This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: Life Might Be a Waste of Time but It’s Nice!
• TSF Showcase 2024-09 Transjitter Ibitsu na Karada by Jirou Saku
• A Reminder That Apple Arcade Exists (Apple Arcade Is Undergoing Some Troubles)
• Pokémon Presents… Confusion! (Pokémon Legends Z-A Announced)
• Sony Lays Off 900 People (Also The Twisted Metal Live Service is Dead)
• EA Also Laid Off 670 People A Day Later (Also, Respawn Got Screwed Again)
• Saber Interactive is Free From The Embrace! (Saber Interactive Leaves Embracer Group)
• Bobby ‘n’ Da Tiki Boyz is Goin’ Indie (Toys for Bob Is Parting Ways from Microsoft Activision Blizzard King)
• NetEase is Opening Up An All-American Bullet Farm (NetEase Established LA-Based Studio, BulletFarm)
• I Get Why You’re Doing This Nintendo, But Fuck Off (Nintendo Is Suing the Developers of the Yuzu Switch Emulator)

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Life Might Be a Waste of Time but It’s Nice!

You know what really boils my broth, chafes my chonies, and arsenics my apples? The very idea that engaging with entertainment is ‘a waste of time’ and that ‘people should be doing something productive instead.’ It’s an argument dating back hundreds of years, partially stems from the Christian work ethic that life is for toiling and prayer above all else, and is one of the stupidest ideas that I’ve ever heard!

Akumako: “Even stupider than racism?”

Six times as stupid!

Akumako: “Damn, that’s a hecka lotta stupid!”

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating—

Akumako: “Fuck you!”

—But I am routinely surprised that people still keep on falling back to this mindset. Keep adopting the mindset that the goal of life is not to achieve happiness, emotional fulfillment, or experience pleasure. Now, I get the appeal behind working hard on something— I run this website and do a bunch of writing as a hobby, and I would not take any pride in that if the work wasn’t substantial. And I do think that hard work and dedication should be something encouraged and rewarded. However, through my job as a tax accountant I have met people who are financially obsessed. People who have no perceptible interest beyond making money, minimizing taxes, and bringing in half a million dollars a year. These people are the most miserable human beings I have met in my entire life.

Now, everybody is brought into this world under slightly different circumstances, and because of that, they develop different values. And I’m not audacious enough to make some bold claim about what one should value in life— I’m only 33% to 50% through mine!

Akumako: “That’s one funky-ass rang you’ve got there…”

Look, trans women life expectancy is all sorts of fucked, yo.

I think that people can agree that everybody wants some basic amenities in their life. Food, water, clothing, utilities, shelter. That is the lowest level of needs. And beyond that, they want to feel fulfilled in some way. Whether that be through work, through relationships, or through hobbies. Everybody has different preferences and desires. Some people just like to be around people all the time, others like to toil on tasks in their lonesome, some people just want to go out and experience things. Or, alternatively, you can just call these ‘the things that make life worth living.’ To me, this is something that humanity has figured out for a hecka long time, yet some people tend to not view this as the end goal of life, but rather the accumulation of stuff.

Now, I understand why some people are so devoted to… optimizing their lives. Why people are so adamant about going through the rigor of education, garnering good marks, getting into a good school, and getting a high-paying job, all while ignoring every time consuming vice. It’s because they understand how the world works, how the systems they were born into function, and desire security through success above all earthly wants.

People with a lot of money like having a lot of money, because it’s harder to lose money when you have a lot of it. When you have enough money, you can get infinite money. If people are able to get returns that beat out inflation, taxes, and living expenses, then they successfully won the game of living in a capitalist society. …Also, higher paying jobs are more likely to offer severance, feature lower turnover, and offer benefits that help people get or save even more money.

Or to cut away the bullshit surrounding the point I keep going back to with my bread-infested rambles, people become obsessed with optimizing their lives, with their finances, because of capitalism. It is how the system is designed. It is supposed to make people view their lives in financial terms, and extrapolate data based on what will offer them the greatest return. I know this, I work in a field heavily connected to this concept, but I fucking hate this system. It obfuscates the concept of fulfillment behind financial barriers on pretty much every level. 

The very concept of rent is a great example of this. I’m fortunate enough that I never had to experience it first-hand, but the fact that people need to constantly pay to stay in even a basic dwelling is a concept that I grow increasingly disgusted with by the week. I regularly see people blame landlords for this, but that’s not how it works. I have ample experience with landlords from a financial reporting level. And the reason why people become landlords is almost always because it offers them something that pretty much everyone wants. Passive income. It is the redistribution of security and comfort from one person in exchange for the security for another person, with real estate management companies scraping off a few thousand dollars a year per property for good measure.

…Shit, I need to stop writing these at one in the morning. What was my point again? Right. The systems of the world are broken, pretty much always have been, but are probably more broken than they were a couple decades ago. People see this, and are either trying to master this failing system while they can, or are struggling to find the security needed to achieve the fulfillment that they crave. While I think people have every right to be miserable fickle neurotic fuckwits, it’s another matter when they put other people’s happiness into question. 

Sure, you can mathematically and statistically say that hobbies are a waste of time and all that matters is accumulating cash, credentials, and children. Hobbies and fascinations might be ‘a waste of time,’ but under those metrics… life itself is a waste of time!

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TSF Showcase 2024-09
Transjitter Ibitsu na Karada by Jirou Saku

This TSF Showcase is an indirect request from Natalie.TF reader Skillet. By that, I meant Skillet requested that I check out an ongoing female to male TSF story, We Are Former Girls by Saku Jirou. I read the first few chapters of it, liked it, and added it to the informal folder of onging titles I should cover eventually. However, in looking at Jirou Saku’s past works I saw that they worked on another TSF series. A series that is conceptually similar yet wildly different from We Are Former Girls. Whether that difference is good will come up to personal preferences, but, well, let’s just say it’s my kind of shit!

