After a disastrous series of events dating back to the launch of the Xbox One and repeated entreaties from us to lay off a few high-paid executives instead of thousands of workers, somebody has finally taken the hint: Phil Spencer. The Xbox boss is retiring from his job at Microsoft, a wannabe AI company whose various chunks are precariously held together by increasingly enshittified vestigial tentacles, and being replaced by… the current president of Microsoft’s CoreAI product. It’s unlikely that things will get better from here on out, but it’s not like we’re sad to see Spencer go. 

“Last fall, I shared with Satya [Nadella] that I was thinking about stepping back and starting the next chapter of my life,” Spencer wrote in a memo to staff published today by IGN. “From that moment, we aligned on approaching this transition with intention, ensuring stability, and strengthening the foundation we’ve built. Xbox has always been more than a business. It’s a vibrant community of players, creators, and teams who care deeply about what we build and how we build it. And it deserves a thoughtful, deliberate plan for the road ahead. … I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built together over the last 25 years, and I have complete confidence in all of you and in the opportunities ahead. I’ll be cheering you on in this next chapter as Xbox’s proudest fan and player.” 

Instead of staying on and assuming Spencer’s role, as many assumed she eventually would, Xbox president Sarah Bond is resigning, which sure is conspicuous! Asha Sharma, who spent years at Instacart and Meta before taking up the aforementioned AI job at Microsoft, promises her appointment somehow won’t lead to more AI slop from a company that seems determined to foist AI on every sector imaginable. 

“As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop. Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us,” Sharma wrote in her own memo to staff, adding that Microsoft plans to “recommit” to Xbox fans and players, but also that Xbox, conceptually, is still kinda, you know, whatever. “Gaming now lives across devices, not within the limits of any single piece of hardware. As we expand across PC, mobile, and cloud, Xbox should feel seamless, instant, and worthy of the communities we serve. We will break down barriers so developers can build once and reach players everywhere without compromise.” 

In his wake Spencer leaves a smouldering swathe of games industry destruction which is not solely his burden to bear – Microsoft employs other execs as well, after all, and also has a board and bloodsucking shareholders to satisfy – but for which he should have suffered significantly more consequences than he did. During Spencer’s tenure, Xbox made a series of ruinously bad bets on everything from console naming schemes to Game Pass uprooting the traditional model of how games are purchased and becoming a bonafide Netflix competitor.

In service of this, the tech behemoth unhinged its rotten maw and swallowed up dozens of video game studios, including all of Activision Blizzard, which cost Microsoft an eye-wateringly gargantuan $68.7 billion. Many studios have since been closed or fallen victim to one of multiple rounds of mass layoffs that ultimately impacted thousands of workers. Resulting brain drain has been immense, and thanks to the actions of Spencer and others at the highest echelons of power at Microsoft and other major companies, the video game industry may never fully recover. Unions, a silver lining of the current Xbox regime, are doing their best, but have frequently found themselves in damage control mode so far.

It might be hard to remember now, but once upon a time, not all that long ago, press and fans ate up Spencer’s smirking “just another average gamer” act, lauding him for putting hundreds of hours into Xbox releases large and small. If nothing else, he was determined to portray himself as a man of the people, proudly announcing that he’d spent the equivalent of 23 work weeks playing games in 2023 alone before dropping to a paltry 17 in 2024. At least now he’ll have more time for his true passion, which is obviously not keeping people gainfully employed.

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Phil Spencer That’s Not How Games Preservation Works, That’s Not How Any Of This Works - Aftermath

‘We’ve talked about game preservation’, says man who has no idea how it works

AftermathLuke Plunkett

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 hits the ground running and rarely lets up, but the first moment that it really knocks the wind out of players’ lungs takes place at the end of Act One. If you’ve maintained even a cursory awareness of the GOTY-hoovering French melancholy simulator, you probably know what I’m talking about by now. But there was a more innocent time last year when we all had no idea what we were in for. Creating a moment that left everyone gobsmacked, said lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, was about more than just a single scene. It worked because of all that came before and, yes, after. 

Clair Obscur spoilers follow.

Fresh off winning an Outstanding Achievement In Story distinction at last week’s DICE Awards in Las Vegas, Svedberg-Yen explained how the Clair Obscur team managed to make the death of Gustave – up until that point the player character – feel earned and emotionally resonant. This meant striking a delicate balance between foreshadowing and restraint so that players wouldn’t see it coming from a mile away. 

"We wanted to make some meaningful moments so that when it came to the time of his death, you could feel the characters,” Svedberg-Yen told Aftermath. “So for instance, we have sort of a bookend where we have Gustave in his first encounter with Renoir on the Dark Shores when the whole team dies. Then we go through his arc and his travels, and now at the end, we come back to that moment. And now we can see Gustave in the second encounter, the change from that first instance. I think that was what we wanted to set up. So we were very intentional about the places in which we made certain moments, right?" 

