PHOTO OPS
Page: 7
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: NetEase / Marvel Rivals
Marvel Rivals is one of the most popular games out at the moment, so it’s shocking to hear that its development team is experiencing layoffs.
Spotted on Insider Gaming, multiple social media reports state that NetEase has laid off Marvel Rivals’ entire development team. Marvel Rivals’ game director Thaddeus Sasser revealed the sad and surprising news in a post on LinkedIn he shared on Tuesday afternoon.
“This is such a weird industry…” Sasser wrote. “My stellar, talented team just helped deliver an incredibly successful new franchise in Marvel Rivals for NetEase Games…and were just laid off!”
According to Sasser, NetEase laid off the Seattle-based team that was tasked with “coming up with new level design mechanics, gameplay mechanics, and so on.”
Level designer Garry McGee, one of the affected developers, and level designer Jack Burrows, who confirmed the news via his post on LinkedIn, were among those who lost their jobs.
Social Media Is Stunned
According to Circana data from industry analyst Mat Piscatella, Marvel Rivals is one of the top five games with the most active users across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Steam, so it’s not surprising that social media is stunned by the news.
“Marvel Rivals is the hottest game out rn, just revealed 2 banger characters, and people still got laid off. The industry is cooked,” one user on X, formerly Twitter, wrote.
Journalist Alyssa Mercante wrote, “Even successful game devs are not safe, because THE PROBLEMS ARE AT THE TOP.”
SpawnOnMe’s Kahlief Adams wrote on X, “Rivals a super popular and profitable game letting go their Game Director the same day as they debut new content seems like Bizzaro land and business as usual at the same time. Success is also in the upside down…”
As Adams mentioned, this tragic news came as Marvel Rivals announced that The Thing and Human Torch from The Fantastic 4 will be in the game this Friday. Blade, the vampire hunter, has also been teased.
Bruh, the video game industry is on one right now. You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
5. When all else fails blame Donald Trump
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: TheStewartofNY / Getty / Tom Hanks
Hit dogs are hollering on social media after Tom Hanks put on a MAGA hat to portray a racist Donald Trump supporter during a skit on SNL 50.
Tom Hanks is feeling the wrath of MAGA Republicans for what they are saying is a “racist and disgusting” portrayal of Trump supporters on Saturday Night Live’s (SNL) 50th-anniversary special.
For the special, NBC spun the block on some of the more popular sketches, including “Black Jeopardy,” featuring Kenan Thompson, Leslie Jones, Eddie Murphy, and Tom Hanks.
For the hilarious skit, Hanks brought back his character Doug, an accurate depiction of Donald Trump’s core base of supporters who have no clue about what is going on in America outside of the right-wing echo chamber.
The Forrest Gump star first portrayed Doug in 2016 during Felon 47’s first failed presidency. In that original skit, he pointed out the differences and similarities between those who proudly support Orange Mussolini and those who give him the middle finger every chance they get.
In this new skit, Doug is the only white contestant on Black Jeopardy and refuses to shake hands with Kenan Thompson’s character, Darnell Hayes, before reluctantly agreeing to complete the gesture.
MAGA world took it as an insult, basically crying that it’s wrong to label the group of people who are proudly rallying behind immigrants being rounded up and deported and an administration on a mission to remove all DEI policies geared towards evening the playing field for Black and Brown people to “make America great again.”
Social media has been sipping on MAGA rage tears over the skit because Tom Hanks nailed the performance.
Welp.
You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
3. Nailed it.
5. We’ll wait
6. Never forget
7. So delicious
10. He sure does
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: NurPhoto / Getty / TikTok
TikTok is back in the Apple Store and Google Play stores for US users.
The popular social media platform officially returned to Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store for US users on Thursday after the companies removed it on Jan.19.
A federal law banning TikTok as of Jan.19 because TikTok’s Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, failed to divest its ownership of the app forced both companies to pull it from their US stores. Failure to adhere to the law by still hosting or distributing TikTok in the US would result in penalties, $5,000 per user or $850 billion in fines because the platform boasts it has 170 million US users. Hence, it’s not surprising both companies yanked the app from their stores.
TikTok gained an ally in Donald Trump, who initially spearheaded the app’s banning before he lost his reelection bid to Joe Biden. Unfortunately, after returning to the White House, Felon 47 signed an executive order on Jan.20 instructing his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, not to enforce the ban for 75 days.
The executive order also instructed Bondi “to issue a letter to each [TikTok] provider stating that there has been no violation of the statute and that there is no liability for any conduct’ as of Jan.19 throughout the 75-day extension.
According to Bloomberg’s report, Bondi sent Apple and Google letters on Thursday.