Transjitter is a short-lived manga series that was canceled 6 chapters into its run, and from the outset… I can see why. Both due to the subject matter and tone of the work, and where it was published. The series debuted in issue four of Young King Bull, a magazine with covers like this, which indicates that something with limited mainstream appeal would not really work in this comic. If anything, the fact it was ever greenlit at all is surprising to me.. 

The series follows Shunichi Ikeya, or just Shun, a gay biracial high school boy who lost his parents at a young age and currently lives with his uncle. Needless to say, he is a rather depressed young man, seen as an outsider, unable to live a ‘normal’ life in a country that has rigid social values, and smack dab in the middle of adolescence. The only real bright spots in his life are his childhood friend, Yuka Yashiro, a comparatively cheery and easygoing girl who tries to brighten up Shun’s life. And the handsome transfer student, Koji Yamagashi, who Shun has a crush on. With this cocktail of misery established, Shun overhears Koji confessing to Yuka, and is immediately heartbroken.  

From a flashback earlier it is revealed that something similar happened back in middle school, and while it did not ruin Shun and Yuka’s relationship, it led him to view her with more… animosity. Back in middle school, Yuka confessed to Shun, but because he’s gay, he was unable to reciprocate her feelings. And shortly after this Yuka was confessed to by Shun’s unnamed senpai, who he had developed a crush on. Every time Shun had someone he was attracted to, they wound up confessing to his best friend instead of him. This, in conjunction with everything else in his life, leaves him bitterly punching a wall that night, wishing that things could be different, and he wasn’t like this. …Okay, more specifically, Shun wishes that he could be a girl so he could be with Koji, because the comic only has so many pages to work with and needs to establish a lot of things in chapter one..

The next morning, Shun wakes up to see that… he got his wish. He developed a spontaneous sex transformation disease, or as this comic calls it, isomerization. The narration provides details on this condition, how it is irreversible beyond gender transition, can lead to nausea, and how some patients experience ‘mental illness’ after this sudden change. Which… is probably just a mistranslation. People don’t just ‘develop’ mental illness. They develop trauma, dysphoria, and so forth, but I digress.

When faced with his new female body staring back at him in the mirror, Shun violently vomits into the sink in a highly effective subversion of the usual reaction, but not an unrealistic one. Despite all the problems with his life, Shun is ultimately someone trying to understand himself and one of the few things that make sense is… his body. His body was replaced with something he did not find attractive, that he does not fully understand, and that isn’t his. His very identity was thrown into question, and the shock of this change leaves him wired, angry, and above all else… disgusted.

Shun then storms off into the shower, forcing himself to confront this new reality on a sensory level, staring back at himself in the shower mirror, before reaching a breaking point. A point where the fear, hatred, and disdain over his situation, fueled by the disorientation of a full-body transformation, overtake him. He reaches out of the shower, pulls out a razor blade and… the perspective shifts.

The comic then shows a young man entering Shun’s house, chiding him for skipping school. They head to the bathroom, where the shower is still running, and there they find Shun, his body covered in cuts adorning his arms, legs, and abdomen, but most of all, his breasts. It is a truly shocking bit of imagery, showcasing a darkness and violence that speaks volumes of the author’s intent with this series. It’s visceral, it’s raw, and it gloriously captures a sense of pain and hatred that comes with being in a body that is not one’s own. I’d show it, but I don’t want to throw super disturbing imagery at people.

…And that’s just chapter one! It’s freaking dense, and I guess that’s my only real criticism with it. It has a lot it wants to pack into 34 pages and there are points where things feel a bit too condensed. But I also can’t imagine what the creator could do better beyond changing a few bits of dialogue to be a bit more broad or specific. Which could always be due to an imperfect translation. 

Chapter two features the first or many instances of parallel storytelling by focusing on Yuka. She underwent her own isomerization, becoming a tall and muscular man, so different that even her parents don’t recognize her. While her parents are left heartbroken by this, Yuka tries not to let the sorrow get to her. She does feel regret and sadness over what she gained and lost, yet tries to stay above it all, and reassures herself that she might have a chance with Shun now. She goes to school immediately after being discharged from the hospital, and is met with about as warm of a reception as one could ask for. A lot of nosy questions, yet support from some of her peers. It goes well, until she is walking home, when she is approached by Koji.

At the start of the chapter, it’s revealed that Yuka rejected Koji after his confession, still holding out her heart for Shun. Despite this, Koji is still interested in her, and has trouble reconciling that Yuka’s really who she says she is. He’s struggling to accept that someone he knew could change so much physically, while retaining so many little traits. It goes against his adolescent world views and it’s all made more complicated by the fact he’s still attracted to Yuka. Everything he liked about her as a girl is still there, her smile, her laugh, and he doesn’t know how to process that.

It’s all a very… human reaction to something like this, and I actually really like the execution. Koji is not angry at Yuka as much as he is angry at himself. He’s venting his frustrations and inability to understand, looking for answers to something beyond the simplistic world he was brought into. He doesn’t say anything overtly hateful or phobic, and from the tears rolling down his face, he’s clearly overwhelmed by emotions he does not know how to handle. Still, he goes a bit too far when bringing up Shun, and gets slapped in the face.

Filled with anger over how that conversation went, Yuka then runs over to Shun’s house, opening up the door with her spare key, and we see the end of chapter one play out from her perspective. Traversing down the dark halls, filled with fear over how Shun will react, only to find him wet, naked, covered in cuts, and with a female form. She struggles to process the sight, process that this person before her is Shun, and with both still in shock, the chapter ends.

