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Forest 'excellent' but Villa semi 'still on a knife-edge'
You can hear all the post-match reaction, analysis and interviews from Nottingham Forest's 1-0 Europa League semi-final first leg win over Aston Villa on the latest episode of BBC Radio Nottingham's Shut Up And Show More Football podcast. The kind of game you expect from a semi-final where two teams are going at it hammer and tongs and nothing much is given either way. The amount of times Elliot Anderson won the ball back was frightening - he was magnificent tonight, the best player on a park full of top players.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Has Done So Well, Live Support Has Been Officially Extended Into a Third Year
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 live support has been officially extended into a third year, publisher Focus Entertainment has announced.
‘Move fast and break things’ not way to fix Colorado’s roads
By Donna Lynne, Kelly Nordini and Rebecca McClellan This month, after the effects of federal H.R. 1 hit Colorado’s budget like a sledgehammer, Colorado lawmakers had to cut more than $1.5 billion from our state budget, leaving virtually no corner untouched. Critical programs for health care, the environment and education felt the effects. We do […]
Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon Unboxing
What are the Angels of Death bringing to Armageddon?
Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe musicals come to L.A.
Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Flower Drum Song" and "The Sound of Music" and Lerner and Loewe's "Brigadoon" are all running in L.A. this spring.
#New40k – Grot Week reveals: Day 1
Warhammer Community has been invaded by Gretchin – let’s check out the first one through the breach.
Ace tanks spearhead vehicular carnage with new Armoured Gauntlet rules
Fight big armoured battles with the new Armageddon: The Return of Yarrick expansion.
Zoom across Armageddon with new Space Marine Detachments
All-vehicle armies and mounted Space Marine infantry? Yes, please!
Da Speedwaaagh! begins with two new Ork Detachments
Join Wazdakka’s lads for a high-speed krumpin’ with new Warhammer 40,000 rules.
Lore of Armageddon Part 3
What is Ghazghkull Thraka up to, and who are his most trusted Bosses?
#New40k – Chaplain with Jump Pack Revealed
Recite the Litany of Hate with the new Chaplain miniature for Warhammer 40,000.
Unleash the Astra Militarum motor pool with new Detachments from Armageddon
Big tanks and light vehicles get their spotlights with new Warhammer 40,000 rules.
Sunday Preview – Yarrick returns to Armageddon
See what’s coming up for pre-order next week!
Saturday pre-orders – Enter the City of Ash
A new Spearhead expansion and Ossiarch Bonereapers reinforcements are available to pre-order now.
Warhammer 40,000 rules reveal – Shoot from the saddle with Inquisitor Kroyle and Intranzia Fraye
We continue our look at the rules of units released alongside Armageddon: The Return of Yarrick.
Randy Fine leads CD 6 fundraising race, but some Democrats are making credible showings
The Hebrew Hammer will have battles in August and November.
Too much light at night may harm health | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
A lot of light at night—for example, from screens or streetlights—can lead to health harms, according to experts including Harvard Chan School's Eva Schernhammer.
Astra Militarum rules revealed – Commissar Graves and new vehicles
Armoured vehicles rumble from the hives of Armageddon to open up new tactics in Warhammer 40,000.
Golden Demon 2026 – AdeptiCon finalists part two
Take a look at the work of the other talented painters who earned a coveted Finalist pin.
Wazdakka Gutsmek rules revealed – Launch your own Speedwaaagh!
Lead your Warbikers to the biggest and best fights around.
Games Workshop brings seven classic Warhammer games to Steam for the first time
Fans of miniature plastic soldiers, rejoice. Games Workshop has brought a host of older Warhammer and Warhammer 40K video games to Steam for the first time.
More Than 20 Classic Warhammer PC Games Just Hit Steam, Including Shadow of the Horned Rat, Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior, and Space Hulk — Check Out the List in Full
More than 20 classic Warhammer PC video games have hit Steam as part of a new Warhammer Classics initiative. Check out the list in full.
Warhammer Classics brings legendary games back to your PC
Shadow of the Horned Rat, Chaos Gate, Dark Omen, Fire Warrior and more have returned.
“AI polls” are fake polls
A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.
Tinkaton with Gigaton Hammer: PvE Performance & Raid Use Explained
April 2026 community day features Tinatink. Its final evolution Tinkaton breaks into the steel meta with Gigaton Hammer.
