Jank Mail: Fighting words

This week in Jank, the big news is that Brendy launched Character Select, our new series pitting game characters in a fight to the death as decreed by the comment section. The debut bout is chemically-dependent cops, with Max Payne facing off against Harry DuBois, and the reaction has been extremely impressive.

Other things: Graham belatedly discovered that Abiotic Factor is less like DayZ and more like Pokémon Pokopia. Jeremy Peel joined our illustrious freelance roster to praise Marathon’s med drones. On Total Playtime, Nate compelled Alice and myself to pick out our preferred Gaming Pope attire, because our internal lore is already at that level after only a year of broadcasting. 

Out in the wider PC gaming world, the Steam Controller sold out instantly and if you want one you need to get in line. Microsoft ditched the gaming Copilot integration which nobody liked or wanted, which I hope other companies will consider inspirational. The GameStop CEO attempted to buy eBay despite not having enough money or apparently any understanding of why that would be worth having and is now trying to meme his way out of it, which would be the most embarassing CEO move ever if Elon Musk's Twitter account didn't exist.

We finally have an answer to the question “what is crypto good for” which it turns out is “about 15% of CCP”, which is now not called CCP any more because they lost the SEO battle with China. There is also a new Eve Online x Google DeepMind partnership which I find faintly ominous in the spirit of Slitherine’s work with the military. Anyway, crypto bad, simply invest in Runescape coal instead (note: do not do this). 

In the AAA mines, 2K is still doing that hero shooter that nobody cared for but it's got a mysterious new look, has maybe lost the heroes and definitely lost some of the staff. Marathon has lost Sony a lot of money but they’re sticking with it, and Take-Two "wasted a lot of time and money" failing to make a new Bioshock but they're sticking with that too. Battlefield 6 made EA loads of money, and they didn't promise to stick with it but we're going to go ahead and assume that they will.

Elsewhere in Business, analysts want Take-Two to make even more money from GTA so that everyone else has an excuse to put their own prices up, which is unwelcome and probably inevitable. Meanwhile in the hippy dreamland of AA, Kepler have spent three years making their own high-art games magazine, presumably in between bong hits. It doesn’t have a coverdisc yet but they’re pretty keen on the idea.  

Windrose was patched to not destroy your hard drive, which is a new terror of Early Access I had not previously considered. There is now Assassin's Creed x Cirque du Soleil, for some reason, which feels like a PR stunt but it doesn’t really connect with the Black Flag remake so maybe it’s just culture. We learned that R.U.S.E is B.A.C.K, Fallout 1 is coming to Pip-Boy and why Geralt calls his horse Roach.

What did we learn from our community? Sarfrin conjured a vivid response to Payne vs. Dubois.

JimJamJimajesty is ready for Cozy Games For Midde-Aged Men.

Sin Vega has no time for Pragmata's dadcore vibes.

Here ends the week. Go and play some PC games.