Chapter three picks up at the hospital, where Shun has received stitches for his deep cuts, including the ones on his nipples. Yet rather than see these two react to each other’s bodies, the perspective shifts again, this time back to school with Koji. He’s still riled up over Yuka’s isomerization and loses it when two students chat about how Yuka and Shun might be hooking up, doing something in secret. Unlike last time, this is a bit overkill for Koji, getting physical with the two rumor spitting guys when they were just talking shit.

Still, another student, Yokoi, sees that Koji is hurting and tries to comfort him, letting him voice his frustrations over a cold drink, and working through his emotions. How he felt mortified by Yuka’s change, how he feels that he is not a “good person” for the way he acted around her, and how he wants to properly talk things through with both of them. Yokoi decides to help him out by searching for the hospital Shun is staying at— by going with her gut and guessing— where she wanders in at the height of an argument.

Shun is furious at Yuka, how calm she is about this, how she acts like she knows and understands him, and how she’s acting like this isomerization can bring them together. Or, at least, that’s how he’s choosing to view the situation. Rather than go off on Shun though, Yuka grits her teeth and tries to explain that she doesn’t like this either and just wants to help Shun. Yuka reaches her hand out to him. IN turn, Shun says that they shouldn’t be friends anymore. 

It’s a deeply cruel reaction to anyone who wants to help someone in their time of need, and even Yokoi, who was eavesdropping, points this out. However, Yuka is less inclined to shame Shun, saying that he is still himself, that this is probably harder for him than it is for her, and that even after having her support rejected… she’s fine. That she will bear the frustration and abuse if it means protecting those she cares about. 

Chapter four sees Shun return to school after his isomerization. He wants to just push it off until next semester, but schools do have mandatory attendance numbers, so he needs to go back. But he refuses to do so as a girl. With a face mask and sarashi— because chest binders don’t exist in Japan— he heads to school, pretending to have a sore throat and relying on Yuka and Koji to cover for him. It lasts for a few periods, but when it comes time for PE, runs into… Fukawa and Saborou. The worst guys.

They look down at Shun like wolves gazing at a wounded rabbit, identify him as the gay kid, and imply they have a history with him. With Shun overpowered, he is taken into the men’s room, these thugs relish this experience, taking off Shun’s mask and slowly unbuttoning his shirt while his mouth is blocked. He cries and murmurs, wishing to hide his secret, only to be exposed. The thugs rejoice at this and proceed to… rape him.

Okay, more specifically they tear off his sarashi and fondle his stitched-up breasts before taking a finger into his vagina, “deflowering” him as he screams in horror. Koji rushes across the school as he hears this, and is met with the sight of Shun, sitting on the floor, hands covering his face, his clothes in tatters, the two thugs looking over him.

Before talking about chapter five, I want to pause and talk about Fukawa and Saborou (I’m not actually sure which is which, but it doesn’t really matter). It is tempting to outright dismiss them as monsters in the shape of humans whose behavior has no place in any remotely decent society. Because they are and it doesn’t. We don’t learn much about why they are like this, but reading through this comic, I couldn’t help but see them as more… representative characters.

They are straight men who view it as their societal right to harm those who go against their hegemonic ideals. With Shun, they encountered something that goes against their worldview, something that they perceive should not exist. So, they proceed to go about making things right. By defiling it, using it to make themselves feel better, feel more powerful, and if this results in the death of their target, then good. Society has been purified. I’m tempted to say that this is saying something about the culture it exists within, except I know enough to know I know precious little about real Japanese culture. But this idea is generally present across… most countries in the world, as most countries still discriminate against queer people.

Tangent aside, the first part of chapter five sees both Yuka and Koji storm into the bathroom to beat up these thugs in an impressively tense fight scene for a non-action series. Hits hit hard, the characters get properly beaten up, and everything feels both gross and uncomfortable in the good way. However, a teacher eventually comes to put an end to the fighting and interviews Yuka and Koji about the event. Afterwards they share a moment, with Koji surprised that Yuka tried to defend him in the interview, and promising to protect Shun going forward. …Despite getting his ass beaten before he could land a single hit. Still, it’s a nice gesture.

Meanwhile, Shun gets patched up in the nurse’s office, and before he can fall into despair over getting people he cares about hurt, Yokoi is there to tell him… no. She says that none of this is his fault, the only people to blame are the rapists in a display of honest emotion that leaves Shun speechless. However, this does not solve his problems and on the car ride home, his uncle encourages Shun to transfer to a new school, and… he probably should. Shun is a target, has an unenviable reputation at school, and if he is going to need to live like this, he might as well start fresh. …Even if it means giving up the two people he cares about most in this world.

This idea sticks with Shun as he arrives home and nestles up in his bed, where he has a panic attack as he re-experiences what Fukawa and his friend did to him. …And it is one of the best depictions of a panic attack I have ever seen. The gritting teeth, the gasping for air, the hacking and coughing as Shun tries to process this horrible event. The way he clutches his clothes, tightly bounding it to his chest as he tries to protect his body, to hide it away. The way tears uglily drip down his face, and how he embraces a pillow as he tries to free himself of this horrible concoction of fear, anger, and confusion. I don’t want to compare myself to Shun as I never had anything 20% as bad as rape happen to me. But as someone who had… well over 50 panic attacks in her life, yeah, this wonderfully captures the feeling. The artist’s portrayal here is spot on.

Chapter six sees Yuka visit Shun yet again, wanting to check in and care for him after everything he’s been through. Shun’s too weary to reject, but as he walks away, Yuka notices blood dripping from his shorts. Faced with this realization, that Shun is on his period, Yuka proceeds to help him through it with an understated, quiet, yet heavy series of scenes. Yuka tries to be supportive, getting Shun tampons and teaching him how to use them, yet he is not emotionally available enough to do much more than sulk until it is time to put them on. Taking off his male underwear, putting on a pair of panties, and then attaching a tampon pad. He looks down at himself, at his crotch coated with only a small bit of cloth, his penis nowhere to be seen, and as he looks into the mirror, he breaks down and cries.

