WTF Happened September 2025
For those new to this series, welcome to the September 2025 edition of What The Fuck Happened, a series where we retroactively apply importance to a whole month of news. This is a retrospective series, so it's always late, but it serves the purpose of letting you remind yourself of all the most important gossip of the month for a wide variety of topics. For return readers, welcome back!
We always start with...
Business, World, and Health News
Follow-up: Wikipedia lost against the U.K. Online Safety Act
This is an article I should have covered last month, but Wikipedia lost a challenge against the Online Safety Act on August 11, 2025. (BBC) They announced on September 12, 2025, that they will not appeal the court decision. (Wikimedia)
Lisbon’s tram derailed... again
In Lisbon, Portugal, the iconic funicular railway crashed and killed 15 people and injured 18 others. (NYPost) I had a tough time finding a solid date when this horrible accident happened, but I think it happened September 2 at night, right before the news hit the next day. This is not an isolated incident! This same tram crashed in 2018 and injured 28 people. (BBC) I wouldn't expect the same tram system to have the same kind of accident twice in less than a decade. These transport systems should be better maintained.
Federal appeals court said Trump unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act
On September 2, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked use of the Alien Enemies Act in several southern states. The states blocked were Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. (CNN) I'm finding the lack of legal ramifications for Trump disturbing. When does he stop getting away with breaking laws and abusing his position? When do we just kick him out and start fresh?
Charlie Kirk killed during outdoor event at Utah university
On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University. A suspect, Tyler Robinson, was arrested after a 33-hour manhunt. The investigation into the murder is still on-going, but early on, the rifle was identified to be gifted to Tyler. (KRTV) Some people are using this assassination as a political rally cry already, which is pretty much a red flag for me, because this wasn't a politically motivated murder in my eyes. Ironically, Charlie Kirk is well known to be pro firearms and recently stated after a school shooting that it was acceptable to have kids die as long as it meant he could have guns. That makes this a very poetic death to me, but every death is a waste of life no matter who died. Footage of the gruesome gunshot was easily available for several days on the internet, but I believe it is a lot harder to come across today. This was probably the biggest event of the month for a lot of people on both sides of U.S. politics and even some other countries with even Putin chiming in about it (FOX), but there's a lot more to cover, so let's keep going...
First Syrian leader to address general assembly since 1967
September 24, 2025 would be the first time since 1967 that a Syrian leader spoke at the UN assembly. (Times) Ahmad al-Sharaa, the interim president of Syria at this time, was addressing the UN to ask that we lift international sanctions now that the Assad regime had been overthrown. (NBC) I highly recommend reading up on the overthrown Syrian government, because there's a lot involved which I won't cover here, but even that NBC article I referenced covers quite a bit more than you'd expect.
During that same UN assembly, Ukraine's leader, Zelensky, continued to speak on his war efforts and warn that once Russia is done with them, others would be next. We also had the Colombia president demand criminal investigation into Trump's and other U.S. officials' involvement in recent Caribbean boat attacks. (AP News)
Nvidia invested $5 Billion dollars into Intel right after U.S. government took 10% of stock
Nvidia, the wildly successful GPU maker, is investing $5 billion dollars into Intel, the wildly successful CPU maker, and calling Intel a "struggling semiconductor company" despite the company already being partially taken over by the U.S. government (APNews) Intel had some cool tech in the 2010s, but their tech would be better supported if the company died and their tech became abandonware. You heard me right, I think Intel's Wigig cards and their CPUs would be in better hands if we gave the tech to everyone rather than having to license it from Intel. For that reason, I question why so many people are adamant that Intel be saved. Let the company burn so that a phoenix may rise. Innovation comes from desperation.
Did you know Tylenol causes autism!?
Yeah, me neither, but that's because what was said this month about Tylenol is bullshit. On September 22, Trump and RFK Jr. announced that there was evidence that Tylenol or more specifically acetaminophen causes autism. (FDA) Many doctors, even the ones at the White House, disproved and criticized the statement. An untreated fever is dangerous, much more so than maybe causing autism, but there's absolutely no link between autism and fever reduction. Tylenol must have been really pissed, and to me, this is just another example of why we never should have fucking voted these morons into office! At least, NPR gets it.
