Technology

• GAT Online publisher Take-Two is suing Paiao Network Technology, the owner of online marketplace PlayerAuctions
• The lawsuit claims PlayerAuctions makes millions from facilitating the sale of illegitimate content and hacked accounts
• Such sales can give new players massive advantages in GTA Online, basically enabling a form of cheating

As GTA V is one of the biggest games in the world, it’s no wonder developer Rockstar and publisher Take-Two Interactive take it very seriously, so much so that the latter is suing online marketplace PlayerAuctions for allegedly selling unauthorized content that infringes GTA V’s copyright.

Spotted by Polygon, the lawsuit is directed at Chinese company Paiao Network Technology, which owns the PlayerAuctions platform, and alleges that the marketplace sells "thousands of listings for unauthorized, infringing GTA Online content – including heavily modified player accounts, in-game assets, and virtual currency – all gained by using hacking software, cheats, and technical exploits."

The filing accuses PlayerActions of doing this with the full knowledge that sellers on the website were “engaged in rampant infringement and other unauthorized conduct” and that it makes millions in reverence by taking a cut in these illicit transactions.

While it’s not illegal to sell your GTA Online account, it does infringe the terms of service for GTA Online, which is one of the issues Take-Two has with PlayerAuctions. But the big issue is that third-party sellers are selling illegitimate items that have been gained by hacking accounts or using exploits to sell high-ranked game accounts or masses of game currency, as well as unlock content that would usually require an investment in gaming time or legitimate purchase via GTA Online’s virtual currency.

On top of all of this, selling such accounts gives players a massive advantage in GTA Online that’s tantamount to cheating, meaning online marketplaces like PlayerAuctions could be seen as nirvana for people who want to get ahead in a game without putting in the gaming grind.

While in-game purchases are absolutely part of GTA Online, they tend to be balanced in a way that doesn't give players an overwhelming advantage, and people who don’t want to spend real money for in-game currency can still earn virtual money by playing the game and completing heists.

“Through these offerings, PlayerAuctions markets to Take-Two’s customers an otherwise impossible experience: new players can begin GTA V with billions in VC and with a massive arsenal of in-game content — such as vehicles, clothing, and weapons — configurations only possible by hacking and modifying the GTA V game in breach of the Rockstar TOS. In some cases, these listings advertise ‘unlock all’ accounts preloaded with maxed-out character levels and virtually all in-game assets available to acquire in GTA Online,” Take-Two’s lawsuit explained.

GTA V is arguably one of the largest games in history, with the online element making billions of dollars for Rockstar and Take-Two. As such, both companies are bound to take action on anything that could mess with their money-making machine.

While it’s hard to feel a great deal of sympathy for Take-Two, especially as GTA can make hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per quarter, having masses of cash hopefully means Rockstar has the resources and funds to make GTA 6 one of the best entries in the series, if not one of the best games ever. Rockstar’s last major game was Red Dead Redemption 2, arguably a masterpiece in open-world design and cinematic storytelling – it’s one of my favorite games – which I’m sure benefitted from the wild success of GTA V and its online element.

We’ll have to see how this lawsuit plays out, but by the looks of it Take-Two has a strong claim; I for one wouldn't like to be in the shoes of Paiao Network Technology’s legal team.

You might also like

• Hitman: World of Assassination hits PSVR 2 soon, finally giving you a reason to dust off your headset
• I’ve spent hours honing my swing in PGA Tour 2K25, and while its shot craft remains excellent, familiar frustrations can’t keep it totally out of the rough
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 blends Western gaming sensibilities with JRPG panache in 2025’s weirdest role-playing game

• Bolt Graphics unveils Zeus GPU, targeting rendering, HPC, and gaming
• Claims include 10x faster rendering, 6x FP64, 300x simulation gains
• Zeus supports up to 2.25TB memory, 6x 800GbE, 8x PCIe Gen5

Bolt Graphics has announced what it says is the fastest graphics processor ever, which is quite the claim.

Based in Sunnyvale, California, the semiconductor startup says Zeus has a “completely new GPU design for high-performance workloads including rendering, HPC, and gaming” and that it “addresses performance, efficiency, and functionality limitations with legacy GPUs.”

