Having a strong home Wi-Fi signal that doesn’t drop out on you is crucial for a seamless and productive lifestyle. Whether you're working from home, streaming your favorite shows, or have a small army of smart home devices, a reliable internet connection has become essential to keep it all running. Traditional routers often struggle to cover every corner of your house, especially if your home has thick walls or multiple floors. This is where mesh Wi-Fi routers come to the rescue, offering a robust solution to extend Wi-Fi coverage throughout your entire home.

Mesh Wi-Fi routers work by using multiple nodes placed strategically around your home to create a unified and extensive home network. These systems are designed to ensure that you have a strong Wi-Fi signal in every room, eliminating dead zones and offering consistent performance. We've tested numerous mesh systems for connection reliability, coverage, ease of setup, and additional features like parental controls. To help you decide and take the hassle out of choosing, we've put together a list of the best mesh Wi-Fi systems available today. If you're looking to boost your existing Wi-Fi network and don’t want to invest in a new Wi-Fi system, check out our top picks for the best Wi-Fi extenders instead.

What to look for in a mesh Wi-Fi system

It’s a pretty good time to buy a mesh Wi-Fi system, since Wi-Fi 6E represents a fairly significant leap in the technology. Matt MacPherson, Cisco’s Chief Technology Officer for Wireless, said that Wi-Fi 6E is a substantial “inflection point” and can take advantage of a much broader chunk of the wireless spectrum than its predecessors. “If you’re using that spectrum with a Wi-Fi 6 [device],” he said, “you’re going to get significant gains [in speed.]”

MacPherson added that Wi-Fi 6E will likely “carry you for a long time,” thanks to the fact that its “top throughputs now typically exceed what people can actually connect their home to.” In short, with a top theoretical per-stream speed of 1.2 Gbps, Wi-Fi 6E is fast enough to outrun all but the fastest internet connection. (You may also see talk of Wi-Fi 7 devices, some of which have been released already before the standard is officially launched next year. Given that it will take a generation for all of the devices in your home to be compatible with Wi-Fi 7, it’s not worth thinking about this for several years yet, so a Wi-Fi 6 system will suffice for now.)

Range and speed

All mesh routers boast a theoretical broadcast range in square feet, as well as its theoretical top speed. Given there are so many factors outside of the manufacturer’s control, these numbers don’t really mean much in the real world. Your internet service provider’s (ISP) real speed, the construction materials and layout of your home, amongst other things, will all affect your Wi-Fi coverage. Simply investing in a wireless router or mesh Wi-Fi system isn’t going to offer faster speeds on its own.

It’s worth saying that raw speed isn’t everything, and that for most normal users, you probably need a lot less than you’re paying for. Netflix recommends a minimum speed of just 15 Mbps to stream a 4K video to a single device. Naturally, that’s just for one connection, so you’ll need some more capacity if you’ve got other connected devices all running at the same time. As cool as it is to say you’ve got 100, 200 or 500 Mbps download speed, factors like latency and reliability are way more crucial. And unless you have Gigabit internet that can reach speeds of up to 1Gbps, you won’t need a mesh router that offers these specs.

Backhaul

Mesh Wi-Fi systems work by connecting every hardware node to a single wireless network, letting them all communicate with each other. Imagine four people in a busy, noisy restaurant all trying to order their dinner from a weary staff member, all at once. Now imagine, while this is going on, that four more people at that same table are also trying to tell a funny anecdote. It’s no surprise that it might take a long while for the right information to reach its intended destination.

To combat this, higher-end mesh routers offer dedicated wireless backhaul; a slice of the spectrum for node-to-node communication. So rather than everyone talking at once in the same space, the conversations are essentially separated, reducing the invisible clutter in the air. Because there’s less confusing cross-chatter, everything moves faster, offering a significant performance boost to those systems.

Connectivity

These days, even your washing machine has a wireless connection, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the joys of wired internet. No matter how fast WiFi is, a hard line will always be faster, and some gear, like Philips’ Hue bridge, still needs an ethernet connection. Plenty of routers can also use these hard connections as backhaul, eliminating further wireless clutter. It’s convenient for spread-out systems and power users, but it will mean running more wires through your home. The most common standard is Cat 5e, or gigabit ethernet which, unsurprisingly, has a top speed of 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps). Since Ethernet cables are backward compatible, you should be able to easily find one that works with your system. However, to make the most out of your mesh routers, it’s worth investing in an Ethernet cable that meets the standard your router uses — if it’s Cat5e, use a Cat5e cable. You can check your router’s specs via the manufacturer’s website to be sure.

Flexibility and scalability

Mesh routers enable you to add (or subtract) modules from your home network to suit your needs. D-Link’s Alan Jones said users should “check how scalable the prospective product is” before you buy. This sense of scale doesn’t just apply to the number of nodes on the network, but how many simultaneous connections it can handle.

Placement

Mesh networks use multiple access points in order to create a bigger network, resulting in better indoor Wi-Fi coverage. You might see the term “whole home coverage”, which is more easily achieved with multiple access points or nodes. Modern mesh routers offer one, two or three (or more) pieces of equipment that are commonly the same hardware inside and out. It normally doesn’t matter which module you make the primary one to connect to your modem, usually over ethernet. You’ll then set up the other, secondary nodes around your home, which is often just a case of adding them to the existing mesh network.

When installing your hardware, remember that every physical obstacle between nodes may hurt your performance. The ideal spot is, at the very least, at waist height on a piece of furniture without too many obstructions. Tables, sideboards, free-standing cupboards, and bookcases make for a good home. The rule of thumb is to place each node no more than two rooms away from the last one.

How we test Wi-Fi routers

My home covers around 2,200 square feet across three stories, with my office on the third floor. It’s relatively long and thin, with the living room at the front of the house, the kitchen at the back and three bedrooms on the second floor. Its age means there are a lot of solid brick walls, old school lathe and plaster, as well as aluminum foil-backed insulation boards to help with energy efficiency. There are two major Wi-Fi dead zones in the house, the bathroom and the bedroom behind it, since there’s lots of old and new pipework in the walls and floors.

For mesh routers that have two nodes, I placed the first in my living room, connected via ethernet to my cable modem, with the second on the first-floor landing in the (ostensible) center of the house. For three-node sets, the third went in my kitchen, which I’ve found is the optimal layout to get the bulk of my house covered in Wi-Fi.

Each mesh is judged on ease of setup, Wi-Fi coverage, reliability, speed and any additional features. I looked at how user-friendly each companion app is from the perspective of a novice, as well. My tests included checking for dead zones, moving from room to room to measure consistency, and streaming multiple videos at once.

Best mesh Wi-Fi systems for 2024

Other mesh Wi-Fi router systems we tested

Amazon Eero 6E

On one hand, Eero Pro 6E does count as an “easy” device, the sort you could hand to a total novice and expect them to thrive with. There’s very little brain work needed to get things set up, and the app has a clean UI with plenty of hand-holding. But — and it’s a big but — the fact so many common management tools aren’t available to me here because they’re paywalled irks me. Amazon and Eero are playing in the same slightly shallow waters as Google / Nest, building a “good enough” mesh product for "everyone;” types who want to set up the hardware and more or less forget about it for several years at a time knowing that everything is in hand. But the fact that the Nest WiFi Pro offers more features for free compared to Eero’s package means that, despite my gripes about Google’s system, it wins out in a straight duel.

Netgear Orbi 960

The Orbi 96T0 (RBKE963) is Netgear’s flagship mesh WiFi product, which the company calls the “world’s most powerful WiFi 6E system.” It’s also one of the most expensive consumer-level kits on the market, setting you back $1,499.99 for a three pack. It's a fantastic piece of gear but it's worth saying that the subset of people who could, would or should buy it remains far smaller than you might expect. Ultimately, I feel that if you’re paying luxury prices, you should expect a luxury product. There were plenty of times during testing that I went looking for a feature that was either only available via the web client, or behind a paywall. While, yes, much of your cash is going to the superlative hardware, but for this sort of money, the fact you have to pay extra for some table-stakes features is insulting. If you’re looking for a new Wi-Fi system and aren’t prepared to spend almost $1,500, it’s worth considering our other top picks for the best Wi-Fi routers and mesh systems.

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi is governed by the International Standard IEEE 802.11, and every few years the standards evolve. Until 2018, routers were sold under their IEEE designation, leaving consumers to deal with the word soup of products labeled 802.11 b/a/g/n/ac et cetera. Mercifully, wiser heads opted to rebrand the standards with numbers: Wi-Fi 4, Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6. We’re presently between two Wi-Fi generations, Wi-Fi 6 and 6E, which relates to the frequencies the standard uses. Wi-Fi 6 covers routers which operate on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, while the latter means it can also use the 6GHz band.

