditional 'Patch Tuesday' update came bristling with a bunch of fixes and minor changes, including said controversial feature, which is notifications in the Start menu that look very much like adverts.

These were already present in the previous optional update for March 2023, you might recall, and consist of prompts to use Microsoft's services. Although they're designed on the face of it to be helpful reminders to users, it's clear enough that the notifications are a thinly veiled way to push potential avenues of monetization for Microsoft.

AMD's Zen 5 processors are expected to debut next year, and of late, we've been hearing a lot of exciting predictions about how fast these next-gen CPUs might be - and here's another one that takes the form of an actual benchmark this time.

Yes, it's still very early days for Zen 5, but we now have a Cinebench result brought to us by well-known YouTube leaker Moore's Law is Dead (MLID).

Arm up with all the usual caveats around rumors at this point, but MLID tells us that a system with a pair of 64-core Zen 5 Turin CPUs (next-gen server processors) in two sockets (for a total of 128-cores) scored over 123,000 in Cinebench R23.

A new blog post over at AMD titled "Building an Enthusiast PC" puts the majority of its focus on VRAM, especially when gaming in 1440p and 4K. With recent PC gaming community discussion around VRAM capacity and whether or not 12GB is enough for modern titles, and the launch of the GeForce RTX 4070 happening very soon - the timing of the piece is calculated.

But also timely as AMD highlights that when it comes to peak 4K memory usage in modern titles like Resident Evil 4, The Last of Us Part I, and Hogwarts Legacy with Ultra settings enabled - anything less than 16GB looks like a potential bottleneck. Of course, legitimate optimization concerns have been raised about a few of these titles, where more VRAM becomes a band-aid approach for PC games that still need development work.

Naturally, this post also shows that AMD's Radeon graphics cards have you covered when it comes to VRAM capacity. The 8GB VRAM of the Radeon RX 6600 Series is the 1080p enthusiast option, the 12GB Radeon RX 6700 Series is for 1440p, and the 16GB Radeon RX 6800 Series is for 4K.

With each new generation of GeForce RTX hardware improving ray-tracing performance, alongside continued advances for tech like DLSS and the new DLSS 3 Frame Generation exclusive to the GeForce RTX 40 Series, NVIDIA has revealed some of its stats relating to the everyday use of RTX tech.

With the release of the highly-anticipated Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode in Cyberpunk 2077, which brings full path-traced lighting to Night City, DLSS is now supported by over 280 games and apps. And these new GeForce RTX 40 Series stats from NVIDIA are fascinating.

Although we don't have specific sales figures outside of NVIDIA confirming that there are "millions of GeForce RTX desktop GPU owners," it does look like ray-tracing is a popular in-game feature for GeForce RTX 40 Series owners.

Looking for a dock for your Steam Deck that does it all and then some? Well, the new 6-in-1 USB-C Docking Station for Steam Deck from Syntech might be the answer, as it's packed with features and is currently available with a nice 10% discount over at Amazon, which goes up to 50% with a coupon (link at the end of the article).

Syntech's Docking Station for the Steam Deck offers 4K@60Hz output over HDMI 2.0, a Gigabit Ethernet input for fast transfer, three USB-A 3.0 outputs, and USB-C 3.0 for full-speed charging. So yeah, it's stacked.

The dock also sports a minimal curved look that looks stylish and sleek in the product shots provided by Syntech, making it one of the best-looking Steam Deck docks currently available. The USB-C charging also means that it can double as a nice little charging stand for the Nintendo Switch or a smartphone.

Samsung has announced a new range of memory cards with the PRO Plus range designed for professionals and enthusiasts that dabble in photography and content creation. Plus, no doubt those that use SD cards on gaming devices like the Steam Deck.

The big thing here is increased read and write speeds compared to their predecessors. Samsung notes that the 180 MB/s read speed represents a 12 percent increase, with the 130 MB/s write speed representing an 8 percent increase. These figures apply to the Samsung PRO Plus microSD and full-size SD cards.

The increase in speed makes the new PRO Plus range from Samsung an excellent choice for capturing 4K videos and photos, with the cards supporting the V30 standard. The PRO Plus range also uses the SDXC standard for SD storage and the UHS-I interface for device compatibility.

Twitter is once again experiencing what appears to be a major problem as users are reporting their secret nude photographs are appearing in the public For You tab.

New Yor Times best-selling author Abraham Josephine Riesman took to Twitter to sound the alarm on nude photos appearing in Twitter's For You tab by writing that Twitter Circles "is broken" as Riesman noticed an account that they don't follow like one of their nudes they posted in a Twitter Circles. As you can probably imagine, Riesman wasn't alone in experiencing this glitch, as more users began reporting the same problem happening to them over the weekend.

Daric L. Cottingham took to her personal Twitter account to write that Twitter Circles is "no longer private" and that she hopes the glitch isn't retroactive. Cottingham continued and said that some of the leaked nudes are appearing in users' For You tab through a mutual follower of an account that likes a Twitter Circles photograph. Accounts that are posting these Twitter Circle nudes only know what tweets are slipping through by which ones that are liked by accounts they aren't following.

The Cougar Cratus is a new and visually stunning min-tower PC case, with the company describing the angled interior layout as an "industry-first revolutionary innovation."

