Hey CDPR management if you are reading this and you are serious about the "whole cost of fixing is irrelevant compared to restoring company reputation" take a look at this list of features and not just fix bugs/performance and call it, therefore, a finished game.
PS:
To anyone reading from the sub itself: Yes I know that the chance that all of this if anything gets added is next to ZERO and I am not deluding myself, that the game we got now is the game we are going to have in 1 or 2 years time from now is the same just with fewer bugs and better performance. If we even get 5 of the easiest bullet points that would be a major achievement. This list is for them to look at, get feedback, and see how they could improve their reputation and make good on their promise, not implement all that.
Open-World

• NPC AI Overhaul
  • No more squatting, when something things get violent
  • Reaction to the weather
  • More interactivity with V
  • Daily Routines / Day/Night Cycles
  • React to V's clothing / car
  • Dynamic npc interactions with each other
• Driving AI Improvements
  • No more basic driving from point A to B
  • No waiting indefinitely until the path is cleared
  • No getting out and squatting when danger is near
  • More car models / or variations
• Cops AI Overhaul
  • No more spawning out of nowhere
  • No turning hostile, when standing next to cops, without doing anything
  • Cops come in cars
  • Actual car chases
  • System to bribe cops
  • Cops only act where it is appropriate to lore, e.g. no Pacifica or Badlands
  • Maxtac comes in AVs
  • The higher the star rating the longer the search for V
• Trauma Team
  • Rescue NPCs with insurance
• Vendors
  • Day / Night Cycle
  • Ability to preview items
  • Animations for drinking / eating food
  • Tattoo, Barber, Plastic surgeon
  • Animations for cyberware installation
  • Car modification services (Vehicle customization)
• Traversal
  • Cap system / Delamain
  • The car from Delamain should have auto travel
  • Train system
  • Zoomed out map while driving
  • Vehicle Combat / Fire form car / bike
  • Wheelies on the bikes
  • Tweak car handeling
• Activity
  • Dance at clubs (kinda in)
  • Procedural Gigs / Mini Jobs
  • More joytoys
  • Watch BDs (You can even purchase some)
• Gangs
  • Reputation system
    • slaughtering a gang, they should start shooting me on sight
    • their rivals should start offering me jobs and rewards
  • (Gang wars / Police shootouts) this is apparently in the game
  • Disguise system -> full Tyger setup, from a distance they should be friendly. But if I wear it in Valentino territory, it makes them automatically hostile.

Companions / Romance

• Ability to hang out with characters / go on dates with romance
• Acknowledge locked in romance, when talking to other choices, e.g. telling River on the toweryou are with somebody already
• Shoot down potential romances immediately by saying you're gay, e.g. Panam, River
• More romance options in general
• Ability to sleep at partners home
• More dialog and missions in general, especially when romanced.
• Walk at the same speed as V (Witcher 3 did this perfectly)

RPG

• Clothing
  • Transmog system
  • Ability to toggle visibility
  • Clothing should provide realistic armor -> More options in accordance to pen and paper
  • Style bonus / set bonus
  • Reputation system matters
  • Being able to swap colors or prints on clothes (Dye system from Witcher 3 B&W)
• Cyberware
  • See all cyberware on character
  • Cyberpsychosis system
  • Monowire hacking
  • Infrared / Night vision eye mods
  • Eye mod for GPS visible on the road (Racing has this already)
  • Cybernetic that let's us listen to music on foot
• Progression
  • Garage
  • More Apartments
  • Meaningful street creed
  • More sources of income
• Better crafting
  • Slider to choose how many we want to craft
  • Craft all button
  • Instant crafting
  • Reduce the amount of material required to create clothing/upgrade clothing and iconic clothing
• Less loot drowning in weapons and clothing
• Loot actual inventory of enemies -> when they have something on you can loot it
• More weapon models (One LMG seriously ?!, Thermal-Katana )
• Consumables that give stats other than health and stamina, e.g. temporary stat inc- decrease

Character Creation

• Body Type definition (Muscle, Fat, Height, etc...)

Story

• Make lifepaths longer
• Restore what was seen in the cutscene leading up to the six months later
• Better endings / hopeful ending or at least a post story mode
• Expand Story if possible (starts to feel rushed towards the end)

Misc

• Ability to ignore calls / Mute Phone
• See current track in the radio selection
• Custom radio station with tracks from your hard drive
• 3rd person photo mode that works while sitting down
• Fix economy -> More income -> less pricy items / cars
• Proper dev tools for modding
• (3rd Person mode (This will probably come as a mod for those you really want it))
• Fix V's shadow and add his character reflections
• Make skip time simulate the world not change lighting
• Option to adjust the auto-save frequency
• Add a picture of the car to its respective quest -> no longer filtering through messages
• Respec should cost less and also reset attribute points
• Proximity auto-loot function (there is a popular Witcher 3 mod that does this btw)
• Make the map not disappear when you get a text/phone call/enter a new area / also do not take away double jump / charge jump
• Ability to favorite/lock items so you don't accidentally sell/disassemble
• Mark items as junk for quick sell
• Ability to pick up throwing knives again
• Better keybindings (Walk on PC, separation crouch and skip dialog)

Also if I forget something list it down below and I will add it.
EDIT: Thanks for the gold stranger (and all the ideas and other awards of course)!
EDIT EDIT: So wow yeah this kinda blew up. Never expected that tbh. I can not wait to read all the new responses tomorrow. Thanks again for all the awards comments upvotes suggestions. Even if you think I am god damn insane and need to get my head checked out for this list, I truly appreciate your comment and stopping by to read what is written here.

A few years ago, I was invited to join in a college dnd club. My friend, Nathan, was running and I had heard great things about his GMing. There was also a dude named Chris there I had only heard bad things about. Not DnD related or related to this story really. So I go to the session zero for character creation at lvl 1 and find him a bit standoffish but didn’t think much of it. Wile I was rolling my Trickery Cleric Chris was bragging about how cool his Artificer character is going to be and was using very power gamey language. He had printed some anime girl as character reference and was describing how she was going to be super capable but shy and you get it.
The first session comes around and we start getting into it. The other players in this group are a blast to play with, but Chris Only RPs with NPCs that have something he wants. Also his character who was supposed to be lawful good turns out to be more chaotic neutral at best and everything he said about how his character was supposed to act did not come off in the Rp.
So we get to a cave that has an ancient ruin of my character’s religion (a religion that had been long dead until recently) and I get exited about this culturally important find and start reading the hieroglyphs as only I am able to. We are RPing amongst the group about their meaning before the excavation begins when Chris decides we are taking too long and shouts at the party to get out of the way because he’s going to throw a flask of explosive at the wall. In character I shout at him to stop and place myself in the way of the ruin. Meanwhile he continues to shout at me to get out of the way wile the party is pleading to him. He ignores it all and starts a countdown. I don’t budge and take the fire Damage, it brought me down to half health, and honestly I was really enjoying the drama and RP. It was tense and I was being confrontational for the first time in my gaming career.
I used Thaumaturgy to make my eyes go black, make my clothes move as if underwater and give my voice whispering creepy undertones. I then got real close to Chris’ character and demanded she apologize and promise not to pull that shit again. Chris doubled down and insisted he had done nothing wrong and that it was my fault for standing in the way. This escalated until I said in character that I wouldn’t work with anyone that would endanger people’s lives like that. Pvp started, I think I initiated it. Chris cast false life, I cast inflict wound and the fights over.(level 1 and all) his character is healed by a part member and tries to keep fighting but the rest of the party hold his character down.
At this point Chris got supper pissed off. He claimed that I did it out of nowhere, refused to acknowledge that he attacked me first and says that “We don’t do that in this group”. The rest of the players are siding with me that makes him even angrier. We ended not long after
In between games he sends me a wall of text about the home brew rules about pvp and how to initiate it and what kind of things are allowed. (ie. never use anything that could kill a pc outright) I talk to the Dm about it and he’s never heard of these rules.
Later I find out that Chris tried to get me kicked out of the club but everyone sided with me despite being brand new to the group. Furthermore, I find out that Chris had killed other PCs near unprovoked in previous games.
We played for a dozen more seasons until the campaign concluded and throughout that time he continuously barged about his character, Hoarded any magic items we found and tried to hog the spotlight despite never having any interesting RP with anyone. Chris also acted really strange after session doing his best not to let me talk to the GM or give the GM rides home.
After that campaign I never went back to the DND club, but I do still play with the people I liked from it.
TLDR: Power gamer Anime That guy attacks my character and gets his butt kicked then has a big tantrum.

Hi all, I feel like it's time to share my opinions and thoughts after letting this subreddit cooldown for sometime. Around February of last year, I began work on a massive passion project developing https://NETRUNNER2077.net after following this title and being a massive fan of CD Projekt Red from the original Witcher title. When they announced Cyberpunk 2077 would be their next IP I was immensely excited as I'm a huge Cyberpunk genre nerd in all forms from art, movies, anime, philosophies, books, cultural significance and relation, aesthetics and more. So having my all time favorite game company work on a huge open world Cyberpunk "RPG" instantly generated immediate interest.
Now where to even begin?
Please note, I've yet to purposely "finish" Cyberpunk 2077 in hopes of CD Projekt Red making a strong come back later on in the future, and hopes that they'll eventually release a REDKit for modders in order to create some incredible work and help flesh the game world out. I have put around close to 200 hours into Cyberpunk 2077 exploring the different Life Paths and their effects on the world. Lots of walking, No fast travel and tons of time lost in an attempt to "Immerse" myself in the experience. I refused to finish Cyberpunk 2077's Main Story for several reasons. The largest being I'm typically against playing titles that are obviously not complete. On top of that, I've invested so much time and effort into researching, designing, learning web design and working towards building an awesome platform in order to properly cover Cyberpunk 2077 with a safe bet of thinking "This couldn't possibly be bad" only to coming around to reality very shortly after and that this title truly needed ATLEAST another year of development time.
There are aspects of Cyberpunk 2077 that are, in my opinion, worthy of putting it in the all time legendary category of games. Then.. other parts that make games from even 20 years ago look superior. It's a very "unbalanced" experience. So much that it takes the top spot for me personally. My experience of Cyberpunk 2077 is that it feels unfinished and some what rushed in many areas, if that isn't obvious enough already. But the thing is, as many of you probably already know, it just isn't bugs. Features, Content, Weapons, Immersive Elements, AI, RPG Elements and Game Design Systems are flat out missing or just straight up broken entirely.
Here are just a few of the elements that I have a problem with personally..

