Apr 24, 2025Ravie LakshmananPhishing / Cybercrime The threat actors behind the Darcula phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform have released new updates to their cybercrime suite with generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) capabilities. "This addition lowers the technical barrier for creating phishing pages, enabling less tech-savvy criminals to deploy customized scams in minutes," Netcraft said in a fresh report shared with The Hacker News. "The new AI-assisted features amplify Darcula's threat potential by simplifying the process to build tailored phishing pages with multi-language support and form generation — all without any programming knowledge." Darcula was first documented by the cybersecurity company in March 2024 as a toolkit that leveraged Apple iMessage and RCS to send smishing messages to users that trick recipients into clicking on bogus links under the guise of postal services like USPS. Earlier this year, the operators of Darcula PhaaS began testing a major update that enabled customers to clone any brand's legitimate website and create a phishing version. The phishing kit, per PRODAFT, is the work of a threat actor codenamed LARVA-246, and is advertised for sale via a Telegram channel named xxhcvv / darcula_channel. It shares identical features and templates with another PhaaS referred to as Lucid. Darcula, Lucid, and Lighthouse are assessed to be part of a loosely connected cybercrime ecosystem flourishing out of China, enabling threat actors to pull off various financially motivated scams such as those perpetrated by an activity cluster dubbed Smishing Triad. "Darcula is one of several communities under the loosely affiliated Smishing-Triad, known for mass-targeting individuals globally via SMS-based phishing (smishing) attacks," Netcraft said. What makes Darcula compelling is that it makes it possible for threat actors with little to no technical expertise to easily craft phishing pages and conduct campaigns at scale. The latest improvement to the phishing kit, announced on April 23, 2025, takes the form of GenAI integration that facilitates phishing form generation in various languages, form field customisation, and translation of phishing forms into local languages. The cybersecurity company said it has taken down more than 25,000 Darcula pages, blocked nearly 31,000 IP addresses, and flagged over 90,000 phishing domains since March 2024. "This kind of flexibility means a novice attacker can now build and deploy a customized phishing site in minutes," security researcher Harry Everett said. Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter  and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post. SHARE    

IT outages are a nightmare scenario for a business. Operations grind to halt. Internal teams and customers, possibly thousands of them, are thrown into confusion. Lost revenue piles up by the minute. Each year, businesses lose $400 billion to unplanned downtime, according to Oxford Economics.   While enterprises can do their best to prevent this scenario, we have seen multiple examples of outages that stretch out over days. Businesses may not be able to control when an outage happens, but they can control how they respond.  What Causes Multiday Outages? Outages can stem from all manner of causes. In 2023, we saw Scattered Spider and ALPHV hit MGM Resorts International with a ransomware attack caused widespread disruption at its hotels and casinos. Slot machines were down. Guests couldn’t use the digital keys for their rooms.  But malicious attacks aren’t the only causes behind outages. The culprit can be something as seemingly innocuous as an update. In July 2024, a faulty sensor software update caused the CrowdStrike outage, resulting in global disruption that lasted for days.  The ubiquitous reliance on third parties means that a company may not be directly responsible for the incident; it might suffer an outage due to an issue that originates with one of their vendors, like CrowdStrike. Last year, fast food behemoth McDonald’s, too, had a global outage caused by a configuration change made by one of its third parties.  Related:In the beginning of this year, Capital One and several banks had to weather a multiday outage. In this case, the vendor Fidelity Information Services (FIS) experienced power loss and hardware failure that kicked off outages for its customers.  Regardless of the cause, enterprise teams need to know how to work through outages. “We all understand that it's not if a breach happens or an outage occurs, it's when that occurs. [It’s] how you respond. That's what everybody looks at,” says Eric Schmitt, global CISO at claims management company Sedgwick.  The right response can minimize the long-term damage and give a company the opportunity to rebuild trust in its brand.  How Can Companies Prepare for One? A multiday outage is a scenario that should be thoroughly covered by incident response and business continuity planning. A business should know its risks and build a plan around them. And often, that means using your imagination for the worst-case scenarios.  “The black swan. It's the things that you don't think of. The things that you don't know can happen really, you have to plan for this," says Sebastian Straub, principal solutions architect at N2WS, an AWS and Azure backup and recovery company.  