Rundown (9/06/2026) Reject Live Services; Return to Piracy

  • Post category:Rundowns
  • Reading time:34 mins read
  • Post comments:0 Comments

This Week’s Topics:

Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Reject Live Services; Return to Piracy!

So, here’s a topic triggered by that hundred kilogram bimbo (complimentary) I call a friend, Missy Creampuff Scrumptious. She directed me to an argument saying that saying “premium games are better” is a classist talking made by “Americans,” and there is a rationale behind this. A premium game is generally more limited. You buy the game, and have that game. You play through it, either until you had your fun or reached the end of a campaign, and then move on. Many of them can be updated considerably, expanding what the game is for years and years, but for the sake of conversation, let’s just say they are “campaign-based premium games.”

Meanwhile, a free-to-play live service can provide players with hundreds of thousands of hours of entertainment without having to spend a peso or groat. The game is updated for years and years. You have an active community to find community within, and have both predictability via daily/weekly/seasonal play and cause to be excited for what comes next. And you can generally play them with your friends. Sounds great, right?

…I mean, yeah, when you phrase it like that, it sounds great. However, I tend to view that perspective to be far too individualistic and idealistic for my liking. Yes, you can fully and thoroughly enjoy a live service for years, and it can mesh as a beneficial and appreciated part of your life. I know this because I have done my time. I put in a year of daily play with one live service in 2017-2018, and three years of daily play with another, where it was my main game. I’ve smoked your crack, and it is delicious, but it’s still crack, and you shouldn’t do it.

Live services exist as services. They need to make money, need to fund payroll of their dev team, need to pay for servers, and need to pay to continue the development of their games and future projects. This is a simple fact of business no matter where in the world you are, and someone needs to pay for these things. That someone can be the government, but it is generally people, and for every hundred F2P “no spendo” warriors, there are going to need to be people willing to let loose of thousands of dollars a year.

There is something to be said about a game that adopts a move collectivist approach to monetization. I’m talking about a scenario where thousands of high rollers fund a game’s continued existence so that millions of people can continue playing for free. It’s a nice idea. But it’s only an idea, ignoring the fact that so many of these games are designed to loosen one’s impulse control, exploit the neurodivergent or gambling susceptible, and literally take cues from casino video gaming. Combine this with the fact these games are designed to keep players lock into their systems with dailies, weeklies, stamina systems, and a drip-feed reward system, and events. Now, tell me this is an inherently better model than pay money and get the thing.

The merits of the two systems have long-been established, but this argument is a bit too abstract as it ignores the reality of the situation. Most people who play games don’t really have a choice. Most people who play games just play them on their phones, and most games there tend to be some flavor of live service. Yes, I consider Candy Crush, Subway Surfers, and Monopoly Go to be live services. What else would they be?

The average person, irrespective of their country, is first being exposed to games via their phones— or tablets as if it makes a difference— and that is not changing in the foreseeable future. This is just what gaming is to many of these people, as a phone lets them do nearly everything they need to navigate daily life. (I sound like a Martian when I say crap like that, as I’m an enigma divorced from myriad norms.) Premium games exist on app stores, yes, but there are systematic, cultural, and psychological barriers that make them undesirable.

So people are going to ultimately rely on whatever premium titles their app stores offer and what is popular among their friends, likely not being exposed to non-phone games. …Well, beyond the likes of cultural events like Grand Theft Auto VI or your viral indie games. As someone who loves games enough to do weekly Rundowns of industry happenings for… 13 years, it goes without saying that I don’t like this. People are becoming more dependent on what’s viral and multi-billion-dollar corporate products designed for engagement.

However, much of the reason I hate this is because of what we are losing, or have lost, in the process.

Let me ask you a question: Did people with minimal disposable income— poor people, or whatever term you wanna use— play video games in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s? You know, before smartphones became the predominant way of playing games. The answer is yes. Yes, they did. And they did so through multiple avenues. They could rent rooms with consoles, controllers, and games for them and their friends to play for however many hours. They would visit arcades where they could enjoy a game’s sight and splendor for some pocket change, with Neo Geo being a staple throughout much of Latin America well into the 2000s. Or they would hit up a net café where they could play their games on a computer, as they didn’t have one at home. They couldn’t own, so they rented, and that was one option.