Gustave’s relationship with Maelle – short lived though it ended up being in actual game hours – was also key to making Gustave’s death land. “For those who come after” needed to be more than just a catchphrase. 

"The conversations with Maelle, setting that up – those solo moments, those moments when we talk about 'For those who come after' and what that means,” said Svedberg-Yen. “We were very careful to have all of those so that when it came to this moment, we didn't necessarily give it away, but there are specific things that tie back. When [Gustave] says 'For those who come after' to Maelle [just before Renoir kills him], she says 'Run' because that calls back to their conversation when he's like 'If you see somebody, you'd better run' and she said 'I'm only running if you run.' So all of those things were sort of building to that point."

In Svedberg-Yen’s eyes, those story and character beats found their purpose pretty naturally; gameplay proved trickier. 

"[Not spoiling] was more of a consideration on the gameplay side,” she said. “I noticed some players realizing that Gustave's skill tree is much smaller. We still made a broader skill tree that was locked, but it was still significantly smaller. I think maybe we needed to make it even bigger."

Fortunately, Clair Obscur’s then-burgeoning community was cool about it.

"I saw a Reddit thread [where someone was like] 'I think my game is blocked or buggy because I'm not unlocking any of Gustave's skills. What's going on? Do I need to reset?'” said Svedberg-Yen. “And people just all jumped in and said 'Don't worry. It's story locked. You'll get it. Act Two is amazing. Gustave becomes [overpowered]. You will not believe the skills you get.' Everybody kept it going, and they didn't spoil it for other people. ... It was at least several weeks before [Gustave’s death] became more widely known."

But there is an argument to be made that Gustave’s strongest moments come in Act Two, even if he’s not around to see them. While many games treat death with a carelessness that borders on cavalier, Clair Obscur gives its cast room to mourn, exhale, and adjust to their new shared reality – albeit only just a bit in what is still a time of immense peril.

"I didn't want it to just be 'OK, he's gone, and now we continue as if nothing has happened,'” said Svedberg-Yen. “But on the other hand, when you are in this life-and-death situation and there's a bigger mission, you have to go on, right? I imagine that this is probably true for a lot of folks who have been in difficult situations where you need to keep pushing on. So we wanted to bring up that contrast, where Lune is saying, 'We have to press on.' Because death is such a constant in this world, and yet, this death is different. Death is something we're used to, but each one is unique in the impact it has on us. ... So writing it, I really tried to think about each character – their relationship to Gustave and also their relationship to the mission – and how they think about death.”

Even in Clair Obscur’s world of near-constant grief, Svedberg-Yen wanted a sprig of closure to see the light of day. Ultimately, Maelle and the rest of the party find a place to bury Gustave’s prosthetic arm and reflect on who he was to them.

“To me, it was really important that we had the burial, that there was a little bit of closure,” she said. “Because it just felt intuitively wrong if we continued on without acknowledging that moment."

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🙃

AftermathNathan Grayson

Blue Prince, as outlined by our own Chris Person in fittingly meticulous detail, is a marvel. It’s also a game whose ending has proven elusive both structurally and thematically. But there is a light at the end of the epically lengthy tunnel – at least for creator Tonda Ros. 

When I asked Ros at DICE in Las Vegas last week if Blue Prince’s brain-pulverizing labyrinth contained any remaining secrets, he reacted with a coy smile.

“[Players] have certainly mined it pretty well,” he told Aftermath. “Now, is that well enough? I’m gonna leave that for future generations to answer.”

But Blue Prince will get one last major update before Ros gracefully bows out.

“There is a little bit still coming that I’m working on – some final touches on the game before I button it up and move on to more projects,” he said. “So even if the people mining [for more secrets] currently turn up empty handed, there will at least be something on the horizon that they can look forward to.”

This is not to say that Ros feels like he asked players to solve a puzzle sans all the pieces at launch. His goal was to release something that felt complete in a sense that harked back to bygone days; updates, in his mind, are about polish and clarity.

"I really wanted to get it all in for launch, and I feel like that was my ultimate desire, because I really like the old-school games where they put it out there, and that's the game,” he said. “It's definitive from day one. It's on a disc, and it's timeless. Obviously we have a big temptation in the modern world: You can continually update and tinker with your things, and oftentimes maybe tinker too much, and you'll start dividing your audience. So I really tried my hardest, but it's my first game. Ultimately, it wasn't worth the crunch. ... [I decided to] focus on bugs and catch up on my own time afterwards. But it's gonna be one big final update, and then it's gonna be final forever."

Blue Prince’s last update, Ros said, will not stray from the game’s current path; the plan is just to refine what’s already there.

