Technologies

Marvel Rivals’ Sharknado Team-Up Ability Cements the Game’s Fun Direction

This is a wacky, wild superhero game at its core — and superheroes aren’t perfectly balanced.

In Marvel Rivals Season 2.5, team-up abilities are going full camp. Keep your head down, because the sharknado is coming to gobble you up — and resistance is futile.

The Season 2 balance patch was the first one to make wide-reaching changes to the game’s iconic team-up abilities, and the midseason patch is about to arrive with a similar shakeup. Gone are the days of the Punisher’s infinite ammo and Spider-Man’s symbiote one-shot combo.

Now, Jeff the Shark can combine his ultimate ability with Storm’s tornado as a nod to one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen — and the little land shark can also team up with Venom to heal nearby teammates through symbiotic tendrils. Yes, that evil shark is getting two new team-up abilities in a single patch. It’s the type of lopsided favoritism that keeps me up at night.

These team-ups are fun ideas, but based on the team compositions I see in Diamond and above, I’d venture to guess they won’t get much playtime in highly competitive matches — even with these cooperative boosts, Jeff just doesn’t compete with more effective strategists. Instead, I think these gimmicks are here because what seems like publisher NetEase’s real No. 1 priority is providing different outlets for players to let loose as their favorite superheroes.

Maintaining the Marvel power fantasy

Marvel Rivals is first and foremost a game about stepping into the shoes of some of the most popular superheroes in the world. Comic books are a great storytelling medium — but they’re also a visual spectacle that will just as often fall back on the “rule of cool.”

It wouldn’t feel right playing as Wolverine if you didn’t have access to the iconic Fastball Special, where he’s picked up and tossed like a football by Colossus (or in Rivals, by Hulk or Thing). Giving up your autonomy to another player rarely goes well, and it’s not like the ability is all that useful — unless you’re one of the best players in the world with Rocket Raccoon’s rocket boots — but it’s an integral part of Wolverine’s combat style.

The same principle applies to Captain America and the Winter Soldier. These characters have known each other for nearly a century. They grew up together in Brooklyn. They’re going to combine their combat styles in a special move.

Is the reverberating slam between Bucky’s metal arm and Steve’s vibranium shield all that great? Not really, because Bucky likely has to be out of position to make use of it. But it’s extremely cool to use and makes players feel like they’re more fully embodying these characters.

That brings us to what will surely be the game’s most infamous combo. The Jeff-nado started out as a Marvel Rivals community joke, and now it’s going to be a real team-up. How often will Storm and Jeff realistically combine their ultimate abilities? I can’t imagine seeing it in many games, but the interaction exists for Jeff players that want to ride the lightning, and that is quite simply cool.

NetEase has designed a game where not every team-up ability should be expected to reshape the entire meta, and I think that’s a great thing. What matters to the developers is that you’re able to enjoy experiencing gameplay for Marvel heroes that isn’t replicated elsewhere.

Each update provides clarity on Marvel Rivals’ competitive mode

If imaginative power fantasy is NetEase’s No. 1 priority, that means the competitive balance of Marvel Rivals takes a backseat. And that’s OK — there are folks who argue that the incessant changes, nerfs and reworks to Overwatch characters have made them less fun over the years, especially oddballs like Sombra and Mercy that are very different from their original incarnations.

Counter to what a game community’s sweatiest players might say, a game is fine when it’s unbalanced. It’s fun to have abilities that aren’t as useful as others, but are super bombastic and flashy. It’s OK to have characters that just won’t make the cut in higher levels of play. There have long been signs that Marvel Rivals is not being designed as a hyper-competitive game — there don’t seem to be Overwatch League-level ambitions at work here.

Marvel Rivals’ competitive system has been criticized since launch, with many players reaching ranks as high as grandmaster with a sub-50% win rate. The rank distribution is extremely generous compared with other games (like Overwatch), and many players who actively play competitive matches will gravitate toward the top.

The recent introduction of Chrono Shield Cards has made it even easier to escape the lower skill brackets, and games in the middle ranks like Platinum and Diamond sometimes feel like a coin flip depending on how skilled the players that queue into the game are. The skill gap between players in each rank is far too wide, and that seems to be how the system is intended to function.

But that relaxed vision for the game may not last, as it seems like NetEase wants to have its cake and eat it too. The Marvel Rivals Ignite 2025 tournament is being backed with a smooth $3 million prize pool. Funky team-ups and a more casual ranked ladder are one thing, but that’s serious money, and it signals that NetEase wants players to get serious about winning.

Marvel Rivals is moving in two distinct directions at once. The actual patches lead me to believe that the developers want this game to be fun first, balancing it around unique hero ability interactions and lower-ranked casual play that the presumed majority of players will experience. The tournament money and the player culture are heavier stuff, and there are a lot of people who want to compete to be the best in Marvel Rivals.

Trying to split the difference will lead the game down a path that ends in an identity crisis. It happened to Overwatch before, and Marvel Rivals isn’t immune to falling into the same traps. If the Jeff-nado is any indication of things to come, I hope the devs at NetEase stick to their guns and keep balancing the game around the Marvel power fantasy rather than prioritize competitive balance for high-tier tournament players and One Above All-ranked streamers.

Technologies

Microsoft’s Nadella says AI needs an ‘emergency brake’ that humans control

Nadella joined other tech moguls and researchers in calling for stronger safeguards and, in some cases, for the pacing of frontier development.