It’s powerful, slow, unceremonious, and heavy stuff. A depiction of something normal and mundane, yet carries with it a crushing weight that only goes to further press Shun’s resolve from shards into fine fragments. The series has a lot of small moments like these, and it’s honestly a bit wild how good they are.

…Then Fukawa and Saborou come back, finding Yuka as she is walking home, and proceeds to beat her ass underneath the local bridge. We learn that they were expelled from school— as they should be— and they proceed to have another fight, punctuated by a brief flashback to Yuka’s childhood. One showing that she has always been someone to hide her sorrow and pain to others, and the only one who could see behind her facade, the only one she could be fully honest around, was Shun. It’s nice character/relationship building, though… the comic only has a few pages left.

The comic finally ends with two scenes. One showing a brief, innocuous, yet heartfelt conversation between Shun and Koji, where Koji affirms how much he cares for Shun, urging him to eat and that, no matter what, he will protect him. And another showing Yuka, bruised and bloodied from her fight, staring up at the night’s sky, remarking that her hand, with bloodied knuckles, is no longer the hand of a girl.

There’s no resolution, no closure, and no idea where the characters will go from here. Will Shun go to a new school and say goodbye to two people who will stand up for him and protect him no matter what? Will Yuka continue to push herself into this new aggressive role, losing sight or something she once intrinsically possessed? And will Koji reconcile his feelings for these two? Only the author can say, and while I would love to see all of these questions, and more, be answered… I’m also content with the beauty on display here.

Transjitter is the type of work that I love being able to platform in TSF Showcases. It’s raw, it’s passionate, and it manages to capture a perspective and dismal tone that is seldom used when tackling this genre. It is not a tale of abject misery for the sake of it. It is one of the physiological and physical strain a sudden transformation can bring, how it can change the way one both sees themselves and is seen by others. It is confident even as it tackles dismally dark subject matter on both a narrative and visual level. It is the type of work that I both love to experience and aspire to create myself.

Also, I should probably take a moment to praise the artwork. I’m not sure what the best terminology is to describe Jirou Saku’s style here, but it draws a fine line between something more grounded and realistic, while still distinctly feeling like manga. And pretty much every element of the artwork impressed me at some point. The paneling can be incredibly effective at conveying a tone. The shifting angles and detailed anatomy add a lot of weight to the more mundane setting. While the expressions manage to achieve a sense of heightened reality. More overt than something truly realistic, while never feeling over the top. It all works wonderfully with the type of story Jirou Saku is trying to tell, and just from looking at their Pixiv… they’ve got plenty of range to boot!

Also, I want to apologize for the scans here. It looks like the group who did the translation, the still active group of genderbenderbb2, used Waifu2x or some similar upscaler on the artwork. As such, while it looks pretty good, you can also see the loss of detail with smaller lines or more detailed patterns. I can’t really blame them for this though. Sometimes when you have low res scans, it’s better than the alternative. 

Heck, my buddy Vee Dee actually used Wiafu2x to improve chapter 6 of Mahou Shoujo La Valliere and chapter 1 of Tenbatsu Chara-o ~Onna o Kuimono ni Shita Tsumi de Kurogal Bitch-ka~, because the original translation releases looked like butt. Sure, their up-res attempts are still flawed, but I think it’s better than what the translation groups did.

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A Reminder That Apple Arcade Exists
(Apple Arcade Is Undergoing Some Troubles)

Apple Arcade, as a concept, could be seen as Apple’s way to save mobile gaming from the overly monetized free-to-play engagement trap hellscape they helped create. The service is home to quality titles free from the grind and bloat of mobile games— and ads, which I think are a western game thing. It was another subscription service, launched just six months before the pandemic, and while it was limited to Apple’s ecosystem, it did pretty well initially. However, phone games like this were not really what people were looking for during the pandemic, and there were not enough regular additions to the library to keep people coming back.

This led the service to become less relevant to gaming enthusiasts, and now, almost five years after its launch, I only hear about it when a classic IP gets a new entry for it, like Sonic Dream Team. As such, it’s not surprising to hear that there are some negative rumblings about the service.

In an article released this past week, MobileGamer.biz spoke to several developers about their thoughts on the service. They voiced how profitable the service was when it launched in 2019, how the payouts were big, but decreased over time, with the “bonus pool” getting smaller and smaller. This is in addition to Apple just canceling “a shitload of projects” in spring 2021 as part of changes to the service. In the intervening time, Apple has turned it into a family friendly service for largely licensed games and has made communication with developers very difficult. With one developer saying that “[g]etting that banner featuring at the top is like squeezing blood from a stone.”

Another developer stated that, following Netflix’s recent entry into games, Apple is looking to reboot the service yet again, to try and stay competitive. I know that might sound minor, but as MobileGamer.biz points out, Netflix’s gaming side underwent a major boom in September 2023, due to the introduction of several games. It makes sense that Apple will look at this and try to find a new way to spin Apple Arcade. They want recurring revenue and something exclusive to their ecosystem, ensuring that people will stay locked within it, paying for their various other services.

Now, I don’t really care about these mobile-geared subscription services in and of themselves. However, they represent funds that go to smaller projects from independent developers. Apple and Netflix are major funders when it comes to game development, and while games might launch exclusively on Apple Arcade, they don’t need to stay exclusive to the platform forever. …Unless their contract says so. Or the developer doesn’t have the means of money to port the game to PC.

…When is Fantasian coming to Steam?