"Nothing I'm going to do will fundamentally change any of the narrative according to the structure,” said Ros. “It's mostly just polish details. There'll be a couple more cinematics because I didn't have time to do all the cinematics I planned. I really want to put everything I wanted into the game. ... So I'm gonna finish my vision on the cinematics, and that'll provide more details for people. But fundamentally, I made sure from day one that all the puzzles were in the game – all the narrative and overall structure."

There’s a reason Ros wasn’t able to include absolutely everything he’d mapped out in Blue Prince’s release version: He was already working himself to the bone.

"I was working, I think, 80 hours a week for eight years straight," he said.

Whatever comes after, he added, will necessarily dial things back at least a bit in terms of ambition.

"Blue Prince will likely be the most ambitious game I ever make, because I don't think I physically can do this again,” Ros said. “It was an incredibly long journey, so it might take as much time [to make my next game], but I certainly won't be working as hard. ... That's just not sustainable now. It's a young man's game."

Still, Ros, a filmmaker who decided to devote eight years of his life to his first major video game project, hasn’t burnt himself out on games yet. 

“The recognition [Blue Prince has received] certainly helps the decision, but I think I did fall in love with game development,” said Ros, who had just received the DICE game design and independent game awards. “I come from a filmmaking background, but game development just suits me really well. It’s fun to take your time and to be able to fulfill your vision without the stress of running a set. I just kind of love it right now, so I’ll continue doing it as long as I find it enjoyable.”

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Back in 2023, a (slightly) more innocent time before Microsoft ravaged its games studios with layoffs and made itself into a BDS priority target, Blizzard held a competition: To promote Diablo IV’s second season, it raffled off a PC "infused with real human blood in its liquid cooling" as part of a blood drive seeking 666 quarts of the red goop that keeps us all alive. I was desperate to know more. How much blood? Whose blood? Can blood reliably and sustainably cool a PC? And, again, whose blood?

At the time, answers proved elusive. Blizzard PR failed to reply to my requests for additional details, and a person I reached out to at Corsair – an expert, albeit not with regard to this particular PC – did not seem interested in discussing the infernal blood engine’s more theoretical aspects. So, dejected, I called off the hunt. But then, last week, via the replies to a Bluesky post by freelance writer (and occasional Aftermath contributor) Jay Castello, I learned that the winner of the competition had semi-recently surfaced on Reddit. Once again, the game was afoot. 

Turns out, Blizzard’s diabolical blood PC went to a streamer who goes by the handle Storms888. He received it at the tail end of November 2023, and – despite or perhaps because of the blood – it’s still going strong.  

“The PC is virtually perfect,” Storms888 told Aftermath. “I haven't seen any drops in performance since the day I got it. … It’s incredible for streaming/recording. Right now I've been streaming Battlefield 6 at ultra settings with easily over 200+ [frames per second].”

Unsurprisingly, given that pure, thick, coagulation-prone blood seems like it’d be an awful coolant, there’s probably some smoke and mirrors happening here.

“It appears that the coolant is mostly regular standard coolant and that they had added red blood cells inside of it,” said Storms888. “They did not specify what the ratio was, but it's dark red.”

Whose blood, though? Sadly, that, much like blood, is unclear. 

"There is not [information about who exactly the blood came from]," Storms888 said. "There was a donor slip that specifically said it was a confirmed blood sample/donation, but that was all."

But OK, say something goes wrong, or the blood-tinged coolant loses its luster, as all things do with time? Don’t worry: Blizzard thought of that.

“[Blizzard] did not specify any need to replace it,” said Storms888, “although they did give me a replacement vial/bottle of blood. ... This did leak a ton though. I had to put the bottle in a separate bag.”

For reasons that probably should be obvious by now, upgrading the blood PC is out of the question.

“I have not upgraded it,” said Storms888, “and yes, the custom nature of it does play a role. I don't want to change any aspect of it for the novelty factor – would love to give this to my future kids some day – as well as the technical limitations, since the CPU and GPU have custom water blocks mounted on them, and I'm not experienced with messing with those.”

But Storms888 also doesn’t think he’ll need to start thinking about buying a boring, bloodless PC any time soon.

“I will keep using it until a [Nvidia] 4090 [graphics card] and [Intel] 14900k [processor] are no longer serviceable for modern games. So I assume at least for the next 7-10 years,” he joked. “Overall I am still shocked to this day that I won it. The majority of my life I've had absolutely terrible computers. … This genuinely has been a life-changing experience, and it's opened up so many doors for me professionally with streaming.”

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AftermathNathan Grayson

Following in the commendable tradition of gargantuan charity bundles like the Palestinian Relief Bundle and Play For Peace, over 600 game developers have come together to assemble a No ICE In Minnesota bundle. Just one day after release, it has already smashed through its initial $100,000 goal.

