Yeah, that tracks - it's a business organisation first and foremost. And yeah, we definitely do.

I'm back on the villainess train, this time with two titles I found completely at random - both being decent finds too.

• Kill the Villainess

I initially thought it will be a less interesting version of Villains Are Destined to Die, it turned out to be probably the most sombre (without being edgy) villainess themed series I've wrote about here so far.
The premise is nothing original: woman is pulled into the body of a villainess from a book and has to die to go back to real world. Guess what? She tried. Multiple times. Before the story even began.
There's no easy way out and she has to play the part of a bad guy according to the original novel, whether she likes it or not.

It's a pretty solid choice if you're in a mood for a less quirky story in this genre.

• Behold the True Villainess

A complete whiplash of emotions when paired with the first one as this is a pure comedy.

This one is also an isekai story but here the soft and timid noble girl gets taken over by someone who doesn't let herself get pushed around by anyone. She bails from a temple she was sent to, stirs trouble, gets people addicted to modernised (well, properly spiced) cuisine and spreads real world slang among the nobles (often misrepresenting what it actually means).

It's silly, it's light-hearted and it's full of pretty good jokes (visual or otherwise).

It's a group representing the biggest publishers in the industry, used as a front to pretend they're able to self-regulate when it comes to consumer laws vs business wants. So no, not a governing body but more of a cartel or lobbying group, I guess? One with A LOT of money on the line and enough lobbying power to push against things like the Stop Killing Games campaign the moment they feel threatened.

Either way it's pure speculation considering something truly massive would have to happen for Steam to even get to this point.

I might be reading too much into this but I think they're going for an anthology feel with the show and if there's ever Cyberpunk Edgerunners 3 it would once again focus on yet another group of characters. That's just how I interpreted Sztybor's words though.

He did say something similar years ago if I recall correctly but we never got any details and it was so long ago it's hard to guess whether that's still the plan. Reassurance or update on that wouldn't be unwelcome, that's for sure.

Here are the board members of this organisation in case someone is curious about their relevancy/neutrality on the matter:

• Hester Woodliffe – Chair (Warner Bros. Games)
• Canon Pence (Epic Games)
• Kerry Hopkins (Electronic Arts)
• Ian Mattingly (Activision)
• Klemens Kundratitz (Embracer)
• Qumar Jamil (Microsoft)
• Clemens Mayer-Wegelin (Nintendo of Europe)
• Cinnamon Rogers (Sony Interactive Entertainment)
• Matt Spencer (Take 2)
• Alain Corre (Ubisoft)
• Alberto Gonzalez-Lorca (Bandai Namco Entertainment)
• Karine Parker (Square Enix)
• Mark Maslowicz (Level Infinite)
• Felix Falk (game)
• Nicolas Vignolles (SELL)
• David Verbruggen (VGFB)
• Nick Poole (UKIE)

You know, the people who "ensured that the voice of a responsible games ecosystem is heard and understood" (direct quote from their website).

Writer was pretty clear about David's fate in the article and mentioned wanting to tell more stories with "many interesting characters". Besides, season 2 is described as a standalone story so more than likely.

Fresh update video from Ross about the campaign.

TL;DW:

• There's a chance many of the signatures for the EU petition aren't real. Keep signing to build up a safety margin. Official suggestions are: 10% more minimum, 20% pretty OK, up to 40% more for an actual safety net.
• Some countries had problems with signing using the digital ID system - suggests to use the manual method (instructions on the campaign page) or try again later.
• Someone not related with the campaign released a SKG crypto. Don't touch it, obviously.
• Ross heard about people harassing Pirate Software, asks to stop.
• He's got a lot of messages to reply to, prioritises ones important to the campaign for now.
• UK petition cleared 100k signatures. Number is most likely more reliable than the EU one.
• Link about contacting UK MP's for those who want to do more than just sign a petition.

That's actually one of the most annoying parts about the whole thing. SKG campaign has been running for what, a year now? Barely anyone with an audience cared enough to even look into it, let alone spread the news. Now that things came close to failing suddenly everyone thinks it's an important topic and scrambled to make videos/posts/whatever. I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt but I just don't have that in me any more...
We could've been in so much better place with awareness, petitions and general sentiment if people in the industry actually cared about these things from the start.

