Physical copies still make up close to a third of the console games people actually own, according to a new Newzoo white paper produced with support from G2A. The firm surveyed 6,166 "premium gamers" across the US, UK, Germany, Poland, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia in August, defined as players aged 18 to 55 who game at least monthly on PC or a current-gen console and bought or subscribed to at least one AA or AAA title in the past year. Of the console games these respondents paid for outright, 30.4% were physical. That share drops to 11% across everything they play, since free-to-play and subscription titles together account for more than half of it.

Apparently, the most common reason for buying physical is being able to play without a stable internet connection, followed by the feeling of owning something tangible and saving storage space. That last one carries a bit more weight now that game download sizes have ballooned, with GTA 6 needing up to 212 GB on its own. Reselling, trading, or lending games came in fourth, and that is something digital console purchases still largely don't allow. PC is a different story, with PC-only players reporting just 6% physical ownership, although GOG would like to change that.

Police in Oakland, California, are investigating the theft of six pallets of NVIDIA hardware worth $11.4 million that were bound for Fort Worth, Texas, the Bay Area News Group reports. A truck carrying a food transportation company's logo picked up the cargo in Oakland on August 29 as planned, but the truck and its drivers then went off the grid heading south. According to authorities, the truck made several multi-hour stops before police lost track of it in San Bernardino County. Apparently, nobody realized the cargo was gone until early September, and Oakland police say the theft was reported to them on September 13. No arrests have been announced.

What exactly was on those pallets hasn't been disclosed, so we don't know if it was AI accelerators, complete systems, or GeForce graphics cards. Speaking to ABC7, UC Berkeley professor Olaf Groth said NVIDIA chips can sell for roughly double their US price abroad, with a $550,000 compute system going for $1 million or more. He added that the heists are getting bigger and more complex, which points to increasingly professional crews.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is now close to double its $749 MSRP in the US. According to price tracking by VideoCardz, the cheapest RTX 5070 Ti at major US retailers was $1,339.99 on November 6, about 79% above MSRP, up from $1,179.99 on October 29. That's a $160 jump in just eight days. Some models have already crossed the 2x mark, like the ASUS TUF Gaming OC at $1,499.99 on B&H. Prices are also moving fast. At the time of writing, the cheapest RTX 5070 Ti sold by Newegg itself is an MSI SHADOW RTX 5070 Ti at $1,409.99. Things aren't much better in Germany, where the cheapest listing on Geizhals sits at €1,300 for a PNY model, roughly 48% above the €879 MSRP.

Things are probably going to get worse, too. NVIDIA's board partners in China are reportedly raising RTX 5070 Ti prices by around 1,000 RMB (about $150) this week, with retail prices expected to follow within a week or two. Unlike the RTX 5090 and 5080 16 GB, which have reportedly been discontinued, the RTX 5070 Ti is still officially in production. After reports of an end of production in January early this year, NVIDIA said it was still shipping all GeForce SKUs, and ASUS denied the card was end-of-life, while admitting that memory supply was hurting production and restocking. The card is still listed at major retailers, unlike the RTX 5080, which vanished from NVIDIA's US Marketplace two weeks after the RTX 5090 did the same. Anyone shopping for an RTX 5070 Ti should probably expect these prices to keep rising for a while.

The NVIDIA RTX PRO 5500 "Blackwell" workstation card has shown up at a US retailer, and it surprisingly costs more than the flagship RTX PRO 6000. As spotted by Alex Ziskind on X and corroborated by Videocardz, SHI Government Solutions listed the PNY-built model (VCNRTXPRO5500B-PB) with an MSRP of $17,999 and a discounted price of $17,408.63. NVIDIA's own US marketplace, on the other hand, lists the RTX PRO 6000 for $16,000, even though that card has more CUDA cores (24,064 vs. 21,760) and more memory (96 GB vs. 84 GB). So even at SHI's discounted price, the cut-down card costs around $1,400 more. NVIDIA hasn't announced official pricing since it quietly added the RTX PRO 5500 to its lineup in September, so it isn't clear whether the $17,999 figure comes from NVIDIA or PNY.