Related:Planning for those unforeseeable events is a multidisciplinary exercise. Different teams need to weigh in and participate in tabletop exercises to best prepare a company for the possibility of a lengthy outage.  “It should never be a single team in a vacuum trying to identify all the risks that may impact the company,” says Schmitt.  What Happens During the Response? So, an outage happens. What now? It is time to take that incident response plan off the shelf and put it into action.  “There should be an incident commander or someone who's designated within the organization to take [the] lead in these types of incidents,” says Quentin Rhoads-Herrera, senior director of cybersecurity platforms at cybersecurity company Stratascale.  However, the incident is very discovered, employees need to be ready to alert the teams involved in incident response and all of the stakeholders being impacted by the outage.  “You need to alert all of the different departments to the fact that, yes, we are experiencing an outage, and sometimes people are just too reluctant to do that,” says Straub.  Related:Once the right people are alerted, they can work through remediation and attribution.  Communication is one of the most important aspects of working through an outage that drags on, and it is one of the toughest pieces to get right.  “You see in many, many outages that communications are one of the weakest things,” says Schmitt.  It is hard to find the balance between transparency, accuracy, and risk management when information about an outage is flooding in and changing so quickly.  “You don't want to pass along incorrect information but being transparent and crisp in your communication outbound helps build trust with your end users, your investors, your clients, whoever it may be,” says Rhoads-Herrera.  Finding that balance is made easier when you include your communications and legal teams in incident response planning, rather than waiting until you’re in the thick of a real-life incident.  While a specific outage and the timeline for recovery are going to dictate what information a business is able to share, committing to a regular cadence of communication, every few hours or once a day, goes a long way. “Long-term, if you're providing quality services and you're not letting your customers or stakeholders down in your communications during the event, I think your brand can recover from that,” Schmitt encourages.  The pressure to get operations back up and running is immense. And that goal is paramount, but it is important to not lose sight of the human element. People are going to be working long days not only during the initial response but beyond that. “These events are not eight hours and done. They're going to be multiday initial response, and the long-term remediation could stretch out of months or even years,” Schmitt points out.  People are going to be tired and stressed. Emotions are going to run high. If leaders don’t pay attention to their people, they risk more mistakes being made and burnout that leads to employee churn in the long-term.  One of the most important ways to safeguard the people responsible for working through a lengthy outage is an issue of culture. People need to know that mistakes happen. It is ok to speak up and get everyone on the same page to work through recovery.  “[Make] sure people understand that you don't need to be updating your resume on one screen while you're responding to an event on the other,” says Schmitt.  Getting lost in the trenches of the response can be easy. But there should be a leader who keeps an eye on people and their hours worked. When someone is hitting 10- and 12-hour days, enforce breaks.  “I saw a firm … put all of their employees up in very close hotel rooms. They made sure lunch, breakfast, and dinner was catered. They had rotating teams going in and out so that people had downtime. They had rest,” Rhoads-Herrera shares.  How Can Companies Learn from Experience? An outage, like any other major incident, needs to undergo a thorough postmortem. What went well in the response? What didn’t? How can the incident response plan be updated?  As much temptation there may be to forget about an outage, taking the time to answer these questions is valuable. “If you're trying to hide what the actual issue was, you're trying to downplay it, well then you're robbing yourself of the opportunity to grow and become stronger and more versatile,” says Straub.  Breaking down the cause of an outage and enterprise’s response is constructive, but playing the blame game rarely is.  “It's all about listing the facts and digging into what exactly happened, being open and transparent about it that leads to a better outcome versus passing blame or walking in trying to deflect,” says Rhoads-Herrera.  Are We Going to See More Multiday Outages? Reliance on third parties is only growing, and the concomitant risk of that interconnectedness along with it. Cyberattacks are in no way slowing down. Natural disasters are happening more often and becoming more destructive. Any of these can cause outages, and it is certainly possible that we will see more of them.  “The companies that are going to be most successful in the future are those that are looking at: what are my risks and making the investment to address those so that when the next event happens, regardless of root cause, they're able to quickly pivot and recover more quickly,” says Schmitt.  

