Pokémon Sex Freak Lost In Translation

Game Freak 'tera leak,' striking Ubisoft devs, and Throne and Liberty's griefing guilds

Oct 19, 2024

You likely heard there was a massive data breach at Pokémon maker Game Freak recently. It was probably the biggest leak in Pokémon history. Despite appearing to originate from a studio employee who fell for a phishing scam, and who seemingly had access to the Nintendo developer portal, the Mario maker has not acknowledged the historic hack beyond some DMCA takedowns.

But most of the drama around the "Tera Leak" (you can catch up on everything discovered here) has been focused on one Pokémon in particular: Typhlosion. That's because at least one of the files in the hacked trove contained a short story about the Gen II fire starter that suggested it had kidnapped a girl from her family and had sex with her. Fans lost their shit. The devs at Game Freak really were freaks.

But the bestiality creepypasta sensation was shortlived. It turned out AI misleadingly mistranslated at least some key parts of the hacked files resulting in nuance getting lost in the process. According to a human translation of the story, it's more of an allegory than anything else, likely referencing an established Japanese myth about a badger-looking shapeshifter Yokai. Typhlosion was uncancelled.

The larger takeaway is that dumping thousands of machine translated files on 4chan and letting social media run wild with it is a recipe for some fun but very likely misinformed nonsense. But also that Pokémon fans are hungry for the series to do more interesting things with their lore and world building. From internal meeting notes to developers' private musings, the Tera Leak delivered some of the most interesting Pokémon story nuggets in years.

French résistance

Amidst the existential financial and creative crises facing Ubisoft at the moment, hundreds of developers across its studios in France went on strike this week to protest the company's controversial RTO policy. The fight began in Montreal last year and has spread to other studios last month when the three days a week in the office requirement was rolled out globally. "It creates a lot of stress," one developer told me at the time.

Ubisoft, which is dealing with frequent cancellations and delays of even its biggest games while the ones that do ship miss financial expectations and fail to wow critics, says the RTO policy is about making better games. “We are a creative company, and creativity is boosted by in-person interactions, informal conversations, and collaborating around the same table," head of studios, Marie-Sophie de Waubert, wrote in an email to staff.

The policy is also likely just as much about trying to make people quit by making their lives that much harder. Insider Gamer reported this was the case at Ubisoft Milan, which shipped 2022's fantastic but underperforming Mario Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, whose director recently struck out on his own. "It is unthinkable that a young person who lives in another region or in any case far from our territory could spend three days a week in Milan, turning their existence upside down," a union rep for the studio told GamesIndustry.biz.

Striking Ubisoft developers stand outside its Paris HQ

France's sectoral union bargaining laws have put game developers there on the forefront of pushing back against gaming's bosses. Don't Nod, which released Jusant in 2023 and Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden earlier this year, recently said both games (despite being excellent) under performed and 69 employees' jobs are now at risk.

French video game union STJV sounded the alarm as early as February, blaming management for understaffing, lack of direction, and last minute delays, as well as failing to negotiate with the studio's worker committee. A survey of developers at the time reported 50 percent disapproval of the studio's strategy. "We will not pay for our bosses' mistakes," the union announced this week after the latest threat of layoffs. "I'm so tired," one developer there told me.

There’s still a huge and unsettled debate around RTO in the game industry more broadly. Some studios have produced great games while fully remote. Others have blamed it for delays and breakdowns in culture. I think the merits and tradeoffs are more complicated than some people are willing to admit, but also that onerous corporate mandates are bullshit and self-defeating and workers should be able to collectively negotiate their own destinies rather than be at the mercy of millionaire c-suite whims.

"In a world obsessed with progress yet haunted by impermanence"

Analogue, the company behind beautiful-looking FPGA-enabled retro gaming consoles, announced the price and pre-order date for the Analogue 3D, a bespoke recreation of the Nintendo 64. The idea is that it works with original controllers and cartridges with zero compromises, outputting image quality in 4K while preserving the CRT-style of the original presentation, all with zero input lag.

The company, or rather its boss, Christopher Taber, also has a penchant for dramatic, expletive-filled mythologizing around himself and his projects. It can make for some great quotes and also plenty of hot air. This week the company sounded like it was reciting Proust while describing its $250 Mario Party machine.

"Just put the fries in the bag bro," joked GameSpot's Tamoor Hussain. "I love your products but please stop posting cringe," wrote critic SpeckObst. "This looks good, but oh my godddd guys, these posts! It's more than a bit much, it reads like parody. I'm not sure there'd be this much aggrandising if God himself popped down," added Lost in Cult marketing director Ryan Brown. God himself would have at least included a controller in the box.

There are some bigger concerns about Analogue at the moment that were recently summarized by writer Sam Machkovech. He notes the Analogue Duo, the company's TurboGrafx-16 replica, still has compatibility issues with some games. The Analogue Pocket was supposed to get CRT output support at some point but the feature was later removed from the website.

Pre-orders are going up for the Analogue 3D next week but we still don't have any actual videos or screenshots demonstrating the image quality. Then there's the MiSTer, an open-source FPGA project that works for more than just one console and has come down dramatically in price this year. There's real competition this time around, in other words, and a sleek plastic housing a nice sounding song and dance might not cut it, at least for hardcore retro enthusiasts.