In a blog post, TikTok celebrated its return to both stores: “The TikTok app is now available for download from the App Store and Google Play. Our U.S. users can download the latest version of our app and continue to create, discover, and share what they love on TikTok.”
How The TikTok Ban Jig Played Out
What a turn of events following TikTok’s loss in its appeal to the Supreme Court, claiming the ban was in direct violation of the First Amendment.
Following the court’s decision, TikTok shut down on Jan.18, a day before the ban was supposed to start, before restoring service after Donald Trump vowing not to enforce the ban. When US users opened the app, they were greeted by a message telling them the app was back thanks to Orange Mussolini.
Users on X, formerly Twitter, have been reacting to the app’s return to the Apple Store and Google Play store; you can see those reactions in the gallery below.
1. Serious question
5. Accurate
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: Johnny Nunez / Getty / Marlon Wayans
We are positive no one had Marlon Wayans and Soulja Boy beefing with each other on their 2025 bingo cards.
Well, this is interesting. Rapper Soulja Boy and comedian/actor Marlon Wayans were engaged in a back-and-forth on X, formerly Twitter.
We can’t tell you why the feud between the two started. Still, according to XXL, Big Draco was BIG MAD about Wayans clowning him for tapdancing for Donald Trump at the Crypto Ball, one of Felon 47’s many inaugural celebration events.
“Marlon Wayans you a b***h and u not funny shut up ni**a keep selling ur soul and sucking the higher up d**ks,” the rapper said in one of the many now-deleted posts on X.
Wayans eventually saw the post and responded back sharing a photo of man grabbing Soulj Boy from behind with the caption, “I’m sorry, @souljaboy said what now? Lookin’ like you give up anything for some meth.”
“Hey @souljaboy you a grown man and still use the word ‘boy’ in your name,” Marlon added in a follow-up post. “Thats what they were calling you at that event huh? Hey there Boy, can you do that dance for me? I’ll throw u a meme coin f*** outta here slappy…Says the coon who jumped over the moon.”
https://x.com/MarlonWayans/status/1889811811815579912
Of course, Soulja Boy had to clap back, taking things to a violent level.
“You a b***h and I’ll slap the s**t out u,” the “Crank Dat” rapper wrote. “Speak on what u know b***h ni**a trump wasn’t even there it was a bitcoin event b***h ni**a u washed up pu**y…You a 52 year old black man that dressed up like a white b***h. Who really the coon? Broke a*s ni**a.”
The Jokes Got Dark
Things took a twisted turn as the insults got even worse.
“You molested lil boy. Go sit your lil a*s down on some uncle lap and stfu,” Marlon said to the rapper.
“Molested?” Soulja clapped back. “A ni**a ever touch me they gone die I don’t play that gay sh*t u sucked d**k for ur movie roles. I got my sh*t out the mud by myself no help just the internet.”
Soulja Boy took it there, insulting Wayans’ transgender child, and Marlon Wayans proceeded to go all the way in and kept the jokes coming.
https://x.com/MarlonWayans/status/1889786382995910791
You can see more responses and reactions in the gallery below.
1. Lol, damn
5. Never forget
6. Howling
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: GREG BAKER / Getty / Google
Google isn’t done kissing Donald Trump’s ring. Not only did they adopt the stupid Gulf of America name change, but they have also removed Black History Month from the calendar.
Spotted on NewsOne, Google is getting in line with Donald Trump and his administration’s continued assault on DEI and “woke” initiatives as part of his mission to make America white again; oops, we mean “great again,” the Alphabet-owned company has removed several cultural observances from Google Calendar, including Pride Month, Black History Month, and Holocaust Remembrance Day.
In an email, the company explained its reasoning for its head-scratching move in an email sent to Newsweek that the previous system it had in place to update the calendar was “unsustainable” and that from now on, Google would only display public holidays and national observances.
Google Calendar users quickly noticed that events like Black History Month (February), Pride Month (June), Women’s History Month (March), and Indigenous Peoples Month (November) were no longer on the calendar after being there in previous years.
As expected, the decision sparked outrage on x, formerly Twitter.
“Hey @Google yall do realize your president declared February Black History Month, even though it was already Black History Month so I think you need to put that back. I don’t fuck with that man, but he is your president and you do need to listen to him,” one user wrote.
Another user added, “Disgusting @Google. Even Trump recognized Black History Month. You are trying to outdo him? Disgusting. The excuse is worse. You are using are global calendar that doesn’t have federally recognized honorifics on it. Wow. Your own search engine recognizes Black History Month.”
https://x.com/hawkgrrrl/status/1889488355311886829
In response to the pushback, Google spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld noted that the company received feedback about the missing events, noting that manually adding hundreds of cultural observances was not sustainable.