Better late than never, I guess. I just hope there's enough time to push through the EU petition as well.

No prob, knowing you didn't read much gives us something to work with for the future. Have fun!

I have no more excuses not to get it, don't I? Thanks for the share.

After Ross announced the campaign is dead a bunch of YouTubers (and media, I think?) picked up the topic and started spreading the word far and wide. This is the result.

It's kinda hard to suggest anything without knowing what you've already read. I'll go with some popular and safe choices for now.

• If you don't mind long winded mystery novels with lots of slice of life moments then Higurashi and Umineko series are always a decent choice.
• VA-11 HALL-A is a great low stakes story set in a cyberpunk future.
• Go! Go! Nippon! has a tiny bit of romance depending on your choices but is mostly about visiting famous Japanese sightseeing spots.
• I haven't played it myself but I've heard a lot of good things about Slay the Princess. It's more of a meta story with things changing each time you play.
• The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is a short but fun mystery story if you like the series. It's free too.

I'm gonna be honest, I didn't do squat in terms of my plans for last month. I was sick for a good chunk of June (still am to some degree) and when I wasn't I was extremely busy. All in all, I had neither time nor energy to play things. Maybe this month? Please.

Not all is lost thankfully. I did manage to find a bit of time to update our VN Patch list with a new rule (#3) as well as patches for: Ciel Nosurge, Katawa Shoujo, Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete and Yaku ~Yuujou Dangi~.

I do hope things will settle down a bit as I could really use some proper rest. Well, that and my backlog won't clean itself.

Edit: I completely forgot to mention that Project Mix, the VR visual novel I wrote about last month, was successfully funded on Kickstarter! While not all stretch goals were met we did manage to reach both handholding and Shoji Meguro so that's a win in my book.

If anyone is interested in the project it has a demo on Steam you can check out. Also the KS campaign is still open for late pledges... just sayin'. (⌐■_■)

Noted and added to the pile, much obliged!

I'm a bit torn on this since with Melissa I always felt more like she's beating some sense into unruly children rather than manipulating them. Still a great series though!

I went for a bit of a palette cleanser since last week and decided to read Hero Killer - a brutal action manhwa about a world with villains and heroes with magical gifts.

I'm a bit mixed on it to be honest. Not because it's bad (it's fine in what it tries to be), it's just most of it doesn't really vibe with me. The story is edgy and treats itself super seriously, action is flashy but can be messy and unintelligible at times while character proportions (especially MC) can vary widely panel to panel. I was actually very close to dropping it after a dozen chapters or so.

Then the unexpected happened - authors started to show how much of a goofy goober MC really is. Not only her! There's a lot of side characters who feel like they're from a completely different series, so you go from the main antagonists of the story who are edgy and serious to the other half of the cast being absolute weirdos in comparison.

This one thing is honestly the only reason I'm still reading for now - I don't care about the epic conflict, I don't care about hero/villains politics, I don't care about MC's motivations. I just hunt for the scenes of MC being silly and weird and acting like she's part of a gag manga rather than a protagonist of a bloody action adventure.

Also a good amount of well built female characters is always a plus. They aren't crazy buff for the most part (they're mostly the lean fighter types) but compared to how scared many action series are of showing muscular women I'll take what I can get.

Edit: OK, Senshu is my second favourite character after Ihwa. She went from a dangerous one person artillery brigade to a complete brat in no time. She's great.

I'm not familiar with Welcome to NHK but I have something that might fit the premise.

Villains Are Destined to Die is a manhwa about a woman being transported into a video game as a villainess who, as the title suggests, is destined to die. Because she's familiar with the game and REALLY doesn't want to die she does whatever she can to manipulate the male leads of the game to avoid that outcome. That includes helping a slave whose sole purpose for her is to become her loyal servant/guard.

He actively misrepresented the campaign and spread misinformation about its goals. I don't know if he genuinely didn't understand or if he was too embarrassed to admit to a mistake but he did a lot of damage to the momentum and perception of the whole thing.

It sucks these big creators only now pick up the mantle but it's better than nothing. There's still some time left.