Trump’s Pakistan gamble: Can talks produce peace?
Iran will approach these meetings pretending it’s the power at the table. That’s what they do. But the boastfulness conceals a country that has just been hammered militarily, in shambles economically, and without the support of its own people.
Warhammer Brings Its Own 'Vampire Survivors' Game To Switch 1 & 2 This Year
In partnership with poncle
Razer just released some new gaming earbuds with low latency and fast switching between devices
Razer just released a new pair of gaming earbuds called the Hammerhead V3 HyperSpeed. They offer low latency, which is great for gamers.
Warhammer Survivors adds PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2, and Switch versions
Survivors-like roguelite action game Warhammer Survivors will launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Switch 2, and Switch alongside its previously announced PC (Steam) version in 2026, developer Au…
#New40k – Take cover with updated terrain rules
It’s not hiding, it’s tactical! See how rocks and ruins have changed in the new edition.
Warhammer 40K: New Vanguard Veterans From Armageddon Box Revealed
The new Armageddon box is coming with a bunch of updated and new miniatures. Today we get a look at the new Vanguard Veterans!
Warhammer 40K: Apocalypse Rules Aim To Make Playing Big Games Easier
Getting all your miniature on the tabletop is tough enough. Now 40k Apocalypse rules should help speed up the fun of actually playing!
New Rowhammer attacks give complete control of machines running Nvidia GPUs
Both GDDRHammer and GeForge hammer GPU memory in ways that compromise the CPU.
Perturabo’s grand plan revealed
The Daemon Primarch of the Iron Warriors has a new purpose – the greatest siege in history.
Golden Demon Show Review from Adepticon 2026
Golden Demon 2026 hosted superlative painters from around the world as they competed in this prestigious painting competition. In this video, the Warhammer team debrief after the judging, discuss the winners, and take a look at some of the highlights from the event.
New rage room business in Topeka offers space to break items, relieve stress
Anger Management 785 will join spaces with Odin’s Lair and allow patrons to use bats, clubs and hammers to break objects.
AdeptiCon Preview 2026 – A new Lumineth Realm-lords warband breezes into Warhammer Underworlds
Awesome aelves and their adorable vulpine spirit revealed.
AdeptiCon Preview 2026 – The Red Terror hunts elite Cadians in new Kill Team expansion
A man-eating Tyranid terror stalks Devlan.
Marathon has sold 1.2M copies across Steam, PS5, and Xbox
Alinea Analytics estimates show that Marathon has generated gross revenues of $55M via 1.2M copies sold on Steam, PS5, and Xbox: Looking at the split between Steam, PS5, and Xbox, Steam is clearly the main platform for Marathon, accounting for a little under 70% of the audience (800K copies sold). Meanwhile, PS5 takes about 19% (217K) and Xbox (including console, PC, and cloud) accounts for a bit over 11% or 133K. Marathon is technically a first-party Sony title, so seeing the home console struggle to break 20% of the volume is a notable data point for the ongoing platform-agnostic debate. PlayStation Studios online games will almost certainly continue being multiplatform (despite Sony reportedly pulling back on PC releases). Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe As for Marathon, the consensus among hardcore players who pushed through the awkward onboarding phase – myself included – is that it’s fantastic. The gunplay, aesthetic, and presentation are among the best in the shooter genre. A great game doesn’t always equal an immediate hit, though, as shown by our estimates. Things are looking lukewarm right now. But this might be one of those marathon-not-a-sprint situations. Had to, didn’t I? Why wasn’t Marathon a hit on the same level as Arc Raiders? One topic that came up in a lot of conversations at GDC this year was why Marathon hasn’t hit the same stratosphere as Arc Raiders. On paper, they’re both extraction shooters, and Marathon has the Bungie pedigree – the house that built the gold standard for gunplay in Halo and Destiny. Marathon’s neon-futuristic aesthetic also distinguishes itself from the gritty realism of Tarkov or the post-apocalyptic hope of ARC Raiders. But vibes can only get you so far for first impressions if the onboarding feels like a brick wall. Marathon is a sweaty PvP-focused experience with a first-time user experience and UI that I can only describe as dreadful. Players are dropped into a complex ecosystem where the UI, though visually striking, is functionally uninformative, forcing users to manually hover over nondescript, identical icons just to identify basic gear or weapon mods. This lack of clarity is compounded by punishing mechanics like a severe heat gauge for movement and a scarcity of vital resources, all without a clear tutorial or a low-stakes mode to learn the ropes. Most