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Inside the controversial tree farms powering Apple’s carbon neutral goal “We were losing the light, and still about 20 kilometers from the main road, when the car shuddered and died at the edge of a strange forest.  The grove grew as if indifferent to certain unspoken rules of botany. There was no understory, no foreground or background, only the trees themselves, which grew as a wall of bare trunks that rose 100 feet or so before concluding with a burst of thick foliage near the top. The rows of trees ran perhaps the length of a New York City block and fell away abruptly on either side into untidy fields of dirt and grass. The vista recalled the husk of a failed condo development, its first apartments marooned when the builders ran out of cash.” This is the opening to our latest Big Story, which we are excited to share today. It’s all about how Apple (and its peers) are planting vast forests of eucalyptus trees in Brazil to try to offset their climate emissions, striking some of the largest-ever deals for carbon credits in the process.  The big question is: Can Latin America’s eucalyptus be a scalable climate solution? Read the full story. —Gregory Barber This article is part of the Big Story series: MIT Technology Review’s most important, ambitious reporting that takes a deep look at the technologies that are coming next and what they will mean for us and the world we live in. Check out the rest of them here. The vibes are shifting for US climate tech The past few years have been an almost nonstop parade of good news for climate tech in the US. Headlines about billion-dollar grants from the government, massive private funding rounds, and labs churning out advance after advance have been routine. Now, though, things are starting to shift.   About $8 billion worth of US climate tech projects have been canceled or downsized so far in 2025. There are still projects moving forward, but these cancellations definitely aren’t a good sign. So, how worried should we be? Read the full story.—Casey Crownhart This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Elon Musk had a shouting match with the US Treasury Secretary   Scott Bessent did not take DOGE meddling with the IRS lying down. (Axios)+ Musk announced he’d spend less time on government work shortly afterwards. (WP $)+ What has the agency achieved in its first 100 days? Chaos. (Reuters)2 Trump’s tariffs are disrupting production of vital medical devices Of everything from MRI scanners to glucose monitors. (FT $)+ The tariffs aren’t good news for protective medical gear makers either. (NYT $) 3 Nvidia has released a new platform for building AI agents  And unlike its rivals, it relies on open-source models to make them. (WSJ $)+ Nvidia has a very specific vision for how they’ll work. (The Register)+ Why handing over total control to AI agents would be a huge mistake. (MIT Technology Review)4 Even Mark Zuckerberg thinks social media isn’t what it was The question is, what comes next? (New Yorker $)+ Meta’s Oversight Board ruled that videos disparaging trans women aren’t hate speech. (WP $)+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)5 How AI can help programmers preserve aging computer code Governments across the world are using AI tools to modernize their systems. (Bloomberg $)+ The race to save our online lives from a digital dark age. (MIT Technology Review)6 LinkedIn is rolling out its verification systemAdobe is among its first adoptees. (The Verge) 7 Google’s AI Overviews is making stuff up againThis time, it’s confidently claiming that made-up idioms are real. (Wired $) + Why Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong. (MIT Technology Review) 8 Reselling apps are flourishing in the USSavvy shoppers are dodging tariffs by shopping second-hand. (WP $) + The end of ultra-cheap shopping is nigh. (Rest of World)9 How to create a new color Olo is a bit like teal—but it doesn’t technically exist. (The Atlantic $) 10 This Starbucks store is entirely 3D-printed The coffee will still taste the same, though. (Fast Company $)+ Meet the designers printing houses out of salt and clay. (MIT Technology Review) Quote of the day “It went from a Cinderella story to Nightmare on Elm Street.” —Dan Ives, a Wedbush Securities analyst, tells the Financial Times why Elon Musk’s allegiance to Donald Trump has backfired for his businesses. One more thing How a tiny Pacific Island became the global capital of cybercrimeTokelau, a string of three isolated atolls strung out across the Pacific, is so remote that it was the last place on Earth to be connected to the telephone—only in 1997. Just three years later, the islands received a fax with an unlikely business proposal that would change everything. It was from an early internet entrepreneur from Amsterdam, named Joost Zuurbier. He wanted to manage Tokelau’s country-code top-level domain, or ccTLD—the short string of characters that is tacked onto the end of a URL—in exchange for money.In the succeeding years, tiny Tokelau became an unlikely internet giant—but not in the way it may have hoped. Until recently, its .tk domain had more users than any other country’s: a staggering 25 million—but the vast majority were spammers, phishers, and cybercriminals.Now the territory is desperately trying to clean up .tk. Its international standing, and even its sovereignty, may depend on it. Read the full story.—Jacob Judah We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet 'em at me.) + An almond and potato cake? You’ve got my attention.+ When you get a tattoo, where does the ink go?+ The latest season of Black Mirror was filmed almost entirely in the UK.+ Lenny Kravitz’s Parisian home is incredibly chic.