However, if they wanted to own, there was legally non-Caucasian (that’s one way to say gray I guess) alternatives. Meaning they would just pirate shit. They would hit up their local nightmarkets for a Dendy, Famiclone, PolyStation, or modded PS1/PS2/PSP, a DS with an R4 card, and stacks upon stacks of burned floppies, CD, and DVDs. Buying a system was expensive, yes, but games were relatively cheap and as the internet developed further, it became easier to just download the games through some shady yet reliable service hosted by some guy. This is how tens of millions of people got games for decades, and this culture of piracy and modification has persisted to this day. Meaning Whites and queers copped that shit.

Hold up, why isn’t the term “queer” capitalized in that context? …Never mind!

Now, this is a topic I only have a pedestrian understanding of. However, I have heard enough stories from people in Qatar, Brazil, Colombia, Philippines, Chile, and even good old Illinois to know a little about the video game pirate’s life. …And I also know that it was not all sunshine and sparkles, as this culture of piracy did damage to local industries, and played a role in the rise of online gaming throughout the 2000s.

Piracy basically destroyed the packaged games industry in countries like South Korea and China during the 1990s after people got access to the internet. And piracy continued as an institution of gaming well on after that, eventually just becoming something utterly normalized through emulation and abandonware. Because you can’t BUY older games, and that’s a real problem. …Just not what we’re discussing today.

This is a point I lean to whenever people say “gaming is too expensive” or “gaming is a luxury hobby” when, no, it’s only a luxury or expensive if you CHOOSE to make it expensive by doing things the legal way. But why the fuck should broke blokes of any stripes care about if some multibillion-dollar company makes more money? I don’t think 10 million pirated copies of San Andreas hurt Take Two. If anything, people from low income countries supporting American corporations is bad, actually.

I liked this system far better, as it encouraged people to play a wider variety of games, and the games they were playing were the classics, the same games that people in wealthy countries were also playing. …And sports games, which are evil because the institution of professional sports is evil, but that made it cool and based that most copies played were pirated, not purchased.

I WANT to see that return, for more people to play games that have a clear beginning and end, that structure themselves as stories, and do unique or interesting things. And it is fully possible for people to get access to a vast array of games on their phone via emulation, unauthorized ports, flat out free games, and games that run in a darn browser!

The problem is that you need to do some work to make this happen, have knowledge beyond that of a normative person, and… nobody with money really wants that to happen. For a lot of people, it is just easier to walk along the road paved by international corporations than to do things their own way and tell them to fuck off. That’s why so many people still use platforms that are built around division, outrage, and spreading the ideals of their billionaire owners through complex engagement algorithms. People can break away and do their own shit, but it’s just easier to go with the flow.

Also, I don’t want to give up my parasocial relationships with all the queers on my timeline!

So, what is there to do? Well, I don’t know, maybe teach kids that they don’t need to suck corporate cock to get what they want, as it’s always possible to get them through unauthorized means. Teach kids about emulation, about torrenting, and managing files on their computer instead of apps on their phones. Which is easier said than done. Missy still refuses to learn how to torrent. Cassie only knows how to look stuff up via Nyaa. And the state won’t let me in the same room as minors since the incident of 2022.

I didn’t know that barrel was full of industrial wasabi!

The Valve Leak Happened
(13 TB of Steam Data Circa 2013 Accessed and Examined)

Right as people were scrapping up GTA 6 leaks, a larger and more widespread leak came on the scene, and one that could be positively enormous, involving 13 TB of Steam data from Valve’s servers.

This is not a leak in the sense that things were stolen. Valve just had crummy security measures, and we now have access to a treasure trove of beta builds and early details about Steam games circa 2013. This was before the wave of Greenlight and back when Steam was a more coveted storefront rather than video game dumping grounds with some truly baffling content rules. Steam is FULL of sex games with no class or grace, but if you want to make a game that poignantly explores consent, assault, and how sex and personal connections intersect, with an anime art style, you’re SOL.

The era means many of the files are based on Valve’s games, as they used Steam more extensively than other developers of the time, big surprise. Most of what I have seen were early assets for Dota 2, some Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike: GO! Gambling early assets, and a bunch of builds for Portal 2. You’d think I would be all over that for Portal 2, as I think it and its predecessor are must-play titles (they take like 12 cumulatively and run on potatoes). However, those games are so tightly constructed and were already detailed through a decade’s worth of interviews and commentary that I feel they are kind of solved entities.

