Friday, October 16
Sega pulls a botched remake; Activision QA nears a strike
“‘What profit it a man if he gain the whole world but in this enterprise lose his soul?’”” — Philip K. Dick, in The Man in the High Castle
Gaming Editorial
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Continuing · Generative AI in games and modding
Aftermath (Luke Plunkett) · Oct 16
Sega has taken Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition off sale days after release. It is working with platform holders to reinstate the original game while it investigates, and existing owners keep access. Its statement concedes the remake "fell short of both your expectations and our own standards". It is signed by Sega and Creative Assembly but not by Polish studio Mataboo, which co-developed the remake and has previously been accused of using AI-generated assets.
Aftermath's Luke Plunkett argues that the bugs, poor textures and AI-generated portraits were obvious to customers almost immediately, and asks how the game cleared QA and milestone reviews. He sees no deadline that would justify rushing a remake of a 15-year-old game, so he reads the release as careless. His conclusion is that, whatever the usual caution about calling a game lazy, the publisher's responsibility leaves only "lazy or reckless".
Counterpoint: Defenders of Sega would point out that it reversed course quickly and restored the original, and that critics have only accusations, not proof, about Mataboo's use of AI. Some developers and critics also argue that shortfalls like this often trace to budgets and schedules the publisher sets, which complicates pinning it on one studio.
Previously: Epic's openly vibe-coded launcher and Sega's AI-upscaled Shogun 2 art were extending criticism of AI use at big publishers. — Thursday October 15 edition.
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Continuing · Union drives at game studios
Aftermath (Nathan Grayson) · Oct 15
Activision's QA union, represented by the CWA, has voted to authorize a strike after two years of bargaining without a first contract. Remote work, wage increases and AI protections are among the open issues. Aftermath's Nathan Grayson frames the story around Jordan Kunze, a former steward who spent over a year seeking a remote-work accommodation for a documented medical condition. Kunze filed complaints with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and the EEOC, and says internal investigations of his conduct in 2026 felt retaliatory. He took a voluntary severance in September, which ended his legal complaints, and now works at a gas station for about half his old pay, compared with a 53-mile commute each way.
Bargaining committee members Jenna Huffman and Emily Danko say Activision has granted no remote exceptions since the union formed, apart from two employees who were already remote. They say management has stalled in the way workers at Blizzard and Zenimax described before those groups won contracts. Members describe a strike as a last resort, and they have rallied outside company offices this week.
Counterpoint: Activision says it has bargained in good faith with the CWA and made "meaningful progress", and it has offered to meet again on October 21 and 22. It says it has plans to avoid disruption to players or upcoming releases. Neither Activision nor Microsoft answered Aftermath's questions about Kunze's case.
Previously: The Rockstar tribunal now runs into November, close to GTA 6's launch. — Thursday October 15 edition.
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Aftermath (Luke Plunkett) · Oct 15
The studio behind Untitled Goose Game and Big Walk said in a statement that the game will not come to Xbox. It cites the Palestinian-led BDS movement's call to boycott Microsoft and its designation of Microsoft Games and Xbox as a priority target. Big Walk was announced in June 2026 for PC, Switch 2 and PS5, and the studio says it received many questions about Xbox afterwards. It acknowledges that the decision cuts against its aim of letting groups of friends play together, and says it is disappointed too. It will not change course until Microsoft and Xbox are no longer boycott targets.
Aftermath's Luke Plunkett mostly relays the statement and adds that the boycott has run for well over a year. Ice Water Games pulled its releases from Xbox in 2025, while other developers have distanced themselves from Microsoft after recent closures and studio moves.
Counterpoint: Critics of the BDS movement, including many pro-Israel groups, argue it unfairly singles out Israel and the companies tied to it. Some fans would also say the decision penalises players who wanted to join Xbox friends rather than pressuring Microsoft.
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Respec (Tom Orry) · Oct 15
Respec's Tom Orry marks the decade since PS VR's launch by calling it a complete failure. He remembers a strong launch lineup, including VR Worlds, Driveclub VR, EVE: Valkyrie, Rez Infinite and Thumper, though motion sickness limited his own play. His central argument is that the games never delivered what players wanted. Most releases felt like novelties, with Astro Bot: Rescue Mission and Capcom's Resident Evil titles the best of them. He says the audience is a fraction of the console base, so a God of War-scale game was never feasible.
Orry faults Sony for treating VR as an experiment it never gave a chance, saying PS VR2 was "essentially dumped on launch day". Beyond Horizon Call of the Mountain, a Gran Turismo 7 VR mode and Firewall Ultra, he sees little first-party support. With hardware prices rising (Valve's Steam Frame starts at £889), he expects VR to survive through enthusiasts but thinks Sony's effort to build the market is over.
Counterpoint: VR advocates would say Sony's difficulties don't show VR itself has failed, since PC and standalone headsets keep an engaged audience. Sony's defenders could argue that a niche market made big-budget first-party games hard to justify, a point Orry himself concedes.
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PC Gamer (Tyler Wilde) · Oct 16
Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, says he will introduce the Power To The Players Act. The bill would direct the FTC to write rules protecting consumers' "ability to own and play" purchased games, including the right to transfer them. It would also require offline modes before online games are shut down. Torres calls a game that can vanish when a company pulls the plug "a rental disguised as a sale".
PC Gamer's Tyler Wilde places the bill in context: consoles are moving away from discs, and Sony has said it will end physical disc production in 2028. He cites the Stop Killing Games campaign, whose organizers gained an audience with the European Parliament, and Ubisoft's The Crew, which went offline in 2024. Wilde notes that DRM-free games such as those on GOG already sidestep the problem. He doubts the FTC would mandate an end to copy protection, so he expects a softer definition of ownership if the bill passes, and he has asked Torres' office how enforcement would work.
