The main thing preventing me from playing Star Wars Zero Company in its iron man "beskar" mode is cowardice, but the second thing preventing me from doing that has been the state of the game at launch. I've had it crash on me a few times, and the thought of my one and only run being lost because of a mid-save crash is enough to keep me playing with iron man off—even if Zero Company is much easier than XCOM and actually losing seems unlikely.

Fortunately, a 1.1 patch is here, and the first patch note is "Fixed various crash issues." Following that, "Fixed an issue where Beskar saves were temporarily deleted" and "Fixed a crash issue for Beskar mode."

There's also a fix for "an issue where shots can be missed, even when the chance to hit is 100%." I've been assuming that ZCOM was rounding up the numbers and actually I'd been missing 97% chance shots the several times I completely whiffed a point-blank sure thing in my playthrough, so it'll be nice to actually land those attacks instead.

The other main bug I experienced was overwatch not triggering even when enemies jog through multiple targeting cones on their turn. That doesn't seem to have been addressed, although several other bugs involving overwatch triggering against units outside the targeting cone or behind solid objects have. Maybe I'll wait one more patch before turning on the beskar mode then.

Bit Reactor, the studio that created Zero Company, reportedly furloughed most of its staff shortly before launch, and has been operating with a skeleton crew since then. Which explains why it's taken two weeks for some fairly fundamental issues to be addressed. Here's hoping some of those staff can get brought back on to help speed up the rate patches come out.

While Sony cites "consumer preferences" for digital games as the core reason for its decision to abandon physical PlayStation releases, the numbers presented in a new report tell a different story. Games like Marvel's Spider-Man 2 are still making a ton of money on disc, according to Rhys Elliot of Alinea Analytics, and Sony's decision to end discs is much more about controlling the overall market for PlayStation games.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 earned $1.2 billion in gross revenue, according to the estimates in Elliot's latest newsletter, 35% of which was made up of physical unit sales. Ghost of Yotei made $400 million, with 37.6% physical. Astro Bot hit $275 million with 46.8% physical. Death Stranding 2 made $129 million, with 41.8% physical.

Why are these numbers so much higher than we've seen from other sources, including Sony itself? For one thing, many of the previous numbers have been counting unit sales, not revenue. For another, Alinea's numbers are about revenue generated, not units sold. And, of course, here we're talking purely about "prestige single-player" games, whose audiences are more likely to buy physical.

"Physical revenue is huge in the prestige single-player games Sony is getting more cautious about," Elliot argues, noting that "a disc dollar is worth less to Sony than a digital one, as there’s the retailer cut, manufacturing and distribution." Certainly, Sony would prefer if it were able to keep 100% of the revenue from these games, and it's betting that whatever players it loses by ditching physical releases will be offset by increased net profits.

So, Elliott argues, "the disc decision was largely about margins, control, and killing the secondhand market," rather than a recognition of consumer trends. We all likely could have guessed as much, and these factors are exactly why I've argued that PlayStation killing discs is bad for everyone, but there's some vindication in seeing the thought backed up by market analysis numbers. That doesn't make the prospect of an all-digital PS6 any less annoying, though.

Sony has topped a generational run of self-owns: abandoning Hideo Kojima's next Metal Gear right as Marvel's Wolverine falls flat.

Wardogs, a 100-player milsim FPS that launched today in early access, is an immediate hit. It's currently Steam's global top seller and has so far peaked at over 300,000 players. Unfortunately, you might not be able to play it right now.

Servers are getting slammed, players are stuck in the login queue, and as of this writing, developer Bulkhead has taken servers offline entirely to work on a fix.

"We are actively working towards getting as many of you in game as soon as possible. Apologies for the disruption," the Wardogs account posted on X. "This is due to an issue that wasn't present in the previous beta."

Trying to log in currently serves up an error, and when Wardogs does come back online, you should probably expect to be stuck in a login queue for a while. In a video posted today, Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer seemed to suggest the long queues are partially due to being "rate-limited by Valve."

"Ideally we'd be on a triple-A tier for some of this stuff, but we're not. So we're talking to them, trying to get that sorted out. It is what it is. I wouldn't leave the queue, I'd just stay in."

The disruption isn't a huge surprise, given the Wardogs' popularity, but it is disappointing. Players had the impression that the numerous closed betas held right up to launch would mean a smooth launch day. Bulkhead seemed confident that they were in a good place, too: The final closed beta held this past weekend invited players to "obliterate our servers."

But the day is still young. Hopefully it all gets sorted sooner than you're reading this. I'll update this story when servers are back up.