Gloss Staff

Ubisoft's Call Of Duty-competitor XDefiant, which hoped to throwback the online FPS genre to its Xbox 360 days, is shutting down. The game has been pulled from online stores today and new players won't be able to join the game. Multiplayer servers will be available until June 3, 2025.

Ubisoft also says it will coincide with "the closing of our San Francisco and Osaka production studios and to the ramp down of our Sydney production site, with 143 people departing in San Francisco and 134 people likely to depart in Osaka and Sydney."

XDefiant's key difference was a rejection of skill-based matchmaking, where players would be paired with other players of comparable skill. Ubisoft instead opted to put all players together, leading to more match variety but possibly less player engagement.

The game also lacked its own identity, introducing skins from other Ubisoft franchises and having a general free-to-play bright, vibrant but simple visual style.

Around its launch, Activision published a research paper basically rejecting the perceived downsides of skill-based matchmaking. "When skill is utilized in matchmaking, 80-90% of players experience better end-of-match placement, stick with the game longer and quit matches less frequently," the paper claimed. It's hard to argue with that.

Update: The paywall has launched. Via Semafor:

Editor-in-chief Nilay Patel told Semafor that the move was intended to drive additional revenue and insulate The Verge from changes made by social media platforms[...]

“I think it’s a tragedy that garbage is free and news is behind paywalls. I don’t want to make that worse,” Patel said. “I think that The Verge homepage and our news coverage serves a central utility function in our ecosystem.”

The website also hints at future integrations with ActivityPub and Bluesky in an effort to take the focus away from SEO and social-media traffic and make The Verge homepage a platform of its own.

Early benefits include unlimited access to posts, such as paywalled newsletters and metered product reviews and features, limited ads on all Verge content and a physical limited edition magazine. Also the original decentralised solution, RSS, is available to subscribers, with unabridged posts available through RSS readers.

Original post:

According to Semafor, Vox Media's technology website The Verge is going behind a paywall. Some content will remain free:

Beginning this week, the Verge will charge $7/month or $50/year for comprehensive access to the site as well as the already-paywalled newsletters Command Line and Notepad.

Some content and the publication’s homepage, which was redesigned in 2022 to resemble a social feed, will remain free. The Verge is Vox Media’s third major subscription push behind New York and Vox, which launched a membership program earlier this year.

Everything old is new again at Vox Media, which will also be introducing an app for its publication New York Magazine, focused on digital NY Mag subscribers:

It will be the magazine’s second crack at a mobile app; New York first launched an iPhone app in 2016. 

I’ve been poolside testing the Steam Deck OLED this week for Gloss. Definitely going to be tempted by some of these games going on sale starting November 27 (November 28 in Australia). The sale will end December 4 (December 5 in Australia).

This is despite the study also assuring readers that Tesla vehicles aren’t specifically unsafe and the company isn’t shipping “design flaws”. The higher statistic could be as simple as a Tesla feature, like the controversial “Full Self Driving”, giving drivers a false sense of security. The US National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration is investigating FSD’s safety, for now at least.

The study from iSeeCars analyses data from the U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). Via Road & Track:

The study was conducted on model year 2018–2022 vehicles, and focused on crashes between 2017 and 2022 that resulted in occupant fatalities. Tesla vehicles have a fatal crash rate of 5.6 per billion miles driven, according to the study; Kia is second with a rate of 5.5, and Buick rounds out the top three with a 4.8 rate. The average fatal crash rate for all cars in the United States is 2.8 per billion vehicle miles driven.

It’ll be exciting to see how Elon Musk brings this kind of efficiency to the US government. He should probably get cracking on improving FSD if he’s still worried about birth rates declining.

Twitter user @IdentsEveryHour is really one of the only reasons I still use Twitter. I love watching TV station identification graphics from other countries:

Australia really is finally part of Valve's hardware plan. The company's not only launching a normal lineup of Steam Deck models on November 19, but also a Limited Edition White model with 1TB of storage. Via Valve:

Steam Deck OLED: Limited Edition White has all the same specs as the Steam Deck OLED 1TB model, but in white and grey (and it comes with an exclusive white carrying case).

In a move that'll surely put Valve's servers to the test, the model will be launching at the same time as the Steam Deck's general Australian availability, Tuesday November 19 at 10am AEDT (Sydney time). And it's apparently a one-time option, so when models sell out for the extra $50 compared to the normal Black model, they're gone for good.

Steam Deck™

Steam Deck™ is the most powerful, full-featured gaming handheld in the world.

STEAM

A little over a month ago, ABC youth brand triple j relaunched at its One Night Stand music festival. And it was a pretty big rebrand, touching the logo, typeface and general audio style of the station. A pretty big change is the new "J" audio sting that plays often on the station.

Gloss Australia reached out to the ABC for more details on the sonic rebrand, but didn't hear back. On the visual side of things, Howatson+Company, partnering with the ABC, has more info on the visual changes:

Since 1975, national broadcaster triple j has served as a lighthouse for young Australians, actively pushing culture forward and challenging norms through its disruptive programming, shows and events. Yet for the last 15 years, the brand and logo have remained static. To address this, triple j has partnered with Howatson+Company to reinvigorate the brand for today’s listeners.

To make it, a custom variable typeface was designed that changes based on audio and musical inputs. The type was taught to respond to music and sound using algorithmic machine learning, creating a reactive design.

The brand’s most iconic element, the drum, was also updated to reflect the tastes of the station’s youth audience today, featuring a simplified base designed to reference digital soundbars and incorporate a hidden ‘j’.

The rebrand successfully refreshes triple j’s visual world while preserving its core identity as a champion of youth culture and new Australian music.