“We created this bundle to raise funds for Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota in response to the Trump administration sending ICE agents to the Minneapolis area and the reckless murder of an innocent people by ICE agents,” wrote the bundle’s organizer, a tabletop charity content creator who goes by the handle Jes The Human on the bundle’s itch.io page. “ILCM provides free immigration legal representation to low-income immigrants and refugees in Minnesota and North Dakota. They also work to educate the community about immigration matters and advocate for public policies which respect the universal human rights of immigrants.”

The bundle includes 1,439 games for a minimum donation of $10, which is a steal so preposterous that you’ve gotta admire the audacity. Highlights include modern puzzling classic Baba Is You, fellow modern puzzling classic A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, cat cafe sim Calico, multiple gun-focused games from Demonschool studio Necrosoft, and Minnesota-made games like Joggernauts. There are also over 1,000 physical games – tabletop role-playing games and things of that nature – ensuring that you’ll never need to rack your brain to figure out something to do when your friends come over ever again.

The bundle will be available until March 13. 

"ILCM provides services based on capacity and has a generally high demand for services," wrote Jes The Human. "The more we are able to fundraise, the more people they will be able to assist."

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“It doesn’t feel safe to be recording and having fun in the streets of Minneapolis these days”

AftermathNathan Grayson

Compared to the PAXes or even MAGFests of the world, Awesome Games Done Quick is itsy bitsy. Around 2,000 speedrunners and fans mill about in Pittsburgh’s Wyndham Grand hotel, with a theater where speedruns take place serving as the obvious centerpiece. Other attractions – like an arcade, a game room with consoles and PCs, and a small artist alley – exist, but they feel more like brief breaks from the 24/7 speedrun deluge than fully fledged alternatives. The entire event spans just a handful of rooms across two floors. Some might view this as a downside, but I find it refreshing. 

There’s an intimacy to AGDQ that makes it feel uniquely cozy. If you make a friend, you will run into them again. Runners and hosts are accessible and friendly. Vocal audience participation during runs is common. The vibe is slumber party, with some audience members going so far as to wear pajamas to late-night runs. 

In my few days attending, I’ve also come to appreciate the event’s focus: There’s one main thing pretty much everyone is here for, so we all have a shared destination and set of hyper-specific discussion topics. The standard model of a video game convention (or comic convention, or anime convention) lends itself to sprawl and bloat. They can even be actively unpleasant to attend – squirming seas of people shuffling between halls, attempting to extract amusement from vast selections of activities that rarely rise above the level of Fine. 

AGDQ, in its current state, lacks unnecessary flab. This makes sense, considering that it began as a group of 20 friends in founder Mike Uyama’s mother’s basement. It was not born as a convention, even as it has since bolted on some of the format’s more common trappings. But that was 2010 and this is now; AGDQ attracts tens of thousands of concurrent viewers across Twitch and YouTube, and the organization behind it now employs over 100 people. 

GDQ, meanwhile, is now far more than just one event, with AGDQ joined by Summer Games Done Quick, as well as a series of smaller charity marathons hosted by satellite organizations like Frame Fatales and Black In A Flash. Every non-event week, meanwhile, GDQ hosts regularly scheduled “Hotfix” programming, with two themed shows each weekday as well as weekend specials. There’s more to speedrunning than GDQ, but it has, in many ways, evolved into a one-stop shop for the average person’s speedrunning needs.

What does this growth mean for the event that started it all, though? GDQ director of operations Matt Merkle doesn’t plan to shy away from further expansion and experimentation. 

"We've already actually expanded,” he told Aftermath. “The artist alley is a new addition. We just started that last summer. We have amazing artists supporting the event – the stuff they do for us to advertise the event. We wanted to bring them into the event and let people purchase their works. ... I think it's been fantastic. The community really loves that artist alley, and we'll continue to grow that as we get into bigger hotels that can support it."

But Merkle is cognizant of the fact that he’s in possession of bottled lightning. 

“Obviously speedrunning is gonna be the primary focus of the event for the foreseeable future,” he said. “But we'll always continue to experiment with different things. Over the summer, we had a live concert, which was really cool to do for the first time. ... We definitely continue to experiment so that when people come back to the event year after year, they have something new to experience on top of the stuff that they know and love."

The show’s format, Merkle added, helps it nimbly avoid some of more traditional conventions’ biggest pitfalls.

“The event lasts for seven days rather than three or four, so you have plenty of time to experience the entire event – to go around and enjoy yourself,” he said. “We don't focus on panels as much as other conventions, so people aren't focused on just getting in lines and waiting for the panel they want to see most or something. Because we control the growth and ensure that there's always plenty of space and time to do everything, it makes it so you don't feel rushed, you don't feel cramped. You feel that you have space to do what you want and hang out with your friends."

