Yeesh. It's been rocky for a minute, you could say since the PSN debacle, but the relationship between Arrowhead and the powerful audience their game built has always been somewhat testy. In the company's Twitter profile, it leads with the phrase "A game for everyone is a game for no one," which I think is just a fascinating thing to say. The version on the page is even surrounded by tildes, which lends the affair a kind of insouciant charm. At the end of the day, it's a profound statement of intention. Maybe a little aggressive. But you can't say they don't live by it.

The Helldivers subreddit is in literal hell. That's most of them, I guess; in the depths of my affair with Destiny, I had an opportunity to observe just how much it is possible for a person to hate the game they love. This relationship here has been on the fucking ROCKS and the memes are becoming more sardonic and beleaguered. DLC Warbonds with useless weapons, or weapons that start out good and then get neutered at some future point, which feels worse. An overall feeling that they can't truly effect any kind of change on the story. And now, a sweeping update intended to bring all the boys to the yard that has mostly infuriated people. It's gotten all the way to here, now: a message from the game's director detailing a sixty-day plan.

The game Gabe is into, The First Descendant, drops patches people celebrate for some reason. Maybe being freemium makes them less inclined to shake up an audience that is already very migratory, but he describes these things like they're piñatas. Or… maybe "piñata" is the plural. In any case, they're full of fun things. Arrowhead is dropping patches that make people want to uninstall, or - even stranger - interact with the story systems, really, truly play with them, in what is probably a completely unforeseen way.

(CW)TB out.