In a turn-up for the corporate books, even the infamously cut-throat Disney corporation has realised that it was just being way too shitty to a man suing it over the death of his wife at Disney World. Dr Kanokporn Tangsuan died in 2023 after a severe allergic reaction to food served at a restaurant in Disney World, Florida, despite warning the staff multiple times about her allergies. Her husband Jeffrey Piccolo launched a wrongful death lawsuit against Disney and the restaurant owners later in 2023.

It's here that Disney's lawyers step in, with one of the most truly amoral legal moves you'll ever see. Piccolo's suit includes reference to language used on the Disney website about the restaurant in question. Disney argued to the court that Piccolo could not sue the company over language on the website because, in 2019, he had signed up for a free trial of Disney+, as part of which he had agreed to the terms and conditions.

These terms and conditions, said Disney, included a clause saying users agree to settle any disputes with the company over any of its services via arbitration (a non-public process overseen by a neutral third party). From Disney's court filing: "The arbitration provision covers 'all disputes' including 'disputes involving The Walt Disney Company or its affiliates'".

To add insult to grievous injury, Disney's lawyers further argued that Piccolo had agreed to these terms again: when he bought the tickets through My Disney Experience for the couple's ill-fated trip to Disney World. Just as the finishing touch, Disney argued he had also agreed to these terms on behalf of his wife, whom he listed as a guest.

To be clear, this argument has not been ruled on by the court, and there's every chance that a sane judge would have turned around and told Disney exactly where it could stick the Disney+ terms and conditions. Piccolo's lawyers said the claim "borders on the surreal."

Last week Disney's argument became public and was widely covered across media, with the reaction almost unanimously being one of revulsion. Following the backlash, Disney has now announced it will be withdrawing its demand for arbitration.

"We believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss," said Disney's Josh D'Amaro in a statement to the BBC. "As such, we've decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court."

You probably don't need a high-priced lawyer to tell you this, but Jamie Cartwright told the Beeb he reckons the "adverse publicity" may well have sparked the change in heart. "In attempting to push the claim into a confidential setting on what were very tenuous grounds, it succeeded only in creating the very publicity and attention it likely wanted to avoid," adds Cartwright.

To zoom out for a moment, while Disney's behaviour here has been the absolute pits, it's an argument that courts have been ruling on for years in various guises. When you get down to it, how many people actually read the terms and conditions of anything before agreeing to them? Is there a human being alive who reads all 34 pages of an Activision EULA before playing the new Call of Duty?

But Disney's approach was taking that even further. It was trying to say that, because Piccolo had previously signed up for a completely unrelated Disney product, the terms and conditions associated with that product then applied to his interactions with Disney across all of its services. A company trying to wriggle out of a wrongful death lawsuit with this rationale is just breath-taking, and almost makes you wish it had gone in front of a judge.

Piccolo is suing Disney for a sum in excess of $50,000, as well as damages for suffering, loss of income, and medical and legal costs. Disney argues that, as the restaurant is operated independently, it bears no responsibility. The case will now be heard in court at an unknown date.

The Internet Archive has announced the preservation and release of 53 episodes of The Famous Computer Cafe, a radio show that aired in California from 1983-86 and explored the topic of home computing. The show features industry news, adverts for technology of the time, hardware and software reviews, and interviews with a wide range of computing (and cultural) pioneers.

The show had once been preserved by its original makers on reel-to-reel tapes, but over the years these were apparently scattered and lost. The Internet Archive project to preserve the show began when computer historian Kay Savetz acquired several of these tapes at a property sale, and subsequently launched a crowdfunding campaign to digitally archive and make the show available again.  

"While full of time-capsule descriptions of 1980s technology news, the most exciting aspect of the show has been the variety and uniqueness of the interviews," writes Savetz. "The list of people that the show interviewed is a who’s-who of tech luminaries of the 1980s: computer people, musicians, publishers, philosophers, journalists. Interviews in the recovered recordings include Timothy Leary, Douglas Adams, Bill Gates, Atari’s Jack Tramiel, Apple’s Bill Atkinson, and dozens of others."

I adore old technology shows, particularly the thrill of listening to smart people try and puzzle-through where the field is going, alongside the nostalgic thrill of an age when people were asking just what computers were, as well as what they can do.

I listened to the episode of The Famous Computer Cafe where they interview a young Bill Gates. He turns up around ten minutes into the show, just after a review of the Muppet Learning Keyboard, which doesn't have very good key responsiveness and may leave a three-year-old bored. Gates was already semi-famous and fabulously successful at this stage, but computers simply weren't as mainstream news as they are now, and their purpose and potential still had to be explained in simple terms.

Gates is first asked to explain an operating system, which he does by talking about how a computer is made of many components, and needs something to communicate between them: "that basic housekeeping function, what we sometimes call input / output management, is performed by an operating system."

Gates goes on to talk about MS-DOS, before listing various bits of Microsoft software including "one of our most popular programs" Flight Simulator: "It lets you be in a plane flying around [...] we have maps of various cities so you can actually see the Sears tower, or whatever landmarks are in the city you happen to be from." 

The interviewer asks about the Apple Macintosh, which Gates enthuses about as a pioneer for graphical applications: "We think that graphics will be on all machines [...] so we were enthusiastic to develop graphical applications." Gates goes on to wheel out some of his favourite phrases ("A machine on every desktop, a machine in every home") while talking about the future of computing, including his ideas for computers "to aid you" through what at the time Microsoft called "softer software." 

Asked if this means AI, Gates says AI is a "loaded" term. "People think of robots, and they're gonna take over the world [but what I mean] by softer software is the machine recognising what you're trying to do."

This interview took place in November 1984 and, four decades on, it's perhaps not surprising just how right Gates is on almost every topic he addresses, and the absolute conviction with which he talks about where the humble PC is going. Later in the show Gates goes on to talk about MSX, before it moves onto talking to Kazuhiko Nishi, who at the time was spearheading Microsoft's push into Asia, about the Japanese PC market. Near the end of the show there's a brief segment about how new government legislation may affect, get this, working from home on your computer.

The Famous Computer Cafe is a wonderful place to hang out for a while, and the list of interviewees means I've already got several episodes bookmarked for the next few weeks. The 53 shows archived and released do not represent the entirety of the show: these episodes are from the period November 17 1984 through July 12 1985. Other shows on those reel-to-reel tapes are hopefully still out there somewhere, and include interviews with the likes of Ray Bradbury, Robert Moog, Donny Osmond (!), and Gene Roddenberry. So maybe if you have a garage in Los Angeles, give it a clearout.

The story of The Famous Computer Cafe and how this project happened is the subject of a new episode of the Radio Survivor podcast, which interviews co-creator Ellen Fields alongside Kay Savetz.

Former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, who stepped down back in January, has a new job: CEO of PrizePicks, a daily fantasy sports company.

In 2021, Ybarra was appointed co-head of Blizzard alongside Jen Oneal. The pair replaced J Allen Brack, who resigned following the California civil rights lawsuit. A few months later, Oneal announced that she was leaving Blizzard, and Ybarra became the studio's sole head until this year, when he unexpectedly quit shortly after the Microsoft acquisition went through. Former Call of Duty general manager Johanna Faries is now Blizzard president.

Ybarra announced his resignation at the same time that Microsoft laid off almost 2,000 of its gaming employees, including an entire team at Blizzard that had been making a survival game. He provided little explanation, saying only that it was "time" for him to go. According to reporter Jason Schreier, Ybarra had previously said that they'd have to "drag" him away from Blizzard.

Ybarra's new job doesn't give us any obvious clues about what really happened between him and Blizzard and Microsoft. His old job is only briefly mentioned in the press release, and he generically comments that "PrizePicks is the most exciting company in sports entertainment today." 

Ybarra's leap from PC games to daily fantasy sports is suggestive, though. Recent videogame industry innovations like loot boxes, battle passes, daily quests, and rotating shop selections certainly feel like they'd be at home in the daily fantasy and gambling worlds, and the ideas exchange surely goes both ways.

Daily fantasy sports emerged in the 2010s due to what's arguably a loophole in US law: Bans on sports betting don't necessarily bar fantasy sports leagues with cash prizes—they're considered games of skill—and there's no rule that the leagues have to last all season. In apps like DraftKings and PrizePicks, players pay to enter contests in which they select rosters of athletes competing that day, winning cash prizes if their picks perform well. Chance is of course a much greater factor when picking players daily, as opposed to managing a fantasy team across a whole season.

A related development is the rise of mobile gaming platforms, such as Skillz, that offer cash prizes for directly competing in small-scale gaming competitions. (Skillz calls them "casual mobile gaming tournaments," but if you're putting money down on solitaire, I'd argue that you're not really a casual solitaire player.)

Last week, GameStop abruptly shut down its long-running gaming magazine, Game Informer. The staff was blindsided by the news when they got to work on Friday morning—all 13 employees were laid off on the spot, and the next magazine issue, which was nearly complete, will not be finished.

GameStop announced the shutdown on the official Game Informer X account with a goodbye statement thanking readers for being a part of its "epic quest." Game Informer staff suggested they had nothing to do with the brief, cringey statement that reads like ChatGPT output. Soon after, they were alarmed to find that the entire Game Informer website had disappeared: years and years of articles had been replaced with the same GameStop statement.

This morning, the Game Informer X account went active again. This time, a former Game Informer staffer seemingly took the reins one last time to share a proper farewell:

"Our 33-year legacy deserves a genuine goodbye, written by a former Game Informer member. Were heartbroken by the shutdown of our publication, yet we leave with pride knowing we poured everything we had into it. In the words of our editor-in-chief: 'Be well, Play well.'"

Attached to the post were images of the Game Informer masthead as of the magazine's closure, a lean staff of 13 helming what was once one of the most popular publications in the US.

As noticed by Destructoid's Eric Van Allen, soon after the post was published, both it and the entire Game Informer X account disappeared. The Game Informer X account no longer exists, just like the website. It seems GameStop didn't appreciate Game Informer wanting to go out on its own terms.

While GameStop continues its course of erasing Game Informer's footprint from the internet, former GI staff at the independent publication MinnMax are planning a celebration of the publication's legacy with a series of videos and podcasts.

