No Man’s Sky – The Swarm

First I used my main save, then when that was… complicated… I turned off multiplayer and started a new save for just the expedition.

Game mode selection, with expedition in the lower right

That ended up not being the huge difference I thought it would be, so actually went back to my main save and caught it up so that both saves were sitting at the current phase and milestone of the event, Countermeasures.

My phase three progress

Countermeasures is the first community-wide milestone, and this has slowed everything down.  There is no “finish the expedition in 3 hours” guide, because we all have to cooperate for a while as a mass, slowly advancing the progress bar.

For this milestone, you can run three types of missions, purge, restore, and sabotage.  However, there is a timer running that keeps you from running more than one of each of those missions more than once per six hour window.  That is my guess as I have seen the timer for the next mission as high as five hours.

Also, the three sides, Weavers, Royals, and Sages are all in a competition to be the ones to contribute the most to the milestone, which brings me to the missions.

When you summon the anomaly and enter, in the middle of the main area where one used to grab group missions is now an additional structure the Prismatic Core, which dispenses missions.

Get missions here

You click on it and it shows you which three missions, one of each type, are available plus some stats on how things are progressing… which is marred a bit on my screen as the background isn’t wide enough for my 3,440×1440 monitor.  But you can still see the stats.

The milestone status on June 15 at 15:00 UTC

The Weavers are out in front, but not by a huge margin.  The assigning of people to the factions seems to have been somewhat balanced and, while there are some Reddit rumors of being able to edit your save to make sure you’re on the winning side, nobody is running away with the competition yet.

So this means that I want to run missions to help my side.  But the mission choices currently… are not helping with this.

Restore missions are fine.  They advance all three factions equally for completion, so at least serve the purpose of getting us through the milestone.  I am for that.

Restore mission rewards

They also happen to be pretty easy most of the time.  The one pictured above involves mining some resources and delivering them to Specialist Polo in the anomaly.  When I get one of those I will always mine a bunch extra so when that mission comes up again I don’t even have to leave the anomaly.  I just walk over and hand him the stuff.

Harvesting some more Paraffinium for Polo

They are not always that easy.  Sometimes you have to go clean up some swarm debris on a specific planet.   But the anomaly reconfigures its exit so that you are in the correct system when you undock and can just jet on over, do the mission, then come right back.

So I am good with those.

Then there are sabotage missions, the rewards for which are currently… not good for me.

Sabotage mission rewards

So if I do that mission my faction gets dinged… and so do the Royals.  Well, that isn’t any good.  So I have been declining to do those missions when they are configured like that.  They might change up with each mission cycle, but I don’t log in often enough to check because… they are not all that exciting to do.

They tend to be finding a corrupted terminal and flooding it with resource… nanites if you have nothing else, and the game GAVE you 10,000 nanites for a previous task, so you have the nanites… and then you’re done.

Then we get to the purge missions, which also are not incentivizing me very well.

Purge mission rewards

So if I do that the Weavers get the benefit.  These are usually pretty quick, undock and do some space combat.  But why would I do this?  I suppose there is the argument that it at least gets the milestone over.  However, Hello Games made this a competition so forget that I guess.

So the milestone keeps moving forward, slowly, without much help from me.

Countermeasures Progress

So I plug away… on two saves no less… doing something for the Sages when  I can.

My green outfit and green ship… go Sages I guess

That is, when I can remember to log in and do them.  After doing the initial two phases of this expedition my play time has tapered off significantly.