Bolt Graphics adds Zeus offers up to 10 times faster rendering, 6 times higher FP64 HPC performance, and up to 300 times faster electromagnetic wave simulation speeds compared to legacy GPUs.

Stunning path tracing performance

It supports expanded memory through Bolt’s architecture, allowing up to 384GB per PCIe card and up to 2.25TB per Zeus unit in a 2U server, with rack configurations reaching 180TB. Zeus also integrates 400 GbE and 800 GbE Ethernet interfaces directly into the GPU, reduces energy use despite the higher performance, and will be available in PCIe, server, and cloud form factors.

"Zeus increases performance while simultaneously reducing power consumption," said Darwesh Singh, Founder and CEO of Bolt Graphics. "I'm proud of the Bolt team's dedicated effort to create a solution that addresses key customer pain points, enabling them to be more productive and bring their ideas to life."

Slides published by ServeTheHome show Zeus is based on a RISC-V RVA23 out-of-order scalar core and there are a number of different architectures.

The Zeus 1c26-032 is a single-chiplet design and supports DisplayPort 2.1a and HDMI 2.1b, along with an RJ45 BMC port - typically seen on DPUs, servers, and other infrastructure components. There’s also a QSFP-DD port for 400GbE and two PCIe Gen5 x16 slots. The 1c26-032 includes 32GB of LPDDR5X and up to 128GB of DDR5.

The Zeus 2c26-064/128 is a two-chiplet module, while the 4c26-256 is a four-chiplet configuration. In the case of the latter, which has 500W of chip power, each chiplet is paired with 64GB of LPDDR5X and up to 512GB of DDR5, bringing the total memory capacity to 256GB of LPDDR5X and up to 2TB of DDR5. Combined, the GPU supports up to 2.25TB of total memory.

It also includes six 800GbE (OSFP) ports, which ServeTheHome notes is “a lot of connectivity coming out of a GPU. Putting that into perspective, that is ~12x PCIe Gen5 x16 lanes worth of bandwidth.”

The slides show the Zeus 2c26-064/128 outperforms the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 5090 in path tracing workloads by roughly 9x and 4.8x, delivering 154 Gigarays compared to 17 Gigarays (RTX 4090) and 32 Gigarays (RTX 5090). In FP64 compute performance, Zeus achieves 10 TFLOPS, significantly ahead of 1.4 TFLOPS (RTX 4090) and 1.6 TFLOPS (RTX 5090) - roughly 7.1x and 6.25x higher, respectively.

Comparing the Bolt Zeus 4c26-256 against Nvidia’s consumer GPUs, path tracing performance is approximately 18x higher than the RTX 4090 and nearly 10x higher than the RTX 5090, while FP64 compute throughput is over 12x greater.

All of this should be taken with a pinch of salt of course. As ServeTheHome observes, “This feels like an announcement where we really want to see product. The fact that we are still a few months away from early developer kits makes this feel a bit early. On the other hand, if Bolt Graphics has Zeus competing with a combination of NIC and consumer GPU, while offering more memory, then it could be a really neat combination. I am always a bit skeptical of products until we see them live.”

You might also like

• Check out our list of the best graphics cards for video editing you can buy
• This external Geforce RTX 4090M GPU is the most powerful right now
• Want a PC with 8 (yes, 8) AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPUs? Here’s one

Diego Simeone's men look to overturn a one-goal deficit against Los Blancos.

Find out when the women's NCAA bracket will be revealed and which streaming service you need for the tournament.

It's completely normal to feel anxious or overwhelmed. But how do you know when it's the beginning of an anxiety disorder?

With AI taking over our phones, some companies are making it more appealing than others.

• New AI tools are coming to Google Workspace
• Automatic translation is coming to Google Chat
• Your image and voice will be sharper with Studio lighting and sound

Google Workspace is adding new AI powered tools to both Google Meet and Google Chat, without the need to buy a separate Gemini add-on. These come in the form of Generated Background Images and Studio Look, Studio Lighting, and Studio Sound for Google Meet, as well as Translate for me, coming to Google Chat.