Less solved entities are things like the mysterious F-Stop demo, where players would resize objects in a 3D environment using a camera in order to solve puzzles. Or, more broadly, anything related to Half-Life 2: Episode 3. We already got a good look at what Arkane was doing with Half-Life Ravenholm, but just seeing additional concepts and footage would ease the soul.

Now, there are also plenty interesting games to investigate, such as early builds of Spore, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age: Origins, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, and Mirror’s Edge to name a few. However, it will take WEEKS before we understand the true extent of what we are dealing with here. So, if you are curious, be sure to keep an eye out.

The State of Play September Slate
(From Nippon with Love)

Something I forgot to consider in my Gamescom Open Night coverage is not only how the event, hosted less than three months after Summer Game Fest, is not only competing with the other summer events, but with the September events. Because there are ALWAYS September events! …Except for Nintendo in 2024. Most of these are Japanese game studios and publishers hosting their own events in preparation of Tokyo Games Show, which has not been a big place for gaming news for years at this point. Though, that’s mostly because the announcements moved to separate events.

However, Sony Interactive Entertainment is NOT a Japanese company. They were, but the failure of the PS3 and declining Japanese console scene created a shift in power, allowing Americans and Englishmen to take hold of corporate control before killing off Japan Studio. They no longer publish Japanese games, cater to the Japanese market, and only eke out a fraction of the success they enjoyed during the PS2 and PSP era. The PS3 outsold the PS4, which will outsell the PS5, which has nearly been outsold by the Switch 2 after a little over a year. It’s a declining market, and we KNOW what PlayStation thinks about those.

They saw that their half-assed PC venture wasn’t making enough money, so they killed it. They saw that disc adoption was declining, so they’re killing it to get more cash per sale without any extra perks. (We really need laws about digital ownership.) They saw that the costs of maintaining old-ass storefronts for PS3 and Vita games weren’t making them money because of how antiquated they are, so they got queued for the executioner’s block. And what do they create in these turbulent times? Well, new ways to monetize existing customers, to wry some extra milk from their utters, and their latest venture? Ad-supported Live TV for PlayStation 5, but only in the lucrative United States. Now, they should have done this a decade ago, but timing is everything in love and war, and this timing just supports the rapid enshittification narrative.

Do I even need to MENTION the price hikes?

Anyway, this was a more typical State of Play in that it did not have much new or exciting and was largely a way to drum up hype and anticipation of releases coming in the next six-ish months. Wolverine, Until Dawn 2, Final Fantasy VII: Revelation, the new Gundam: Rogue Orbit game, that sort of thing. These things are fine supplemental pieces, but people come to these things for the reveals, for the new stuff, or the first REAL look at a given game. And if you are just reheating things shown three months ago, people aren’t going to be enthused unless it is a pillar of the lineup. Nintendo generally gets this, but Sony didn’t get the memo.

Akumako: “Because they’re no longer Japanese!”

…It sounds better when my Persian-Japanese alter ego says it.

On that note, this State of Play was stupid long, as they showed off several games TWICE, once via a standard presentation and again via a pre-TGS showcase hosted by a Japanese guy. If he has a role in the company, I forgot, and can’t be arsed to look it up. Awful formatting, and most of the announcements were middling. For example, a $180 PlayStation 1 Lego recreation? Okay, that’s “cool,” but it’s really just a bumpy model you can build and fiddle with as a desk/shelf toy.

They’re bringing back a drip feed of nifty PS1 and PS2 era titles with Mega Man X: Command Mission (2004), Dino Crisis 2 (2000), and Ratchet & Clank (2002). These are all good titles to have on a service, but… you should have at least one new game like this every other week. (The same criticism goes to Nintendo, but Nintendo’s the autistic kid you don’t expect to know social cues. PlayStation used to be a varsity athlete honor roller neurotypical, so you think that much less of them when they commit a social fail. Or faux pas. It’s unfair, but that’s life!)

Fate Extra Record, the remake of Fate Extra (2010), finally got a big blowout after being in the “it’s almost done” stage for 4+ years. As someone currently going through Fate Stay Night (2004), it looks like an interesting alt-universe version of events, now with deckbuilding features, everybody’s favorite! Though, I have to say it is a DEEPLY in-depth remake, turning it into a fully new game, rather than trying to gussy up the original, for better or for worse. Probably for better to be honest…

Cygames is launching their indie and AA branch with Cygames Edge, which will debut with Where the Seeds Fall. It’s a precision 3D platformer about a father figure and his “Fell Child” daughter figure going up, down, and all around my beloved Yggdrasil The World Tree. It has a skewed graphical fidelity and looks sorta jank, but I will never knock a major publisher for launching an indie branch.