A third of American students are delinquent on loans
Honestly, I thought that number would be higher. Apparently, that's actually down from 31% in April, but it's still a high percentage of people who are unable to pay for their student loans. (Bloomberg) Makes you think, why even go to school when you aren't even guaranteed a job afterward and you can't otherwise even afford to pay for it?
Luigi Mangione terrorism charges dropped and potential DOJ mishap
Luigi Mangione, the man accused of the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was charged with domestic terrorism, but the New York judge presiding over the case dismissed the charges stating that he didn't seem to want to intimidate and coerce the civilian population (PBS), which I believe are the grounds for labeling something as a terrorist attack. He still faces second degree murder charges. In related developments, Luigi may have had his right to a fair trial violated by the DOJ. (Adam Klasfeld)
Kenyan judge ordered Transgender Protection Rights Act as result of 6-year court case
In June of 2019, a transgender woman in Kenya was arrested on grounds of impersonation. After half a decade fighting the good fight, this woman was awarded a million Kenyan shillings, which was equivalent to ~$8k USD, and the judge also ordered the Kenyan government to introduce legislation that addresses the rights of transgender citizens. (QNews) This is a big win for transgender rights advocates everywhere, even if they don't live in Kenya. For me, it's just so refreshing to see a functioning judiciary system in 2025, but I must point out that this win came only after half a decade of this woman's misery and years of delay. I'm ignoring the absurdly low shillings amount won, too, because that's mostly a side effect of poor economics and Kenyan salaries being crazy low. It's definitely strange that I can earn a year of the average U.S. salary and then go to Kenya and live like a king for many years. That seems pretty stupid when the solution is to enforce a trade rate that's much higher to make Kenyan shillings more valuable.
Young black college student found hanging from tree in Mississippi
A young man named Trey Reed was found hanging from a tree outside Delta State University. (NYTimes) This event had all the trappings of a lynching and hit hard considering the political climate of 2025. Racists and bigots are emboldened to do a lot more unspeakable things right out in the open. The second autopsy is still underway at the time of posting this recap article, but I won't be surprised if we find foul play.
Also in Mississippi, 17-year-old shot to death by other teenagers
Mississipi is getting a lot of attention this month with several very public murders in the state. On September 19, a 17-year-old boy was shot to death in Jackson, Mississippi, in the area of Sunnyvale Drive and Sandalwood Place. Two suspects were arrested. (Clarion Ledger) Keep in mind that while this may seem like a lot of murders in one place, the average murders per month in the U.S.A. is over 1400 murders. I'm not trying to downplay these specific murders, but unfortunately, murders happen all the time, and we do pretty much nothing about stopping future murders, so... yeah, it sucks, but I kind of expect this stuff to happen in the States.
People are freaking out about two people found dead in a place called Guntown, too! We literally called the place Guntown and we're somehow surprised there was a shooting there? Okay, so it was a murder-suicide incident, but it still involved a gun.
Company sells users' phone call data to AI firms
Neon, an up-and-coming social app, is offering to give you money for your phone data. (TechCrunch) Neon will currently pay you $0.30 per minute for communicating with other Neon users and up to $30 per day for communicating with other people outside of the Neon network. They're also paying for referrals and are preferring users talk with other users on Neon so both sides of the conversation can be legally recorded. I personally wouldn't trust it not to record both sides of a phone call, but I assume it's simply easier to record your input microphone than record the output audio from the phone.
This app's mere existence on a mainstream app store scares me greatly for people growing up in the 2020s onward. Neon isn't even candy-coating their business plan. They're straight-up disassembling your privacy and everyone else's privacy by existing at all. This kind of company should be illegal in general in all areas of the world, but here it is, just another independent data-hogging, AI-training company using user data to create automated systems and storing that data for years if not decades until it inevitably gets hacked or worse, leaked.
