- The Guardian has *Stop Killing Games* on the docket today, and it is the cleanest consumer-rights item in the medium: people are tired of buying games that can be remotely executed when the publisher gets bored. Inclusion is nice. Preservation is nicer. Hard to feel represented in a game that no longer exists.

- The EU response is apparently not full legal salvation, but it is movement: codes of conduct, digital-fairness talk, end-of-life plans, the dead game dragged into the committee room. Good. The industry needs adult supervision because the industry keeps proving it cannot be trusted with the toys.

- California’s Protect Our Games bill is also part of the story. Imagine that. A purchased game should remain meaningfully playable. A radical idea, apparently, in an industry where the customer owns a license, the server owns the corpse, and the publisher owns the off switch.

- GTA VI preorders begin June 25, with the launch still pointed at November 19.

- Xbox remains the sick man. Ninja Theory is reportedly being closed unless a buyer saves it. The Hellblade studio. The prestige studio. The “look, Xbox has art too” studio. Asha Sharma’s Xbox has discovered that prestige is lovely until it asks to remain employed.

- The Sharma machinery is almost too clean. Gen X Phil sold the dream in hoodie form. The new regime sells discipline in enterprise form. Out goes the console dad language. In comes the operator class. Portfolio health. Reset. Sustainability. The words around Games, spoken with no visible hunger for Games.

- The brutal elegance is that Xbox now feels led by people who know every noun adjacent to gaming and none of the old verbs. Acquire. Align. Optimize. Reset. Exit. They do not need the couch. They do not need the disc. They do not need the night. They need the model to stop bleeding.

- Xbox’s Juneteenth contribution to inclusion is apparently making sure every kind of beloved studio can be equally terrified. Art studio. Weird studio. Boutique studio. Narrative studio. Everybody gets a seat at the table, then the table is sold.

- Nintendo gets no holiday Reprieve. Switch 2 still needs Games. Not reverence. Not museum lighting. Not Ocarina incense. Games. Nintendo has the most loyal congregation in the industry and keeps testing whether the congregation will clap for the reliquary instead of the miracle.

- Today’s release calendar is almost offensively on-theme: Thank You For Your Application hits PC. Perfect title. The whole industry in five words. Thank you for your application. Thank you for your passion. Thank you for your years at Ninja Theory. Thank you for making the prestige object. Unfortunately, after careful review, the position of “having a studio” has been eliminated.

- The rest of the calendar is basically yesterday’s tail and next week’s promise. *R-Type Tactics*, *The Adventures of Elliot*, and the smaller June items are still doing the useful work below the big stage. Specific games. Specific audiences. Specific nouns. Not everything needs to become a metaverse annex with a heritage-month splash screen.

- There remain few games where you actually play as a nigger except GTA SA, Shadow Man, and GTA5 sometimes, also NBA 2K

- Price Watch: *Clair Obscur: Expedition 33* is $39.99 on Steam today and still roughly in the sane mid-price zone elsewhere; *Silksong* remains $19.99 digital across the major platform story. One looks like ambition with a budget. The other looks like restraint with teeth. your move, AAA.

- Indie remains a Reprieve. Not holy. Not pure. Not immune from slop. But it can still be cheaper, stranger, less laundered, less dead-eyed. It can still put the author in the room. It can still make inclusion feel like someone’s life instead of someone’s slide.

The Absolute State: Juneteenth Edition. AAA is inclusive enough to post, not healthy enough to protect the people making the work. Xbox has No Games and now fewer studios. Nintendo has the congregation and still owes them miracles. GTA VI is coming to collect the tithe. The dead games want legal rights. The small games keep breathing. Gaming is Grim, but the Reprieve keeps slipping through the cracks.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5875514&forum_id=2betting#49948091)