In case you missed the news, World of Warcraft's development team—which is approximately 500 members strong—formed a union late last month, attached to the Communication Workers of America (CWA).

It all comes as somewhat of a milestone ending to a vicious 3-year saga, starting with harrowing reports of harassment, sexual misconduct, and abuse at Activision-Blizzard that led to several employees simply leaving in 2021.

In 2022, Activision-Blizzard settled an $18 million sexual harassment lawsuit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A year later, it settled a seperate California civil rights suit for $54 million, with an extra $47 million being funnelled to help employees, though the settlement concluded "no widespread harassment or recurring pattern or practice of gender harassment".

Before the settlement, former CEO Bobby Kotick characterised employee's complaints as "a very aggressive labour movement working hard to try and destabilise the company" before insisting that he wasn't "anti-union … I have no aversion to a union. What I do have an aversion to is a union that doesn't play by the rules". Kotick proceeded to step down after Microsoft acquired Activision-Blizzard.

According to a new interview from The Gamer with WoW senior producer Samuel Cooper, the change in atmosphere post-acquisition helped those union efforts come to fruition. Microsoft's more pro-union stance helped Cooper and his colleagues feel safe in setting their union in stone: "Legally, a company can't retaliate against you for organising. But that doesn't make it any less scary … It becomes un-scary when you see hundreds of your fellow co-workers out there, side by side with you. And neutrality allowed us to be very visible on campus."

Cooper also reaffirmed his previous statements from an IGN report that the waves of 2021 departures helped plant the seed that would grow into the current union: "There was this series of walkouts … The way that was able to come together so quickly without any prior laying of groundwork really became a proof of concept. We knew we could do that. We could make big changes together, and we knew we had a lot of shared values to rally around."

While Kotick claimed not to be against unions, Activision has a pretty visible history of anti-union behaviour—after not recognising a QA union at Raven Software in 2022, the US Labor Relations Board later found that a series of raises were withheld from the team as retaliation for the attempt to unionise.

Going a little further back, a 2021 statement drew ire from workers and the Campaign to Organise Digital Employees (via CWA), arguing that exhortations such as "take time to consider the consequences of your signature on the binding legal document presented to you by CWA" were as the CWA put it "tired anti-union talking points straight from the union busting script".

This fraught relationship between the CWA and Blizzard's owners is less of an issue now that Blizzard is under the Microsoft umbrella, however, according to Cooper: "We've had CWA representatives and members from other video game unions like Sega and ZeniMax on the campus, talking to folks."

That's not to say the transition to Microsoft was painless for everyone, even those at Blizzard—a rash of layoffs followed the purchase, with 1,900 spread across Xbox and Blizzard itself, leaving many Blizzard employees reeling as they'd only just started at the company. Similarly, Microsoft would later shut down four studios including Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin, a move which—considering Hi-Fi Rush's genuine popularity—gave rise to a wave of borderline existential dread among the industry.

Mind, that's in the context of historic layoffs industry-wide—though it's also in the context of Microsoft spending $68.7 billion dollars on buying a shiny new company. These things, as they typically are, are complicated messes. Hopefully, however, Blizzard's newly-formed union will effectively protect those remaining from a similar fate.

If you can cast your mind back to around this time last year, you might remember Garry Newman—him off of Garry's Mod, and founder of Facepunch Studios—announcing that "Unity can get fucked" in the wake of sudden, badly thought out changes to the engine's pricing scheme that would have seen devs fork over fees on a per-install basis once certain "fee thresholds" were met.

Unity eventually walked back the most egregious aspects of those changes, but it's probably not surprising that Newman is more committed than ever to his kinda-sorta Garry's Mod sequel/brand new engine s&box, which has been in the works for years now. In fact, Newman spoke a bit about his vision for the engine in a recent dev blog.

"I don't want to pay Unity $500k every year so I can then pay my own staff to optimize and fix their engine," writes Newman, quite reasonably. Facepunch's other game, super-popular survival game Rust, has been based on Unity its whole life, but Newman has already said Rust 2 would be based on a different engine.

"Unity has been good to us," he says, so it looks like bygones are bygones when it comes to those fee changes, "but I regret that we didn't always have our own engine being developed in the background… The long term goal is to be making all of our games on s&box, and to have expanded so the engine works on mobile/console/etc."

So Newman would quite like to stop paying Unity for the privilege of fixing its engine, which makes sense, but he also regrets that "the Garry's Mod community mostly have to leave Garry's Mod if they want to make money from the things they create in it."

Later on, Newman writes that "In Garry's Mod, if you made a popular game, the next step was to abandon the community and make a new version in Unity or Unreal. That fucking sucks."

That means a key element of s&box will be "A Garry's Mod type platform, where there's a list of games and you can jump between them. But this time providing a way for the game developers to monetise." 

Which could, of course, open the floodgates to all kinds of dreadful shovelware. "Everything you download on iOS/Android app store turns out to require a subscription. Every Roblox game is pay to win. We need to do better than that.," says Newman, "Let people make money, but don't let it get predatory."

Which sounds easier said than done, to me, and would probably necessitate relatively strict moderation, but Newman hopes to lead by example. "For this to work we need games that get people sticking around. We're making games that will try to do that, and we'll be making an official sandbox mode too." There will also be s&box game jams to get devs' creative juices flowing.

Plus, Newman promises he isn't just trying to lure disaffected devs into his own financial bear trap. "We don't want the burden of collecting royalties or license fees. The platform and our own games should make us money. That should be our incentive." In what I can only interpret as a jab at Unity, he writes "I would also like to offer some assurance, legally, that we can't change the rules further down the line, when we get jealous about how much money everyone is making."

Which all sounds quite idyllic, so I hope Newman pulls it off. Over the last few years, it feels like the games industry has coalesced more and more around the two poles of UE5 and Unity, with other engines increasingly left out in the cold. 

It'd be great if the engine that is—for all intents and purposes—Garry's Mod 2 succeeded in diversifying a bit, and treated devs better than Unity has been in the process. There's just one thing that needs to happen before Facepunch can let devs "use the s&box engine to create games, export them, give them away for free or put them on Steam," Valve has to say yes.

"We obviously need officially Valve to say yes to this, but Valve are cool, they get it, I don't think they're gonna say no. They just need to know what they're saying yes to—so our aim is to put a demo together and see what we can do." So keep an eye out for that, and if you want to try s&box out now, you can check out its developer preview on its website.

Billionaire Elon Musk has said that humans with his company's Neuralink brain chip installed will be nailing 360 noscopes better than the pros within two years. Speaking on an episode of the Lex Fridman podcast (full transcript), Musk went on to make some even wilder claims about the tech: including the idea that Neuralink is going to have to speed up human brains so that AI doesn't get "bored".

Musk says that his idea about the "data rate" of humans came about while he was thinking about AI safety and the possible barriers to a positive human-AI convergence. "The low data rate of humans, especially our slow output rate, would diminish the link between humans and computers," says Musk, before adding a rather unbelievable coda: "Let’s say you look at this plant or whatever, and hey, I’d really like to make that plant happy, but it’s not saying a lot."

The human brain is the pinnacle of evolution and a computer that no Silicon Valley firm is even close to outperforming. We barely understand its complexity and capabilities. Comparing it to a plant… not for me. 

Nevertheless Musk insists a major goal is to somehow increase the "output rate" of humans, i.e. how fast our brain is sending signals to the chip, and reckons there's the potential to go "three, maybe six, maybe more orders of magnitude." Just in case you feel like Musk is pulling these numbers out of thin air, he goes on to agree with Fridman's suggestion that "hundreds of millions" will have Neuralinks within "the next couple of decades".

Some of the stuff Musk is saying sounds to me like psychological torture. "Let's say you can upload your memories, so you wouldn't lose memories," muses Musk, a scenario that sounds like it would drive you insane. Asked whether this is going to change the human experience, Musk says "yeah we would be something different. Some sort of futuristic cyborg… it's not super far away, but 10-15 years, that kind of thing."

It's while talking about efficiency that Musk moves onto gaming, which has been a minor theme around Neuralink, presumably because most games have clearly defined metrics and win conditions that make for easy comparison points. In May Neuralink issued an update on its first patient to be implanted with the chip, Noland Arbaugh, who noted his increasing skills with the brain-computer interface in videogames: "I'm beating my friends in games that as a quadriplegic I should not be beating them in."

"We feel pretty confident that I think maybe within the next year or two, that someone with a Neuralink implant will be able to outperform a pro gamer," says Musk, in the context of the prior chat about speeding up our brains. "Because the reaction time would be faster."

Amidst the cyber-promises, it's perhaps worth reminding ourselves that Neuralink is something that undoubtedly has great medical potential and benefits for certain people. The company's current focus is on the medical side and specifically what it may be able to do about damaged neurons, with a view to curing certain conditions that current medicine cannot.

"If they’ve got damaged neurons in their spinal cord, or neck, as is the case with our first two patients, then obviously the first order of business is solving fundamental neuron damage in a spinal cord, neck, or in the brain itself," says Musk. "So, our second product is called Blindsight, which is to enable people who are completely blind, lost both eyes, or optic nerve, or just can’t see at all, to be able to see by directly triggering the neurons in the visual cortex."

Musk can't resist getting slightly tangential here, speculating Neuralink could one day "solve" schizophrenia, and that Blindsight could later be used to enhance normal human vision ("I think you get to higher resolution than human eyes… you could see ultraviolet, infrared, eagle vision, whatever you want"). There is unquestionably the potential for this tech to make a massive positive contribution to medicine, but it's the science fiction stuff that really gets Musk going, and getting the risks of the technology down to a level where cyberpunk starts looking like a possibility.

"If you have thousands of people that have been using it for years and the risk is minimal, then perhaps at that point you could consider saying 'OK, let’s aim for augmentation,'" says Musk. "So we’re not just aiming to give people the communication data rate equivalent to normal humans. We’re aiming to give people who [are] quadriplegic, or maybe have complete loss of the connection to the brain and body, a communication data rate that exceeds normal humans. While we’re in there, why not? Let’s give people superpowers."

