This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: Update to Devastation
• SVC Chaos is BACK! (The Capcom Versus Resurrection Arc is GO!)
• MultiVersus Forever? (Warner Bros. Acquired Player First Games)
• Not So Humble Games Anymore… (Ziff Davis Axes Humble Games in a ‘Restructuring’)
• Over 800 Microsoft Developers Unionized This Week! (Unionize EVERYTHING!)

---

Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Update to Devastation

Let’s see, topics, topics… I could talk about politics and how the entire economy of news is being controlled by people who want to sow chaos and propagate ideas that cause conflict, because conflict gets clicks. Either that, or they are run by wealthy elites who wish to perpetuate their powers and become gods among the world, because you do not get billions when you have empathy. Seize the assets of the rich and use it to improve the lives of 99% of people in the nation. Fuck the laws. Fuck the rules. Laws are not justice.

I meander something about how younger people seem to not understand how retirement and passive income work, as I have never heard someone younger than me talk about the merits of social security or IRAs. Which is pretty crazy to me, as I have over $80k in my IRA and work with people 30+ years older than me, who are all about getting fat social security checks. Or to use a vague approximation of the youthsome vernacular, SockSexMaxxing SocSecMaxxing. 

I know that I am just looking at a small vocal minority, but I worry that the younger generation was not told about the safe way to make money in America. Get a profitable skill from a profession experiencing a labor shortage due to an aging population of professionals— like accounting— make money, get social security, and make regular investments into your retirement account. Ideally with a 401k match. I did that and I bought a condo, darn it! Also, live with your folks, go to state university, work to avoid student loans, and get autism to get financial aid. 

If I want to be super pedantic, I could talk about how some people just have no ability to understand when to use the right official artwork or renders or promo materials when talking about something. Particularly with PokéTubers, who just LOVE using ORAS artwork when talking about Pokémon Emerald, when they are different games set in different universes. We have Lewtwo’s massive image archive. Use it, ya fricks!

I could talk about how hyperbolic rhetoric is decaying discussion and nuance as people are being taught to categorize things into peak and garbage. Except I think I already brought that up, and the core of the topic is right there in that sentence. Yes, quality is a spectrum, but one with multiple dimensions, and there ain’t nothing wrong with something just being okay. And if you think that is unacceptable… that’s a programming error in your hamburger, bucko! (Hamburger is brain, because if you ever looked at raw brain scooped straight from the dome, it is literally just hamburger. Look it up.)

But I think the big story to talk about is the whole CrowdStrike fiasco. A story so big that my mother told me about it before I even got out of bed. That my boss told me about it first thing when I woke up. And  that… did not actually affect me, because I am not in an industry that uses CrowdStrike. But my mother and boss both thought it was a Microsoft problem when… no. Just because something affects computers running Windows does not make it a Microsoft problem. And goldarn do I hate it when people who don’t know jack about IT use the ‘term’ (deliberate wording) Microsoft, because 80% of the time, they are using it wrong.

This hubbub fortunately did not affect me personally, but it did leave my boss stranded in Puerto Rico for a few days. …Meaning I had the weekend off. However, the fact that this happened does raise a lot of questions and necessitates that more precautions be made to prevent this from happening in the future. Questions like how did this even happen? It was clearly a mistake, but how could a mistake capable of incapacitating 8.5 million machines get out into the public? When was this change to the code made? How was this not caught in testing? Was there testing? And most importantly, how can this be prevented going forward?

I know that this will cause significant damage to CrowdStrike as a company. That this will likely result in a widely publicized lawsuit that shows a lack of care and consideration that goes into protecting essential services from bad updates. And unless things change, and change thoroughly, there is a very strong chance that something like this will happen again. Possibly involving far more than 8.5 million machines.

As someone who uses a computer for… basically everything, stuff like this freaks me the hell out, and makes me incredibly paranoid about updates. I remember back 15 to 25 years ago when updates were distributed only when they were necessary and did something significant. Back when it was not possible to roll out nighty updates for software. But as tech has become bigger and more essential, these standards have gotten looser, and now things are both constantly updated and becoming unstable.

While I enjoy regular updates for things like games, and enjoy seeing new features be added to software that I depend on for my job, I have to wonder if this is really the best approach. Not all updates are good. Updates are capable of breaking things as much as they are capable of fixing them. And there is something comforting about knowing that the tools you use are… stable. 

I use a lot of software on a daily to semi-regular basis, including Draw.io, Bulk Rename Utility, Paint.Net, Manga Reader, Everything, XnConvert, Adobe Acrobat 2015, MusicBee, InkScape, ImageGlass, and NAPS2. I have not updated any of them in over a year— some of them I haven’t updated in three, and they work just fine. Sure, there might be some minor hiccups and some room for improvement, but seeing the sheer number of new releases they’ve had to fix seemingly minor problems is… kind of maddening to me.

