Rockstar Updates Red Dead Online to Include Tumbleweeds Blowing Through Abandoned Servers

Posted on by Mark Roebuck

NEW YORK — Rockstar Games has answered fans’ pleas and finally made a substantial addition to its Red Dead Online game following months of inactivity: the addition of tumbleweeds blowing through the game’s long-deserted servers. 

“Not exactly a new map or game mode, but I guess I’ll take it,” said Arnold Templeton, one of many who got the phrase “SaveRedDeadOnline” trending on social media in recent weeks. “Rockstar ditched RDO right after it debuted, and they’ve totally shorted us on all the stuff we were promised. It’s almost like what was once a robust and inspired company has ultimately become the sort of capitalist corporation a lot of their games satirize. Anyway, thanks for the tumbleweeds! Very cool!” 

Representatives from Rockstar Games said that they listened to the fans, and have committed to correcting the course of the game’s trajectory. 

“We hear you, and we apologize,” Ron Newton, senior vice president at Rockstar Games. “And frankly, you’re absolutely right. We dropped the sorriest update you’ve ever seen last July, and since then have put out Los Santos Tuners and The Contract over on GTA5 our absolute cash cow. I know how this looks. It looks like we’re a buncha fuckshits that literally don’t care how we’re perceived so long as the cash is flowing in. I know that’s exactly what this looks like. But I assure you, that’s not what’s going on. I mean, we’re not even charging for these gorgeous tumbleweeds!” 

The update is expected to come out later today. When asked about the potential for a Bully 2, Max Payne 4, or any other sort of non-Grand Theft Auto release on the horizon, Newton punched us in the head.

Microsoft Could Straight Up Buy Sony, By the Way

Posted on by Minus World

Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion. If you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, you can read all about it. If you don’t, we’ll sum it up for you: a large chunk of capital is getting combined with an even larger chunk of capital. Blah blah blah. Happens all the time. More and more. But what does this deal mean for us, the gamers? It means we won’t have to talk about the Console War for much longer. 

We can argue about the PS5 and Xbox Series X, but let’s not kid ourselves about Microsoft and Sony. Microsoft has a market cap over $2 trillion. Sony’s is about $150 billion. For years now, Microsoft has maintained over $100 billion cash on hand. They can write a $70 billion check for their gaming division like it’s nothing. At worst, maybe Phil Spencer feels bad about buying Activision Blizzard like when you realize you’re spending a little too much on coffee. By contrast, gaming is Sony’s largest segment. Sony’s bread and butter is Microsoft’s trip to Starbucks.

If Microsoft can buy a $70 billion gaming company, why can’t they buy a $150 billion one? Who would stop Microsoft from buying Sony? Congress? Joe Biden? Microsoft could buy Sony and add the PS5 to Game Pass. Xbox players could finally have the experience of swinging around as Spider-Man until they get bored with it. PS5 stans could finally find a new thing to be mad about all the time. Kevin Feige could argue with Bill Gates over the new Spider-Man 12 trailer reveals.

That won’t happen, of course. Microsoft doesn’t want Sony. But the point is, the Console War is a scuffle for a company the size of Microsoft. In the long term, capital pulls like gravity. The bigger piece swallows the smaller one. Maybe it buys the smaller one, maybe it uses its capital to grind the other one down through monopolistic practices. Either way, it will happen. Capital accumulates. It’s the only thing it knows how to do.

The Console War is starting to look like iPhone vs. BlackBerry. It was barely a decade ago that BlackBerry was still the dominant player. It had a bigger market share than the iPhone in 2010. Tech nerds argued about the hardware, just like gamers argue about consoles. I need a physical keyboard, because I do real work. But they were missing the forest for the trees: Apple was already worth nearly four times BlackBerry’s parent company, Research in Motion. If the tech nerds had looked up from the two phones, they might have realized the fight was already over.