Neuralink is just one of Musk's technological interests, with the billionaire also knee-deep in the AI wars and currently embroiled in a huge lawsuit against OpenAI. As well as that there's SpaceX, Starlink, the rise of the Tesla Bots, and of course his incessant fascination with a platform he paid $45 billion for. Just imagine, one day Neuralink may well speed up Musk's brain, and we could get six times the terrible memes per day.

Steam's dominance of digital PC game sales is fearsome. In a 2021 survey, more than a quarter of game dev studios reported that they make over 50% of their yearly revenue from Steam sales. Despite its successes, however, Valve's former economist says the company could've been even more terrifyingly powerful.

Before a stint as Greece's finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis worked with Valve as its economist in residence, studying the player economies emerging from the exchange of in-game commodities like TF2 hats. In an interview with Aftermath, Varoufakis said that, by never shifting its sights from games, Valve failed to follow its true calling: macroeconomic forecasting.

Varoufakis's primary work at Valve, he says, was monitoring the stability of player markets. By studying how those economies functioned, he informed Valve's monetization strategy to avoid the potential mayhem of an unregulated player aftermarket, which he told Aftermath could've led "to substantial financial losses for a lot of people." But, Varoufakis said, the economic picture that he'd pieced together was left with untapped potential.

As Varoufakis tells it, he had worked at Valve on how to use the platform to build a kind of gamified prediction market, to crowdsource and, ideally, refine economic forecasts. The Steam user base formed an economy that, in turn, was interconnected with and informed by a number of external economies. "You could use these 100 million people that interacted there in order to essentially improve upon the predictions of economic forecasters on the American economies, the global economies, interest rates, growth rates, and so on," Varoufakis said.

As an example, Varoufakis imagined a game where you might get "brownie points or credit points if you predict next month's inflation rate more accurately than the Fed." While Varoufakis doesn't specify in the interview, you can pretty quickly imagine how that might've contributed to a reputation system where contributors with accurate predictions would've been weighted higher, gradually producing more accurate forecasts.

"I am of the belief that had that happened," Varoufakis said, "then Valve would be able to produce better macroeconomic forecasts for the American economy or the global economy than the [International Monetary Fund] or Goldman Sachs."

While imagining the alternate timeline where Valve has become a lynchpin for global investment banking feels to me like a dystopian nightmare, Varoufakis told Aftermath that Valve's game-focused myopia has meant the company has made it "less interesting" to him than it was during the heyday of the hat economy. For Varoufakis, Valve fell prey to the poison of selling too much junk. 

"Commodification won," Varoufakis said. "There were important values in there that commodification has destroyed, but that's what commodification does."

In an interview with Aftermath, Yanis Varoufakis, former economist in residence at Valve, says that the company unintentionally prototyped the digital economic hellscape we're currently forced to languish under. That hellscape is the subject of his book Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, published earlier this year, and it's one he says he helped create.

As Varoufakis describes it, we no longer live under capitalism. Instead, he says we're in the age of "technofeudalism," a condition which emerged from and supplanted capitalism. The essential feature of this new era, according to the economist, are algorithmic fiefdoms that masquerade as marketplaces, extracting rent and dictating the terms of exchange while producing none of the goods themselves. Amazon is a prime example, as is Apple's App Store.

Varoufakis says that, during his time at Valve, the company's development of a platform that incorporated, structured, and monetized community exchange like the TF2 hat trade helped pave the way for the digital fiefdoms to follow. Valve's implementation of its in-game stores and the Steam marketplace, Varoufakis says, emerged from a need to balance monetization with a fear that if the company didn't create its own systems for exchange between players, they would "take it outside, and then it will be completely impossible to regulate."

Varoufakis acknowledged that if Valve was part of the transition into technofeudalism, he had a hand in the process. As he told Aftermath, Valve's monetization strategies were informed by his work to examine those player economies and advise on how to manage their stability. 

"My main project was to study the economy—to work out its dynamics, to work out what determined prices, what determined the distribution of incomes," Varoufakis said. Valve's fear was that, if it didn't wrangle the unregulated aftermarkets for in-game commodities, it risked financial and legal chaos that would be "detrimental to the interests of the company."

In the years since, those fears have proven reasonable. Valve's been forced to crack down on the CS:GO gambling aftermarket multiple times: first in 2016 in response to state gambling regulators, and again in 2023 when CS:GO skins were being used as a medium for cryptocurrency laundering.

Varoufakis says Valve's designers "didn't want to create technofeudalism," but that the systems Valve built to manage player exchange—driven, in part, by his analysis—produced a "new rent extractive drive," which pushed Steam further toward expanding monetization and consolidating its command of the digital PC games market. From its formalization of loot boxes, to its implementation of a real-money player marketplace, to its eventual ascendance as Valve's own taxable domain driven by an arcane promotion algorithm, Varoufakis contends that Steam sketched out an early draft of technofeudalism's monetization playbook.

Whatever its original intentions, Valve had "become part of the problem," Varoufakis said, "the same way that everybody participated in the late 18th century and early 19th century in the creation of capitalism."

The skies are gray above our hobby today as one of gaming's oldest institutions, Game Informer, is closing its doors. This morning, GameStop abruptly pulled the plug on the Game Informer magazine and website, laying off its entire staff as it was "about 70% done" with the next issue, according to content director Kyle Hilliard.

The official Game Informer X account shared a farewell message titled "The Final Level: Farewell from Game Informer", found below:

The sudden closure comes after a turbulent period for the Minneapolis-based magazine. Facing pressure from struggling owner GameStop, Game Informer had already gone through multiple rounds of layoffs since 2018, reducing the outlet's size. In March 2024, Game Informer launched a new subscription, detached from GameStop's rewards program, for $19.91 a year. Before today's developments, the GI staff seemed pretty happy with how it was going.

It's unclear if GameStop plans to issue refunds for existing subscriptions, but it's not a great sign that the entire Game Informer website has already disappeared. The site now directs to the same closure statement above.

Game Informer was founded in 1991, a time when gaming was smaller, and it was much harder to keep track of everything going on in our hobby. For millions, the monthly edition of Game Informer was appointment reading, not only for the major exclusives on newly announced games the magazine would reliably deliver, but for the breadth of games it covered in a single issue.

If you were a kid in the 2000s like me, there's a chance you didn't fully understand how Game Informer got to your door. We started getting mags in the mail after my dad signed up for a GameStop membership—he never cracked one open, but I couldn't get enough. In elementary school, I kept a thick stack of Game Informers in my desk that I'd pour over at every opportunity. I lacked the attention span to read most of the articles, but I could marvel for hours at the screenshots, page design, and sharply written captions.

That stack got heavier over the years, and while I eventually got rid of some in a move, my favorite Game Informer issues still enjoy a spot on my bookshelf. I still have my 2007 Borderlands issue, back when it was going to look all desaturated and Mad Max-y. I remember reading and rereading my Assassin's Creed issue so often that the binding fell apart. I always made time for the reader letters and fan art pages—I think I liked that it brought out the personalities of GI's staff, even if I was too young to learn their names. Game Informer was how I learned that writing about games is a thing you can do as a job. Now it's gone.

Game Informer's legacy lives on, though. MinnMax, an independent outlet founded by former Game Informer staff caught up in layoffs, is organizing a Game Informer archival project on its Discord to help preserve the magazine's decades of work.

After nearly two decades in the biz, romhacking community lynchpin Romhacking.net is switching out the lights, putting up the chairs, and shutting itself off from new submissions. Why? Because, says the site founder known as Nightcrawler, it's "achieved almost everything it set out to do, and far exceeded it." But according to other figures attached to the site, it might be a bit more complicated.

Let's start at the start. Romhacking, if you're not familiar, is the process of taking a scalpel to the inner workings of videogame roms—basically digital copies of videogame cartridges—to change the game in some way. It's basically a kind of modding, but done on console roms people are plugging into emulators with tools that are generally a tad less official than the modding toolkits you'll get from the likes of Bethesda for PC games. 

Creators make them to achieve all sorts of stuff, from fan translations of things that never made it out of Japan to full-on new games. For nearly 20 years, Romhacking.net has been a kind of Nexus Mods-esque host for them, assembling "the largest force of ROM hackers on the planet," per Nightcrawler.

But nothing gold can stay, and Romhacking.net is now retiring, accepting no new hacks or updates to existing ones. In other words, it's shifting to read-only mode rather than going away entirely, at least for now. You'll be able to grab what's already on there "as long as DarkSol, FCAndChill Calico allow," says Nightcrawler, the names referring to prominent users, and the site's archive has been uploaded to the Internet Archive for the day when it truly goes dark. "It may be a good time to start an open source initiative for a new site," Nightcrawler recommends.

It all sounds like a site admin who has grown weary of shouldering a heavy burden, but elsewhere in the post Nightcrawler describes a situation that sounds far more sinister. "I was finally looking to wind things down at the end of last year," says the admin, at which point "an internal group" of users stepped forward to offer to take Romhacking.net off their hands. 

After a "rocky" process getting the site's downloads into the new group's hands, Nightcrawler says they "discovered a most dishonest and hate filled group. I learned that I had been dehumanized for a very long time. My personal details had been given out. Secret deceitful plots had been made to cut me out, and drop a bomb like I am a target to destroy."

And that was that. "My family has seen this and after discussion, we are immediately ceasing all related site operations. We are cutting ties to Discord and Twitter social media outlets, and will have no further contact with these individuals. Lines were crossed."

The post attracted sympathy. "This is even worse than the Xbox 360 store shutting down," wrote CRPG book author Felipe Pepe on Twitter, "And this time is not because of greedy CEOs, it's because of entitled freaks harassing pillars of the community." One of the first responses the news attracted on ResetEra was from user BaconHat, who wrote that the closure "truly sucks, but it's definitively better if the alternative was the owner, who did incredible work over the years, was being harassed in a stupid plot against him for no sane reasons."

But other parts of the romhacking community take issue with Nightcrawler's framing. In a Twitter thread, prolific romhacker Gideon Zhi expressed sympathy with Nightcrawler's burnout, but wrote that they had "exerted iron-fisted control over community-created content, and categorically refused basically all offers of help over the last decade.

