I'd write that out for you, but I don't think the website would appreciate having to display its more than 41 million digits. Don't worry, though: I downloaded the 18.3 MB .txt file recording Durant's discovery and everything seems to be in order, as I'm sure you'll agree:

If you want to pore over all those digits yourself, 2^136,279,841-1 is available for download in its entirety from The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, or GIMPS, a 28-year-old website that looks exactly like you would imagine. GIMPS provides free software that attempts to calculate numbers in a rare category of prime numbers called Mersenne primes.

If it's been too long since the relevant math class: A prime number is any number that's only divisible by 1 and itself. Mersenne primes, meanwhile, are even more unique, being prime numbers that are one less than a power of 2.

If you're wondering how you even discover a prime number in the first place, it's a matter of verification. Sure, if you just mash a bunch of digits out on your keyboard, there's a chance it might be a prime number—but you'd have to calculate whether it's divisible by any smaller number to prove it. Unsurprisingly, the amount of necessary calculation skyrockets as the number of digits in the potential prime number increases.

And Durant's newly-discovered Mersenne prime, which according to GIMPS is over 16 million digits larger than the previous prime number record, took a hell of a lot of computing. While using "thousands of server GPUs, spanning 24 datacenter regions over 17 countries" to identify potential primes with GIMPS, an Nvidia A100 GPU in Dublin, Ireland scored big when it identified 2^136,279,841-1 as a potential candidate.

Of course, then it had to be verified, which required further calculations through a battery of primality tests on different hardware platforms. But the results are clear—to some mathematicians somewhere, I'm sure. I'll take their word for it.

Durant's discovery marks the first time GIMPS cloud computing has been used for the discovery of a Mersenne prime. Durant's network of number-crunching GPUs, GIMPS says, "ends the 28-year reign of ordinary personal computers finding these huge prime numbers."

According to GIMPS, Durant decided to undertake the Mersenne prime search as a "demonstration that GPUs can be used for more than AI." While I'm sure prime numbers aren't quite the investor buzzword that AI's been the last couple years, I admire the motivation regardless.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is quite good. PC Gamer's Mollie Taylor felt it was dragged down by a very slow start, calling it "a slow burn to a fault" in an overall positive review, and it holds an enviable 86 aggregate score on Metacritic. Despite that, Ubisoft recently confirmed that the development team has been scattered to the four winds to work on "other projects that will benefit from their expertise."

This, Douse feels, is at least partially the outcome of Ubisoft's focus on subscriptions over conventional game sales—the whole "feeling comfortable with not owning your game" thing espoused by Ubisoft director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay earlier this year—and the decision to stop releasing games on Steam, which is far and away the biggest digital storefront for PC gaming.

"The last notable game on their platform was arguably Far Cry 6 in 2021," Douse posted on X (via GamesRadar). "The Crew, Mirage and Avatar came in 2023 and didn’t perform, so you can assume subscriptions were at a lull when PoP released by 2024. Which means people wouldn’t be launching their store all too much.

"If it had released on Steam not only would it have been a market success, but there would likely be a sequel because the team are so strong. It’s such a broken strategy. The hardest thing is to make a 85+ game—it is much, much easier to release one. It just shouldn’t be done as it was."

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown did eventually come to Steam, but not until August 8, seven months after its initial release. It's been as well received there as elsewhere, holding a very positive user rating, but that far down the road the proverbial wind was out of its sails, and decisions about a sequel (and the fate of the dev team) were presumably already locked in.

"If the statement 'gamers should get used to not owning their games' is true because of a specific release strategy (sub above sales), then the statement 'developers must get used to not having jobs if they make a critically acclaimed game' (platform strategy above title sales) is also true, and that just isn’t sensible—even from a business perspective," Douse wrote.

Ubisoft has arguably seen the error of its ways to some extent. After years of keeping PC releases to its own storefront and the Epic Games Store, Ubisoft's games began trickling back to Steam in 2022. It announced a wholesale return to the storefront in September, saying that all future releases, including the delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows, will launch on Steam on day one.

It's worth remembering that even when you purchase games on Steam, you don't really "own" them in the traditional sense: You are paying for a license to use them, and that can be taken away from you at any time, for any number of reasons. But, with all due respect to GOG, Steam is where most PC gamers buy their stuff, and in the digital marketplace that now dominates PC gaming, that license agreement is de facto ownership. Publishers avoid the storefront at their peril.