Videocardz points out that Chinese demand is probably a big factor behind the RTX PRO 5500's price. According to Reuters, ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent have ordered over 3 million RTX PRO 5500 cards at roughly $11,400 each, with total orders from China reportedly topping 6 million. One source said NVIDIA can make no more than 3 million of them in 2027. With the B300 barred from China and the H200 reviewed case by case, the RTX PRO 5500 is one of the strongest NVIDIA GPUs Chinese firms can still buy. The card also packs 28 GDDR7 modules at a time, even as memory prices keep climbing. With orders far ahead of supply, it's reasonable to expect RTX PRO 5500 pricing to stay high for a while.

Nintendo isn't considering another price increase for the Switch 2, at least for now. Speaking at the company's financial results briefing on November 5, president Shuntaro Furukawa said there hasn't been any major change in the memory situation and that Nintendo is still able to secure "sufficient quantities," according to Reuters. That's welcome news for anyone still on the fence, since the console has already gone up once this year. Nintendo announced a $50 price hike back in May, which took the US price from $449.99 to $499.99 on September 1, while the Japanese model went from ¥49,980 to ¥59,980 and the European My Nintendo Store price climbed from €469.99 to €499.99.

The comments seem to arrive as Switch 2 hardware sales are slowing down. Nintendo shipped 2.67 million units between July and September, down 41% from a year earlier, though the console has now reached 26.35 million units overall and is still ahead of where the original Switch was at the same point. Nintendo has kept its forecast of 16.5 million Switch 2 units for the fiscal year ending March 2027. Of course, "not considering" isn't the same as a promise, so it's best not to treat this as a price freeze. Sony said much the same thing this week, noting that it has already agreed on memory volumes with suppliers for its next fiscal year. Elsewhere, hardware keeps getting pricier, with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50-series reportedly set for price hikes of up to $500, but at least Nintendo is staying put for now.

Sony has started nudging some PlayStation owners in the US to sell their PS5, with a PlayStation app notification shared on ResetEra offering "up to $400" for a standard console. The trade-in itself runs through Back Market, which inspects the hardware and then sends cash straight to the owner's bank account instead of offering store credit. That $400 figure comes with some fine print, though. It is based on quotes for a standard PS5 in Grade 0 condition, which is basically flawless, with two or more controllers included, collected between August 23 and September 22. PS5 Pro owners aren't part of this one. The timing certainly looks pretty convenient, with GTA 6 launching on November 19 and pre-load starting on November 10.

Coincidentally, Microsoft also started emailing inactive Xbox owners last month, offering up to $375 for a Series X traded in at Best Buy. Sony's offer looks a little better on paper, since Microsoft pays out in Best Buy eGift Cards rather than cash. A couple of users who ran the online trade-in estimate got a little over $400 for a base PS5, so the headline number seems realistic for consoles in good shape. A new PS5 now costs $649.99 after Sony's April price hike, while the $899.99 PS5 Pro is hard to find at list price, and GameStop is reportedly asking $1,399.99 for used units. With retailers already expecting console shortages around the GTA 6 launch, used PS5s will probably sell fast. Owners with an idle console are advised to compare Back Market's quote with local resale prices before shipping it off.

In a big surprise to no one, graphics card prices went up again in October. TechSpot's latest survey across 10 countries shows GPU prices rising 11% month over month, following a 15% jump in August and 7% in September, or roughly 35% over three months. On average, cards now sell for 44% above MSRP, climbing to 58% in the US and Canada. Keep in mind these numbers track the lowest in-stock price in each region, so most models cost even more. Moreover, there is another GeForce RTX 50-series price hike on the horizon, so these numbers will rise again pretty soon.

The GeForce RTX 5090 is in a league of its own. It got 32% pricier in a month, and its normalized global price of $7,240 sits a staggering 262% above its $1,999 MSRP, almost double the 136% figure from early September. In the US, the cheapest in-stock model now costs $9,400, or 370% over MSRP, and most models now sit above $11,000 comfortably. The RTX 5080 is following a similar path, up 22% in a month to $2,200 in the US, while Newegg had none of its own in stock when the data was collected. TechSpot argues the GDDR7 memory crisis can't explain a jump that big, and some retail sources apparently told them wholesale RTX 5080 costs have gone up recently too.