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Pokémon Presents… Confusion!
(Pokémon Legends Z-A Announced)

Because I have brain problems, I’ve been following the rumor mill for upcoming Pokémon crap for the past few weeks, which is just a bad use of time. All they do is spread rumors, talk about the viability of them, and try to manifest their will into reality for the joy of guessing something. There was word about a game that somehow combined Johto and Unova together into one region. A lot of discussion about a Pokémon Black and White port or remake. Discussions about the GameBoy and GameBoy Advance games coming to Switch. And even talk about a Pokémon Legends Celebi… though, that has been a baseless rumor for the past two years now.

As it turns out… everybody was wrong, all the rumors were wrong, and we’re not going back to Johto or Unova, we’re going back to Kalos, bitch! Because, after over a decade, Pokémon Z is real! …Okay no, it’s not a remake of Pokémon X and Y, those will need to wait a few years. Instead, it’s the second Pokémon Legends game, Pokémon Legends Z-A. 

…Wait, what? How? Why? Well, those questions cannot be answered, as despite getting a two minute trailer, all it did was show off a CG rendition of Lumiose City from Pokémon X and Y along with paper documents for an “urban redevelopment plan.” Some have read this as meaning a sci-fi sequel to X and Y. To me, this indicates it will be some manner of prequel to Pokémon X and Y. But not one featuring the war 3,000 years ago that split the Pokémon timeline. …This series’ lore is stupid, and I like it.

Beyond that, all that was revealed about Legends Z-A was as follows:

• The game will be released in 2025, which makes sense as it’s miraculous how Game Freak manages to release games so frequently, but they do not have magic 24-hour-work-trousers… yet.
• The game will feature the return of the fan favorite mega evolution. A concept that I would just ditch by making every mega evolution a regular evolution and saying to hell with the balance. Let Eviolite Garchomp ruin everything! And if that’s too much, just up the base stats for 90% of Pokémon and make 600 base stats the standard. Everybody would love that! 
• Per a Nintendo of America social media post, the game will be set entirely in Luminous City. Which is an odd concept, but one that I am not opposed to, given how honking massive the map of Lumiose City is. If it’s three kilometers wide, which is a fair estimate, that would still be seven square kilometers, which is a lot of space.

Now, I have zero idea why they are going in this direction, why only now they are revisiting Kalos and what they actually plan to do with this concept. So I’m just going to leave it at that and accept this situation for what it is. This is an absolute curveball and the lack of any game set in Unova seems weird after it got so much love in Scarlet and Violet’s DLC. But there’s nothing to gain from thinking about a potential solution to something like this.

…Gosh, I’m going to be thinking about this game as Pokémon Legends: ZX Advent for a hot minute, aren’t I? But I really shouldn’t. It’ll make me think this game will let you become Pokémon… And then the Digimonification will be complete.

Akumako: “I’m starting to think the gene pool for Natalies is corrupted at this point. I’ve been getting nothing but duds!”

We have just evolved to a higher state, our typing has been altered and with it, our abilities.

Akumako: “…Jimmy, get my gun!”

Jimmy(?): “Hey, couldn’t they just announce a port or remake of an older title later this year? And wouldn’t it be financially irresponsible for them to skip a year? Because if they can sell 15 million copies of a game at $60,. Assuming half of the revenue goes to covering production and marketing, that’s still $450 million. And assuming it costs $150 million to make the game, that’s $300 million profit. …Those are just conservative numbers, but it makes sense. And while Game Freak is busy, couldn’t they just outsource a project to someone else, like Tose? They’d be stupid to not release a 2024 game!”

Akumako: “…Natalie, we’ve gotta kill Jimmy!”

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Sony Lays Off 900 People
(Also The Twisted Metal Live Service is Dead)

I don’t understand how game developers are supposed to actually make games if their jobs are viewed as disposable. Game development is a rigorous discipline, it requires specialized skills, years-long commitments, often a degree of some manner, and requires workers to take a haircut compared to other tech jobs. And the industry is doing well. It’s making money. And it’s only in decline if you view things in a matter of two or three years, rather than decades. The fact that layoffs have struck the industry this relentlessly is, quite frankly, an insult to the people who made this industry what it is. 

This past week, Sony laid off around 900 employees from multiple studios, leaving them without jobs in a precarious position for the industry, the economy, and the world overall.

While this mostly manifested in studios losing people, this also brought an end to PlayStation London Studio, their premiere augmented reality and virtual reality developer. A move that marks yet another England-based studio being shut down by Sony, after Studio Liverpool, Guerrilla Cambridge, Bigbig Studios, Manchester Studio, and Evolution Studios. Which is incredibly upsetting because of how big the PlayStation brand was in the UK— it is a PlayStation country. This also means the only England-based studios still in operation are Media Molecule and Firesprite… Though, Firepsrite might not be around for very long at this rate.

Since their acquisition in 2021, it has been an open secret that Firesprite has been working on a live service, and people figured out that it was a reboot of Twisted Metal. Not to be confused with the 2012 reboot directed by the disgraced game developer David Jaffe of Code Monkeys fame. As part of these layoffs, that game has been canceled, which is just the pits! Not only did Firesprite spend YEARS working on that game, but they were building off of the work of Lucid Games! Meaning that hundreds of people’s work is just discarded, thrown onto a server, never to be completed or seen.

This sucks and… there’s nothing that can really be done about this, other than change society itself or form a proper game developer union to prevent these things from happening. Publicly traded companies are supposed to do things like this, and it is just part of the way the modern industry, unfortunately, works. I don’t think this could or will lead to a crash like I’ve heard some people comment, as companies will still flourish while workers are treated like garbage. Always have, and always will… unless someone with power does something!