ICE was spotted in the wild wearing Meta smartglasses
In
a concerning turn of events, people noticed ICE officers were sometimes
wearing Meta Ray-Ban Wayfarer smartglasses as their personal accessory
similar to regular glasses. (Bsky:@unraveledpress.com)
I find this concerning because it shows potential for these officers to
film unsuspecting victims and then put those videos online. Of course,
this could be done by anyone, but not everyone is trying to disrupt
communities and remove people from their jobs and ruin others' lives as
part of their job.
Speaking of evil assholes, those ICE assholes invaded a family's home while they weren't even home in order to trap a bunch of workers who were working on their roof. (ABC7) They don't even wait for a warrant, guys. These guys are basically unpoliced police, but we already knew that. I just wanted to point it out again. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Bone-healing guns?! Sign me up!
According to Popular Mechanics, "scientists in South Korea created a new kind of bone mixture that can be extruded within minutes from a device similar to an arts-and-crafts hot glue gun." That's right, we now have 3D printer guns for bones! This was done in an effort to provide emergency services for repairing bones quickly when it's necessary to prevent further injury and/or save the person's life. It is not a perfect bone-healing gun, but it will help in emergencies. (Ars)
In related news, way back in June, Popular Mechanics also covered a new kind of concrete that can self-repair itself. A lot of people don't seem to realize human bones heal themselves already, but they do. This concrete is called "lichen concrete" and uses a combination of cyanobacteria and fungi to basically make living concrete that draws energy from sunlight to heal its wounds. (Popular Mechanics) Pretty soon, we may see this concrete used for roads where potholes will become a thing of the past. What a world we live in, right? This concrete innovation is part of an effort to curb climate change and should make future concrete production more efficient and construction less wasteful. I'm going to update the June recap right now to include this invention.
Historic church gets stilts to endure massive construction project
Usually, when you rebuild a zone, you demolish the area and build on top of the remains. This church tower needed to be preserved, because it was a protected historical landmark, so engineers developed a stilt system to suspend the church tower while they dug massive holes around it. (Times) I personally think this feels like a Minecraft moment except in Minecraft, if you remove the 'stilts', the tower just floats in the air.
Celebrity News
Asmongold's father passed away
It's
tough losing people in general, and it gets tougher the closer you are
to them. Asmongold AKA Zack Hoyt lost his father, Jack Lloyd, to
pancreatic cancer and acute liver failure a few days before an
announcement was made by Asmon officially on X on September 18 with a follow-up video on September 21. This all happened just weeks after a video
was posted about his Dad having cancer. In the earlier video, Asmon
allowed his Dad to speak and Asmon spent a good part of the video making
fun of his Dad's seemingly endless ranting. Despite the clowning
around, I'm sure Asmon's in a tough position and I wouldn't wish this
kind of loss on anyone. Jack died at the age of 78, which gives me hope I
may be able to last that long! 
Jimmy Kimmel suspended over Charlie Kirk-related monologue
Jimmy Kimmel's never been someone I cared to watch, but his indefinite suspension from ABC after his monologue implied the Kirk shooter was probably a member of the MAGA crowd, that was scary levels of censorship. In the backlash of that suspension, millions of people flooded social platforms as well as the streets in protest and many promised this was the final straw that led them to cancel their Disney+ subscriptions. Despite Disney forcing ABC to reinstate Kimmel days later, Disney, Hulu, and ESPN subscriptions plummeted in late September, reporting 1.7 million lost subscribers from all 3 platforms combined. (Mashable) Regardless of Disney's losses being very justified, I think we're failing to hold those truly responsible for this suspension to account, and I don't think they're actually learning the lessons we want them to. They're just going to continue making bad decisions in the guise of making more profits.