Each Wi-Fi band has tradeoffs, because the slower radio frequencies have greater range but less speed. 2.4GHz signals will travel a long way in your home but aren’t quick, while 6GHz is blisteringly fast, but can be defeated by a sturdy brick wall. A lot of Wi-Fi-enabled gear, like a lot of smart home products, only use 2.4GHz because the range is better and it’s a lot cheaper. But it means that the band is also overcrowded and slow. You can check the speed of your Wi-Fi by using an online speed test like Speedtest by Ookla. This will display your download and upload speeds, offering better insight.

Linksys’ CEO Jonathan Bettino told Engadget why mesh systems are an “advancement in Wi-Fi technology” over buying a single point router. With one transmitter, the signal can degrade the further away from the router you go, or the local environment isn’t ideal. “You can have a small [home], but there’s thick walls [...] or things in the way that just interfere with your wireless signal,” he said.

Historically, the solution to a home’s Wi-Fi dead zone was to buy a Wi-Fi Range Extender but Bettino said the hardware has both a “terrible user experience” and one of the highest return rates of any consumer electronics product. Mesh Wi-Fi, by comparison, offers “multiple nodes that can be placed anywhere in your home,” says Bettino, resulting in “ubiquitous Wi-Fi” that feels as if you have a “router in every room.”

Rather than having one main router in your home, having a “router in every room” is the biggest selling point for mesh Wi-Fi given how reliant we all are on the internet. Each node is in constant contact with each other, broadcasting a single, seamless network to all of your connected devices. There’s no separate network for the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, just a single name that you connect to.

You may also see mesh Wi-Fi systems advertised as dual-band or tri-band routers. Dual-band routers typically offer a 2.4GHz and 5GHz band. Wi-Fi 6E tri-band routers, on the other hand, provide a 2.4GHz, a 5GHz and a 6GHz band —or in the case of Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6 routers, a 2.4GHz band and two 5GHz bands. Once you’ve got your head wrapped around the concept of dual-band and tri-band, you should also be aware that the width of each band is measured in MHz. The wider the band, the more MHz it can support, typically 20MHz, 40MHz, 80MHz, 160MHz or 320MHz. The wider the channel, the more bandwidth it offers.

When developing a mobile multiplayer game, there’s an added layer of complexity. It’s not just the technical challenge of connecting the players together, but every element of your game is affected – from the monetization to the gameplay itself.

With that in mind, we’ve brought together the tools and resources that’ll help you make your multiplayer game.

Which engine is best for multiplayer games?

Most engines feature multiplayer support in one way or another, whether it’s built-in or a plugin.

• Unity. Despite recent concerns, Unity is still the go-to choice for many mobile developers. Not only do they have guides on their website, they also have tons of the backend tools and features you’ll need to make your multiplayer game run smoothly.
• Defold. Completely free and open source. Defold is a very lightweight engine that’s perfect for mobile games. But it isn’t built for 3D games.
• Godot. Often considered the open-source alternative to Unity. It also has a very active community, building plugins for most of your needs. It’s a good engine for any genre.
• GameMaker. A great 2D engine that has multiplayer out of the box. While it costs for a commercial licence, it’s a flat fee or subscription rather than based on your earnings.
• Unreal. If you’re building a deep, 3D, competitive multiplayer game and want the best graphics, the only real choice is Unreal. But it’s overkill if you’re making a more casual game.

It’s always tricky picking an engine. You can easily end up in decision limbo, spending months researching each one. Luckily for you, GameAnalytics is compatible with most major engines and environments, making it easy for you to rely on data at any time.

What motivates people to play multiplayer games?

People play multiplayer games for very different reasons to a single-player game. It’s important to understand those motivations and how they affect your game’s design. Here are a couple of resources to bear in mind when designing.

• Understanding player motivations. There are eight main reasons why people play games. In this article, we dig into them and how they affect your game.
• Player motivation archetypes. Similarly, GameRefinery found that you can dig a little and split those motivations into twelve categories.

What tools do you need to make multiplayer games?

There are many tools you’ll need to integrate with your multiplayer game, if you want it to feel fair and satisfying to play. The four main areas to consider are:

1. Server hosting. Will you host your matches or host from the player’s machine? You’ll likely want to look at cloud providers, such as AWS Gaming or get a third-party to sort it out for you, like Gameye.
2. Matchmaking. It’s no fun joining a game with players who are far better than you. Instead, a matchmaker groups your players together based on their skill. You can also include other rules, such as their region. What matchmaker you choose largely depends on your engine.
3. Anti-cheat and DDoS protection. As soon as you open up your game to the general public, you could be a target of cyber attacks or just general cheating. Either way, make sure you have some way to protect the data you’re sending.
4. Backend systems. Most multiplayer games will need a database of users and other meta-features, such as achievement systems, leaderboards or economies. Services like LootLocker, Photon or Pragma make it easy to set these features up and keep them running.

How do you monetize multiplayer games?

Unlike casual games, advertising doesn’t particularly work with multiplayer. Adverts tend to interrupt the flow of a game, so you can’t show them during a match. Instead, developers need to focus on different models to monetize the game. There are three main approaches:

1. A one-off payment. Simple and easy. But it can leave you with a problem if you’re paying for ongoing services, such as servers. Make sure you have an exit strategy for how you’ll switch to a community-led game in the future.
2. Subscriptions and battle passes. These are often the most popular ways to monetize a multiplayer game. Offer new cosmetics and content and keep the game active.
3. In-app purchases and downloadable content. Offering packs that players can purchase to give them more in-game currency or cosmetic items works well.

However you decide to monetize, it’s important to find the right balance. Make sure you A/B test different prices and bundles to see which is most effective. If you need help, check out our A/B testing.

How do you manage your community?

One of the major incentives for multiplayer games is the social aspect. If you want to keep your game active and thriving, you need to build and engage with your community.

• Building a community on Discord. In this article, we walk through how to get started with your community.
• Three ways to engage your community. Once you’ve established your community, here are three ways to keep them happy and active.

What’s the best way to make a multiplayer game?

It all comes down to data. Your analytics is key to making sure that your multiplayer game is active and effective. You need to track how players behave inside the matches, how your servers are doing, how your monetization models are performing, and what’s going on in your community.

With so many different data sources, it can be challenging to bring it all together in a cohesive way. This is where DataSuite comes in. We can bring all your data into a single Data Warehouse, allowing you to query the data from all these different sources in one central location. Check out what DataSuite can do for you.

Apple has updated the operating software for the Apple Vision Pro, visionOS, and added a bunch of features. The company unveiled the changes at its live WWDC keynote and they look pretty useful. 

The biggest news with visionOS 2 is the addition of spatial photos that provide depth to 2D images. When the Vision Pro released earlier this year, Apple had reserved this technology for videos. Spatial photos will allow users to peek beyond the frames of the photo by moving your head, giving people a bit more to see from the right and left sides of the original image. 

Engadget

There's a new way to share these spatial photos with friends and family. The SharePlay feature in the Photos app lets people simultaneously view content and discuss it in real-time by integrating the headset's avatar personas. Vacation photos just got a serious level up. 

The operating system is also bringing updated gestural control options. You'll be able to hold your hand up and tap to open the home view and flip your hand over to bring up time and battery details. Another tap will bring up Control Center and quick access to notifications. 

Engadget

Later this year, visionOS 2 will offer some benefits to those who use the AVP for screen-mirroring. Resolution is getting an upgrade, and a forthcoming option for a wraparound ultrawide will be able to approximate two 4k monitors placed side by side.

Travel mode is even getting a little bit of an update here, with train support. In other words, the algorithm will be familiar with the usual bumps from a subway or long-distance train ride, so you can continue using the headset without any interruptions. 

For developers, there are plenty of new APIs coming down the pike, like one for tabletop apps and another for advanced volumetric images. Finally, there's a lens coming for the Canon EOS R6 digital camera that will allow filmmakers to make immersive video experiences for the headset. 

While not a game-changing software update, the addition of the aforementioned features should make strapping a computer to your head more of an attractive notion. The thing’s still $3,500 though.

Catch up here for all the news out of Apple's WWDC 2024.

As the grand finale of Xbox’s Summer Game Fest showcase, after the new consoles, we were treated to the exclusive premiere of the latest addition to the Gears series, Gears of War: E-Day.

The trailer kicks off with a one-on-one brawl between the Gears guy and a grunt, ending in a headshot. Immediately after, however, the floor collapses between them. Fortunately, Gears’ Guy #2 is there to grab your hand. And the sad Mad World melody plays in the background. Because Gears. Called E-Day, and ending on an apocalyptic view of a city, it looks like this game will center on an invasion. Apparently, this is the origin story centered on the Locust invasion on Emergence Day, through the eyes of Marcus Fenix — AKA Gears guy. Get the big guns. There’s no release window just yet, but it will, of course, be landing on Game Pass when it does arrive.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!

