If you haven’t been falling the struggle session / hugbox cope of BioWare closing, it’s been pretty funny. I wonder what our old friends at Kotaku think…
It Didn’t Have To End This Way
After years of strife and sabotage, BioWare is gone, and video games are lesser for it
One of the most influential developers in the western RPG scene is gone, a reliable space for queer fans has been ripped from their hands, and some of the most vibrant worlds in video games are likely to be hoarded and distorted by the big-business equivalent of a dragon sitting on top of a mountain of riches. The best case scenario was that BioWare could have been sold to a new owner and set free to work without the looming threat of whatever heinous penny-pinching whims the already insatiable publisher felt like enacting that day. EA execs and private equity bean counters may offer a multitude of justifications for why this happened, and bigots may call this a win because they were mad a non-binary character was in a game they weren’t going to play, but regardless of what suits with no imagination say, make no mistake: It didn’t have to end this way.
Bitch, a reliable space for queer fans is why no one wanted the games. Can you really not understand why people don’t buy an offered a product they don’t want and have told you repeatedly for over a decade they don’t want? We’re you momma’s little water baby?
And you can have all the queering you want if you keep it light. Baldur’s gate let you fuck a bear. But there wasn’t a cut scene lecture about respecting bear pronouns.
More cope:
BioWare was asked to remove LGBTQ flag from canceled Mass Effect game, report says
Mass Effect Has Been Taken Away Just When We Needed It Most
A Canadian Politician Says BioWare Devs Should Be Given Government Funding To Buy The Studio And Get Back To Making Mass Effect
Mourn not Mass Effect 5, for this was one of the writers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherynne_M._Valente
Credits include:
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There
The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two
The Boy Who Lost Fairyland
The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home
The Refrigerator Monologues is a 2017 superhero fiction novel by Catherynne Valente, with art by Annie Wu, exploring the lives – and deaths – of superheroines, and of the girlfriends of superheroes; the title refers to “women in refrigerators”,[1] and to The Vagina Monologues.[2] It was published by Saga Press.
Sounds riveting.
Can you think of a more perfect fit for her than Mass Effect?
UCLA expands campus vending machines to offer 24/7 access to health essentials
UCLA announced this month that it will expand the number and operating hours of essential health vending machines on campus.
The Be Well Bruin Express – launched by UCLA Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center and UCLA’s Health Education and Resource Team in partnership with UCLA Vending Services – is stocked with a variety of health-related products and operates 24 hours a day outside the Ashe Center.
The machines offer naloxone or Narcan, fentanyl test strips, condoms and menstrual hygiene products for free, according to an Oct. 13 press release from the Ashe Center. Students must pay for bandages, thermometers, ice packs and pregnancy tests, though a price has not yet been decided, according to the release.
…
Offering free naloxone is especially important because it can be life-saving, Ritter said.
“So many people are studying in libraries, so very late, and so having these machines accessible at all times can make it more accessible for a student to get something or more inclined to use it because it’s available for them,” Castro said.
You’d think that student’s ODing on campus would be of more concern than making sure they don’t die with a free vending machine. Also, I doubt junkies are the ones studying diligently in the middle of the night.
I think Rolling Stone is staffed by a sect of people that crave humiliation.
The 200 Greatest Rock Songs of the 21st Century So Far
- “Maps” – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
- “Seven Nation Army” – The White Stripes
- “Mr. Brightside” – The Killers
- “good 4 u” – Olivia Rodrigo
- “The National Anthem” – Radiohead
- “I Know The End” – Phoebe Bridgers
- “Last Nite” – The Strokes
- “99 Problems” – Jay-Z
- “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” – Arctic Monkeys
- “Impossible Germany” – Wilco
Not the best Yeah Yeah Yeahs song, just the first hit.
“Seven Nation Army” is a banger.
“Mr. Brightside is OK.” Gen Z seems to really like it.
Nowhere near Olivia Rodrigo’s best song, which is either “Vampire” or the BPD National Anthem “Get You Back.”
Radiohead never did much for me. I moan often enough all on my own.
Phoebe Bridgers was a flash in the pan. Without looking, name another song.
Jay-Z is not rock, are these people honestly retarded?
“I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” is a damn fine song but the rest of their output beyond the first album didn’t hold my interest.
A mediocre Wilco song from when they were long past their prime.
Also, fuck you for the graphic, Rolling Stone, for reminding me the stunningly awful Alabama Shakes existed.