• Weapon Balance - Many weapons are straight up overpowered and unbalanced and easy to find early in the game.
• Weapon Variety - CD Projekt Red claimed that the game would have a large variety of weapons - this ended up not being the case with a few showcased weapons not implemented in the game itself although they exist in the game files. Also to note most "Iconic" weapons are just a reskin.
• Cyberware Balance & Variety - Same thing as above can also account for Cyberware. Outside of Cyber Arm implants, which has its own bulletin
• Very Hard Difficulty - Feels like a joke when compared to a lot titles out there. This is coming from someone who chose Style over Substance in all three playthroughs, typically never using a Jacket, Helmet or Mask. I'm no means great at games. This doesn't help with the extremely bugged out AI.
• Perk Balance and Design - All around, most perks feel unrewarding and feel vastly unbalanced, once again making it pretty easy to feel overpowered pretty quickly early on, especially if you end up going down the Quickhacking Sub Skill Tree.
• Pedestrian, Water and Car Damage Physics / Collision needs a serious second look - Water as of Patch 1.1 is still a pretty much nothing more than a transparent texture.. fire a bullet, a person, hell.. a fucking car and there is not a single pinch of reaction from that what so ever. The collision from bullets, other cars, people and objects is just bad for a 2020 game.
• UI - I'm usually not one to complain about an unintuitive UI but it's quite clunky that takes some time to get around and use to.
• Artificial Intelligence - It's either extremely bugged or just barely there. It's very bare bones in EVERY NON SCRIPTED aspect of the game. This has already been covered a thousand times so there's no need to go deep into detail with this. Vehicles, Police, Pedestrians, Etc.
• Lack of Immersive Elements - One of CD Projekt Red biggest selling points for many fans was making it sound like there would be many ways to Immerse yourself in Cyberpunk 2077. That is not the case outside of World Design, World Building and Story Telling. It's really hard to actually "Immersive yourself and Roleplay" You can't sit at a bar and grab a drink in real time. You can't grab food anytime you like and eat in real time, the few vendors there are in the game completely rip you out of the game world and into a standard UI vendor menu. Installing Cyberware is just a click of a button in a menu after the initially Eye and hand implant, There's bare minimum interactivity with NPC's or the world itself for that matter, Not a single soul uses an umbrella that I've witnessed when it rains in Night City, There's little to no sense in danger outside of the repetitive Gang hotspots... the list could go on and on with this one.
• 90% of the choices you make during Cyberpunk 2077 feel like they have little to no consequence - While it's true that there are SOME choices you make in this game change certain outcomes (For the most part - the end of the game as reported by many) It feels like a very bare bones system that doesn't seem fleshed out at all. The majority of the time you're only given the "Illusion of Choice" This was very disappointing to witness. Life path decisions feel utterly meaningless later on down the road.
• Side Quests are typically very short when compared to Witcher 3 - On top of that, there are a handful of stunning Side quests but it was very disappointing when a large majority of them lasted around 5-10 minutes at most. If you're looking for another Baron equivalent quest line.. It ain't here chief.
• The Main Quest is far too short for a game that attempts to coin itself as being "RPG" - Regardless of not finishing, its pretty obvious that you do a small handful of Main Story Quests (Outside of the Optional ones) and you've reached the end.
• Life Paths do not largely impact your overall experience and the way the game and story unfolds - Outside of the VERY beginning of the game, which can roughly take around 10 to 20 minutes to do.. and maybe a single quest depending on your lifepath, They ended up being extremely disappointing. You really aren't missing out on doing multiple life paths as you can basically "choose" your ending at the epilogue of the game and just restart from a save and make a different decision to see different outs. AKA making all the decisions you made throughout the game feel meaningless because in the end, its only what you choose during the epilogue that really matters.
• A Second Note on Life Paths and Dialogue Impacting Secondary and Third Playthroughs - Very few side main quests can make a small difference by the end and there is no tension build up for your dialogue options that will lead to consequences that make you afraid of your choices later down the story.
• What the hell happened to Meredith Stout? - If you went down the route of siding with Meredith Stout during the Maelstrom Mission and have followed Cyberpunk 2077 for some time you were probably completely thrown off as to how cut off that whole "follow up" went down. Very disappointing.
• Dynamic Vehicle Chases / Fights are not a thing and were removed from the game - The one Scav chase in the beginning of the game is scripted.. and that's about it, hell.. you can just sit in the vehicle and watch it crash into the wall without doing a single thing. What the hell? Sorry guys, If you choose to mess with gangs.. they're not going to hunt you down, they aren't going to mow you down while you're in your vehicle. It was all bullshit.
• Gangs / Corps will ignore the actions you take against their gang / corp and there are no repercussions for your actions against them at any point in the game - This goes with the one above, but I figured I'd expand on it more. Remember when we thought siding with Maelstrom would cause dire consequences in the long run with Meredith and Militech? Guess what? it definitely isn't a thing. You can go about your business in Night City and not have to worry about that for a split second your entire playthrough, no matter who you decide to fuck over.
• Side Gigs are typically just filler content - Very little variety and the only way to really extend your playtime if you choose to not walk the streets of a dead feeling night city attempting to immerse yourself in the world. Which is totally okay if there were also other things to do, but for the most part its just generic Ubisoft tier filler content. There are a very SMALL amount of unique ones with actual dialogue.
• Netrunner Enemy Types - The worst they do is upload a low quality damage hack and that's it. Half the time they scan your location and nothing happens. No cool shit like having to tap a button repeatedly to stop you from pulling the trigger on yourself after being hacked.
• Pacifica is obviously unfinished - Well, it's not hard to tell that Pacifica wasn't complete after the game came out, I fully know the lore behind what happened to Pacifica, but I don't see how it's acceptable that there are literally unfinished areas from game development.
• MAX-TAC and Trauma Team were epic during the early Scav Hideout mission, but that's it - Not much else to say here other than they had some really cool "scripted" events during and after that mission.. but other than that you'll see Trauma Team with their ships in the same exact spots you find them and MAX-TAC basically just spawn in as higher tier cops when your wanted level is high enough.
• Cyberpsycho Quest line was a missed opportunity - Quite a disappointing quest after tracking down 17 Cyberpsychos regardless if you choose to let them live or kill them. They could of gone deep into some gritty cyberpunk writing and mystery with this but their approach to this was pretty underwhelming and surface level with no depth other than some logs you find, but this can be said about MANY of the quests during the game.
• Collecting Cars is just more checkmark optional filler - Hey? Want another vehicle? Let me flood your quest list and phone letting you know you can GPS right to the location and pick it up. Outside of the few hidden vehicles in the game, Collecting cars was pretty disappointing. You literally walk up to location and buy them, no interactivity with NPC's, just click and buy. Might as well of just given a option to have the vehicle self deliver to the non existent garage where all my other cars reside right?
• The Garage outside your Megabuilding serves no purpose and doesn't store your vehicles - Can't find your vehicles there now can you? Yeah..
• The 6 Month Montage felt like a giant slap in the face, quite possibly cut missions from early game and is the exact SAME no matter what life path you choose - Going down any life path will grant you the exact same Street Kid themed montage. It really feels like these were cut missions that would of fleshed Jackie Welles as a character out so much better.
• Cyberpunk 2077 feels more like a decent "Action Adventure" Game rather than a true "RPG" - Not too hard to see this. While it has RPG elements and Dialogue, it's definitely not on the level of Dues Ex, Vampire Bloodlines, Divinity, Elder Scrolls, Fallout (3 & NV). After you exit the prologue it is all downhill after that.
• There isn't much to find and see outside of map markers - While there are a handful of secrets, schematics and weapons it doesn't feel very rewarding when finding these things because of how the weapon, items, currency and game design elements were implemented where things are either easily replaced or you're already easily overpowered as it is.
• Cyberpunk tries to be too many things and falls short of most of them - With the Ambitious goals, talk and promises.. The one thing I hoped it would be was a truly Ambitious RPG with some really good Immersive elements. I definitely wasn't expecting the world, but it's just sad as to how many elements it falls flat on.
• Black Market Cyberware isn't a thing - You see those four options you have for Cyber arms? Yep, That's it. Nothing else, Everything shown through trailers is what you get.
• Brain Dance was a MASSIVE missed opportunity - It's pretty obvious that there was at one time far more to brain dance outside of story missions. Hell, it could of found a way to replace the Gwent Mini Game, but alas - In the end it was used for only story missions and not a single side experience on its own.
• Night City just feels like a extremely gorgeous backdrop to a Somewhat Linear story - I've already covered several reasons as to why I feel this way.
• It feels more like "Johnny's Story" rather than V's Story - While the writing is indeed excellent most of the time. I personally feel like this story is more about Johnny rather than V.
• The sense of urgency after the prologue really makes it hard to "Role Play" V correctly. This conflicts with previous statements made by CDPR "Really wanting players to Role Play the character"- The way this was approached was quite confusing, as CDPR offers this massive world yet having a huge urgency that you need to figure out a solution before you die in a few weeks.
• The World does not feel "Alive" by any means.. Lack of Dynamic Events - The world itself just feels pretty dead outside of flying vehicles and ads going off every 4-5 seconds. There is VERY little dynamic content like you see in RDR2 where they put a huge emphasis on the world feeling "alive" and never knowing what could happen.
• Customization is severely lacking from a world that begs for more of it - Luckily if you're on PC, a lot of these issues have been solved with customizable Cyber arms, More tattoos, Hair Styles, Face and Neck Cyberware and more. If you're on Console though, you're sadly shit out of luck. The lack of visible Cyberware for V was very surprising. No visible Cyber legs, No visible Netrunning gear outside of "Suits", etc.
• Jackie Welles was a brilliant character that was quickly thrown away - Let alone the massive spoiler they decided to showcase via the 2019 E3 CG Trailer, It was extremely disheartening to know that saving Jackie was never an option seeing as we were barely given any time with him and a wasted opportunity for possible great plot points. This could of been remedied by actually going through the missions played out in the 6 month montage. For players unfamiliar following Cyberpunk 2077 for so long, I would assume losing Jackie wasn't near as impactful for them.
• Cyberware Arm implants are just alternative weapons for the most part - Which pretty much become useless unless you choose to use Gorilla Fists the whole game. No Utility from them, No useful tool elements, Just weapons that become obsolete very fast.
• For a Dystopian World that is hyper sexualized, there sure is a lack of sexual content - Not hard to miss this, You have two Joy Toys and two high end JT's later in the game to choose from in the entirety of Night City outside of the selection of Story related characters you come across. Hell, even a lot of characters that dance on poles in the world are fully clothed. Let alone any real Adult themed clubs.
• Trains were a missed opportunity - Let's face it, there were obviously systems in place at one point in development to have an actual train system where you could ride around Night City and be able to enjoy the huge vistas that it offers. Now you can just watch one from a distance disappear right through a building.
• Verticality? Sort of..? - Take your Home Megabuilding for example and also prime example of cut areas and content. There were suppose to be several areas of verticality to explore in the world and areas and this is just not the case anymore.
• "You'll never run into cool areas where you'll want to get in there but can't" - Yeah, that was definitely not the case now was it? There are several areas you would think would be accessible but just aren't or at any point in the game are.
• Acid Rain? Yeah.. No. - Remember this? Yeah I haven't witnessed it either. But hey, at least there's acid fog right?