"In Dec '23, [Nightcrawler] posted about an imminent shutdown. Staff offered to help. It was initially refused. The site was originally going to just be turned off—no archive, no handoff, nothing. 20 years of community contributions just *gone*." Though Nightcrawler expressed a desire for a successor, Zhi writes that their requirements for a candidate were "unrealistic by any measure," requiring a constellation of ability, participation, and a recent donation to the site that made them "a real unicorn."

In Zhi's telling, attempts to save the site were made harder by admin bullheadedness, and attempts to move its backend over to more cost-effective systems met with active resistance. "Mourn for RHDN," writes Zhi, "But this was not the outcome anyone wanted, and Nightcrawler is *not* the victim here."

Over on the site's Discord—which Nightcrawler has declared no longer official—an admin named Snarf wrote that, "Things have been rocky between site staff and Discord staff for a while, and while Discord staff had been exploring possible ways forward, likely including severing the relationship with the existing site and its ownership, we are deeply confused and disappointed by the accusation of doxxing and the implication that we've been threatening."

Referring to Nightcrawler's complaint that their personal details had been given out, Snarf said "We categorically reject these allegations."

Which leaves us, well, not much clearer on what happened. But one thing is certain, a cornerstone of the Romhacking scene is suddenly gone, and plenty of users aren't sure where to turn.

I've reached out to Nightcrawler about Romhacking.net's closure, and I'll update this piece if I hear back.

Earlier this year Microsoft announced the closure of four major studios on the same day, among which number was the Tokyo-based developer Tango Gameworks. Founded in 2010 by industry legend Shinji Mikami, best-known for creating Resident Evil, the studio developed the (excellent) Evil Within games as part of an eclectic output, with its most recent release the well-received rhythm beat-em-up Hi-Fi Rush. 

Tango's games were generally well-liked, and indeed Xbox executive Aaron Greenberg called the launch of Hi-Fi Rush (which was announced and released on GamePass on the same day) "a breakout hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations [...] We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release." In that context especially the closure felt like an absolutely brutal decision, one that left peers bemoaning that making a good game that sells well "will no longer keep you safe in this industry."

For whatever reason, Tango Gameworks has become the particular focal point of these studio closures, inasmuch as it is the decision that the Xbox suits keep getting asked about. And the problem is that so far they've done little more than open mouth and insert foot. 

President of Xbox Sarah Bond was asked about the closure in May, and spent about a minute saying absolutely nothing. Then CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer waffled on about "doing the right thing for the individuals on the team", how "it's not about my PR, it's not about Xbox PR, it's about those teams," and how "I have to make hard decisions that frankly are not decisions I love, but decisions that somebody needs to go make."

It's all so vague, even verging on avoidance, that you're wondering why there isn't a straight answer. If the rationale was as cold and ruthless as "Tango's games don't sell in the quantities we expect for a first party studio" then Microsoft would rightly come in for some criticism, but would also lay the matter to rest. Instead what Microsoft is doing now, as exemplified by today's developments, is implying some highly questionable stuff through a surfeit of word salad.

Trouble at the top

Speaking to Variety's Strictly Business podcast (and first spotted by Eurogamer), Xbox executive Matt Booty was asked about Tango's closure, and specifically whether Microsoft had looked into finding a buyer rather than shuttering it.

"I won't get into the real sort of nitty gritty details on what went into the decision, mostly out of respect for the people there, just because you know, there was a lot of work that went into delivering Hi-Fi Rush, which was a great game and you know did well for us," says Booty, and so far, so usual.

After some more verbiage about how Microsoft has to be "forward looking" when making decisions like this, Booty then steps on a bit of a rake. "There are a lot of things that go into success for a game. You know, what leadership do you have? What creative leadership do you have? Is the team the same team that shipped something successful previously?

"And we have to look at all of those things together and then ask ourselves, are we set up for success going forward? And while there may have been factors and situations that previously led to success, they may not all still be in place as you look at what you're doing going forward."

What Booty is saying here seems an unmistakable reference to the departure of Tango founder Shinji Mikami in early 2023, and puts the Xbox executive on some fairly questionable ground. Is Booty really trying to shift part of the blame for Tango's closure onto Mikami's decision to leave? Is he really saying that Tango didn't have the leadership or team to deliver another successful game? Because that seems frankly insulting.

Or is Booty just trying to give a non-answer, listing random reasons they consider, and making things worse? Answers on a postcard to Phil Spencer's office, please.

What is especially galling about Booty's remarks is that Mikami, one of the greatest directors in gaming history, had set up Tango specifically in order to train new creators and guide their projects as producer. Mikami of course directed the studio's first game, The Evil Within, but after that served as executive producer on the sequel (directed by John Johanas), on Ghostwire Tokyo (Kenji Kimura), and Hi-Fi Rush (Johanas again).

In other words Mikami hasn't been the creative lead at Tango since 2014, and they've put out three games since then. So Booty's comments about leadership and shipping something successfully in this context seem, at the very least, ill-judged and disrespectful. If nothing else it's a good example of how being nonspecific about this decision has harmed Microsoft more than just coming out with a straightforward rationale for why it happened.

So expect this to rumble on, at least until someone from Microsoft says something that draws a line under it. It's true that sometimes in cases like these, where you're talking about a lot of people losing their jobs, the best thing to do is say nothing. But Microsoft's people keep saying little things here and there that don't add up, and you wonder how on Earth it could ever be this complicated. The idea that Microsoft is money-oriented is not going to surprise anyone!

What bakes my noodle is that these people are media trained out the wazoo, experienced at dealing with the press, and have enormous PR teams dedicated to honing their messaging. The Microsoft executives must know this question is coming in every interview now, yet their answers make it seem like they're either unprepared, inarticulate, or just verbalising a shrug emoji. No-one expects these people to come out and wear a hairshirt. But it would be nice if, sometimes, they spoke to the audience like adults.

The last of the big summer gaming showcases—excluding Nintendo Direct, when that happens—comes from Ubisoft. The two big games we expect to see are Assassin's Creed Shadows and Star Wars Outlaws, but it's possible Ubisoft has a surprise or two in store. (Not holding my breath for Beyond Good & Evil 2, personally.)

How to watch Ubisoft Forward 2024

Ubisoft Forward 2024 is on Monday, June 10 at 12 pm Pacific. That's 3 pm Eastern and 8 pm in the UK.

You can watch the show on YouTube (embedded above) or Twitch.

What to expect from Ubisoft Forward 2024

We've already gotten one Assassin's Creed Shadows trailer from Sunday's Xbox showcase, and Robin had good feelings about its dual protagonist setup. We'll see a deeper look at Shadows during the Ubisoft Forward stream, and we also expect a substantial look at Ubisoft's open world Star Wars game, which is set to release in August.

Beyond that, Ubisoft will be talking about its new free-to-play shooter, XDefiant, and I expect it'll promote its other new free-to-play shooter, BattleCore Arena, which launched last week, as well as the new early access Prince of Persia roguelite.

If you're a collector of Twitch drops, Ubisoft is offering several—full details here and pasted below:

• 15 minutes: Earn the Ultra Top Fan Charm in Rainbow Six Siege
• 20 minutes: Earn the Forest's Dawn Trinket in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
• 30 minutes: Earn The Trailblazer Trinket in Star Wars Outlaws
• 45 minutes: Earn the M60 Eruption Weapon Skin in XDefiant and the Skull and Bones Welcome Firework in Skull and Bones
• 60 Minutes: Earn the Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale (1968) in The Crew Motorfest, the Yurei Bushido Gear Set in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and the Koi Uchide-no-Kozuchi trinket in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

The Xbox Games showcase has, altogether, been a pretty good showing from Microsoft—Game Pass is going to be getting a new Doom, Gears of War is making a comeback, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard got a trailer. I mean, the tone's sort of off, and the characters are introduced like bootleg Borderlands bad guys, but I've still got my fingers crossed tight. A wonky trailer isn't an indication of much other than a slightly-scuffed marketing effort.

Despite all that, however, a spectre's lingering over the entire event: the closure of a number of studios including Arkane Austin (Dishonored, Prey) and Tango Gameworks earlier in the year. While Arkane Austin's fall might seem to logically—if cruelly—follow on from the flop that was Redfall, Tango Gameworks' shutdown seemed to catch many off-guard.

Hi-Fi Rush was a success by almost every metric, something heads at Microsoft itself have even stated themselves. The hard and altogether baffling pill that individual devs have had to swallow is that, somehow, making a good game that sells well "will no longer keep you safe in this industry".

It doesn't help that said closures followed a massive $68.7 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard (which itself oversaw sweeping layoffs at the company). It's easy to put red strings on a corkboard and believe that studios like Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks are simply footing the bill for bigger, juicer brand names.

Fortunately, Xbox has had plenty of interviews to explain its rationale, including maybe some insight into the departure of Shinji Mikami before Hi-Fi Rush's release. Insight that could, potentially, explain that there were reasons to close the studio unrelated to profit. Unfortunately, absolutely no-one high up seems to be prepared to give an actual answer.

Last month, president of Xbox Sarah Bond rambled on about the issue for a bit, and now it's CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer's turn to say basically nothing. During a talk with IGN, interviewer Ryan McCaffrey provides Spencer an opportunity to lay the conversation to rest.

"The closure of any team is hard on, obviously, the individuals there … As you said I haven't been talking publicly about this, because right now it's a time for us to focus on the team and the individuals," Spencer says, I can only assume, about the individuals he had recently put out of a job. "It's obviously a decision that's very hard on them, and I wanna make sure (through severance and other things) that we're doing the right thing for the individuals on the team."

Alright, fair enough. These layoffs are frustrating, but Microsoft wants to make sure it's providing severance packages and that they're not just sent off with all their dreams in a cardboard box—great! Also: a legal requirement. As to the actual why, however, Spencer doesn't really have an answer.

"It's not about my PR, it's not about Xbox PR, it's about those teams," Spencer says, vaguely gesturing in the direction of meaning. "In the end, I've said over and over I have to run a sustainable business", which is a justification he's rolled out before, "inside the company and grow, and that means sometimes I have to make hard decisions that frankly are not decisions I love, but decisions that somebody needs to go make."

You might have noticed that we're no closer to actually understanding why Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin had to go—obviously the business can't divulge company secrets, but there's not even a morsel of context provided beyond: Hey, we love the teams, we love the games, we love the individuals. That's why we had to shut them down.