Even as AGDQ continues to grow and attract more attendees, Merkle wants to preserve the show’s unique vibe.

“Intimacy is a core part of it,” he said.

That intimacy – and a rigorous set of rules – means people feel safe at AGDQ. This comes through whether you’re in attendance or watching along from home. What other video game event, after all, boasts “trans rights” as its rallying cry? Merkle recognizes the importance of maintaining that core component of the event as well. 

“If you’re harassing anybody in our community or making people feel uncomfortable, we don’t want you here,” he said. “I think the community has come to expect that type of vibe at this event, and that’s why we have so many people that feel safe to come to these events. … We take it seriously.” 

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AftermathNathan Grayson

Last week, Warframe’s hotly anticipated Old Peace update launched, kicking off a saga that digs into the very foundations of the nearly 13-year-old game’s lore. Of course, like clockwork, servers immediately took a tumble, resulting in crashes, outages, and chat issues. But why has this pattern become so predictable with online games? Especially when developers are well aware that a storm of their own making is on the horizon?

During a Game Awards-adjacent event celebrating The Old Peace’s launch last week, I asked creative director Rebb Ford.   

"You've gotta spin up capacity,” she told Aftermath, referring to the practice of paying money to a distribution partner for additional servers ahead of or during moments when many players will be trying to access content. “You're allowing so many connections. We're an always-online game, right, so every time a player does something, there's a server call. There's something that needs to be verified server and client side. … Login, mission complete, anything that needs to talk to us to say 'You did this, you did that’ – it happens to us at a volume level that's very hard to account for."

In The Old Peace’s case, Digital Extremes was ready for a stampede the moment it opened the gates, but not quite ready enough.

"We actually didn't fall over as much as I thought we would,” said Ford. “That's when we realized 'Oh, we didn't think this was gonna be bigger than TennoCon [Warframe’s annual convention that often drives record player numbers].' We spun up IRC servers, we spun up things just to deal with volume. But sometimes you just cannot be prepared enough when you didn't predict it to be the third-best day in the history of the game. That was an error on our part, but it's not so much a tech error; it was an anticipation error. We fixed it very quickly."

The ability to quickly rectify server issues is also the result of preparation – in some cases years of preparation.

"One of our most important things to do is make sure people can get the content as fast as possible,” said Ford. “With Warframe, when we have the build or the update, we release it to our distributing partners, and we do something called a pre-heat of our CDN, or content delivery network – which is basically us saying 'People shouldn't all be fetching the game data from one node.' Because that will take forever. It'll get congested. So we distribute it, and this is through years of network partner shopping, working with really good network partners. We have content servers in 16 or 17 central population hubs."

The pre-heat, Ford explained, ensures that the whole network doesn’t hinge on a single point of potential failure.

“So sometimes you'll be going in the Philippines instead of being routed to our deploying headquarters, which is Ontario,” she said. “We pre-heated our server structure across the globe so that people can fetch [new content] quicker, and that takes a lot of load off.”

But that’s only one stair in what Ford characterized as a winding staircase of individual, overlapping needs.

"So that's the first point of failure: Can you download the game at all?” she said. “Second point of failure is: Can you login at all? When that happens, that all comes to us through login capacity. That one, you just have to spin up more capacity. Then you have the question of 'Can people play missions?' So you can kind of see the staircase: Can you download the game? Can you login to the game? Can you play the game? And each one of those is a slightly different sector of stability."

In Warframe’s case, elements can function independently, but if they’re not all working in conjunction, players quickly begin to see the seams.

“A lot of people can be logged into the game, and that's cool, but if you can't play, [then there's a problem],” said Ford. “It's like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Can you chat? You don't need chat to play the game, but chat servers run independently. Those were hit the hardest [on Old Peace launch day], and we fixed it fairly fast by spinning up more capacity." 

Games are complicated, as is the process of distributing them to millions of different computers with as many hardware configurations as there are stars in the sky. You will not be surprised to learn, then, that many other things can also go wrong.

“We have issues where we release new code in this build, and then maybe one piece of code fires every second on a heartbeat,” Ford said. “And sometimes we find these heartbeats, and we're like 'What is pinging the servers every second on the second,' and we're like 'It's the new title system we put in,' for example. ‘It's checking against server-client to issue you a title, but it's doing it in a way where we were unsure because it's checking all this indexed stuff.’"

Warframe has been around for over a decade and regularly pulls in tens – or in Old Peace launch day’s case, hundreds – of thousands of concurrent players. Nonetheless, said Ford, Digital Extremes still frets about The Ramifications as though it were a much smaller company.

