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The move also ends work on the next Mass Effect. EA said a small BioWare team had been in early development on the game, but the publisher chose to drop the project and shut the studio down, including its office in Edmonton, Alberta. "We do not take this decision lightly," Weber and Tinson wrote in the memo.

BioWare's own goodbye post on <a href="https://x.com/bioware" target="_blank">X</a> confirmed the closure and thanked the fans who debated their choices, fell for the characters, and made the studio's worlds their own over three decades.

This is EA's first major restructuring since they became a private company. In August, a group of investors led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund bought EA for $55 billion. The deal left the company with around $20 billion in debt, raising concerns that layoffs and other cuts could follow.

According to an internal memo, EA spent the past several months reviewing their operations and spending. The company now seems to focus less on single-player RPGs and more on their biggest franchises, including sports games, Apex Legends, and Battlefield, alongside upcoming Star Wars and Iron Man titles. Respawn Entertainment and DICE will also work together on a new project, reportedly another Star Wars Battlefront game.

BioWare isn't the only team affected. Full Circle, the studio behind the Skate reboot, is being cut down to a smaller team, and a Sims project has been put on hold. EA leadership reportedly indicated that more cuts to staff and projects could be coming.

For longtime fans, the closure caps a rough decade. BioWare was founded in 1995 and built its name on Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect and Dragon Age before EA bought the studio's parent company in 2007. The recent years were harder. Anthem, a live-service shooter that launched in February 2019, fell short of EA's sales targets, and its servers went dark for good on January 12, 2026.

With EA doubling down on online PC titles like Apex Legends and Battlefield, keeping your gaming accounts and PC secure matters more than ever

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EA Shuts Down BioWare & Cancels the Next Mass Effect Game

EA Pulls the Plug on BioWare and the Next Mass Effect

The PHP security team posted an <a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2026.php#2026-10-20-1" target="_blank">advance notice</a> on October 20 saying both vulnerabilities score 9.2 out of 10 on the CVSS v4.0 severity scale. They held back technical details until the release, but said they could ship sooner if details went public or attacks appeared. The flaws allow remote code execution, meaning an attacker could run their own commands on a vulnerable web server. CERT-EU says the scores suggest no login would be needed.

Researchers are tracking the flaws as CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, though PHP's notice names neither. Exactly who is exposed is still partly unclear. Reports claim every version since PHP 5 is affected, but PHP hasn't confirmed that. What is certain is that fixes will only come for the four <a href="https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php" target="_blank">supported branches</a>, 8.2 through 8.5. Anything older, including 8.1, 7.x and 5.x, is end of life and won't get an official patch. Security company Mallory estimates that about 884,000 websites and servers still run one of these older, unsupported versions. That's more than half of all the sites that publicly show which PHP version they use.

Cloudflare says they're already seeing early attack attempts and have rolled out emergency firewall rules to all customers, though they stress that these are only temporary measures. Other researchers have yet to confirm any attacks, but Sansec warns that widespread exploitation could begin within 15 minutes of the patch becoming public. The threat has already prompted some Dutch organizations, including the country's House of Representatives, to take their websites offline as a precaution.

Meanwhile, a quick fix circulating online that involves changing a single PHP setting may offer a false sense of security. According to a PHP core developer, applying the patch is the only reliable way to protect affected systems.

<h2 id="how-to-protect-yourself-until-your-servers-are-patched-">How to Protect Yourself Until Your Servers Are Patched:</h2>

<ol>
	<li>Find out where you're exposed. List every website and server running PHP, including copies tucked inside control panels like cPanel and Plesk, vendor apps and containers, and note each one's version. Anything reachable from the public internet goes to the top of your list, and anything on PHP 8.1 or older is your biggest risk because it will never get an official fix. That list tells you which systems need steps 2 through 4 right now.</li>
	<li>Cut off public access where you can. CERT-EU advises taking internet-facing PHP apps off public networks until a fix is applied. If going fully offline isn't an option, limit who can reach the site with a VPN, an IP allowlist or a login page in front of it.</li>
	<li>Put the site behind Cloudflare's emergency rules. Cloudflare has deployed firewall rules against the known attack methods for every customer, including the free plan, but they only work if your traffic actually passes through Cloudflare. Set your DNS records to Proxied (the orange cloud icon), check that the WAF managed rules are switched on, and set your server's firewall to accept web traffic only from Cloudflare's IP ranges.</li>
	<li>Block file-upload requests where you don't need them. Researchers believe the attack arrives through multipart form requests, the type browsers use to upload files. On sites or pages that never accept uploads, a web server or firewall rule that blocks those requests closes that path, though PHP hasn't confirmed how the attack works.</li>
	<li>Limit the damage if someone gets in. Security firm GMO Flatt advises removing stored passwords and cloud credentials from the server, lowering its privileges, cutting the data kept on it and storing logs somewhere safe.</li>
	<li>Watch for warning signs, such as PHP processes launching shells or download tools, new files in your web root, unfamiliar cron jobs or new user accounts. If you spot any, isolate the server and keep your logs.</li>
	<li>Have the update ready to go. When the fix lands at 14:00 UTC, install it on internet-facing servers first, then restart PHP-FPM or your web server. If a hosting company runs your server, ask them now when the fixed build will be live.</li>
</ol>