And it's a pretty straightforward design principle to wrap your head around on account of hot air rising, with the Cougar Cratus creating a cyclical current to ensure the hot air rises and cool air falls for maximum airflow. The image showcases cool air entering the case from the front and underneath, pushing hot air through the top and rear.

The visual look of the Cougar Cratus is quite something, with the case made up of a precision-tooled steel tube frame and four tempered glass panels that are also contoured to match the case's shape. Curved glass is definitely premium stuff for a PC case.

Apple's unannounced but heavily rumored mixed reality headset has reportedly seen a change of supplier as the company gets ready for its big unveiling.

Thought to be called Reality Pro, the headset is now expected to be announced during the WWCDC event in June. While the product isn't expected to be made available to buy any time soon, it now sounds like Apple has already made a change to its supply chain, ditching one company in favor of another.

That's according to a paywalled DigiTimes report seen by MacRumors, with the report suggesting that Taiwanese outfit Pegatron will no longer be the company responsible for assembling the Reality Pro headset. Instead, it's claimed that Apple has asked Pegatron to hand over production to Luxshare - a company that it already uses for other accessories like AirPods. The company is also responsible for assembling some iPhone and Apple Watch models, while it's also thought to be the one that will build the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Google TV is a smart TV platform that runs on devices like the Chromecast not to mention plenty of devices like smart televisions and whatnot. Now, Google has announced that Google TV is getting more than 800 free live TV channels including some you've probably heard of.

The news means that Google TV will integrate services from Tubi, Plex, and Haystack News right into its Live TV tab. Beyond that, there are going to be more than 800 other free live TV channels including some from the likes of NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX.

All of those names mean that people can look forward to some big-name TV shows that will be available to watch free of charge, with fans of Westworld and The Walking Dead very much catered for.

Gamers take another shot at blocking the Microsoft-Activision merger with an amended complaint that argues why the Microsoft-Activision merger should be blocked.

10 gamers have teamed up and hired legal representation to sue to block the Microsoft-Activision merger under grounds of violating section 7 of the Clayton Act. As per the FTC, section 7 "prohibits mergers and acquisitions where the effect may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly." As per Section 16 of the same Clayton Act, action may be taken by private parties to prohibit such an anti-competitive merger.

Following a dismissal of the original complaint by Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, plaintiffs for the Gamer's Lawsuit have filed a new amended complaint that attempts to make a second shot at shutting down the merger. To be clear, plaintiff counsel is attempting to argue that the merger is anti-competitive--a goal that the FTC has spent lots of time and manpower also trying to do.

NVIDIA's Blackwell graphics cards, expected to be GeForce RTX 5000 models, could be over twice as quick as current-gen Lovelace models - and we've heard a pile of other rumors about Team Green's next-gen GPUs to boot.

This comes courtesy of Wccftech, with the tech site keeping its ear to the ground and flagging up a bunch of info - approach all this very cautiously, naturally - from Twitter and two prominent YouTube leakers, Moore's Law is Dead (MLID) and RedGamingTech (RGT).

Bearing firmly in mind that it's still early stages for Blackwell, we hear from MLID that NVIDIA is likely to go with a monolithic GPU (single chip) for the next-gen flagship (RTX 5090). That idea has been floated in the past via the rumor mill, notably from renowned Twitter leaker Kopite7kimi, but there's a twist here - MLID doesn't completely rule out chiplets.

The idea of Twitter going away isn't all that crazy right now with current owner and CEO Elon Musk making some strange decisions since his $44 billion buyout at the back end of 2022. But now the company very much doesn't exist. Twitter is dead.

Long live X Corp. Confused? We've only just started.

See. the story goes that Twitter is in the middle of being sued by Laura Loomer because she thinks that the social network violated federal racketeering laws when it banned her account back in 2019. That account is alive and kicking right now, but part of the lawsuit's process means that Twitter has to submit corporate disclosure agreements. And the latest was a doozy.

The hugely popular instant messaging service WhatsApp is reportedly testing a newly revamped version of its Mac app, this time ditching the text labels in favor of something a little more icon-heavy.

The new-look WhatsApp isn't yet available to everyone but is rolling out to some specific users of the WhatsApp for Mac beta right now. Those who have the app installed via TestFlight might already have the new interface, while others are expected to see it in the coming days.

That's according to the WhatsApp beta watchers at WABetaInfo who have shared a screenshot of the new look. It's a familiar interface, but what's changed is the navigation bar on the left side of the display.

10 gamers have banded together to sue to block the Microsoft-Activision merger under parts the Clayton Act, and new court filings reveal that Sony has provided documents to the plaintiffs.

Microsoft wants to buy Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion, representing the largest video games acquisition in history. It's also the largest acquisition that Microsoft has ever proposed. The trillion-dollar tech firm attempts to assuage anti-trust concerns, the chief of which is making the $31 billion Call of Duty franchise exclusive to Xbox platforms, with multiple 10-year licensing deals to ensure the mega-hit video game series remains on multiple platforms.

While many gamers see tremendous benefits with the acquisition, including the addition of Activision-Blizzard titles to Microsoft's popular all-you-can-play Xbox Game Pass subscription, the deal faces staunch opposition from gamers and other industry players like Sony. Some gamers feel so strongly against the merger that they have banded together to collectively sue Microsoft in an attempt to block the deal. This is the 3:22-cv-08991-JSC "Gamer's Lawsuit" filed in the District of Northern California courts.