Related:

• Hello Games – The Swarm: Introducing Update 6.4
• Hello Games – The Swarm 6.41 patch
• Hello Games – The Swarm 6.42 patch
• Hello Games – The Swarm 6.43 patch
• Hello Games – The Swarm 6.44 patch
• Hello Games – The Swarm 6.45 patch
• Hello Games – The Galactic Atlas
• Reddit – NMS Swarm Expedition 22 In 2 HOURS – (Almost) Full Guide

Windrose – in Early Access

First, while it is my top title for time played so far this June, I am kind of playing at least five titles in rotation and my bandwidth for playing and blogging is generally about three titles deep… and one of those has to be EVE Online which, after more than 19 years, I have developed a pattern as to how I approach writing about it.  And EVE Online isn’t in the top three currently, so I end up with a bunch drafts queued up to work on, but then something else pops up and I realize a week later that I never quite got to a post or three.  It happens.  My routine is to try and get in one update post about any title I am playing regularly… and that hasn’t been working out.

Second, I have been a bit busy in real life.  June is always a chaotic month working for the state as the fiscal year starts on July 1 so we’re in the last minute budget/project planning cycle where I get a “what if we did this?” sort of question a few times a week… and always at the very end of the work day with a need for an answer by the morning.  Meanwhile, we have stuff in the air at home as well, so lots of distractions.

Finally though, I am also having a bit of trouble finding an angle to write about that interests me.  This is, in part, because if you pull back far enough Windrose falls into the co-op base building survival genre… the survival crafters as Tipa referred them the other day… and I’ve written about and played a lot of those over the last decade.  Valheim is the current prototypical title in the genre, but Minecraft counts as well, in addition to Enshrouded and Space Engineers and Astro Colony and Conan Exiles and probably a few others I am missing.  And that is keeping it to the private server crowd.  I could very easily argue that No Man’s Sky belongs in that list, or even Stars Reach in it current state, despite them being single universe titles, as they scratch the same itch.  So we I have only one post so far.

Yes, Windrose does have its own theme… pirates… in the Caribbean… but not “of,” because copyright, you know… and it is more quest/story driven than some of the titles in the genre, but there is also an underlying sameness that is making it feel somewhat less exciting than I might have expected.

Which is not to say that there isn’t some good stuff in the game.  I do like the bigger boat I ended up with after not too long into things.  You start with that bathtub sized craft, but quicky get sent to find a boat that has washed ashore, then need to round up some supplies to fix it and a crew to man it and then some cannons to mount on it, but once you’re there you are free to sail about.

The Cape Kvetch ready to… do things

The sailing is simplified.  Potshot setup the server so I am not sure of what the difficulty options are, but for us the wind doesn’t matter.  Unlike in Valheim, the wind is always strong and blowing at the optimum angle no matter which direction you are heading and you can set full sale and get your ship humming along to 19 knots, which is pretty fast in a world where you need to be really optimized for speed and racing to get much past 20 knots on wind alone.

And there are NPCs to fight, so you maneuver around to try and get a broadside hit on them.  If you batter them down sufficiently you can board… or you can just sink them and take whatever loot floats to the surface.  Boarding is more lucrative, but takes time.  Also, you have to keep an eye on how much damage your ship is taking and if you don’t have some repair supplies to hand, things can go badly for you.

Have you been gripped by a sinking feeling?

But then you go back to your base and put everything back together and carry on as before, because what good are you without a ship?

And for all the speed of you ship, 19 knots is still not very fast when measured against the size of even the abbreviated sea the game offers you, so you move by fast travel points, which exist at certain ports, or you can manufacture your own.

Meanwhile, content is gated through multiple progression paths.

There are levels… because why not?  Everybody loves levels?  Yes?  At least as a way to allocate attribute and skill points for your character, which impact how well you do in fighting on land or in boarding actions, and most of the progression combat is around that.

And then there is crafting, which follows the usual unlock patters when you find resources or recipes or just a thing in the world like a weapon, which once you have held it you can now craft it.

I struggled a bit with combat until Potshot pick up a halberd, a strength based pole arm with an AOE attack as you swing it, which helped me take on the multiple foes you run into.  Those dodos on the beach… they’ll totally gang up on you, so you need to be ready.