Listen, being the CEO of a major gaming company sounds like a stressful job—as does being in the public eye when you have to be the bad guy—but also, Phil Spencer makes millions of dollars a year. You'd think he, or anyone else senior at the company, could come to one of these interviews prepped with an actual answer to one of their biggest recent controversies.

Still, Spencer says: "We will continue to go forward, we will continue to invest in what we're trying to go do in Xbox, and build the best business that we can, which ensures that we can continue to do shows like the ones we just did." So, to summarise, Tango Gameworks had to go because of "business"—and that's all you'll get. Cue some very confusing applause from the audience. Please clap and look towards the future until the next time this happens.

The 10th annual PC Gaming Show has officially signed off, but you can catch all the trailers and reveals right here if you missed the premiere. As hosted by Sean Day[9] Plott, Mica Burton, and Frankie Ward, this year's show reached PC gamers around the world on Twitch, YouTube, and Bilibili. If it feels like PC Gaming is bigger than it's ever been since we started doing this yearly premiere, well, you're right. And this year's showcase sure made it feel that way.

This year we shared over 70 total trailers and 15 first reveals, including creature collecting and crafting game Among The Wild, sandbox RPG Streets of Fortuna, and solarpunk city builder Generation Exile. We also caught up with some regular favorites of the PC Gaming Show like the turn-based tactical Demonschool and narrative horror Still Wakes The Deep which, by the way, is launching this month.

If you just want to skim for your favorite announcements below instead of watching the full show that's alright, we won't tell our hosts. Check out the trailers for everything in the show down below and a quick brief on what we learned about each of them. You can also catch all these fresh trailers over on the PC Gamer YouTube channel.

Among The Wild

Starbirds

Lorn Vale

Ale Abbey

Streets of Rogue 2

Open world immersive RPG Streets of Rogue 2 announces its early access date on August 6. Build, craft, and survive in this sandbox with its procedurally generated levels that are 10,000x bigger than the original.

Wander Stars

How on earth do vocabulary and '90s anime meet up in a turn-based battling game? That's the premise in Wander Stars by Paper Castle Games in which you combine words to create attacks, which you can try out in its new demo.

Southfield

Silly farming sim Southfield is full of wobbly physics and gloopy characters where you'll farm crops that may do unexpected things like explode, it turns out. Cultivate dangerous crops and automate your base when it launches on June 24.

Steel Seed

Dark sci-fi platformer Steel Seed follows the journey of Zoe and her drone partner Koby deep into a mysterious facility. Check out the new trailer teasing some of its story and a new area of the game ahead of its launch later this year.

Fallen Aces

Comic book-style bloody FPS Fallen Aces is a pulpy, noir adventure in which you can go loud or stealthy to make your way through its episodes. You can catch the first episode when it lands on June 14.

Stormgate

We didn't just see a new trailer for the upcoming RTS Stormgate, we also got to play it. We also got some details on its factions, which you can study up on until it launches on August 13.

Mars Tactics

Mars Tactics is an upcoming tactics game that lets you choose between conquering the planet as oppressed Red Faction-esque workers or as a bunch of soulless corporate mercs. Its new trailer shows off base-building and a bit of its campaign, which we'll get our hands on when it launches later this year.

Toads of the Bayou

Toads of the Bayou is a deckbuilder-slash-roguelike game that blends cards with good ol' fashioned turn-based tactics. Baron Samedi, a nasty spirit, has trapped you and your fellow hoppers in a cursed bayou to wallow and suffer. It's hopping onto Steam in October this year.

Sumerian Six

All Systems Dance

Fumes

Fumes is infused with the spirit of Mad Max in its procedurally generated desert wasteland where you get to slam trucks together in ridiculous gun and chainsaw fights. You don't even have to wait to give that a shot, because it's got a demo available on Steam ahead of its early access launch.

Sulfur

Solo extraction shooter with roguelike and RPG elements Sulfur just got a massive update to its demo, as it showed off in a new trailer. You can try that out right now while you wait for it to launch later this year.

Phantom Line

Killing Floor 3

We got an up-close look at the sci-fi monsters of Killing Floor 3 ahead of its appearance in the PC Gaming Show and The Impaler looks like a real tank. KF3 is already looking excellent for pulling friends into co-op, but we'll have to wait for it to launch first.

Copa City

Tempopo

Last Moon

Independent French team at Sköll Studio shared a new look at its classic Zelda-like adventure Last Moon in which you collect Runes of the Ancients to become a more powerful Lunar Knight. It's launching sometime in 2025 but you can try its demo right now on Steam.

I Am Your Beast

This "short-form FPS" called I Am Your Beast is an adventure through the Alaskan wilderness in which you'll stalk, shoot, and chuck your gun at guard goons. It calls itself a "lightning-quick hunt-the-hunters action fantasy," that's launching later this year.

Cataclismo

Cataclismo is a survival RTS with a building system inspired by Legos from the developer of Moonlighter. You can catch several new types of enemy shown off in this new trailer and its July 16 release date announcement too.

Level Zero: Extraction

Level Zero: Extraction, a "multiplayer extraction horror" game from Ukrainian outfit Doghowl Games has a twist for the extraction genre: three squads of three playing as human scavengers competing for valuable loot while two other players take control of "deadly alien monsters, hunting the humans from the shadows." It will be coming to early access later this year.

Battle Aces

If you don't have time for a lengthy RTS match, Battle Aces is angling for breezy 10-minute battles as shown off in its new trailer. Take a turn with its PvP in the upcoming closed beta, which you can sign up for on its official site.

Citizen Sleeper 2

Developer Jump Over The Age debuted a new trailer for the tabletop-inspired sci-fi RPG Citizen Sleeper 2, giving us a peek at its expanded scope. Instead of simply trying to survive as a digitized consciousness in a robot body, you'll have a whole crew to take care of, too. It's launching early in 2025.

Demonschool

Turn-based tactics game Demonschool has returned to the PC Gaming Show yet again, looking just as cool as every other time we've seen it. This time it's debuted a fresh new animation sequence and a release date for September 13 of this year.

Unrailed 2

Hectic co-op game Unrailed 2 turned up to show off its new "terrain conductor" mode that will let players build levels for one another to navigate. The game itself is planning to pull into your Steam station later this year.

Space Station 14

After 13 years in development, the overhaul of free-to-play multiplayer RPG Space Station 13 is finally out in the wild. Space Station 14 just launched into early access on Steam so the wait is finally over.

Unbeatable

A rockin' rhythm and narrative game in which music is actually illegal, Unbeatable brings a punk attitude and tunes. We already think its demo, Unbeatable [White Label] is pretty rad, which you can still try out while waiting for it to launch in full next year.

Odinfall

You don't see many twin stick shooters about vikings but that's exactly what Odinfall is. Ragnarok has come and gone and now you've got to survive the deadly Motherstorm while murdering robot gods when it heads to early access in July.

Core Keeper

Core Keeper was a co-op survival crafting hit when it launched into early access. It's now nearly ready for that 1.0 launch, now scheduled for August 27, it announced along with two new character classes in this new trailer.

No More Room In Hell 2

We're all sick of mid zombie games, but the concept remains irresistible when done right, and developer Torn Banner has mastered the art of melee combat in the Chivalry series, so expect that baseball bat to feel just right as you introduce it to zombie skulls. No More Room In Hell 2 is all about 8 players in co-op trying to survive the apocalypse on huge open maps.

Striden

Catch a new look at unconventional alternate history FPS Striden in its new trailer above. The Half-Life throwback seems out of place next to the very dramatic, blue-filtered WW2-ish shooting—but then you get to the irradiated bear.

Drug Dealer Sim 2

This drug empire simulator sequel has debuted a new trailer sharing another look at its early 2000s setting complete with flip phones and parkour. It's launching soon, on June 20, and has a demo available right now if you don't want to wait to get growing.

Zero Sievert

Zero Sievert shared a trailer with us showing off looting and shooting in the tense apocalyptic Zakov City. After spending time in early access since 2022, it's getting ready to hit 1.0 this autumn. 

The Deadly Path

Otherworldly management game The Deadly Path has you gathering card-based resources to expand your operations and ascend a bunch of grisly deities. Check it out in the trailer above while we wait for it to launch later this year.

Incolatus

Incolatus is a "dripping pink Y2K girly-pop retro-inspired arena-style movement FPS," which means it's crammed with pink guns and the faster you move the more damage you do. Incolatus shared a trailer with us going over that extremely fast-paced FPS action and also a bit of dressup. You can wishlist it on Steam right now.

Inferni: Hope & Fear

Inferni: Hope & Fear calls itself the "first deck-builder battle royale" where you and a team play ability cards onto the battlefield last-team-standing style in real time battles. You can download its demo right now ahead of its planned release on July 1.

Deathsprint 66

Why race cars when you can race remote-controlled androids? Deathsprint 66 is like a foot race between off brand Master Chiefs, which is somehow even wilder to watch than it is to say. It's sprinting off the starting block later this year.

Crescent County

A montage from Indie.io

Forgotten Seas

This crafting RPG has a story mode and co-op and styles itself as a relaxing pirate adventure where you can work on base building or chilling on the beach. It's out now in early access, with plans to hit full release after a year or more.

Moon Mystery

"Moon's haunted," so goes the famous meme, but in the upcoming FPS Moon Mystery, it's true—and it's fallen to you to figure out what's going on. For now you'll have to wishlist this outer space FPS to find out what exactly is going on up there.

G.I Joe: Wrath of the Cobra

At last we'll nearly have a proper side scrolling beat 'em up based on the Real American Heroes. G.I. Joe and crew are getting together to bash Crimson Guards over the head, which you can take part in yourself in its demo.

Everholm

Unlike its cozy and cute farm sim cousins, Everholm is just a little creepy. Lily gets dropped in a mysterious town where everyone already knows her name while looking for her missing sister. You may not solve the whole mystery, but you can get started planting some pumpkins in its demo right now.

Shell Runner

Shell Runner is an isometric PvE tactical extraction shooter set in a world where corporations have taken total control, opening the door to a thriving but brutal underworld where making a buck is as easy as pulling a trigger. You can try out its demo on Steam right now.

