Welcome to the preliminary installment of Video Video games Weekly on Engadget. Count on a brand new story each Monday (sure, we understand immediately is Tuesday), damaged into two elements. The primary is an area for brief essays, observations and ramblings about online game traits and associated subjects from me, a reporter who’s lined the trade for greater than 13 years. The second accommodates the online game tales from the previous week that it’s good to learn about, together with some headlines from exterior of Engadget.
Please get pleasure from — and I will see you subsequent week.
I’ve seen a rising sentiment in a few of my favourite queer gaming boards relating to Grand Theft Auto VI, and it’s each making me chortle and inflicting me deep nervousness in regards to the malleable nature of our shared actuality. When the second trailer for GTA VI dropped on Might 6, one in all its protagonists, Jason, turned an immediate intercourse image among the many gays, and the thirsty memes began rolling in. This was light-hearted and enjoyable, however on the identical time, the alt-right gaming crowd was freaking out about Jason being too homosexual — though, canonically, he’s clearly a straight dude. Queer gamers accused the neo-Nazis of projection, and the memes exalting Jason as a homosexual icon ramped up, till, someplace alongside the way in which, it stopped being a joke. I began to see earnest feedback suggesting the GTA franchise was a bastion of inclusion and an outspoken buddy to the LGBT+ neighborhood. I noticed queer gamers discuss GTA VI as if it had been going to be a heat and welcoming area, one thing made for us.
And I oop — that’s some critical grand theft gaslighting, associates.
I’m not right here to burst any bubbles, and I sincerely hope that GTA VI presents well-rounded, numerous characters with considerate storylines. Nevertheless, with regards to queer points, that’s simply not what the sequence does. GTA has a historical past of perpetuating dangerous stereotypes about transgender folks specifically, and GTA V particularly supplied a platform for gamers to enact violence in opposition to trans characters.
I covered this topic in-depth in 2020, and on the time I spoke with Dr. Ben Colliver, a lecturer in criminology at Birmingham Metropolis College and the creator of “Representation of LGBTQ Communities in the Grand Theft Auto Series.” Violence in opposition to trans folks in the USA has lengthy been acknowledged as an epidemic, and in 2025, the scenario is worse than ever — lawmakers are legalizing transphobia and shutting down entry to gender-affirming care, utilizing trans lives as a political soccer. It’s a nasty time for the LGBT+ neighborhood to have false associates, which is one purpose I cringe after I see folks rewriting the historical past of GTA.
Ugly stereotypes and focused violence are a part of GTA’s DNA, so the frequent argument right here is that, really, the sequence punches in all instructions and which means it isn’t discriminatory. However, this take doesn’t maintain as much as scrutiny. Dr. Colliver’s evaluation discovered that straight, cis males in GTA video games stay largely unscathed, and characters who characterize oppressed teams are sometimes those used as punchlines.
“Largely it’s LGBT folks, intercourse staff and ladies who’re portrayed in a nasty means,” Dr. Colliver mentioned in 2020. “Usually, males within the sport conform to nearly these conventional masculine stereotypes that we anticipate of males round violence and aggression.”
The one topic that GTA actually takes critically is masculinity, and even then it approaches the subject from a fundamental lens. GTA presents mainstream straight-male energy fantasies with a Michael Bay aptitude and a teenage sense of edginess, and GTA VI seems to be extra of the identical. That’s even with the inclusion of a feminine protagonist — Lucia, who could be very a lot concerned with Jason, who is definitely straight-coded regardless of interesting massively to homosexual males, which I imagine was a complete accident on Rockstar’s half.
(And since I can hear your screams from right here: Sure, The Ballad of Homosexual Tony exists and it’s a effective piece of DLC for GTA IV targeted on a queer character. The factor is, it got here out 16 years in the past — earlier than Rockstar constructed trans violence into GTA V — and though it was extremely well-received, the studio has but to return to its blueprint. I discover that reality extra telling than the rest.)