NVIDIA's US Marketplace no longer lists the GeForce RTX 5080. The GPU filter on the store's graphics card page now tops out at the RTX 5070 Ti, followed by the RTX 5070, RTX 5060 Ti, RTX 5060, and RTX 5050, with partner RTX 5080 models gone as well. The same thing happened to the RTX 5090 about two weeks ago and, barring a brief cameo at $5,599, the card still hasn't returned. NVIDIA has since denied that the RTX 5090 is discontinued, though it hasn't said anything about the RTX 5080 yet. Oddly enough, its RTX 5080 product page still says "Starting at $999."

The removal seems limited to the US for now. NVIDIA's UK Marketplace still has 13 RTX 5080 listings and two RTX 5090 cards. Of course, a missing listing could simply mean there's no stock left, since the RTX 5080 already costs close to $2,000 at US retailers, roughly double its MSRP. That leaves the RTX 5070 Ti as the fastest card on NVIDIA's US store, and it isn't cheap either. The seven listings there range from $1,269.99 to $1,499.99, well above its $749 launch price.

Colorful has just released its latest overclocking motherboard, the X870E Ultra-S V14, a new E-ATX unit with 16+2+1 power phases, five M.2 slots, and plenty of high-speed I/O. The new motherboard, as shared by IT Home, is priced at 1,899 CNY, which comes out to around $284 at the time of writing, although it only seems to be available in China for the time being. The iGame X870E Ultra-S V14 is explicitly marketed to overclockers on AMD's AM5 platform, bearing XMP/EXPO memory overclocking and asynchronous BCLK CPU overclocking, a digital debug display, EZ Debug diagnosis, and easily accessible rear I/O buttons for both clear CMOS and BIOS updates.

The motherboard also features Wi-Fi 7 and 5 GbE networking built-in, alongside expansive rear I/O that includes: 4× USB Type-A 5 Gbps, 3× USB Type-A 10 Gbps, 2× USB Type-A 2.0, 2× USB4 40 Gbps, and both 3.5 mm line in/out ports and SPDIF out for audio. Colorful claims that its 16+2+1 VRMs are capable of 80 A, and the VRMs are covered by beefy aluminium heat sinks. It also has five M.2 slots for expanded storage, each with its own heat sink. The Colorful iGame X870E Ultra-S V14 is available on JD.com at the time of writing.

Micro Center seems to have quietly stopped selling the GeForce RTX 5090. Several RTX 5090 listings on the retailer's US website now show as "Not Carried," and a post on r/gpu claims every single one of them does. That label usually means a product has been dropped from the active catalog and won't be restocked. Custom models from ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte are still listed but out of stock at physical stores, and the only RTX 5090 reportedly still sitting on shelves at most locations is an ASUS ROG Astral sold inside a 20th Anniversary bundle for almost $11,000. Neither NVIDIA nor Micro Center has commented on the situation yet, and NVIDIA's own website still lists the RTX 5090 at the now-mythical price of $1,999.

Separately, Redditor johnnyphotog on r/Microcenter says staff were already pulling RTX 5090 cards from the shelves on October 9. Apparently, a manager told him the cards were being sent somewhere else, and while he did manage to buy one, an employee told him it was probably the last RTX 5090 the store would sell. That timing is interesting, since it came a day before leakers claimed NVIDIA stopped allocating GB202 silicon to the RTX 5090 and is saving it for far pricier workstation cards like the RTX PRO 5500. Of course, the MSRP of the RTX 5090 hasn't meant much for a while, with the card selling out at Walmart for $4,299 last month. If GB202 supply has really dried up, whatever partner stock is left will likely get even pricier, so readers set on buying one shouldn't expect prices to come down anytime soon.