L.A. Comic Con 2025 had AI Stan Lee
At the Los Angeles Comic Con this year, from September 26 - 28, an AI representation of Stan Lee was used to engage with fans with the permission of his estate and the engagement was given a ticket price of $15+ per person and extra for photographs and one-on-one conversations. This is a dark reality where if you die and don't have a trusting family and end up popular, your untrustworthy family can spin up a fake version of you for money and nobody in charge will even bat an eye at it. Guys, this is all done in bad taste. It doesn't matter what the chatbot says. The very idea that you can be taken advantage of after your death like this and it's not illegal... it scares me. I hope at least some of the fans will realize this is an abomination, but part of me realizes most people who are Stan Lee fans will gladly pay the ticket price. I base this probability on the state of the world alone. Excelsior!
Web & Streaming News
The Completionist returned to YouTube
Okay, so... this one takes some explaining so you understand why this is newsworthy. Basically, a YouTube personality titled "The Completionist" AKA Jirard Khalil was well regarded as a game completionist or someone who gets 100% of a game's achievements and seeing all there is to see of a game's content. He started taking donation money in 2014 with his Open Hand Foundation, but the foundation was sitting on those donated funds for almost a decade when in 2022, an investigative YouTube channel revealed that the foundation had not spent any money since 2014 aside from tens of thousands in administrative costs. The donations were still sitting around in limbo even into early 2023. On September 25, 2025, Khalil returned to his YouTube channel to post an apology video titled "You Deserve Answers" which confirmed a lot of what people were assuming for years. His video owned his mistakes and his dishonesty. Regardless, it was a huge event on social media to talk about his return after a year of silence. This is a good example to reference when explaining reasons to avoid charity fundraisers like the plague.
Mozilla Firefox got a new optimization feature: Unload Tab
The new Unload Tab feature allows users to take a tab out of memory without removing the tab itself. All content within the tab instance is lost, but you save memory and can reload whatever was in the tab the moment the tab is returned to an active state. This is a feature I likely won't ever remember to use, but it should help older and weaker hardware run multiple tabs at once without having to bookmark things as a workaround, which is what I've always done in the past.
Bluesky has invisible shadowbans
This is bad, very bad. I left Twitter over things like this, and it turns out I get to deal with it on Bluesky as well. there's a hidden label called "needs review" that effectively shadowbans users, keeping all their posts from being seen by anyone who isn't a mutual follower. In Bluesky's defense, shadowbans are an effective moderation tactic, but they can also be really bad for engagement and waste people's time and make the site feel more lonely than it has to. The "needs review" label has been around for a while, but I only became aware of it this month when I noticed many replies to my posts were being hidden from me. I followed a lot of people back to ensure I see their posts even though I really don't have a real interest in what most of them say on their own feeds. I hope Bluesky removes this feature soon so I can unfollow tons of people and start having a more curated follow feed. Otherwise, I'll have to take things into my own hands and create a custom user list to look at.
Whistleblower says Meta consistently prioritizes profit over safety
LOL. What? No way. /s (Bsky) Who would have guessed a corporation would choose to focus on profits above all else! (also /s) 
You should leave Twitter!
I wrote a new blog post about reasons you should leave The Site Formerly Known As Twitter. I posted this right before working on the recap article for September, so it's technically something that happened in October, but I just want to let you know that it existed before this recap post. I'll be linking people to this article IRL when they say they still use Twitter in hopes of weening them off that hellscape.
New & Returning Shows September 2025
September was a month when we ate well as far as entertainment television goes. We really got a lot of good shows this month, including Alien: Earth on Hulu/FX, Wednesday season 2 on Netflix, The Runarounds on Amazon, Gen V season 2 on Amazon, the Irish Blood finale on Acorn, a Helluva Boss standalone episode on Amazon titled "Mission: Zero", the Foundation season 3 finale on Apple TV+, and the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 finale on Paramount+ among many, many other shows. I just heard about Marvel Zombies on Disney+ and it sounds like an episode of What If but longer... which I welcome.
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver covered Trump's attacks on universities and had a rather nicely put conclusion: "Even if there is not a fixed destination, there is a clear direction. And that is they want to turn back a clock that, quite honestly, had taken way too long to move forward, and restore all of academia to being a training ground for those looking to uphold old systems of power instead of questioning them."