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EA Also Laid Off 670 People A Day Later
(Also, Respawn Got Screwed Again)

Just a day after Sony announced these layoffs, studio closures, and project cancellations, EA did the same damn thing. EA cut 5% of their workforce, or approximately 670 jobs. Ridgeline Games, a studio founded in 2021 to develop a single player Battlefield game, was shut down before their work was ever shown to the public. Meaning that over two years of work from dozens, if not hundreds, of people that is just left to rot on servers. Work that they cannot use to get future jobs, delaying their career growth. And Respawn Entertainment’s Star Wars FPS was canceled. A move that hits especially bitterly as just last year Respawn suffered a similar cancellation, with EA canceling a game in the Apex Legends/Titanfall universe. 

Again, how do publishers expect creators to be motivated enough to make things with the scale demanded of modern big-budget games when projects can be greenlit and discarded so easily? This is not the result of management being hard (even though it is) or a necessary financial measure (executives should always take pay cuts first), this is just… managerial destruction. Managers and executives are destroying lives, companies, and the labor of skilled and devoted artists in order to improve the bottom line and appease shareholders.

It would be appropriate, albeit gauche, to respond to this by saying something to the effect of ‘fuck EA.’ However, this is not something attributable to any one company. This is a systemic issue and one that cannot be easily fixed. Unless you’re willing to break everything, in which case—

Akuamko: “Another fucking word and I’ll give you a third asshole with Jimmy’s 45!”

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Saber Interactive is Free From The Embrace!
(Saber Interactive Leaves Embracer Group)

Oh my goooosh, Gamindustri! Freaking cool it with all of these news stories! 

Embracer was overzealous with their proposed deal with Saudi Arabia and failed to read the market properly, so they have wound up doing every bad thing that I have criticized Sony and EA for. Except Embracer are in a financially precarious position, and not merely playing to the uncaring market. They can only get out of this position by making some drastic changes, and I previously discussed how they at least considered selling off Gearbox back in September 2023.

For now though, Embracer is parting ways with Saber Interactive. A publisher/developer who has been doing well these past few years, in part due to how they got… 21 subsidiaries given to them by Embracer. However, their in-house titles, like Evil Dead: The Game and SnowRunner both did pretty darn well all things considered, and they are wrapping up development on Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2.

I would assume that Saber would become a public company, much like Embracer, yet instead they are going the private route as part of a $500 million deal. Which… is really bloody good for them!

I’m not going to do the math on all of Saber’s new subsidiaries and figure out how much the total company is worth. However, Saber Interactive was purchased by Embracer in February 2020 for a total of $525 million dollars. Which would be $623 million in today’s money. Back in 2020, the company only had around 600 employees, and per Bloomberg’s report on the matter, they currently have around 3,500. Embracer built the company up, made it almost six times bigger, and then let them go private for less than the initial purchase price of the publisher, let alone all of its subsidiaries. 

Yeah, no matter how I look at this, this is a massive fuck up by Embracer. It’s a desperate move that cuts off future revenues for an influx of cash and a hearty chop to their overall expenses. …But this is also pretty much the best case scenario, as I just fucking hate public companies.

I feel like I’m on a weird political tilt with this take, and I dunno where this take even lands on the spectrum. But I think the only good corporation is a private corporation and publicly traded companies should not exist. The idea of collective ownership shaping and steering a public company is not true and has pretty much never been true, as shareholders only care about getting returns. Public companies are the instigators of perpetual growth and all the bad things that come with it. Public companies are required to pursue profit and make money for shareholders above all else. Publicly traded companies are able to basically generate money out of sheer hype and dedication. And the ultimate act of holding shares, or buying and trading stocks, is a valueless process that only generates income because that’s how many systems were designed.

Private equity companies are pretty much no better, possibly even worse. Their ultimate goal is to extract value for private investors, buying up a company, building it up, and either selling it or siphoning out its value. They do little more than speculate and provide money, while offering little value that could not be substituted by, say, a bank loan, financial consultants, and maybe a marketing firm. Their purpose is to consolidate wealth, and fuck that shit, yo!

But a regular old private company? That’s just a way for a few investors to make money, and chances are those investors are involved in the day-to-day operations of the company. They have freedom to avoid doing things in the pursuit of profit. Sure, they can be prone to all manner of vices, just look at everything the technically private company Epic Games has gotten up to in recent years. But I still vehemently believe that every bad private company would be worse if it were owned by private equity or publicly traded. Private companies are pretty much the way to go… unless you are talking about worker owned private co-ops or government-owned corporations. Both of which are da best of best.

Now, you could say that there is a limit to how big a private company can be and how many of the greatest boons in the world exist because private companies were given ample resources. …But that’s mixing up correlation and causation, thinking that the world could only get to its current state by taking one route. 

…Yeah, this is just becoming a political ramble. Saber is free, that is good, and I hope that things work out for Saber, as while they are still a bit too big, I’d rather they be independent than owned by a mega corp. Speaking of which…

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Bobby ‘n’ Da Tiki Boyz is Goin’ Indie
(Toys for Bob Is Parting Ways from Microsoft Activision Blizzard King)

WHY DIDN’T THIS HAPPEN A MONTH AGO?!?!?!?!

Toys for Bob is one of the many, many developers who got done dirty by Activision Blizzard. The studio was a prime workhorse, creating and shoving out Skylanders games year after year. They created a great remaster of the original Spyro trilogy, with the only drawback being how the game didn’t include the feature to switch to the one PS1 graphics. They released a banger revival with Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time… but Activision Blizzard decided to basically not market the game and staggered the release across different systems, causing the game to underperform by design.

This move basically spelled the beginning of the end for Toys for Bob, with Activision Blizzard conducting widespread ‘contract expirations’ throughout 2021, while the developer was called onto Call of Duty… duty. However, the developer did repurpose various Crash 4 assets to create a multiplayer title… that was canceled, and then replaced with the dud of a live service known as Crash Team Rumble on June 20, 2023. (And now it’s going into maintenance mode on March 4th.)