Renaissance: Kingdom Wars

Reverie World Studios has returned to its roots: large scale medieval beatdowns in the upcoming Renaissance Kingdom Wars. It's promising a grand strategy-RTS hybrid that lets you conquer all of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East launching later this year.

Debtors' Club

Debtors' Club puts you in command of a small army of lazy bureaucrats, cheap thugs, and corrupt officials as you attempt to squeeze all the money you can out of a failing city's debtors. You can beg, cajole, and bluster the city's tax payers right now in its new demo.

The Land of the Magnates

The Land of the Magnates is a world inspired by Middle Eastern myth and legends, in which Malik Shahbaz attempts to save his kingdom with the power of running, jumping, and a trusty sitar. We'll see the rest of that adventure when it launches later this year.

Cat Quest 3

The cat action series continue in Cat Quest 3, where you'll now be heading out onto the high seas. Full of action combat and lots of pirate-y cat puns, Cat Quest 3 has a demo right now and plans to launch on August 8.

The Crush House

Making a reality show is tough, as proven in The Crush House where you'll throw together sloppy singles in a pastel Malibu Mansion and film whatever it is they get up to. Capture the smooching but do it with a bit of cinematic flair if you want to turn both romance loving viewers and the former film students into loyal viewers. It launches on August 9 but you can start filming now in its new demo.

Go-Go Town

As the mayor of a rundown town, bringing the place back to life and persuading tourists to up sticks and become permanent residents by finding the architectural balance between business and pleasure should be great fun. This cute little city builder launches in early access on June 18.

Star Trucker

Ditch the long stretches of asphalt and all the rough weather of terrestrial trucking in favor of interstellar longhauling in Star Trucker. This Americana-infused job simulator is sending you out into the space highways when it launches on September 3.

Escape From Tarkov

Though we still don't have a release date in hand, Escape From Tarkov debuted a new trailer to show off newly announced content ahead of its next big patch. This includes features like transitions between maps, a brand new map in Escape From Tarkov Arena, and synchronization of game profiles across Escape From Tarkov and the separate EFT: Arena.

Splodey

Splodey is a platformer that "does away with the jump button" in favor of a throw button instead. Your little wizard will chuck explosive potions at the walls to propel themself through its hellish 2D platforming levels. It's out now, if you think you can finish a platformer without jumping.

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn

Gunpowder and magic-powered "soulslite" action RPG Flintlock: Siege of Dawn debuted a new action-y trailer to show off some new enemies and its release window. You can finally try it in full this summer or hop into its demo new demo.

'83

Welcome to an alternative universe where the Cold War turned hot. A new multiplayer FPS from Blue Dot Games where the guiding principle is "accessible realism" around a core of tactical precision combat, 83's most ambitious element might be the number of players: Up to 100 per match. It doesn't have a release date yet, but you can sign up for upcoming beta events if you'd like to take part.

Mullet Madjack

In the '80s anime-inspired action game Mullet Madjack, you have ten seconds to live and you can only get more time on the clock by taking down rich androids. It's turned up with a trailer at the show to remind us that it actually launched last month in May so you don't actually have to wait to play.

Generation Exile

Reka

If you've spent enough time as a cute witch, crafting witch, or entrepreneurial witch and just want to escape into the woods, Reka is going to deliver. Based on slavic myths like Baba Yaga, you'll build your own chicken-legged house and wander the countryside to meet townsfolk and summon spirits when it enters early access in August.

Blue Prince

Blue Prince continues the long tradition of estranged relatives leaving dangerous mysteries to their descendants, which in this case is a mansion that you have to build yourself room by room. This mysterious architectural strategy game doesn't have a release date yet but you can wishlist it after checking out this new trailer.

Lok Digital

Lok Digital looks like a word puzzling game, and it is, but it's also one where you're using words to expand society for a bunch of inky little creatures. You can try out the demo right now to check out what this chill and challenging puzzle is all about.

Tactical Breach Wizards

We've had our eyes on turn-based mages game for a long time, which happens to come from former PC Gamer writer turned indie developer Tom Francis' studio. You'll be able to take your party of tactically kitted casters into missions starting on its newly-announced release date: August 20.

Aloft

The crafting survival genre is really going through a big second wave right now, and it's brought all sorts of wild new settings for us to explore, now including the tops of giant floating islands. Survival sandbox Aloft showed off some of its co-op crafting adventures in a new trailer, which you can try in its demo over on Steam.

Screenbound

For those who are already experts in the noble art of texting and walking, Screenbound is a platforming challenge where you're simultaneously navigating a 3D world and the sidescrolling one inside the Game Boy-like handheld in front of your face. It's not launching until 2025, so you still have plenty of time to work on your foot-eye coordination.

Hotel Galactic

Still Wakes The Deep

Last time we got a look at Still Wakes the Deep we were being introduced to the creepy metal sculpture used to make some of its sound effects. This time the narrative horror game set on a Scottish oil rig is sharing its June 18 release date with us.

Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days

Set in 1980 in Walton City, Texas, the outbreak has overwhelmed the town and fighting off the zombies is just one of the challenges that lies ahead in Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days. This side scroller looks full of tension between survivors for you to navigate when it launches in October.

Streets of Fortuna

Grit and Valor - 1949

Grit and Valor – 1949 is a real-time tactics romp that's evoking a lot of cracking games like Into the Breach, Iron Harvest and BattleTech. Developer Milky Tea and publisher Megabit showed off the RTS for the first time in this new trailer and shared plans to launch sometime in 2025.

Rise of the Golden Idol

The Rise of the Golden Idol—sequel to the excellent Case of the Golden Idol—just got a funky-fresh new trailer showing off its new '70s setting and a few of the ways you'll be piecing together the puzzle pieces of its many terrible, terrible crimes. The other mystery we still need to solve is exactly when this one launches, though it is expected sometime this year.

Every Day We Fight

In Every Day We Fight you take charge of a group of civilians caught in an alien invasion Groundhog Day. Thanks to some strange sci-fi tech tech, every time your untrained fighters die, they wake up back at the start of the day, ready to go again. It's due out sometime this year, and you can wishlist it right now until it lands.

Tales of Seikyu

No, this isn't one of those "Tales of" games, but it seriously looks like one. Tales of Seikyu is a cozy framing RPG in a town full of neat animal yokai civilians. You'll cultivate crops, care for livestock, and even pursue romance as you transform into your own yokai incarnations when it launches this year.

Island of Winds

Island of Winds is an action-adventure game, set in 17th-century Iceland, where you play as Brynhildur, the Balance Keeper mediating between our world and supernatural forces. With stealth, puzzles, and combat to contend with, this landscape isn't as quiet as it initially appears. This one launches sometime in 2025.

Airframe Ultra

Airframe Ultra is set in the world of Ultra Circuit racing, a future sport where players compete on combat jetbikes called airframes. In the dystopian Southlands, first place in an underground death sport is apparently worth the extremely high risk of decapitation. You can wishlist it now on Steam.

Stormforge

Crafting pretty houses and tackling giant bosses with friends is no longer enough, for a crafting and survival game. The announcement for upcoming Stormforge demands we also tangle with unnatural magical disasters like tornadoes, firestorms, and the inevitable firenadoes. Take shelter when it launches in 2025.

Windblown

The next game from Dead Cells developer Motion Twin is a super fast-paced action game called Windblown. Notably, Motion Twin wants it to be not just a good single player roguelite, but a cooperative one for up to 3 people. You can wishlist it now to keep track of development. In a similar way to Pikmin, you fight proxy wars in Worship, using your followers as foot soldiers to attack the enemy. Worship doesn't have a release date yet, but you can wishlist it for now.

Worship

Gunboat God

Sony's policy toward PC has shifted noticeably over the last few years. The publisher has gradually been bringing more of its exclusive titles to PC, and more recently, launching games like Helldivers 2 concurrency on PC and PS5. Now, the company's soon-to-be co-CEO Hermen Hulst has outlined the whys and wherefores of its current strategy, and how we can expect them to approach releases in the future.

Speaking at this year's Sony Business Briefing, Hulst explained that Sony has a "dual approach" to game releases. "On the live-service side, we're releasing our titles simultaneously, so day-and-date on PS5 and PC," he explained. But with the publisher's "tentpole titles" (i.e. big budget singleplayer titles like God of War and Horizon: Forbidden West) Hulst says they take a more "strategic approach, and we introduce our great franchises to new audiences". Hulst doesn't say how they approach this, but he presumably means releasing them as PlayStation exclusives first, and onto other platforms later.

What he does explain, however, is what he hopes Sony will get out of this. "We're finding new audiences that are potentially going to be very interested in playing, for example, sequels on the PlayStation platform. We have high hopes that we're actually able to bring new players into PlayStation at large, but into PlayStation platforms specifically."

In short, Sony hopes that if you really dug, say, God of War on PC, then you'll be more inclined to invest in a PlayStation 5 to play God of War: Ragnarok while it's exclusive to the platform. There is a logic to this, but I do think Hulst underestimates how patient and determined PC gamers can be. There's a whole contingent of PC gamers who will refuse to buy games on the Epic Games Store, waiting months or even years until those games release on Steam. And buying a game on Epic incurs no additional cost beyond the game itself. The idea of those players rushing out to drop hundreds of notes on a PS5 so they can play Horizon 3 or whatever seems unlikely.

Admittedly, we don't know exactly how many people feel that way. It could just be a handful. But we do know the PC gaming community can move its weight around when it wants to. Less than a month ago, PC gamers collectively switched Helldivers 2's review rating on Steam to "Overwhelmingly Negative", after Sony tried to reinstate PSN/PC integration. Doing this meant switching hundreds of thousands of reviews to thumbs down, and they did it in a matter of days. When they want to, PC gamers can move the needle, and when it comes to buying games on other platforms, they can likewise refuse to do so.

A month after a Bloomberg report claimed that Kerbal Space Program 2 developer Intercept Games would be closed at the end of June, multiple employees have confirmed that numerous workers, and possibly the whole team, are being laid off.

The initial report was backed by an April Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) indicating that 70 employees at Take-Two's Seattle office would be laid off as of June 28, and that the studio would be closed. Take-Two declined to comment, but a couple weeks later Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said Intercept and OlliOlli developer Roll7, which was also reportedly closing, had not been shut down.