This follows Google’s recent infusion of Gemini AI across services, most recently with its introduction into Google Calendar - so that users no longer have to manually add diary entries, or schedule meetings.

Translate for me, the AI injection into Google Chat, is an in-chat automatic detection and translation tool which can identify over 120 languages, and translate messages whilst keeping the original available for review.

Google Meet gets studio tools

For Google Meet, AI is coming with new Generated Background Images, which can help users create unique and bespoke meeting backgrounds, and can obscure your surroundings during a meeting, just in case your home office isn’t as presentable as you’d like.

Also coming to Meet is Studio Look, which uses machine learning to “detect and enhance” image quality with noise reduction and image sharpening, making sure you’re always in focus.

It won’t just be your image that’s sharper though, as Studio Lighting and Studio Sound will be introduced to simulate studio-quality lighting, with automatic light position and brightness adjustments - but only for devices that meet specific browser and processor requirements.

Your voice will sound more balanced and crisp, with Studio Sound making sure even the low quality headset users are still understood perfectly.

If you want to get a bit more creative, Google Drawings is also bringing in Gemini’s image background removal function, to help reduce time spent on fiddly tasks and give you more time to perfect your drawings.

You might also like

• Take a look at our picks for the best AI tools around
• Keep costs low with the best productivity tool options around
• Google Workspace opens up Gemini for all - but you'll have to pay more

On this special episode of Uncanny Valley, we unpack Elon Musk's desire for a government shutdown that could become permanent. Plus: An update on measles misinformation in the US.

Niantic's pivot to spatial mapping has been underway for years. What it means for Pokemon Go's future is unclear, but a deeper blend of AR, AI and your future maps of the world are going to be what comes next.

• Apple's M3 Ultra defeats most desktop CPUs in terms of power efficiency
• This is thanks to its ARM-based instruction set compared to x86 used for desktop processors
• It does lag behind the M4 Max in power efficiency, however

Apple's new Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) has received critical acclaim from multiple reviewers thanks to its M3 Ultra processor, despite apparently losing out to the M4 Max in single-core processes. However, its performance capabilities aren't where the praise stops - a new benchmark suggests there is another, equally important benefit to using the M3 Ultra chip compared to other processors on the market.

As highlighted by Wccftech (based on the Ars Technica Mac Studio review), the M3 Ultra's benchmark in Handbrake (a video encoding program that can be used for benchmarking both CPUs and GPUs) reveals that it's only slightly less power efficient than its Mac Studio M4 Max counterpart - and it also proves to be far more efficient than other powerful desktop processors. This is likely due to Apple opting for an Arm-based architecture instead of x86, which is used for most mainstream desktop CPUs, notably those offered by Intel and AMD.

Ars Technica's analysis shows that the Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) draws 77.3W of power on average in Handbrake, slightly lagging behind the M4 Max variant which uses an incredibly low 50.2W. While the latter is more efficient, the M3 Ultra arguably makes up for it with its better performance in multi-core processing based on benchmarks - albeit at a much higher price.

Up against x86 processors, the M-based chips are the clear victors - the prime examples are the Intel Core i9-14900K using 233.6W, and the AMD Ryzen 9950X using 194.6W on average. It's worth noting that none of there aren't any other ARM processors among the comparisons; Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips are also highly power-efficient, but were likely omitted as they’re still a long way off the likes of the M3 Ultra in terms of performance.

The Mac Studio is, at first glance, just a super-chunky Mac mini - but there's more going on under the surface. (Image credit: Future) Buy the M3 Ultra Mac Studio if you can, but the M4 Max model makes more sense for most users…

There’s no denying that these power-efficiency claims are impressive. But unless you're looking for the absolute best hardware available with deep pockets to justify it, the M3 Ultra Mac Studio is overkill in my eyes.

It might be more powerful than the M4 Max (specifically for gaming and multi-core processes), but I'd argue it may not be a significant enough margin to justify spending more. The M4 Max model starts at $1,999 / £2,099 / AU$3,499 while the M3 Ultra starts at $3,999 / £4,199 / AU$6,999 - bear in mind, the M4 Max isn’t that far behind the M3 Ultra in terms of performance, while also being more power efficient. I don't know about you, but the M4 Max model seems like the easy choice here.