Maybe they should use AI to do it. Just saying.
You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: Justin Sullivan / Getty / Google
Like when Elon Musk stupidly changed Twitter’s name to X, Google is doing the same for Donald Trump and has officially renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” for US users to see.
We’re still gonna call it the Gulf of Mexico; just saying.
Google has officially capitulated to Orange Mussolini’s dumb executive order calling for the name change of the Gulf of Mexico to be now called the Gulf of America.
According to a blog post, Google claims it made the move because Trump’s ridiculous administration has already updated the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which ultimately decides the “federal and national standard for geographic nomenclature.”
Google claims it has a longstanding policy of waiting for government resources to be updated before applying name changes, even though Trump signed the executive order renaming the body of water in January.
Hilariously, it’s not a complete name change. The Gulf of Mexico will only be visible to US Google Maps users. People in Mexico will still see the Gulf of Mexico, and people in other countries will see it specifically (Gulf of America).
Also, Trump ordered the Denali, the highest mountain peak in the United States, to be renamed Mount McKinley. Why, you ask? We are pretty sure it has everything to do with Barack Obama renaming the mountain in 2015 as a symbolic gesture to Alaska natives. So yeah, Trump is just doing this because he doesn’t like Obama.
After checking the map, we noticed that the location is still referred to as Denali.
Users On X Are Sounding Off On Stupid Name Change
Social media is clowning the name change because it’s just another one of Trump’s stupid stunts to take the focus off the real promises like lowering grocery and egg prices, things he already admitted weren’t top priorities for him.
“This petty, childish bullshit just serves to embarrass our nation on the world stage. It makes us look as stupid, weak, arrogant and petulant as the worst stereotypes about Americans globally,” one user wrote in response to The White House’s post showing the name change on the map.
Another user accurately asked, “And this is supposed to help Americans how?”
Welp.
You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
1. Same sis, same
3. At this point Idiocracy was a work of non-fiction
4. Eggxactly
5. Pretty much
7. This is what the MAGA cult wanted
9. Damn Google
11. Gulf of America Day?
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: PA Wire – PA Images / Getty / Ledisi
As expected, the MAGA contingent was once again BIG MAD at the Black National Anthem being sung at the Super Bowl.
Will this be an annual thing, or will the Orange Menace, aka Donald Trump, sing one of his useless executive orders ordering all American sports leagues only to perform the National Anthem and sporting events?
Even though the NFL has gotten rid of the “end racism” signage in the back of endzones for the Super Bowl, they still kept the singing of “Lift Every Voice” ahead of kickoff, a move the league adopted in 2020 in the wake of protests following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police.
The song was adopted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and is commonly called the Black National Anthem.
Louisiana-born singer Ledisi performed the song in New Orleans ahead of Super Bowl LIX in front of Felon 47 Donald Trump, and the performance was magnificent.
Unfortunately, like last year, the MAGA cult was BIG MAD at the idea of the hymn being used as a separate anthem in a league that features predominantly Black players.
Right-wing commentators such as Charlie Kirk sounded off on the performance. “Only our actual national anthem should be performed at the Super Bowl,” Kirk wrote.
“Black National Anthem’ is a racist relic left over from the BLM era. Get rid of it,” the lame account End Wokeness said on X, formerly Twitter.
Another crappy account R T wrote, “Just muted the Black National Anthem. There’s one national anthem for this country and that ain’t it. We’re all Americans, not divided by Race, Creed, Sex or Religious Preference.”
Black Xitter Loved Ledisi’s Performance
Thankfully, Black Xitter loved seeing MAGA all butt-hurt about the performance of the hymn.
“Yes, the Black National Anthem does deserve to be a part of the Anthems we sing at the Super Bowl. Why? Because Black History is American History,” one post on X read.
Another post read, “Baby, #Ledisi sang the Black National Anthem from her soul and pit of her stomach! The ancestors are proud!”
They can honestly stay mad. The NFL better not let these people influence them into taking out the Black National Anthem.
You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
2. Yes, yes it was
4. Oh they were big mad
5. It was Black as hell, and we loved it.
7. Never fails
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: Anadolu / Getty / PlayStation
Next to Kansas City Chiefs fans and Drake, no one had a crappier weekend than PlayStation console owners, thanks to a massive service outage. The company finally explained what happened, but gamers were not feeling it.
The AskPlayStation account on X, formerly Twitter, finally broke its silence on the massive service outage that kept PS5 and PS4 owners from playing multiplayer games, games that require online connectivity,y and even some games in their digital library for over 24 hours.