Which isn't to say a Steam release would've ensured a long, bright future of togetherness and sequels for The Lost Crown dev team: It's also available on PlayStation 4 and PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch, which seemingly didn't add up to stellar sales. But Douse said it was an ideal fit for the Steam storefront and Steam Deck, and being there would've given it a better chance at finding an audience than not being there: "It can’t resonate with an audience it doesn’t reach because it isn’t on a platform at the right moment."

"For premium games Steam on PC is about 90%+ of your total sales on that platform, probably slightly lower if you own your own platform," he wrote. "If you remove the Steam platform at peak of relevance you’re removing 90% average of your potential audience. Quite substantial."

Douse isn't the only Larian stalwart to feel this way: In January, Larian founder Swen Vincke said "it's going to be a lot harder to get good content if subscription becomes the dominant model" because that will leave subscription service owners as the final arbiter of which games do and don't get made. That's maybe a debatable point, but the bottom line, Vincke said, is this: "You won't find our games on a subscription service."

Sarah Elmaleh, an actor and union negotiator, said at the time that "eighteen months of negotiations have shown us that our employers are not interested in fair, reasonable AI protections, but rather flagrant exploitation".

The strike has been proceeding apace according to the union, which shared some good news via an update posted to its website earlier this week: "On the eve of the scheduled resumption of negotiations on the video game contract, SAG-AFTRA has announced that more than 120 games from 49 companies have now signed the union’s tiered-budget or interim agreements.

"Significantly, these contracts contain the same common-sense, foundational A.I. protections that SAG-AFTRA members are asking for in the Interactive Media Agreement—demonstrating that the provisions are fair and achievable, and providing employment opportunities to members during the work stoppage."

Elameh also made a statement, included in the update: "Humane protections for actors against AI exploitation are not an unreasonable ask—and the success of these contracts shows that most companies agree. They are happy to embrace fundamental, ethical guidelines around this tool—alongside equitable accommodation of it—in order to collaborate with professional talent. And talent are likewise eager and delighted to partner with companies that respect them."

While some proponents of AI technology might oppose such measures—such as the boss of Amazon Games who, staggeringly, claimed that videogames "don't really have acting" in them—AI is incredibly unpopular amongst the people actually doing the work these models tend to scrape.

Baldur's Gate 3's cast, who've produced some of the industry's best recent work, for example, expressed revulsion at the whole situation back in April: "I went on to this stream because somebody gave me a heads up, and I went on and heard my own voice reading rape porn," narrator Amelia Tyler stated, adding that the technology was "stealing not just my job but my identity".

As for the present day, some participating actors took to Twitter to celebrate the news of a slow-and-steady win. Kit Harrison, who's worked in games like Genshin Impact, SMITE, and Baldur's Gate 3, writes: "Turning down game opportunities during the strike has stung a lot. But as [SAG-AFTRA] re-enters negotiations with this many projects already signed to the new agreement, hopefully my voice is enough among the many to strike a fair deal."

I'm glad to hear the news, myself. I don't think I've heard a single piece of AI voice acting I've actually been charmed by or moved by, but that's beside the point—this technology's ability to defer its theft-with-more-steps has led to some truly ghoulish behaviour, like putting three imaginary zoomers on the radio with the resurrected voice of a dead nobel prize winner, or deepfaking voice actors into NSFW mods without their consent. The law will drag its heels catching up on stopping exploitation, but in the meanwhile, I'm glad the people who bring character and life to our games are getting a say.

Twitch streamer and virtual YouTuber Sykkuno greeted Sanders in his anime avatar moments after he joined the stream and explained why he wasn't on camera like the others, which included host AustinShow and popular streamer Pokimane.

"Do you know what a vtuber is?" Sykkuno asked. There wasa brief moment of awkward silence before Sykkuno repeated the question: "Have you heard of a vtuber before?"

"Nope," Bernie admitted.

"No? I'm the first one! Thank you for supporting vtubers!" Sykkuno exclaimed while AustinShow tried to move the show forward.

Sanders smiled and told him he's "looking very good."