An animated Splinter Cell series is coming to Netflix on October 14 titled Splinter Cell: Deathwatch. I haven't consumed Splinter Cell content in a decade. I've been hoping they'd bring Splinter Cell to VR for years, but I don't think we'll see Splinter Cell VR anytime soon unfortunately. The previously announced Splinter Cell VR project was officially canceled a while ago.
Indie animations are starting to be a big part of my Bluesky feed this month, and some of the indie animations today blow my mind with how much quality work is sunk into them. Check out this clip from "Atlas and the Stars". Also, there's a series in the works called "Knights of Guinevere". There's also a show in the works titled The Ebony Witch that looks promising.
You could also check out this DBZ fan animation titled "Goku VS Vegeta - The Battle!" by A-Patrick on Newgrounds.
New & Upcoming Movies September 2025
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale got its theatrical release. I plan on watching this as soon as I catch up on the rest of the show and the the other movies in the franchise. There's a lot more to this series than I thought. I've only seen maybe half of season 1... and that was years ago.
The live action adaption of Lilo & Stitch hit Disney+, though I refused to watch it. I don't know if I'll ever watch it after the scars of Snow White's adaptation. I just can't trust Disney's judgment anymore, and my time is limited. If you watched it, let me know what you think of it. Is it as good as the cartoon?
A movie titled "Friendship" was released on HBO Max, and my first exposure to it was a skit posted to social media that didn't even credit the source and did nothing to let me know it was a recent movie release. I'll have to check this one out as soon as I can get my wife to sit down and watch it with me. Heh.
The 2025 adaptation of Superman was released to HBO Max, and the recent The Naked Gun 2025 remake/sequel was released to Paramount+. I saw both of these in theaters, so I skipped the streaming release, but trust me, they're both amazing films worth your time. If you have to pick just one of them, The Naked Gun is a god tier comedy movie.
The Superman sequel was confirmed to have the title "Man Of Tomorrow" and confirmed to be releasing July 9, 2027. (Variety) I'm more interested in the Justice Gang web series.
For October, we're getting some interesting horror releases, including the thrillers, Black Phone 2 and Blue Moon.
Good Fortune releases October 17, and I think I'll try to watch that one close to release, because I'm a fan of Keanu Reeves and the story seems pretty unique for the time. I'm interested. Let's just leave it at that.
Bugonia also looks really fun. That releases October 31 and seems like a cross between horror and satire.
Zootopia 2 is scheduled to release November 26. I loved the original movie, but I'm worried this sequel won't be the same level of humor as the original. I will be viewing it at home whenever it comes to streaming.
A comedic remake of the classic horror film Anaconda is scheduled to release December 25 with the tagline "It's the movie they're dying to remake" which to me sounds more comedic than scary. I don't know exactly what to expect from this film, but I hope to see it in a motion chair. Seems like it'll be great fun as a motion-enhanced experience.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie was announced during a Nintendo Direct on September 12 and the full trailer was posted to Illumination's YT channel. I'm moderately excited for the film but don't really care about the Galaxy games much. I much prefer the 3D World games or the Kart games. Hell, I'd love to see a Mario Party movie. Illumination would be really good at that.
Gaming News
EA sold for $55 Billion USD to multiple parties
The deal is involving Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, but the biggest investor and therefor biggest owner is going to be Saudi Arabia. (USA Today) There are a lot of questionable aspects to this IP hand-swapping, but I'd just like to point out that this is crazy in general and should not be allowed to happen. Publicly traded companies should not be allowed to be sold privately at all, because that's going against the whole point of a public company. We're basically forcing people to sell their stock in the company so the company's biggest shareholders could sell the company. The only reason people aren't freaking out is there's so many other things wrong in this world which are distracting us all from this huge, forced company sale to government entities. Many people hate EA in general already for a lot of good reasons, but we're worried about the fate of our favorite EA IPs, like The Sims and Dragon Age, and I fear The Sims 5 may get delayed further or even killed indefinitely after this sale. Thankfully, we are seeing some indie devs create some really interesting and promising The Sims alternatives.