Approval follows tussle with Ealing council over affordable contribution Source: HTA DesignCourtyard view of the now consented development which has been designed by HTA HTA Design has been given the green light to progress with the final phase of a 1,345-home estate regeneration project in west London. The third phase of the Friary Park scheme, designed for Peabody and Mount Anvil, will see 693 homes delivered in Acton after updated proposals for the development were approved by Ealing council. The three-phase regeneration scheme replaces 225 social rent dwellings and five market homes that previously occupied the site. Outline approval for this phase of the scheme had previously been granted in 2020 and 2023, with the latter version granting permission for 576 new homes, 133 of which would have been affordable. Updated proposals submitted last year sought to increase the maximum height of the scheme from 22 to 24 storeys and add 117 more homes, without any additional affordable contribution. Amendments to the design have added 117 homes After discussions between the applicant, the council and their respective representatives, a figure of £4.2m surplus was agreed and the applicant amended its proposals to incorporate additional social rented homes in place of 15 market sale units. It means the third phase will now provide a total of 148 affordable homes. Proposals for Friary Park also include a 450 sq m community centre, a community square, and a 5,000 sq m play area. It will also feature an outdoor gym, a cycle hub, a climbing wall, a basketball court, a community kitchen and allotments.

Why has the AJ, in partnership with Architects’ Action for Affordable Housing, compiled a collection of 20 of the UK’s best housing schemes? Because each of the projects in our clearly laid-out guide offers practical suggestions about how to design and deliver homes in a better way. The wheel does not have to be reinvented. Many of the solutions to the nation’s housing crisis already exist. And here they are. READ THE PUBLICATION When we talk about the crisis, what we mean is that millions of people in the UK are struggling to find safe, decent, affordable homes. But, while the headlines are dominated by the government’s housing supply target, the crisis is as much about quality as it is about quantity. The quality of the norm is unacceptable, yet we have somehow become inured to it. According to a comprehensive audit of England’s new housing carried out by UCL in 2020, the design quality of three-quarters was ‘mediocre’ or ‘poor’, and a fifth should have been ‘refused planning permission outright’.Advertisement SEE ALL 20 PROJECTS HERE Not only that, most new-build housing is environmentally unfit for purpose, as was found by a new report by the Design Council Homes Taskforce, which speaks of the ‘profound challenge’ of delivering 1.5 million homes within the UK’s legally binding climate commitments. So, in fixing the crisis, it’s vital that we focus on both radically increasing housing numbers – in particular affordable housing – and achieving a step change in design quality. Such an approach will avoid the cheap, botched and snagged outcomes which have scarred past episodes of mass housebuilding. And it will result in huge benefits for our health, our communities and our environment. Here, then, are 20 exceptional yet attainable housing schemes, all of them designed with care by architects. We wanted not only to showcase these but to focus on the vital questions of ‘why’ and ‘how’ they are good. To be sure, there is no perfect housing scheme, nor any single ready-made solution. Instead, these projects excel in different ways. Some are notable by delivering social housing which meets the Passivhaus standard, or by saving up-front carbon through the adaptation of existing buildings. Others use modern methods of construction (MMC) or simply meet the real needs of growing families or older people. While the majority represent affordable housing, all 20 have realistic budgets, and none are homes ‘for the rich’. Taken together, we hope they provide a host of useful clues as to how to design and deliver homes in a better way. These schemes show how we can design and deliver homes in a better way Of course, the true impact of housing on people’s lives can only be understood by the people who live there. So, in this guide, you’ll hear how residents feel about their homes, alongside the views of clients and architects. Raising the bar in housing is a shared endeavour, and the more involved communities are, the better.Advertisement The stand-out homes we’ve highlighted in this guide are not the norm – yet. So let’s use them as inspiration and raise our expectations. We can have this level of ‘good ordinary’ housing everywhere. It doesn’t need to cost more. But we do need ambitious, committed clients, who understand what they can accomplish with architects on board. For decades, the bulk of the housing sector has been starved of design expertise. We have the architects with the right skills. Let’s put them to work. The Architects’ Journal team Source:Dowen Farmer Architects Good Homes for All housebuilding 2025-04-24 AJ news desk comment and share