Your choice of web host matters most in moments like this. A managed host handles PHP updates, security patches and backups for you, so you aren't scrambling when a flaw like PHP2Shell hits.

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Cloudflare Reports PHP2Shell Attacks: Here’s How to Protect Your Site

PHP2Shell: Critical PHP Flaws Put Millions of Sites at Risk

The plan manager opens the Spotify mobile app, taps their profile picture, then goes to Your Premium and Manage to bring up the code. The member scans it with their phone camera. Both people need to be in the same place, because the code refreshes every few seconds. That detail is the whole point: a screenshot sent over a group chat will likely expire before anyone can use it. Spotify also says the check only works in the mobile app, so a manager who handles billing from a laptop will need the app on their phone.

Members get seven days from the time the notification arrives to complete the scan. If they miss that window or can't finish the verification, Spotify's support page says they can't join a different Family or Duo plan for 12 months. Reports add that those members drop to Spotify's free, ad-supported tier. They can still buy their own Premium plan, such as Individual, from <a href="https://www.spotify.com/premium" target="_blank">Spotify's Premium page</a> during that year.

The QR step doesn't replace Spotify's older address check. Members are still asked to enter the plan manager's full home address when they join, when the manager moves, or when Spotify can't confirm a match. The difference is that an address can be borrowed, while being in the same room can't. Under the old system, anyone who knew the manager's address could usually pass from anywhere.

The support page describes it as something Spotify may ask of some members, which points to a targeted or gradual rollout rather than a sweep of every Family account at once.

Netflix took a similar approach in 2023, restricting password sharing and charging $7.99 a month for members outside the household. Despite complaints, they gained 5.9 million subscribers in the second quarter and 8.8 million in the third. Spotify doesn't offer a paid add-on for people outside the household, but the goal appears similar: encourage users sharing accounts to pay for their own subscriptions.

For more articles like this, check out our <a href="https://several.com/news/tag/tech" target="_blank">Tech News</a> page!

Spotify's New QR Check Could Ban You From Family Plans for a Year

Spotify Now Uses QR Codes to Police Family Plan Sharing

The new crackers are built for shoppers with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity, along with anyone hosting a gluten-free guest this holiday season. According to the <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/small-business/articles/ritz-brand-introduces-gluten-free-150000322.html">official Ritz announcement</a>, the gluten-free version delivers the same flaky, golden-baked, buttery-flavored cracker as the original and contains no artificial colors or flavors. &ldquo;Our fans have been asking for a gluten free version for years,&rdquo; said Olympia Portale, senior director of core crackers and head of savory portfolio strategy at Mondelēz.

The gluten-free recipe replaces wheat flour with a blend of cornstarch, yellow corn flour, faba bean protein, tapioca flour, and oat flour. It&rsquo;s sweetened with invert sugar rather than the high fructose corn syrup used in classic Ritz. Shoppers who avoid oats for medical or dietary reasons should note that oat flour appears on the ingredient list and check the label before buying.

Food Network writer Adriana Chavez <a href="https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/news/i-tried-gluten-free-ritz-crackers" target="_blank">tested gluten-free Ritz side by side with the originals</a> and found them slightly smaller, noticeably crunchier, and a little less buttery, without the wheaty flavor of the classic cracker. She also found them lighter, and said she kept reaching for the gluten-free box over the regular one during a weekend of snacking. Her main complaint was packaging: the gluten-free crackers don&rsquo;t come in Ritz&rsquo;s signature sleeves, so a box may not stay as fresh once opened.

Ritz is joining a growing lineup of gluten-free versions of familiar snack brands. Cheez-It and Goldfish both released gluten-free crackers earlier in 2026, and Mondelēz&rsquo;s launch puts the company in direct competition for the same pantry space. For gluten-free shoppers, the result is more name-brand options in a cracker aisle long dominated by specialty labels.

The price works out to about 56 cents per ounce, and the eight-ounce box is noticeably smaller than the 13.7-ounce box classic Ritz typically comes in. Gluten-free products often cost more than their wheat-based counterparts, so a higher price per ounce isn&rsquo;t surprising. Shoppers who want to stock up before holiday gatherings should look for the red box at Walmart or Albertsons now, and anyone who doesn&rsquo;t live near either retailer can expect wider availability starting in February 2027.