Then you have this huge dystopic metropolis of a city which looks absolutely phenomenal. I think it'll truly go down in history for its amazing design and the techniques they used to craft this insanely dense city. There's truly nothing like visiting Night City and it surely is a unique experience from a VISUAL and AUDIO design standpoint. The writing is solid most of the time as well. It really just feels like they had a very direct deadline and were forced to wrap systems up after changing the core game several times over and over again which caused loads of bugs in the code. I really hope when I come back to this game in a year it'll be quite different but after what CDPR pulled I find it extremely hard to trust and have faith in them.
I had so much faith and love in this company that I ended up spending countless months building, designing, and launching NETRUNNER 2077 almost single handedly but after playing Cyberpunk 2077 for weeks, I couldn't even bring myself to write a review over it. Honestly, I would've been way too critical and harsh. Especially after having to monitor and dissect everything that was "said" to be in the game and how systems were suppose to "work" and it ended up being nothing like that what so ever. At this point and time I have no motivation or confidence to continue the platform due to the recent events and actions of CDPR's upper management as well as the highly manipulative marketing that made Cyberpunk 2077 only a glass half full of what it was intended to actually be.
I made sure to set my expectations accordingly from what was told from developers to fans via interviews, deep dives and what was reported to sources that was approved by CDPR. With that and the EXTREMELY misleading marketing, it leaves an extremely sour taste in my mouth. I really want to have faith that they can turn this title around, but something feels off. I understand from a legal perspective that they probably cant at the moment. I just hope one day that this game can truly live up to its potential. There is an incredible foundation set, but it's ultimately up to CD Projekt Red if they choose to deliver their originally intended vision.
For other upper management in game development out there possibly reading this- if your game isn't finished, please market it correctly as an "Early Access Game" and not a finished product. That is straight up lying and deceiving fans and consumers out there. It isn't right, and needs to stop.