people – even top streamers and veteran shooter players – have no idea what’s going on in Marathon at first. Arc is on the complete other end of the spectrum. As we covered here and here, Arc Raiders offers a more collaborative, approachable loop where players often work together toward shared goals. And the objectives are instantly clear. To many players, this contrast only emphasised Marathon’s issues, especially during the testing period. Players understand the Arc Raiders loop within 30 minutes, while Marathon acts as a massive filter, chewing up newcomers and spitting them out before they can experience the depth of Bungie’s signature gunplay. What I’m getting at here is that the poor first-time user experience of Marathon’s Server Slam likely stifled launch sales, while the opposite was true for Arc. Let’s look at the pre-launch copies sold for each game during their respective Server Slams (launch-aligned) : Looking at the trajectory: Arc Raiders saw a massive 80% jump in copies sold during its three-day Server Slam (day -13 to -11). Players jumped in, realised the water was fine, and immediately opened their wallets. Marathon, meanwhile, saw a 49% increase in the four days following its Slam (Day -7 to -3). At the time of each game’s respective launch, Arc Raiders had nearly double the Steam footprint of Marathon – and word of mouth only continued to grow. Bungie could have had more time to fix the onboarding process had the beta happened earlier. But Marathon launched three days after the beta finished. These factors limited the launch sales quite a bit, I reckon. Marathon has found a niche audience, though Despite the friction-heavy start, the data suggests that those who survived Marathon’s onboarding are loving life. We’ve been tracking cross-platform DAUs, and while there’s the expected post-launch leakage, many players are sticking with it. After peaking at 478K total DAUs on its first Saturday, Marathon has settled into a respectable rhythm, holding 345K DAUs as of yesterday and averaging 380K DAUs across the weekend. Steam continues to do the heavy lifting here, consistently accounting for the lion’s share of the daily players. Players have been putting in the hours, too: On Steam, Marathon’s average playtime has climbed to 27.8 hours, significantly outpacing the console averages on PS5 (16.5h) and Xbox (17.3h). Even more telling than the averages: 22% of the Steam audience has surged past the 50-hour mark, and nearly 7% have already logged over 100 hours. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe This data suggests that once the Bungie magic clicks, it hooks players deeper than the average extraction shooter. There’s also started to be a shift in the game’s discourse. Marathon launched as one of those games that’s cool to hate. But as Marathon’s 100-hour club grows, we’re seeing conversations around its mechanical merit outweigh the negativity. Several high-profile creators, who were initially vocal critics, have spent the last week coming around on the mechanical depth of the endgame. It’s a subtle but positive signal; the hate train is losing steam, and a new narrative about the game is emerging. Bungie faithfuls unite Another interesting metric in Marathon’s first few weeks is who, exactly, is playing. Bungie leans heavily on its prestige as the “makers of Halo and Destiny,” in its marketing, and that message has clearly hit the mark. On Steam, the gravity (hammer) of Bungie’s previous work is unavoidable. A staggering 78.2% of Marathon players also played Destiny 2. The trend carries across other platforms, with 74.2% of PS5 players and 82.7% of Xbox players also having played Destiny 2. The Halo legacy lives on, it seems. More on that in a bit. While Destiny 2 went free to play, these numbers still represent a high-intent migration of a fanbase that trusts Bungie’s specific brand of kinetic gunplay and cryptic world-building. The Xbox data adds another layer of legacy. About 85.7% of Marathon players on Xbox have played Halo Infinite, while over half of the Steam audience has spent time in Halo Infinite and 36.1% in the Master Chief Collection (a paid collection of the old Bungie-made legacy games). Interestingly, we see a 55.9% overlap with ARC Raiders on Steam. Overlap is even higher there on PlayStation (60.5%) and Xbox (66.5%). And there’s also significant crossover with Helldivers 2 on all platforms, too. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe Bungie has found some of its fans with Marathon, and the challenge now is keeping this engaged in a high-stakes PvP environment when they’ve spent the last decade primarily enjoying the power fantasies of PvE. On that note… Go the full 26 miles? Or cut and run? Time for some could’ve, should’ve, would’ve. These things would have improved Marathon’s performance at launch: A more robust onboarding process, perhaps in the form of a short single-player/PvE campaign. We know Bungie fans love this stuff. A traditional arena-based mode akin to Destiny’s Crucible could have been a bridge for the cautious players who’d have been otherwise deterred by the Server Slam. It’s also a great palate cleanser after getting merked. Introducing a dedicated PvE environment would have similarly diversified the conversation and lowered the barrier for the Bungie faithful who found the pure PvP extraction loop too abrasive. PvE is safer than PvP these days. There’s an argument that a thin PvE mode would have just felt like a budget Destiny, potentially hurting the brand more. But given how dire the FTUE is, I think it would have been a net positive. Any kind of tutorialised loop that demystifies the stakes, really. While there is merit in a studio sticking firmly to a singular creative vision, and going all in on the hardcore extraction loop. Less forgiving is the technical reality is that the user interface and first-time user experience (FTUE) were not at a commercial standard for launch. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe In a landscape where player time is oversaturated and the most contested currency, a flawed FTUE is a critical failure point. But it’s not all doom and gloom, as Marathon has an incredible, unique gameplay loop, suggesting that financial success is still attainable if Bungie can pivot effectively. Bungie and PlayStation now face a difficult strategic crossroads, though – one within a challenging games market. They could: Double down on Marathon with a long-term Rainbow Six Siege- or No Man’s Sky-style recovery plan, which is something I heard Last Stand Media’s Chris Maldonado mention last week. While this could be a sunk-cost fallacy in action, it could eventually yield the audience the game’s mechanical depth deserves. Shift focus toward the inevitable Destiny 3 or another project, mitigating the escalating opportunity cost and cutting their losses, so to speak. Doing both is an expensive proposition, given the high overhead and burn rate of operating out of Bellevue, Washington. With Sony recently demonstrating a lower threshold for underperforming studios and projects, the margin for error has vanished. Whatever happens, the next six months will determine whether Marathon becomes a cornerstone of Sony’s live-service portfolio or a cautionary tale of vision exceeding accessibility. I’m hoping it’s the former, because Marathon rocks. As always, hit subscribe to get updates on Marathon and other relevant games. Subscribe Want to get your hands on our data for yourself – for free? We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply to this email, and we’ll set you up. The last word Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover. [Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]
Eye of Terror – New rules for Defilers, Mutilators, and Kravek Morne
See the new datasheets now.
Figma's stock drops 11% in two days after Google releases 'vibe design' product
Figma's stock has been getting hammered on concerns about AI, and Google's new design product is adding to that anxiety.
How YouTuber Caleb Hammer built a big business on debt call-outs
Caleb Hammer, who built a large audience by blending personal drama with money advice, has parlayed that into a lucrative subscription business.
New Animation: The Saviour of Armageddon Returns
The Hero of Hades Hive is back with a new miniature.
Widespread School, Government Office, Business Closures Monday
Widespread closures have been announced across northern Michigan Monday amid a winter storm that has hammered the state, producing significant icing across the region. Strong predicted winds and a continued winter storm warning through Monday could exacerbate impacts to infrastructure, especially for areas with icing on trees and power lines. Multiple schools in the Grand …
Tinkatink Community Day April 2026: Shiny Odds, Bonuses & Gigaton Hammer Tinkaton
Trainers, get hyped! The next Community Day of 2026 stars Tinkatink, the Metal Hammer Pokémon! Join the event on Saturday, April 11, 2026, from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. local time to enjoy 2x catch Candy, increased Tinkatink spawns, and a chance to encounter Shiny Tinkatink. Evolve Tinkatuff during the event—or up to four hours […]
PlayStation Plus Extra February games for March leak
It seems that PlayStation's upcoming PS Plus Extra games for March have leaked.
'No Girls Allowed' Box Set Spoofing Warhammer Hides Toxic Lead
Edgelord animation, riffing on Warhammer Space Marines, develops exciting new ways to ruin brains
Sutton's predictions: Fulham v West Ham
West Ham boss Nuno Espirito Santo was very upbeat about his side's performance at Anfield on Saturday, but they lost 5-2. The only consolation for the Hammers is that the teams immediately above them all lost too. Marco Silva's side played really well in their win against Tottenham on Sunday and Harry Wilson is on fire - my advice is to get him in your fantasy team, now.