For more articles like this, visit our <a href="https://several.com/news/tag/lifestyle" target="_blank">Lifestyle News Page</a>!

Ritz Launches Its First Gluten-Free Crackers, Only at 2 Retailers

Gluten-Free Ritz Crackers: Price, Release & Where to Buy

The proposed legislation would direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to establish rules recognizing video game purchases as ownership rather than temporary licenses. It would also require games with online features to offer an offline mode before their servers are permanently shut down. According to Torres's office, the bill would protect consumers' ability to resell or transfer their games.

&nbsp;"A game that can be taken away the moment a company pulls the plug is not a purchase. It is a rental disguised as a sale," Torres said in his announcement. He described the proposal as a "restoration to the historical norm," referring to a time when buying a cartridge or disc generally meant being able to keep playing it without depending on a publisher's servers.

Torres pointed to NBA 2K25 as an example of why he believes stronger consumer protections are needed. Released on September 6, 2024, the basketball game launched at $69.99 for its standard edition and $99.99 for the All-Star Edition. Yet just over two years later, 2K plans to remove it from digital storefronts on October 30 and shut down its online servers on December 31.

That shutdown will make MyCareer and MyTeam unplayable, as both modes depend on online services and the game's Virtual Currency system. Players who already own NBA 2K25 will still be able to access offline modes, including Play Now, MyNBA, The W, and MyWNBA. This isn't a new practice for the publisher, which followed a similar retirement schedule for NBA 2K22, 2K23, and 2K24, shutting down their servers roughly two years after release.

State Sen. John Kane of Pennsylvania has circulated a proposal for a Protect Our Games Act that would require publishers to preserve access through an offline mode, provide an online option independent of their servers, or refund consumers at least 25% of the game's original purchase price.

Until then, keeping your games playable also depends on your own connection, since online modes and digital-only downloads need reliable internet.

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Lawmaker Proposes Bill To Let Gamers Own the Games They Buy

Rep. Ritchie Torres Wants Gamers to Own the Video Games They Buy

Gold had fallen 0.7% the week before, after a hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation report raised the chances of another Federal Reserve rate hike and pushed the dollar higher. That combination usually hurts gold, because higher rates make savings accounts, CDs, and bonds more attractive than a metal that pays no interest.

Oil prices fell on Monday after President Donald Trump waived sanctions and tariffs on Russia, a move that could bring more Russian fuel exports to market. Energy prices have been pushing inflation up since the U.S.-Iran conflict started in late February, so lower crude also eases some of the pressure on the Fed to keep raising rates.

&ldquo;The metal is responding positively to the softer tone in oil prices,&rdquo; said Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at KCM Trade. In his view, a longer slide in oil or a clear drop in Treasury yields would be the biggest boost for gold in the near term, since either would ease concerns about inflation and interest rates.

Traders scaled back bets on an October rate hike after recent comments from Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, which markets read as support for a pause at next week&rsquo;s policy meeting. The odds of a quarter-point hike this month are now below one in five, but a December increase is still the expected outcome. The CME FedWatch Tool puts those odds at 92%.

A December hike would likely make credit card APRs, home equity lines of credit, and other variable-rate debt more expensive going into the new year. Anyone carrying a balance may want to pay it down or lock in a fixed rate before then. Savers are in a better position, since high-yield savings accounts and CDs should keep paying strong returns while rates stay elevated.

U.S. import prices rose more than expected in September, driven by higher energy costs and a range of other goods. That points to the Middle East conflict still feeding costs that eventually show up on store shelves and at the gas pump. Investors are now waiting for the upcoming personal consumption expenditures (PCE) report, the inflation measure the Fed uses for its 2% target.

Gold has stayed above $4,000 an ounce since August, supported by its role as a safe haven during periods of uncertainty. It is still down about a fifth since the U.S.-Iran conflict began, after a war-driven selloff pushed it into bear market territory earlier this year. Long-term buyers can get in at lower prices than at the start of 2026, though prices could still fall further.

Silver rose 0.6% to $57.33, and platinum and palladium also gained. The dollar barely moved after slipping 0.3% last week, which helped support metals priced in U.S. currency.

Gold coins, bars, ETFs, and gold IRAs will likely keep tracking oil prices and next week&rsquo;s Fed decision. Cheaper crude and a patient Fed would support prices, while another inflation surprise could stall the recovery. In the meantime, it&rsquo;s worth reviewing any variable-rate debt and checking what your savings are earning, since the rate outlook affects those accounts as much as it affects gold.

For more articles like this, visit our <a href="https://several.com/news/tag/financial" target="_blank">Financial News Page</a>!

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