Hi, I’m Jeff and welcome to the The Geek Dojo Weekly for the week of May 20th 2021! This is a weekly video games newsletter featuring my top stories of the week.
Returnal may get a save feature, Summer Games Fest is ready to roll, and free Palestine! Let’s get into the news.
IGN Management Pulls Article Supporting Palestine Aid Groups, IGN Staff responds
IGN editorial staff came together and posted an article with ways to support Palestine, earlier this week. The article originally went up on May 15th and was taken down without IGN’s editorial staff’s permission on May 16th. A public statement from IGN was not given until the early morning hours of May 17th. The content was removed because it was, “not in-line with our intent of trying to show support for all people impacted by tragic events. By highlighting only on population, the post mistakenly left the impression that we were politically aligned with one side.”
This enraged IGN’s editorial staff and they responded with an open letter over on Medium.
“We, the undersigned employees of IGN, are appalled by the recent management decision to subvert our editorial autonomy and remove our post directing aid to the Palestinian civilians currently suffering a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.”
The letter goes on to explain what happened prior to the post being taken down.
“This decision to take down the post was made a day and a half after it was published. The takedown took place in the early hours of the morning on a weekend with no communication to its initial authors, the general IGN staff, or to the public as to why it happened. IGN’s editorial team has guidelines about updating content deemed needful of changes, something that we’ve done multiple times in the past — but wholesale removal of pieces without posting an explanatory statement is expressly against our usual policy.”
Later, the IGN staff goes on to call out their parent companies J2 Global and Ziff Davis.
“We, the undersigned, are calling for an all-hands meeting that includes IGN upper management and anyone at J2 Global or Ziff Davis who had a hand in the decision, by the end of the week, in which we would like full transparency about the reasoning and process behind the post’s removal. We ask that the management body responsible for the decision accept that responsibility publicly. We ask that management recognize IGN’s editorial authority and autonomy with regards to what it publishes, regardless of whether that work is news, reviews, features, guides, video content, or promotion of initiatives our staff feels are important, such as issue awareness or charitable support. While we want to make sure all voices on our team — IGN management included — feel able to weigh in on what we say as a site and how we say it, we are adamant that corporate leadership does not get the final word in editorial decisions.”
The letter has been signed by over 50 IGN staff members. You can read the letter in its entirety here.
Since then IGN staff have taken it upon themselves to spread awareness on their own Twitter accounts. It is pretty disheartening to see something like this happen. The IGN staff wanted to make people aware of what’s happening and how to help. To have a upper management remove that without notice is maddening. I recommend you educate yourself on what is going on. Innocent people are losing their lives for no reason at all. Go to https://savepalestine.carrd.co/ for ways to support Palestine. #FREEPALESTINE
Housemarque is Investigating a Save Feature for Returnal
Returnal is an incredible sci-fi horror roguelite, but the only downside is there not being any way to save your progress. Like most roguelite games, when you die, you are sent back to the beginning of the level then you can start your run all over again and hope you make it further than you did last time. The only issue with Returnal is runs can take hours upon time to complete. For example, you are playing after dinner and you make it very far into the game. After about an hour and a half you want to go wind down for bed, but you do not want to give up on this fantastic run. Outside of putting your system into rest mode, there is no way to save your progress from the exact point you made it to. Rest mode is fine, but if the game updates automatically, you can lose your run that way as well. According to Housemarque’s marketing director, Mikael Haveri, he hears our feedback. “We understand that there are some systems in place that are currently a hindering factor.” The team is actively looking into a solution for this issue, but we should not expect a fix any time soon. “But currently, we just don’t know exactly what it is. So it’s very difficult to announce anything, because I think there’s a lot of different people looking for different things,” Haveri states.
As I’ve stated before, I do really enjoy the game. It’s a punishing game, but each moment will keep you on the edge of your seat. In the beginning I didn’t think it needed a save option, because it is a roguelite, but the more I play, I honestly think it could use some sort of checkpoint system, at the very least. There have been many times I have wanted to stop playing to go playin something else, or to just go to bed. I do hope Housemarque can figure out a solution because many would appreciate it.
Summer Games Fest 2021 Reveals its Partner Lineup
Summer Games Fest will begin on June 10th with a live kickoff. Geoff Keighley promises there will be pretty of world premier showcases. There will even be a performance by Weezer. Sega, Ubisoft, Capcom, PlayStation, Xbox an more will all be included. Live streams for the event will begin at 11am PT/2 pm ET / 6pm BST.
I am pretty interested to see what gaming news Summer Games Fest brings. I assume most of the information we get will also be at E3. In the tweet, there is no information on when the even will end so this leads me to assume this will be an all summer thing, comparable to last year’s event. Either way, this kicks off a couple of days before E3 so that week will be loaded with plenty of new games reveals.
Noteworthy:
New Mario Golf: Super Rush Trailer: Nintendo YouTube channel
The 5 minute trailer shows off Speed Golf, Battle Golf, and the Golf Adventure mode.
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Details: Game Informer
The next expansion launches on Nov. 23rd and will feature a new Reaper class.
GTA 5 and GTA Online come to next gen this Fall: Polygon
The PS5 and Xbox Series X versions launch on Nov. 11th. There will be more surprises as well.
The Last of Us Part 2 gets a PS5 update: The Verge
Patch 1.08 introduces 60FPS and faster load times.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD Remake locks fast travel behind an amiibo: Game Informer
Yeah, you read that right.
My Video Game Playlist
Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town: I started this game this past week and I am having a blast. This entry definitely has some quality of life changes that improve it over the last entry. I no longer feel like I have to rush to sell products, which is a huge plus. Also, this entry introduces ways to improve the town you live in. I’m still pretty early in the game so we will see what that has in store. All in all, this game has me addicted. It’s very charming, chill, and relaxing. If you enjoy this series, and games like Stardew Valley, I highly recommend it.
Scavengers: Scavengers is a new F2P, PVP/PVE, early access battle royale game. It does do things a bit differently. In this post apocalyptic frozen earth. You and your team must stay within the eye of the storm (the circle), and scavenge for materials to make items and weapons. You main objective is to gather valuable data to upload to the Sanctuary AI protector, known as Mother. On your journey you will run in many enemies, some AI or other players. After a certain amount of time, the mothership will appear to take you off of the planet, but beware as you will run in to many other players out to kill you as well. I am having a great time with it. It is slightly buggy and laggy, but it is an early access title. It should be great once the bugs are ironed out.
Notable Releases:
Tuesday, May 18th
SnowRunner – Switch
Days Gone – PC
Wednesday, May 19th
Aerial Knight’s Never Yield – Switch
Thursday, May 20th
Grindstone : PC
Layers of Fear 2 – Switch
Friday, May 21st
Miitopia – Switch
Rust – PS4, Xbox One
My Pick of the Week:
May 21st: Knockout City – PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Catch me every week on The Skill Tree: A Gaming Podcast
Madness (Episode 17) – The Skill Tree (A Gaming Podcast)
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