"We didn't shutter those studios, to be clear," Zelnick said. "And we are always looking at our release schedule across all of our studios to make sure that it makes sense. So we are being very judicious because we are in the middle of a cost reduction program that we've already concluded and are now fully rolling out. We've announced that we're saving $165 million in existing and future costs, but we haven't shuttered anything."

What that actually meant—that the initial closure report was incorrect, that the studios simply hadn't been closed at that point, or that they'd been gutted but would continue to exist as zombie corporate entities—wasn't clear, and elaboration was not forthcoming.

Whatever fate awaits Intercept, it will apparently be without a large number of its employees—possibly all of them. "The team at Intercept Games will be laid off as of June 28th so a great group will be out and about looking for their new roles," senior design manager Quinn Duffy wrote on LinkedIn. "As will I.

"I got to know the designers pretty well in my all-too-brief time there. These are some fantastically smart and talented people and I'm happy to vouch for their qualities. And I can say the same about the other disciplines—good folks across the board."

"My teammates and I at Intercept Games have been affected by the recent layoffs at the end of June," software engineer John Del Valle wrote in his own post. "It has been an honor to work on such a complex and amazing franchise, and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to be part of the engineering team for both Kerbal Space Program 1 and 2 for over six years."

"Myself, along with my talented coworkers at Intercept Games will be laid off at the end of June," principal engineer Mark Jones wrote. "It has been an absolute pleasure working with this team, and you couldn't ask for a more dedicated group of developers who really embrace the Kerbal spirit. It will be hard to say goodbye to such a unique title and franchise, but all good things must come to an end.

"This is a tough time for this industry, and unfortunately another great group of developers are going to be out looking for work."

Based on those posts, it sure sounds like the entire team, or at least most of it, is being let go. Take-Two's prior statement, indicating that the Private Division publishing label—which is to say, not its subsidiary Intercept Games—"continues to make updates to Kerbal Space Program 2" reinforces that impression. The actual number of layoffs, and whether it constitutes a shutdown, are not yet known, however.

Whatever happens, Kerbal fans are being clear about their frustrations on Steam: Recent Kerbal Space Program 2 reviews—more than 2,100 of them posted over the past 30 days—are "overwhelmingly negative." I've reached out to Take-Two for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

Activision has won a judgment worth more than $14.5 million against cheat maker EngineOwning, which has also been ordered to stop making cheat software and to turn over its website to Activision's control.

The case began in 2022, when Activision filed a lawsuit accusing EngineOwning of "trafficking in circumvention devices", "intentional interference with contractual relations", and "unfair competition." EngineOwning offers subscription-based cheat services, such as aimbots, triggerbots, and wallhacks, for games including Titanfall 2, Counter-Strike 2, and several Battlefield and Call of Duty games. 

Activision described the cheats in its lawsuit as "malicious software products designed to enable members of the public to gain unfair competitive advantages," and sought an order shutting down the service, as well as financial damages including all "unlawful proceeds" earned by the site.

In a ruling issued on May 28 (via The Verge), Activision got what it wanted. After noting that "no defendant has appeared or defended itself in this action" since July 2023, a default judgment of $14,465,000 was awarded to Activision, along with $292,912 in attorney's fees. An injunction against future development and sales of EngineOwning cheats was also issued, and ownership of the engineowning.to domain was ordered to be transferred to Activision.

This is the second courtroom victory for a game publisher over cheat makers in recent days. This past weekend, Destiny 2 studio Bungie scored a jury trial win over AimJunkies. But the financial penalty imposed in that case was much lower: A relatively paltry $63,200, which is still a hell of a lot of money for normal people but, as associate editor Ted Litchfield said, "a rounding error" for Bungie. (When you get down to it, $14.5 million is also a rounding error for Microsoft-owned Activision, but best not to think too much about that.)

Whether Activision will be able to collect remains to be seen. EngineOwning was based in Germany when the lawsuit was filed but the company is apparently now operating out of Dubai, which could complicate enforcement of the ruling. EngineOwning also indicated that it intends to continue operating, and producing Call of Duty cheats.

"There has been a lot of false claims regarding the lawsuit against EngineOwning," it said in a statement. "All the guys targeted in the lawsuit are inactive and have been for a long time. The project was handed over to a new owner years ago. Some news articles claim that Activision got access to the data of our users. This is completely false and to no surprise those news articles don’t link any kind of source. All relevant documents regarding the lawsuit are publicly available if you want to look it up yourself.

"Now Activision is trying to claim our engineowning.to domain. We have created backup domains (listed below) and kindly ask you to bookmark them. We hope and think that our domain registrar will not defer to this bogus claim, that would not have been approved by any clearheaded judge with even basic democratic values in a proper jurisdiction."

EngineOwning also said that a "test version" of a new Call of Duty cheat will be released after the start of season 4, and that it is working on a "free lite version" of its Modern Warfare 3/Warzone cheats once the paid version is restored.

"We can confidently say that business as usual at EngineOwning will continue for years to come," a representative said in a brief statement provided to PC Gamer.

I think there's reasonably good odds that's just bluster, but for now at least EngineOwning clearly isn't inclined to go away quietly. On the upside for Activision, sales of the Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone cheats are currently disabled, although EngineOwning attributed that not to the ruling, but to Activision's anti-cheat efforts: It said subscriptions will be unfrozen once it is able to make the cheat software undetectable again.

Sony's been on a bit of a bender with AI stuff recently, huh—as I'm sure a recently-misrepresented Neil Druckmann will tell you. AI—or I should specify, generative AI—may prove valuable in game development, but as with a lot of new technologies the actual use cases devs are finding clash severely with the executive pipe dream of paying fewer voice actors and writers in the name of "reactivity". 

Flying under the radar of the Druckmann controversy (though nonetheless spotted by IGN) is another ream of buzzwords courtesy of head of PlayStation productions and product Asad Qizilbash, who has a brave new angle on the tech via an interview on Sony's website: You see, AI's got what the kids crave for more reasons like—uh, personalisation, and reactivity, and meaning, and stuff.

"In terms of gaming's future, I envision games becoming more personalised due to advances in technology and AI," Qizilbash says when asked about PlayStation's next 10 years, gazing into his crystal ball. 

"... technological advancements will enhance emotional depth in games by allowing characters to be much more emotive and expressive, fostering more evocative storytelling. That's going to help a whole generation of creators be able to just create so much more emotion in the stories. The focus is going to shift from graphics or visuals to immersive narratives that resonate long after the controller is set down."

As we all know, videogames made prior to 2024 have all been about ray-traced graphics and sick 360 MLG no-scopes. Before AI, no one was ever emotionally moved by a game—no one ever put a controller down and felt impacted by the thing they just played. It never happened.

This newfound frontier of immersion and narrative, hitherto just impossible without current technology, is especially relevant to the youth™, Qizilbash argues: "Advancements in AI will create more personalised experiences and meaningful stories for consumers. For instance, NPCs (Non Player Characters) in games could interact with players based on their actions, making it feel more personal." Yeah, if only Baldur's Gate 3 had that, it would've been way better. I would've felt a bajillion immersions. 

"This is important for the younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences, who are the first generations that grew up digitally and are looking for personalization across everything, as well as looking for experiences to have more meaning."

The temptation I have to simply tear into this clear bowl of corporate word salad is tremendous, but I'm going to resist in favour of sharing the first time a game really moved me—Supergiant's Bastion. Spoilers, in case you haven't played a game that came out 13 years ago.

In the game's final act, protagonist "the Kid" is presented with a very simple choice between wrath and justice. You can either save Zulf, or leave him to die. 

Zulf is a character from a nation of old enemies called the Ura, who betrayed you. However, by the time you reach him to wreck bloody revenge, the Ura have already blamed Zulf for leading you to them. They blame him for the demise of their fellows you fought through to get here. They rough him up and leave him to die. 

If you pick him up, the kid staggers through Ura territory with Zulf on his back, shielding him with his body as Ura troops fire upon him, until they all eventually just… stop, and let you go. The fight draining from them in the face of your selflessness. There's no dialogue, but you get a real sense that all of them had the same thought at the same time: 'What are we doing? He's just a kid.'

Plenty of meaning achieved without a deep learning model of any kind, there.

Anyway—yes, AI's got its uses, but developers obviously don't, nor have they ever, needed it to deliver personalised narratives or meaningful stories. The "shift" Qizilbash describes of new technologies letting a "whole generation of creators be able to just create so much more emotion in the stories" already happened decades ago. It happened with Missile Command in the 1980s, an arcade cabinet that captured the raw anxiety of the Cold War with pixels, bleeps and bloops. 

Honestly, I think more than anything the statement is just kind of insulting. I'm a young millennial myself, but I know people from Gen Z and Gen Alpha—and beyond some utterly unassailable memes, the kids are alright. Bare minimum, I'm sure they're capable of sniffing out a good story when it's told to them without needing an AI that reacts when you talk about burgers, or a bajillion hours of regurgitated machine-generated content.

Sony has apologized to Naughty Dog studio boss Neil Druckmann for "misrepresenting his words" in a recent promotional interview, which it acknowledged contained "several significant errors and inaccuracies." The interview has now been taken down.

In the interview published by Sony last week, Druckmann reportedly praised the potential of generative AI, saying it is "opening the door for us to take on more adventurous projects and push the boundaries of storytelling in games." He also talked up the studio's next game, which he said "could redefine mainstream perceptions of gaming."

But shortly after the interview went up, Druckmann took to Twitter to clarify that the reported statement about redefining perceptions of gaming was "not quite what I said." 

"In editing my rambling answers in my recent interview with Sony, some of my words, context, and intent were unfortunately lost," Druckmann very diplomatically tweeted.

That's putting it mildly: Druckmann also provided the full text of his response to the question about "future innovation" in gaming, and nowhere does he say any of the words attributed to him in the published interview. As far as I can tell, the closest he comes is to say that, thanks to the success of The Last of Us television show on Amazon, "people even outside of gaming are looking at us to see what it is that we put out next"—a far more attenuated and reasonable statement.

We noted the change in our report on the interview, but an obvious question was left hanging: If Sony so thoroughly mangled Druckmann's answer to that question, what about the rest of them? And now we have our answer.