Now, I am not some luddite who wants to stick with Windows 3.1 95 98 XP 7 10 switch to Linux and keep using the same distro for 15 years while living in the mountains, stealing social security checks. I understand that software that interfaces with the internet often needs regular updates, as APIs change, the structure of websites change, and the internet, over time, changes. I just think there is a line where routine updates are warranted and when they are not, and society has entered a stage where updates are just becoming excessive. Sadly, with tech companies gradually reducing vital software to little more than a web interface to communicate with a server, I don’t see that changing anytime soon. 

Sure, there is a growing generation of GitLabbin’ hacker-kins who have a more old school perspective and release handy software tools for free and only rush out updates if a significant flaw is discovered. But I know that most people do not know how to use GitHub. Hell, I barely do, and I get frustrated whenever a project asks me to use the command line to download something. And I took three computer science classes, for frick’s sake…

Side note, but I recently was trying to back up a website, to save a comic I liked as a kid, and got frustrated by people poorly explaining how to extract the information before I found WinHTTrack Website Copier. It’s slow, hasn’t been updated in 2017, and is kind of finicky to use, but it works, so I’m never uninstalling it. Just like FSResizer File Resize Crop, BulkImageConverter, and Easy Duplicate Finder. All software I have gone years without using, but I keep because they are simple and effective. They exist to save me time and do tedious work for me, while putting me in complete control. I love stuff like this sooooo much!

At the very least, I think that corporations should not be allowed to shove out updates across this many industries with such a brazen lack of foresight. There needs to be some stagger time to prevent a massive collapse, because this alone is going to bork up the supply chain. And unless you are living in the mountains, and living off of canned food you robbed from a truck two years ago, you are affected by the supply chain. Yes, even you, Steve Jachowicz from Pembina, North Dakota! I have your IP address! I have your street address! And soon enough, I will have your social security checks! All thanks to a little friend.

Akumako: “In addition to being the most dazzling demon north of the core, I’m also a beast at mail fraud! Get fucked, Jacho!”

---

SVC Chaos is BACK!
(The Capcom Versus Resurrection Arc is GO!)

OH SNAP! 

Five weeks after Capcom announced they are bringing over the classic Marvel Vs Capcom titles, SNK decided to do a stealth drop at EVO 2024 for a re-release of SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos. Which was the SNK developed end of the SNK vs. Capcom crossover agreement, put out late as part of a contractual obligation, because SNK was going bankrupt. It generally is not considered to be a great fighting game, but it is a really interesting part of video game history, and the game clearly has its own unique ideas behind it, along with some excellent sprites. 

This also means SNK has fully re-released their crossover titles, but Capcom has remained mum on the subject of Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 and Capcom vs. SNK: 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001. And considering how publicized this shadow drop was, I’d imagine that Capcom will get right on their SNK crossovers… right after they release the more lucrative Marvel fighters. At least I’m assuming Capcom only has one team that has the expertise to do fighting game re-releases like this.

SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos is available on PS4, Switch, and PC.

---

MultiVersus Forever?
(Warner Bros. Acquired Player First Games)

…Yeah, this is another ‘nothing’ acquisition in my book. 

Warner Bros. has been trying to capitalize on their legacy vault of IP with MultiVersus. A Smash Bros. clone that made some waves in July 2022 before gradually losing players throughout the year, before getting sent offline in June 2023. This was followed with a relaunch in May 2024, where the game has been… well, making headlines at the very least. With seasons of planned content meant to keep players engaged, just like every other big game these days. 

MultiVersus was developed by Player First Games, an independent studio founded in 2019, whose debut title was a crossover involving some of the biggest IPs in the world. Which makes absolutely no sense to me— why not just have a spin-off team at Netherrealm do it, since they have decades of experience? Chicago needs more game dev jobs, damn it! 

Anyway, I thought that WB already owned PFG, as why would you let an outside studio touch so many IPs, but as it turns out they didn’t. So WB acquired them this past week for an undisclosed sum. This acquisition makes sense now that the game is live and prepping for its second season, as WB probably wants to maintain more control and reduce costs on the project. Now, why not do this several years ago? I don’t know… but it’s Warner Bros. Nothing they do makes sense.

Warner is a company so against artwork that they would rather scrap a movie than release it then they can recognize more expenses on their tax returns. And so against the creation of new IP that they shuttered one of the most prolific American animation studios of the past few decades. Even though animation was doing well for them and they kept on greenlighting more animated projects. I have negative faith in them, and would not want to touch them with a ten-foot pole if I was involved in any industry. They only care about IP, profit, and product, and will probably sell off their assets and spin-off their debt in the next five years.