NEW INFO 5 Results from share redemption are posted. Less than .2% redeemed. Very bullish as investors are showing extreme confidence in the future of PLBY.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/playboy-mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-120000721.html
NEW INFO 4 Definitive Agreement to purchase 100% of Lovers brand stores announced 2/1.
https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Playboy+%28MCAC%29+Confirms+Deal+to+Acquire+Lovers/17892359.html
NEW INFO 3 I bought more on the dip today. 5081 total. Price rose AH to $12.38 (2.15%)
NEW INFO 2 Here is the full webinar.
https://icrinc.zoom.us/rec/play/9GWKdmOYumjWfZuufW3QXpe_FW_g--qeNbg6PnTjTMbnNTgLmCbWjeRFpQga1iPc-elpGap8dnDv8Zww.yD7DjUwuPmapeEdP?continueMode=true&tk=lEYc4F_FkKlgsmCIs6w0gtGHT2kbgVGbUju3cIRBSjk.DQIAAAAV8NK49xZWdldRM2xNSFNQcTBmcE00UzM3bXh3AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA&uuid=WN_GKWqbHkeSyuWetJmLFkj4g&_x_zm_rtaid=kR45-uuqRE-L65AxLjpbQw.1611967079119.2c054e3d3f8d8e63339273d9175939ed&_x_zm_rhtaid=866
NEW INFO 1 Live merger webinar with PLBY and MCAC on Friday January 29, 2021 at 12:00 NOON EST link below
https://mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/press-release-details/2021/Playboy-Enterprises-Inc.-and-Mountain-Crest-Acquisition-Corp-Participate-in-SPACInsider-ICR-Webinar-on-January-29th-at-12pm-ET/default.aspx
Playboy going public: Porn, Gambling, and Cannabis
!!!WARNING READING AHEAD!!! TL;DR at the end. It will take some time to sort through all the links and read/watch everything, but you should.
In the next couple weeks, Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp is taking Playboy public. The existing ticker MCAC will become PLBY. Special purpose acquisition companies have taken private companies public in recent months with great success. I believe this will be no exception. Notably, Playboy is profitable and has skyrocketing revenue going into a transformational growth phase.
Porn - First and foremost, let's talk about porn. I know what you guys are thinking. “Porno mags are dead. Why would I want to invest in something like that? I can get porn for free online.” Guess what? You are absolutely right. And that’s exactly why Playboy doesn’t do that anymore. That’s right, they eliminated their print division. And yet they somehow STILL make money from porn that people (see: boomers) pay for on their website through PlayboyTV, Playboy Plus, and iPlayboy. Here’s the thing: Playboy has international, multi-generational name recognition from porn. They have content available in 180 countries. It will be the only publicly traded adult entertainment (porn) company. But that is not where this company is going. It will help support them along the way. You can see every Playboy magazine through iPlayboy if you’re interested. NSFW links below:
https://www.playboy.com/
https://www.playboytv.com/
https://www.playboyplus.com/
https://www.iplayboy.com/
Gambling - Some of you might recognize the Playboy brand from gambling trips to places like Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Cancun, London or Macau. They’ve been in the gambling biz for decades through their casinos, clubs, and licensed gaming products. They see the writing on the wall. COVID is accelerating the transition to digital, application based GAMBLING. That’s right. What we are doing on Robinhood with risky options is gambling, and the only reason regulators might give a shit anymore is because we are making too much money. There may be some restrictions put in place, but gambling from your phone on your couch is not going anywhere. More and more states are allowing things like Draftkings, poker, state ‘lottery” apps, hell - even political betting. Michigan and Virginia just ok’d gambling apps. They won’t be the last. This is all from your couch and any 18 year old with a cracked iphone can access it. Wouldn’t it be cool if Playboy was going to do something like that? They’re already working on it. As per CEO Ben Kohn who we will get to later, “...the company’s casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth.” Honestly, I stopped researching Scientific Games' sports betting segment when I saw the word ‘omni-channel’. That told me all I needed to know about it’s success.
“Our SG Sports™ platform is an enhanced, omni-channel solution for online, self-service and retail fixed odds sports betting – from soccer to tennis, basketball, football, baseball, hockey, motor sports, racing and more.”
https://www.scientificgames.com/
https://www.microgaming.co.uk/
“This latter segment has become increasingly enticing for Playboy, and it said last week that it is considering new tie-ups that could include gaming operators like PointsBet and 888Holdings.”
https://calvinayre.com/2020/10/05/business/playboys-gaming-ops-could-get-a-boost-from-spac-purchase/
As per their SEC filing:
“Significant consumer engagement and spend with Playboy-branded gaming properties around the world, including with leading partners such as Microgaming, Scientific Games, and Caesar’s Entertainment, steers our investment in digital gaming, sports betting and other digital offerings to further support our commercial strategy to expand consumer spend with minimal marginal cost, and gain consumer data to inform go-to-market plans across categories.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tMDAA1
They are expanding into more areas of gaming/gambling, working with international players in the digital gaming/gambling arena, and a Playboy sportsbook is on the horizon.
https://www.playboy.com/read/the-pleasure-of-playing-with-yourself-mobile-gaming-in-the-covid-era
Cannabis - If you’ve ever read through a Playboy magazine, you know they’ve had a positive relationship with cannabis for many years. As of September 2020, Playboy has made a major shift into the cannabis space. Too good to be true you say? Check their website. Playboy currently sells a range of CBD products. This is a good sign. Federal hemp products, which these most likely are, can be mailed across state lines and most importantly for a company like Playboy, can operate through a traditional banking institution. CBD products are usually the first step towards the cannabis space for large companies. Playboy didn’t make these products themselves meaning they are working with a processor in the cannabis industry. Another good sign for future expansion. What else do they have for sale? Pipes, grinders, ashtrays, rolling trays, joint holders. Hmm. Ok. So it looks like they want to sell some shit. They probably don’t have an active interest in cannabis right? Think again:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/09/24/playboy-gets-serious-about-cannabis-law-reform-advocacy-with-new-partnership-grants/?sh=62f044a65cea
“Taking yet another step into the cannabis space, Playboy will be announcing later on Thursday (September, 2020) that it is launching a cannabis law reform and advocacy campaign in partnership with National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Last Prisoner Project, Marijuana Policy Project, the Veterans Cannabis Project, and the Eaze Momentum Program.”
“According to information procured exclusively, the three-pronged campaign will focus on calling for federal legalization. The program also includes the creation of a mentorship plan, through which the Playboy Foundation will support entrepreneurs from groups that are underrepresented in the industry.” Remember that CEO Kohn from earlier? He wrote this recently:
https://medium.com/naked-open-letters-from-playboy/congress-must-pass-the-more-act-c867c35239ae
Seems like he really wants weed to be legal? Hmm wonder why? The writing's on the wall my friends. Playboy wants into the cannabis industry, they are making steps towards this end, and we have favorable conditions for legislative progress.
Don’t think branding your own cannabis line is profitable or worthwhile? Tell me why these 41 celebrity millionaires and billionaires are dummies. I’ll wait.
https://www.celebstoner.com/news/celebstoner-news/2019/07/12/top-celebrity-cannabis-brands/
Confirmation: I hear you. “This all seems pretty speculative. It would be wildly profitable if they pull this shift off. But how do we really know?” Watch this whole video:
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/playboy-ceo-telling-story-female-154907068.html
Man - this interview just gets my juices flowing. And highlights one of my favorite reasons for this play. They have so many different business avenues from which a catalyst could appear. I think paying attention, holding shares, and options on these staggered announcements over the next year is the way I am going to go about it. "There's definitely been a shift to direct-to-consumer," he (Kohn) said. "About 50 percent of our revenue today is direct-to-consumer, and that will continue to grow going forward.” “Kohn touted Playboy's portfolio of both digital and consumer products, with casino-style gaming, in particular, serving a crucial role under the company's new business model. Playboy also has its sights on the emerging cannabis market, from CBD products to marijuana products geared toward sexual health and pleasure.” "If THC does become legal in the United States, we have developed certain strains to enhance your sex life that we will launch," Kohn said. https://cheddar.com/media/playboy-goes-public-health-gaming-lifestyle-focus Oh? The CEO actually said it? Ok then. “We have developed certain strains…” They’re already working with growers on strains and genetics? Ok. There are several legal cannabis markets for those products right now, international and stateside. I expect Playboy licensed hemp and THC pre-rolls by EOY. Something like this: https://www.etsy.com/listing/842996758/10-playboy-pre-roll-tubes-limited?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=pre+roll+playboy&ref=sr_gallery-1-2&organic_search_click=1 Maintaining cannabis operations can be costly and a regulatory headache. Playboy’s licensing strategy allows them to pick successful, established partners and sidestep traditional barriers to entry. You know what I like about these new markets? They’re expanding. Worldwide. And they are going to be a bigger deal than they already are with or without Playboy. Who thinks weed and gambling are going away? Too many people like that stuff. These are easy markets. And Playboy is early enough to carve out their spot in each. Fuck it, read this too: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimosman/2020/10/20/playboy-could-be-the-king-of-spacs-here-are-three-picks/?sh=2e13dcaa3e05
Numbers: You want numbers? I got numbers. As per the company’s most recent SEC filing:
“For the year ended December 31, 2019, and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s historical consolidated revenue was $78.1 million and $101.3 million, respectively, historical consolidated net income (loss) was $(23.6) million and $(4.8) million, respectively, and Adjusted EBITDA was $13.1 million and $21.8 million, respectively.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Licensing segment contributed $44.2 million in revenue and $31.1 million in net income.”
“In the ninth months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Direct-to-Consumer segment contributed $40.2 million in revenue and net income of $0.1 million.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Digital Subscriptions and Content segment contributed $15.4 million in revenue and net income of $7.4 million.”
They are profitable across all three of their current business segments.
“Playboy’s return to the public markets presents a transformed, streamlined and high-growth business. The Company has over $400 million in cash flows contracted through 2029, sexual wellness products available for sale online and in over 10,000 major retail stores in the US, and a growing variety of clothing and branded lifestyle and digital gaming products.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF
Growth: Playboy has massive growth in China and massive growth potential in India. “In China, where Playboy has spent more than 25 years building its business, our licensees have an enormous footprint of nearly 2,500 brick and mortar stores and 1,000 ecommerce stores selling high quality, Playboy-branded men’s casual wear, shoes/footwear, sleepwear, swimwear, formal suits, leather & non-leather goods, sweaters, active wear, and accessories. We have achieved significant growth in China licensing revenues over the past several years in partnership with strong licensees and high-quality manufacturers, and we are planning for increased growth through updates to our men’s fashion lines and expansion into adjacent categories in men’s skincare and grooming, sexual wellness, and women’s fashion, a category where recent launches have been well received.” The men’s market in China is about the same size as the entire population of the United States and European Union combined. Playboy is a leading brand in this market. They are expanding into the women’s market too. Did you know CBD toothpaste is huge in China? China loves CBD products and has hemp fields that dwarf those in the US. If Playboy expands their CBD line China it will be huge. Did you know the gambling money in Macau absolutely puts Las Vegas to shame? Technically, it's illegal on the mainland, but in reality, there is a lot of gambling going on in China. https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/10/19/magic-johnson-and-uncle-buds-cbd-brand-enter-china-via-tmall-partnership/?sh=271776ca411e “In India, Playboy today has a presence through select apparel licensees and hospitality establishments. Consumer research suggests significant growth opportunities in the territory with Playboy’s brand and categories of focus.” “Playboy Enterprises has announced the expansion of its global consumer products business into India as part of a partnership with Jay Jay Iconic Brands, a leading fashion and lifestyle Company in India.” “The Indian market today is dominated by consumers under the age of 35, who represent more than 65 percent of the country’s total population and are driving India’s significant online shopping growth. The Playboy brand’s core values of playfulness and exploration resonate strongly with the expressed desires of today’s younger millennial consumers. For us, Playboy was the perfect fit.” “The Playboy international portfolio has been flourishing for more than 25 years in several South Asian markets such as China and Japan. In particular, it has strategically targeted the millennial and gen-Z audiences across categories such as apparel, footwear, home textiles, eyewear and watches.” https://www.licenseglobal.com/industry-news/playboy-expands-global-footprint-india It looks like they gave COVID the heisman in terms of net damage sustained: “Although Playboy has not suffered any material adverse consequences to date from the COVID-19 pandemic, the business has been impacted both negatively and positively. The remote working and stay-at-home orders resulted in the closure of the London Playboy Club and retail stores of Playboy’s licensees, decreasing licensing revenues in the second quarter, as well as causing supply chain disruption and less efficient product development thereby slowing the launch of new products. However, these negative impacts were offset by an increase in Yandy’s direct-to-consumer sales, which have benefited in part from overall increases in online retail sales so far during the pandemic.” Looks like the positives are long term (Yandy acquisition) and the negatives are temporary (stay-at-home orders).