I was pretty sure the studio was going to be killed off after the Microsoft acquisition, and in January 2024, it almost was. They suffered massive layoffs, their ‘famous’ tiki-themed studio was closed, and workers shifted to work from home. They were almost certainly going to be closed… but some people in the cold machine of Microsoft had the humanity necessary to let them split off and become their own independent studio.

This is so much better than seeing a studio close. It allows the existing team to stay together, allows people to avoid the costs of relocation for a new job, and frees people from the shackles of being part of a major corporation. However, I am curious as to what this all means for the people who were laid off the prior month. Are they just screwed? Did this new incarnation of Toys for Bob just not have enough work to justify a headcount that high, even if they became a remote studio?

I’m not sure, but I’m going to write this off as a ‘blue W on a white flag’ for game developers here. A studio shoved onto the chopping block managed to escape… while still losing a limb or two in the process. But that’s okay because, like an octopus, studios can regrow limbs if they eat their wheaties… and nails! They’re full of iron!

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NetEase is Opening Up An All-American Bullet Farm
(NetEase Established LA-Based Studio, BulletFarm)

Stupid PR site not giving me high quality key art for header images so I gotta up-res it…

Oh my goooosh, NetEase! Stop it! I’m glad that you’re ultimately creating jobs and hiring people to make new games— the industry needs companies like you to establish new studios to combat the rampant layoffs. But your expansion over the past few years has been ri-diing-dong-diculous!

For those not on the uptick, NetEase has established the following studios since 2020:

• Sakura Studio in Tokyo
• Nagoshi Studio in Tokyo
• Studio Flare in Tokyo
• PinCool Inc in Tokyo
• GPTRACK50 in Osaka
• Jackalope Games in Austin
• Jar of Sparks in Seattle
• Anchor Point in Seattle and Barcelona
• Bad Brain Game Studios in Montreal and Toronto
• Fantastic Pixel Castle in… it doesn’t matter, because they’re a remote studio

None of these studios have shown or announced anything more substantial than concept art since their inception, and as the years go on, the more suspicious I get of that. Yes, modern game development takes a long time, as does staffing up a newly formed studio. However, NetEase keeps pouring capital into this initiative, so I would expect them to have something to show, if only for their investors.

Anyway, they have another studio they’re adding to the pile of ten. BulletFarm is a remote-first studio headquartered in Los Angeles led by David Vonderhaar. A former Tryarch employee who served as an online manager, design director, and general designer on Call of Duty titles, from 2005’s Call of Duty 2 to 2020’s Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War. The studio is currently working on a cooperative first-person shooter developed in Unreal Engine 5 and Vonderhaar is naturally talking up how great NetEase is for giving him and his team creative control. 

It’s nice to see an industry veteran like Vonderhaar get to run his own studio, presumably bringing a cluster of people with him from the Call of Duty gulags. But it’s hard to get excited about an industry monolith like NetEase spreading themselves across a foreign country like this. Sadly, the only way to start a major games studio these days is to get outside funding, and it’s either gonna be NetEase or a private equity company. And private equity doesn’t want anything to do with video games at the moment.

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I Get Why You’re Doing This Nintendo, But Fuck Off
(Nintendo Is Suing the Developers of the Yuzu Switch Emulator)

Well, guess I need to talk about this.

This past week, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Tropic Haze LLC, the developers of the number two Nintendo Switch emulator, Yuzu. Now, I wanted to be thorough with my take on this lawsuit, so I read through the 41 page case, skimming over the more technical or less relevant stuff. However, I was always a B student when it came to my business law classes, and I don’t have the highest degree of legal literacy, or regular literacy. So everything that I have to say about this should be seen as a layperson and be taken with a grain of salt. I do not fully know the law, and I would defer to legal professionals such as Moon Channel to explain it.

The crux of Nintendo’s argument here is that Yuzu is an unlawful tool for piracy and throughout the lawsuit they regularly push Yuzu as being a tool for piracy. Going so far as to end their preliminary statement with “there is no lawful way to use Yuzu to play Nintendo Switch games.”

To justify their claims, they go into a surprising level of detail in how people have dumped the Switch in the past. Describing how people obtain prod.keys, listing the software commonly used to mod Nintendo Switch systems, and even mention the update rolled out in June 2018 that made the Switch far harder to hack. 

Nintendo views any hacking of their hardware and all dumps of their software to be unlawful, and their ultimate goal from this case appears to be broader than just shutting down Yuzu. They want to establish law that will protect their products from any future, or at the very least make it easier to defend their position in future cases. They are not trying to be fair with their assessment, and are using whatever tools at their disposal to make Yuzu look bad and… I have to admit that things do not look great for Yuzu.

A great deal of emphasis is put on the events of May 2023, when Tears of the Kingdom was leaked onto the internet on May 1st, prior to its May 12th release date. As a result, there was a flurry of leaks of the game, many of which were not of people playing the game on a Nintendo Switch, but the Yuzu emulator. While the lead developer of Yuzu, Bunnei, discouraged this behavior, people still used Yuzu and modified the software to play TotK prior to release. 

Nintendo does have an argument that this event could have damaged the release of their biggest 2023 title. In that brief window of a few days, they claim the game was downloaded over a million times. I would argue that this is a mere correlation, that the leakers are the party at fault here, and people could have played the game on a hacked Switch, Yuzu, or some other emulator. However, there is a big problem in that defense.

Like many projects of this sort, Yuzu has its own Patreon, where people can support the developers and help them invest more time into their project. And during the period of May 1, 2023 to May 12, 2023, Yuzu’s monthly Patreon income doubled. That does not look good, but if the Patreon was just a tip jar, one could argue this was just a result of pirates showing their love to software developers. …Unfortunately, Yuzu’s Patreon wasn’t a tip jar.