Instagram launched Notes in December 2022 as a way for people to share statuses (not so dissimilar to Facebook) on the platform. Now, the Meta-owned app is taking inspiration from its sister site for more features, with the addition of Note Prompts. 

Instagram first experimented with Note Prompts earlier this year, and the feature allows users to share questions such as "What should I eat?" or "Who is going to be in X city this weekend?" Friends can then respond with tips, suggestions and random thoughts on the subject. It feels very Facebook circa 2012, as does another new feature, Mentions, in which users can tag a friend directly in their Notes. The example Instagram gives, "Hanging with @user later," would be right out of the early 2010s with just adding "Text! :)" Instagram also announced Note Likes, which works similarly to how likes function everywhere else on Instagram — all users need to do is double tap a note or click the heart. 

Notes have only emerged on Instagram in the past couple of years. They mirror stories in many ways, lasting only 24 hours and with controls as to who can see them (such as just mutual followers). Notes are visible in a user's inbox and on profiles. 

Instagram is expanding two of its safety features in an effort to ramp up its bullying protections for teens. The company is changing how limiting and restricting work in its app to give teens ways to deal with potential bullies that it claims are less likely to lead to further retaliation.

With the changes, Instagram users will have the ability to “limit” their post interactions to “close friends” only. That means that users will only see comments, direct messages, tags and mentions from people on their close friends list. Other followers will still be able to interact with their posts, but those comments and messages won’t be visible to others.

The company previously introduced comment limiting as a creator-focused anti-bullying feature in 2021 with the goal of preventing the kind of sudden flood of harassment experienced by several UK football players. The latest changes, according to Instagram, are geared more toward teens who are dealing with bullies, but may be hesitant to use the app’s block feature due to fears of escalating potential conflicts,

For cases when people may be dealing with one particular bully, Instagram is making similar changes to its “restrict” feature. Users will be able to prevent restricted individuals from tagging or mentioning them. Comments from those on the restricted list will also be automatically hidden from others.

The updates comes as Meta is facing scrutiny over its handling of teen safety and other issues. The company was sued by dozens of states last year for allegedly failing to protect its youngest users from harmful aspects of its service.

A robust backend infrastructure is the engine that powers all top-grossing mobile games. It enables engaging gameplay experiences and handles essential functions such as user authentication, multiplayer capabilities, LiveOps, leaderboards, cloud storage, and much more.

However, there are numerous mobile game backend providers (also called backend-as-a-service) in the market. By the end of this article, you’ll have an understanding of who they are, and how they differ from each other.

Should you build or buy your backend tech?

Most of the companies you see in the top-grossing gaming charts use bespoke backend technology that they’ve built in-house. This allows for customization and total control of the backend tech stack, but it requires hiring a team of engineers – a time-intensive and costly process.

The vast majority of game developers, however, do not have the time, human resources, or money to invest in building in-house backend tech.

Instead, they use external backend providers, which offer “plug-and-play” solutions that make the process far more affordable and efficient. In turn, this lets them focus on creating exceptional gameplay experiences.

So which mobile game backend providers are leading the way?

Leading backend providers for mobile games in 2024

Metaplay: the backend of choice for games with top-grossing ambitions

Metaplay’s backend is particularly suited to developers building a game with a long-term mindset, one that accounts for the evolving tech needs, innovation, and dynamism required to take a game from good to great. Metaplay offers tools to power feature-complete games from day one all the way through to hit status, such as:

• Game programming
• Backend engineering
• Product and LiveOps
• QA and customer support

Metaplay’s backend solution is suitable for a wide range of games built on Unity, from casual titles to real-time multiplayer experiences.

What sets Metaplay apart from other backend providers is the flexibility of the technology?

Alternative providers offer a limited set of functionalities, which are good enough to get you on par with your competitors. However, when the time comes to innovate, to add custom game features that are not supported by the limited off-the-shelf functionalities, problems emerge.

Specifically, in these cases, developers need to do a major code refactor or migrate their game to a different backend provider. At best, this is a necessary nuisance that drags on for a few months. At worst, it’s a disaster that eats years of development time.

Metaplay, by contrast, offers a tech upgrade path, ensuring game innovation is never stifled by technological limitations.

Their fully programmable stack is also server-authoritative and, as such, cheat-proof by default, which guarantees developers peace of mind as they scale. And because Metaplay ships as source code deployed into a game developer’s own cloud, when making games with Metaplay, a game studio never has to worry about vendor risk.

The Metaplay SDK includes a pre-built but fully customizable LiveOps and player management dashboard, which has everything ambitious game developers need to engage, retain, and monetize their players as their game grows.

Click here to learn more about Metaplay’s backend for mobile game developers.

Pricing

Pricing for Metaplay’s backend technology starts at €995 per month for managed development environments, opportunities to add production and staging environments as you globally launch your game.
Game studios can also choose from a variety of expert support packages tailored to their needs, as well as bespoke Private Cloud options for self-hosting at scale.

Beamable

Beamable provides tools for monetizing players (in-game stores, payment infrastructure, notifications), connecting players (leaderboards, chats, guilds or clans, multiplayer gameplay, tournaments), and optimizing the game experience (analytics into player behavior, A/B testing for new features, content management for deploying new content).

From a more technical angle, Beamable also provides admin tools for development, microservices that eliminate the need to build and operate a game server, and more.

They also offer both Unity and Unreal SDKs, allowing developers to add Beamable’s backend service to games built on either of the leading engines.

Pricing

Beamable’s subscription tiers begin at $10 per million API calls, also providing an indie tier for solo or small teams without revenue or funding. For large companies who expect over 200M API calls, Beamable offers special pricing.

Azure PlayFab

Azure PlayFab, owned by Microsoft (and formerly known only as ‘PlayFab’), provides a solid set of building blocks to launch a fully functional game and is one of the longest-running backend solutions, having launched in 2014.

On a high level, PlayFab’s offering can be divided into three pieces: multiplayer tools, LiveOps tools, and analytics.

PlayFab’s tools for multiplayer games include party networking and chat, cross-network identity and data, multiplayer servers for low-latency real-time gameplay, leaderboards and statistics, and matchmaking and groups (like guilds or clans).

PlayFab’s LiveOps tools include game economy infrastructure, player communication, automation to set up custom operations and react to events in real time, content management (like remote updates to game assets), and experiments (like running tests on player segments).

Finally, PlayFab’s real-time analytics let developers understand how their game is performing and how users are interacting with it. And in terms of data, PlayFab also ensures GDPR and COPPA compliance.

Pricing

PlayFab’s pricing has several tiers: a free tier for games with less than 100K users, a pay-as-you-go plan, a standard plan at $99/month, and a premium plan at $1,999/month.

Photon

Photon’s inclusion on this list could be seen as slightly contentious as, strictly speaking, it’s not exactly a backend (or at least not in the same sense as the other vendors on this list).

More so, Photon is a multiplayer engine that is particularly valuable for developers aiming to create highly scalable and real-time multiplayer experiences.

One of the standout features of Photon Engine is its low latency and reliable networking capabilities, which enable seamless real-time multiplayer interactions. This makes it an ideal choice for fast-paced multiplayer games, such as first-person shooters or sports simulations.

Photon also offers extensive matchmaking and lobby management functionality, allowing developers to create custom matchmaking algorithms and efficiently connect players. This feature is invaluable for games that rely on fair and balanced matchmaking, enhancing the overall player experience.

Another great aspect of Photon is its authoritative server support, enabling developers to enforce game rules and prevent cheating. This is crucial for competitive multiplayer games where maintaining a fair and level playing field is so important.

Note that Photon is not a complete backend provider – it focuses on multiplayer game infrastructure. Some developers, for instance, use Photon in tandem with other backend tools like Metaplay to cover all of their mobile game’s backend needs.

Pricing

Pricing for Photon is tiered according to concurrent users (CCU), with options available for indie developers and larger studios.

Heroic Labs

Heroic Labs is a composable product stack featuring an open-source game server, a LiveOps platform, a game development toolkit, and managed cloud services.

Nakama, Heroic Labs’ flagship tool, is a scalable and flexible backend server for multiplayer games. It provides essential features such as user authentication, real-time multiplayer functionality, social features, leaderboards, and server-side scripting.

Nakama is particularly valuable for developers looking to create large-scale multiplayer experiences across different platforms, as it offers high-performance networking and seamless synchronization.

In addition, Heroic Labs’ latest tool, Satori, provides a real-time data platform designed for building live, interactive, and immersive experiences. Satori enables developers to stream data in real time, facilitating dynamic gameplay, chat systems, and live events.

Satori is particularly useful in instances where real-time data updates and instant communication are essential, such as massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), live competitions, or other collaborative experiences.

Heroic Labs’ cloud tool is another handy feature, letting developers deploy dedicated Nakama and Satori clusters on a managed and private cloud.