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921006093/tm213766-1_defa14a.htm
This speaks to their ability to maintain a financially solvent company throughout the transition phase to the aforementioned areas. They’d say some fancy shit like “expanded business model to encompass four key revenue streams: Sexual Wellness, Style & Apparel, Gaming & Lifestyle, and Beauty & Grooming.” I hear “we’re just biding our time with these trinkets until those dollar dollar bill y’all markets are fully up and running.” But the truth is these existing revenue streams are profitable, scalable, and rapidly expanding Playboy’s e-commerce segment around the world.
"Even in the face of COVID this year, we've been able to grow EBITDA over 100 percent and revenue over 68 percent, and I expect that to accelerate going into 2021," he said. “Playboy is accelerating its growth in company-owned and branded consumer products in attractive and expanding markets in which it has a proven history of brand affinity and consumer spend.”
Also in the SEC filing, the Time Frame:
“As we detailed in the definitive proxy statement, the SPAC stockholder meeting to vote on the transaction has been set for February 9th, and, subject to stockholder approval and satisfaction of the other closing conditions, we expect to complete the merger and begin trading on NASDAQ under ticker PLBY shortly thereafter,” concluded Kohn.
The Players: Suhail “The Whale” Rizvi (HMFIC), Ben “The Bridge” Kohn (CEO), “lil” Suying Liu & “Big” Dong Liu (Young-gun China gang). I encourage you to look these folks up. The real OG here is Suhail Rizvi. He’s from India originally and Chairman of the Board for the new PLBY company. He was an early investor in Twitter, Square, Facebook and others. His firm, Rizvi Traverse, currently invests in Instacart, Pinterest, Snapchat, Playboy, and SpaceX. Maybe you’ve heard of them. “Rizvi, who owns a sprawling three-home compound in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a 1.65-acre estate in Palm Beach, Florida, near Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, moved to Iowa Falls when he was five. His father was a professor of psychology at Iowa. Along with his older brother Ashraf, a hedge fund manager, Rizvi graduated from Wharton business school.” “Suhail Rizvi: the 47-year-old 'unsocial' social media baron: When Twitter goes public in the coming weeks (2013), one of the biggest winners will be a 47-year-old financier who guards his secrecy so zealously that he employs a person to take down his Wikipedia entry and scrub his photos from the internet. In IPO, Twitter seeks to be 'anti-FB'” “Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia looks like a big Twitter winner. So do the moneyed clients of Jamie Dimon. But as you’ve-got-to-be-joking wealth washed over Twitter on Thursday — a company that didn’t exist eight years ago was worth $31.7 billion after its first day on the stock market — the non-boldface name of the moment is Suhail R. Rizvi. Mr. Rizvi, 47, runs a private investment company that is the largest outside investor in Twitter with a 15.6 percent stake worth $3.8 billion at the end of trading on Thursday (November, 2013). Using a web of connections in the tech industry and in finance, as well as a hearty dose of good timing, he brought many prominent names in at the ground floor, including the Saudi prince and some of JPMorgan’s wealthiest clients.” https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/technology/at-twitter-working-behind-the-scenes-toward-a-billion-dollar-payday.html Y’all like that Arab money? How about a dude that can call up Saudi Princes and convince them to spend? Funniest shit about I read about him: “Rizvi was able to buy only $100 million in Facebook shortly before its IPO, thus limiting his returns, according to people with knowledge of the matter.” Poor guy :(
He should be fine with the 16 million PLBY shares he's going to have though :)
Shuhail also has experience in the entertainment industry. He’s invested in companies like SESAC, ICM, and Summit Entertainment. He’s got Hollywood connections to blast this stuff post-merger. And he’s at least partially responsible for that whole Twilight thing. I’m team Edward btw.
I really like what Suhail has done so far. He’s lurked in the shadows while Kohn is consolidating the company, trimming the fat, making Playboy profitable, and aiming the ship at modern growing markets.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-ipo-rizvi-insight/insight-little-known-hollywood-investor-poised-to-score-with-twitter-ipo-idUSBRE9920VW20131003
Ben “The Bridge” Kohn is an interesting guy. He’s the connection between Rizvi Traverse and Playboy. He’s both CEO of Playboy and was previously Managing Partner at Rizvi Traverse. Ben seems to be the voice of the Playboy-Rizvi partnership, which makes sense with Suhail’s privacy concerns. Kohn said this:
“Today is a very big day for all of us at Playboy and for all our partners globally. I stepped into the CEO role at Playboy in 2017 because I saw the biggest opportunity of my career. Playboy is a brand and platform that could not be replicated today. It has massive global reach, with more than $3B of global consumer spend and products sold in over 180 countries. Our mission – to create a culture where all people can pursue pleasure – is rooted in our 67-year history and creates a clear focus for our business and role we play in people’s lives, providing them with the products, services and experiences that create a lifestyle of pleasure. We are taking this step into the public markets because the committed capital will enable us to accelerate our product development and go-to-market strategies and to more rapidly build our direct to consumer capabilities,” said Ben Kohn, CEO of Playboy.
“Playboy today is a highly profitable commerce business with a total addressable market projected in the trillions of dollars,” Mr. Kohn continued, “We are actively selling into the Sexual Wellness consumer category, projected to be approximately $400 billion in size by 2024, where our recently launched intimacy products have rolled out to more than 10,000 stores at major US retailers in the United States. Combined with our owned & operated ecommerce Sexual Wellness initiatives, the category will contribute more than 40% of our revenue this year. In our Apparel and Beauty categories, our collaborations with high-end fashion brands including Missguided and PacSun are projected to achieve over $50M in retail sales across the US and UK this year, our leading men’s apparel lines in China expanded to nearly 2500 brick and mortar stores and almost 1000 digital stores, and our new men’s and women’s fragrance line recently launched in Europe. In Gaming, our casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth. Our product strategy is informed by years of consumer data as we actively expand from a purely licensing model into owning and operating key high-growth product lines focused on driving profitability and consumer lifetime value. We are thrilled about the future of Playboy. Our foundation has been set to drive further growth and margin, and with the committed capital from this transaction and our more than $180M in NOLs, we will take advantage of the opportunity in front of us, building to our goal of $100M of adjusted EBITDA in 2025.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company
Also, according to their Form 4s, “Big” Dong Liu and “lil” Suying Liu just loaded up with shares last week. These guys are brothers and seem like the Chinese market connection. They are only 32 & 35 years old. I don’t even know what that means, but it's provocative.
https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1832415.htm
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-ii-002600994.html
Y’all like that China money?
“Mr. Liu has been the Chief Financial Officer of Dongguan Zhishang Photoelectric Technology Co., Ltd., a regional designer, manufacturer and distributor of LED lights serving commercial customers throughout Southern China since November 2016, at which time he led a syndicate of investments into the firm. Mr. Liu has since overseen the financials of Dongguan Zhishang as well as provided strategic guidance to its board of directors, advising on operational efficiency and cash flow performance. From March 2010 to October 2016, Mr. Liu was the Head of Finance at Feidiao Electrical Group Co., Ltd., a leading Chinese manufacturer of electrical outlets headquartered in Shanghai and with businesses in the greater China region as well as Europe.”
Dr. Suying Liu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp., commented, “Playboy is a unique and compelling investment opportunity, with one of the world’s largest and most recognized brands, its proven consumer affinity and spend, and its enormous future growth potential in its four product segments and new and existing geographic regions. I am thrilled to be partnering with Ben and his exceptional team to bring his vision to fruition.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company
These guys are good. They have a proven track record of success across multiple industries. Connections and money run deep with all of these guys. I don’t think they’re in the game to lose.
I was going to write a couple more paragraphs about why you should have a look at this but really the best thing you can do is read this SEC filing from a couple days ago. It explains the situation in far better detail. Specifically, look to page 137 and read through their strategy. Also, look at their ownership percentages and compensation plans including the stock options and their prices. The financials look great, revenue is up 90% Q3, and it looks like a bright future.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF
I’m hesitant to attach this because his position seems short term, but I’m going to with a warning because he does hit on some good points (two are below his link) and he’s got a sizable position in this thing (500k+ on margin, I think). I don’t know this guy but he did look at the same publicly available info and make roughly the same prediction, albeit without the in depth gambling or cannabis mention. You can also search reddit for ‘MCAC’ and very few relevant results come up and none of them even come close to really looking at this thing.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gOvAd6lebs452hFlWWbxVjQ3VMsjGBkbJeXRwDwIJfM/edit?usp=sharing
“Also, before you people start making claims that Playboy is a “boomer” company, STOP RIGHT THERE. This is not a good argument. Simply put. The only thing that matters is Playboy’s name recognition, not their archaic business model which doesn’t even exist anymore as they have completely repurposed their business.”
“Imagine not buying $MCAC at a 400M valuation lol. Streetwear department is worth 1B alone imo.”
Considering the ridiculous Chinese growth as a lifestyle brand, he’s not wrong.
Current Cultural Significance and Meme Value: A year ago I wouldn’t have included this section but the events from the last several weeks (even going back to tsla) have proven that a company’s ability to meme and/or gain social network popularity can have an effect. Tik-tok, Snapchat, Twitch, Reddit, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter. They all have Playboy stuff on them. Kids in middle and highschool know what Playboy is but will likely never see or touch one of the magazines in person. They’ll have a Playboy hoodie though. Crazy huh? A lot like GME, PLBY would hugely benefit from meme-value stock interest to drive engagement towards their new business model while also building strategic coffers. This interest may not directly and/or significantly move the stock price but can generate significant interest from larger players who will.
Bull Case: The year is 2025. Playboy is now the world leader pleasure brand. They began by offering Playboy licensed gaming products, including gambling products, direct to consumers through existing names. By 2022, demand has skyrocketed and Playboy has designed and released their own gambling platforms. In 2025, they are also a leading cannabis brand in the United States and Canada with proprietary strains and products geared towards sexual wellness. Cannabis was legalized in the US in 2023 when President Biden got glaucoma but had success with cannabis treatment. He personally pushes for cannabis legalization as he steps out of office after his first term. Playboy has also grown their brand in China and India to multi-billion per year markets. The stock goes up from 11ish to 100ish and everyone makes big gains buying somewhere along the way.
Bear Case: The United States does a complete 180 on marijuana and gambling. President Biden overdoses on marijuana in the Lincoln bedroom when his FDs go tits up and he loses a ton of money in his sports book app after the Fighting Blue Hens narrowly lose the National Championship to Bama. Playboy is unable to expand their cannabis and gambling brands but still does well with their worldwide lifestyle brand. They gain and lose some interest in China and India but the markets are too large to ignore them completely. The stock goes up from 11ish to 13ish and everyone makes 15-20% gains.
TL;DR: Successful technology/e-commerce investment firm took over Playboy to turn it into a porn, online gambling/gaming, sports book, cannabis company, worldwide lifestyle brand that promotes sexual wellness, vetern access, women-ownership, minority-ownership, and “pleasure for all”. Does a successful online team reinventing an antiquated physical copy giant sound familiar? No options yet, shares only for now. $11.38 per share at time of writing. My guess? $20 by the end of February. $50 by EOY. This is not financial advice. I am not qualified to give financial advice. I’m just sayin’ I would personally use a Playboy sports book app while smoking a Playboy strain specific joint and it would be cool if they did that. Do your own research. You’d probably want to start here:
WARNING - POTENTIALLY NSFW - SEXY MODELS AHEAD - no actual nudity though
https://s26.q4cdn.com/895475556/files/doc_presentations/Playboy-Craig-Hallum-Conference-Investor-Presentation-11_17_20-compressed.pdf
Or here:
https://www.mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/default.aspx
Jimmy Chill: “Get into any SPAC at $10 or $11 and you are going to make money.”
STL;DR: Buy MCAC. MCAC > PLBY couple weeks. Rocketship. Moon.
Position: 5000 shares. I will buy short, medium, and long-dated calls once available.