Weapons can be upgraded… need to be upgraded… to keep up with foes of increasing difficulty.  This past weekend we took a detour to an island and found it populated by level 12 creatures, which put them into the next tier of difficulty.  Even our weapons, upgraded as far as the first tier would get them, were not much good and we spend about 40 minutes getting our asses handed to us by three crabs and four undead.

Watch out, them crabs is murder

There are also guns, but guns of the period that are somewhat accurately modeled in that you get one shot and then have to fumble around to reload.  You also have to have gunpowder and shot to hand, though fortunately one size fits all so your pistol and your newly found musket have interchangeable ammo needs.

I avoided that complication for a while, preferring to close with my halberd and just smack things, until I picked up a musket with a bayonet.

If you’re close enough to stick ’em…

I started using that because it has a special thrust attack with the bayonet, in addition to being able to butt stroke mobs and shoot them at a distance.  Potshot has favored a blunderbuss up to now, which is a shotgun… but uses the same ammo at the same rate… so can sweep up a few mobs on an opposing deck if being a bit of a shorter ranged weapon.

Then there are boss fights.  The quest chain brought us up to face Thomas Richards, a no goodnik of some sort that had an MMORPG feel to the fight.

Specifically, when we first encountered him he was behind a gate.  We opened the gate and stepped in, which started him off, but I was standing in the doorway and an explosive attack knocked me out of the room just as the gate closed again to contain the fight, leaving Potshot solo for the first round.  He did not survive.  But we learned a few things about the fight, the first being to be in the freaking room so when the gate closes you’re not locked out.

Together, with the aid of health potions and bandaging (instant heals and heals over time) we were able to bring him down.

Richard Thomas has fallen, but he can get up if you use the shrine just outside the gate

That victory unlocked the foothills, which is the next biome, the ability to craft/upgrade past level 6, and opened up a couple of quests that led into this new area of the Caribbean.

That got us to some new locations with new resources that unlocked new upgrades and new things to build.

We have discover hardwood

Also, wolves… and goats.  Which kind of brings me up to date on where we are with Windrose.  Now to see if I can not fall behind again.

Fantasy Critic League – Like Fantasy Football, but for Video Games

But first a review of where we left off last time around.

Week 23 Scores

With that set… not much happened.  As the week opened up Gothic took a hit.

• Gothic 1 Remake
  • [Picked by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 72.5 to 71.5

Then as we arrived at the far end of the week, the one title we were exception, Beastro, arrived.

• Beastro has released!
  • [Picked by Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)]

You can find it over on Steam where it is listed as a rogue-like deck building casual cooking RPG or some such.  They might be abusing tags… or that might be what it is.  I am not sure.  Also the name and the logo seems to imply that you play as animals doing this.

Beastro

All fine I suppose.  I don’t need to understand every title that ships.  The problem is… it didn’t seem to get much attention.  It is on sale for under $10 to celebrate its launch and it has a “Very Positive” rating on Steam based on 164 reviews as of this writing.

But Open Critic hasn’t setup a page for it yet, while over on Metacritic is has a single review.  But at least it is listed.

So we’re waiting on that.  Maybe next week?

And then, as a bookend to the scoring portion of the week, Gothic took another hit.

• Gothic 1 Remake
  • [Picked by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 73.1 to 70.9

Clearly, this week wasn’t really about titles launching as scores shifted a bit, but the lineup on the scoreboard remained the same.

Week 24 Scores

What else can I add to that?

Then there was a bit this week.

• Bids in TAGN League
  • Lords of the Fallen II
    • Won by Green River Gaming (Nimgimli) with a bid of $12
    • Dropped game Witchbrook conditionally

So that was a thing.  Congrats to Nimgimli on the new choice.

All of which leaves us with the announcements that came out of Summer Game Fest at the beginning of the week.  There were a bunch.

Breaking this up, there were titles that got ship dates for this year.