Hiro, which is Heroic Labs’ game development kit (GDK), is a client-server library built on the Nakama game server with built-in game economy, social, and LiveOps features pre-made to be flexibly integrated into your game.

Pricing

Heroic Labs offers a flexible pricing model, including a free tier for indie developers, and custom plans for larger-scale games.

Choosing the Right Backend Provider for Your Mobile Game

When it comes to backend infrastructure for mobile games, partnering with an external provider rather than building your own technology offers numerous benefits. Aside from saving significant time and money, developers are able to maintain focus on the number one priority: building an engaging gameplay experience that keeps their players coming back for more.

Choosing the right backend provider is a big decision and requires a lot of research. Ideally, the backend service you go with from day one will remain your provider over the long run, as the cost of switching later is higher and will continue to rise as a game matures.

This article was designed to serve as an overview of the leading mobile game backend providers, but it is far from definitive. Use this as a starting point for conducting deeper research, and remember that your game is likely to evolve in ways you haven’t thought of yet – so ensure your backend provider gives you all the functionalities, scalability, and reliability to support your future tech needs.

Just like it slimmed down the latest iPad Pro, Apple is said to be looking at making the iPhone more slender. To be more precise, the company is working on a "significantly thinner" device that may arrive as part of the iPhone 17 lineup in place of a Plus model, according to The Information.

This model has been described as an iPhone X-level leap forward in design language for the company, according to several sources. Apple has yet to lock down the design and it's said to be looking at various options, including an aluminum chassis. An upgraded front-facing camera could be housed alongside Face ID sensors in a smaller pill-shaped cutout, while the rear camera array could move to the center of the phone (that could reduce the possibility of accidentally covering the lenses with your fingers). The screen size is pegged somewhere in between that of the current base iPhone and the iPhone Pro Max — so between 6.12 and 6.69 inches.

If that's of interest to you, it's worth bearing in mind that the slimmed down iPhone may actually be more expensive than the iPhone Pro Max, which starts at $1,200. But hey, at least you'll have some time to save for it.

This thinner model could be set to replace the Plus in the iPhone lineup. The report suggests that there will be an iPhone 16 Plus, but that could be the end of that format, which hasn't lived up to Apple's sales expectations. This year's iPhones are said to be more about AI advancements than any major changes to the physical design, though there may be a new button on the side with touch sensitivity for improved camera control.

Engadget has asked Apple for comment on the report. Meanwhile, there's unfortunately no indication that the company is going back to smaller screen sizes. I still miss my iPhone 5 sometimes.

Soon, AT&T subscribers will have the option to ensure that they have access to cell service even in typical dead zones, like deep inside national parks or far-flung rural locations. The mobile carrier has been working with AST SpaceMobile since 2018 under a Memorandum of Understanding, helping the latter test two-way audio calls, texts and video calls via satellites in space using ordinary smartphones. Now, the companies have entered a definitive commercial agreement, which means AT&T is getting close to offering subscribers the capability to transform their regular phones into legit satellite devices.

Phones need to be close enough to cell towers to be able to get any sort of service. That's why people aren't usually able to call their families, or even text them, when they're in a forest or in the mountains. AT&T's satellite-to-phone service will use satellites as cell towers, and since they're placed in orbit, they're able to provide connectivity even in remote areas.

The companies have reached an agreement just in time for a rocket launch this summer that will ferry five commercial AST satellites to space. Those satellites will enable AT&T to roll out its service and are just the first ones in the company's planned constellation. Unfortunately, AT&T has yet to reveal a specific rollout date for the service, and it's also unclear if it will charge extra for the capability.

Last year, AT&T wrote the FCC to raise concerns about a similar satellite-to-phone technology T-Mobile and SpaceX's Starlink are working on. The two companies formed an alliance in 2022, promising to provide users with a service that they'll be able to access even if they're in the middle of the ocean. SpaceX launched the first Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell service capability in January 2024, and the companies sent and received the first text messages via T-Mobile using the satellites a week later. The carrier said it's planning to offer satellite-based texting to the public sometime this year.

Swiss start-up Climeworks has done it again. The company just opened the world’s largest carbon capture plant in Iceland, dwarfing its own record of how much CO2 it can pull from the air. The company’s previous record-holding carbon capture plant, Orca, sucks around 4,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere per year, but the new plant can handle nearly ten times that, as reported by The Washington Post.

The plant’s called Mammoth and boasts 72 industrial fans that can pull 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air each year. Just like with Orca, the CO2 isn’t recycled. It’s stored underground and eventually trapped in stone, permanently (within reason) removing it from the environment. The plant’s actually located on a dormant volcano, so it’ll make a great hideout for a James Bond villain should it ever cease operations.

The location was chosen for its proximity to the Hellisheidi geothermal energy plant, which is used to power the facility's fans and heat chemical filters to extract CO2 with water vapor. After extraction, the CO2 is separated from the steam, compressed and dissolved in water. Finally, it’s pumped 2,300 feet underground into volcanic basalt. This compound reacts with the magnesium, calcium and iron in the rock to form crystals, which become solid reservoirs of CO2. It’s pretty nifty technology.

However, it’s not the end-all solution to climate change. It’s barely a blip. For the world to achieve "carbon neutrality" by 2050, "we should be removing something like six to 16 billion tons of CO2 per year from the air," said Climeworks founder Jan Wurzbacher, according to reporting by CBS News.

Therein lies the problem. This facility, the largest of its kind by a wide margin, can capture up to 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air each year, but that’s just 0.0006 percent of what’s needed to meet the minimum annual removal threshold as indicated by Wurzbacher. There are other plants, of course, but all of them combined don’t make a serious dent in what’s required to pull us from the brink.

To that end, Wurzbacher has pleaded with other companies to take up the cause. He says that Climeworks has a goal of surpassing millions of tons captured per year by 2030 and a billion by 2050. The company’s chief technology officer, Carlos Haertel, told 60 Minutes that scaling up the process globally is possible, but requires political will to rally behind the initiative.

The Biden administration recently committed $4 billion to jumpstart the industry here in the states and earmarked $1.2 billion for a pair of large-scale projects. The US Department of Energy also started a program called Carbon Negative Shot, with a goal of fostering the development of budget-friendly carbon capture technology.

The method of carbon capture deployed by Climeworks is just one of many approaches. These processes range from stacks of limestone blocks that absorb CO2 like a sponge to giant hot air balloons that freeze and trap the chemical compound. Restoring forests is another option, which is something companies like Apple and Goldman Sachs have experimented with. Which one is best? All of them together deployed at global scale. Whatever it takes. Climate change isn’t fooling around.

Swiss start-up Climeworks has done it again. The company just opened the world’s largest carbon capture plant in Iceland, dwarfing its own record of how much CO2 it can pull from the air. The company’s previous record-holding carbon capture plant, Orca, sucks around 4,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere per year, but the new plant can handle nearly ten times that, as reported by The Washington Post.

The plant’s called Mammoth and boasts 72 industrial fans that can pull 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air each year. Just like with Orca, the CO2 isn’t recycled. It’s stored underground and eventually trapped in stone, permanently (within reason) removing it from the environment. The plant’s actually located on a dormant volcano, so it’ll make a great hideout for a James Bond villain should it ever cease operations.

The location was chosen for its proximity to the Hellisheidi geothermal energy plant, which is used to power the facility's fans and heat chemical filters to extract CO2 with water vapor. After extraction, the CO2 is separated from the steam, compressed and dissolved in water. Finally, it’s pumped 2,300 feet underground into volcanic basalt. This compound reacts with the magnesium, calcium and iron in the rock to form crystals, which become solid reservoirs of CO2. It’s pretty nifty technology.

However, it’s not the end-all solution to climate change. It’s barely a blip. For the world to achieve "carbon neutrality" by 2050, "we should be removing something like six to 16 billion tons of CO2 per year from the air," said Climeworks founder Jan Wurzbacher, according to reporting by CBS News.

Therein lies the problem. This facility, the largest of its kind by a wide margin, can capture up to 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air each year, but that’s just 0.0006 percent of what’s needed to meet the minimum annual removal threshold as indicated by Wurzbacher. There are other plants, of course, but all of them combined don’t make a serious dent in what’s required to pull us from the brink.

To that end, Wurzbacher has pleaded with other companies to take up the cause. He says that Climeworks has a goal of surpassing millions of tons captured per year by 2030 and a billion by 2050. The company’s chief technology officer, Carlos Haertel, told 60 Minutes that scaling up the process globally is possible, but requires political will to rally behind the initiative.

The Biden administration recently committed $4 billion to jumpstart the industry here in the states and earmarked $1.2 billion for a pair of large-scale projects. The US Department of Energy also started a program called Carbon Negative Shot, with a goal of fostering the development of budget-friendly carbon capture technology.