On two separate occasions, in August and again in September, it was predicted that entry-level GPUs would see significant price increases in the second half of 2026, and it seems as though that prediction has come true, as showed in a recent Reddit post sharing updated retailer listing prices for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs from Japan—one of the countries where PC hardware prices are often felt sooner than in international markets. According to the price list, the cheapest available RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB was ¥118,800 (~$750 converted), while RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB prices start at ¥139,800 (~$882 converted).

Meanwhile, the RTX 5070 12 GB starts at ¥145,800 (~$920 converted), 5070 Ti prices start at ¥230,800 (~$1,456 converted), and the RTX 5080 16 GB has climbed to a starting price of ¥295,801 (~$1,867 converted). Compared to MSRP, these new prices represent an increase of around 59% for the RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB, 66-144% for the 5060 Ti 16 GB, 32-82% for the 5070, and as much as 94% for the RTX 5080.

The second-generation Lenovo Legion Go handheld devices have already received a substantial price increase after their initial launch, with the entry-level Legion Go S jumping from $899.99 and $649.99 to $1,579.99 and $989.99, for the Z1 Extreme and Z2 Go models, respectively. This was after Lenovo already increased the price on the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme-powered Legion Go 2 from $1,349.99 to $1,999.99. Now, the same Legion Go 2 with 32 GB of RAM and 2 TB of storage that previously jumped to $2,849 can now be found on the Lenovo US online store for $3,081.99.

This is a $233 price jump that corresponds to around 8% of the total previous price, although the Legion Go 2 with 1 TB of storage can still be found at Best Buy for $1,999.99. The latest price increase for the Legion Go 2 comes as the gaming handheld continues to be out of stock at Lenovo, despite partner stores, like Best Buy, having stock of the handhelds. Lenovo hasn't yet announced the price hike for the Legion Go, but it seems reasonable to assume the price increase is linked to the ongoing RAMpocalypse that has repeatedly affected pricing across various PC hardware segments—but most severely RAM and DRAM.

Xbox and PlayStation console sales in the US are having a rough 2026, according to new Circana data that analyst Mat Piscatella shared on Bluesky. For the year 2026 through August, Xbox hardware unit sales are down 33% year over year, while PlayStation units are 25% lower. That puts Xbox at an all-time low and PlayStation at its lowest point since 2013. As one might expect, it looks like pricing is the main culprit. Buyers paid an average of $529 for a new Xbox console this year, 26% more than a year ago, and $597 for a PlayStation, up 20%. Both are record highs for the US, and Piscatella says price sensitivity is becoming a real problem.

The decline follows a string of price hikes tied to the memory and storage shortage. Sony raised the PS5 Pro to $899.99 in April, Microsoft pushed the Xbox Series X to $799.99 on August 1, and Nintendo moved the Switch 2 to $499.99 in September, a hike analysts had warned about back in January. August itself was weak, with total hardware unit sales falling 15% to 559,000, the lowest August total since 2013. The Switch 2, however, remains the best-selling console of 2026 in both units and dollars. Piscatella said the US hardware market hasn't been "in a more precarious position since the early 80s." He thinks GTA 6's big launch might ease some of these declines, although that depends on console availability and pricing.

Circana's Mat Piscatella recently published the analytics firm's 2026 gaming sales data that effectively shows reduced game and console sales, with total US market spend dropping across the board, despite rising prices of both video games and gaming hardware. More precisely, total video game hardware sales in the US for the 2026 year to date saw a YoY drop of 11%, from $2.856 billion in 2025 to $2.543 billion in 2026. Further, video game content, including physical and digital media, DLCs, microtransactions, and subscriptions, saw a 10% decline in August 2026 compared to the same month in 2025, but the year-to-date spend in the same category is down only 2%.

Perhaps expectedly, the August 2026 content spending data shows a 7% decline in US console content spending, while PC content spending increased by 13%, and subscriptions grew by 3%. Much of this PC growth is likely driven by increasing PC hardware prices caused by the ongoing AI data center demand squeeze, instead of an actual increase in PC adoption. Moreover, we are in the middle of a console generation, and the Nintendo Switch 2 launched long enough ago that its resulting bump in console sales would likely have flattened by now, although the Switch 2 was still the best-selling console in the US for both unit sales and dollar spend for August 2026 and the 2026 year to date.