• Deltarune Chapter 5
  • [Picked by Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)]
    • Release date changed from ‘2026’
    • to ‘Wednesday, June 24, 2026’
• Halo: Campaign Evolved
  • [Picked by TAGN HQ (Wilhelm)]
  • [Counter Picked by Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)]
    • Release date changed from ‘2026’
    • to ‘Tuesday, July 28, 2026’
• Big Walk
  • [Picked by S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)]
    • Release date changed from ‘2026’
    • to ‘Tuesday, August 04, 2026’
• Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
    • Release date changed from ‘2026’
    • to ‘Thursday, August 27, 2026’
• Orbitals
  • [Picked by Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)]
    • Release date changed from ‘Summer 2026’
    • to ‘Thursday, September 03, 2026’
• Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave
  • [Picked by Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)]
    • Release date changed from ‘2026’
    • to ‘Thursday, September 17, 2026’
• Valor Mortis
  • [Picked by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)]
    • Release date changed from ‘Fall 2026’
    • to ‘Thursday, September 24, 2026’
• Gears of War: E-Day
  • [Picked by S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)]
    • Release date changed from ‘2026’
    • to ‘Tuesday, October 06, 2026’
• Valor Mortis
  • [Picked by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)]
    • Release date changed from ‘Thursday, September 24, 2026’
    • to ‘Tuesday, October 13, 2026’
• Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse
  • [Picked by Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)]
    • Release date changed from ‘2026’
    • to ‘Thursday, October 15, 2026’

So all of that is now on the calendar.

Then there is one title that moved out to 2027.

• Persona 6
  • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
    • Estimated release date changed from ‘TBA’
    • to ‘2027 or Later’

I expect that will end up being dropped by Arhanta forthwith.

Finally, there is whatever this is.

• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake
  • [Picked by Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)]
    • Game name changed from Unannounced The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake.
    • Estimated release date changed from ‘Unannounced ‘ to ‘2026’.
    • Announcement date changed from ‘No Date’ to ‘Tuesday, June 09, 2026’.
    • Note removed: ‘This is completely unconfirmed speculation.’.
    • Note added: ‘This game’s final tag is still to be decided. The first teaser really did not give any indication of what to expect so we are deferring the decision by giving it two tags. Once we know more, one will be dropped. Consider this game 49.5% Reimagining, 49.5% Remake, and 1% Partial Remake. Partial Remake would really surprise me and that argument would have an uphill battle. But consider your league rules before you bid on this, and league managers, don’t forget that tags can be overridden.’.
    • Tags changed from Unannounced Game to Reimagining, Remake.

All of that and… maybe it will land in 2026?  We’re still not sure.

There was also nothing about the Unannounced Mainline 3D Mario Platformer during the Nintendo Direct that was part of the chain of announcements last week, so I’ll have to think about that.  It is also in some state of contention such that you cannot even counter pick it currently.  We shall see.

That leaves the next ten titles on the list looking like this.

Coming Up for Week 25

That gives us two title set to launch in week twenty-five, the Dave the Diver sequel and The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales.  And maybe Beastro will get some traction.

Related:

• TAGN Fantasy Critic League
• TAGN Discord Server
• Fantasy Critic Site
• Fantasy Critic How to Play
• Fantasy Critic FAQ
• Fantasy Critic Most Desired Reviews
• Open Critic Review Site

So we had a month with her around the house with her, during which she wanted to setup a game we could play together while she was away.  She had been playing Stardew Valley some over the winter and wanted to try doing a co-op game, that now being a thing with the game.

Stardew Valley Splash Screen

I was good with that.  However, she was keen to play on her Nintendo Switch Lite, which she had been using a lot more since graduation.  Since Stardew Valley doesn’t support any cross-platform connectivity… how much can you ask of a small game like that… I would have to play on the Switch as well.

But that wasn’t a problem either.  I got a Switch Lite of my own back in 2020, just before Covid shut everything down and sent us all home.  I have played a number of Pokemon titles on it.