"In re-reviewing our recent interview with Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann, we have found several significant errors and inaccuracies that don't represent his perspective and values (including topics such as animation, writing, technology, AI, and future projects)," Sony said in a statement that's replaced the interview. "We apologize to Neil for misrepresenting his words and for any negative impact this interview might have caused him and his team. In coordination with Naughty Dog and SIE, we have removed the interview."

It's a remarkable walkback, and a very big bucket of egg on Sony's face. The interview with Druckmann was conducted by Sony, for Sony—Naughty Dog is a Sony studio—and the difference between what Druckmann said, and what Sony put out for public consumption, is not subtle. It's not even close. 

The net result is that Sony has not only managed to irritate one of its most prominent developers to the point that he was willing to drag the company for it (Druckmann's tweet was diplomatic, yes, but also unmistakably not happy), it's also cast doubts on its wider credibility: How often has this happened, unnoticed or unremarked upon, in the past?

I suppose one possibility—and this is purely speculative, because Sony hasn't commented further—is that someone decided to clean up Druckmann's commentary with an AI-powered summary and didn't bother to check the output. As awful and embarrassing as that would be, it's probably the best possible explanation from Sony's perspective. "We relied on the machine and got burned" ain't great, but it's a whole lot better than, "We wilfully misrepresented the words of one of our top guys because we thought it would make for more effective PR."

I've reached out to Sony for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian Studios opened a new operation in Warsaw earlier this month to help support the development of "two very ambitious RPGs." There's just one problem: Warsaw, the capital of Poland, is already home to one of the world's most ambitious RPG studios, CD Projekt. Is there room in that town for both of them?

It might seem like kind of an odd question at first blush: Warsaw has a greater population than the Canadian city of Montreal, home to multiple game studios from companies including Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Warner, and others. (Larian also has a studio in nearby Quebec City.) But in case there was any doubt, CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski said it's all good in the 'hood.

"When it comes to Larian opening up a new studio, the more the merrier," Nowakowski said during an investors call. "Larian are great people, Swen is a great guy, and that team is great ... I completed [Baldur's Gate 3], I loved it. Big fan of D&D as well personally.

"Do we see any threats? To be honest there's always a threat that somebody can leave and go somewhere else, and whether they have a studio in Warsaw or it's a job opportunity somewhere else, the difference is not that big. The world is a pretty small place, and developers, especially at a senior level, are very often mobile. And if somebody didn't want to work on the project but they dream of working with somebody else, they will do it anyway. So having Larian next door or not, does not change that much from our perspective. We wish them nothing but the best."

It's a reasonable position to take: I'm not intimately familiar with EU rules but generally speaking, borders between European nations are pretty permeable when it comes to relocating for work. And while Larian is no doubt a powerhouse RPG studio, CD Projekt is very much its equal in that regard. And as Larian boss Swen Vincke himself said when announcing the new studio in Warsaw, "There's a lot of talent here." Enough to go around, apparently.

Correction: The report originally indicated the statements at CD Projekt 's financial call were made by joint chief operating officer Piotr Karwowski. They were in fact made by Nowakowski.

Google's recently-introduced Web search option feels like a cheat code: it just gives you a list of websites related to your search query, sorted by relevance, with no cruft, sponsored links, or other nonsense⁠—it'll even skip over the search giant's new AI Answer box that insists on inserting itself at the top of your results. 

What's more, as outlined by Tom's Hardware, you can set desktop Chrome's address bar to default to Web search, removing the hassle of manually setting it each time. The process is blessedly simple:

1. Go to your Chrome settings: click on the three dots in the upper right corner of the browser and it will be the second-to-last option.

2. Click on the Search Engine tab on the left side of the screen, then Manage search engines and site search.

3. Scroll down to Site search, and click Add to create a new entry:

• Name: Google (Web)
• Shortcut: google.com (Chrome made me type out "www.google.com" for some reason)
• URL: {google:baseURL}/search?udm=14&q=%s

4. Click on the three dots to the right of the new Google (Web) entry and select Make default

And that's all there is to it: typing a search in Chrome's address bar will now send you straight to Web search. Your options are a bit more limited on mobile, where the vast majority of my own "[insert game] solve annoying puzzle/cheese unfair boss" -style searching occurs, but at least on PC, this bastion of user control and customization, you can cultivate a Zen garden of Google search working more how you want it to. Tom's Hardware's guide does break down how to default to Google Web search on Firefox's mobile app if you're a user of that yeoman browser.

While Chrome extensions like Tom's Hardware editor Avram Piltch's own Bye Bye, Google AI are also a viable option for skipping AI overview, and even offer an option for defaulting to Web search, the Chrome settings route strikes me as the most straightforward, least likely to be borked by an update way of doing this.

As someone whose living depends on traffic from Google in a big way, I've obviously got an incentive not to like the AI answer box, which when working as intended, basically scrapes answers from websites like ours while cutting us out of the traffic. But I also don't like it as a user of Google, because similar to so many new AI tools, it doesn't work as intended.

Whether it told you to drink urine to pass a kidney stone or produce lethal chlorine gas to clean your washing machine, AI Overview has that persistent generative AI "hallucination" problem: it will lie to you harder, faster, and more casually than your most credulous podcast-listening pothead cousin trying to explain the "truth" about the pyramids.

For a more PC gaming-centric example, I searched "Baldur's Gate 3 how to fix Underdark tower elevator," remembering a guide I wrote close to that game's launch. The AI answer box mashed up instructions related to two different Underdark elevators in Baldur's Gate 3, presenting the resulting nonsense instructions with all the unearned authority of an AI chatbot. Now that's a pretty understandable error for a person to make, let alone an automated pattern-recognition process, but doesn't that beg the question of why you'd even want to bother with this solution in search of a problem? 

What's the worst thing you've accidentally deleted without meaning to? I can assure you that it wasn't anywhere near as bad as Google Cloud deleting the entire customer account (including all backups) of $135 billion Australian pension fund, UniSuper, putting services for its over 615,000 members on the fritz for nearly two weeks.

As reported by Ars Technica, UniSuper picking Google Cloud for its digital services was a big enough deal to get its own press release, with the fund outsourcing crucial infrastructure to the internet giant—many companies do the same with Amazon Web Services⁠⁠.

While UniSuper said that pension payments were not disrupted by the outage, customers were unable to log into their accounts on mobile or desktop, and the fund's outage update timeline implies that transactions were unable to be processed during the blackout, with a data rollback to the end of April required once everything was said and done. Thankfully, UniSuper had kept a backup of its cloud data through another service, which helped in the full resumption of its operations.

But it's still not clear just how this occurred: The deletion of a multi-billion dollar client's account and every backup therein, bypassing all safeguards, knocking out financial services to hundreds of thousands of pensioners for two weeks is, in the words of Brass Eye, the one thing we didn't want to happen.

A joint statement from Google Cloud and UniSuper describes the deletion as resulting "from an unprecedented sequence of events whereby an inadvertent misconfiguration during the provisioning of UniSuper's Private Cloud services ultimately resulted in the deletion of UniSuper's Private Cloud subscription." What, that wasn't crystal clear to you? Basically, "it was a freak accident."

Software developer Daniel Compton points out that the vague language in Google and UniSuper's statement does very little to explain how this occurred on a technical level. Compton argues that one likely explanation was some error on UniSuper's part when using a common cloud infrastructure tool, but Google Cloud seemed to admit fault on its end in a statement during the outage, implying it was a bug on Google's end.

My theory? Some hapless Google employee was chasing a chimpanzee through the server room (you know how those permissive tech offices are, ball pits and whatnot), slipped on a roller skate, and accidentally hit the big red "Delete the Australian pensioners' data" button. They really should have installed a flip cover on that thing. Whatever the explanation may be, clearly no tech service is too big to fail, and you should keep redundant backups of any data that matters to you⁠, he says, ignoring his 20 year-old, 308-game strong Steam Library.

There's been plenty of controversy over AI deep fake videos and the digital necromancy of dead or aged actors (mostly in Star Wars), but how about taking that one step further? The company DeepBrain AI will collect audio and visual recordings of a loved one and then create an interactive AI version of them for you to speak with once they've passed.

A recent story from the BBC highlights some new players in "death tech," or the niche of technology startups offering services related to grief and mortality. Two of the companies profiled are, dare I say it, normal. You can use HereafterAI to collect recordings and pictures and save them for your loved ones, but the service doesn't seem to generate new text or audio⁠—the "AI" part seems to be its interactive user interface for easily creating, storing, and accessing this data. Settld, meanwhile, offers a service for canceling a departed loved one's financial and social accounts, removing a major logistical burden from the bereavement process.

Hoo boy, the third one though. DeepBrain AI CFO Michael Jung claims the company's AI likenesses carry a "96.5% similarity of the original person, so mostly the family don't feel uncomfortable talking with the deceased family member." I am dying to know how you quantify the profound and subjective experience of speaking to a loved one within a fraction of a percent.

Watching a video of this product in action from 2022 made me feel insane. "Husband Mr. Lee, who was sentenced to death, was worried about his wife who would be left alone, so decided to leave his digital twin for her." That's a hell of an opening, but benefit of the doubt says "sentenced to death" was just a poor bit of translation work for a figurative "death sentence" like a terminal illness⁠—I hope. The phrase "digital twin" makes my skin crawl though: it implies a kind of parity between the real person and the generated homunculus, a kind of techno-Tulpa that ought to be eliminated with extreme prejudice.

The footage of the avatars in action is bizarre too. Watching the two conversations on offer feels profoundly voyeuristic and invasive, but they're also minimally interactive⁠—absent context, I might have assumed these were merely pre-recorded messages, making me question the feasibility of the product. As a lover of games, I'm reminded of those "bullshot" pre-rendered trailers of E3s past that purported to show real gameplay.

Even assuming it works as advertised, I find the concept highly disturbing. The HereafterAI product is an organizational tool, no more controversial to my eye than keeping a loved one's letters or recordings the old fashioned way. DeepBrain AI threatens something else: a slurry of recorded "content" from a loved one shaped into a perverse puppet to manipulate the bereaved to the tune of $50,000.