AMD will "substantially" increase its chip supply in 2027, CEO Lisa Su told reporters in Taipei on Tuesday, while admitting that demand is still running ahead of what the company can ship. Su is on her third trip to Taiwan this year, meeting partners such as Foxconn, Quanta, Acer, and ASUS, with TSMC also on the schedule. She is reportedly heading to South Korea later this week to sit down with memory suppliers Samsung and SK Hynix. Here's what she said:

We've been able to increase our supply as we've gone through 2026, and we're going to substantially increase our supply in 2027, but we can definitely use more. There's very, very high demand for the next several years. We can see very high demand, and so we need more advanced wafer capacity.

Micro Center may have started asking some RTX 5090 buyers for ID and a signed declaration form. A Redditor on r/Microcenter says they bought a PowerSpec AI90 prebuilt with an RTX 5090 at the Tustin store, where a manager had them fill out a form and scan their driver's license. Apparently, staff called the process new, starting about two days earlier. The form looks to be an "Advanced Computing Product Purchaser Declaration" that asks for contact and ID details, and it reportedly says "No exports, No exceptions." The form requires buyers to certify that they will not export the hardware, nor will they resell to someone intending to take it outside the country. Micro Center hasn't officially commented on this incident or on the rule in general.

The standard RTX 5090 isn't meant to be sold officially in China under US export rules, and MSI previously said that any units showing up there came through unauthorized parallel imports. That may be why the retailer wants a paper trail, but that's unconfirmed for now. Pricing could also play a role. NVIDIA has hiked RTX 5090 prices multiple times over the past few months, and German listings recently passed €5,000, about 73% above January. AI firms are reportedly buying RTX 5090 cards in bulk, tightening supply for consumers. If other stores follow Micro Center's approach, buying a 5090 in person could come with some paperwork. Regardless, we don't yet know whether this is a new widespread policy or a one-off.

Taiwan's Economic Daily News (UDN) reports that TSMC is planning a second US manufacturing campus in Texas, separate from Arizona. Citing semiconductor equipment industry sources, it says the project would include six advanced fabs, with Dallas the most likely location. UDN estimates the total investment could exceed the $265 billion committed to Arizona, since new fabs would probably use more advanced nodes. TSMC hadn't commented when the report went out. Reuters has since reported, citing two people familiar with the matter, that TSMC is indeed evaluating a potential Texas investment, with plans not finalized. One source said it would come on top of the Arizona commitment.

UDN points to customers like NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, and Apple wanting US-made chips, plus the Trump administration's renewed tariff threat of up to 200% for chipmakers that don't produce in the US. TSMC reportedly hasn't asked suppliers to prepare, and the board hasn't signed off just yet. TSMC added another $100 billion to its Arizona plans in July, but UDN says that site still faces power and labor shortages while it sorts out its water supply. Either way, fabs like these take years to build, so it's not reasonable to expect Texas-made chips any time soon.

Orders that get mixed up often tend to leave buyers with the short end of the stick. For instance, in 2025, a Micro Center customer found backpacks inside a Zotac GeForce RTX 5090 box, and another Best Buy customer reportedly got rocks instead of an ASUS TUF RTX 5080 and was initially denied a refund. This time, apparently, the order error went the other way. Reddit user deadmanwonderland_23 says they ordered a single MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16 GB from Walmart for $1,099 and received four identical cards. The card looks like MSI's Frieren Edition, which comes with a bundled blanket, and currently goes for $1,259 on MSI's website. It was already a relatively good deal at $1,099, but getting four cards really sounds too good to be true. At the price paid, the four cards add up to roughly $4,400, and there's no word on whether the buyer has told Walmart about the extras.