Patch notes

Super Mario Party Jamboree version 1.1.0 went out before the game even launched. It "Fixed a bug where the number of times you’ve stopped on an Unlucky Space is reset when you resume from a suspended save in Mario Party."
Metaphor: Refantazio patch 1.4 fixed anti-aliasing on PC, addressed a camera shake bug, and made the game louder. "Unbeknownst to me, I booted up the game and my poor ears, man…I had to adjust master volume to 1/8 from its previous setting of ½," responded one player.
Lollipop Chainsaw Repop version 1.05 fixed some bugs after a pretty rough launch, including a lack of undead. "Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the number of KillZombie to be insufficient in some scenes."
Dragon's Dogman 2's latest update improves the "processing of NPC thoughts" in order to boost the performance framerate closer to 60fps on console. Combined with a new casual mode I might actually finish it now.
Signalis version 1.4 on Switch adds an option to toggle inventory capacity limits and extend its size. This was a big reason why some people didn't enjoy the game originally, and was rolled out on Steam almost a year ago.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate patch 13.0.3 arrives three years after its final balance update and fixes an exploit whereby online players could rage quit to avoid having their rank impacted. Unfortunately the update also messed up GameCube controllers that used third-party adapters.

Live Service Interrupted

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 players got bent out of shape after the latest patch nerfed some things and made the game harder. Some accused Saber Interactive of pulling an Arrowhead, whose similarly beloved squad-based PVE shooter Helldivers 2 torched community goodwill over the course of many months with nerfs to fan-favorite guns and strategies.

The update limited ammo refills on certain difficulties, made enemies more aggressive, and bosses harder to deal with. "Devs need to stop listening to edgelord 'elite' players that want the most punishing experience possible," wrote one player on Reddit. Negative reviews on Steam spiked for a couple days before the developers announced a hotfix to dial things back. Some fans called on everyone to chillout. "Power never concedes without demands, so we will maintain demands," one responded.

Still, it's part of a larger philosophical fight over the soul of the game. Kilroywashere1917 on Reddit hit the nail on the head. "That is a problem when I’m playing a game about Space Marines and using their primary weapon isn’t viable," they wrote. "I shouldn’t be forced to use a melee oriented build to 'get gud.'" If the game is supposed to be a grim dark power fantasy about stoic fascists stomping demonic aliens across the cosmic horrors of deep space, why chase a game balance that undermines that feeling?

One way to read this is that Space Marine 2, celebrated for its old-school Xbox 360-style purity, is now falling into the online game trap of fixing what wasn't broken, potentially with an aim to extend the party and keep people engaged for longer by upping the challenge. Or maybe the honeymoon has just worn off and players are getting antsy as they wait for promised new content.

Tekken 8 is trying to make amends for a microtransaction faux pas earlier this month when it tried to sell players the stage for DLC fighter Heihachi "many illegitimate children" Mishima separately for $5. This meant that even fans who had shelled out $110 for the Deluxe Edition would need to pay extra to fight on Genmaji Temple.

They couldn't even access it if they randomly got matchmade with someone else who had bought it. Both players would need to have paid to experience the glory of the red maple retreat. Fans flooded Reddit, Steam, and social media comment boxes with things like, "I absolutely REFUSE to pay for GENMAJI TEMPLE as a Ultimate Edition / Season Pass owner."

Father of Tekken, Katsuhiro Harada, apologized, then deleted the apology, then tweeted "Plz check this out" when the team announced this week they would make it up to fans by giving season pass owners a winter stage for free and everyone who plays 500 free Tekken Coins to spend skins and stuff.

Tekken 8 is the first new entry in the 3D fighter in almost a decade. In that time modern fighting games have adopted the NBA2K school of making everything in-between matches feel like a virtual mall and charging players for hanging out in it. Tekken 8 turned out to be no different, which has caused repeated waves of controversy.

Harada previously suggested the development team and Bandai Namco aren't exactly on the same page when it comes to what content is sold and for how much, but has also defended charging for things given the investment required. He ballparked the cost of a new stage at $350,000.

Throne and Liberty has a guild griefing problem. The NCSoft MMORPG published by Amazon Games came out of Early Access recently and has retained surprisingly robust concurrent player numbers on Steam. But some players are already complaining about overly powerful guilds monopolizing activities on certain servers thanks in part to all of the pre-release grinding their members have been up to.

There's a big PVP focus in Throne and Liberty, and warring guilds are essentially excluding underpowered ones from certain events. "On the server where I play with my friends, the top 4 guilds have monopolized the entire server," wrote Reddit user farkitto. "All they do in all conflicts, all events, all pvp open zones is to kill all the players who try to enter with MACRO and completely prevent entry to the zone. The game is getting really disgusting."

You can see some of the massive fights between top Throne and Liberty guilds on YouTube. Unlike some other MMOs where players just make guilds for them and their friends, Throne and Liberty uses them as economic hubs for organizing the distribution of potions, loot, and other resources integral to the grind. But the result is that players of smaller guilds on the wrong servers don't have much leverage when trying to just be play and be chill.

"Why is griefing not only allowed but encouraged in your game?" complained one player. "Junobote just spawned and Sanctum of Desire was closed because it was pvp inside. We tried to hang out in there, but got killed by a huge alliance who wiped everyone out and took the boss for themselves when it was supposed to be a peace boss."

Some players have reported getting ripped off by their guilds. Others are finding the guild application process even more humiliating than applying to regular jobs. There are also accusations that some of the top guilds are relying on bots and scripts to essentially cheat. This week NCSoft took a ban hammer to accounts suspected of botting. One player was not impressed. "'Fair and equal environment' meanwhile it’s a p2w game," they wrote.