So before she left I grabbed a copy of the game from the Nintendo store and we logged in and got ourselves into the same game.  It was simple enough.  I mean, I had to go turn on the Nintendo Switch Online service, an annual subscription which is required if you want to do any gaming with other people.  I had set that up back in the day, but had let it lapse a couple of years back.

With that in place and her added to the family plan… I had to kick a couple of her friends from high school that I had added during Covid so they could play, but she doesn’t hang out with them anymore…  we were able to connect and get started.

And that is where I ran into the problem.

I had played a bit of Stardew Valley on my PC.  I own it on Steam, of course.  And on the big monitor everything is fine.  However, transitioning that game to the Switch Lite and its wee 5.5 inch screen… big compared to the old GameBoy days, but tiny for game designed to run at 1080p… meant reading any of the text on screen was a challenge, even with my glasses on.

It wasn’t just the screen size that was an issue.  The brightness on my now six year old Switch Lite wasn’t great.  Add in the font choice in the game… it sets a tone on the big screen, but on a small screen it help turn words into a fuzzy mess for me… and this was going to be a bit of a chore.  Still, the game played well enough and we got ourselves setup with some farming started.

Then there was the week of the move down to San Diego.  But after that we setup some time on the following Sunday to play together.  We used out phones to talk and got ourselves together into the game and started off with her showing me the town and the surrounding area and doing a bit in the mines.

It went okay, largely with her guiding me… but it was really tough for me to read anything on screen still, and even distinguishing things once it was night time in the game, that was starting to give me a headache after an hour or so.  She had to run off about then, but we made plans to make this a recurring play time.

So on Monday morning my wife walked into my office to find me looking at Amazon; specifically, Switch 2 configurations.  That got a wry smile from her, though when I explained my issue she played the part of enabler and told me to just buy it.

Then she went off and I pondered it a bit more.  $450 for the base configuration still seemed like some money to me.  But then I checked our points balance… our credit card earns points that can be spent directly at Amazon and we use that card for all of my wife’s business expenses, so we do end up with points to spend… and saw I could knock a good $200 off the price.  For $250, well I wanted a Wii back in the day based on that price point alone.

And while I am not a huge fan of Bezos or Amazon as a place to work, they will absolutely get you a Switch 2 delivered to your door in a couple of hours for no extra cost.  At least if you’re a Prime member, and I am.  Yes, I am plugged into the Bezos industrial abuse complex.  They’ve got my number.

Anyway, I ordered that at 10am and by 2pm it was on the doorstep.  I set it up to transfer things over from my Switch Lite while I worked, which it mostly did without much need for attention from me, so by the time I was done with work it was all setup.

I then went out and setup the little dock, hooking it up to our TV, dropped the Switch 2 into it, and turned it on, and was off and running.

Stardew Valley on the TV

So there it is, as the title stated, on the TV.  And even sitting on the couch across the room I can read all of the text.  The screen is far enough away that I don’t even need my glasses.  My distance vision is fine, it is when things get close up that things get blurry.

I wasn’t really big on the joycon controllers hooked up to act like a game pad.

However, a while back I had ordered a new 8BitDo Bluetooth controller for my PC.  My old one, which I bought to play Forza Horizon 4 back in 2022 was still working fine, but it was a black controller with no labels on any of the buttons and… I don’t use the controller enough to remember the A B X Y layout.  So I bought one that had labels on the buttons, choosing one with a bit of a retro Nintendo look.  It was the model as my black one, because that had been working so well.

The 8BitDo Controller style

In the image above, my original one is on the left (only the one here on my desk doesn’t even have those tiny button labels) and the new one I bought is in the middle.  I didn’t want to go back to the Famicom level of retro look like the one on the right.

However, because I cannot remember the A B X Y button layout, I didn’t notice until I had it that when I connect to my PC to use the controller with Steam it defaults to the XBox layout, which is NOT THE SAME as the Nintendo layout.

That got some real “How can ace be 1 AND 11! What kind of god would allow that?” level of reaction from me.  So I put the new controller on the shelf… until I had the Switch 2 setup.  Then I realized I had a use for it.

