Man, The Last of Us Part II Remastered is seriously next level. The story hits hard, and the gameplay keeps you hooked with all its twists and moments. Every chapter felt different and kept me on my toes. Definitely one of those games you don’t forget anytime soon.

To All Beavers of Slatsville Who May Have Been Affected by Recent Events:

It has come to my attention that the past several months have been difficult for our Timberborn settlement, and some of you have not felt seen by the management of Slatsville. This could not be further from the truth, but words are cheap and actions speak louder so as your manager I am personally extending this apology.

I am sorry. I need to do better and I will do better, and that process starts with taking accountability.

I am sorry that I did not notice the food warehouses and water tanks were slowly emptying well before the Cycle 4 Drought. I am sorry that apparently my first response to learning of the resulting food shortage was that “this will self-correct, don’t worry about it.” While true, obviously a devastating famine is not the mechanism by which any of us would like to handle these issues.

I regret that the Great Reservoir I built to address future drought issues was overtopped by the radioactive runoff of the Cycle 7 Badtide which killed all our crops and forests and led to the Second Great Famine of Cycle 8. 

I do feel I must point out, purely for the sake of fairness, that this led to meaningful reforms and an attempt to prevent recurrences of this issue. The flood and famine prompted construction of the Badtide Diversion Runoff Channel so that never again would our drinking water and arable farmland be inundated by radioactive floodwaters.

However, the fact that the Great Badtide Diversion Runoff Channel did not have enough capacity to channel all the runoff into the river was regrettable. As was the backwash of radioactive waste that flooded the Industrial Canyon District as well as most of our farmland (again). I have heard your stories and felt your pain over this incident. But all this was also completely unforeseeable, and I am comforted by the fact that nobody could have prevented this disaster.

I do apologize for the fact that Slatsville’s network for roads and bridges (the envy of the world) is such a finely-tuned and efficient system that I could not shut down the flooded roads in the affected districts and build detours to job sites and resource depots. I regret that so many beavers had to commute daily through the Unforeseeable Badwater Disaster Memorial Lake for multiple cycles until they succumbed to the effects of contamination.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see how expanding working hours to 18 hours a day to deal with our sudden labor shortage increased the strain of an already challenging and upsetting situation. In my defense, I assumed workers would deal with issues like thirst and hunger as they arose and the fact some staff began expiring outside their places of work feels like an outcome where responsibility must be shared.

While I think we can all agree that the Slatsville Zipline Network revolutionized transit in our city, I acknowledge that ziplines were not the appropriate solution for the obstructions caused by the Unforeseeable Badwater Disaster Memorial Lake. Bottlenecking the economy of Slatsville around the procurement of advanced materials to complete the Slatsville Zipline Network was not a net positive at that juncture. I recognize that had those resources been more effectively deployed, we might have been able to produce treatment for victims of the Unforeseeable Badwater Disaster.

We can take a great deal of pride in how we rallied as a community in the face of these tragedies and bounced back with a bigger and more productive Slatsville than ever. But here I have to put my hand up and say that it was probably premature to focus so exclusively on building the Great Slatsville Social Housing Ziggurat (boasting the latest amenities like gravity battery-powered carousels for kits of all ages). While I think we can all agree the Social Housing Ziggurat was a huge success, I admit that its runaway success and desirability created a population boom that overwhelmed our food supply network and led to the Population Correction of Cycle 11.

That said, it is unfair and insensitive both to me and experiencers of the Population Correction to call the Social Housing Ziggurat “Zacny’s Corpse Warehouse”. In the future, please refer to it and its neighborhood by their new name: ZoHo.

I trust this message has cleared the air between us. We’ve come through a lot together these last many cycles, and we’re still here. Because we’re Slatsville Strong.

Humbly and with gratitude, 

Rob Zacny, Slatsville City Manager

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the Disney-fication of Nintendo continues

I'm planning on switching to Linux on my main PC as I don't want to move to Windows 11 and was curious about other people's experiences doing so.

I have a Steam Deck and everything there works out of the box, but I imagine that's a more curated platform compared to standard distros.

What are your experiences, good or bad?

This might not be the place for it, but I'd love any feedback I can get. No need to leave a like, comment, or subscription, simple feedback will be enough!

TL;DW: Patrick Klepek and Kat Bailey are longtime games journalists. Kat runs a Nintendo-focused newsletter, so she follows Nintendo news more than most. Here, they discuss how modern Nintendo is less focused on innovation and more focused on becoming a nostalgia brand, a la "Disney Adults". They talk at length about Nintendo's cross-media aspirations, DK Bananza, and how Nintendo's leadership changes have led to this new course. Patrick talks about how his kids would rather game on an iPad than a Switch. Kat dreads the idea that she might be a "Nintendo Adult".