According to PlayStation, the outage that began on Friday, February 7, around 6 p.m. ET and ended at 6:58 p.m. ET on Saturday (February 8) was due to an “operational issue.” To compensate for ruining gamers’ weekends, PlayStation said it would offer subscribers additional days of service at no additional cost.
“Network services have fully recovered from an operational issue. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank the community for their patience. All PlayStation Plus members will automatically receive an additional 5 days of service.”
That’s all they had to say? Hmm
As you can imagine, gamers are not buying what PlayStation is selling, especially the “additional 5 days of service,” because it just feels cheap on their part.
“What was the reason behind Network failure? this is extremely shady and tone deaf communication. I lost my profile back in ps3 hack and this one of the reason why i don’t trust this Brand atleast security wise,” one post on X read in reply to AskPlayStation’s post.
Another post read, “5 days of PlayStation Plus as an apology? That’s like getting a small fry after they mess up your entire order.”
Listen, we understand that there has to be a better explanation for what happened. However, we still believe that it was Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s fault.
You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
7. Interesting
9. Howling
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: Anadolu / Getty / PSN
Yup, PSN is still down, and nobody at PlayStation is saying a damn thing about it.
Last night, everyone who wanted to play online games on their PS5 and PS4 consoles over the weekend found out that they won’t be able to because the PlayStation Network suffered a massive global service outage.
PSN has been down for over 14 hours, and PlayStation has not shared any details about what is happening. The official PlayStation X account shared a post from the US AskPlayStation account stating, “We are aware some users might be currently experiencing issues with PSN,” and directing gamers to the PlayStation Network service status page only to see red dots across the board signaling PSN is still down,
https://x.com/AskPlayStation/status/1888041723831484682
This outage has been one of the most prolonged outages in recent memory, but it still pales in comparison to the outage of 2011, which saw PSN not function for 23 days following an “external intrusion” that took the service out and saw the private user data of 77 million subscribers be swiped.
While this situation is probably not on that level, it is bad enough that games, specifically ones that require gamers to be online, like Marvel Rivals, have done more talking than PlayStation on the matter.
Per Marvel Rivals:
Due to PlayStation server’s emergent issue today, PlayStation users might have difficulty launching games, apps, or network features. We are actively communicating with the PlayStation team and will restore the game once we receive a solution plan from the PlayStation team.
We apologize for any inconvenience and will notify the community through official channels once the issue is fixed. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Was PSN Hacked?
Some gamers believe that PSN has been hacked, and that’s why PlayStation is so mum on the situation and is suggesting folks should reset their passwords.
https://x.com/Troydan/status/1888078195934609665
Bruh.
We hope it’s just a PlayStation issue and that the company can get PSN back up and running before the weekend is over. The gallery below shows more reactions on the dire situation for PlayStation owners.
2. Sound adivce
3. Ruh Roh
6. Howling
7. Accurate
8. We have a winner here
9. This is all of us right now
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: Gilbert Flores / Getty / Kai Cenat
Kai Cenat made the right choice. Protecting his integrity and his bag over streaming with Kanye West.
The world’s most popular Twitch streamer (debate your cousin), is not linking up with the most problematic person in the world not named Elon Musk or Donald Trump.
Kai Cenat announced to his Twitch followers that the once-planned stream with Kanye West, aka Ye, is no longer happening. Cenat revealed that he made his decision after seeing West’s latest round of bizarre and extremely antisemitic tweets.
“I’m gonna go ahead and address the elephant in the room,” Cenat told his fans. “I seen the tweets, bro. I don’t know what’s going on.” He revealed he was just as stunned as everyone else by Kanye West’s recent online behavior. “I don’t know, bro. It’s crazy.”
Cenat’s announcement comes after he excitedly revealed on January 29 that he was planning to take a trip to Japan and hopefully get West on his stream. The Twitch streamer also bumped into the rapper at the Grammys before the whole Bianca Censori naked on the red carpet stunt.
“He’s a very good, motherf*cking dude,” Cenat said on January 29. “I think he’ll be open to the stream. “If I had to say a percentage,” Kai Cenat said. “It’s at like probably 90%. We been talking almost every day.”
Welp.
You Know Kanye West Is Going To React
Kanye West has yet to respond to Cenat’s decision, but we fully expect him to. We won’t be surprised if he calls him an “industry plant” again or something worse.
Fans have been reacting to Cenat making the right decision not to associate himself with a Black Nazi sympathizer, some are calling him a sellout, while others understand he’s got a brand to protect.
https://x.com/kanyewest/status/1888107257474511185
You can see those reactions in the gallery below.
2. Ehhhhhh
3. Basically
5. Oh really?