Marvel Rivals’ latest Season 2 feature is targeted at all the fashionistas out there. Costume customization lets players change the color palette of their skin, creating a new in-game look that suits them best.

The new palette swap customization isn’t free and isn’t available on every skin, though more skins will be available to customize as time goes on. Four reskins shipped with the feature’s introduction.

Unlocking costume customization will cost you the in-game currency equivalent of $6 per skin, but you can freely change the color to any variation released for a skin you bought customization on as they are released.

The pricing of these reskins is actually generous compared with Rivals’ largest competitor: Overwatch 2. Palette-swapped legendary reskins in Blizzard’s first-person hero shooter have typically cost just as much as the original skin, and unlocking the black-and-gold customization for special Mythic skins costs the equivalent of $20.

The $6 price tag for Marvel Rivals costume customization is a tame monetization practice in comparison. But the biggest problem with the new feature isn’t the price tag — it’s the introduction of Unstable Molecules, which feels like an unnecessary additional currency introduced to lure players into spending more money.

Marvel Rivals is developing a currency bloat problem

There were already three separate currencies to manage in the game, alongside the occasional addition of special tokens that let players interact with limited-time events like Galacta’s Cosmic Adventure.

Of the three existing currencies, most players will interact with Chrono Tokens, the purple currency, as it’s available to free-to-play Marvel Rivals players. These tokens unlock rewards on the battle pass. Whereas most games have experience points that unlock battle pass tiers, Chrono Tokens are a currency that disappears at the end of a season.

Units and Lattice are the current premium currencies in Marvel Rivals. Lattice is the gold coin that you directly pay — most microtransactions convert your money into this currency to spend in-game, at a rate of $1 to 100 Lattice.

Units, the blue currency, are what you need to buy most of the premium costume bundles in the game — so you need to convert your Lattice to Units at a one-to-one exchange rate when you’re buying costumes.

That brings us to the new cosmetics system. As if that wasn’t overly complicated enough, costume customization now requires a new currency: Unstable Molecules. Unstable Molecules aren’t Units, but they might as well be. You exchange Lattice to Unstable Molecules at the same one-to-one rate.

The only difference between these currencies is that you use Units to purchase costumes, emotes, sprays and account name changes, and you use Unstable Molecules to purchase the costume customization feature for skins you already own.

The decision to add another currency for no reason needlessly complicates Marvel Rivals’ microtransactions — and the system was already pretty opaque as it stands. Maybe that’s by design, as trading in multiple fictional currencies helps obscure the real dollar cost that players are sinking into their in-game cosmetics.

The addition of Unstable Molecules feels like an anti-consumer move. The costume customization prices are fair when you compare them with the competition’s asking prices for similar cosmetic tweaks, but the new feature should be bought and paid for with Units. There’s no need to add another currency to Marvel Rivals, unless the entire point is to create another way to obfuscate and inflate player spending.

How to unlock costume customization in Marvel Rivals

You can rock palette-swapped versions of some of your favorite Marvel Rivals costumes right now. Costume customization is live in Marvel Rivals — for a handful of skins. Here are the skins the new feature is compatible with right now:

• Magik Punkchild: Rosy Resilience skin variant

• Psylocke Vengeance: Phantom Purple skin variant

• Luna Snow Mirae 2099: Plasma Pulse skin variant

• Winter Soldier Blood Soldier: Winter’s Wrath skin variant

Each costume customization is available for purchase for 600 Unstable Molecules. The customizations are purchasable as part of the costume’s listing under the store tab in the main menu. You need to own the base skin before you can purchase the costume customization color variants.

Unstable Molecules are currently only available in a one-to-one exchange with the Lattice premium currency, but the costume customization announcement in the official Marvel Rivals Discord server mentioned that there will be new ways to earn Unstable Molecules in Season 3.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Connections: Sports Edition might be tough today. If you’ve never heard of a particular method for healing an injury, the green group could stump you. And there’s one of those last-name groups that the New York Times loves to throw at players. Read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That’s a sign that the game has earned enough loyal players that The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times, will continue to publish it. It doesn’t show up in the NYT Games app but now appears in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can continue to play it for free online. 

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Collectibles.

Green group hint: For an injury.

Blue group hint: Not olds.

Purple group hint: Rock and ____.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Sports memorabilia.

Green group: «Rice» method.

Blue group: Youngs.

Purple group: Things that roll.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is sports memorabilia. The four answers are autograph, jersey, poster and trading card.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is «rice» method. The four answers are compression, elevation, ice and rest.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is Youngs. The four answers are Chase, Cy, Steve and Trae.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is things that roll. The four answers are bowling ball, dice, gymnast and screener.

The fourth beta of Android 16 has begun rolling out to supported Pixel smartphones and tablets, and it’ll be the last release for the beta program. Android 16 reached platform stability in its last beta, and this secondary stability release is all about tightening up all the screws before the final release in a few months. We’ll probably hear more about Android 16 next month during Google I/O 2025.

Users installing the latest beta will receive the latest fixes and optimizations first, and will be able to submit feedback via an app installed within the build itself. The Android Developers blog also announced that the latest beta is now available for more devices from its partners, allowing more people to get in on the Android 16 fun. 

Below, we’ll cover the updates of the latest beta and how you can install beta on your Pixel device. For more, don’t miss our Pixel 9a review and how to get Android 16’s Live Updates working with Google Maps.

What’s new in Android 16 beta 4?

Given how close we are to the final release of Android 16, we didn’t expect to see any major changes, and that seems to be the case with the latest beta. The blog post doesn’t share specifics on what changes were made, indicating that new features have not been added, though there may be a couple of minor or cosmetic tweaks. If the developer blog adds any specifics to the post, we’ll detail them here. 

Install Android 16 on a partner device

While it’s not a feature, Android 16 is now available for even more devices, so Pixels are no longer the only piece of technology to get this release. 

Here’s a list of the partners that now support the Android 16 beta on their devices:

• HONOR
• iQOO
• Lenovo
• OnePlus
• OPPO
• realme
• vivo
• Xiaomi

You can learn how to install Android 16 on supported devices from these partners on the Android 16 devices page.

What Pixel devices can install the Android 16 beta?

In order to install the Android 16 beta 4 (or any of the prior betas), you’ll need a compatible Pixel device. Here’s the full list of supported devices.

• Pixel 6 and 6 Pro
• Pixel 6A
• Pixel 7 and 7 Pro
• Pixel 7A
• Pixel Fold
• Pixel Tablet
• Pixel 8 and 8 Pro
• Pixel 8A
• Pixel 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL, 9 Pro Fold and 9a

How to install the Android 16 beta 4

Installing the Android beta is easy. Here’s how to do it.

1. Go to the Android Beta site and log in to your Google account.
2. Click or tap on «View your eligible devices» or just scroll down to the section.
3. You should see the devices associated with the Google account you’ve logged in with.
4. Under the device on which you’d like to install the Android 16 beta, click or tap the «+ Opt in» button.
5. Agree to the terms of the beta program and click or tap «Confirm and enroll.»

Once your device is enrolled, you can check to see if the update is waiting for you. It typically doesn’t take long.

• Go to your Settings menu. Tap System.
• Tap Software updates. Tap System update.

From there, the Android 16 beta 4 should start downloading to your device. If it continues to say «Your Pixel is up to date,» give it a few more minutes or try restarting your phone. 

For more, check out why Android 16 is being released earlier this year.