Korean studio 5minlab Corp. and the liars at Krafton are working on an SCP inspired action game, WPCA: World Phasebound Control Activity. Which is not surprising as SCP inspired games are sorta in at the moment. Hell, even more so after The Backrooms have become an international generational touchstone. It is largely another weapons-based monster bashing action game, preferring the style and flourish of a character action game over the deliberateness of Monster Hunter. However, I need to poo-poo it for having an utterly dreadful color scheme, so washed out and with a blurry filter applied that the game. Because when I play an action game, I don’t want to see things.

Also, do not ask me why a Korean game was featured in a Japanese State of Play. I cannot answer ALL your questions.

Digimon Story: Time Strangers is getting what’s effectively a brand-new game as part of its DLC. New protagonist, new setting, new slate of Digimon to get digi on, in a move that perplexes me. If you have a $70 game with a $30 season pass, then you are not going to get a lot of impulse buyers until the game gets (temporarily) knocked down to $25 in approximately 3 or 4 years. But if you want to captivate a more casual audience, then maybe you should just release a $20 side game that lasts 10-ish hours instead. Give them a taste, get some money, and watch them decide to get the full package later on. Alas, Bandai Namco just does things differently.

CONQ: Crown of No Quarter is just funny to me, as it is a European war game made by a supposedly Japanese team that looked rather promising at first. A warfare game where you engage in boots on the ground combat, revive and command dead soldiers, and partake in wide skirmishes with dozens of combatants AND Black Flag ship combat? Well, it sounds cool, but the trailer was ROUGH, with NPCs that just kind of bumped into each other and drifted down to sub-10 frames per second. I cannot remember the last time a game that looked so unoptimized was platformed like this, and it was quite humorous.

SlashZero was shown off with a captivating trailer showing off its sci-fi story beats and weird time travel plot. However, that was all set-dressing for a 2D action roguelike, or rougelite, even I cannot be arsed to respect the distinction here. This genre blew up after hits like Hades and Dead Cells, but the rendition here suffers from having a weird idea of what a good 2D action game should be. I tried the demo, and it’s just kind of sloppy. Visual information is so messy that it’s hard to even see enemies without their health bars. Aerial combat feels awkward, despite being a core pillar of the game. And the title simply puts too much emphasis on parrying while giving the player precious little health and virtually no i-frames. Also, it’s text is insultingly small. So that’s an un-wishlist for me.

Da Ba: Land of Water Scar was just the latest in the line of an ancient Asian mythology action game with heavy Dark Souls influence, only mentioned here because it will probably sell 5 million copies.

More Like State of KONAMI
(Revision Noir and Rhapsody in Scarlet, and Look Dope)

The real highlights of State of Play, the ones warranting their own segment, were strangely Konami’s offerings, proving that after over a decade, the developer is BACK with a vengeance! Or, well, three in-house* titles. One action RPG, one character action game, and their answer to the live service plague!

Rev. Noir was given a more thorough showing, and continues to look like a heartfelt, endearingly adolescent, action RPG about teenagers going through hell and back to save the world. As a reminder, this is the game about golden rain that kills people, slaying the gods responsible, and weaving together threads of hope even in the darkest days. It’s cliché, but has an earnestness that makes something a classic, and looks like it will develop a freak following upon release. Also, the combat system actually looks like it has some mechanical chops and not a bunch of flashy effects. Which is more than I expected from an ILCA joint that Konami is helping with.

Rhapsody in Scarlet was the BIG game of this whole showcase though, and for good reason. The title is a summoner and mage type character action game starting a Red Riding Hood looking girl with access to oodles of spells and a scattering of animal friends. Yet instead of being set in some fantasy world, this game takes place in 1920s New York City! The Roaring Twenties, the jazz age, the golden era of organized crime, the era of prohibition and excess after the advent of women’s rights, electricity, and automobiles!

While I don’t know as much as I should about this era, I love everything I do know, and believe it has been viciously under-explored in the world of video games. So I’m excited to see it be the base stage for a game about crime, conspiracy, the arts, and magical beasts wrecking each other’s shit in while toppling the city with seismic magical damage. It’s taking an era that’s inherently cool, and making it cooler by saying “but what if magic tho!”