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OpinionApril 24, 20254 min readSlashing NASA’s Programs Will Squander America’s Place in SpaceThe Trump administration’s plans to cut NASA’s science missions will destroy the U.S. space legacyBy Louis Friedman Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean during the second moonwalk EVA. NASA/Recall Pictures/Alamy Stock PhotoFor more than half a century planetary exploration and space science have been a hallmark of American achievement and excellence. From Mercury to Pluto and beyond, we have gained enormous understanding about planetary origins and evolution. We have learned about the atmospheric, surface and interior dynamics of other worlds. All those discoveries have carried implications for what’s happening here on Earth. In classrooms around the world, exploring new worlds and probing the mysteries of the universe is an emblem of America.But that may now end; the Trump administration is poised to take the chainsaw to space science, just as it has to almost everything else in the U.S. science portfolio. Trump officials are planning huge, destructive cuts for space science, according to news reports, likely killing all new mission plans for this decade, including the long-sought, all-important Mars Sample Return mission. This flight was meant to return now-waiting samples from the red planet.China is already leading the way to the moon and Mars with robotic vehiclelike rovers and sample returns and is also likely to do so with human missions. The U.S. human space program, meanwhile, is bogged down with a stumbling Artemis program, built with a convoluted architecture marked so far by failures and delays in nearly every major component. The latest is the repeated failure of SpaceX’s Starship, which twice now has exploded in flight. Reminiscent of the 1980s, when we paused planetary exploration after the success of Viking and launch of Voyager 1 and 2, the U.S. has iced new Mars missions, with plans to cancel Mars Sample Return, and redirected our once great lunar capability to small experimental landers built by inexperienced new companies. Beyond specific missions, the loss of space science research capability will be a generational calamity.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.So what? Does it matter if the U.S. is No. 2 on other worlds? Space is a pretty distant arena—even more distant if it is the moon, Mars and beyond you are thinking of. Compared with the “America First” emphasis on AI chips, rare earth metals, tariffs and trade wars, promoting Teslas and cutting foreign aid, space is a minor political and economic player. But we are becoming No. 2 in such areas of focus too (see China’s advances in DeepSeek AI, BYD electric cars and developing hydropower in Africa). Our failures on Earth are not unrelated to our narrow and shortsighted vision for the moon and Mars, and the broader dismissal of science.Focusing inward is what China’s Ming dynasty did in the 15th century and the Portuguese and Dutch did in the 18th. Our step back from exploration of new worlds is one deep into mediocrity or even obscurity. It’s tied together—the Apollo program was not about a race to the moon; it was about a race between geopolitical powers to prove their economic and technological superiority to the world. So too now. Africans will feel the U.S. retreat as we withdraw humanitarian and infrastructure aid. They will also feel the U.S. retreat from science and exploration just as China goes forward with theirs.I don’t think it matters to Africans if it is Chinese or Americans there, engaged and helping them. I also don’t think it matters to the moon or Mars whether it is China or the U.S. building things there. But if we accept mediocrity and turn our focus inward, it will matter to us, especially to our children. The isolationist or island mentality expresses to our children and to the world that we have given up on ambition and growth and understanding the universe, that we will be satisfied with being less than we can be.Curiosity rover created this self-portrait at Gale Crater on Sol 2082 (June 15, 