Engadget - What to expect at Summer Game Fest 2024

It's Wednesday, June 05, 2024.

Summer Games Fest kicks off this week, with its titular game showcase starting Friday. Expect a string of SGF events, livestreams, YouTube trailers to follow… and maybe a Silksong update. Please? We’ll be reporting live from LA, offering our thoughts and impressions of many of the games at the event — especially if we get to play any of them.

We break down every event right here, but the biggest events include the Summer Game Fest Live on Friday June 7 at 5PM ET, the Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday June 9, 1PM ET and Ubisoft Forward Monday June 10, 3PM ET. Wait, was there something else on that day? Yes. But we can talk about that later in the week, OK?

— Mat Smith

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Max just raised streaming subscription prices again

$17 a month, please.

Today’s price rise is brought to you by Max, formerly HBO Max, HBO Go, HBO. The standard ad-free plan has shot up to $17 per month, with a yearly price of $170. This is an increase of $1 per month or $20 per year. The ultimate ad-free plan is now $21 per month or $210 per year. What’s on? New episodes of House of the Dragon premiere this month, but that’s about it. We should get the Penguin series in the next few months, Dune: Prophecy by the end of the year and The Last of Us season two at some point.

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Skydance’s Behemoth brings giant climbable monster fights to VR

Intuitive battles with titans that could squish you.

Skydance’s Behemoth is an action-adventure game that draws on the combat and physics of The Walking Dead games but focuses more on fighting and less on survival. While some parts of the demo made me feel a little queasy, running and evading a colossal monster didn’t. Maybe because I focused on a single objective — the giant monster — I felt… fine. Like SatC and recent Zelda games, you can scale this behemoth (if there’s the right texture of climbable surface). The game is coming to Meta Quest headsets, PSVR2 and PC this fall.

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AI workers demand stronger whistleblower protections in an open letter

Signed by 13 current and former workers with ties to Google, OpenAI and Anthropic.

A group of current and former employees from leading AI companies, like OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic, has signed an open letter asking for greater transparency and protection from retaliation for those who speak out about the potential concerns of AI. It says: “Broad confidentiality agreements block us from voicing our concerns, except to the very companies that may be failing to address these issues.”

In a statement sent to Bloomberg, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company is proud of its “track record providing the most capable and safest AI systems.”

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