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News Schedule:

• Jan 15 - 3.13.0 Launch - 11AM PST
• Jan 16 - New Mystery Box Revealed.

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Latest Info (updated daily)

• PATCH NOTES
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Official News

• 3.13 Official Info Page
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• Miscellaneous teasers
  • Good Tidings, Nomad
  • But.. what if?
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• 3.13 will be parallel content alongside Conquerors of the Atlas.
• Atlas Lore Recap - Part 1 & Part 2
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• 3.13 Echoes of the Atlas + Ritual League
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New Expansion Breakdown - Echoes of the Atlas

The Elder's absence has not gone unnoticed. Similar beings have been drawn towards out exploits within the Atlas and the first to arrive is the Maven. An enigmatic entity interested in our struggles and obstacles. So much so that she has decided to contribute.
This upcoming expansion seems to much more focused on the bosses we know, bringing in mechanics allowing to amplify the map bosses as well as using a large number of them within the new Pinnacle Encounter.

New Atlas Mechanics - The Maven's Challenges

The Maven seeks entertainment. After running into her in the Atlas you'll be able to summon her to a map, where she will intentionally make the map boss significantly more difficult, quite literally for her amusement.

New Pinnacle Boss - The Maven

^{Think ShapeSirus Level}
If you've entertained her enough eventually you can request a challenge from the maven herself. She'll throw multiple bosses at you in waves 3 bosses, then 4, 5, 6, and finally 10. After that you may (they specifically used the word may) be able to fight the Maven herself. Once you've beaten the 10 Boss stage, each concurrent gauntlet will be 10 bosses again.

• Each Atlas Region will have its own Maven Gauntlet progress. Gauntlets are the source of Atlas Passive points.
  
• Unique bosses will not appear in the Maven Gauntlet
  
• Elder Guardians (and presumably Shaper, but not confirmed) can be added to the Gauntlet.
  
• Bosses will be set to a specific level for the Gauntlet, aka you can't cheese the encounter by filling the pens with T1 bosses
  

11 New Maps

• This includes new tilesets and new bosses. Timestamp to relevant video showcase of four new tilesets

Atlas Passive Points

Each Atlas region will have their own trees and respective passive points. Each emphasizing different mechanics. You will receive two points per Maven Gauntlet stage per area for a total of Ten points per area.

• Each different Region will have different league mechanics, but are the same for all players.
• Full Official List found here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3008533

Current examples:

Glennach Cairns

• 1) Scent of Blood - [BEYOND] Slaying enemies close together has 3% chance to attract Beyond monsters
  • 1a) Torn Veil - [BEYOND] Powerful Beyond Demons require 1 fewer Portal to summon; Beyond portals in Areas have 100% increased Merging Radius
• 2) Monumental - [LEGION] 10% chance to contain a Legion encounter
  • 2a) Face to Face - [LEGION] Legions are 100% more likely to contain a General; encounters with Generals have both Generals; Generals drop 100% more Timeless Splinters
  • 2b) Protracted Battle - [LEGION] Legion encounters have 50% increased duration and Legion monsters take 50% increased damage while in Stasis
• 3) Cultural Advancement - [INCURSION] Incursion Monsters are at least Magic
• 4) Resource Reallocation - [INCURSION] Killing non-resident Architects has 50% chance to add an additional upgrade tier to surviving Architect's room (e.g. 0 to 2, 1 to 3)
  • 4a) Contested Development - [INCURSION] Killing resident Architects add their Upgrade Tier to the surviving Architect's Room (stealing Architect levels)
• 5) Twice Tempted - [AMBUSH] Areas contain an extra Strongbox, and Strongboxes have 10% to be openable for a second time
  • 5a) Tamper-Proof - [AMBUSH] Strongboxes in area are Corrupted and at least Rare

Lex Proxima

• 1) Bountiful Harvest - [HARVEST] Harvest monsters grant 200% increased Experience; Harvested plants have 50% chance to spawn an additional monster
• 2) Invading Force - [BREACH] Breaches have 30% increased AoE and 30% increased monster density; Breach monsters grant 50% increased experience
• 3) Gatekeepers - [BREACH] Breaches have 100% increased chance to contain a Boss; Breach bosses drop double splinters; Breach bosses have 5% chance to drop a Breachstone
  • 3a) Within Their Grasp - [BREACH] Breach Bosses have 5% chance to drop a Breachstone; Breachstones dropped by Breachstones have 9% chance to be Charged, 3% chance to be Enriched, and 1% chance to be Pure
• 4) Rich Veins - [DELVE] Sulphite veins and chests have 10% chance to contain double Sulphite; contain 20% increased Sulphite
  • 4a) Sulphite Infusion - [DELVE] White tier maps grant 200 Sulphite on completion; Yellow tier maps grant 350; Red maps grant 500
  • 4b) Packed with Energy - [DELVE] 35% increased Damage and 15% increased Movement Speed for each Sulphite vein or chest found in area
• 5) Bumper Crop - [HARVEST] Harvests in Areas have doubled bonuses to Item Quant and Rarity; Sacred Grove contains an additional Harvest
  • 5a) Heart of the Grove - [HARVEST] Sacred Grove has 100% increased chance to contain the Heart of the Grove (Oshabi Boss); Harvests in areas have 10% chance for the unchosen crop to not wilt
• 6) Seance - [TORMENT] Up to 20 Rare monsters in area are Possessed and their Minions are Touched

Craftable Watchstones

Watchstones now have 3 new craftable bases. Differences are not obvious - may have different mod pools:

• Platinum - chance for a specific Legion army; increased effect of map mods
  
• Titanium - chance for max sockets; more Sulphite
  
• Chromium - chance for white socket; chance for an additional Essence
  

New Currency - Maven's Orb

Maven's Orb only drop from the Maven herself and are specifically geared to refining influence affixes. Using an orb will randomly remove one Influenced Affix and upgrade the tier of another. T1 Affixes become T0 Affixes, also known as "Elevated Mods". These retain the influence of the original mod, and appear to be a hybrid mod consisting of the original affix and an extra stat.

• Has no effect on items with only 0 to 1 Influenced mod.
• Can be used on items that are either Single or Double Influenced.
• Elevated mods can be Awakener Orb'd together.
• Cannot be used if mods are locked by metacrafting modifiers.
• Estimated currency drop weighting should be similar to the Awakener Orb.

Examples:

T1 Mod	Elevated Mod
X% Intelligence	X% Intelligence & +1 level to Socketed Int gems
X% Life Recovery Rate	X% Life Recovery Rate & Life Flasks gain 1 charge every 3 seconds

New League Breakdown - Ritual League

Throughout 3.13 you will run into Ritual Sites, a small enclave of monsters surrounding a profane altar. Kill the monsters and tag the alter to perform the Ritual. This will 1. Revive the monsters around the Alter (staggered/in waves) 2. Locks you in with them. Or are they locked in with you? 3. Add some additional hurdles to take them out. aka debuffs to you, buffs to them, and of course lasers!

• There's the possibility of multiple Rituals in an area, each Ritual completed increases the difficulty of the next in each instance.

Ritual Tribute/Store

As you perform Rituals you will gain Ritual Tribute which can be exchanged for items within a specific vendor.

• New bases, listed later under 'Ritual Base Types'
  
• Tribute can also be used to re-roll the store
  
• Tribute can also be used to 'defer' selected items for a discounted price, meaning they will be guaranteed to appear in your next store page at a reduced price. This can be done multiple times so hilariously expensive items are still possible to get over the course of multiple Rituals.
  

Ritual Capture

Occasionally, you will receive a Vessel. These Vessels can be used to capture certain Ritual Monsters to then juice a map (and by extension the Ritual inside) for additional Trubute and other rewards.

• Captured Monsters will inherit level when they were captured, so don't bring a T15 Ritual mob into a T2 map!
  
• Juiced Rituals (Rituals where a Filled Vessel was used) will not have Monsters to capture. There are not multiple tiers of captures like Metamorph.
  