One plausible explanation is that someone in a Walmart warehouse mistook a carton of four cards for a single special edition package. That seems like a possibility, but the actual reason is not currently known. As of now, Walmart hasn't commented on this incident, and the only account comes from a Reddit post, so take it with a grain of salt. Retailers have often let customers keep extra units in the past, though that is usually decided case by case. Walmart has been generous with mistakes before, like when a customer managed to pick up an RTX 5070 for just $129 due to a labeling error. Either way, it's something we don't often see in a GPU market where prices just keep climbing.

A federal court in Washington has ordered Reddit moderator James "Archbox" Williams to pay Nintendo $4.5 million in damages over alleged Nintendo Switch piracy. US District Judge Lauren King granted Nintendo's motion for default judgment in full on September 23, along with a permanent injunction barring Williams from distributing pirated games or circumvention tools. Nintendo filed the lawsuit in June 2024, accusing Williams of running a network of so-called "Pirate Shops" offering libraries of pirated Switch games to the public.

According to the complaint, Williams promoted these shops through the r/SwitchPirates subreddit, where he served as lead moderator, and allegedly solicited eShop gift card donations to fund additional pirated titles. Williams never responded to the lawsuit. The court noted he had hired an attorney at one point to contest a Google subpoena, but he did not answer Nintendo's claims. Since he failed to respond, the court treated the complaint's allegations as true, which is standard for default judgments rather than a ruling on contested evidence.

Reuters reports that Meta has been testing a "human concierge" for Muse, its new personal AI agent, where human contractors handle some of the phone calls Muse places for users. The report is based on internal company posts seen by Reuters. Muse launched on September 8, and its calling feature can phone US businesses to book a haircut, check whether a store has an item in stock, or collect quotes. Apparently, not every call went smoothly, with one employee saying their insurance company kept hanging up once it realized it was talking to an AI. Meta reportedly enabled the human option for half of its employees last week, with an opt-out group for anyone who didn't want in.

It looks like that didn't go over well internally. Some employees raised privacy concerns, warning that sensitive information could accidentally end up with call center contractors. One of them reportedly wrote, "We are one bug away from unnecessary information being leaked to human callers." It gets even messier as another employee, who had Muse call his internet and cable provider to negotiate his bill, said the transcript showed the contractor made a racist reference. A Meta Superintelligence Labs vice president reportedly acknowledged it was a mistake to start the test without proper disclosures and said the feature has been rolled back for now.

Discord was met with substantial backlash when it first announced that it would be adding age verification requirements globally, with the platform almost immediately rolling back the ID requirements after the backlash. It has since announced that it will be introducing new age verification methods, including credit card verification, Apple Store and Google Play Store verification, Google Wallet, and AgeKey—a third-party reusable age credential that can be used for multiple platforms. It will use these services to place its users in an age group—13-17 years and 18+ years—which will allow them access only to content appropriate for their age. While these new methods will apply to international users, users in the UK, Brazil, Australia, and the US state of Texas will have to follow different guidelines.

However, these new systems will not be the first resort for age determination. Discord says that, following the controversy with the ID requirement for age verification, it will prefer other ways to verify the age of its users, including account signals—account age and which servers users are part of, specifically. It says that these signals match biometrics on accuracy. Only in cases where there aren't sufficient signals to confirm user age, will Discord require users to verify their age using one of the aforementioned age assurance options. Users in the teen group will not have access to sensitive media, while messages to teens from non-friends will be filtered through message requests, and other users will not be able to see teens' full profiles or activity. They will also not be able to join age-restricted servers without confirming their age.

AMD's Ryzen 5 5500F and Ryzen 5 7500 are finally available in the US, but both are selling above their announced pricing. On Amazon, the Ryzen 5 5500F lists for $120 and the Ryzen 5 7500 for $210, each $20 over AMD's MSRP of $99 and $189, respectively. The Ryzen 5 5500F has been spotted fluctuating between $118 and $125. Both listings are sold directly by Amazon rather than third-party sellers, so this doesn't appear to be a case of resellers padding the price. AMD revealed the two budget chips nearly two weeks ago, though they only became available for purchase now. At the time of writing, Amazon is the only US retailer stocking either chip, with Micro Center and Newegg still showing no listings.