I would feel sorry for the folks at PFG, but they already staked their livelihood on this project five years ago, and at least the founders/owners got a nice payout for this acquisition. They were already lost…

---

Not So Humble Games Anymore…
(Ziff Davis Axes Humble Games in a ‘Restructuring’)

The story of Humble Bundle is the story of a bunch of indie game devs banding together to sell their games for dirt cheap prices to support charitable causes. But in the following 14 years, the image and direction for the company changed. They went from a periodic game bundle to one that always had some bundle going on. Then they introduced multiple bundles. Then bundles for things beyond games. Then they started hosting a rotating spectrum of bundles. Which, as an aside, encouraged Steam key resellers, and various other boutique storefronts, to sell products at a steel discount in a bundle, but often without the charitable cause backing it.

This reputation as a place to get cheap PC games eventually led to the creation of the Humble Store in November 2013. Which I’ve always been partial to, as some games on the storecome both with a DRM-free copy and a Steam key, and 10% of every purchase goes to charity. Truly, the best of both worlds. 

Still hungry to rake in more money— which is a weird goal for a company that probably should be non-profit given its fixation on raising money for charity— Humble decided to launch a mystery box subscription service. Humble Monthly launched in October 2015 as basically a LootCrate but with digital copies of PC games instead. A curated selection, every month, all for a price well below any MSRP. There were some good months, some bad months, and this service underwent a lot of changes over the years. 

Such as changing its pricing model to encourage annual subscriptions. Renaming itself to Humble Choice and only letting people select X games from each bundle depending on their subscription tier. And encouraging people to stick with a grandfathered reduced subscription rate while giving them the option to opt out of every month, but if you forgot to skip out on that month, they hit your credit card for $12. …That happened to me like three times before I gave up and unsubscribed, though it was $13.23 for me, because of local taxes.

I’d ask why they engaged in confusing semi-predatory practices like this, but the answer is simple. Humble had to grow to accommodate the venture capitalists who invested in them, and this was a good way to do that. As a reminder, this was the early 2010s, and venture capital was the cheapest capital around! Why not get a reasonably priced business loan with a bank? Because what bank would give two dudes with a song in their step and a dream $4.7 million? …Silicon Valley Bank! And look at what happened to them!

But rather than just HODL Humble, the venture capitalists eventually sold the company to Ziff Davis, owners of IGN, in October 2017. A story that a lot of outlets reported as ‘IGN buying Humble Bundle.’ But saying that is kind of a misnomer. If you put apples in a bag and put that bag in the fridge, it would be correct to say that the apples are in a bag, but what affects the apples more? Being in the bag, or being in the fridge? 

Parent companies control all, and I think Ziff Davis just wanted to squish their video game assets together. Just like they did with 1Up.com, Computer Gaming World, GameSpy, etc. Honestly, I’m surprised Ziff didn’t merge Humble Bundle and IGN and call them Humble IGN Bundles. That would have been a terrible idea, but this is Ziff Davis we’re talking about.

Also in 2017, Humble announced that they were taking the next logical step in their expansion. Becoming an indie game publisher! Starting with A Hat in Time (2017), Humble Bundle’s publishing branch, later renamed Humble Games, published a handful of games a year, and had a pretty good track record. Slay the Spire (2019), Unsighted (2021), TemTem (2022), Cat Girl without Salad (2018), and recent titles like Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus and #Blud. In the world of indie games, the industry needs publishers like Humble to keep the indie market from collapsing in on itself. So many creative people are trying to just make good games. But good games require funding and marketing to thrive, and a publisher should provide both.

Humble has done this over the years… but now they are shutting down their publishing operations. More specifically, they laid off 36 people who worked at their small publishing branch. Those affected have claimed that the entirety of Humble Games were let go, while ‘Humble Games’ claimed this is merely a ‘restructuring.’ Yeah, just like how demolishing a building is a restructuring.

The statement they gave, published by VGC, is unabashed corporate drivel that bends the truth as far as it can go without being an outright lie, and just makes me believe the affected staff even more. The executives in charge of Humble Games have looked at the financials, at the future prospects of publishing indie games, and decided to kill it. Maybe their latest games were slow sellers. Maybe the costs were rising— because when you pay people, the costs are SUPPOSED to go up. Or maybe Ziff wanted to cut some heads down and rather than purge EuroGamer or GamesIndustry.biz, who they bought in May, they are hitting an unrelated department.