The method of carbon capture deployed by Climeworks is just one of many approaches. These processes range from stacks of limestone blocks that absorb CO2 like a sponge to giant hot air balloons that freeze and trap the chemical compound. Restoring forests is another option, which is something companies like Apple and Goldman Sachs have experimented with. Which one is best? All of them together deployed at global scale. Whatever it takes. Climate change isn’t fooling around.

You need to wear a lot of different hats when you’re making a game – especially if you’re doing it solo. One day, you’re a foley artist. Next, you’re a marketer. Even as a programmer or designer, it’s useful to understand how these elements come together, so you can make sure everything ties into your theme.

To help you along the way, we gathered all the free resources you can use to learn about the different areas of game development. Before you use the resources, we encourage you to make sure the assets are royalty-free.

Game design resources

Game design is all about the choices you make. The rules and mechanics that bring your idea to life. From small decisions, like whether to use coyote time in your platformer, to big decisions, like the main theme of the game.

1. Game Accessibility Guidelines. Every game designer should bookmark these guidelines. They go through the principles you should follow and give examples for each task. There’s even a checklist you can download.
2. Develop.Games. Thor Hall, the creator behind Heartbound and ex-Blizzard developer, has put together the Develop.Games site. It goes through both the development and the business side of creating games. A must-read for any would-be developer.
3. GameMaker’s Toolkit. This YouTube channel is an excellent series that deep dives into the most important elements of game design. You’ll find topics like creating puzzles, developing for a specific genre, and the psychology of the players themselves.

1. GDC Vault. The Game Developers Conference adds all the various talks and presentations from their events to their vault. These range from technical advice on how to develop specific ideas to wider trends and best practices.
2. The Level Design Book. This website covers everything about level design, starting from the theory to the actual tools you’ll need to get started. There’s even a section for specific assets and resources you can use.
3. Scroll back (the theory of cameras in side scrollers). This gigantic article could be a book all to itself. It covers everything you might want to know about how to use a camera in 2D games.
4. Pixel Architect. Dev diaries like these can be a useful way to see how to actually build your game. There are plenty to follow, but Pixel Architect is a particularly good start.
5. Design Doc. This channel answers the tricky, specific questions you might have about game design, focusing on the mechanics themselves. How do you stop people from hoarding items? Why add critical hits? What’s the point of fast travel?

1. The Architect of Games. While this channel seems to be about critiquing games with humour – it actually analyzes the actual game design decisions and explores the themes of the game in depth.
2. Brackeys. A huge channel of tutorials that also delves into the actual game design decisions behind that development. The only downside is that they shut down a few years ago, so some videos can be a little outdated.

Game development resources

At the heart of every game is the code itself. Even if you’re experienced with a programming language, you’re likely to bump into a few surprises when developing your game. Either way, there are tons of resources out there. And if you need an engine, consider the open-source Godot.

1. freeCodeCamp.org. If you want to learn to code, this is the channel to visit. They go deep into the practical and theory side and even have the full Harvard Computer Science University course as a 25-hour video. Yes, a Harvard University course – completely free.
2. Game Programming Patterns. Keeping your code clean and organised is a major challenge, so this free ebook teaches you the best practices.
3. Programming Patterns on Unity. Unity has released a similar guide around coding patterns and explaining how to use them inside Unity.
4. Ludum Dare. A twice-yearly game jam over a weekend. Not only is it inspiring, but it’s worth reading the posts from other developers as they delve into their process.
5. Introduction to Game Development with Unity. This Udemy tutorial is a perfect start for anyone looking to use Unity. You’ll see how to use cameras and objects, and understand the Unity interface.
6. GDQuest. If you want to get into Godot, then look no further than GDQuest. A huge treasure-trove of free tutorials that cover pretty much everything you need – even if you’re not going to use Godot.

1. Game Development Crash Course. Udemy also has a crash course about how to use the Solar2D game engine.
2. GitHub Student Developer Pack. Get your school enrolled, and you’ll be able to get access to real-world tools and practice using them. There’s a page about how to get your school involved.
3. Codeacademy game dev course. This four-hour introductory course will help you get the ball rolling and learn about game design and development.
4. LootLocker free guides. These step-by-step guides walk you through specific mechanics, particularly meta-mechanics like energy systems.

Game art free resources

Not all games need fantastic graphics to be a success. Vampire Survivors used assets that Luca Galante simply bought in a pack. There are also plenty of videos out there about how to draw pixel-art-style games. If you need a free tool, consider open-source tools like Gimp, Blender, or Krita.

1. Itch.io. There are thousands of free assets on itch.io, from character sprites to user-interface elements. Even if you only use them for inspiration, it’s a fantastic collection.
2. Kenney.nl. Not only can you get thousands of free 2D and 3D assets, there are loads of guides on how to edit them or create your own.
3. Blender Guru. If you’re looking to create slick 3D graphics, Blender Guru is the channel to follow. He offers guides and tutorials for beginners and advanced artists alike.

1. Polligon. Created by Blender Guru, you can find Blender textures, models and more in the free section.
2. CRTLpaint. This site has a bunch of free video series that teach you how to get into digital painting for yourself. From concept art to the principles of design. You can also follow their YouTube channel.
3. Proko. If you want to learn the basics of drawing, particularly characters, then this channel will help you get there.
4. 2DGameArtGuru. Learn all the most useful tools, such as Inkscape, Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw. There are absolutely loads of tools here.

Music and sound-free resources

Your music can define the tone and atmosphere of your game. It’s vital to make your game come alive. These resources can help you produce that soundtrack, from composing your melody to putting it all together. If you need an open-source tool, check out Ardour, MuseScore (if you know sheet music), and Audacity.

1. Sonniss: Free archive. This is one of the biggest libraries of sound effects out there. Every year they give out free samples at GDC. This is the link to their 10GB archive of all those free sound effects.
2. Bensound. A huge collection of royalty-free music that you can filter and organise by mood.
3. Music Matters. If you’re completely new to music theory, this channel has tons of videos that will get you up to speed in no time.
4. Spitfire Audio. Not only does this channel talk you through music theory and crafting tracks from multiple instruments, but they also show the process behind actually composing a track from start to finish. They also have a free library of instrument samples called BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover.
5. Ryan Leach. Ryan creates videos about how to compose music for TV, film and games. He covers not only basic music theory, but how to easily turn that into an orchestral masterpiece.

Narrative game design resources

Storytelling and narrative design are quite different from writing a novel or script. You need to consider not only the character and plot, but what actions the player might take. It’s all about choices. If you need a tool to help you plan out your story’s flow, look into the open-source engine Twine.

1. Emily Short. This blog is a huge list of books and blogs that you should read if you want to learn about interactive narratives.
2. Screencraft: Write for video games. This article explores the various types of writing you might need to cover, from cut scenes to side quests.
3. Game Developer: Storytelling in games.This article is the first in a series that dives deep into what narrative design is and how to think about it.

Game marketing and monetization resources

Once you’ve developed your game, it’s time to start getting it out to the masses. Here are a few resources to help you get the word out.

1. Kickstarter: Tips for games. Unsurprisingly, Kickstarter has a section on their site about how to set up your project, entice people in, and get funded. A lot of the advice works well for your general marketing, too.
2. Helpshift’s marketing guide. Focused on mobile gaming, this ten-step guide walks you through what you need to do as well as in-depth case studies.

1. Game Marketing Genie. These guys have a great guide and overview about how to market your game, from understanding your competitors to using Steam.
2. AskGameDev. This channel has a specific playlist all about how to market your video game. There are 17 videos here that will surely help.
3. Steambase: If you want to research other games, Steambase is a really useful resource. It tracks Steam sales, so you can know when to best discount your own game.

How to keep track of gaming industry trends?

Not only is it important to market your game, but to keep an eye on trends in the industry. What’s working? What isn’t? Here are a few resources that can help you out.

1. GWI’s gaming playbook. This free report from GWI goes into the stats and figures that you need to know about the industry.
2. GameAnalytics. Our free tool can help you track and research your own game, but we can also give you insights into the industry.

Once your mobile game has had time to mature, it might be worth developing a version for console or PC. If you’re looking to port the other direction, from console to smartphone, check out our blog on adapting games for mobile.

In this article, we’ll look at how porting to consoles or PCs could help extend the lifespan of your game, bring in more revenue, and the challenges you’ll face.

What are the benefits of porting your mobile game?

Not every game is suitable to port over to PC or mobile. The platforms have vastly different requirements and player expectations. However, this shouldn’t deter you from exploring the option.

Porting can open your game to a new market

The mobile gaming market holds around half the overall gaming revenue in the world – consisting of around $92 billion. However, it’s worth remembering that console and PC markets still make up the other half.

While there’s an overlap of players, porting your game gives it more visibility, opens up new revenue streams, and provides new opportunities to reach a wider audience.

It isn’t just porting your game that can help you take advantage of the PC and console markets. Cross-platform play is becoming increasingly common, as we explored in our trends for 2024.