The short exchange was a treat in an hour-long Q&A where Sykkuno, Pokimane, Valkyrae, and Mark Hamill asked Sanders about politics and the upcoming election. They covered topics like his support for Harris, the conflict in Gaza, and U.S. healthcare. After Sanders made his departure, the conversation continued for another two hours with more guests, including Hank Green and Mark Cuban.

But Sanders stumbling into vtuber 101 was the most popular thing clipped out of the stream and shared all over social media. It's not every day you get to see an 83-year-old senator talk politics with a messy-haired catboy in a hoodie. And the meetup felt reflective of, if not a bit more genuine than, the Harris campaign's recent tactics to appeal to young voters. Brat Summer may be over, but Catboy Fall is here.

"This might be the funniest moment in American political history to date," X user therealpanzer posted with a screenshot of the guests lined up on the Discord video call.

I'm never going to get over the absurdity of seeing a still shot of human faces joined by a single vtuber. Even after their explosive popularity on Twitch and YouTube during the pandemic, vtubers haven't shaken all the novelty off. But we're getting there: Pink-haired vtuber Ironmouse recently became the most subscribed-to Twitch streamer ever with over 320,000 subscribers earlier this month. I'm certain Sanders won't be the last politician we see talking live on Twitch with an anime character, and I'm here for it.

The topic goes back further than social media, but the first time I remember everyone having an opinion on price and length was Gone Home in 2013—a time when indie games had started to command a lot of respect in the industry, but before we'd gotten used to the idea of paying $20+ for story-heavy games that only last a couple of hours. A few years later, The Order 1886 sparked a few headlines defending its six-hour campaign at $60. Last year, our review of Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart caught some heat for highlighting its short runtime and premium price as a negative.

Holding game devs to a strict dollar/hour ratio is obviously not a sensible idea. That's a recipe for mediocre videogames, and arguably the line of thinking that's led to a generation of padded-out open world games that would've benefited from smaller maps and fewer crafting systems. It's understandable that the most plugged-in videogame enjoyers emphasize artistry and meaning and think less about extracting value from a product.

And yet, I think about game length constantly. I can't help it. Every time I hover over the Add to Cart button on Steam, I consider how long this $40, $60, or $70 game will last. I gravitate toward singleplayer games with lots of systems that take dozens of hours to explore to the fullest. I get giddy when replay value is baked into game design and entranced by competitive shooters with hundreds of hours of depth.

It's not like I check every game's HowLongtoBeat page before clicking buy, but when I put all my favorite genres in a lineup—immersive sims, stealth games, multiplayer FPSes, co-op shooters, open world action RPGs—clearly I appreciate a ravenous hours-eater. As good as they may be, I struggle more to justify picking up short adventure games with positive buzz like The Invincible ($30) or Indika ($25), and I'm tired of feeling sheepish about it.

The good kind of value

As much as I prefer to celebrate sexier accomplishments like The Invincible's gorgeous planet or Indika's blending of 2D and 3D horror, if I'm honest with myself, how much time I get out of a game is part of my calculus for how "good" it is. I think it is for a lot of people, whether we think about it in those terms or want to admit it.

Complaining that a game costs too much for its length is gauche, yet no one complains when a cheap game is praised for being a great value. Every conversation about Vampire Survivors I've ever witnessed has, at some point, touched on how wild it is that the standout indie hit of 2022 was only $5. That goodwill has carried into positive reviews of its multiple expansions that commend Poncle for packing so much more game into $2.50 packages.

This year people are saying similar things about Helldivers 2, a $40 co-op shooter that's refreshing simply for having a lot of meat on the bone at launch, and Balatro, the poker roguelite that consumed my entire month of June. Balatro is genius for a hundred reasons, but I remember reaching a new level of appreciation for it after hitting the 12 hour mark, discovering there were still dozens of Joker cards to unlock, and thinking, "All of this for $15?" Terraria has now offered 13 years of free updates for just $10.

Maybe my reluctance to pony up the dough for short games is really just an expression of preference for games made up of systems and rules, which can be entertaining forever, over ones that rely on writing, dialogue, and cutscenes enjoyed over an afternoon or two.

It's a testament to PC gaming's unmatched diversity that these entirely different approaches to videogames are in competition. The digital store where I bought Teardown, a one-of-a-kind puzzle sandbox game that I've had 70 hours of fun in, is the same store where I bought Immortality, a one-of-a-kind 6-hour mystery game, for the same price. I don't regret picking up either, but as someone who's eager to stretch my videogame budget as far possible, only one of those purchases felt like a steal.