2018) using the Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSThe planned decimation of American space science, coupled with the total dysfunction in our human space program, squanders the admirable U.S. record and accomplishments. If these budget cuts go through, we will leave collected samples on Mars and forego future exploration. What little money will remain will be given to Boeing’s troubled Space Launch System human space flight vehicle and SpaceX’s exploding Starship—a vehicle designed for Elon Musk’s Mars fantasy, rather than for the needs of the U.S. space program.There is no doubt we could do more with less. NASA is wasting money racing again to put footprints on the moon, this time to lose. Instead, we could play to our strengths. Imagine a telerobotic lunar base with broad societal and international participation, instead of the two-people-per-year plan to put boots on the moon we now have. We could “commercialize” the moon not with fanciful mining ideas, but with private and public partners operating vehicles, conducting science observations and even playing sports and games. Similarly, we can lead the world into the solar system with virtual exploration opportunities for all. And we can bring home those samples from Mars—possibly with the discovery of extraterrestrial life. This kind of American creativity would cost far less than our current program—but it will not have a chance in a budget-slashing environment where we throw out the babies and bury our heads in the bathwater.This can only be enabled by government. Private companies will not conduct science and astronomy on the moon (nor send rovers or bring back samples from Mars). Nor will they fly the successors to Hubble and Webb such as the Nancy Grace Roman telescope, which the administration also proposes to cancel.Space exploration is meant to create a positive future. The legacy of Apollo, and of our robot explorers in the solar system is a real and worthy America first legacy, one that proclaims American leadership based on a peaceful and global aspiration: for the benefit of all humankind. That legacy should not be squandered.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

Until Dawn developer reportedly cancels Blade Runner game set for PS6, next Xbox Hit the Deckard. Image credit: Warner Bros News by Victoria Kennedy News Reporter Published on April 24, 2025 Supermassive Games - known for releases such as Until Dawn and The Quarry - has reportedly cancelled an unannounced Blade Runner game. The project was titled Blade Runner: Time To Live, and according to Insider Gaming, it was going to be a "character focused, cinematic, action adventure" release, poised to be launched across PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, as well as on next generation Xbox and PlayStation systems. Reportedly, it was a single-player game, slated for a 2027 debut. The 7 Best Game Franchise Revivals Ever. Watch on YouTube The report claims the player would be the only Blade Runner in 2065, and the game's campaign would feature a 10-12 hour "compelling" story, which would blend "the philosophical themes of Blade Runner with kinetic action-adventure gameplay". This story would see players taking on the role of So-Lange, the report states. So-Lange is a vintage model Nexus-6 "inexplicably still alive well beyond your limited lifespan". Documentation seen by Insider Gaming reads: "Journey from the teeming undercity of New Zurich 2065 to the eerie remnants of the forgotten world beyond... Under orders to retire Rev, the mysterious and ruthless leader of an underground replicant network, you are betrayed and left for dead in a brutally hostile environment." Blade Runner: Time to Live was said to have entered pre-production in September 2024, with pre-production then expected to wrap up in March 2025. The end of prototyping, meanwhile, was set for this September. On the cost side of things, Blade Runner: Time to Live's development budget was reported to be in the region of $45m, with $9m of this expected to cover external performance capture and acting talent. The game was ultimately cancelled, reportedly towards the end of last year. As to why, that's allegedly due to Alcon Entertainment, who is the owner of the Blade Runner rights, although no further details were provided at this time. While we may never know what could have been, according to one source, Blade Runner: Time to Live was "rather impressive". Next up from Supermassive Games will be the long-awaited next Dark Pictures Anthology game, Directive 8020. This one's set in space, features Bond and Marvel star Lashana Lynch, and has been in development for some time.