• Ritual Vessel | Blood-Filled Vessel
  

Ascendencies

^{Listed elements will not be comprehensive, refer to pics for specifics}

Elementalist (Reworked)

Image credit: u/SurgeProc

• (New mechanic): Primal Aegis - A buff granting damage reduction in specific conditions; details unknown
• (New mechanic): Convergence - 30% More Elemental Damage for 4 seconds (Similar to Ele Overload)
• (Removed) Shaper of Desolation - now split into three:
  • (new) Shaper of Winter - Guaranteed chill base 15%, All damage can chill, increased maximum chill effect to 40% (from 30%), more cold ailment effect if highest is cold damage
  • (new) Shaper of Flames - Guaranteed ignite, All damage can ignite, more ignite damage if highest is fire damage
  • (new) Shaper of Storms - Guaranteed shock base 15%, All damage can shock, more lightning ailment effect if highest is lightning damage
• (Rework) Liege of the Primordial now resummons Golems automatically 4 seconds after they die. No longer grants Golems Elemental Immunity.
• (Rework) Elemancer - Now grants Golems Elemental Immunity. No longer grants additional Golem damage per summoned Golem
• (Rework) Bastion of the Elements - Triggers Primal Aegis, mitigating 100 damage per Notable Passive on the tree in certain conditions. No longer grants damage and damage reduction based on damage taken, or Elemental Damage leech
• (Rework) Mastermind of Discord - adds an additional 25% resistance to reduction to all sources of Exposure, and 1% mana regen on inflicting Exposure recently. No longer has Herald modifiers
• (Rework) Heart of Destruction, formerly Pendulum of Destruction, grants Convergence when hitting Unique Enemies once every 8 seconds (50% uptime) and 60% Aoe when you don't have convergence. (Overall better for mapping/bossing)

Inquisitor (Reworked)

• (New mechanic): Fanaticism: Grants 75% more cast speed, 75% reduced mana cost, and 75% increased area of effect (Similar to Divinity Charges on Garb of the Ephemeral)
• (New mechanic): Battlemage: Gain added spell damage equal to the damage of your main hand weapon (Similar to Spellslinger)
• (new) Instruments of Zeal: Gain Fanaticism when reaching max fanatic charges, gain 1 Fanatic charge every second if you've attacked in the past second, lose all charges when you reach max charges, maximum 4 Fanatic charges
• (Rework) Instruments of Virtue: Now grants 10% more attack damage for each non-instant spell you've cast in the past 8 seconds, up to a maximum of 30%; also grants Battlemage. No longer grants spell/attack damage and attack/cast speed if you have attacked/casted a spell recently.
• (Rework) Righteous Providence: Now grants 1% increased global crit chance per point of strength or intelligence, whichever is lowest; now grants +50 to strength and intelligence. No longer grants crit chance and multi based on elemental ailment status; no longer grants increased effect of non-damaging ailments.
• (Rework) Sanctuary: Consecrated Ground you create applies 15% (from 10%) increased damage taken to enemies. No longer grants 15 mana per second while on consecrated ground.
• (Rework) Pious Path: Now grants a buff when standing on Consecrated Ground that copies the sum of your % and flat life regen (the number in your character screen) and granted as ES recovery to you and allies, unlike how ZO scales. No longer grants attack and cast speed and 200 energy shield while on consecrated ground.
• Augury of Penitence and Inevitable Judgement are unchanged.

Deadeye (Reworked)

• (new mechanic) Gale Force: Each instance of Gale Force lasts 4 seconds. Maximum 10 Gale Force. No base effects.
• (new mechanic) Rupture: Ruptured enemies take 25% more damage from Bleed, and Bleeds on them expires 25% more quickly, for 3 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times.
• (new) Occupying Force: Mirage Archers no longer ride around on your back like Yoda, but stand in place instead. Allows up to three active Mirage Archers at once.
• (new) Focal Point: 75% increased effect of marks, 25% less damage taken from enemies near a Marked enemy, Marks are not removed from dying enemies.
• (new) Wind Ward: 3% less damage taken per Gale Force; Lose all Gale Force when hit (Similar to Crab Barriers)
• (reworked) Gathering Winds: Gain 1 Gale Force when you use a skill; 15% increased effect of Tailwind on you per Gale Force (from 10% increased Tailwind effect for each skill you have used recently). Tailwind now permanently applies to you and nearby Allies (nerfed to 8% base, from 10% action speed). No longer grants flat evasion while you have tailwind.
• (Rework) Far Shot: The Far Shot mechanic now grants 60% more damage to targets as the projectile travels further, from 30%, but now comes with a downside of projectile attack hits dealing 20% less damage to targets at the start of their movement (mirroring Point Blank). Also grants "projectile barrages have no spread". No longer grants 30% increased projectile speed.
• (Rework) Ricochet: Projectiles now have a 30% chance to be able to chain when colliding with terrain (up for some pinball, anyone?). No longer deals 10% more damage for each remaining chain.
• (Rework) Endless Munitions: Now simply grants 2 additional projectiles to skills (from 1). No longer grants accuracy or area of effect.
• (Rework) Rupturing (was Rupture): Now inflicts Rupture on all critical hits that apply Bleed. No longer grants Chance to Bleed, crit chance and multi against bleeding enemies, life on hit against bleeding enemies, or immunity to extra bleed damage while moving.

Slayer

• (Rework) Masterful Form - Now grants +1 Frenzy instead of Charge Duration.
• (Rework) Overwhelm - Unnerfed weapon base crit override to 8% (from 7.5%)
• (Rework) Impact now grants +4 to melee strike range (was +2)
  • (Rework) Endless Hunger and Brutal Fervour have swapped places, making it easier to access Slayer's class-defining leech mechanic.
• (Rework) Brutal Fervour - buffed to 10% reduced damage taken while leeching (from 6%); now grants 100% increased maximum recovery per life leech. No longer grants increased attack speed or damage while leeching.
• (Rework) Endless Hunger - now grants 20% increased attack speed while leeching.
• (Rework) Headsman - now deals more damage with Hits and Ailments against Unique Enemies.

Hierophant

• (Rework) Conviction of Power - now grants +1 max power and endurance charge and also grants +4 minimum endurance and power charges (bruh). No longer grants charge generation, damage reduction or Elemental Penetration based on charges.
• (Rework) Pursuit of Faith - now grants 100% increased totem placement speed (taken from Ritual of Awakening, was 50%, making this much easier to access early). No longer grants increased damage per enemy killed recently or attack and cast speed while you have a totem
• Ritual of Awakening now grants 5% more damage per summoned totem (from 3%). No longer grants totem placement speed, or the ability to summon an extra totem per cast.
• Arcane Blessing and Illuminated Devotion have swapped places, making it easier to access Arcane Surge on hit (not that you needed it).
• Arcane Blessing - now grants 50% increased effect of Arcane Surge. No longer grants Ailment Immunity.
• Illuminated Devotion - now grants Ailment Immunity while you have Arcane Surge. No longer grants additional damage.

Occultist

• Malediction - no longer requires Profane Bloom to spec. No longer grants non-chaos damage as extra chaos damage per curse on killed enemy.
• Profane Bloom - now has a 40% chance for cursed enemies to explode (from 25%).
• Forbidden Power - now grants 6% AOE and 6% generic damage per power charge (from 5%). It has also been moved from the left side to the right side. This has literally no effect other than making the ascendancy nodes symmetrical and that makes me happy.
• Vile Bastion - now grants 2% energy shield regen per second for each enemy killed recently (was 1%) but still capped at 10% per second.
• Withering Presence - now grants 15% more Chaos Damage (was +20% to chaos damage over time multiplier) making the node more well-rounded hit builds.
• Frigid Wake - similarly, now grants 15% more Cold Damage (was +20% to cold damage over time multiplier).

Skills and Items

Skill Gems

New (2)

• Hydrosphere - A placeable, long duration AoE that will deal damage based on the element damage it itself has been hit with (lightning and cold). Can be re-placed by recasting, doing damage on 'landing'
  
• Trinity Support - When hitting with a skill which the highest damage is a specific Element (Fire, Cold, Lightning), grants Resonance stacks of the other two elements which slowly lose stacks if not refreshed. Supported skills gain x% more damage per 5 of lowest Resonance and penetrates x% Elemental Resistances while each Resonance is at least 25. Resonance stack cap is 50.
  

Reworked/Adjusted (40+)

• Scorching Ray - cast time halved (source: spontaneous interrogation off-screen during Ziggy Q+A, so grain of salt on numbers)
• Seismic Trap
• Firestorm
• Venom Gyre
• Static Strike
• Kinetic Bolt
• Crackling Lance
• Lightning Strike
• Shrapnel Ballista
• Artillery Ballista

Uniques

New

• Hands of the Fervent - Grants Sacrificial Zeal on skill use (25% of mana cost gained as flat Physical Spell Damage, and 150% of mana cost as Physical Damage over Time for 4 seconds)
• Blackflame - Turns Ignite into Chaos Damage over Time and makes Wither stacks permanent on ignited enemies
• Legacy of Fury - Scorched Ground (-X% Elemental Resistances) and pseudo-Herald of Ash proc on kill
• Qotra's Regulator - low crit Damage over Time shield (e.g. Ignite or non-RT Bleed)

Reworked

• Disintegrator and Martyr of Innocence no longer have flat spell damage and instead have the new Battlemage mod - granting the flat damage of the weapon as flat spell damage.. This makes 30 Quality Beastcraft/28 Quality Hillock and Heist Enchantments incredibly useful for increasing spell damage further.

New Div Cards

• Acclimitisation - (2) 20x Alteration Orbs
• Fateful Meeting - (9) Double Corrupted, Double Influenced, League Specific Unique
• Haunting Shadows
• The Whiteout
• Society's Remorse
• Dying Light
• The Astromancer
• Keeper's Corruption
• Reckless Ambition
• Love Through Ice
• Draped in Dreams
• The Patient
• The Long Watch
• The Bear Woman
• Brotherhood in Exile

New Maps

• Dry Sea - Boss: Blood Porcupine Goliath
• Forking River
• Cold River
• Frozen Cabins - Boss: Ghostly Warrior
• Grave Trough - Boss: Reaper
• ??? - Gore Cathedral
• ??? - Vine Forest
• ??? - Jungle Ruin - Boss: Water Bat?

Ritual Base Types

Base types which are powerful but have a significant downside.