I had to update the firmware on the new controller… the most annoying part of that was finding a USB classic to USB-C cable because nearly every outlet or power brick in our house only has a classic USB socket… but once that was done I was able to sync it to the Switch 2.

I still have to start up the Switch 2 with the joycon controller, but once it is up and active the new controller gives a rumble and is active.

So I am ready for some Stardew Valley with our daughter tomorrow.

Also, I have a new console.

I might have to find something else to play on it.

• EverQuest Legends Pre-Orders Arrive Next Week
  • EQL – EverQuest Legends Pre-Order, Coming June 16, 2026!

EverQuest Legends, that new look at the old world of Norrath, which totally did not steal the idea from The Heroes Journey, is going to be available for pre-order next week.

EverQuest Legends

Announced back in late March, this is the next step on the way to the launch of the game, so here are a few more bullet points to cover key dates in this process:

• June 16, 2026 – Pre-orders go live
• July 1, 2026 – Beta for pre-order customers begins
• July 21, 2026 – Beta for pre-orders ends
• July 28, 2026 – EverQuest Legends launches

These dates are all subject to change, but that is the current plan.

I have no interest in giving them money early, nor paying to be in their beta, but might take a look once we get to launch day.

The game itself will cost $19.99 and require a $10 a month subscription to play, but you will get one month of subscription time with the initial purchase.

I am sure I’ll be writing more about EverQuest Legends later.

• The Wuoshi TLE Server Goes Live in EverQuest II 
  • Daybreak – Wuoshi Server is open!

The latest EverQuest II time locked expansion server, Wuoshi, went live earlier this week.

The Wuoshi TLE Server coming June 9

The latest in an ever growling line of such special servers, the best thing I can say about it is that at least it isn’t another attempt to relive those few glimmering moments when PvP briefly worked for the game.

The server starts off at the 2007 Echoes of Faydwer expansion and will end when it hits the 2018 Chaos Descending expansion.  Expansions will unlock every three months, which will give this server an eight year life span, if it lasts that long.  There is always the hazard of the player base dropping off such that Daybreak closes it down early.  There is a new server every year and the base of players interested in such servers is considerably smaller than that of its older sibling, EverQuest.

The is a FAQ list included with the announcement that strays into passive-aggressive territory as it clarifies that the answer to just about everything is “no.”  And, as always, you have to be a Daybreak All Access Subscriber to play on special servers.

Meanwhile, as Bhagpuss notes, the EverQuest II team is getting into their usual summer rhythm of events on the live servers.

• Destiny 2 Winding Down
  • Bungie – Destiny 2: Every End is a New Beginning
  • Massively OP – Destiny 2 enters maintenance mode after its final update
  • Massively OP – Destiny 2’s Monument of Triumph launch sees huge player surge

I played neither Destiny nor Destiny 2, though at one point Activision was involved with it and… did the original get advertised on the WoW launcher at one point, or is my brain just making that up?  Also, there was that whole Bungie’s seven pillars of design philosophy, one of the series of “design pillars” posts I have indulged in over the years.

Anyway, Destiny 2 represented some sort of break with Activision if I recall right, and was also available on Windows and, while not what one might consider an MMORPG strictly speaking, it was an multiplayer online title with character progression and other adjacent features that helps blur the line between our attempts to divide things up into nice neat categories.

Destiny 2

Anyway, after eight years Bungie has decided to wind things down, delivering the last major content update for the game and everybody who had a good time and then moved on is suddenly feeling that misty eyed nostalgia for that title they once played, causing the Steam concurrent count for the game to pass that of the Marathon remake, Bungie’s latest outing.

So it goes.