No matter the reason… it’s a shitty one, and this should not have happened. This move hurts people, hurts devs, and hurts the industry. The only one it helps are the shareholders, who are the only people Ziff cares about. And shareholders expect year-over-year returns, but after the stock spiked three years ago, it’s been falling back to its pre-pandemic levels..

This just straight up makes me not want to touch anything Ziff does… but then I’d be fucked. IGN, EuroGamer, and GameIndustry.biz are all incredibly valuable publications. They produce good work, are home to a number of important stories or insights, and are pillars to the games press. And yes, you do need the games press. If you think you don’t like them, that’s because the GamerGaters poisoned the discourse, and they did it well before 2014. There is reason to be critical of them and how they report certain things, but that’s a topic for another preamble ramble.

Then there’s Humble Bundle itself. I choose to interpret these events as being the ultimate fault of executive shitheads, rather than people working the ranks and trying to make a living. And… I really do not want to turn on Humble Bundle. While I have had more than a few gripes with them over the years… I have been buying from them for over a decade— since before I even built my first PC— and have spent at least $1,500 at the store. (I wanted to give an exact number, but that would be too time consuming to get, and the purchase section is missing prices for several transactions.) 

While I might want to avoid buying from the Humble Store itself, and the monthly Humble Choice, I do want to continue buying their bundles. Because with those, I can put 85% to charity, and the 15% fee that goes to them probably mostly goes to payment processing anyway. And if I can send funds to charity and get games… I’m gonna do that.

Akumako: “…Why are you buying games when you don’t play them?”

Support!

Akumako: “Support? You seriously think buying games at steep discounts is supporting the industry?”

Like Mighty No. 9, it’s better than nothing.

Akumako: “…We really need to talk about how you spend your money, bae.”

I’ll cut back after I spoil Cassie and her boyfriend next month, aight?

Akumako: “You don’t really have a choice with that special assessment coming up. An extra $520 a month for a year is a hella lotta green, ya mean?”

Anyway, the point of this whole story is to say fuck Ziff Davis. The behaviors of publicly traded corporations are harmful to the human beings who live in this world. But I do not want to write off Humble Bundle because of this.

---

Over 800 Microsoft Developers Unionized This Week!
(Unionize EVERYTHING!)

America needs more unions. Just in general. But the games industry is one that should have unionized a looong time ago, as the industry is notorious for chewing people up and spitting them out. Same with the animation industry, but that’s a topic for a different time. Here, the current topic is that over 800 workers have unionized this past week!

Working with the Communications Workers of America, 241 employees from Bethesda Game Studios’ Rockville, Austin, and Dallas offices have unionized. This is coming 18 months after 300 ZeniMax QA members unionized in January 2023 and a month after the Bethesda Montreal satellite studio unionized. Which I think means that Bethesda Game Studios has… almost completely unionized. There might be some weird edge cases, but that has to be over 550 employees, all protected from Microsoft as they will, inevitably, try to make more cuts and shut down more studios. Not because they cannot afford it, but because they care more about their financials than the people who depend on them to make a living.

Normally I would be worried if this union would be squashed down, but Microsoft is such a big company that they cannot be anti-union without facing some repercussions. Back in June 2022, after announcing their intentions to buy Activision Blizzard, they signed an agreement with Communications Workers of America (CWA) to not interfere with employee unionization efforts. This fact combined with all of the layoffs they’ve done, and all the layoffs they are still planning, means that you can expect to see a lot more Microsoft teams buckling up and forming a union.

Such as… the World of Warcraft development team. Over 560 members of this team have tallied together to form their own “wall-to-wall” union, which… is just an incredible feat.

The World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild includes 500 people from all development disciplines— engineers, game designers, artists, QA team members, everyone. While Texas Blizzard QA United includes the 60 person QA team located in Austin, Texas. This combined with the waves at Bethesda makes me think that the phone is going to be off the hook at CWA as workers try to get their unionization paperwork submitted and filed and contracts published. Because… they should be protected. 

Hell, not just game developers. The tech industry has been dominated by the shithead ideologies of Libertarians for decades who hate regulation and believe in the virtues of capitalism even more than conservatives. And with a company as disgustingly large as Microsoft, with something like 220,000 employees, I think the majority of their workforce should be unionized. Especially in the United States.

The Microsoft Office team should unionize. The Windows team should unionize. The Azure data center team should unionize. And tens of thousands of workers at Microsoft Gaming should unionize. The waves of change are here— soon, over 1,000 Microsoft employees will be protected by a union. And now that unions have a foot in the door, now is not time to get complacent. It’s time to get aggressive. Because this shit is how you save gaming.