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here April has been a good and bad month for PS Plus. The good was that the Essential games were excellent with the likes of RoboCop Rogue City, and Extra also received the day-one release of the magnificent Blue Prince. However, on the flip side, Sony delivered a storm of price increases across many countries and regions, leading payers to claim they are “cancelling”. While we don’t know what additions will arrive next month, the games leaving PS Plus in May 2025 have now been confirmed, and there are 25 upcoming departures in total for Essential, Extra, and Premium combined. Games leaving PS Plus in May 2025 Below is a list of all 22 known games leaving PS Plus Extra and Premium on May 20th, 2025, as per PushSquare: Grand Theft Auto V (PS5, PS4) MotoGP 24 (PS5, PS4) The Sims 4: Island Living (PS4) Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3) — Premium Resistance 2 (PS3) — Premium Walkabout Mini Golf (PS5) — Premium Synth Riders (PSVR2) — Premium Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord (PSVR2) — Premium Before Your Eyes (PSVR2) — Premium The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners (PSVR2) — Premium The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2: Retribution (PSVR2) — Premium LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 (PS4) Stranded: Alien Dawn (PS5, PS4) The LEGO Movie 2 Videogame (PS5) Ghostrunner (PS5, PS4) Payday 2: Crimewave Edition (PS4) Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (PS4) Journey to the Savage Planet (PS5, PS4) Portal Knights (PS4) Enter the Gungeon (PS4) Batman: Arkham Knight (PS4) inFAMOUS: Second Son (PS4) In addition to the above departures for Extra and Premium, don’t forget the following three games will leave Essential on May 6th: RoboCop Rogue City Texas Chainsaw Massacre Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth – Hacker’s Memory As you can see from the above lists, there’s a lot of great games set to leave Extra and Premium. Responding to the confirmed departures, a lot of subscribers on Reddit are not very happy. The first echoed complaint is about first-party games leaving the subscription service with InFamous Second Son and the Resistance series. As stated by one user, “These are Sony-owned games. It costs them literally nothing to keep them on PS+”. Another complaint is about the assortment of VR games leaving Premium. There is already a shallow catalogue of games for the PSVR2, and “losing that many VR2 titles all at once [feels like] a kick in the nuts”. There’s also the understandable complaint that 22 games are leaving Extra and Premium, and we’re only likely to get eight or so additions in May. As pointed out by one user, “This sucks, losing 22 games, getting only 8 new games and they will raise the price of the subscription after this month”. Lastly, some of the complaints stem from the PS Plus price increases, along with its value looking worse compared to Xbox Game Pass. This comparison is especially brutal right now as, although Microsoft subscribers regularly receive day-one releases, they have just recently been gifted two juggernauts in the Oblivion remaster and the highest rated game of 2025 so far, Clair Obscur Expedition 33. Again, the current ensemble of Essential games will leave on May 6th, meanwhile, the Extra and Premium departures will set sail on May 20th. Hopefully Sony has some good additions planned as right now subscribers are miffed and supposedly planning to not renew their memberships. In other PlayStation news, the release time for Days Gone Remastered is imminent, and the release date for Ghost of Yotei has been announced with stunning pre-order bonuses. Related Topics PS Plus Subscribe to our newsletters! By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime. Share

Bradley and Peter Hüsemann-Odom weren’t specifically looking for a loft—a house with a yard where their pair of vizslas would have room to romp was more what they envisioned—but when a tall, light-filled space in a 1938 Art Deco factory building that backs up to Atlanta’s Beltline essentially fell into their laps, they were game to give it a try. A good friend, it turned out, was moving to New York; she offered them her unit, which both men had admired during social gatherings. And so the deal was made.