Counterpoint: Publishers have generally argued that online games depend on servers with ongoing costs, and that licences let them manage those costs and end support. Others question whether the FTC can or should define ownership of software at all.
AI & Industry
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Continuing · State lawsuits against OpenAI
AI Weekly · Oct 16
Per Axios, the FTC sent OpenAI and Anthropic 50-page demands for records on security incidents, safeguards, marketing and privacy, a federal step beyond the state suits. The same AI Weekly issue reports that Character.ai filed for bankruptcy and that Citizen Lab traced spyware sent to Al Jazeera devices through targeted ads.
Previously: Several states allege OpenAI ignored its own safety warnings for profit. — Thursday October 15 edition.
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Simon Willison · Oct 15
Per the FT, as summarised by Simon Willison, Anthropic's quarterly revenue rose from about $4.8bn in Q1 to $11.5bn in Q2 and $16.8bn in Q3. In Q3 it earned $1.70 for every $1 spent on computing power, with adjusted operating margin of 11% excluding stock-based compensation. AI Weekly separately reports investors discussed a $1.5 trillion IPO valuation, down from about $2 trillion.
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Continuing · Six Flags Georgia coaster fatality
Blooloop (Bea Mitchell) · Oct 15
Blooloop reports that witnesses described the moment a man fell out of a Six Flags coaster as traumatic.
Previously: Six Flags shares fell after a coaster incident in Georgia left one person dead. — Thursday October 15 edition.
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WDW News Today (Shannen Ace) · Oct 15
Disney Theatrical Group and Lightstorm Entertainment are collaborating on AVATAR: Guardians of Eywa, a licensed immersive walkthrough in Niagara Falls that combines live performance art, acrobatics and immersive technology. It is due to debut next year, per WDW News Today.
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Blooloop (Bea Mitchell) · Oct 15
Blooloop reports that the landlocked Disneyland Resort has added 25 acres to support its expansion.
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Blooloop (Bea Mitchell) · Oct 15
Dollywood's 42nd season opens to passholders on March 10 and to the public on March 11, the first since the death of Dolly Parton, per Blooloop. The park will add a new character called the Dream Maker to Wildwood Grove, and its $60 million NightFlight Expedition ride has opened.
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GamesIndustry.biz (Alex Forbes-Calvin) · Oct 15
DayZ creator Dean Hall has released Brutal, an open-source game development framework built by his companies Ahwoo and RocketWerkz, per GamesIndustry.biz.
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Blooloop (Charlotte Blanco Coates) · Oct 15
At a Framestore panel in London as IAAPA Expo Europe closed, leaders from VFX, theme parks, gaming and shared reality discussed how established IP and nostalgia can deepen audiences' ties to familiar stories. Blooloop's Ella Baskerville moderated, with speakers from Disney, Epic Games and Cosm.
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WDW News Today (Shannen Ace) · Oct 15
Disneyland's roughly 1,700 character and parade performers, who unionized as Magic United under Actors' Equity in early 2024, will protest this weekend over the lack of a first contract. They say Disney's latest proposal is unfair, per WDW News Today.
Science & Archaeology
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Archaeology Magazine (Jessica Esther Saraceni) · Oct 15
BBC News reports that a Bronze Age shipwreck near Kekova Island off Antalya, Turkey, has been identified as the world's oldest known shipwreck, per Archaeology Magazine.
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Live Science (Kristina Killgrove) · Oct 15
A hole in the shoulder blade of a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal from Shanidar Cave in Iraq may have been a fatal wound from a wooden spear, archaeologists say. Live Science calls the find rare.
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Live Science (Owen Jarus) · Oct 15
The remains of two Ramesses II statues were found by a villager in Egypt, one wearing a double crown. One would originally have stood about 28 feet tall, per Live Science.
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Archaeology Magazine (Jessica Esther Saraceni) · Oct 15
A rescue excavation at a 200-year-old tavern site in Troy, Ohio, recovered more than 18,000 artifacts, per Archaeology Magazine.
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ScienceDaily · Oct 15
A 120-million-year-old fossil left in a museum for nearly a century has revealed a tiger-sized predator. It is the first evidence of megaraptorans in Europe, and it helps explain how the group later grew into giant hunters, per ScienceDaily.
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Ars Technica (Jennifer Ouellette) · Oct 15
Researchers used modal analysis of a 20th-century replica bell at Penn State Behrend to look for clues to how the Liberty Bell sounded, per Ars Technica.
Sound & Music Tech
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Continuing · Synth firmware hacking and open-source firmware
Synth Anatomy (Synth Anatomy) · Oct 15
The custom zvenson Obervave firmware turns the M-VAVE FM-1 and SMK-37 Pro/Elite into a virtual-analog polysynth modelled on Oberheim instruments. It is the latest third-party firmware project for inexpensive hardware.
Previously: Fluyt logue ports Felucca engines to the microKORG2 and drumlogue. — Wednesday October 14 edition.
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Sonic State · Oct 16
SSL has launched Bus Comp Classic, which puts the original SSL Bus Compressor in a dedicated 1U rack format.
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Sonic State · Oct 16
IK Multimedia has released ARC Studio+, a next-generation standalone hardware system for calibrating studio monitors and room acoustics.
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Synth Anatomy (Synth Anatomy) · Oct 15
Haze is a creative effects plugin for macOS and Windows with tape, granular and spectral modes.
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Synth Anatomy (Synth Anatomy) · Oct 15
Waldorf has released free Chutney librarian software for the Protein, the compact wavetable synth it launched at the end of last year with Microwave 1-style oscillators.