The advantages of launching on a new platform are similar to launching in a new country. Not only do you reach those new players, but you can celebrate the launch, reach out to press, and keep your game present in the zeitgeist.

It also gives more choice to your current players. If they can play on their PC or console, as well as their smartphone, they’re far more likely to continue.

Porting increases your return on investment

The cost of porting an existing game is typically lower than going through the whole game lifecycle – half the initial cost, according to iLogos Game Studios.

This is borne out when we look at the figures. In a post from Kevuru Games, elementary 2D games cost up to $10,000 to develop, causal games cost up to $50,000, and mid-level games cost up to $120,000. As a benchmark, they claim that Angry Birds cost around $140,000 to develop.

Meanwhile, iLogos Game Studios estimates it costs around $5,000 to $20,000 to port simple games. Although, for more complex games that can rise to between $20,000 and $100,000.

This makes it a viable option for publishers with an already successful title. Being able to reach the other half of the gaming market, while costing only half your initial development is a far better return on investment than taking a risk on a completely new title.

Porting can lead to increased session length

People tend to play for longer on PC and console than they do with mobile. The average session length of a mobile gamer is around 30 minutes to an hour. The average for console gamers is an hour to two hours.

This was even more prominent when you look at the extremes – an additional 20% of console gamers said they play between two and four hours, compared to only 10% of mobile gamers.

These increases in session length can directly lead to more in-app purchases. The longer people play, the more likely they’ll pay.

What are the challenges to porting your game?

There are plenty of reasons to port your mobile game to another platform. However, there are a few challenges you’ll need to consider before you start the journey.

Advertising is uncommon on PC and console

This trend is changing. While it’s a relatively new and unexplored market right now, Microsoft and Sony have both announced that they’re looking to bring advertising to their games. The difference is that most advertising on consoles or PCs tends to be more subtle native advertising, where the ads are a part of the scenery and world.

Because advertising is still an emerging trend, free-to-play console and PC games rely on microtransactions and subscriptions for their revenue. With that in mind, you’ll need to carefully analyze your data to identify the best strategy. You can also look at other creative ways to increase your revenue on our blog, such as merchandising and IP deals.

The development takes time

Though there are fewer costs associated with porting a game than developing one from scratch, there are technical challenges to consider. The game engine and programming language you use could be unsuitable for the new platform.

After rewriting sections of your code, you’ll also need to make sure that you’ve optimized your game for the new platform. There are different hardware and resolutions to consider, which may need additional options in your settings.

Controls and interfaces might need revisiting

How players interact with your game on PC and console is very different from mobile. Certain mechanics and inputs can be physically impossible to replicate identically. Likewise, your user interface might not be optimized for different controllers. For example, moving items around an inventory can be very different between console, PC, and mobile due to the different ways people interact with the menu.

Data is key to finding the right balance

You’ll need to experiment with subtle variations between platforms. For example, you might show offers at longer intervals than you would on mobile, make levels more difficult to compensate for more dexterous input devices, or adjust user interface elements to be more intuitive. If you need help in this regard, we have a guide on how to run A/B tests using our platform or check out how we can help with your live ops.

You will also need to amalgamate the data from all your versions to see what trends are specific to a platform and which are generalized to your game design. If you need to collect and study data from multiple platforms, look at our DataSuite.

Swiss start-up Climeworks has done it again. The company just opened the world’s largest carbon capture plant in Iceland, dwarfing its own record of how much CO2 it can pull from the air. The company’s previous record-holding carbon capture plant, Orca, sucks around 4,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere per year, but the new plant can handle nearly ten times that, as reported by The Washington Post.

The plant’s called Mammoth and boasts 72 industrial fans that can pull 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air each year. Just like with Orca, the CO2 isn’t recycled. It’s stored underground and eventually trapped in stone, permanently (within reason) removing it from the environment. The plant’s actually located on a dormant volcano, so it’ll make a great hideout for a James Bond villain should it ever cease operations.

The location was chosen for its proximity to the Hellisheidi geothermal energy plant, which is used to power the facility's fans and heat chemical filters to extract CO2 with water vapor. After extraction, the CO2 is separated from the steam, compressed and dissolved in water. Finally, it’s pumped 2,300 feet underground into volcanic basalt. This compound reacts with the magnesium, calcium and iron in the rock to form crystals, which become solid reservoirs of CO2. It’s pretty nifty technology.

However, it’s not the end-all solution to climate change. It’s barely a blip. For the world to achieve "carbon neutrality" by 2050, "we should be removing something like six to 16 billion tons of CO2 per year from the air," said Climeworks founder Jan Wurzbacher, according to reporting by CBS News.

Therein lies the problem. This facility, the largest of its kind by a wide margin, can capture up to 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air each year, but that’s just 0.0006 percent of what’s needed to meet the minimum annual removal threshold as indicated by Wurzbacher. There are other plants, of course, but all of them combined don’t make a serious dent in what’s required to pull us from the brink.

To that end, Wurzbacher has pleaded with other companies to take up the cause. He says that Climeworks has a goal of surpassing millions of tons captured per year by 2030 and a billion by 2050. The company’s chief technology officer, Carlos Haertel, told 60 Minutes that scaling up the process globally is possible, but requires political will to rally behind the initiative.

The Biden administration recently committed $4 billion to jumpstart the industry here in the states and earmarked $1.2 billion for a pair of large-scale projects. The US Department of Energy also started a program called Carbon Negative Shot, with a goal of fostering the development of budget-friendly carbon capture technology.

The method of carbon capture deployed by Climeworks is just one of many approaches. These processes range from stacks of limestone blocks that absorb CO2 like a sponge to giant hot air balloons that freeze and trap the chemical compound. Restoring forests is another option, which is something companies like Apple and Goldman Sachs have experimented with. Which one is best? All of them together deployed at global scale. Whatever it takes. Climate change isn’t fooling around.

Graduating college is a huge achievement. If you’d like to show your appreciation for a tech-savvy grad, or if you just want to help them acclimate to their new life, there are tons of gadgets and services you can gift to make it easier for them. We at Engadget spend our days testing these kinds of products and figuring out which ones are actually good — if you need some help jogging your brain, we’ve rounded up a few of our favorite college graduation gift ideas below.

Rebel Moon: Part 2 - The Scargiver is an empty feast. It's a relentless onslaught of explosions, sci-fi tropes and meaningless exposition that amounts to nothing. And yet somehow it's still better than the first film in Zack Snyder's wannabe sci-fi epic franchise for Netflix, Rebel Moon: Part 1 - A Child of Fire. (What do these titles really mean? Who cares.) 

With all of the dull table-setting complete, Snyder is able to let his true talents soar in Rebel Moon: Part 2 by delivering endless battles filled with slow-motion action and heroic poses. It looks cool, I just wish it added up to something. Anything.

Spoilers ahead for Rebel Moon: Part 2.

If you somehow missed the first Rebel Moon film, the basic setup is that it's Star Wars meets The Seven Samurai. Sofia Boutella stars as Kora, a former elite soldier of an evil empire who is hiding out in an all-too idyllic farming village, just planting and harvesting her days away. When a group of military baddies kills the chief of the village and starts threatening a young girl, Kora goes on a murdering spree (in defense!), leaving the community open to a retaliatory attack. 

She spends the first movie recruiting potential warriors to defend the village, including a fallen gladiator (Djimoun Hounsou) and a bad-ass swordswoman (Doona Bae). (Their names are Titus and Nemesis, respectively, but those don't really matter because the characters are paper thin.)

Full disclosure: I tried writing a review for the first Rebel Moon and just gave up in disgust. It was a shockingly boring epic, so much so that it took me several days to watch without falling asleep. By the end, I was only left with a feeling of dread, knowing that there was still another two hours of Rebel Moon ahead of me.

It's somewhat empty praise, but at least I didn't fall asleep during The Scargiver. Mostly, that's due to the film actually having a sense of momentum and a lot more action. You can turn off your brain and enjoy the pretty pictures, much like you could for Snyder's Sucker Punch, Justice League and Watchmen adaptation. He's more a stylist than a natural storyteller, but occasionally Snyder's visuals, such as a baffling montage of our heroes harvesting wheat, can be almost poetic.

Netflix

It's just a shame that I didn't care much about the film's characters or any aspect of its story. James Gunn's Guardian's of the Galaxy trilogy made us fall in love with a band of misfits and screwups, with storylines that directly led to their personal and emotional growth. The crew in Rebel Moon, instead, feel like cardboard cutouts from better movies, and the overall plot feels forced (there's even setup for another film by the end). 

Hounsou tries to sell the pathos of Titus with his eyes, but he can only do so much. And while Bae's warrior woman exudes cool (and has a very compelling flashback), she's mostly wasted when the action really heats up. Then there's Jimmy, a robot voiced by Anthony Hopkins, who is briefly introduced in the first film and pops up for a few minutes here to kick butt. Why? It doesn't matter. Somehow that character is also important enough to serve as the narrator for both Rebel Moon films (but really it seems Snyder just wanted Hopkins' voice adding gravitas).

