On topic, I picked up Hellblade in this PSN sale. It's not on sale by too much (€21 rather than €29, I think) but I thought it won't be on sale again before the podcast.

This likely means it will be €15 a month before the podcast.

Friday the 13th is £7.99 in the PSN sale too. Anyone recommend it? All fixed and plenty of content now?

I've just taken the copy of Uncharted Lost Legacy that I got for Christmas out the cellophane and it appears to have come with a download code for the PS4 party game, That's You. Most of us probably have it as its been on PS+ for months, but if you don't have it, and you want it, feel free to use this code:

That's You (PS4) - BHQE XMNL XQNR

Just say if you use it so nobody else tries after.

If you've not played the game, it's fun enough for a few goes. Probably fun in a larger group, I only played it with my son. You play it via your mobile phone, so no need for extra controllers.

If you order Donkey Kong TF Switch through Zavvi and use the discount code VCUK15, you can get it for £37.53!

Music Magpie has 20% off on most of their pre owned games! Some great deals to be had.

It’s not really a deal as such, but there’s a special new skin for Mercy in Overwatch for around £13 with all the money going to breast cancer research.

It is pink. And makes her look like a Japanese anime magical girl show protagonist.

For anyone that doesn't own it on every platform under the sun, Peggle is currently free for PC and MAC on EA Origin. Just sign in / sign up and it's all yours.

Ha, I was thinking of posting about the Mercy skin myself. I think it's a good initiative, as long as it's in good faith and the money goes to those who need it. I wish more companies would do stuff like that. The world could always use more compassion and generosity.

It made me wonder, though. Why is breast cancer the main type to receive this kind of public awareness / prevention efforts? I had a look at these statistics, and it doesn't seem to top any of the charts.

Are there other prevention campaigns I'm simply unaware of? Or is it that crowd-funded breast cancer research yields particularly potent results in comparison?

Hmm, according to this, it's the second most common cancer. The fact that it's that common but confined to only 50% of the population means it has an inordinate effect on that population

However, divorcing the actual cancer bit from it for a moment, it's more Corporate PR friendly than the other top cancers for sure. Ideal marketing for products with toxicity issues too (primarily thinking of the NFL here, with it's domestic violence issues, but that could be stretched to multiplayer video games, which I've heard a rumour that their communities are not all sweetness and light).

It's a known problem in the medical community - breast cancer is significantly more treatable and so it's... for want of a better term, "marketable" in terms of raising funds. And the money does good work - it improves screening processes, it improves quality of life options, etc. But it does, in many minds, divert attention and funding away from research into more common or more difficult cancers.

I suppose it's a bit like funding the total eradication of one fading disease while another grows stronger. The former is more attainable and more likely to produce results (and is still ultimately very important), even if logically it seems like the latter is the more pressing concern.

The way Blizzard phrase this as ‘our first charity skin’ suggests this is just the beginning of what they’re planning to do.

The Overwatch team do seem to be pretty charity motivated, they did a live ‘puppy duel’ on twitch last year with rescue pups dressed as Overwatch characters to raise money for a local no-kill shelter.

It’s pretty easy to be cynical about this (I’ve seen people say that the reason they’ve gone with an anime magical girl look is to get the ‘buy the skin for my waifu’ crowd, essentially to ‘con’ charity money out of basement dwellers), but I choose not to be.

Flabyo wrote: ↑May 9th, 2018, 7:11 pm The way Blizzard phrase this as ‘our first charity skin’ suggests this is just the beginning of what they’re planning to do.

The Overwatch team do seem to be pretty charity motivated, they did a live ‘puppy duel’ on twitch last year with rescue pups dressed as Overwatch characters to raise money for a local no-kill shelter.

It’s pretty easy to be cynical about this (I’ve seen people say that the reason they’ve gone with an anime magical girl look is to get the ‘buy the skin for my waifu’ crowd, essentially to ‘con’ charity money out of basement dwellers), but I choose not to be.

Oh, I absolutely agree. Gaming culture spends more than enough time telling us to buy Doritos, it's wonderful to see this instead. I'm very happy that my copy of Hellblade supported mental health charities when I bought it.

And as for people who see being asked to give money to charity that they'd happily give to Blizzard as being "conned"? That's a miserable headspace I'm glad I'm not privy to.

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I do have general doubts about giant corporations ever being truly altruistically minded, but if even a single life can be saved from this event, that's a net positive in my eyes.

It's just that I was reading the news yesterday and thought "Huh, I don't think I've ever seen a similar campaign for colon, prostate or stomach cancer, that's weird". Kintaris' explanation does make sense, though. It's understandable that diseases which are comparatively easy to cure would be given priority funding.

Chopper's point about PR friendliness sounds accurate as well. Although it's not very pleasant to think of public health-related matters being used by various corporations looking to rectify their image problems.

Difficult issues with no easy solutions, I suppose...


PS: If the Overwatch team really has more charity projects in store, thumbs up from me.

Galactic Civilizations 2 is free on Humble

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/gala ... te-edition

Comforting to see that now it will be resting in everybody else's account, not getting played

Apologies if it's already been posted...

CD Keys currently doing a 30 day 'Xbox Live Games' pass for 0.79p. If you redeem this on a valid Xbox account and setup the auto renew function, Microsoft will also give you an additional month for free. So that's 2 months for 79p! My understanding is that it only works with accounts that have never used the Live Games subscription in the past (that also includes the 14 day free trial)but I may be wrong. I still think this is a no brainer for any PC only gamers since it does include a small yet decent list of Windows 10 compatible 'Play Anywhere' titles that doesn't require you to have ever owned an Xbox.. All you need is a valid Xbox account which can be setup entirely online for free. The only caveat is that your machine is running Windows 10 if you want to play the game.

So I get to enjoy Sea of Thieves, Crackdown 3 (and various other titles) for 79p. Bargain! Ohh and it will also include the full release of State of Decay 2 as well.

Two months for 79p? You can probably cross Crackdown 3 off that list then

Galactic Civilizations II is free on the Humble Store right now. I remember playing a demo way back in 2007ish and being extremely lost. Grabbed the freebie anyway, hope I get on with it better this time around.

Nice 85% deal on Mankind Divided. Its almost 4.5 euro in my region.

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/deus ... nd-divided

Unreal Gold is free on GOG right now.
https://www.gog.com/