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Technologies

Kremlin Confirms Putin Transmitted Iran’s War Resolution Plan to Trump

The Kremlin says Putin relayed Iran’s proposal for ending the war to Trump, while Trump announced a Russian diesel supply deal that drew sharp criticism from Zelenskyy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin communicated Tehran’s perspective on a potential conclusion to the conflict in Iran to U.S. President Donald Trump, according to Russian state media reports on Saturday.

This disclosure follows Trump’s Friday statement that Russia will provide diesel to global markets amid soaring energy prices driven by the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

Russia’s Interfax news agency cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stating that Putin conveyed the message to Trump “in agreement with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian,” per a Google translation.

Additional Russian media accounts indicate Putin spoke with Trump by phone after meeting Pezeshkian on the margins of a summit in Turkmenistan.

Interfax did not detail the specifics of how Iran envisions the war — which erupted on Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iranian targets — reaching an end.

The White House did not immediately respond to Verum’s emailed request to confirm the reported conversation between Putin and Trump.

Russia supply deal

Trump announced Friday that Russia will deliver more than 4 million tons of diesel to the global market under an arrangement he said he agreed with Putin during a phone call.

Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by 500,000 tons in November, and 1 million tons immediately after, Trump posted on Truth Social. Moscow will then provide another 3 million tons of diesel contingent on the condition of Russia’s refineries, Trump added.

The Treasury Department temporarily waived sanctions on Russian diesel through April 2027 under a general license issued Friday.

Iran has intensified attacks on oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, with vessels coming under fire almost daily as Tehran attempts to choke off a rebound in crude exports.

A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard official stated Wednesday that Iran will block all “illicit routes” through Hormuz, according to the Fars News Agency, an outlet considered close to the Guard.

The surge in tanker attacks coincides with crude oil exports from the Middle East rebounding in September to prewar levels, largely because the U.S. military escorted ships through Hormuz along Oman’s coast.

An interim agreement signed in June between the U.S. and Iran to pause hostilities to allow for negotiations quickly collapsed.

‘Gifts to Putin’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy immediately denounced Trump’s diesel deal with Putin. Ukraine’s leader warned that easing sanctions without a commitment from Russia to de-escalate the war will only prolong it.

“Gifts to Putin will not bring peace or any benefit to the civilized world,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post. “Russia will ‘repay’ the diesel with further terror and perfidy. Allowing Russia to sell petroleum products is an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged.”

Diesel prices have surged worldwide as Ukraine has pounded Russian refineries, forcing Moscow to ban diesel exports to global markets. Iran and its Houthi allies have also attacked refineries in the Middle East, further constraining fuel supplies.

Trump faces mounting political pressure to lower fuel prices ahead of the November midterm elections. Republicans confront competitive races in conservative strongholds like Iowa, where farmers feel the pinch of high diesel prices.

Technologies

AI is Changing How Lawyers Work — and Putting the Billable Hour Under Pressure

AI is reshaping the legal industry by reducing the time needed for routine tasks, challenging the traditional billable hour model, and changing how lawyers learn and practice.

Artificial intelligence is now used by almost 90% of legal professionals in the U.K. and Ireland, and it’s putting one of the profession’s oldest conventions — the billable hour — under the microscope. That’s according to legal software company Clio’s U.K. & Ireland Legal Insights Report 2026.

It found that among firms using AI, almost 80% said they can handle more work without increasing resources, while over 70% said it cut costs by absorbing administrative work once done by support staff.

As a result, AI is challenging some of the assumptions on which the legal profession was built, forcing firms to reevaluate how their lawyers spend their time, how they charge for it and how new lawyers learn the ropes. You can’t charge 16 hours for something that takes 16 secondsNick Rowles-DaviesLexolent Some of the U.K.’s biggest firms are already putting this into practice.

A&O Shearman has worked with legal AI company Harvey to develop artificial intelligence agents for tasks, including reviewing loan agreements and analyzing regulatory filings, which it says can complete in minutes work that previously took several hours. Slaughter and May, meanwhile, has rolled out Harvey across all practice areas this year, including for regulatory research and document analysis.

Billable hour pressure The billable hour is central to the business model of many law firms, but when AI significantly reduces the time lawyers spend sifting through and drafting documents, the economics are no longer so straightforward. “You can’t charge 16 hours for something that takes 16 seconds,” Nick Rowles-Davies, founder and CEO of legal finance fund Lexolent, based in London and Dubai, told CNBC.

About one in five firms that have widely adopted AI report difficulty meeting billable-hour targets, according to Clio’s report. Globally, senior legal leaders expect the share of work charged by the hour to fall from 72% to 44% over the next two to three years, according to a Deloitte survey.

Routine work is the most exposed, Rowles-Davies said. “If you’ve got standard documents and you’re just putting in detail, then clearly that’s an automatic process.” But complex legal work still requires human judgment, he added, particularly when interpreting AI output and determining the right strategy for a client.

Lawyers [are] telling us that their day is getting betterJoshua LenonClio

AI and workloads

Whether AI efficiencies ultimately make lawyers’ working lives better may depend on what firms do with the time they get back. Clio’s report found that 51% of legal professionals work evenings, but only 32% want to, while 22% work weekends compared with 11% who would choose to.

Joshua Lenon, Clio’s New York-based lawyer-in-residence, believes some lawyers are already seeing the benefits. “Lawyers [are] telling us that their day is getting better,” Lenon told CNBC, as AI becomes more commonplace.

“People are really looking at these tools and saying, ‘This is making work better.’”