"We still feel very young and scrappy, and we're like 'Can we even afford $600 more per month in capacity?'” she said. “That's the kind of question we ask ourselves on launch day. And then we're like 'Just do it! Just do it!'"

Warframe’s servers weren’t quite able to withstand the sheer weight of years’ worth of anticipation on launch day, but Ford was relieved that they didn’t go down for “hours and hours,” which would’ve necessitated a suitably less jubilant speech at the launch event in LA. 

"It's exciting. It's thrilling. Everyone did an amazing job,” she said. “We asked our team to do the impossible with this update, so even though those little hiccups happened, we had two speeches prepared – funeral or the celebration – and we undoubtedly got to do the celebration."

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Today the overwhelming majority of workers at Doom studio id Software – 165 of around 185 total employees – announced that they’re forming a wall-to-wall union in conjunction with Communications Workers of America (CWA), the union that’s aided thousands of game workers across Microsoft in organizing.

"id Software is historically important – one of the more famous American studios that survived a length of time that few others have,” id Software producer Andrew Willis, who was part of the organizing effort from the jump and filed the initial paperwork to CWA, told Aftermath. “So it feels really awesome to get this done for something with such historical and cultural importance."

Workers at id began organizing around a year and a half ago, but things kicked into high gear following Microsoft’s unceremonious closure of several Bethesda studios in 2024.

"With Bethesda unionizing, it was a push for people [at id] to start talking, and that's when it started,” id Software lead services programmer Chris Hays told Aftermath. “But then the big push that got it rolling was the closure of Tango [Gameworks] and layoffs within Microsoft at Arkane Austin. It was a wakeup call for a lot of people. People decided that it was time that we took our future into our own hands."

"The big push that got it rolling was the closure of Tango [Gameworks] and layoffs within Microsoft at Arkane Austin. It was a wakeup call for a lot of people."

id itself, Hays said, has suffered “a few” layoffs “here and there” in recent years, but nothing comparable to the scale of Zenimax Online Studios, which lost hundreds of employees earlier this year amid Microsoft’s latest round of mass layoffs and project cancellations. Now, he believes, is the time to secure workers’ rights – before the scythe swings, as opposed to after.

"Not that we're not scared that [layoffs] will one day come," said Hays. "In fact, avoiding each of the previous rounds has made us more anxious about if the next round will be us. And the most recent round of layoffs happened after several [studios] had already organized. People [at id] can see what it was that they got. We got to see them negotiating where they didn't actually lose their jobs [for a couple months]. They were still on payroll. They still had their health insurance. ... They had the extra time to make sure they could get their lives [in order], and many have actually gotten their jobs back through negotiations on where they could place people in the company." 

CWA has been able to successfully unionize so many studios within Microsoft and Activision Blizzard in large part due to a legally binding neutrality agreement it struck with the company in 2022 when it was facing regulatory scrutiny over its $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard. That deal lapsed earlier this year, but according to Hays, only on the Activision Blizzard side of things.

"For us under Zenimax, there's actually a separate neutrality agreement, and that one is still valid until May [2026]," said Hays. "But that was definitely on our minds when we were looking at when we wanted to think that we had enough support [to unionize]. … We knew that it was really special for us to have the neutrality agreement, to have the freedom to be able to talk to each other more openly and not face the kind of pushback you would have in other unionization campaigns. We wanted to make sure that we took advantage of the benefit while we had it."

While the union plans to conduct a bargaining survey before members go to the table with Microsoft to hammer out a contract, preliminary discussions have focused on a few pillars: benefits, remote work, and AI. 

"There's a lot of blind spots in our benefits, and a lot of us don't know what we have and what we don't and where things are lacking,” said Hays. “When talking with a lot of people, some would say 'Oh, I think we're lacking this particular kind of benefit, or something around child care.' Personally, I'm really motivated to get protections around remote work and responsible use of AI."

"There's definitely a directive from Microsoft to use [AI] more.”

Remote work has been a sticking point at multiple Microsoft studios, with many issuing return-to-office mandates despite teams’ demonstrable success collaborating from across the country – and even the globe – in 2020 and 2021. 

"We actually launched Doom Eternal during covid,” said Hays. “The month of [the launch], we started our work from home. ... We did a launch event, the whole internet fell apart, and we had to learn how to do all of that remote. And then starting a project [Doom: The Dark Ages] from the beginning, all remote, we learned a lot of lessons. On my team, we learned to change how we work, to be more remote friendly. We ended up becoming more productive as a result. So we've done this before. We've learned lessons, and I think we can continue to use that. We shouldn't just throw away all the great wins we got with remote work."

As for AI, Willis was cagey about precisely how it’s being used within id, noting that going into specifics would involve divulging secrets about proprietary tech. But he said that in his view, some of the current applications are “good,” while others are… less so.