GTA is a non-subversive franchise constructed for fundamental bros, and this reality is simply strengthened by the homogeneity of Rockstar Video games and the complacency of its mother or father firm, Take-Two Interactive. We don’t have knowledge about queer illustration at Rockstar, however at Rockstar North in 2024, girls composed lower than 12 % of staff within the highest-paid roles. Throughout the studio, girls’s common hourly pay was 43 % decrease than males’s. In its annual investor report filed this month, Take-Two removed all references to variety and inclusion, and deleted any point out of awards the corporate has obtained for supporting LGBT+ staff. These strikes are meant to appease President Donald Trump, and it’s the precise sort of spineless, bootlicking habits that the GTA sequence is meant to mock.
Personally I really like doing crimes and messing with cops, and because it seems, so do most different video game followers. This mass-appeal ethos has helped make GTA one of many trade’s most enduring franchises. Please, simply don’t financial institution on GTA VI being progressive or actively inclusive from a queer standpoint. We don’t want another excuse to be disenchanted these days.
Greater than that, we will’t let the alt-right actuality devour our personal. The folks complaining about Jason being too homosexual are the identical ones claiming that Widow’s ass isn’t visible enough in her Overwatch 2 Cammy pores and skin — they’re unserious folks making bad-faith arguments about video games as an artwork kind. Don’t take in their messaging and don’t have interaction with their lies. Assume critically about their angles of assault and, in the meantime, play all the queer games you need to. One among my private latest favorites is Sorry We’re Closed, when you’re searching for an attractive, campy place to start out.
The information
Night School nabs Obsidian veteran Carrie Patel
Avowed director and longtime Obsidian narrative lead Carrie Patel has joined Night time Faculty, the studio behind the Oxenfree sequence, as a sport director. This can be a massive get for Night time Faculty and an indication that the crew has some stability in its future. Netflix acquired Night School in 2021, earlier than the launch of Oxenfree 2 and as a part of the streaming firm’s massive push into online game improvement and publishing. Netflix has since closed one internal AAA studio and reduced its third-party output, but it surely appears Night time Faculty is safe and dealing on one thing story-heavy, if Patel’s involvement tells us something.
The first video game included in Cannes
Lili made historical past in Might as the primary online game to be included in a Cannes Pageant competitors, and it looks super rad. Lili is a recent, neo-noir interpretation of Macbeth, offered in full-motion video and set on the streets of Iran, that includes webs of presidency corruption and witches who work as hackers. It’s a collaboration between the Royal Shakespeare Firm and iNK Tales, the studio behind the award-winning sport 1979 Revolution: Black Friday. Lili is already on the competition circuit but it surely’s nonetheless in improvement, and it’s as a result of be publicly out there in or simply after late 2025.
Troubles are bubbling at Bungie around Marathon
Bungie solely revealed Marathon in April, however the sport is already enduring a rocky pre-launch interval. First, the studio needed to publicly apologize and evaluation all of its Marathon property after it was confirmed that the sport’s alpha included stolen artwork. Then, Forbes dropped a report documenting the present tensions at Bungie, saying morale on the studio was in “free fall” throughout each division. The most recent rumblings round Marathon, which is because of land in September, are that its advertising plans have been scuttled fully.
GeoGuessr ditches the EWC after a brief protest
GeoGuessr will not be included within the Esports World Cup after a fast — and clearly efficient — neighborhood blackout. Essentially the most prolific GeoGuessr map creators pulled their contributions from the sport to protest its participation within the EWC, calling the tournament “a sportswashing device utilized by the federal government of Saudi Arabia to distract from and conceal its horrific human rights document.” Lower than a day after the blackout started, GeoGuessr AB responded by abandoning the occasion, writing, “You — our neighborhood — have made it clear that this determination doesn’t align with what GeoGuessr stands for. So, while you inform us we’ve obtained it unsuitable we take it critically.”
FTC admits defeat against Microsoft
The FTC was the final remaining voice rallying in opposition to Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and it’s now been silenced for good. The FTC formally dismissed its case in opposition to Microsoft after shedding its newest attraction earlier this month.
A reminder that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a very good game
In a cute second of serendipity, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has bought 3.3 million copies in its first 33 days in the marketplace. In the event you had been ready for an indication to start out enjoying, this could be it.
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