Yuzu offered, and still offers, supporters with early access to version updates, including better compatibility with recently released games. …Which can be seen as them selling product updates. Thereby turning this bit of free software into something commercial. Something capable of replacing the Nintendo Switch. And to make matters worse, as of writing this, their monthly Patreon earnings are $29,830, from 7,416 paid members, nearly $360,000 a year.

Now, I did a quick sanity check with the Patreons for major emulators. Cemu offers exclusive news and updates to patrons, but has not seen new Patreon posts in two years. Cirta locks access to a live support Discord beyond a Patreon paywall, which might be seen as paying for support, but is pretty small potatoes and is for a discontinued product. While another Switch emulator, RyujiNX, just gives access to progress reports and a Discord channel. …So now we know why they went after Yuzu in particular.

Nintendo also further tries to correlate Yuzu with piracy, bringing up the defunct Yuzu Pirates Reddit, mentioning how sites like NSW2U.com directly reference Yuzu, and pulling out a few unfavorable things Bunnei said in the past. While they did not directly condone piracy, they expressed an awareness that most people just pirate Switch games and dumped Nintendo Switch games. Which, again, Nintendo views as unlawful, no matter what.

But that really isn’t the point of this lawsuit, and I don’t think it’s what will ultimately determine the outcome of this case. The long and short of it is that Yuzu has been effectively selling early updates of their emulators to enthusiasts, which has provided a substitute to both owning a Nintendo Switch and buying games for it. If it was free, non-commercial software, I would insist that Yuzu was innocent, and the only reason why Nintendo might have a chance of winning is because the law is wrong and gives absolute power to software distributors. 

I would go on a tear about how people do have rights to the software that they own. But after watching Ross Scott’s latest video on the legality of killing games last week, I realize that US law offers very few protections when it comes to software, largely due to ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg back in 1996. A Federal court case that determined how customer rights for software, back when the understanding, use, and distribution of software was dramatically different.

In conclusion, I really want to just use this as an opportunity to get mad at Nintendo for trying to take down another fan project. However… they do ultimately have a point, and I cannot see Yuzu completely winning this lawsuit. They were effectively selling early versions of a software that replaces a Nintendo Switch

That being said, I believe this could be an important court case, and I would be very concerned over its outcome. This could be used to establish precedent. And that precedent could be used to make emulation, just in general, illegal in the United States.

Now, it is possible that Yuzu will simply shut down, this won’t go to court, the Patreon will be shut down, Tropical Haze will liquidate and give all its assets to Nintendo, and production on the emulator will cease. That is probably the most likely option, as court cases are very rigorous and expensive. Though, if Tropical Haze does think they have enough of a defense to fight Nintendo in court, and opens up a legal defense fund, I will be more than happy to make a donation of at least $200. Enough to buy a Nintendo Switch Lite!

Also, between this and the kerfuffle with Dolphin the past year, I truly think Nintendo is on the war path to redefine emulation law in the US, so… get the ROMs you care about while you still can. I know I did.

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Progress Report 2024-03-03

Header image this week was just me throwing a bunch of Um Jammer Lammy sprites into Paint.Net and just… fucking them up as much as I could. Why? ‘Cos I came up with the title first.

2024-02-25: I wanted to write more, but I just did not have the creative energy after I slept like shit last night and woke up early when my mother started cooking at like 6:00. Which meant I had to turn in early tonight. Wrote 4,000 words for VD2.0 Ch 6-27.

2024-02-26: Wrote 100 words for VD2.0 Ch 6-27, read the comic for TSF Showcase, and wrote 3,000 words, almost finishing it, but not quite. It’s six chapters, and I devoted THAT MUCH TIME to discussing it? Fuck you, Natalie!

2024-02-27: Shit. Another day of just working on the Rundown, this time because I had to read a damn court case! Wrote like 3,900 words in total.

2024-02-28: I wrote like 400 words for the Rundown in the morning, but I was swamped with work today. Aside from eating an orange, dinner, exercise, and showering, which took maybe 90 minutes in total, I was working from 10:00 until 1:30 in the morning. So… a 14 hour day, basically, but I’m pretty sure you’re entitled to 3 30 minute breaks when working a 15.5 hour day, so take your poison. It could have just been a 10 hour day, ending with a meeting that lasted until 20:30, but I went one step beyond!

2024-02-29: Wrote 1,500 words for the Rundown, made header images, edited this 9,000+ word Rundown, got the Transjitter snapshots. I wanted to do more, but I was operating on two nights of 5.5 hours of sleep, so I decided to just konk out at 23:30.

2024-03-01: Yeah, I got super busy again at work, doing stuff until around 22:00. So I only wrote 1,600 words for VD2.0 Ch 6-27. I’m making shit progress, but that’s still a sex scene and some other character bits, so it ain’t nuthin’ either!

2024-03-02: OOF! This horse was hard to get back on for an extra packed day and my mind kept a-fluttering. But I was determined to get 5,000 words into VD2.0 Ch 6-27, and I did! Now this chapter is, like half over!

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Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp
Acts 1 and 2 Progress Report:

Yeah… this isn’t going to work smoothly under the tax season crunch. I wish I had a boss who didn’t believe crunch culture was the only way to make this job work, and gave me regular/predictable work hours… A job where you work anywhere from 50 or 200 hours a month sucks. And fuck you if you think it has to be this way.

Current Word Count: 333,260

Estimated Word Count: 360,000

Total Chapters: 33

Chapters Outlined: 33 

Chapters Drafted: 30

Chapters Edited: 0

Header Images Made: 0

Days Until Deadline: 87