Perhaps the only real saving grace for Rebel Moon: Part 2, much like the first film, is Ed Skrein as the villainous Atticus Noble. As a sadistic baddie, he's really nothing new, but Skrein's heightened scenery chomping makes the character interesting to watch. Where Darth Vader exudes a calm sense of dread, Skrein's Noble is entertainingly chaotic, like the Joker crossed with Christoph Waltz's Hans Landa from Inglorious Basterds. He just has a lot of fun being bad — that's something!

Given how popular the first film was (according to Snyder and Netflix, anyway), we'll likely see more Rebel Moon down the line. Snyder previously said he'd like to do a six-hour director's cut of both films, and he recently told Radio Times that he'd like to stretch the Rebel Moon series out to four or six films. Somehow, that just feels like a threat. 

Apple users in China won't be able to find and download WhatsApp and Threads from the App Store anymore, according to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. The company said it pulled the apps from the store to comply with orders it received from Cyberspace Administration, China's internet regulator, "based on [its] national security concerns." It explained to the publications that it's "obligated to follow the laws in the countries where [it operates], even when [it disagrees]."

The Great Firewall of China blocks a lot of non-domestic apps and technologies in the country, prompting locals to use VPN if they want to access any of them. Meta's Facebook and Instagram are two of those applications, but WhatsApp and Threads have been available for download until now. The Chinese regulator's order comes shortly before the Senate is set to vote on a bill that could lead to a TikTok ban in the US. Cyberspace Administration's reasoning — that the apps are a national security concern — even echoes American lawmakers' argument for blocking TikTok in the country. 

In the current version of the bill, ByteDance will have a year to divest TikTok, or else the short form video-sharing platform will be banned from app stores. The House is expected to pass the bill, which is part of a package that also includes aid to Ukraine and Israel. President Joe Biden previously said that he supports the package and will immediately sign the bills into law. 

Rebel Moon: Part 2 - The Scargiver is an empty feast. It's a relentless onslaught of explosions, sci-fi tropes and meaningless exposition that amounts to nothing. And yet somehow it's still better than the first film in Zack Snyder's wannabe sci-fi epic franchise for Netflix, Rebel Moon: Part 1 - A Child of Fire. (What do these titles really mean? Who cares.) 

With all of the dull table-setting complete, Snyder is able to let his true talents soar in Rebel Moon: Part 2 by delivering endless battles filled with slow-motion action and heroic poses. It looks cool, I just wish it added up to something. Anything.

Spoilers ahead for Rebel Moon: Part 2.

If you somehow missed the first Rebel Moon film, the basic setup is that it's Star Wars meets The Seven Samurai. Sofia Boutella stars as Kora, a former elite soldier of an evil empire who is hiding out in an all-too idyllic farming village, just planting and harvesting her days away. When a group of military baddies kills the chief of the village and starts threatening a young girl, Kora goes on a murdering spree (in defense!), leaving the community open to a retaliatory attack. 

She spends the first movie recruiting potential warriors to defend the village, including a fallen gladiator (Djimoun Hounsou) and a bad-ass swordswoman (Doona Bae). (Their names are Titus and Nemesis, respectively, but those don't really matter because the characters are paper thin.)

Full disclosure: I tried writing a review for the first Rebel Moon and just gave up in disgust. It was a shockingly boring epic, so much so that it took me several days to watch without falling asleep. By the end, I was only left with a feeling of dread, knowing that there was still another two hours of Rebel Moon ahead of me.

It's somewhat empty praise, but at least I didn't fall asleep during The Scargiver. Mostly, that's due to the film actually having a sense of momentum and a lot more action. You can turn off your brain and enjoy the pretty pictures, much like you could for Snyder's Sucker Punch, Justice League and Watchmen adaptation. He's more a stylist than a natural storyteller, but occasionally Snyder's visuals, such as a baffling montage of our heroes harvesting wheat, can be almost poetic.

Netflix

It's just a shame that I didn't care much about the film's characters or any aspect of its story. James Gunn's Guardian's of the Galaxy trilogy made us fall in love with a band of misfits and screwups, with storylines that directly led to their personal and emotional growth. The crew in Rebel Moon, instead, feel like cardboard cutouts from better movies, and the overall plot feels forced (there's even setup for another film by the end). 

Hounsou tries to sell the pathos of Titus with his eyes, but he can only do so much. And while Bae's warrior woman exudes cool (and has a very compelling flashback), she's mostly wasted when the action really heats up. Then there's Jimmy, a robot voiced by Anthony Hopkins, who is briefly introduced in the first film and pops up for a few minutes here to kick butt. Why? It doesn't matter. Somehow that character is also important enough to serve as the narrator for both Rebel Moon films (but really it seems Snyder just wanted Hopkins' voice adding gravitas).

Perhaps the only real saving grace for Rebel Moon: Part 2, much like the first film, is Ed Skrein as the villainous Atticus Noble. As a sadistic baddie, he's really nothing new, but Skrein's heightened scenery chomping makes the character interesting to watch. Where Darth Vader exudes a calm sense of dread, Skrein's Noble is entertainingly chaotic, like the Joker crossed with Christoph Waltz's Hans Landa from Inglorious Basterds. He just has a lot of fun being bad — that's something!

Given how popular the first film was (according to Snyder and Netflix, anyway), we'll likely see more Rebel Moon down the line. Snyder previously said he'd like to do a six-hour director's cut of both films, and he recently told Radio Times that he'd like to stretch the Rebel Moon series out to four or six films. Somehow, that just feels like a threat. 

Apple users in China won't be able to find and download WhatsApp and Threads from the App Store anymore, according to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. The company said it pulled the apps from the store to comply with orders it received from Cyberspace Administration, China's internet regulator, "based on [its] national security concerns." It explained to the publications that it's "obligated to follow the laws in the countries where [it operates], even when [it disagrees]."

The Great Firewall of China blocks a lot of non-domestic apps and technologies in the country, prompting locals to use VPN if they want to access any of them. Meta's Facebook and Instagram are two of those applications, but WhatsApp and Threads have been available for download until now. The Chinese regulator's order comes shortly before the Senate is set to vote on a bill that could lead to a TikTok ban in the US. Cyberspace Administration's reasoning — that the apps are a national security concern — even echoes American lawmakers' argument for blocking TikTok in the country. 

In the current version of the bill, ByteDance will have a year to divest TikTok, or else the short form video-sharing platform will be banned from app stores. The House is expected to pass the bill, which is part of a package that also includes aid to Ukraine and Israel. President Joe Biden previously said that he supports the package and will immediately sign the bills into law. 

It used to be difficult to find cheap wireless earbuds that weren't trash. Today, though, it's much less of a struggle to get something good enough without spending triple digits. And with headphone jacks all but extinct on most new smartphones, that should be the case. Still, some models are better than others. If you’re looking to upgrade, we’ve researched and tested more than a dozen wireless earbuds that cost less than $100 and sorted out our top picks below. While none of them beat our absolute favorite wireless earbuds in terms of sound quality or noise cancellation, the best can provide a surprisingly polished experience for a fraction of the price. This is a busy market with new contenders arriving all the time, but for now, here are the best budget wireless earbuds we’ve tried.

Honorable mentions

Amazon has released a full trailer for the live-action Fallout series that's coming to Prime Video soon. It's our most in-depth look yet at the show and early indications suggest that the creative team has captured the distinct blend of irreverence and violence that helped Bethesda's game series become so successful.

The clip focuses on Lucy (Ella Purnell), a young woman who emerges from a fallout bunker into what used to be Los Angeles, 200 years after a nuclear apocalypse. Lucy quickly discovers that life on the surface isn't quite as cushy as staying in a luxury vault. "Practically every person I've met up here has tried to kill me," she says, seconds before we see a robot attempt to harvest her organs.

The trailer (and the show) gets a helping hand from the otherworldly charm of Walton Goggins as a pitchman for living in a fallout shelter. His character somehow survives the apocalypse and is still around two centuries later, carving out a life as a mutated bounty hunter called The Ghoul. The trailer has a ton of other references to the games for fans to drink in.

Amazon also took the opportunity to reveal that Fallout will arrive on Prime Video on April 11, one day earlier than previously announced. You won't have to wait a week between episodes either, as the entire season will drop at once.

Saber Interactive has reportedly found an exit strategy from the death grip of its parent company, Embracer Group AB. Bloomberg reported Thursday that “a group of private investors” will buy the studio in a deal worth roughly $500 million. Saber would then become a private company with about 3,500 employees.

Engadget emailed a spokesperson from Saber for confirmation about the alleged buyout. The studio declined to comment.