Olivia Rodrigo is basically the opposite pole of Taylor Swift. Swift is essential sexless Rodrigo carries a erotic charge. She’s the hot crazy girl that ride you until your dick is two-day sore. It would be fantastic thrill ride until she stabbed you.
So much fun. Like touching an= sexy stove.
I wanna break his heart
Then be the one to stitch it up
Wanna kiss his face
With an uppercut
I wanna meet his mom
Just to tell her her son sucks
(But then I, I want to get him back)
Could it be our games that are the problem?
No! The CUSTOMERS are wrong!
Put an ugly chick in it, and make her gay!!
I tried to play the first Mass Effect.
I made it about twenty minutes into the game and the mechanics sucked. Game sucked.
Those songs?
No. Couple are probably top 50. Seven nation army and Mr Brightsides would be in there.
No foo fighters?
Nothing off of King Animal?
Yeah whoever put that list out dosent like rock.
And Olivia Rodrigo? First heard of her because Lego picked her up for some reason. And then some dyke power concert thing her people organized was sending money to Planned Parenthood to kill babies.
Fuck her. Zero interest. Make good music and keep your trap shut about politics.
Listened to two minots of that bubble gum pop angsty girl without a bra.
Avril Lavigne was better.
Pallet cleanse. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9i0F0nocoPU&ra=m
I e never been able to spell minutes either. I don’t know how that U snuck in there. I blame the French.
I have trouble with apostrophes
I have trouble with apostrophes
I call them “flying commas” to keep life interesting.
Mass Effect 1 crawled so Mass Effect 2 could soar. Mass Effect 3 was… the crash of the story into a celestial body. Dragon Age: Origins was solid, 2 already started making changes to the world, designs, and was so terribly planned that it felt like there were a total of 3 mission maps, with different paths for different missions.
The ‘squad based’ controls pissed me off. Not a game that was designed for me. Maybe someone used to playing Final Fantasy, So written for chicks.
Origins wasn’t bad, but I never completely got over the intro. You don’t kill the people who have second thoughts about joining your secret society, when they find out that said membership carries a significant random chance of painful and ignominious death. You graciously thank them for their consideration, pay their travel expenses, and send them on their way.
How about this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=p1g3iZPna9Q
No. No, they cannot. Those people are Nazis, and you never listen to anything a Nazi says. That’s programmed into Kotaku’s midbrain structure at this point.
You’re being kind to Kotaku.
Sorry, early but too good to remember to post later. Union Strong!
https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2026/10/tufts-sues-union-to-prevent-reinstatement-of-professor-fired-over-sexual-misconduct
Well, it isn’t like he is MAGA!
Outcome:
Prof reinstated with settlement
University makes settlement with students for hostile environment
Win-Win!
TFW you find out that you’ve never been anything more than a means to an end…
Wilco was never as good as Son Volt.
Phoebe Bridgers was cute but dumb.
The Killers? Seriously?
Both Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift suck compared to Doja Kat.
Jay Z is a piece of shit. Full Stop.
Seven Nation is a good song, but I tend towards the work on De Stijl more
Maps is good, as the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s were big Rowland S Howard fans, and it shows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Upoa4xnbo&list=RDH6Upoa4xnbo&start_radio=1
So- Beloved game factory shuts down?
I guess they weren’t so beloved after all.
They were beloved for their early work. Not so much any of the later works.
These game studios obviously haven’t mastered the art of losing money for the cause the way Hollywood studios have.
The people who made those early works were long gone by the time the name got retired and the Veilguard team got the axe.
Last Night is not the worst song. At least I have heard it.
It’s fun.
Poppy/catchy.
A rock song/work of art? Naw.
Jay-Z? LOL
Were any of them even alive when that came out…?
I know some of that list. “Last Nite” is the best of what I know.
Brightside, I read Blue Sky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQUlA8Hcv4s&list=RDaQUlA8Hcv4s&start_radio=1
“a reliable space for queer fans”
And… I’m out.
What about “What would look good on you is me”?
Always a hit at parties.
Soooo last century.
What the world really needs is more IGN writers speaking on the horrors of “unchecked late-stage capitalism.”
EA execs and private equity bean counters may offer a multitude of justifications for why this happened, and bigots may call this a win because they were mad a non-binary character was in a game they weren’t going to play, but regardless of what suits with no imagination say, make no mistake: It didn’t have to end this way.
