Entertainment | The Verge

Decap is the man behind the drums behind your favorite song

2026-09-26T15:22:40-04:00

Drums on film. | Image: Decap

I don't think I'm going to hurt anyone's feelings by pointing out that Decap doesn't have the name recognition of Kendrick Lamar, Olivia Rodrigo, or Charli XCX. But his fingerprints are all over tracks from them, as well as many other artists, including Freddie Gibbs, Bad Bunny, Mac Miller, BTS, and even Ludwig Göransson's score for Oppenheimer.

Nicholas Piantedosi, better known as Decap, is a record producer, but perhaps more importantly, he's the man behind Drums That Knock, a series of sample packs that have found their way onto countless records across genres. The line is so successful that, after debuting in 2016, it's now on its 11th …

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Kids turned the comment section of an NPR podcast into a group chat

2026-09-26T13:32:35-04:00

Middle schoolers, likely blocked from other apps and social networks, apparently turned the Spotify comment section under an episode of NPR's Wild Card into an impromptu group chat. In a new episode of This American Life, host Ira Glass digs into how the kids landed there and why. But it mostly boils down to kids getting creative to work around the restrictions placed on them.

When Glass asked one of the kids why they picked this particular podcast, they said, "We just, like, looked for podcasts that didn't have many comments." Which, obviously, hurt Glass's feelings a bit.

Initially, showrunner Dave Blanchard thought the comments were a …

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Control Resonant is a great game — it’s even better when you read everything

2026-09-25T18:06:51-04:00

In Control Resonant, the entire world is at stake. But that didn't stop the diligent employees of the Federal Bureau of Control from filing reams of paperwork, and it didn't stop me from reading everything I could find, either. Reading is often optional in Resonant, but it's where some of the game's best details - and even love stories! - can be found.

In the world of Control Resonant and its predecessor, 2019's Control, the FBC deals with mysterious, otherworldly objects and entities that defy explanation. But the FBC itself is still an old-school bureaucratic agency, and that means tons of (often heavily redacted) reports and memos and mi …

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Pokémon card resellers have turned collecting into an online blood sport

2026-09-25T18:32:28-04:00

Earlier this month, Pokémon card content creator Natalie Roush posted a video to her YouTube and Instagram pages that enraged the larger collection community. In the now-deleted video, Roush shows off two premium boxes of cards that had not yet been officially released, and implores viewers not to be mad. But they were; other creators claimed that cards Roush had purchased were stolen from the manufacturer and mocked her for trying to sell them at exorbitant prices. The Roush situation was a high-profile example of the way Pokémon card collecting culture has been upended by the influencer economy and people trying to profit off the hobby. Th …

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Sony and UMG are suing Suno again

2026-09-25T15:09:57-04:00

Suno’s AI vocalists could learn a thing or two from this glitchy image. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Sony and Universal Music Group filed yet another suit against Suno. The labels claim its new v6 model still infringes on their copyrights because it's trained on user outputs from previous models, which were themselves trained on unlicensed music ripped from YouTube and other sources. Sony and UMG are notable holdouts who did not sign a licensing agreement with Suno.

In its complaint shared with The Verge, Sony and UMG accuse Suno of "model laundering," saying:

"Training a 'new' model on the outputs of an infringing model does not eliminate the infringement; it launders it, passing the value of Plaintiffs' expression from the copied reco …

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Gaming’s biggest horror series are more vital than ever

2026-09-25T10:06:58-04:00

For the third year in a row, I've been scared out of my wits by a new Silent Hill game. First it was the modern remake of Silent Hill 2, then the Japan-set spinoff Silent Hill F. Now I find myself slowly crawling through a quaint Scottish town in Silent Hill: Townfall, trying my best not to get brutally murdered by demonic creatures chasing me through the streets. It's been a remarkable turnaround for a franchise that once seemed like it was on life support. And when you combine it with a strong run from Resident Evil across games and film, you have gaming's two biggest horror franchises both at the height of their powers.

For Resident Evil …

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Control Resonant gets tough, but gives you the tools to deal with it

2026-09-23T13:26:11-04:00

Control Resonant isn't an easy game. At any given moment while exploring vast open areas where you're sometimes leaping from wall to wall to ceiling, you may be surrounded by swarms of otherworldly enemies trying to crush you into the ground. It can be a lot, especially when enemies sometimes take a long time to take down. I died often. But whenever I got to a point where I was starting to feel frustrated, I didn't have to suffer for too long; thanks to Resonant's generous assist mode, I often tweaked the game's settings to give me an edge so that I could keep on trucking through the game's weird world.

The assist mode is accessible from Co …

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YouTube is building AI creator tools that do almost everything for them

2026-09-23T09:49:24-04:00

Part of the job of a content creator is to figure out how to get their work in front of the most people. Cracking - or fighting - the algorithm has historically been a frustration for creators, but YouTube is increasingly simply telling creators what they should do.

At the annual creator-focused Made on YouTube event, the company announced updates to the suite of AI-powered creator tools it unveiled in 2025. In its initial iteration, the dashboard of creator tools included things like A/B testing for video thumbnails and a chatbot interface to query how content was performing. This year's update adds AI tools for more complex tasks.

Perhap …

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Nobody does it like Remedy

2026-09-23T15:10:05-04:00

Video games have given us plenty of ways to traverse huge open worlds, but none have felt quite as oddly exhilarating as manipulating gravity in Control Resonant's twisted version of New York City. It's a game that lets you flip, twist, and fly through the air while exploring settings that look ripped out of Inception. It's as if you mashed up the meta storytelling of House of Leaves with the inventive platforming of Super Mario Galaxy and somehow turned it into a coherent experience. That strange combination is just the latest example of developer Remedy making games like nobody else out there.

Resonant is a sequel to 2019's Control - thou …

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Paramount will need to release way more movies to make this merger work

2026-09-22T18:26:07-04:00

Now that Paramount has reached a settlement with the 12 states that were suing to block its $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), the studio is even closer to becoming one of the world's biggest production houses. In addition to spending at least $300 million more on film and TV projects produced in the US, Paramount says that it will release a minimum of 30 movies annually after it absorbs WBD. On paper, these goals make it sound like Paramount is trying to ensure that the entertainment industry won't be harmed by its WBD acquisition. But when you look at the studios' recent output, it seems very much like Paramount CEO Dav …

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