“We looked at the loft as an opportunity to combine our aesthetics into one,” says Bradley, who leads the eponymous AD PRO Directory design firm Bradley Odom. The recently married couple had been staying in his apartment, which shared much the same moody, layered style as his popular home furnishings store, Dixon Rye (where Peter serves as design director). Rather than continuing to live and work in matched environments, however, they decided that their new home should incorporate a measure of the sparer, airier sensibility Peter grew up with in Germany.Hanging constructions of wire hoops and vintage bocce balls—resembling miniature solar systems—help bring down the main living area’s ceiling height for a more intimate feeling. The shape-echoing circular wall mirror is a Paris flea market find. The wood barstools were custom-made, but designed to give off a vintage vibe. Not much was needed in the way of build-out, with most of the loft’s interior simply getting a coat of pristine white paint—although the ceilings and certain strategic walls were left with the worn, peeling surface the years had provided, as a reminder of the building’s manufacturing heritage. While the majority of the space remains open and interconnected, custom-designed oak doors (inspired by examples the two had seen in a Mexico City hotel) were installed to create separation and privacy for the bathrooms, a walk-in closet, and the kitchen pantry.In addition to the desire to blend their personal styles in the project, Peter says, “another driver was that we really wanted a space where we could entertain and bring all of our friends together.” The loft’s living area, as a result, is set up to accommodate plenty of company. One major focal point is a 1950s leather-wrapped daybed by the French designer Jacques Adnet, which is accompanied by further seating in the form of a puffy Verellen sofa, a pair of Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams slipper chairs that Bradley has owned for more than twenty years (freshly re-covered in a heather-colored Schumacher wool), and a funky, rounded spindle chair and ottoman that were picked up at a roadside flea market near New Orleans for 20 dollars. Peter designed the coffee table for the room, in the form of 12 independent cubes—10 wood, two marble—that can be pulled over to wherever a guest needs to set down a plate or a drink.The loft’s under-stairs entry is painted a smoky purple, which extends around the corner to provide an atmospheric backdrop for a Kit Reuther painting. The Vittorio Introini lounge chair, from 214 Modern Vintage at High Point, is dressed in a Kravet velvet. A carved Anne Herbst console table stands beneath a grid of Rocío Rodríguez works on paper in the dining area. The set of vintage brass-and-rattan chairs came from Bradley’s previous apartment. Other furnishings, such as a rolled-steel dining table, take their cues from the loft’s industrial windows and concrete floors. “We like for a place to speak to us about what it wants to be,” Bradley says, although “we also definitely wanted to have a little bit of fun”—hence a scattering of more playful pieces such as an Anne Herbst console table supported by carved lions.Perhaps above all, Bradley and Peter see their new residence as a spot that symbolizes their joined lives, a repository for artworks they have both collected over the years as well as furniture and accessories discovered during travels together to High Point or Paris or Charleston. Much of the art has been acquired in consultation with Robin Sandler of Atlanta’s Sandler Hudson Gallery, and such professional ties are important to the couple. More than a few owners of businesses where the loft’s contents were sourced, Peter explains, “are friends of ours, and we host them in our space. So it’s really nice to have this representation of them in our interiors.”“I don’t think either of us sees the loft as our forever home,” says Bradley, “but it’s a nice transition, especially for our first years of marriage.” The meaningful things the two have surrounded themselves with, whether brought over by Peter from Germany, kept on from Bradley’s former bachelor pad, or recently purchased à deux, will “continue to find new life in our spaces,” he says, both now and in the future.Bradley (left) and Peter Hüsemann-Odom with their vizslas, Stella Bates and Grayton Rhodes, in their Atlanta loft. A vignette beneath the loft’s stairway includes a Dixon Rye tiered chest, a tadelakt pottery lamp, and brightly hued ceramics from Michael Dickey’s Accretion Series. The couple intend, eventually, to cover the entire wall behind their bed in works of art. The papier-mâché ceiling fixture, from Jeanne Tardif at Atlanta’s Foxglove Antiques, was the final piece added to the room. Graphically patterned nightstands flanking the upholstered Verellen bed are from Dixon Rye. Just outside the closet’s custom white-oak doors is a compact work space; the desk was found at a French flea market. “Since we’ve both worked in fashion,” says Peter, “we’re very keen on having our closet organized, with everything nicely folded and color-coordinated. So it feels like going shopping in the morning for what we are going to wear.” The powder bath is a departure in mood from the rest of the loft, with its skirted vanity, darker color palette, and foliage-covered walls. The three wild-clay vessels are from Josh Copus Pottery.