Those bigots should still have bought the game they weren’t going to play in order to support the hard working xim/xers who make it for people other than those hateful bigots. Because otherwise Drag-On-Under-Age would have had to cost at least five times what it did for the LGBTQWERTY++2A&^# comunity to support it alone.
It’s funny because pretty much all of the left wing freaks shrieking about sexism and misogyny and racism in whatever thing genuinely aren’t the people who buy the fucking thing in the first place. Like we’ve seen what happens time and time again when that crowd gets catered to. The thing in question has ridiculously small audiences even when top IP is slapped onto it and mass audiences that made the thing successful in the first place tune it out.
The chud’s are gamers. Gamers are chuds. You know who isn’t the average gamer or even a significant portion of gamers?
To bolster that point, the QUILTBAG+ group was calling for boycotts and review bombing Hogwarts Legacy (Harry Potter game) due to Rowling-hate. The game was a massive hit. Compare that to Veilguard, which was hated by fans and flopped, but was full on QUILTBAG+ embracing, to the point of having midlevel era characters talking about proper pronoun use and gender issues.
QUILTBAG stuff can be smoothly handled without the lectures. The other day I mentioned seeing some confusing pronoun play in some game (Sable, I think) which was not elaborated on in any way. It was just there. No big deal.
But that’s not good enough for the activist set.
Balder’s Gate was very popular. It allowed for a high degree of customization that included Quiltbag shit. But it wasn’t in your face or forced or integral.
It’s like how black guys could be in movies in the 90’s. Woman could be action leads. No one cared. But then DEI became the focus and now it’s like you see it and roll your eyes. It’s an established character with a race swap or crowbared in to become the focus point.
They also didn’t lose site of who they were making the action movie for in the 90’s. Having a woman lead didn’t mean a bunch of woman were going to go watch it because they weren’t delusional fucks making the movies.
🤣😂
I am often seeing Big Government funding games made by Euro-studios. I guess this is a normal thing there. I can’t possibly think of any down sides to this.
Amelia was supposed to be the bad guy.
They can really save on healthcare costs by putting ads for MAID in the game!
There’s always the CCP and Tencent, CDPR got a grant from Poland, and I’m pretty sure that Korea has also subsidized their game studios. You can get all the way down to the local level with 38 Studios and Rhode Island.
“So many people are studying in libraries, so very late, and so having these machines accessible at all times can make it more accessible for a student to get something or more inclined to use it because it’s available for them,” Castro said.
It’s important to be safe when you’re getting high and hooking up in the stacks.
Mass Effect 3’s overwhelming sense of fatalism, of trying to hold on to hope in a world without a future, feels more resonant now than it did in 2012. The 2020s have been a turbulent decade, with numerous potentially world-ending catastrophes either ongoing or just beyond the horizon. Between climate change, COVID-19, perpetual violence in the Middle East, the rise of generative AI, and unchecked late-stage capitalism, the last several years have been a nonstop cavalcade of disasters. The damage to the social contract and the realization that we’re probably all traumatized and a little bit insane is difficult to process, especially when the soaring cost of living forces people to still go to work and act like everything is normal while the world crumbles around them.
JFC.
Yes, the last five years have been just like if an alien military were scouring the galaxy of all sentient life.
Oh hell, even funnier.
Mass Effect: Andromeda’s solution to continuing the Mass Effect story after the cataclysmic events of Mass Effect 3 was to sidestep them; to have a new cast jump ship to another galaxy before the end of everything. By contrast, Mass Effect: Universe was going to tackle the problem head-on, with the developers challenging themselves to imagine what rebuilding after the apocalypse really looks like. We’ve only seen small glimpses of their solution, but a game that shows there was a path forward after the Reapers would likely resonate with people while we’re still in the trenches of the mid-2020s. Whether players picked up on it subconsciously or otherwise, Mass Effect: Universe had the potential to give people hope that we can persevere through the psycho reality we’re currently living in.
Yes, this video game would have taught humanity how to survive and rebuild after Trumpocalypse 1 and 2.
Andromeda was gods awful. The story was nonsensical, the game play was mediocre, and there’s absolutely no reason for the main character to be all important.
All fair points, but what disappointed me most about Andromeda was that you are arriving in a different galaxy – and they wake you up after everyone else so you only encounter races from the old galaxy and two “new” races that are functionally identical to the bipedal races you brought along. They didn’t do anything New when handed a blank slate for creativity.