The alleged agreement would be one of Embracer’s most significant cost-cutting moves since the collapse of a reported $2 billion deal with a group backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Some criticized the imperiled deal as the gaming equivalent of “sportswashing,” using popular sporting acquisitions and partnerships to boost beleaguered governments’ global images. That followed US intelligence’s conclusion that the Saudi regime murdered The Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi in late 2018.

Other cost-cutting moves at Embracer have included laying off about 900 employees in September, cutting another 50 or so jobs at Chorus developer Fishlabs and implementing more layoffs at Tiny Tina’s Wonderland developer Lost Boys Interactive, Beamdog, Crystal Dynamics and Saber subsidiary New World Interactive. Embracer also closed Saints Row studio Volition Games and Campfire Cabal.

LucasArts / Aspyr

According to Bloomberg, Saber’s sale won’t affect the studio’s role in developing an upcoming Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) remake. That game has already changed hands once: One of Saber’s Eastern European studios took over from Aspyr Media in the summer of 2022.

Aspyr had reportedly already been working on the game for years before providing a demo for Lucasfilm and Sony in June 2022; a week later, Aspyr fired its design director and art director. (Reports of the KOTOR demo costing a disproportionate amount of time and money may indicate a possible reason for the fallout.) By late that summer, Saber had taken over the development of the highly anticipated — and indefinitely delayed — remake.

Embracer bought Saber for $525 million in 2020 as it scooped up gaming studios left and right. It acquired at least 27 companies during that period, folding some of them (Demiurge Studios and New World Interactive) into Saber. Bloomberg reports that the deal to sell Saber to private investors includes an option to “bring along multiple Embracer subsidiaries.”

One studio that’s far too big to be included in this transaction is Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment. However, Kotaku reported Thursday that Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford told staff this week that a decision about the studio’s future had been made. He allegedly said he’d be able to share more details with them next month.

In the meantime, a cloud of uncertainty envelops Gearbox — and Embracer’s other remaining studios. “I’ve personally been looking for roles elsewhere not just due to the Embracer layoff fears, but due to pay,” an anonymous developer reportedly said to Kotaku. “Vague and in a holding pattern is definitely par for the course at the moment and has been for most of 2023.”

Intel's relatively new Foundry division — formerly known as Intel Foundry Services until earlier today — has just landed a notable order from a big name. According to Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that his company will be tapping into Intel's latest 18A (1.8nm) fabrication process for an upcoming in-house chip design. But given Intel's process roadmap, this means we likely won't be seeing Microsoft's new chip until 2025.

While neither company disclosed the nature of said silicon, Microsoft did unveil its custom-made Azure Maia AI Accelerator and Azure Cobalt 100 CPU server chips last November, with an expected rollout some time "early" this year to bolster its own AI services. The Cobalt 100 is based on Arm architecture, and it just so happens that Intel has been optimizing its 18A process for Arm designs since April last year (it even became an Arm investor later), so there's a good chance that this collaboration may lead to the next-gen Cobalt CPU.

In addition to the usual efficiency improvements as node size decreases, Intel 18A also offers "the industry's first backside power solution" which, according to IEEE's Spectrum, separates the power interconnect layer from the data interconnect layer at the top, and moves the former to beneath the silicon substrate — as implied by the name. This apparently allows for improved voltage regulation and lower resistance, which in turn enable faster logic and lower power consumption, especially when applied to 3D stacking.

Intel

In Intel's Q4 earnings call, CEO Pat Gelsinger confirmed that "18A is expected to achieve manufacturing readiness in second half '24." Given that Intel's very own 18A-based processors — "Clearwater Forest" for servers and "Panther Lake" for clients — won't arrive until 2025, chances are it'll be a similar time frame for Microsoft's next chip.

At Intel's event earlier today, the exec shared an extended Intel Foundry process technology roadmap, which features a new 14A (1.4nm) node enabled by ASML's "High-NA EUV" (high-numerical aperture extreme ultraviolet) lithography system. According to AnandTech, this 14A leap may help Intel play catchup after its late EUV adoption for its Intel 4 (7nm) node, though risk production won't take place until the end of 2026.

Intel Foundry is the brainchild of Gelsinger, who launched this department right after he assumed the CEO role in February 2021, as part of his ambitious plan to put Intel up against the likes of TSMC and Samsung in the contract chip-making market. Before Microsoft, Intel Foundry's list of clients already include MediaTek, Qualcomm and Amazon. The company still aims to become "the second largest external foundry by 2030" in terms of manufacturing revenue, which it believes is achievable as early as this year.

Google has released an open AI model called Gemma, which it says is created using the same research and technology that was used to build its Gemini AI models. The company says Gemma is its contribution to the open community and is meant to help developers "in building AI responsibly." As such, it also introduced the Responsible Generative AI Toolkit alongside Gemma. It contains a debugging tool, as well as a guide with best practices for AI development based on Google's experience.

The company has made Gemma available in two different sizes — Gemma 2B and Gemma 7B — which both come with pre-trained and instruction-tuned variants and are both lightweight enough to run directly on a developer's laptop or desktop computer. Google says Gemma surpasses much larger models when it comes to key benchmarks and that both model sizes outperform other open models out there. 

In addition to being powerful, the Gemma models were trained to be safe. Google used automated techniques to strip personal information from the data it used to train the models, and it used reinforcement learning based on human feedback to ensure Gemma's instruction-tuned variants show responsible behaviors. Companies and independent developers could use Gemma to create AI-powered applications, especially if none of the currently available open models are powerful enough for what they want to build. 

Google has plans to introduce even more Gemma variants in the future for an even more diverse range of applications. That said, those who want to start working with the models right now can access them through data science platform Kaggle, the company's Colab notebooks or through Google Cloud. 

Google has released an open AI model called Gemma, which it says is created using the same research and technology that was used to build its Gemini AI models. The company says Gemma is its contribution to the open community and is meant to help developers "in building AI responsibly." As such, it also introduced the Responsible Generative AI Toolkit alongside Gemma. It contains a debugging tool, as well as a guide with best practices for AI development based on Google's experience.

The company has made Gemma available in two different sizes — Gemma 2B and Gemma 7B — which both come with pre-trained and instruction-tuned variants and are both lightweight enough to run directly on a developer's laptop or desktop computer. Google says Gemma surpasses much larger models when it comes to key benchmarks and that both model sizes outperform other open models out there. 

In addition to being powerful, the Gemma models were trained to be safe. Google used automated techniques to strip personal information from the data it used to train the models, and it used reinforcement learning based on human feedback to ensure Gemma's instruction-tuned variants show responsible behaviors. Companies and independent developers could use Gemma to create AI-powered applications, especially if none of the currently available open models are powerful enough for what they want to build. 

Google has plans to introduce even more Gemma variants in the future for an even more diverse range of applications. That said, those who want to start working with the models right now can access them through data science platform Kaggle, the company's Colab notebooks or through Google Cloud. 

Some Wyze camera owners have reported that they were suddenly given access to cameras that weren't theirs and even got notifications for events inside other people's homes. Wyze cofounder David Crosby has confirmed the issue to The Verge, telling the publications that "some users were able to see thumbnails of cameras that were not their own in the Events tab." Users started seeing strangers' camera feeds in their accounts after an outage that Wyze said was caused by an Amazon Web Services problem. 

Crosby wrote in a post on the Wyze forum that the company's servers got overloaded, which corrupted some user data, after the outage. The security issue that resulted from that event then allowed users to "see thumbnails of cameras that were not their own in the Events tab." Users couldn't view those videos and could only see their thumbnails, he clarified, and they were not able to view live streams from other people's cameras. Wyze was able to identify 14 incidents before taking down the Events tab altogether. 

The company said it's going to notify all affected users and that it has forcibly logged out everyone who've recently used the Wyze app in order to reset tokens. "We will explain in more detail once we finish investigating exactly how this happened and further steps we will take to make sure it doesn’t happen again," Crosby added. 

While the company doesn't have a detailed explanation for what happened yet, its swift confirmation of the incident is a huge departure from how it previously dealt with a security flaw. Back in 2022, cybersecurity firm Bitdefender revealed that in March 2019, it informed Wyze of a major security vulnerability in the Wyze Cam v1 model. The company didn't inform customers about the flaw, however, and didn't even issue a fix until three years later.

Update, February 20 2024, 9:08PM ET: In an email received by Engadget, Wyze admits to affected users that "about 13,000 Wyze users received thumbnails from cameras that were not their own and 1,504 users tapped on them. Most taps enlarged the thumbnail, but in some cases an Event Video was able to be viewed." 

The company went on to explain that this glitch was caused by a mix-up of device ID and user ID mapping, due to a new third-party caching client library struggling to cope with the "unprecedented" data load from client devices rebooting all at once. Wyze promises to prevent this from happening again by adding "a new layer of verification" for connections, and that it'll look for more reliable client libraries to cope with such incidents.