"There's definitely a directive from Microsoft to use [AI] more,” Willis said. “In what ways and how careful they're being about implementing it within the studio to actually benefit the creation of a better game or a more efficient process, I personally don't think that's being done in a careful enough way to have it be beneficial.”

Last year, the Zenimax QA union secured AI protections that commit the company to uses of AI that "augment human ingenuity and capacities ... without causing workers harm" and require that Zenimax provides notice to the union in cases where "AI implementation may impact the work of union members and to bargain those impacts upon request." Willis and Hays hope the new union can make something similar happen under id’s roof.

"We are going to be in a fortunate position in that we have a lot of other people who've gone through this,” said Hays, “so we can look at what they have bargained for, especially around AI, and take that as a starting place, which hopefully means that it's going to be easier for us than anyone before."

Microsoft’s support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza – which continues despite a supposed ceasefire – is also potentially on the docket.

"It would be difficult to say [if we’ll make Israel a core bargaining issue] without seeing what the bargaining surveys comment on, but I can say for myself personally that, yeah, I want no part in [Israel's] usage of Microsoft tools and the deals between Israel and Microsoft," said Willis.

"The folks that are in charge of a lot of these decision-making processes, it's a lot of Ivy League MBAs, a lot of folks with zero game experience."

More broadly, Willis believes the union will allow for more input from developers, as opposed to execs who have never shipped a game and, indeed, might not play them at all.

"We see the direction the industry is headed,” said Willis. “The folks that are in charge of a lot of these decision-making processes, it's a lot of Ivy League MBAs, a lot of folks with zero game experience – not just from the management standpoint, but zero experience in actually making games. ... I find little evidence of them really enjoying games or playing games personally."

“I think the more video game studios that unionize, and the greater percentage of video game employees that are in a union, it's not just better for them as individuals or folks that are raising families or have mortgages; it keeps talent from shedding,” he added. “You get to keep people in the industry who have experience and the amount of game credits that allow them to do things and create games that a contract-only or much more volatile workforce simply couldn't.”

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Earlier today, Humble followed in the hoofprints of Steam and Epic by yanking bafflingly controversial art game Horses from its digital shelves – in this case after the storefront had already made it available for purchase. Now, mere hours later, Humble has relisted Horses.

IGN’s Rebekah Valentine broke the news, which was immediately met with a collective “Huh.” Aftermath reached out to Humble for more information but did not receive a reply as of this publishing. 

Speaking to Aftermath, Santa Ragione co-founder and director Pietro Righi Riva said that Humble temporarily pulled Horses to reevaluate it, but found no reason to set that decision in stone.

"In short, their team saw the press coverage and temporarily delisted Horses to reevaluate it," Riva said. "After a full review they determined that while the content is heavy, nothing in the game warrants removal from their store."

"We are grateful to Humble for having reconsidered and for taking the time to check out the game, although I wish they had informed us that this process was ongoing!" he added. "We are happy that it has been resolved with the game being back on the store, and we wish Steam and Epic would also reconsider their stance based on the actual game contents."

Horses, which contains censored nudity and adult themes like sexual assault and slavery, remains banned on Steam and Epic. This despite the fact that it is far tamer than many widely distributed films and on level even with some popular games. Santa Ragione, the award-winning indie studio behind Horses, has categorized this sudden lack of access to PC gaming’s largest consumer bases as an existential threat and railed against what it describes as “preemptive censorship.”

Meanwhile, let’s have a quick look at what else Steam is stocking these days (warning: NSFW). Phew, no double standards here.

Horses can be purchased on Itch, GOG, and now, once again, Humble.

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Tortellini, a goldfish that defied pretty much every conceivable odd to beat some of Elden Ring’s toughest bosses, has died. He was three.

YouTuber and streamer Eric “Pointcrow” Morino informed his community of Tortellini’s passing on Twitter late last week.

"Unfortunately, my goldfish Tortellini has passed away," Morino wrote. "He's been unwell for the past couple weeks fighting a systemic bacterial infection and took a turn for the worse last night. I'm doing my best as a goldfish keeper, but fancies are incredibly fragile, and it seems that after 3 years it was his time to go." 

Goldfish can live to be older than ten with proper care and space, but there are many misconceptions around their actual needs and even their supposedly fleeting memories, which studies have shown are much more sophisticated than colloquial myths have led people to believe. As a result, goldfish in captivity often fail to reach their golden years.  

“Rather than wax on all [the] mistakes I've made keeping [a] fancy goldfish, lessons I've learned too late (there is so much to know), and how devastated I am over this loss, I really want to highlight all the accomplishments Tortellini has done,” Morino wrote. 