Ten years later, Apple is the first company to hit a $3 trillion market cap. BlackBerry ended all support for its phones earlier this month, and its brand name gets passed around between sketchy phone companies every once in a while. But it’s not about the phones, is it? And it’s not about the consoles. Microsoft vs. Sony? Give it ten years.

Here’s All The Newest Workplace Abuses Coming to Game Pass This Month

Posted on by Robin Brooks

Microsoft is always expanding its lineup of fan-favorites on Game Pass, and this month is shaping up to be no different. With the new Activision Blizzard acquisition, all of our fan favorites are now a part of the Xbox family. Here’s all the newest workplace abuses coming to Game Pass this month:

Activision Blizzard has an expansive library of classic worker mistreatment, and many of those classic titles are coming with them. We can look forward to seeing Lower Pay for Women and Passing Over Women for Promotions, not to mention all time favorite Ignoring Employee Concerns. All of these titles are expected to come with their Worse for Women of Color expansions, at no extra charge.

Stealth action is on the menu as well, as Breastmilk Theft and Grope the Female Employees make their Game Pass debut, alongside the harassment management sim Running the Cosby Suite. It’s exciting to see these key pieces of Activision Blizzard history under the Microsoft umbrella at long last!

Everybody loves party games, and Acti-Blizz fan-favorite Drunken Office Crawl is ready to bring multiplayer harassment for all Game Pass subscribers to enjoy. Get your friends together and get ready to stumble through the cubicles assaulting female employees all over again when it lands later this month.

Dialogue and choice driven stories are all the rage and this month’s Game Pass offerings are here to deliver, with titles like Don’t Tell HR and its sequel Difficult to Work With: Not a Team Player. Difficult made waves on release when it actually followed up on the aftermath of Don’t Tell HR’s bad ending, where the protagonist did, in the final level, tell HR that her boss had made several explicit and inappropriate jokes about wanting to have sex with her.

No mention was made in this month’s lineup, but we can expect Record Profits Means Layoffs and Fire Somebody Big and Hope This All Goes Away to arrive sooner rather than later. Looking to the horizon, we can expect ABK’s recently announced titles Union Busting and No Real Improvements to make appearances as well.

Whatever your opinion of the deal, it’s clear to us that it’s an exciting time to be an Xbox fan!

Joss Whedon Fails to Explain Controversy to His Girlfriend After Realizing ‘Buffy’ Came Out Before She Was Born

Posted on by Jeremy Kaplowitz

LOS ANGELES — Writer and director Joss Whedon, while struggling to explain to his 22-year-old girlfriend today why people were so mad at him online, came to the realization that she was born after his TV show Buffy began airing.

“OK so remember how things were before Buffy came out? What? You weren’t born yet?! No, not the original movie, the show I made in ’97. You were born after that too?! Welp, this is really awesome. And by ‘awesome,’ I mean precisely the opposite of that, Boss Baby!” Whedon said to his young girlfriend. “Well the 1990s were a different time. Yeah, those 1990s. The ones that happened — hold up — 30 whole years ago?! Yikes City: population 1. Back in those days, women were basically seen as weaklings. No one respected them and most of the things they said were serious and not snarky at all. That’s when ole Jossy came along and basically feministed the shit out of the world’s butt. I mean basically, I was the king of feministing. Queen? Doesn’t matter… anyway, I empowered all of these women, but now, all of the sudden, they’re being super bitchy to me. It’s insane! Is it my fault I had sex with all my young actresses? Of course not! How was I to resist? And now Iron Giant’s mad at me because I cut all the scenes in his movie and said it was because he sucked. Again, this is my fault? I guess you live by the nerd, you die by the nerd. Are you getting all this, babe? You’re gonna wanna sit down, because there’s a lot more to it and — oh yes, you’re already sitting.”

At press time, Whedon was reportedly furiously scribbling in a notebook trying to find the little quip that would make everybody love him again.