If Apple's M3 Ultra Mac Studio is on your radar for its gaming capabilities, I would still argue the M4 Max is the reasonable option - or even the shockingly impressive M4 Mac mini. We all want great performance from our hardware in some capacity - but it's always worth considering factors like power consumption and whether the price tag is justified, and this is a perfect example of that.

You may also like...

• The only way is stack! Arm wants to build its own CPU server for hyperscalers, reports say, and AMD won't be happy
• Arm may be planning to hike prices, has considered developing its own chips
• The best laptops 2025 tested, reviewed and rated

French side host the Bundesliga outfit with the tie on a knife edge after a first leg stalemate.

The live-action remake will arrive in May.

Expect political intrigue and intense battles as Randland returns to Prime Video.

• WBD has migrated Discovery+ to the same platform as the Max app
• Starting March 12, subscribers will see five great new features
• The update will make the rollout of future changes quicker and simpler

Discovery+ subscribers are getting a big update to their streaming apps, according to an announcement from Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD).

The changes will be rolled out today (March 12) to all subscribers in the US and Canada that update their apps, and includes five great new features that might be familiar to anyone who's signed up to WBD's other streaming service, Max.

That's because the change will see the Discovery+ app migrate to the same in-house tech platform that WBD uses for the HBO streaming service, which WBD's head of tech Avi Saxena says will enable "richer feature set".

Unifying tech stack for all of its streaming services means WBD will be able to roll out any backend changes, including bug fixes and updates to the design of the apps, more efficiently.

What new features are available on Discovery+?

Discovery+ is the home for content from HGTV, Food Network, TLC, ID, Discovery Channel and CNN. (Image credit: Discovery Inc.)

The update means WBD can bring a lot of the same great features that Max subscribers already enjoy to those signed up to Discovery+. These include:

1. An improved homepage that looks more Max
2. More personalized content recommendations
3. A new search layout for jumping between episodes
4. Ability to sign in to the app via a QR code
5. New sharing functionality for social media

Of these new features, the improved navigation tools look to be the most helpful to subscribers looking to find content in the app. Indeed, the new search layout (as pictured in the lead image of this article) looks like it will make jumping between episodes of a show a lot simpler.

I can see this change being most useful for big reality series that have a seemingly endless number of seasons and episodes, making it a lot easier for viewers to find a specific segment from the show. WBD also says that these new discovery improvements will allow for more personalized content recommendations.

There's also new sharing functionality that lets Discovery+ subscribers send content to their friends and family more easily. WBD specifies in its announcement about the update that this new functionality is for "adult profile users" though, so that might mean this feature is disabled for kids. We've contacted WBD for clarification, and will update this article when we hear back.

Discovery+ subscribers can also expect the new homepage, which will look more like Max, to have more personalized recommendations that utilize machine learning to better serve up movies and shows that you like.

Outside of the new features, WBD also says the update means that the Discovery+ app will benefit from faster performance more generally, allowing for better video resolution and playback.

Discovery+ is the latest streaming service to roll out an overhaul of its app in 2025, with YouTube TV teasing a big Netflix update earlier this month, Prime Video launching a new app for Apple TV devices in February, and Max making a big change to its navigation menu in January.

Make sure to check in with TechRadar regularly for details of the latest changes to your favorite streaming services.

You might also like

• Best streaming deals: current offers live
• Watch Max with friends? One of its best features is now available
• Fubo is the latest streaming service to raise prices in 2025

The best end-to-end encrypted messaging app has a host of security features. Here are the ones you should care about.

Sam Altman asked, and OpenAI's new creative writing model delivered.

“No Lives Matter” has emerged in recent months as a particularly violent splinter group within the extremist crime network known as Com and 764, and experts are at a loss for how to stop its spread.

Here's hoping Elon Musk won't have to personally fix President Trump's new EV anytime soon.

Pokemon Go's team leader says the entire team is moving with the game and that it will continue to evolve at Scopely.

If you're a Cleveland resident in search for great internet and broadband, look no further. Our CNET experts are on the case.