Indie game Tossdown picked up by Acclaim
That indie game I demo'd a while back with the rockets raining from the sky as you run package deliveries is now being backed by Acclaim! (Fer) It's really cool to see a fellow dev successful and able to continue their dream job of making games for a living, and Acclaim is a cool company to have on your resume.
Nintendo Virtual Boy in 2025?
Nintendo Virtual Boy official emulator for Switch 2 was announced on September 12 with an upcoming Google Cardboard style accessory for it that makes it basically the worst VR implementation ever. This Virtual Boy accessory coming in 2026 looks like early days Google Cardboard from 2013. Virtual Boy emulation from mid-to-late 2015 that I already had via an Android phone. Nintendo will never be a supporter of VR in any significant way, but this is just silly levels of slow that you have to question why it's even a thing. Nintendo just isn't innovative anymore.
Pocketpair studio trolled Ninttendo in spite of Nintendo's power crazy patent war
Nintendo got approved for patents they never should have been approved for, and now Nintendo has some shaky legal ground to stand on when they sue people for copying their ideas. At the same time, they promoted an upcoming farm/life sim called Pokopia. Pocketpair, famously known for their Pokemon rip-off parody game Palworld, announced their own farm sim project, Palfarm, days later. Pocketpair has a history of ripping off mechanics and visual styles of popular titles, and they're in legal trouble with Nintendo already for Palworld, so I guess they just never gave a fuck? 
New Video Games September 2025
I've gotten into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 finally. I wish I played it way sooner, but here we are.
Otherskin released September 2. I wasn't aware of this title until making this post, so I'll have to look into it more later, but it looks interesting at first glance.
The long awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong is real... since September 4. We also saw Hell Is Us this day.
Tokyo Underground Killer released September 5.
Borderlands 4 released September 12 to mixed reviews. Angry Joe said he liked BL3 more and he didn't particularly enjoy BL3 because of the annoying villains. I didn't like BL3 all that much either, so I've opted not to get BL4 until it's part of a bundle or super cheap and hard to pass up.
A really weird game I heard about a few months ago, Baby Steps, released on September 23.
Hades 2 released September 25. I still haven't played the original, but it looks fun. Silent Hill f released on the same day as Hades 2. We also saw Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds this day.
Upcoming Games October 2025 and onward...
Before I could write the recap for September, on October 2, Ghost of Yotei, sequel to Ghost of Tsushima, released exclusively on PlayStation 5. I haven't played the predecessor yet, so I'll likely grab that first, but I'd love to play both games someday. I'm a big fan of the feudal Japan aesthetic and games like Tenchu: Stealth Assassins. Both of these games seem to be less focused on stealth mechanics and more focused on the swordsman duels and things like that... but whatever! I think they'll be great fun.
A Kickstarter campaign for a really fun-looking and fast-paced arcade racing game hit at the end of the month. The title is Project Turboblast, and even the lowest tier that gets the game will get their name in the credits. In their first 2 days, the campaign raised 70% of their goal, but funding has slowed down significantly. I think it'll need some additional push to get over the goal post, but it will likely meet its funding goal eventually. If you want to help make sure this game gets made, join the Kickstarter campaign and fund development. They already have a great trailer, so go check that out.
Virtual Reality News
Steam Link now on HTC and Pico headsets
As
of September 25, 2025, Steam Link is available on the following headset
models: PICO 4 Ultra, PICO 4, PICO Neo 3, HTC Vive Focus Vision (Steam) with Vive XR Elite support coming later in the year. I honestly prefer Virtual Desktop.
VisionOS v26 introduced PSVR2 controller support
Apple's Vision headset now works with PSVR2 controllers, which increases its VR gaming capabilities greatly. This update also included vastly improved personas, spatial widgets, volumetric scenes, and local shareplay. I don't know what shareplay is, but... cool, I guess. I really don't think I'll ever buy an Apple device for myself, but their devices get so much love and care after the initial sales period. I wonder what's in store for this headset in 2026.
