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Leaked footage of “paused” Dungeons & Dragons RPG shows the thing doing a thing with the stuff

by admin June 20, 2025

Some footage from a reportedly cancelled Dungeons and Dragons RPG from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive co-developers Hidden Path Entertainment has surfaced online, alongside concept art.

All of it paints a vague picture of a work-in-progress game – which was being assembled under the watchful eye of a Wizards of the Coast that’s currently facing a post-Larian Baldur’s Gate conundrum – that looked a bit like a bunch of the big fantasy RPGs we’ve gotten in recent years.

If you need a quick refresher, this unannounnced Hidden Path D&D game was reported as having been cancelled alongside a bunch of other stuff at WoTC back in 2023, only for the studio to then refute that reporting. Then, last year, Hidden Path creative director Michael Austin posted on LinkedIn that they had made the call to “pause development on that project and reduce the company size until we have an opportunity to return to it”. 44 devs lost their jobs.

Now, this footage (via MP1st) has come out, and looks to have been put together by a music supervisor on the game, which was codenamed Project Dante. It shows off a party of three adventurers, made up of the player and two companions, putting a bunch of bandits to the sword in third person combat that looks quite Dragon Age: The Veilguardy to me.

They then do some puzzles to get the magical water flowing at a temple, explore a bit, and towards the end things get pretty cutsceney with a group of folks chilling in a tavern, before ending with the player sneakily watching a group of NPCs sing while crouching in some grass. I hope they at least tossed the crooning crew a coin as a tip after taking that last bit in.

Overall, not much sticks out to me as beyond what you might expect from a big fantasy RPG like this, though the concept art does have a very nice picture of a flying cat, or a Tressym to give the furry boi its proper name.

Well, I say that, but while the temple puzzling’s going on one of the companions – named Kavar – does say the line “The thing is starting to do a thing with the stuff”. It’s not really noteworthy, maybe a tiny bit eye-roll inducing, but I got a kick out of it.

If this D&D RPG had made it to release rather than that paused/cancelled limbo, I could see myself quoting it to mates in a fashion I’m sure they wouldn’t find irritating whatsoever.

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June 20, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Eight minutes of footage from an unfinished open world D&D game has leaked

by admin June 20, 2025

Four years ago, Hidden Path Entertainment—the studio behind the Defense Grid series and the codeveloper of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive—posted a bunch of job listings that revealed it was developing a big-budget open world Dungeons & Dragons game. Bad news came in 2024 when its creative director posted on LinkedIn to reveal the studio had spent six months searching for “replacement funding” to continue work on it, but in the absence of that funding, made the decision to “pause development on that project and reduce the company size until we have an opportunity to return to it.” 44 developers lost their jobs.

Now, an eight-minute video and a collection of concept art for the game has leaked (via MP1st). Codenamed Project Dante, it’s a third-person RPG with action combat (very early-in-development action combat, I feel obliged to say), and two AI-controlled companions. After an initial fight we see a simple puzzle being solved to activate a magical temple, some exploration, a flashback cutscene, a snippet of tavern conversation, and then a song.

The fact there’s a full song being sung by a group of NPCs you can overhear just by sneaking up on them is the most surprising thing in the footage, which is otherwise fairly by-the-numbers fantasy RPG stuff. It reminds me of Dragon’s Dogma, only with a Forgotten Realms skin.

The concept art is a nice collection of D&D imagery, showcasing an adventuring party that includes an orc bard, a tiefling rogue, and an elf lady with a tiny dragon pet. There’s a bunch of dragons, some displacer beast kittens, and an adorable tressym—one of the flying cats like Gale has in Baldur’s Gate 3. It looks exactly like the kind of art I show my players when I’m running D&D.

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While nothing about what’s been leaked seems exceptional, it does seem like development was fairly far along. While Wizards of the Coast did reportedly cancel five in-development videogames a couple of years ago, it seems like Project Dante was put on indefinite hold due to a loss of funding. Either way, it’s a shame to see so much hard work go nowhere.

