This is less an announcement week and more of a series of updates and revelations. Things are always happening in this industry, that’s for sure.
Anthony Fantano, the Internet’s Busiest Music Nerd, has gotten entangled in a court case with Activision over a popular meme audio he created. The audio, in which he shouts that there’s too many slices of pizza, was uploaded to Tik Tok’s audio library and was used by thousands for memes, but Activision used it for an ad promoting the new Crash Bandicoot party game. Fantano threatened legal action, and Activision answered similarly. This raises the question of if Fantano uploading the audio to the audio library meant brands and companies could use it as well without financial compensation.
Yuka Kitamura, composer of FromSoftware titles such as Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring, has left the company. She will now be working as a freelance composer.
Labor’s Continued Struggles
Kickstarter has updated their AI use policy. Now, if a “creator” uses AI in their project, they must attribute how they used AI, and that will be listed on the project’s page.
eBay has been charged with refusing to recognize the union TCGPlayer, the card sale website they bought in 2022, voted to form earlier this year.
Last week, Project Moon of Limbus Company fame ended the contract of one of their artists due to threats levied by right wing incels. Now, the CEO of the company, Kim Jihoon, spoke on Twitter, saying that anyone who claims the firing was unjust will be met with potential legal action.
Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency project, in which common tropes in media was criticized from a feminist viewpoint, is shutting down after fifteen years. While often surface level and not without faults in its critique, Feminist Frequency’s Tropes vs Women in Games series did usher in a variety of new voices into games criticism, and changed the landscape of video games forever.
More Standard Game Announcements
Treasure’s beloved SHMUP Radiant Silvergun is coming to Steam on August 18th.
Nintendo rumors abound, one big and one small. The small one first, as LEGO is seemingly gearing up to announce some Animal Crossing sets in the near future.
As for the big rumor, the next Nintendo console is supposedly gearing up for announcement. Prominent leakers are saying the new console will be similar to the Switch, with an eight inch LCD screen and 512GB internal memory. Backwards compatibility with the Switch is still up in the air, but said leakers are claiming it will release sometime late in 2024.
And hey, it’s Evo right now, so we’ll tell you more fighting game news next week. The one thing that got in under the door was Under Night In-Birth 2 Sys:Celes, the full sequel to French Bread’s non-Melty Blood hit.
