Plus Lego Fortnite becomes GTA and Funko knocks Itch.io offline
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SIFTER is produced by Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Courtney Smith, Adam Christou and Chris Button. Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer. Thanks to Audio Technica Australia and Apple for their support of SIFTER.
FIONA: Hi I’m Fiona Bartholomaeus
KYLE: and I’m Kyle Pauletto
FIONA: Welcome to Walkthrough, SIFTER’s weekly recap on the biggest news in video games.
KYLE: For our final walkthrough of the year, we’ll be covering the 2024 Game Awards, Funko’s false DMCA claim against itch.io and we get Lego Fortnite GTA before GTA VI.
Here is the news for Sunday 15th of December. Let’s go!
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PROMO: Join the SIFTER community on Discord at sifter.com.au/discord
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KYLE: What a week Fi. We were treated to some massive announcements, fantastic trailers, and I think some awards were given out at some point too?
FIONA: That’s right it was the Game Awards this week, and to no one's surprise Astro Bot took out the top spot of Game of the Year.
The walking talking PlayStation ad cleaned up actually, taking home Game of the Year, Best Family Game, Best Game Direction, and Best Action Adventure Game.
KYLE: Black Myth Wukong also took out four awards, indie poker-like Balatro also had a great night and was awarded Best Debut Indie, Best Indie in general, as well as Best Mobile Game.
And Metaphor ReFantazio won Best Art Direction, Best RPG, and Best Narrative.
FIONA: But it wasn’t ever really about the awards was it. We know what you all came for. Trailers, baby!
And boy did they deliver some rippers this year.
We got our first good look at The Witcher IV with a Ciri fronted cinematic reveal trailer. No word of a release date, but that hasn’t stopped my hopes and expectations from running rampant.
And Naughty Dog showed off their new sci-fi action adventure title, Intergalactic: The Heretic Project. Which I swear must just be an advertising collab between Porsche, Adidas and Sony. It was adverts within an ad…Neil Druckmann really is a genius. In saying that though, I can’t wait until we see more gameplay of it.
KYLE: Elden Ring is back. Just when I thought I was ready to take some time away from the lands between, they drag me right back in.
Thankfully for my poor weary tarnished, Elden Ring: Nightreign is something of a co-op spinoff set in the same universe, not another expansion, so I’m looking forward to what that looks like next year.
FIONA: It Takes Two Devs Hazelight unveiled their new IP, Split Fiction. It’s more two player co-op focused action that jumps between fantasy and sci-fi, and looks to be a lot of fun.
And speaking of co-op hitmakers, Hello Games of Overcooked fame also has a brand new, escape room themed multiplayer IP in the works titled Stage Fright which sort of seems like the same concept?
KYLE: Borderlands may yet redeem itself after a disastrous jump into cinemas this year, because the back half of the Borderlands 4 trailer looked phenomenal.
And The Last of Us 2, as well as Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth are both coming to PC early next year.
FIONA: There was so much more that we just don’t have time to get to, so be sure to visit the link in our shownotes for a full list of award winners and announcements.
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FIONA: The indie gaming marketplace itch.io briefly went offline this week after Funko took it down with a DMCA strike.
According to Leaf "leafo" Corcoran, the founder of itch, Funko has an AI powered brand protection software called Brand Shield which created a phishing report to their registrar.
Corcoran said Itch responded to the claim, took down the page in question but Funko supposedly ignored it and disabled their whole domain.
On X Funko said the takedown request targeted a specific page that was imitating the Funko Fusion development website, not the entire itchio.io website.
KYLE: To add some weirdness into the mix, apparently Funko called the founder’s mum? Corcoran posted a screenshot of a text from their mum which said “got a strange call from a company about accusatory statements on your social media account. Call me.”
So far Funko hasn’t confirmed anything about the phone call or if they did disable the whole website, nor did they respond to Itch.io’s claim about it being an AI-powered software that caused the issue.
The store wasn’t down for very long and has been restored so fingers crossed it doesn’t happen again.
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KYLE: Lego got a massive expansion in Fortnite this week with a new social RPG experience called Brick Life.
You can explore a Lego city with 31 other people, and can take on jobs like a courier, security guard or even a sushi chef.
People can design their own homes, explore a magic school and rooftop club, and get involved with a bunch of missions too.
FIONA: People are comparing it to Grand Theft Auto 5, at least for it’s roleplaying city style of game play, but this will be much more family friendly.
It’s not the only recent Lego announcement either. The team also revealed that Lego Fortnite, the Minecraft-style survival experience is being renamed Lego Fortnite Odyssey and from now ‘Lego Fortnite’ will be the name of the hub that houses all the Lego experiences in Fortnite.
And for those sweats out there, Kyle I’m looking at you, there is Fortnite Ballistic which is a first person tactical shooter in the vein of Counter Strike and Valorant.
So now you can live your dream of smashing Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso after a triple kill, Pauletto.
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FIONA: Those wild cats at Dbrand just straight up put a Switch 2 case on their website, with a Switch 2 inside it.
I mean WHAT!?
KYLE: These leaks are getting absurd, why doesn’t Nintendo just launch this thing.
Dbrand’s CEO Adam Ijaz confirmed that the device you can see inside the semi-transparent case is made from a 3D scan of a real device.
FIONA: It’s a heck of a viral marketing move from a company that’s known for pushing the boundaries but you know what good on em.
You can see the video on Dbrand’s website.
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KYLE: That’s it for the big headlines, here are the rest of the games coming out this year.
FIONA: Bit of an odd one to start with this week, we have the Netflix Gaming exclusive Squid Game: Unleashed. It’s basically Fall Guys with a Squid Game aesthetic, and surprisingly looks pretty fun. That’s out on Netflix December 17.
KYLE: If you’re one of the few VR gamers out there, and you’re a fan of sci-fi horror, be sure to check out Alien: Rogue Incursion this week. It’s a survival horror shooter that looks genuinely terrifying, so much so that I don’t think I’d be able to play it even if I could afford a VR setup. That’s coming to PSVR 2 and PC VR on the 19th, and Meta Quest 3 early next year.
FIONA: And finally, Nintendo’s favourite pretender Palworld is getting an expansion, cheekily titled Feybreak, which can only be a not-so-subtle nod to the fan made Pokemon RPG Daybreak. Feybreak will bring new pals to enslave, new weapons to threaten them with, as well as new building options, mechanics and areas. Mark that in your calendar Nintendo lawyers, that’ll be available on the 23rd.
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PROMO: Articles to read, videos to watch and podcasts to listen to on sifter.com.au
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FIONA: This has been Walkthrough by SIFTER, my name is Fiona Bartholomaeus.
KYLE: And my name is Kyle Pauletto, thank you so much for listening.
FIONA: This is our last episode for 2024, we’ve had a great year sharing the news with you. We’ll be back in a month in Early January, unless something massive happens like Nintendo launches the Switch 2, but I think they’ve given up on that hey…but maybe Dbrand will start selling them or something…
KYLE: SIFTER is produced by myself, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Adam Christou, Courtney Smith and Chris Button. The episode is edited by both Senior Producer Mitch Loh and Gianni Di Giovanni who is SIFTER’s Executive Producer and also Walkthrough’s script editor.
FIONA: Thanks to Brian Fairbanks from Salty Dog Sounds for composing the Walkthrough theme tune, and Audio Technica Australia and Apple for their support of SIFTER’s podcasts.
KYLE: We’ll be back with more news on Sunday 12th January 2025. See you then.