Have the pathfinder actually be first and give them something weird to deal with before any of the familiar races wake up.
To be fair, SOMETHING pretty fucking insidious has been scouring the Earth of sentient life.
Glibs deny any culpability
I wonder if charging customers a fee they have to go to work to earn so they can play a video game is part of “unchecked late-stage capitalism”. Something tells me these brave warriors were not intending to hand out copies of this opus for free, but I guess we’ll never know. 😥
I noticed in “uni” as the dopey little shits of Reddit all seem to call it that there was a direct correlation between being a leftwing little douche who would use that sort of term and consumerism.
The same cunt defending the mega-corp to the death (like Nintendo or some shit, fanboy types) in one thread there is the other bashing capitalism and greed in another.
It’s all performative bullshit with most of them.
The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There
And later accused everyone else of gang raping her? Sued Fairyland, Inc for seventy billion dollars?
The last twenty five years of “rock” has been mostly homogenized dreck, even allowing for Sturgeons Law. A song today sounds like it could have come out in 2005. No real change unlike the past. Today music is the equivalent of 70’s filmmaking. Utter crap by posers who are in love with their farts.
Or AI generated.
Yoru ni Kakeru / YOASOBI (1982 Style Cover)
Guy has some mad programming skills.
YOASOBI “Racing into the Night” Official Music Video
Bill Gates issued an apology to his staff for the Epstein shit. Said he had two affairs with Russian women when with his wife, but committed no crimes.
Dude grow a fuck pair. One of the richest and most powerful men on the planet right here.
Did he also apologize for catching the clap and trying to feed his wife antibiotics on the sly?
Nah man. His lawyers advised him against that. Dude is desperate to be at the cool kids table at his age and with his money though.
He should have created a vaccine for the clap I guess.
Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?
Pick up some freebies before your next drug-fueled sex party, kids!
They should stock it with business cards for the lawyers they will hire to deal with the aftermath.
Re: top 10 songs
I guess the names of some of the performers sound vaguely familiar. Haven’t heard any of those songs, to be able to name them. And that’s the way I like it.
Rolling Stone can catch fire and burn to the ground and mankind would be no worse for the loss.
Inc magazine is amazed:
Cheerios and Ziploc just answered the prayers of moms and breakfast lovers everywhere with a new collaboration that finally brings resealable bags to cereal boxes.
The product line, called Cheerios With Ziploc PantrySeal, features upgraded cereal bags that are designed to open halfway across the top to form a spout for pouring, and then reseal after use. They look like a cross between a typical cereal bag and a Ziploc bag.
“Hundreds of thousands” of Cheerios customers have requested resealable cereal bags each year, according to a press release.
Because it’s so bafflingly difficult to fold the top of the bag over and put a clip on it.
Ever since they started making cereal boxes out of construction paper I just throw the box away as soon as I open it.
Generic oatmeal in a round box with a cover. Two minutes in the microwave, a dash of milk and a squeeze of honey. Every morning.
I can’t go back to rolled oats after steel cut oats.
They are describing the Malt-O-Meal bag for the cheap cereal sold in large quantities.
Except for some reason they are putting it in a box.
This has been the norm fpr a few decades for the poors.
Bioware had some great games. I’ve strayed away from games but may try again if I can find some decent ones. Last game I bought was Elden Ring and played only 15 minutes of it.
Just like music, there’s tons of great new stuff but you have to look harder to find it. And develop a taste for game genres that the big studios generally don’t make anymore.
Get a load of this hateful piece of trash.
I wonder if he has any nearby relatives’ gravestones I could piss all over.
Jay Z’s song 99 Problems, while probably his best, is basically covering a song from Ice T and 2 Live Crew about 10 years earlier without attribution. Jay Z wishes he was half the lyricist Ice T is.
Stunt
Hennepin County prosecutors on Wednesday said they charged conservative provocateur James O’Keefe and another man with felonies for unlawful voting and identity theft for filming themselves misrepresenting their identities to election judges during the Minnesota Aug. 11 primary.
——-
Secretary of State Steve Simon later said the poll workers did exactly what they were supposed to do to protect the integrity of the election.
“I think it’s pretty clear they did not intend to vote. That’s not the question here,” Moriarty said Wednesday as she unveiled the charges against O’Keefe and Higby.
They tried to make us look bad. They can’t get away with that.
*I couldn’t give a shit what they do to that guy.