Finally taking shape after a lot of hours. My end goal is to make a Starcraft Terran cruiser look alike

Independent game developer Paolo Pedercini wanted to announce his new game Future? No Thanks! a few weeks ago, but said it was delayed because Steam found a screenshot it planned to share “had suggestive themes.” The screenshot? A low-polygon woman in a short dress with her legs closed together.

Future? No Thanks! was meant to be announced weeks ago but the Steam page didn't pass the first review because a screenshot marked as "Suitable for all ages" had suggestive themes.
The screenshot? This one:

— Molleindustria - Wishlist FUTURE? NO THANKS! (@molleindustria.org) 2025-07-30T14:31:04.532Z

Future? No Thanks!’s page did land on Steam, just a little late. “I thought the screenshot flagging was funny because they seem to have interpreted that low poly character as having no underwear, maybe due to the purple color matching the hair,” Pedercini, who releases games under the name Molleindustria, told 404 Media.

According to Pedercini, he had submitted the game to Steam earlier this month, a process which requires a developer to send in a trailer and at least four screenshots that are “suitable for all ages.” He marked the screenshot above as suitable, but Steam rejected it on July 10.

“The trailer does have a suggestive clip with a sexbot, and a hyperbolic disclaimer…so I guess that's fair,” Pedercini said. He pushed back against Steam and asked for a review. “Both reviews took more than a week, which I think it's longer than usual. I wonder if they were figuring out how to respond to the payment processor deal.”

Pedercini’s problems with Steam came at a time when the platform was facing pressure from credit card companies to remove adult games from its platform. Earlier this month, the credit card companies Visa and Mastercard pressured video game distributors Steam and Itch to remove adult games from their storefronts.

The payment processors themselves were bowing to a pressure campaign from the organization Collective Shout, which describes itself as being “for anyone concerned about the increasing pornification of culture” and which argued that many of the adult games normalized violence against women. But a lot of games with queer themes were kicked off Itch and Steam as part of the purge, and it’s not always clear what the lines are and who is drawing them.

“We live in a golden age of independent cultural production, but digital distribution is still extremely concentrated. There are a handful of entities that can instantly make huge swaths of digital culture disappear,” Pedercini said. “We thought digital marketplaces like the Apple Store were the main agents of market censorship, but now we've found out there are even more monopolistic companies upstream from them.”

Those upstream monopolies, pressured by outside lobbying groups, are now defining what can and can’t be said online. Payment processors have pushed other kinds of content to the margins before, video game storefronts are just the latest example. “Such marketplaces may default to freedom of expression because it's cheaper to not moderate content, but they will easily bow to calls for censorship because it's less trouble than advocating for controversial products. It cuts both ways: a few years ago, major online stores removed products showing the Confederate flag,” Pedercini said.

“Conservative groups are willing to exploit these vulnerabilities and are trying to put illegal content such as child pornography on a continuum with porn and queer representations,” he added. “I think they genuinely believe that homosexuality is in the same set as bestiality or rape, as something forbidden by the Bible or whatever, but we can't let that view be enshrined into law or into commercial content guidelines.”

Pedercini has been through something like this before. His 2007 game Operation: Pedopriest, a game about the well documented abuse of children in the Catholic Church, earned the ire of an Italian Christian group which accused the game of depicting virtual child pornography. “The accusation immediately lead the provider to shut down the site, legal charges, and a point of order all the way up to the Italian parliament,” Pedercini said.

Gamers, a group that can be particularly aggressive when politically activated, have launched a counter-pressure campaign on the payment processors. It’s too early to tell if Visa and Mastercard will bend to gamers the same way it did to collective shout.

The future of video games as a form of cultural expression is at risk of massive damage. “The status of video games as culture is still being negotiated. If thematic restrictions like the ones defined by itch.io were to be applied to movies or books, limiting their distribution, it would be major news immediately,” Pedercini said. “Arguably, most video games are currently moving away from culture and morphing into pseudo-cultural objects like slot machines, or apps for wasting time and feeling nothing. The problem is that those of us who still make video games as some kind of artform will be caught in the dragnet.”

Steam did not immediately respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.

Assassin's Creed Shadows nails the feudal Japan fantasy—finally. Dual protagonists, dynamic seasons, and stealth-depth we’ve been waiting for. If you miss the old AC vibe but want modern freedom, this is it.