“Our New Cheeseburger Highkey Slaps. Poggers!” Tweets One of America’s Most Powerful Corporations

Posted on by Camden Brazile

CHICAGO — Fast food restaurant and megacorporation McDonald’s made a tweet Tuesday claiming their new bacon quarter pounder ‘highkey slaps’ in order to appeal to a younger, more internet-savvy audience. 

“McDonald’s may be the embodiment of capitalism run amok, but we can still snatch weaves and spill the tea,” said McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski. “It’s important to connect with today’s youth in the language they understand, and today’s consumer is increasingly ‘sus’ of companies that are ‘cheugy,’ I’m told. We at McDonald’s want to show that we are a casual, laid-back company, which we will achieve through intense focus grouping and targeted advertising. The moment our team realized we could essentially get free advertising by regurgitating popular slang was by far and away the biggest ‘bruh moment’ of our corporate history. Our meat may not resemble anything close to an animal, considering it’s a sludge of poisons we invented to capitalize on the fact that poor people can’t afford to buy healthy foods, but you have to admit it’s pretty poggers.”

McDonald’s Social Media Manager Daniel Maple spoke out in his defense.

“Look, what do you want from me? My job is to come up with ‘viral McDonald’s content.’ How the hell am I supposed to do that?” said Maple. “I’m just trying to earn a paycheck here, but it’s taking a toll. After you record yourself doing a Tiktok dance with a Big Mac in your hands, it’s hard to look your children in the eye anymore. At least they let me vent about my struggles on the corporate McDonald’s Finsta.”

At press time McDonald’s was under heavy criticism for a labor scandal involving heinous treatment of a reported three thousand workers, which was forgotten after a particularly savage clapback to Arby’s on Instagram.

Employees Urged to Keep Working After T-Virus Exposure Unless They Have Giant Eyeball Growing Out of Their Shoulder

Posted on by Saad Khan

RACCOON CITY — The Raccoon City Health Department (RCHD) recently advised employees exposed to the rapidly spreading T-Virus to continue reporting for work, unless their symptoms included the growth of a giant eyeball on their shoulder.

“Cases where there is no new eyeball growth in the shoulder region can be classified as mild,” said Robert Winters, director of the RCHD. “People without such growth can safely continue to work. We know the T-Virus only spreads if infected people bite others who are not yet infected, and people with mild infections do not do this the majority of the time.”

The RCHD faced severe backlash for this new guidance, but Winters maintained that allowing people with mild cases to work was the only option to avoid total societal collapse.

“Unfortunately, the T-Virus is spreading quite rapidly and has grown beyond our ability to control,” Winters said. “If we were to ask everyone, even those with mild infections, to stay home from work, we could see a potential collapse of society due to the loss of many employees who are essential to keep society functioning. We may have to abandon our goal of completely eliminating T-Virus spread and instead learn to start living with it.”

Jane Redfield, an employee at a Raccoon City weapons shop, stated that she was recently infected by a coworker with a mild case.

“Our boss told Bill to keep coming in after getting infected since he wasn’t growing any eyeballs or anything. He was fine for a couple of days, but you could tell he was getting worse. Then one day, out of nowhere, he bit me,” said Redfield, pointing to a pair of teeth marks on her right calf. “So now I’m infected, too.”

Redfield’s boss would not allow her to take sick time, however, insisting that the weapons shop was an essential business. “He says people need weapons to fight off all the infected people with severe cases,“ Redfield said.

At press time, the RCHD director could not be reached for comment. Phone calls to the department were answered only with various screaming and growling noises.

Phineas & Ferb Co-Creator Falls for Obvious Satirical Joke

Posted on by Minus World

On January 15th, beloved* satirical nerd-culture outlet Hard Drive published an article titled Creators of Confirm Phineas & Ferb Could Have Cured HIV Whenever, including a fake quote from the show’s co-creator Jeff “Swampy” Marsh about trying to create an episode in which the titular scientist children stick it to Ronald Reagan, and everybody was cool with it. 

Well we regret to inform you that Swampy has found the tweet and does not like the joke.