Even mechanically, I think it is an interesting pivot for an action game, taking the summoning concepts of Devil May Cry V and Bayonetta 3 while making your protagonist a mage rather than a heavy-hitter, requiring different, and flashier, strategies. Visually, it definitely look like an Unreal 5 game… but it’s a darn pretty one. The splendor of the city, the scale of the beasts, and the particle effects of the magic, it’s all good stuff and I look forward to seeing more of it.

Rhapsody in Scarlet, which really should be called Scarlet Rhapsody, is seemingly a true in-house venture, and is currently slated for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC, with no release window provided.

Akumako: “If they called it Scarlet Rhapsody, people would think it was a sequel to Scarlet Nexus.”

Drats, you’re right!

Akumako: “I was born right, and Imma die right.”

However, the most brow-raising announcement was for Konami’s obligatory Roblox-like, Wai Wai World Craft. …What, you’re surprised that a company with such opportunistic tendencies as Konami is trying to make a Roblox-like in 2026? Well, they are. A game all about creating stages/worlds/experiences for you and your friends to play through, comment on, bump up in the rankings, and enjoy a sense of corporate-run restricted community. Use a level creator to make 2D or 3D stages, publish them, and get points you can spend on cosmetics or pay-to-win mechanics.

Why would anybody want to play this instead of Roblox? Well, aside from a reduced amount of child sex abuse activities, it’s the roster of playable “actors.” This includes Simon Belmont, Bill Rizer, Lance Bean, and… some weird frog and tank people who I don’t think are from anything. There are supposedly characters from Primo, Pyo Pyo Kero, and Poyo Poyo Tank, but I have zero idea what any of these games are, searching them does nothing, so I think they don’t exist. The Frogger dudes made up new frog people!

Based on the trailer, this generously looks like a socialized level creator, and pessimistically looks like a desperate attempt at appearing executive leadership’s goals of chasing trends. Which is just upsetting considering the legacy of Wai Wai World. If you don’t know the name, I would not blame you, but Wai Wai World is a series of Famicom games developed by Konami that crossed over some of their biggest game characters at the time. Goemon, Simon Belmont, TwinBee, Vic Viper, Bio Miracle Baby Upa, King Kong, Penta the Penguin, Mikey the Goon, Konami Man, the works.

The games were… crossover platforms, being fairly basic side-scrolling action games set in worlds from or reminiscent of other Konami games. The genre shifts sometimes, such as with the shooter sections, but it’s largely a run and hit enemies sort of affair, with the multiple characters being the most unique mechanic. The first game was a bit rougher, with expansive levels that feed into each other and not the best color palette. The second game was chibi and cuddly all around with reworked character sprites and chibi-fied renditions of classic game worlds and iconography. You could also play the second one with a friend, on the NES, in a platformer, which is RARE. Both are well worth playing for NES fans, and they are a glimpse into a world where gaming crossovers became a real thing more than it wound up being.

So seeing this series come back as a Roblox clone is… eye-rolling. The series has been dead for twenty years after some puzzle game spin-off. The real series lived and died within three years. And the games were made by like 15 people who largely left the industry. Or died, I dunno, it’s been 35 years. I’m not opposed to using the name for a new game. Hell, I think a Konami game where you played as oddball classic characters would be dope. A game with Air Zonk, James Sunderland, Goemon, and Bomberman would make me very happy in the butt to see. But I don’t want to see it used on some slop factory.

Saudi Arabia MIGHT Want to Buy Square Enix
(GOD, PLEASE, NO!)

I have previously spoken at length over my disdain over Saudi Arabia’s attempts at seizing control of the games industry. Buying up minority 5% to 10% stakes in the biggest games industry is a shitty thing, but something the current stock market system supports. They have some influence, but anything under 10% requires less scrutiny or disclosure and anything under 20% is not considered significant influence per my business school learning. However, their acquisition of SNK back in 2020, acquisition of EA back in… August, and partial responsibility for everything going poopy at Embracer has earned them an eternal spot on my enemy list. …And that’s BEFORE getting into all their human rights abuses.

Akumako: “So says the American.”

If I had a button that killed all of America, I would press it, but I don’t!