Occasionally, a narrative game is so exceptional that hour count is the last thing on my mind: I picked up Disco Elysium for $40 on the back of buzz and now it's in an exclusive club of games I've replayed three times.

Quantity is quality, at least sometimes. A great game that's also cheap triggers the same rush I get when I find a killer deal on my favorite shampoo, like I've discovered some sort of capitalism loophole where good things can also be affordable. Rolling credits on an expensive game that kept me occupied for two days reminds me of why I don't frequent the local sandwich shop that charges $17 for half subs that are good, but always leave me hungry. Of course, my partner loves that place because their sandwiches are just the right size for her. Such is the variety of human experience. If we're going to think more of games that give us more than we paid for, it's fair to be disappointed by ones that are smaller than we hoped.

Actually, we're going to get it for the 42nd time, because the Golden Joysticks will be back this November 21, live from London. What's more, the show has revealed its host. None other than Ben Starr (FF16's Clive, dater of summons) will be on stage to guide us through proceedings at this year's event, which also makes it a great opportunity to generate exciting new memes of his face.

If you somehow missed voting for the awards opening at the start of this month, then good news: You can still make your voice heard. You can still get your votes in until Friday, November 1. If you want to put down a selection for the Ultimate Game of the Year—probably the most important vote you'll cast in 2024—then you'll be able to do that between November 4 and November 8. 8.4 million have already been cast, after all. You'd better get in there and fight for what's right if you haven't already.

This one's gonna be a banger. Alongside Ben Starr, the event will have guest presenters like Alex McKenna (Sadie from RDR2), Alix Wilton Regan (Joanna Dark from Perfect Dark), Neil Newbon (your beloved Baldur's Gate 3 vampire boy, Astarion) and Patricia Summersett (Princess Zelda from, uh, Zelda). Plus, Monika Janowska from CDPR and actor, game developer and producer Abubakar Salim will pop their heads in (AC: Origins' Bayek and bona fide House of the Dragon telly star).

And those are just the guests that have been announced. So why not spend your November 21 celebrating videogames and seeing if anyone comes away with a Swen Vincke-style armful of trophies this year? You know you want to.

Word of the change came from Bridget O'Neill, formerly the senior director of Creative Studios at Bungie, now the senior director of Creative at PlayStation Studios, who said on LinkedIn (via Game Developer) that her team "is joining PlayStation Studios to build the foundation for a creative team that can support all PlayStation live service games."

"This opportunity to share our experience working on Bungie titles with other studios that are building live service games is so exciting," O'Neill wrote.

"Live service is hard and comes with a unique set of challenges, so with PlayStation and Bungie working together we will be able to give a huge jumpstart on development for new games as they enter this super competitive market."

Despite the move, O'Neill said the team will also continue working on Destiny 2 and Marathon.

In some ways, the change has been a long time coming. Sony's acquisition of Bungie in 2022 was driven in part by a desire for "the expertise and technology that Bungie has developed in the live game services space," which Sony wanted to incorporate in its own studios. Bungie's influence was subsequently seen in the decision to delay, and eventually cancel, a Last of Us multiplayer game after Bungie, which had been asked to give the game a look-see, expressed doubts about its viability.

But the bloom's been off Bungie's rose for a while now. PlayStation chairman Hiroki Totoki expressed irritation with Bungie leadership earlier this year, saying he wanted to see more "accountability" for development budgets and schedules, and when Bungie announced the layoff of 220 employees in July, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons announced that another 155 employees, representing about 12% of the studio's employees, would be moved to Sony. Another "incubation project" at Bungie is also being spun off into a new PlayStation studio, separate from Bungie.

Apart from all that, though, I think it's fair to say that PlayStation could probably use an experienced guiding hand for its live service games. After shooting itself in the foot by refusing to back off on a PlayStation Network requirement for Helldivers 2 until the maximum possible damage was done, it absolutely clanged it with Concord, an online shooter that may have been the most DOA videogame of all time.

Despite its catastrophic failure, a Concord comeback could be in the works, and if so that makes the timing of the announcement interesting—bringing it back as a videogame people actually find appealing might be just the sort of thing O'Neill and her team could help with.