Monday afternoon, Swampy began hitting Hard Drive and its readers with some curt warnings that he had reported their tweet and that the article was fake. His fans deserved to know: he did not really believe that Phineas and Ferb could cure HIV whenever they wanted.

https://twitter.com/mmonogram/status/1483110410182021121

And perhaps fanning the flames, Hard Drive quote tweeted one of these accusations of falsehood with a simple 😮 emoji. And, well, once you’re in a ratio, it’s kind of hard to get out of it. Ratios are like quicksand in that way. The more you struggle and squirm, the deeper you find yourself in the sand.

“Lmao do you know what a joke is?” comments flew into Swampy from all angles, sticking in his mud like a, uh, stick. 

“What do you mean? It clearly says right there that you did [say the quote in Hard Drive’s article]” read one tweet. “Yea I think it’s really irresponsible to question the journalistic integrity from the publishers of such hard hitting pieces such as the above article and this,” said another tweet, quoting an older Hard Drive article: Luigi Amiibo Curved to Hit G-Spot.

Swampy, jumping on an opportunity to misread a quote making fun of him while bringing up an article about sticking Luigi up his ass, thanked the commenter.

Trying his best to fight back against those who accused the creator of a children’s comedy show of understanding humor, Swampy explained his position. You see, children are confused. They’re messaging him begging him to explain why he would say such a thing.

https://twitter.com/mmonogram/status/1483136833911345152

We’re not exactly sure why Swampy is talking to so many children in his DMs, but we have a hard time believing that this is a real issue. Nonetheless, perhaps this is a good time to explain to these perhaps-imaginary children that sometimes there’s jokes on the internet and that they’re going to be OK. 

Is this all Swampy’s fault? No, of course not. Swampy is probably just stressed out about fake news and all that comes with it. What if someone sees this and blames him for something he didn’t even do? Look, we get it. The internet isn’t a bongo circle, it’s a knife fight. It’s a scary place and sometimes you gotta get in there and stab your way out, reporting anyone who claims your co-creator Dan Povenmire said a fictional episode of your show where your characters permanently cure HIV is “basically the same as Rent, just with a platypus.” 

But is it funny?

lmao

yea lol

So get your dunks in while you can, I guess. Some say you can still find Swampy battling it out in the comments, liking ironically supportive tweets from fans referencing a Hard Drive article about Waluigi’s uncircumcised penis. 

*You’re reading an offshoot of Hard Drive, please be nice.

Hidetaka Miyazaki Reveals All His Swamp Levels Are Based On Different Cities in New Jersey

Posted on by Tyler Simpson

TOKYO — In an interview about his upcoming game Elden Ring, Hidetaka Miyazaki revealed that all the swamp levels in every FromSoftware game are based on different cities in New Jersey.

“You know, in the original Japanese translation for Dark Souls, Blighttown is actually called Trenton, New Jersey,” Miyazaki explained. “I wanted the player to know that they were entering a shitty, annoying, disgusting place and I felt that name would clearly communicate that.”

“What’s funny is that one of our QA people guessed it before we even had programmed a title to come up,” Miyazaki continued. “They said, ‘This place sucks in a very specific way that I’ve only experienced while being in New Jersey. That feeling like you’re getting a staph infection just by being there.’ We were very proud of this moment.”

When asked why swamp levels have become a mainstay in all of his games, Miyazaki said that he wanted the feeling of being in New Jersey to be a recurring theme across his work.

“I have a lot of work to do with this concept, still. I have yet to truly convey the feeling of being in a place like Atlantic City, which was the inspiration for the Valley of Defilement in Demon’s Souls, or Newark, which Farron Keep was nearly a 1:1 recreation of,” Miyazaki said. “I want players around the globe to truly feel the pain and misery that comes with having to step foot in New Jersey. The air smells like if Papa Johns made a cologne. The forested areas still have smokestacks in them. The people themselves are like if the characters from The Sopranos had children with the characters from The Hills Have Eyes. It is my life’s work to convey this experience.”

