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Wizards of the Coast Controls Commander Now
For very unfortunate reasons, too.
Robert Scarpinito
October 04, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes
Happy spooky season. Let’s start with a story that’s scary, but in a sorta sad way. Turns out, making irrational death threats has consequences.
For those not in the know, Commander, arguably the most popular way to play Magic: The Gathering nowadays, has been run by a committee independent from Wizards of the Coast. That committee banned four cards that were important to the community, resulting in some angry backlash, including very personal death threats.
Now, Wizards has taken over the committee’s duties, primarily to help shield them from further threats. What this means for the future of Commander is uncertain, but the reasons for this change are disappointing and despicable.
What is it with gamers and the immediate jump to death threats? Not everyone does this, of course, but for some reason, when the crowd gets big enough, it’s only a matter of time before those sorts of threats get made over the slightest dissatisfaction.
Good News & Bad News for Bethesda
The Fallout TV show has been an unabashed hit for Amazon and Bethesda. It was well received when it first came out, and now it’s boasting some pretty nice viewer numbers, all things considered.
Starfield’s DLC Is Having a Rough Time, Though
Shattered Space came out earlier this week, and it hasn’t fared well in reviews. It’s sitting at 58% on OpenCritic at the time of writing, and overall sentiment has been mixed at best. But one of Starfield’s writers and developers did an interview this week touting the game as one of the best Bethesda’s ever made. You can be the judge of that.
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In more bad space news, the Star Citizen developers are going through a mandated 7-days-a-week crunch to meet a deadline ahead of Citizencon, its own convention. So much for TGIF.
I’d go into some of the other problems with the overall Star Citizen project, but our news story does a pretty good job already.
Thinking about picking up the new Diablo IV expansion next week? The new Spiritborn class is a surprising amount of fun, and the expansion adds a ton of new endgame content. Overall, our writer Austin Suther gave it a 9/10, so it’s worth checking out if you’re in the mood to grind some demons.
From the brilliant minds at Critical Role comes the latest season of Vox Machina, and our resident D&D expert Andrew Stretch has a lot of positive things to say about it. He also got to interview the cast about changes in the story, along with what it’s like to revisit a campaign from the past.
Calling all Ludwig fans—our writer Austin interviewed Offbrand Games Director of Publishing Bryan Herren about the benefits and challenges of running a publishing arm that’s so closely tied to a popular influencer. Overall, there’s a lot of positives here, especially in Offbrand Games’ structure as a co-op.
I caught up with Victura’s founder and CEO Peter Tamte about Six Days in Fallujah, the controversial military-sim shooter that uses the actual events of the Second Battle of Fallujah as the backdrop. If that doesn’t make you raise an eyebrow, you should Google it.
Anyway, I got an early peek at the upcoming Fireteam AI update, which lets players play the game alone with AI teammates instead of actual players. Then we chatted more about the game overall and what it’s trying to teach players about the consequences of war—and it’s far more complicated than you’d think.
If you’re still on the fence about the latest Zelda game, Stretch reviewed the game and gave it a 7/10, praising just how creative the Echoes are. However, he really didn’t like the ending—so much so that he wrote about it (spoilers, of course).
This isn’t the first time Epic has sued a phone company over anticompetitive practices. Epic has its own mobile store, but it’s difficult to get it on Samsung phones thanks to an Auto Blocker that’s automatically turned on.
Safe in Our World, a video game mental health charity organization, has released a cheeky ‘80s-inspired D&D one shot for four Level 4 players. The fundraiser asks people to make a free Tiltify account, stream the one shot with some friends, and raise money for charity.
Podcast: A Deep Eagle Dive Into Ubisoft
This morning, Bloomberg reported that the Guillemots and Tencent are considering buying out Ubisoft and taking it private, removing its reliance on public shareholders.
We recorded this week’s podcast before that news dropped, but if you want to understand how and why Ubisoft got here, we recap some of its recent woes, especially amid its tanking stocks and wavering confidence in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. While we’re still hopeful for the game, it’s hard to ignore the hard spot the company’s in nowadays.