Sutton's predictions: Bournemouth v Brentford
Brentford's late win at Burnley means they have won five of their past six away league games. They have already won at Bournemouth once this season, in the Carabao Cup, and also hammered them 4-1 when they met after Christmas. But that was when Bournemouth were in the middle of their bad run, and they have picked up a lot since then - they are unbeaten in their past eight league games.
BUSINESS MONDAY: Spotlight on Hammertown Great Barrington
After more than two decades in the Berkshires, the retail and design shop is closing its doors here to focus its operations in the Hudson Valley.
Embrace Chaos with March’s Miniature of the Month and score two commemorative coins
Celebrate Chaos, Death, and Black Library.
Sunday Preview – Ahoy me hearties, space pirates inbound
Corsairs of different flavours lead next week’s pre-orders for Warhammer 40,000.
Berehk Stornbröw is the premier Big Guy-killer in the Leagues of Votann, as proved by his new datasheet
Check out the new miniature’s powerful rules.
T’au Empire’s Twin Lance datasheet lets you perfect close-range enemy-melting
Who ever said the T’au were no good up close?
Saturday Pre-orders – Knock knock, it’s time to give up the bone-tithe
Check out all of today’s new pre-orders.
Games Workshop had a Warhammer FTL clone pulled from Steam over some overly Space Marine-esque shoulderpads
Void War is back online after being taken down by a DMCA notice that was at first deemed a hoax, but was actually sent by Games Workshop.
Indie dev claims the sudden takedown of its game was due to Warhammer creator Games Workshop, and a set of familiar-looking shoulder pads
Tundra Interactive has spoken about Void War's temporary removal from Steam, claiming it was due to a DMCA from Games Workshop.
Revealed: The new Defiler stomps onto the battlefield
Wield six legs of absolute devastation on the battlefield.
Discover a new love for objective-based piracy with the Red Corsairs Raiders datasheets
Raiders and Reave-Captains go for the gold.
Sunday Preview – Huron Blackheart sets sail from the Maelstrom
What’s coming up next week?
Video shows man smashing slot machines with hammer at Hialeah business
Surveillance video shows a man using a hammer to smash slot machines at a Hialeah business during an incident that led to his arrest.
Fresno city workers 'stuck in the middle' of Community Health negotiations with Blue Shield CA
Thousands of employees for the city of Fresno are now cut off from their health care as Community Health Systems and Blue Shield of California hammer out an agreement.
Man arrested after smashing slot machines at Hialeah business with hammer: Cops
A man was arrested after police said he used a hammer to smash some slot machines at a Hialeah business.
Tyranids swarm over our Iron Halo coin stash thanks to February’s free Miniature of the Month
Head in-store for a great miniature and coin this month.
Warhammer 40K: Ranking The Chaos Battleforces
With their imminent arrival to pre-order this weekend it's time to rank the new Chaos Battleforce boxes for Warhammer 40,000!
Saturday Pre-orders – Chaos Space Marines and Marauders running wild
Check out today’s latest pre-orders.
Rule the Maelstrom with Huron and his crew’s spicy new datasheets
Rules revealed for the Masters of the Maelstrom.
Plain Talk: 'Politics is noise'
On this Plain Talk, we were joined by outgoing North Dakota House Majority Leader Mike Lefor and Democratic-NPL U.S. House candidate Trygve Hammer.
Trump’s Choice to Be Alabama’s Next Senator Finds an Odd Political Target: the Modern Gas Can
ENTERPRISE, Ala.—U.S. Rep. Barry Moore, a longtime political figure in this rural Alabama community, has his priorities. Among them? A reform effort aimed at the modern gas can. A congressman since 2021, the Republican may be headed toward one of the most powerful positions in Yellowhammer State politics, a seat in the U.S. Senate, given […]
'FTL in a Warhammer 40,000 Skin' Game Pulled From Steam After What May Be a Nuisance DMCA Takedown From a Troll Claiming to Be Games Workshop
A strategy game dubbed ‘FTL in a Warhammer 40,000 skin’ was recently pulled from Steam, with its developer suggesting it may have been on the receiving end of a nuisance DMCA takedown from a troll claiming to be Games Workshop.