Windows MR Headsets Revived By Free 'Oasis' SteamVR Driver
Windows 11 killed WMR support with update 24H2. A lone Microsoft employee named Matthieu Bucchianeri released an unofficial SteamVR driver called 'Oasis' to fix WMR support. (UploadVR) The 'Oasis' name makes me wonder if the employee was a fan of Ready Player One. I've never owned a Windows MR headset, though I was on the fence about the HP Reverb G2 Omnicept back in the day.
New VR Games
We got a new graffiti sim called Graffism VR. It's in early access on Steam, so I'd wait to pick it up when it's at a 1.0 state. First early access version was released September 26.
We also got a new fishing sim called AnglingTimes. This one isn't in early access, but it's a Chinese production and not a superb translation. The game doesn't give me confidence in its quality, but if you're a big fan of fishing games, you might want to at least try it, because honestly, there are never enough VR fishing games.
Titan Isles was on my radar months ago, and it's finally out! I unfortunately wasn't able to afford it at release like I hoped, but it's staying on the wishlist for sure! The game looks like a ton of fun.
We also got a PC port of Dungeons Of Eternity finally. I'm not a fan of timed exclusives, because I either wait for the PC port and miss the game's initial hype cycle or I play it on an inferior platform I really don't enjoy as much. This game is a ton of fun, though, and exudes quality. Get it if you don't already have it.
Neolithic Dawn released on September 4 in early access, and it was rough. After a ton of time in the oven and getting tons of hype from its creator on social media, it came out to mixed reviews saying it's a buggy mess. I was given a review copy of the game, so I'll check it out soon, but I tend to agree with the hive mind on these kinds of things. If it's good, I'll do a video about it eventually.
Upcoming VR Games
We've really not had a lot of made-for-VR racing titles yet, but there's a really promising VR racing game in the works titled Dart Racer. I saw this post
about progress made on a VR third-person view mode, and I really liked
how the UX was designed and how VR hands were incorporated into the
design. I hope to see more work done on the cockpit view, though,
because it currently looks really bland and uninteresting. The game is
coming to Steam and Meta Quest 3 sometime soon, but there's no planned release date yet. Definitely wishlist and follow this one!
By the way, if you're making a VR game or VR app and want to get put on the next recap, just send me an email or contact me on Bluesky. I check both email and Bluesky daily... usually, anyway. I can't promise coverage, but if your game looks ready for coverage, I'll try my best to get the word out there. I also run a curator group titled Roomscale VR for reviewing SteamVR stuff, so you can send your Steam projects to that if you want. It's safer for your game than giving out keys, because you never know where the keys will actually go, and the curator group has 420+ followers. The group is ran by me with helpers who are old VR friends.
Outside of the indie sphere, I'm somewhat interested in the Star Wars: Beyond Victory Mixed Reality Playset, which releases October 7, and I'm really excited for the upcoming Deadpool VR game coming November 13. Roboquest VR is also still on the way with no set release date.
Tech News
LLM Artificial Intelligence Used in Ransomware Toolsets
LLMs being used as delivery tools or hacking assistants in the process of getting ransomware onto machines has always been a possibility to me from the moment I played the original Halo on the original Xbox way back in 2001. However, this is finally starting to show up in real world research as a practical eventual future that is likely already underway as bad actors learn and develop their updated toolsets and LLMs become more sophisticated. (TechXplore) It's really messed up that this stuff is actually feasible in 2025 but we still don't have hoverboards.
No, not that hoverboard!
LiveAI demo fails on the first prompt at Meta Connect 2025
The funniest thing to come out of Meta since the last Meta Connect. Watch this video clip posted by @shacknews.com if you haven't already seen the event. The host of the segment asked Meta to guide him to make a steak sauce by saying "Hey can you help me make a Korean inspired steak sauce." Meta AI failed to even give him the first step of the process and skipped directly to one of the later steps and refused to reset to the first step.