Tortellini led a distinguished life among video game-playing animals. Breathing – or extracting from water, via gills – the same rarified air as Peanut Butter the speedrunning dog, Tortellini managed feats that have eluded the majority of human beings. Specifically, he toppled a slew of Elden Ring bosses, including Melania, considered to be the base game’s hardest boss, and Consort Radahn, the final boss of the Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC. 

This involved a setup that mapped Tortellini’s tank onto a grid, each portion of which corresponded to a controller input. Repeats on the grid ensured that Tortellini was never doing nothing as long as he kept drifting around, but that didn’t stop him from, for example, repeatedly trying to swig health flasks even when he had none. Attempts took hours, as well as a special build that focused on armor and bleed damage, minimizing the number of times Tortellini – whose memory might be better than assumed, but whose perception of the human world and all its terrors still leaves something to be desired – would have to hit enemies and dodge. 

Tortellini also proved to be a capable Mario Party player.

Videos of his accomplishments have racked up over 10 million views in total, meaning that, as Morino has observed, Tortellini might actually be the most famous goldfish in history.

After Morino announced that Tortellini had gone to the great goldfish tank in the sky, mourners poured into not just his Twitter post, but also years-old videos and even games. 

"Had to come back and watch this absolute legend of a goldfish after hearing the sad news," wrote one video commenter. "I will miss you little fish."

Recent years have seen a growing number of viewers raise questions about the ethics of pets and content creation, whether it’s the storm of bad-faith nonsense surrounding Hasan Piker’s dog or more legitimate concerns like Logan Paul’s pig being found abandoned in a field, disheveled and unhealthy, after she was “irresponsibly rehomed” according to the animal sanctuary that ended up saving her. Aftermath reached out to Morino for more details about his approach to taking care of Tortellini, as well as what he self-admittedly learned over time, but did not receive a response as of this publishing.

"[Tortellini] was there to make us all laugh and bewilder us on how a small fish could do so much,” Morino wrote in his Twitter post. “He's lived a god damn good life. I miss him so much."

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On Monday, we reached all-time-high levels of being 12 years old when several government social media accounts shared a deluge of Trump-themed Halo memes. Unfortunately, today those in the halls of power have raised the bar again, making their past selves look downright 13 in comparison.

Now we’ve got White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai and the Department of Homeland Security weighing in, both of whom provided comments on the memes to freelance journalist and Aftermath pal Alyssa Mercante. Desai centered his response around the supposed end of the console wars, which should only matter to you if you died in the 90s while arguing about who’d win in a fight between Mario and Sonic and now haunt the playground you were crawling around on to this day:

“Yet another war ended under President Trump's watch—only one leader is fully committed to giving power to the players, and that leader is Donald J. Trump. That’s why he’s hugely popular with the American people and American Gamers."

(With loud reactionaries, maybe, but with normal people caught in a tornado of tariffs, almost certainly not.)

The Department of Homeland Security’s media team decided to go the openly racist and xenophobic route, because of course they did:

"We will reach people where they are with content they can relate to and understand, whether that be Halo, Pokemon, Lord of the Rings, or any other medium. DHS remains laser focused on bringing awareness to the flood of crime that criminal illegal aliens have inflicted on our country. We aren't slowing down."

Then we have the crown jewel in today’s gold-embossed propeller hat: Vice President JD Vance casually referencing the dumbest, most disingenuous Twitch drama yet during an appearance on New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast. Speaking about his own dog, Atlas, Vance voiced his opinion on CollarGate:

“I kind of obsessively trained him,” Vance said of Atlas. “You could see this: He sits on command, he stays on command. He has this command, place, which is basically if I snap my finger and point, he will run to that place and lay down."

"You don't have to zap him like Hasan [Piker]?" asked the show’s host, Miranda Devine.

"Not like Hasan Piker?” Vance replied in a voice that anyone should be disqualified from running for public office simply for possessing. “ No. No electrocution of dogs here."

"How disgusting is that? What does that tell you about a person?" said Devine, whose unquenchable appetite for boot needs to be studied.

"Well, I think that tells you that they're bad people,” said Vance, 12, who nonetheless possesses the baby brain of someone who was born yesterday. “If you can actually cause suffering to an innocent animal, you're probably the kind of person who doesn't worry about suffering in people as well. And that's been my experience: If you mistreat dogs, that's almost 100 percent a sign that you're gonna be a really terrible person."

Tell that to the 40 million low-income Americans about to lose SNAP benefits. I’m sure they’ll agree with you that the truest measure of a man is his dog, rather than his proclivity for aiding and abetting mass immiseration. Also, I bet JD Vance’s dog hates him, too.

On the upside, while we’ve never been more 12 years old than we are today, we could not possibly become even more 12 tomorrow. I’m sure this is it, and soon everyone will be grownups again.