Now Twitch has banned a group of Middle Eastern streamers for "hateful conduct," and for one month each, even longer than Asmongold. The reason for the bans isn't entirely clear, but it apparently centres around a tier list ranking streamers from "Arab" to "loves Sabra", an American and Israeli-owned hummus brand.

The ranking was part of a TwitchCon panel hosted by Twitch partner Frogan on September 21, who said it was all about "who has a habibi pass" (habibi is Arabic for "my love"). This was subsequently picked up by Ethan Klein of h3h3Productions, a streamer and advocate for Israel, who posted a video titled "Twitch Has a Major Problem" claiming the panel was "kinda Arab good, Jew bad" and that the Sabra reference is anti-Israeli because this particular brand is often part of pro-Palestinian boycotts. Klein further produced an inverted image of the tier list on Instagram Stories (which disappear after 24 hours) with "loves Sabra" now accompanied by "Jews who live in Israel" to make his point.

The real game-changer, however, seems to have been the involvement of the Anti-Defamation League, a major American non-profit that campaigns against antisemitism and promotes Zionism as a movement for "self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland." Yesterday the ADL confirmed in a statement it had put pressure on Twitch to act about the month-old stream, and accused Frogan of spreading "antisemitic vitriol." The full statement reads:

"ADL spoke with the Twitch staff today after becoming aware of several concerning incidents on the social media platform and/or involving Twitch streamers in the past week. We appreciate Twitch making the right decision to finally suspend the streamer Frogan for abusing her platform and the Twitchcon event to spread antisemitic vitriol during this time of intense apprehension for the Jewish community."

It goes on to say Twitch must improve with "meaningful action", and ends by saying it will "continue to hold them accountable when they fail in that responsibility."

Frogan and the other panelists were subsequently banned for 30 days for "hateful conduct."

The streamers involved in the panel are not happy about this. "[The claim is we] and our guests did a tier list where 'good=Arab and Jew=bad' which isn’t what happened," said Frogan after the ban. "Our tier list was 'who has habibi pass' which is a meme tier list we did with a variety of creators [...] we are all Arabs from different religious backgrounds: I am Muslim, Capri is Christian, and Raff is Jewish. Sabra hummus is objectively the worst hummus to exist and is the unfortunate standard of hummus in the US."

Leaving the question of Sabra hummus aside, Twitch appears to have waded into a controversy where, whatever you think of Frogan's sense of humor, one prominent critic mocked-up an image to make it look worse than it is, and a major non-profit has steamed in to demand a ban. Frogan later posted the ban notice from Twitch for "targeted hateful conduct", while noting that she's received 30 days while Asmongold's anti-Palestinian rant (which was much more explicit) landed him a 14 day suspension. The TwitchCon stream has now also been deleted from the platform.

Whether the ban is justified or not, it is notable that it's been applied retrospectively to a TwitchCon stream that the platform was clearly aware of, and seems to have come about thanks to pressure from an outside rights organisation. The latter is not unusual, of course, but it does seem like Twitch being forced to belatedly moderate something that the platform initially judged as fine.

By going after content like this, it feels Twitch has just created a massive problem for itself: Because it's almost impossible to say anything about Israel or Palestine without angering someone, somewhere. If Twitch just thinks the topic shouldn't ever be allowed on the platform, that's at least a clear decision. But if it's going to start getting into the weeds over streamer tier lists and hummus, it's going to need a whole lot more moderators.

Team Blue was revealed, without the catchy name, in October 2022, and appeared to signify a real escalation of Netflix's gaming ambitions. The company said in 2021 that its move into gaming would be focused primarily on mobile games, but a year later it was "seriously exploring" cloud gaming and hiring some big names for its second internal studio, including former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny as studio head, former Halo Infinite creative lead Joseph Staten, and former Sony Santa Monica art director Rafael Grassetti.

Mike Verdu, then serving as vice president of gaming at Netflix, said when the studio was announced that "you don't get people like [Sonny] coming to your organisation to build the next big thing in gaming unless there's a sense that we're really in it for the long haul." Those words, unfortunately, proved to be the opposite of prophetic: The project never saw the light of day and all three executives are no longer with the company, according to the report.

A reason for the closure wasn't provided, but it feels rather sudden. Former Blizzard and Bungie design lead Gavin Irby, who joined the studio in October 2023, shared a job listing for a senior technical designer at the studio on LinkedIn just two months ago.