To recap, the Ryzen 5 5500F is a 6-core, 12-thread Zen 3 part built on the Vermeer die, unlike the older $90 Ryzen 5 5500, which uses Cezanne. That gives it PCIe 4.0 support and a 4.4 GHz boost clock, versus PCIe 3.0 and 4.2 GHz on the 5500. The Ryzen 5 7500 is essentially a Ryzen 5 7500F with integrated graphics, packing six Zen 4 cores, DDR5 support, PCIe 5.0, and a 5 GHz boost clock, all within a 65 W envelope. AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 saw something similar earlier this year, launching on Amazon $100 above MSRP before settling down once other retailers picked it up, so pricing here could correct itself too.

Scalpers have apparently started listing Steam Frame reservations on eBay within hours of Valve sending its first reservation emails. Per IGN, listings for the 256 GB kit start around $1,700 versus Valve's $1,059, while 1 TB kits are listed at roughly $2,000 versus $1,299. IGN says at least some have already sold, but Mixed points out these are asking prices, and we haven't seen a confirmed sale. Valve's terms seem to work against these listings. The Limited Drop Program terms tie the purchase link to the qualifying Steam account, and they bar transferring the right to buy. No Steam Frame has shipped to a buyer in the US, Canada, the UK, the EU, or Australia, so you would be paying for a place in the queue, not a headset. eBay's policy also requires listings to offer a physical, tangible item.

Perhaps more interestingly, the community is pushing back against these scalpers. Users on r/Steam shared how to report the listings, and one said eBay sent a flood of emails confirming removals. Others found scalpers' Steam usernames in listings and reported them to Valve. We don't know if Valve has acted on any of it, and it also hasn't publicly commented on scalping since the September 14 launch. Valve used the same randomized lottery system for the Steam Machine, which still ended up on eBay regardless. It would be naive to assume that Valve can fully stop this while supply stays tight, but it is nice to see the community mobilize against scalpers.

Tesla, SpaceX, and SpaceXAI have taken a trademark dispute over the "Terafab" name to federal court, PCMag reports. The declaratory judgment action was filed on September 15 in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas. It asks a judge to rule that Terafab does not infringe the "Tera-Fab" mark of Illinois nanotechnology firm Tera-print, which covers a desktop photolithography system used by researchers. Tera-print sent a cease-and-desist letter on May 23, days after Tesla filed its own Terafab trademark applications on May 18. Six settlement meetings between June and August apparently went nowhere, and Tera-print says it will defend its rights.

Nothing has been decided yet, and the claims are each side's own. Tesla and SpaceX point to a separate Tera-print application filed on May 22 that seeks coverage for semiconductor-related goods, and they call the timing opportunistic. That is their characterization, not a court finding. Tesla and SpaceX also argue the two operate in different product spheres and that confusion is unlikely. Musk announced Terafab in March as a chip factory for AI compute. Intel joined the project in April, though its exact role is unclear. Filings in May pointed to costs up to $119 billion across all phases, and in August the companies confirmed a Grimes County, Texas site with a $16.8 billion first phase.

Spotify has started displaying GTA 6-themed artwork on massive billboards in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, adding a new layer to the game's already active marketing rollout. The images match ones recently posted by musicians including Travis Scott, Future, Metro Boomin, Morgan Wallen, and Keith Richards, all of whom teased possible collaborations with Rockstar Games on their own social accounts. Spotify used its own logo in the artwork and shared the billboards on X, but offered no further explanation of what it's actually planning with Rockstar. Multiple artists posted GTA-styled teasers hinting at soundtrack or in-game radio involvement in the days before Spotify's billboards went up, so this doesn't come entirely out of nowhere.

Speculation now ranges from official playlists and new songs to a joint marketing push tied to the soundtrack. Some fans are hoping for something more ambitious, such as direct Spotify integration that would let players stream their own playlists inside the game. That's a feature request that's floated around GTA and Rockstar communities for years, and it has never made it into a mainline entry. Rockstar hasn't confirmed any of this, so it's worth treating the billboards as just a marketing tease for now. GTA 6 is currently set to launch on November 19, and the GTA 6 Album drops on the same day.