OpenAI announced parental controls for ChatGPT
Apparently, because some teenager killed himself after talking to a chatbot, we have to add parental controls to ChatGPT. (Ars) Just another day in the world of irresponsible parents? I think so. Parents should not let their kids use generative AI chatbots without supervision in the first place. If you can't handle talking to a chatbot, after all, you should be supervised.
So yeah, ChatGPT is going to have a parent controls part of its settings. I guess that'll be fine... as long as we don't push it to every user as a mandatory age verification. What's that? It only works if we require login and kids are unable to sign up? Fuck. There goes guest users, and in the near future, we're going to have to start verifying our ages to get adult status on this tool, which means we'll have to prove who we are... which means they'll know who said what and what we asked for. Anonymity is gone, folks!
Game Dev & Art Asset News
Fab gets Epic launcher tab and proper by-engine filtering of assets
Fab, previously known as Unreal Marketplace, recently got a few new features, including proper filtering of your assets library by engine and batch purchasing assets! (UE News) Gone are the stone age marketplace tools... finally. Unity Asset Store is truly in trouble now.
Unreal Engine 5.7 Preview
Unreal Engine 5.7 preview dropped. (GameFromScratch) This release preview looks really promising, because it comes with production ready Procedural Generation Graph and the new-ish Substrate material system from 2023 which have both been in development since then.
Godot gets realistic forest demo
Godot's really capable these days! Check out this Reddit post about a forest scene running in Godot 4. It looks amazing!
Closing story? How about we geek out about VR and 90s anime instead!
Did you know the classic harem anime Love Hina featured a girl playing VR on a Dreamcast? This Bsky post points that out. Linus Tech Tips recently posted a new YT video about old 90s VR,
too! We should all remember what came before current day tech and what
led up to modern tech we take for granted. I should rewatch the Love
Hina anime and see if I can spot the same VR stuff on the show as I see
in the old manga. That said, we had shows like .Hack//SIGN back then, so
I could just watch that... but I already rewatched it last weekend! Heh.
There's a surprising amount of VR in 90s anime. To start, I already mentioned .Hack//SIGN and Love Hina, but there's also Hunter X Hunter, which didn't have any ties to VR at all in the 90s but got an early 2000s spin-off miniseries/OAV (I'm not sure which) that featured a rather weird way to accomplish a VR game: teleportation rings. So get this, in Hunter X Hunter: Greed Island, you had to earn the right to get one of 100 rings to be able to teleport to a game world where if you died, you died for real. It was like a very basic version of Sword Art Online's premise but it featured already established characters with rather overpowered capabilities and a kind of what-if-dragonball-was-in-vr vibe. It was silly and a headache-inducing story, but if you're a fan of VR anime, this is at least worth a look for history's sake.
There were also a ton of dark and gritty worlds to explore in 90s anime. Off the top of my head, there's obviously Ghost In The Shell, but that's low hanging fruit. I would prefer to direct your attention to Serial Experiments Lain, a kind of cyberpunk-ish detective story featuring a girl named Lain who gets onto a fantasized version of an internet platform and MMO-like world known as "The Wired". The story is dark and very philosophical to the point where it probably puts a lot of viewers off and features really dangerous topics for impressionable youth, topics like suicide and virtualization of your consciousness. It's a really slow burn and takes a long while to get to any conclusions, but VR is a feature of this world in a way that VR headsets are a thing of the past already and characters use wired connections to computers to exist within the network. It's really kind of like an early anime version of The Matrix with psychic powers and cult-inspired topics about religion. This kind of scares me now that I think back on it and realize how ahead of its time it was.
Winter
is coming... but I won't let my watch end. These articles will keep
coming on a monthly basis. If you like what I'm doing and wish to
support my work, buy some merch or buy me a taco... or buy something from Amazon through one of my referral links. Every little contribution adds up and helps keep me motivated to work on this monthly recap and blog in general. It really does help.
I'll see you all next month. Stay alive! 