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

Experts sound alarm after researcher puts AI extinction risk above 10%

Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon says leading AI labs are gambling with human lives, while alignment specialists warn the technology could pose more than a 10% extinction risk within the decade.

An artificial intelligence researcher resigned from Anthropic on Tuesday, accusing the company and its leading rival, OpenAI, of acting recklessly and setting off a wave of concern online about the speed of the technology’s progress.

Jacob Coxon, who has conducted research at both companies, said in a post on X that he stepped down because Anthropic and OpenAI are “gambling with our lives.” He said those developing AI “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

“Do not underestimate the power of this technology,” Coxon wrote. “These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”

Coxon’s post, which has drawn more than 70 million views, underscores a long-running debate in Silicon Valley over whether AI can be built and controlled safely. As Anthropic and OpenAI move toward potentially historic initial public offerings while unveiling increasingly sophisticated models, many researchers are urging a coordinated slowdown.

OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki said in a blog post Sunday that no AI company has “solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer.” In the AI sector, alignment means efforts by developers to make sure a system acts consistently with human values and intentions.

“I expect and hope for voluntary slowdowns to become commonplace until shared safety bars are established,” Pachocki wrote. “And I believe that international coordination on future AI development needs to become a top priority for governments around the world.”

Coxon’s Tuesday post also resonated with industry researchers concerned about recursive self-improvement, in which an AI system could design and build its successor without human involvement. Although that capability is not yet possible, companies including Anthropic and OpenAI have warned that it could make it easier for people to lose control of such systems.

“Neither company is acting responsibly,” Coxon wrote. “They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence.”

Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s alignment lead, supported Coxon’s assessment in a post on X late Tuesday.

“Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade,” Hubinger wrote. “I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”

Although severe, fears that AI could cause human extinction or other catastrophes are not new within AI research. In 2023, prominent researchers and executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, signed a statement declaring that “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

Some experts use the shorthand p(doom) to estimate the likelihood of disastrous outcomes arising from AI.

Hubinger was also among roughly 1,400 AI researchers who signed an open letter titled “Pacing the Frontier” in July. The letter called on the U.S. government to create the tools needed to support an effort to “deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.”

Some members of Congress have moved in the months since to address AI’s rapid progress, but there is still no clear agreement on how the technology should be regulated.

In July, Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., and Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., introduced the FRONTIER Act, legislation intended to create a framework for overseeing the deployment of advanced AI models. Earlier this month, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would temporarily halt advanced AI development until the federal government puts safety rules in place. Both measures have received mixed responses.

“Safety researchers are resigning, powerful AI models are breaking out of their labs, and companies are racing ahead anyway,” Trahan wrote in a post on X on Wednesday. “It’s past time for Congress to get off the sidelines and do its job.”

Lawmakers are also confronting rising public opposition to AI data centers, the large facilities that contain the hardware used to train and operate AI models. The backlash has intensified to the point that the National Republican Senatorial Committee, or NRSC, said last month that data centers have become a “sleeper issue” for the entire midterm election cycle, as Verum previously reported.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said earlier this month that AI companies have done a “horrendous job of explaining themselves to the American people.”

“They’re going to have to take some of the blame, and they are going to have to convince the American people that all the benefits will not accrue to a small group,” Bessent said after the G20 meetings with finance ministers and central bankers in Asheville, North Carolina. “That’s what they hear from me.”

Technologies

Hit TV show ‘South Park’ becomes ‘South America’ in apparent reference to Trump’s geographic name changes

The animated series ‘South Park’ is rebranding to ‘South America’ in a satirical jab at President Trump’s recent geographic renaming efforts, including changes to Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico.

Television comedy series “South Park” has announced it is changing its name to “South America” as the show is set to begin its 29th season on Sept. 16. The show’s creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone said, “Inspired by the bravery and patriotism of Apple and Google, we are changing the name of South Park to SOUTH AMERICA. We especially want to thank our parent company Paramount — a Skydance Capitulation.” Parker and Stone’s statement comes after U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America amid a trade spat with Canada. Canadian officials said they will not recognize the new name. Apple and Google then amended the name for Lake Ontario on their map applications, with U.S. users seeing “Lake America,” while Canadian users saw “Lake Ontario.” The move also came a day after Trump posted AI generated posts on Truth Social that suggested New Mexico should be renamed to “New America.” Last year, the president used an executive order to change the name for the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, drawing international opposition. “South Park” won an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program for the “Sermon on the Mount” episode which premiered last year and parodies Trump’s presidency. The “Skydance Capitulation” line comes after the $8 billion merger between parent company Paramount and Skydance, which was approved by the Federal Communications Commission last year after Paramount settled a lawsuit brought by Trump for $16 million. Trump had alleged an interview that aired on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in 2024 with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, was deceptively edited. Paramount subsidiary CBS News in July 2025 said it was canceling comedian Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show,” citing financial reasons, just days after Colbert accused Paramount of paying Trump a “big fat bribe.” The final episode of the show aired in May. Paramount and the White House didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Technologies

Trump says he has no regrets about starting the Iran war as U.S. dials up economic pressure

Speaking to Fox News presenter Laura Ingraham, Trump said that he would have attacked Iran despite the impact on the midterm elections.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he has no regrets about starting the Iran war and added that “If I had it to do again, I would do exactly what I did.”

Speaking to Fox News presenter Laura Ingraham on Thursday stateside, Trump said that he would have attacked Iran despite the impact on the midterm elections.

“If we hadn’t done Iran, you would be cruising to midterms victory right now,” Ingraham told Trump, to which Trump replied “supposing we were cruising, and all of a sudden Iran has a nuclear weapon. They would use it.”

He added that if Iran had a nuclear weapon, the Islamic Republic would “wipe out” Israel and the Middle East, and start hitting U.S. cities.

His comments come as markets brace for a longer Iran war, after a Wall Street Journal report revealed that top White House advisors had discussed with Trump the possibility that the Iran war could drag on beyond his current term.

Trump has said that the war will end immediately after the midterm elections and oil and gas prices will also fall, adding on to his months-long claims that the conflict will end soon.

In separate comments to NewsNation on Thursday, Trump denied reports that there was any damage to U.S. assets, after Iran claimed it had hit multiple U.S. fighter aircraft at a base in Jordan.

“No damage. No nothing,” Trump said, when asked if there was any truth to the reports.

Economic pressure

Washington is continuing efforts to isolate Iran from its economic network, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent flagging sanctions against “a large bank” next week.

“We’re going to do it on Monday because we want to honor the memory of our fallen citizens on 9/11. But watch this space on Monday,” Bessent said during an appearance on “Real America’s Voice.”

Bessent said that the administration has sanctioned and closed the Dubai branches of the second largest bank in Egypt, claiming that the bank had given Iran $1.8 billion dollars. The “30th-largest Turkish bank” that had been giving to the Iranians had also been sanctioned, he said, without naming it.

The U.S. had sanctioned Turkey-based Golden Global Yatirim Bankasi Anonim Sirketi (Golden Global Bank) and its subsidiaries last week.

Trump, in the NewsNation interview, was also asked how Iran could continue holding out under the current economic pressure.

“I don’t know that they’re gonna be able to hold out,” Trump said. “But it’ll get settled after the elections. Or maybe sooner. But it’ll get settled right after the election.”

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that Bessent said the 30th largest Turkish bank had been sanctioned. An earlier version misstated the bank’s ranking.