Saturday Pre-orders – Death strikes from the skies in Kill Team: Shadowhunt
Everything available to pre-order today.
Pentagon to take ‘sledgehammer’ to contracting program central to many Alaska Native corporations
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s remarks over the weekend are latest in the Trump administration’s criticisms of the 8(a) program.
Techmarine: Dive Into Space Marine 2’s Upcoming New Class
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 deploys in the Xbox Game Pass next week, and a new playable character is set to follow soon after. How does it play? We’re here to find out!
Scientists destroy 99% of cancer cells in the lab using “vibrating molecules” - Futura-Sciences
A groundbreaking advance in the fight against cancer has just been made. Scientists have developed a revolutionary technique that uses vibrating molecules to kill malignant cells. This innovative method showed a remarkable 99 percent success ... Read more
Minneapolis businesses hammered as anti-ICE unrest continues: 'like the pandemic all over again'
Minneapolis businesses report massive revenue drops as anti-ICE agitators drive away customers, with some comparing the economic impact to COVID-19 closures.
Coming to Xbox Game Pass: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II, Death Stranding Director’s Cut, and More
Coming to Xbox Game Pass: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II, Death Stranding Director’s Cut, and more!
Trump’s attack on science is shaking industry’s foundations
By dismantling scientific enterprise, the US risks 'taking a hammer to our miracle machine'
Kill Team: Shadowhunt – Scream down from the skies with the vicious, bloodthirsty Murderwing
Soar around the killzone and stab operatives you fly over.
U.S. Secretary of War Hegseth Pledges to “Sledgehammer” Small Business Assistance Program Calling it Government’s “Oldest DEI Program”
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced plans to “sledgehammer” the 8(a) Program, a federal contracting program aimed at assisting socially and economically disadvantaged small business owners, calling it “the oldest DEI program in the federal government.” Established in 1978, the 8(a) program is run by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), a federal agency, […]
'Custodes Are Not Space Marines' — Games Workshop Addresses 'The Telemon in the Room' and Explains Warhammer Lore Behind New Female Miniatures
Games Workshop has published a Warhammer lore explanation for the existence of female Custodes following a new miniature range announcement on Friday.
Praise Hashut and earn a new Daemonsmith by shopping in Warhammer stores soon
Spend in-store to get a new Zharrdron miniature.
Games Workshop Is Finally Making Female Custodes Models
The new models mark the first time tabletop players will be given the option to build their Custodes units with unhelmeted female heads.
10 Most Wishlisted Strategy Games on Steam in 2026
Explore the 10 most wishlisted strategy games on Steam in 2026, featuring Slay the Spire 2, Total War: Warhammer 40,000, and more.
GW reveals a whole plastic Adeptus Custodes army for Horus Heresy that makes the 40k minis look like trash
The new Horus Heresy Adeptus Custodes miniatures are so far ahead of the Warhammer 40,000 models they've completely replaced them.
A "Space Marine-Killer," Custodes, pirates, and everything else revealed at the New Year Warhammer Preview 2026
Chaos Space Marines take on Prince Yriel's Aeldari, and more
Corsairs of the Maelstrom – Revealed at the New Year Preview 2026
Huron Blackheart's Red Corsairs launch fresh assaults from the Maelstrom – but they're not the only pirates in the galaxy. Prince Yriel joins the fray with his Aeldari Corsairs, the Eldritch Raiders!
The New Year Preview – Tanks galore for the Legiones Astartes
New super-heavies and Journal Tactica announced.
The New Year Preview – All-new Legio Custodes Revealed
The Emperor unsheathes his talons.
The New Year Warhammer Preview Live! 2026 – See all of the reveals
Every reveal in one convenient place.
The New Year Preview – Prince Yriel counterattacks with new Aeldari Corsairs
The Eldritch Raiders strike from the void.
The New Year Preview – Fulfil the bone-tithe with new Ossiarch Bonereapers
Build new tactical options from the bones of the conquered.
The Warhammer Community team paints a pair of spectacular Nightbringer C’tan Shards
More inspiration for how to paint this awesome miniature.