Another D&D game that’s definitely still in the works is the singleplayer action-adventure coming from the former director of Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi games. That one’s being developed by Giant Skull and all we know is that it will apparently contain “immersive storytelling, heroic combat and exhilarating traversal” and is being made in Unreal Engine 5.

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June 20, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

How Waymo Handles Footage From Events Like the LA Immigration Protests

by admin June 12, 2025

Waymo declined to answer questions from WIRED about how many cameras are inside its vehicles, exactly how long footage is retained, and whether the company has ever turned over footage to US federal law enforcement or a branch of the military. Karp did note, however, that the company’s engineering team sometimes uses information from sensors, including video footage and other data, to run simulations aimed at improving its technology. She says Waymo also puts limits on both who can access data and how long it’s retained.

Waymo’s robotaxi service is currently available in the Phoenix metro area and parts of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas. In the company’s relatively short time operating in US cities, it has shown a willingness to comply with requests for footage from law enforcement.

Officers working for the Mesa Police Department and the Chandler Police Department in Arizona have been requesting and using footage from Waymos for criminal investigations since 2016, or about as long as the vehicles have been in their towns, according to reporting from Phoenix’s ABC 15. Police told the news outlet in 2022 that they have used the footage for several cases, including an alleged road rage incident. (The individual pleaded guilty after being charged with disorderly conduct.)

In May 2022, two months after Waymo began limited robotaxi operations in San Francisco, Vice reported that a training document for San Francisco police explicitly told officers that “autonomous vehicles” have footage that could sometimes “help with investigative leads.”

As of 2023, Waymo had been issued at least nine search warrants in San Francisco and Arizona’s Maricopa County, its primary markets at the time, according to reporting from Bloomberg. One of the cases involved the murder of an Uber driver in 2021. While San Francisco police said they couldn’t identify a specific Waymo vehicle that was near the crime scene, an officer argued that there was “probable cause” that Waymo vehicles were “driving around the area” and had footage of the victim, possible suspects, and the crime scene, according to a search warrant viewed by Bloomberg. Waymo complied and provided footage, but it ultimately did not lead to the arrest of the suspect, who was convicted of the murder in 2023.

Last year, WIRED reported that Waymo had sued two individuals for allegedly vandalizing its vehicles in San Francisco and had camera footage from the cars of the alleged incidents. (One of the cases is ongoing; the other was dismissed last month.)

Waymo’s video-recording and data-collection practices aren’t unique. All vehicles with self-driving capabilities rely on a combination of lidar, radar, and video data in order to operate. Cruise, the now defunct self-driving-car venture run by General Motors, also reportedly gave camera footage to law enforcement upon request.

Private owners of camera-equipped vehicles can also voluntarily turn over camera footage to law enforcement. For example, police in Berkeley, California, have received at least two sets of footage from the owner of a Tesla Cybertruck who said their car was vandalized twice this year, according to documents obtained by WIRED via public record request.

Additional reporting by Paresh Dave.

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June 12, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Massive privacy concern: over 40,000 security cameras are streaming unsecured footage worldwide

by admin June 11, 2025

A major privacy concern involving more than 40,000 security cameras worldwide has been revealed by Cybersecurity firm Bitsight. According to the company’s TRACE research division, these cameras are live-streaming video feeds that are fully exposed to the internet — meaning that one can gain access without needing any sort of authentication, encryption, or even a basic password. In most cases, a person can access real-time footage from these exposed cameras simply by knowing their IP address.

Bitsight initially flagged the issue back in 2023, but recent research suggests that the situation “hasn’t gotten any better.” According to the latest research, these vulnerable cameras are not limited to one region or industry. The United States has close to 14,000 cameras that are potentially exposed, with states like California, Texas, Georgia, and New York having the highest numbers. Next on the list is Japan, with 7,000 exposed cameras, followed by Austria, Czechia, and South Korea, each of which have close to 2,000 vulnerable devices.

It is true that not every camera hooked up to the internet is a cause for concern, and some livestreams are set up intentionally to showcase scenes, like a beach or a birdhouse, for public viewing. However, some of these vulnerable cameras have been found in more private environments — including residential setups monitoring front doors, backyards, and even living rooms.