Akumako: “Please, you’d do that with any button that killed random people.”

Yes! That’s beside the point!

The point of this segment is that Japanese business magazine Sentaku reported that Square Enix is considering going private after drawing interest from a “foreign investment fund.” And which foreign investment fund is buying up game companies like candy?

Akumako: “The Saudis!”

…You were supposed to say the Finnish, then I would call you a nefarious cuttlefish before correcting you. But whatever. Not like we need to follow a script or anything!

This speculation was triggered by 3D Investment Partners, an activist investment firm that currently owns 18.5% of Square Enix. Why would they tell Sentaku this? Well, maybe they are trying to make fetch happen, know what’s really going on, or are just trying to spike up the share price for cheap thrills. Square Enix naturally denied these claims, but… stories like this don’t just spawn out of thin air. Needless to say, I would LOATHE to see this happen. I would need to effectively boycott and taint every scrap of coverage I offer to Square Enix with the Saudi Stink.

I would need to mourn— weep— that pillars like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, are now the property of such a dubious nation. I would be in despair that millions would need to reassess what these games really mean to them, weighing pleasure and personal connection. Because even beyond their legacy IPs, Square Enix is still a studio producing consistent quality games that avoid many of the same evils of modern game monetization. (In part because they were BAD at it.) I REALLY hope this is a false flag and Square Enix stays the course, because they HAVE been doing good work, and I don’t like it when things take a turn for the worst.

Victor Folmann Acquires SteamDB
(Capital Consumes and Conquers)

The rush of 2021 to 2023 acquisitions have been one of the WORST things to ever happen to the games industry. Companies grew too big, could not pay back their debts, and paid too much on subsidiaries that lost half their speculative value in a matter of, what, 30 months? The security promised by an acquisition was not fulfilled, at all. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs directly or indirectly through an acquisition, and SO MANY projects were axed as staff and budget issues emerged from this slew of short-sighted decision-making.

Akumako: “But at least the games were good?”

But at least we created oodles of shareholder value. Shut your mouth! It would be one thing if this mad spending was ONLY consolidated to game devs, but it also happened to the games press, to resources people rely on, and I HATE to see it.

So much of the internet as an institution relies on people being able to freely post, share, create, and ascertain information. If these resources are monetized or locked behind a subscription or other barrier, then this pillar of society build up over the past 35 years becomes that much weaker. Simply put, there needs to be a way to keep these platforms and resources available for people to use the internet for work or recreation, but such a prospect becomes murky when private equity and capital are involved.

I have no problem with someone making money, but as we have seen over the past few years especially, the quest for profit can often destroy things of immeasurable cultural value. Third places, the very experience of buying food or going out to do anything, and of course online platforms. For this reason, I tend to be incredibly suspicious of anybody who just decides to buy a website that a lot of people use and is of great cultural value for millions of people.

Enter Victor Folmann is an aspiring tech executive who, by virtue of his status, seems to be planning a gradual enshittification process of various gaming platforms. Just looking at his corporate website, WeAreChosen.io, I do not trust this guy as far as I can throw him, and I can’t throw for shit. The tagline of “We acquire. We amplify. We conquer.” is some IRL supervillain shit. While everything about the site is derivative of crap I’ve seen when browsing the sites of altcoin projects, AI startups, or some other scuzzy business venture that only exists to make money, end of statement. Considering his past with crypto and NFTs, I view Folmann as an opportunist who targeted games and wishes to monetize staple platforms.

Last year, he acquired Nexus Mods, which alongside Mod DB, ROMHacking.net, and Game Banana, is a pillar of the online game modding scene, and easily the biggest one. While I am not big into modding, this is a very concerning move that has not resulted in dramatic changes, yet, but as we know, all it takes is a single day for that all to change, forever.

So, what is Folmann targeting next? Well, it’s a site I visit every week for regional pricing information, player counts, metadata, and general information, SteamDB. There is no substitute for SteamDB, its developer is a marvelous workhorse of a man, and a hugely useful resource for anybody who does numbers stuff in the games industry. It is the first and easiest source to check a game’s success, and is so engrained with Steam that I view it as a PART of Steam.

