Earlier this month, Discord said it would be enacting an age verification policy. The platform faced some initial concerns from users about turning over their IDs and personal information, particularly given how poorly similar policies have been going elsewhere. Discord announced today it will delay and make some changes to its plans in response to the ongoing backlash.

The first change is that Discord is postponing the global rollout of its age verification plans until the second half of 2026. The company noted that it would meet its legal obligations in places where they exist, likely in those countries that have national laws requiring protections for younger users. But it will not begin the global rollout until it makes some amendments to the offerings.

Discord will offer more alternatives to how users can confirm their ages, including verification by credit card. That should allow people to access age-gated content without sharing an ID or performing a face scan. "If you're among the less than 10 percent of users who do need to verify, we'll give you options, designed to tell us only your age and never your identity," according to a blog post credited to co-founder and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy.

The company is also promising more transparency about its vendors for these verification services and their practices. Discord said that it will not work with any partners for face scans unless the tests are performed completely on-device. The blog post noted that Persona, one of the common vendors for facial age estimation services, does not meet that standard and Discord has opted not to work with the brand. 

Finally, Discord is also building a new spoiler channel option so that servers with select age-restricted channels won't have to require all members to verify their ages. It will also publish a technical explainer on its own automatic age determination systems.

We at Engadget have own worries about the wave of age verification laws happening both within the US and globally, but it's somewhat encouraging to see a digital platform at least trying to continue to deliver anonymity while still creating effective protections for teens.

We're less than a month from the availability of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach on PC, and today Sony released the required specs. Despite designer Hideo Kojima being known for spectacle in his projects, the minimum specs are quite reasonable.

The low graphics preset runs on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 or AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB, and that will give players average performance of 1080p at 30 frames per second, which is rough but at least makes the game available for players who haven’t upgraded in awhile. Intel Core i3-10100 or AMD Ryzen 3 3100 are the recommended GPUs for that graphics tier. As is typical for PC gaming, though, the higher end performance options will require beefier internals.

This port of Death Stranding 2 will also boast a few firsts. The title will mark the debut of Pico as an upscaling option on PC. This upscaler was made by Guerilla Games and was also used for the Death Stranding sequel on the PlayStation 5. The game will also be adding support for ultrawide views. The cutscenes can be viewed in a 21:9 aspect ration and gameplay can be displayed at 32:9. This option will be available for both PC and the PS5 versions of the game, and an ultrawide monitor won't be required to enable this view option.

Anyone who's been paying even a little bit of attention to tech news lately could have made a reasonable guess that AI will be a big topic at Samsung's Unpacked next week. Ahead of the event, Samsung teased some of what's to come for AI in terms of the Galaxy S26 smartphone lineup's photography tools. 

The S26 phones will feature a new camera system using Galaxy AI that combines capturing, editing and sharing of photos and videos. "Users will be able to turn a photo from day to night in seconds, restore missing parts of objects in images, capture detailed photos in low light, and seamlessly merge multiple photos into a single, cohesive result," a company rep said. The video clips Samsung shared demonstrated the before and after results of using its AI tools, which will all be housed in a single app rather than needing to switch between multiple image editing programs.

Updated cameras are just part of what will be on the schedule for Samsung's big mobile showcase. The expected Galaxy S26, Galaxy S26+ and Galaxy S26 Ultra will likely have a lot of AI-centric features.

During the flurry of CES 2026 news at the start of the year, it might have been easy to overlook Amazon's announcement that the Fire TV user interface is getting a revamp. But that redesign is rolling out starting today for US viewers. It will be available to users as a free update. 

The main visual updates for the streaming device's UI are a lot of rounded corners. But Amazon is also emphasizing speed in this new look, claiming that the improvements will offer 20 to 30 percent faster interactions. This version of the UI also makes more apps visible on the screen at a time, with up to 20 apps able to be pinned to the homescreen compared with six in the prior design. The update also has access to the Alexa+ AI voice assistant if you want to use it to pull up viewing suggestions or to organize your viewing queue.