I am so sick of clickbait doomerism talking about how gaming is dying or dead, and what people should actually want… is unionization. Is seeing creators take the reins back and focus on delivering good games. Yet publishers have so successfully misled people into seeing no divide between dev teams and executives that people have been blaming devs for decades. To some, it seems wrong to not blame the actual workers. But in this world, beyond retail, beyond whatever shitty office job you had, in Capital-C Corporate America, the worker is rarely the problem. It’s the people up top.

I will concede that management is hard, being a good executive is hard, and human beings simply were not designed to lead more than a few dozen other people. But most people in these positions are wet dog farts at their job. Well, if you view their job as anything more than manipulating financials to look appealing to the investor class and investment firms.

Form unions, form co-ops, do not let the wealthy continue to sit on their wealth and receive compensation. And fuck the stock prices— investors do not actually care if a company’s stock price tanks, because selling their shares is faster and easier.

…Okay, I can feel myself going on about how governments should be the largest shareholder of every publicly traded company. But that theory might be a bit too radical of a departure for a story about unions, so let me circle back to basics.

Unionization is good. Keep it up, game industry. And stay aggressive!

Akumako: “Unionize or die, motherfuckers!”

…She’s not even being hyperbolic.

---

Progress Report 2024-07-28

KoRobo’s dev team members are… just kinda botching the whole marketing thing. They should have just waited and announced the game on Monday the 22nd, launched the Kickstarter as the trailer dropped, and let people throw around their moment from the get-go. Instead, they staggered things out over the weekend and forgot to upload their own trailer to YouTube. Really not a great look, but I still gave ’em $102 to make the Chibi-Robo dream come true. Support KoRobo, ya fricks! It’ll probably be jank, but damn it do I want a new chi-chi-go-bo!

2024-07-21: Had an anime day with Cassie, so that ate up some time, but wrapped up the draft for Ch 3 of PS 1988 with an extra 3,000 words, not counting the lyrics I wanted to change but.. It’s Fuck Tha Police. I’m not making a parody of the song, I’m not changing the context, I am just having not-NWA play a show because the story is set six days after they dropped Straight Outta Compton. They need to be part of it, but rebranded as NFJ. And there is basically nothing I can do to modify the lyrics apropos of making a new song. And I’m not a lyricist, I only write corny malarky. Also, I forgot to count the 200 word bit for SVC Chaos yesterday. Then I did 1,200 for chapter 4, but stopped because I was getting tired. I wound up getting kinda distracted today, but 4,200 words is more than nuthin’!

2024-07-22: Wrote about 1,000 words for TSF Showcase 2024-33, but got distracted by work, errands with my mother, and PokéRogue. Wrote a 350 word thing for MultiVersus.

2024-07-23: Excel troubles in the morning, a complex multi-state corporate tax return in the evening, and an afternoon at the DMV to get my Real ID! Figured that I should finish up the current chapter of PS 1988 before moving into a showcase, especially one as meaty as this. Wrote the 1,100 word preamble. Wrote a 1,360 word essay on Humble Bundle. Made three header images. Wrote 0 words for PS 1988. …FUCK!

2024-07-24: Edited the Rundown so far, because why not. Wrote 3,600 words of PS 1988 chapter 4. I did not get to the end though, because this is the longest chapter yet.

2024-07-25: Wrote 800 word Microsoft bit while waiting for my boss to get to work. Posted the Rundown, and realized my grammar editor, that I bought a lifetime license for, was broken! Had to go out to dinner with family and get haircuts, but by the time I got back home, I was so tired that I went to bed at 22:00 instead of 2:00. Wrote 1,800 words of PS 1988 chapter 4, almost finishing it.

2024-07-26: Wrote the final 200 words of PS 1988 chapter 4, wound up being 6,820 words for the South Africa chapter. Wrote 3,700 words for TSF Showcase 2024-33. Read through some chapters of a non-TSF comic in response to a commenter on the latest TSF Showcase.

2024-07-27: Wrote 3,700 words for TSF Showcase 2024-33, which I decided to spin off the latter half of into 2024-34. I know, I know, but when putting out weekly content, you gotta make some cuts, and ain’t nothing wrong with a 7,500 word article. Also re-read like 500 pages of comic. Also also wrote a mini diatribe 500 word about a 400 page Koikatsu comic that you should see next week.

---

Psycho Shatter 1988: Black Vice X Weiss Vice
Progress Report:

Current Word Count: 18,698

Estimated Word Count: 88,000

Words Edited: 0

Total Chapters: 16

Chapters Outlined: 16

Chapters Drafted: 4

Chapters Edited: 0

Header Images Made: 0

Days Until Deadline: 100