Needless to say, the idea of some capitalist conqueror buying this site is infuriating to me. Folmann frames this acquisition as protecting SteamDB, but I have been lied to so many times that I cannot view “we’re not interested in changing SteamDB into something it isn’t” as a reassuring statement. Now, this could be a strategic acquisition, as SteamDB and work with Nexus Mod’s tools to determine if mods are broken by game updates, which would be a great boon to the community. Having systems that talk to each other is a great thing… but why the frick do you need to BUY something and consolidate control to achieve that? Because you really don’t!

I hope that I am simply overreacting, that Folmann runs these sites for decades without them going to shit. However, I would rest far better if people like him weren’t going around, buying the tools I like and rely on. I truly wish that there was some sort of foundation dedicated to games that could maintain these sites instead, but that’s not how the apple falls in this capitalist system.

Progress Report 2026-09-06

So, this past week I have spent a LOT of time playing through the recent recompilation of Donkey Kong 64, and I think I’m going to need to do an article about it. DK64 is a very special game for me, as it was the first game I had that was not menu-driven or Mario Kart 64. It was a fully 3D platforming adventure, and while I played it a lot, enjoying the sights and sounds of it, the game also deeply terrified me as a child, and I was never good at it. I experienced it through the lens of a bad Let’s Play by some teenager by the name of Tyler in 2008. Now, in 2026, I feel like I’m experiencing double nostalgia over the game, while also being able to truly appreciate it for the first time ever.

I really like the game, but also bloody hate it in other respects, and think this is “one of the most autistic child games” ever created, as its design feels deeply autistic, and like it is made to both delight and enrage autistic children. Also, this game has wicked impressive lighting. Like, it is gorgeous in its use of colors, and I want to keep playing just because I want to see what the next area looks like. But I also want to stop playing because fuck those minigames. Some of them are just WAY too hard! This is a game for small children, why do I need to beat Donkey Kong (1981) on one credit, twice? That requires SUCH precision, and only gets harder the more we deviate from the original sin…

2026-08-30: Spent time with Cassie and Shiba watching movies. Wound up playing a bunch of the Donkey Kong 64 recomp, and I really like that game, which is not too surprising, as it was one of my first video games ever. Decided to do some cleanup to get a missing dead end in Fate Stay Night and just start Unlimited Blade Works, as I do not want to stop right in the middle of this project. Yes, even if I wind up getting SICK of Fate by the end. Also, learned that ProtonJon came out as trans and is now ProtonClaire. Considering she had a thing where she liked it when people drew her as Rosalina… not surprised but I think it’s always hilarious when people who did stuff I liked as a kid come out as trans. It’s like history is correcting itself. She also apparently played Lach’s mermaid game which… lol. Everything is merging into a big pile!

2026-08-31: Work in the morning and early afternoon, helped Cassie with a train delivery, ate some chocolate cake my mother got from the library for being a good reader. I normally don’t like cake, but this Portillo’s stuff was really good. Probably super bad for me, but fuck it, you gotta eat sweets sometimes or else you’re dead. Played too much Donkey Kong 64, because I goldarn LOVE that game except for when I HATE it. And mashed through two hours of Fate Stay Night.

2026-09-01: Missy the temptress distracted me for FAR too long. Played more Fate Stay Night.

2026-09-02: Had to clean my computer to take help with some RAM issues for Missy, wrote the SteamDB and Square Enix segments. That’s 1,300 words. Made some notes for a segment that I scrapped on pre-Gamergate gaming press and reader relationships, as it was not the right time for that. I also spent TOO LONG trying to fix issues with my Windows Search Index. Look, I get that I have three million files, but STFU.

2026-09-03: Wrote the State of Play stuff, about 2,000 words, mailed a package, avoided credit card fraud. Edited this FRICK. Didn’t feel like Fate, so I played the demos for Final Fantasy Resonance, which was QUITE GOOD, and SlashZero, which was just another roguelike 2D action game, and I don’t think it’s a particularly good one.

2026-09-04: Played a lot more Fate Stay Night while getting sidetracked in conversations and other nonsense. NOW the Unlimited Blade Works route is getting GOOD. Only took like half the bloody runtime.

2026-09-05: Played Big Walk with friends and had a grand time. Played the Stupid Never Dies demo, and that game controls like shit, but I got two pertinent things from it. One, I really like the style used for the dialogue scenes, with 3D models over a blurred background. Two, the Stupid Parry is a dash where you parry by dashing into danger, and that is great, I like that more than any guard system. Too bad attacking enemies feels bad.

Natalie.TF 2026 Progress Report

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Leave a Reply