“You can’t just dodgeroll into New York from the Garden State,” Miyazaki added. “But we made the games a little more inviting in that way.”

As of press time, Miyazaki and the American localization team are having heated discussions about whether or not to call one of Elden Ring’s more difficult creatures to fight “Chris Christie.”

We Would Love to Let You Read This Article for a Mere 500 Gems

Posted on by Walker MacDonald

Ah, hello! I see you’ve stumbled across another of the many delightful articles available for perusal on this venerated website. What wonders could lie beyond this introductory paragraph? A piece of embedded media? Perhaps an impassioned op-ed piece on a subject of the day? Certainly a breadth of belly laughs and learning a new thing or two is in store for you — or, at least, it could be, for a mere 500 gems!

Don’t look so surprised! 500 gems is truly a small price to pay for a web-browsing opportunity such as this. I mean really, what else would you possibly purchase with those precious stones? A kangaroo’s freedom? The lowering of a simple drawbridge? All investments are frivolous compared to the unbelievable content that lies behind this nice, sturdy paywall I’ve constructed.

Consider for a moment what it is people like about gems. They’re nothing more than precious, sparkly little nuggets of joy. In that regard, they actually have quite a lot in common with articles on this website, wouldn’t you say? I mean, when you think about it, we’re really just taking your gems and turning them into different kinds of gems. It’s just a barter system, really. It’s simple!

…Look, you seem like a smart person. I’ve managed to maintain your attention for this long, so I know you’re at least more intelligent than that idiot purple dragon. I’ll level with you.

Gems are totally useless. I’m talking worthless. Less than pennies. Your portfolio is going to be way too risk-exposed if you don’t offload those to me right away. What if it affects your credit score? You need a professional like me to show you the smart moves to make in an economy like this. This is the definition of a bear market, and I should know. I’m a bear wearing a tuxedo and a monocle.

Ahem, well, friend, I won’t belabor the point any further. You’ve heard my proposition, and if you’ve read this far without paying, I will just assume you’re a filthy freeloader who hasn’t even collected 500 gems to begin with. If you’re still clutching onto those dull, worthless rocks, at this point, I pity you. And on the off chance that you can afford it but you’re still mulling it over, maybe go take a long walk to clear your head. And pick up some more gems while you’re at it, because there’s another 1000-gem paywall right behind this one.

New Franchise Reboot Struggling to Decide Which Character Has a Podcast Now

Posted on by Camden Brazile

NEW YORK — NBC announced a delay of its latest franchise reboot coming in 2022, citing development issues after nobody could agree which character should have a podcast now. 

“Carrie has a podcast on Sex and the City, J. Jonah Jameson has a podcast in Spider-Man: No Way Home, and fuck, Ghostbusters just straight up named a character Podcast in their new thing, so we’re going to shoehorn it in if it kills us,” said lead writer Edith Byrne. “The problem is which character should have one? If we choose the main character, the podcast will be prevalent enough that viewers will figure out that we don’t know what a podcast is. But on the other hand, if the podcast is just a minor detail in the reboot, then we can’t franchise our own branded podcast along with the show. So it’s a tightrope walk.”

NBC President Noah Oppenheim weighed in on why giving a reboot character a podcast can be so integral to the show’s new audience.

“It’s a tricky thing to decide, but a necessity of a new reboot,” said NBC president Noah Oppenheim. “You have to let the audience know that this is taking place now, in the modern era. Sure, you could adjust the political compass and find out what this new show will say about current culture, but it’s far easier to just slap a podcast on some character, play some Post Malone or whatever over the credits, and call it a day. It has to be modern enough that a new generation will want to watch it, but not timeless in case we want to beat this dead horse again later down the line. Because everyone these days has one of these damn podcasts, whatever they are.”

At press time, NBC announced that it will also be making the progressive, inclusive choice to add a gay character to their next reboot, provided such character tests well with the 18 to 24 demographic.

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