But there have been some recent changes at the top: Alain Tascan, previously the executive vice president of game development at Epic, joined Netflix in July as its new president of games, while Verdu moved to a new role focusing on "transformative innovation in game creation and development," whatever that means.

Netflix has had some notable successes with its mobile platform, including the well-regarded Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals and the Grand Theft Auto trilogy, which Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said in February was "a resounding success, quickly yielding the highest rate of installs and engagement on [Netflix's] game platform."

Even so, while Netflix isn't backing off on games completely, it does sound like the focus is shifting. In an October investors call, co-CEO Gregory Peters said Netflix is "excited about games based on Netflix IPs," including Squid Game, Virgin River Christmas, and The Ultimatum, and also mentioned the upcoming release of Monument Valley 3, which will be exclusive to Netflix Games. The lofty ambitions of 2022 and "the next big thing in gaming" went entirely unmentioned.

Gamefile's Stephen Totilo said something very similar on X, writing that the closure of Team Blue is "definitely a sign of new leaders pulling back from one big bet," but adding that Netflix has other studios still operating and company executives "seem hyped on growth targets and show tie-in games."

Netflix confirmed with PC Gamer that the Gamefile report is accurate but declined to comment further.

As reported by Otaku Souken, the lawsuit alleges that a set of five patents have been infringed—which are, as you might guess, primarily related to fairly innocuous gacha mechanics. I'm unable to get into the core specifics myself—patent language is obnoxiously specific and roundabout at the best of times, but there's also a language barrier going on here in terms of translation.

However, Japanese game industry consultant Serkan Toto took to X to analyse the changes yesterday, and noted that one of them—5930111, which "solves the conflicting psychological problems" when using rare items—essentially translates to "a specific system for fusing character cards of the same kind more easily". Another, 6402953 appears to describe a specific gacha system for character pulls.

As Otaku Souken points out, MementoMori was a big success for developer and publisher Bank of Innovation, making up 90% of the company's recent sales. The report states that both companies were in talks with each other about the dispute, but were "unable to reach an agreement". Unsurprisingly, Bank of Innovation disputes Sega's claims, and states it'll keep running the game if possible. Toto also goes on to report that the studio's stock price dropped a sharp 17% as a result of the news.

As broken down by IP attorney Kirk Sigmon, who PC Gamer spoke to in the fallout of Nintendo's lawsuit, filings like this have to be hyper-specific, and prove that every single word within the patent has been in some way infringed upon by the developer in question—which is a risky move in itself:

"If Nintendo's asserted one of these patents and they've gone overly broad, they may have exposed themselves to Palworld finding proof that these concepts are not new … They've exposed themselves in a big way."

Sega seems to be going even more shotgun with this legislation, making five different patent claims, rather than what appears to be just two from Nintendo (based on the ones it's moved to file in the US). Meaning, logically speaking, it's got more to prove. I'm scratching my head to figure out the actual reasonings behind this one, though.

Palworld is—and I'm not saying I agree with this thinking—a sort of direct challenge to Nintendo, a clear and satirical ribbing of the Pokémon games. If anything, it's more of a shock that the famously litigious company took so long circling before going in for the kill. Has there really been that much beef between Sega (which does have mobile games) and MementoMori in the past? The damages sought, which total to ¥1 billion (around $6.6 million), are barely a drop in the ocean of the SegaSammy company's operating income, which was ¥56.8 billion (around $376 million) this year.

This isn't the case for Bank of Innovation, who stand to lose a lot more from the suit—and no matter what your opinion on gacha games is (mine's pretty withering, in all honesty) it's hard to see this as anything other than another company wading into a market that should be producing a lot of innovation and making efforts to put the clamps on smaller studios. Mechanic patents are a bit of a blight on this industry—they're why the kickass nemesis system from the Mordor games never saw further use, and I'm keen to see the back of them.

To see even more of this nonsense just kinda weakens the spirit, especially as part of a trend that might see smaller Japanese studios afraid to cook, especially since Toto portends a similar doom: "Sega's lawsuit following Nintendo's legal action against Palworld owner Pocket Pair might also signal a new trend in big Japanese studios looking for damages from smaller ones that surprisingly launch hit games." We can only cross our fingers that hope's at the bottom of that box, somewhere.