• XBox Woes and Was Activision Blizzard Worth the Price?
  • Ars Technica –  Xbox leaders lay out “hard truths” behind sagging brand
  • Game Developer – Xbox CEO unsure whether Activision Blizzard merger is paying off
  • Game Developer – MSFT to pay $250M to settle lawsuit filed by aggrieved Activision Blizzard shareholders
  • WCCFTech – Microsoft CEO Says Xbox Must Finally Become a Sustainable Business
  • Massively OP – Xbox’s ‘reset’ will reportedly mean layoffs

When Asha Sharma replaced Phil Spencer as the head of Microsoft Games back in March, it didn’t seem like Phil would have a new position within the organization.  But it was revealed this week that he does, and that position is under the bus, where he has been thrown in repeated interviews.

Public post on March 5, 2026… I didn’t have an XBox logo handy to insert here

Not that he doesn’t deserve it.  Phil oversaw a massive expansion of the division, massive acquisitions, a massive price increase for the XBox Game Pass, and then massive layoffs as his optimism turned to ashes as the video game market began to crash out post Covid.  (Obligatory Matt Ball State of Video Gaming presentation for 2026 link.)  That is kind of his legacy now, and in hindsight it ain’t great.

I will grant that isn’t all his fault, and Asha hasn’t been overtly hanging Phil out to dry, but when asked in an interview if the Activision Blizzard acquisition was a good idea her response was equivocal at best.  Given that was a Phil era crown jewel, it is a bit of a slap in the face that the answer wasn’t an enthusiastic affirmative.

And that was before the deal ended up costing them another $250 million. (This was said to be Bobby Kotick’s fault, but in America rich guys face no consequences, so MSFT shareholders will end up paying.)

So Asha out there saying that things aren’t great… I am not sure if she has opened up the first envelope (which will tell her to blame her predecessor) quite yet, but it sure feels like she is getting there.

The word is that XBox is running at a 3% profit margin… so don’t put Phil in the box with Lars Wingefors just yet, because they aren’t running at a loss… yet… but the goal at Microsoft is for all divisions to be running at a 30% profit margin.

Asha is no doubt feeling the pressure to close that gap and it sure seems like the easiest way to get there is to continue Phil’s legacy and lay off a bunch more people.  Traditionally the second envelope, once opened, says to reorganize, but I feel like “do layoffs” has supplanted that.  We shall see.

• Steam Retail Gift Cards Going Away
  • Game Developer – Valve confirms it won’t restock Steam Gift Cards
  • Ars Technica – Valve kills its retail gift card program due to scammers
  • Federal Trade Commission – Avoiding and Reporting Gift Card Scams

This one is kind of odd to me.  Valve announced that they won’t be restocking Steam retail gift cards, the ones you see on that big rack at Safeway or Walmart or Best Buy, due to scammers I wondered what scam was involved.  What new twist could possible cause Valve to dump this particular money making vector?

Steam Logo

But there was, in fact, no new twist.  This was the same old thing that has been going on for many years where online scammers will try to sell you goods or services in exchange for the code off of Google Play or iTunes or, apparently, Steam gift cards.

I’ve linked the FTC advisory about this scam as well, mostly because I was surprised we have any interest in consumer protections these days.  The current theme of the administration is promoting an era of “grab all you can, we’re not going to stop you.”  But these scams tend to be run overseas, so maybe overt racism has kept this notice in place.

How it goes is that gramps gives somebody the code online, they disappear, gramps then complains to Google, Apple, or Valve causing a customer support burden.

While this seems pretty cut and dried… you politely tell gramps he is an idiot… Valve apparently did the math and decided that they were better off just not having retail gift cards.  Color me surprised.

They aren’t going to recall any gift cards, and gift cards will continue to be valid for many years, they just aren’t going to put anymore on the retail shelves.  (Also, you can still buy virtual gift cards on Steam, but you can’t put those in a birthday card to your awful nephew, now can you?)

This means when gramps gives little Bobby some cash for Christmas, Bobby won’t be able to run down to the Piggly Wiggly to turn that into a gift card so he can buy Bonestorm XXVII on Steam as Valve expects retail gift cards to have dried up by the holidays.