• Nexus Gloves - reduced % mana, chance to recover mana cost
• Stormrider Boots - X Lightning Damage to Attacks per 200 accuracy rating; 25% less accuracy rating
• Penitent Mask - 21% effect of Fortify on you; you are Crushed
• ??? Shield
• Debilitation Gauntlets - Exerted attacks deal increased damage, +2 seconds to Warcry Cooldown

Misc

• Hydrosphere's Gem has an 'Orb' tag. If this stays into the patch notes this could imply a number of orb-centric changes and/or mechanics.

Harvest Integration

Harvest will be returning in a much more pre-packaged variation. Harvest will appear as portal to a pre-generated Garden, where specific plots of seeds allow you to choose between two seed plots with details of both the fight and available crafts inside shown before choosing. You can save up to 10 crafts at the Horticrafting station for use at your hideout.
Harvest will be map-only content.

Heist Integration

Heist drops (aka contracts/markers) will start dropping in Act 6+. Rogues will level up significantly faster, marker stacks will be larger and quest contracts will drop specifically as soon as they possibly can (from a smuggler's cache).

Media Coverage

• GameSpot
• Polygon
• Fanbyte
• PC Gamer

Hello gamers, this is Carmelo (sophomore in high school), and I'm going to tell you guys how I was able to get my first gaming PC at age 15. My friend Michael and I were into computers since we were in middle school and we always talked about getting one. In the middle of the 9th grade year (January, 2020) we finally had enough of not having a computer so we started selling candy bars to earn one. On our first day we were outside of Sam's club selling candy bars about 1.5 hours in my friend Michael left because he had given up on the idea. Michael was a very lazy guy who wanted things, but never liked putting the effort into to doing it. Me however, was fixated on getting that computer I wanted so bad. 2 hours after Michael left, I had officially sold my first box of candy bars ($50 plus some tips they gave me). This was nowhere near enough money to get a PC, so I had to take $30 dollars out the $50 to get a new box of chocolate. With this method, I could make $20 profit each box that I sold. The goal was $500. After about 3 months of walking around my city selling chocolate. Constantly getting kicked out of places. Sitting in 1 spot for 5+ hours, I had sold over 12 boxes of chocolate and made just a little over $600. I know 3 months is a long time but keep in mind Covid-19 made it harder, I just never gave up no matter what. After about 2.5 weeks I had a full blown pc. I was so excited. I felt bad for my friend Michael, so I let him play on it sometime. Here are the specifications:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ch7cqp
Thank you guys for listening and no matter what, hard work will eventually pay off.
Edit: I was on a google doc typing this and the end didn't paste over here
Edit2: apparently my case isnt the one in the site. Im changing it to the right one. I'm still new to pcs sorry i didnt know the name of the case so i put one in the same price range.

STEAM USER LINK: https://steamcommunity.com/id/kayathemistress/
The game costs $24.99 USD, not including tax. It probably needs to be bought on Steam, as I have no other accounts on popular PC gaming websites. If there is an alternative site, please do tell!
LOOK ABOVE FOR GAME INFO AND STEAM USER LINK ^^^^^
Third time's the charm, right? Hope that applies to GoG too!
So, you might be wondering, why should I be gifted this game?
Well, I'm going to tell you. A sob story. And then an actual reason why.
TW: fake sob story, mentions an absurd chain of events involving one dog death and one human death, each mentioned twice specifically.
My dog died yesterday due to a tragic car accident! His toy bone pressed a button on my computer which sent an NSFW Barbie meme to the Australian Government of People's Food Resources and Off-White Bouncy Balls, which made a sentient tiger eat my finger, which made a building crash a party in LA, which killed the Pope, which made me die, which made my 10,000 secret birds eat dirt, which made a bouncy house deflate, which made kids faceplant a golf club, which made a 27.5 year-old cat eat my dog, which made the dog eat me, which made me get hit by a car, which made me get cancer and die, which made the dog get hit by a car and die.
TW is not to be worried about any further.
So sad, right? Betcha want to give me all of you Hades keys now! HAHAHAHA!!!
Anyways...
Here's my actual reasoning for requesting a gifted Hades:
First, some context: I already have the Switch edition of Hades, and I have played at least 350 hours of it. I have completed most of the story, but I am nowhere near 100% completion. I just unlocked the aspect of Lucifer a week ago for Artemis' sake! Also, I'm a minor with minimal ability to have money due to some... odd conditions in my life. But that's besides the point.
You may be thinking: But Kaya, doesn't this seem like a reason to NOT gift it to you?
And that would be where you are wrong!
See, Steam's Hades has something that the Switch's doesn't. That would be mods. Mods to add whole new systems and fixes into the game that I have been thinking should be there this whole time! Not to mention the fact that I could finally get into the speedrunning community of Hades, as Switch doesn't really have much to offer in that regard. With the ability to install mods for Hades, the game could be enhanced on SO many levels I wouldn't DARE dream of. There's a few mods in particular I absolutely ADORE, one of which being the Weapon Mastery mod. All in all, the Hades modding community has been in my sights for months now, and I haven't been able to utilize their wonderful achievements yet. That's why I am requesting this gift. I would be able to put just as much, if not more, time into the game if I was able to use mods with it then I have over all of my Switch endeavoring.

The last drama post I did about Kuma Miko seemed to have gotten some praise, but some wished to see a Hobby Drama post that had consequences outside “people got angry over it”. So without any further delay, here’s a story about a studio that’s close to my heart, one that I’ve backed twice and seen die twice.
Note: This is a fairly lengthy drama, so forgive me if I’m not able to provide all of my sources. Most of the front half of this comes from this video, which chronicles the first half of Lab Zero entirely in Russian.
From Ahad to Mike Z
Let’s start in the beginning. Alex Ahad is a freelance illustrator who, in between other work, had created character designs for a prospective fighting game. Mike Zaimont is a professional fighting game player best known for games like BlazBlue and Marvel Vs. Capcom, but since 1999 had been coding a custom engine in his free time, which he hoped could be used for a fighting game. The two met in 2008, and the two quickly realized that with each other’s help, their dream could come true. In 2010, the two joined the newly developed game studio Reverge Labs. Joining their team was Mariel “Kinuko” Cartwright, a friend of Ahad’s and daughter of a Disney animator who helped animate games such as Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Shantae; Peter Bartholow, who acted as CEO of Reverge as well as their PR arm; and an assortment of other animators and designers. Their goal: a fighting game in the style of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 with hand-drawn animation that they called Skullgirls.
After obtaining publishers in Autumn Games and Konami (at the time of development the Microsoft required indie devs to have a retail publisher in order to bring their games to Xbox Live Arcade), the team got to work on Skullgirls. Initial impressions were favorful - people liked Ahad’s unique character designs, the fluid animation, and the solid engine Mike Z built - but upon release, there were some concerns. The time and money needed to develop each character meant a starting roster of only eight characters, a far cry from other fighting games (the original MvC had 15 characters in 1998), and due to the team trying to get the game out, there was no in-game move list. Some were also concerned that the cast, consisting entirely of women, was too fanservice-filled, although Bartholow said that the characters were just attractive women who could fight as opposed to characters using their sexuality in battle (Ahad said that sex wasn’t his main focus, he just wanted to have monster girls fight each other). The team at Reverge Labs stressed that they would continue to update the game, with plans to add DLC if the game sold well enough. Good thing nothing could go wro-
Everything goes wrong
Alongside publishing Skullgirls, Autumn Games and Konami had previously published a karaoke game called Def Jam RapStar. Unfortunately, around March 2012, the time Skullgirls released, both parties were at the end of several lawsuits made against them - one argued that Autumn and Konami did not get the rights to some of the songs used in the game, while another claimed that the game was funded with a bank loan which Autumn Games was unable to pay back. The result of these costly lawsuits was that Autumn was unable to pay Reverge the money made from Skullgirls - this led to the entire Reverge team being laid off around July, and the future of the game in the air.
And so, the team decided on a whim to reconvene as a new development studio, Lab Zero Games. At a fundraiser for breast cancer research which included a fighting game tournament, Mike Z revealed the first DLC fighter and promised that new information about her and the team would be posted soon. This would turn out to be an Indiegogo fundraising campaign that asked for $150,000 to develop the first DLC fighter, with more characters promised if people backed enough.
In the end, $829,829 was raised in the campaign, enough to fund five DLC characters, a bevy of stages and voice packs, and other features. It was quickly becoming a cult classic.
The Skullgirls Curse
And so work on Skullgirls DLC was underway. However, a variety of events happened to befall Lab Zero during development, some causing controversy and others just annoying the team. Some dubbed this “The Skullgirls Curse”. So let’s go over some of them:

• Paypal Woes: During the Indiegogo DLC campaign, Lab Zero announced that Ahad had created around 30 prospective designs for DLC characters, and that there would be a vote to see which characters would be the two “mystery characters” teased in the Indiegogo campaign. As you would guess, this caused the Skullgirls fanbase to get heated, to the point where some stressed that they would ask Indiegogo for their money back if their character didn’t win. PayPal, who managed the funds for this campaign, was concerned about these threats and put nearly all of the money on hold. Bartholow tried to negotiate with PayPal, and was eventually able to get the funding - once PayPal was given a hefty sum as collateral.
• Bad Juju - If you notice on the list of prospective DLC characters, one character is Juju, a character who was designed by Ahad from a fan’s suggestion on a Whiteboard Wednesday art stream. Ahad seemed to like the idea of the character, and kept building her up until she became a legit character in the game. The original fan made a joke on Facebook that he’d like to be compensated for the design, which led Lab Zero to negotiate obtaining the character rights from him. They eventually worked out a contract that would give them the rights to the character, but only if the original fan didn’t reveal it until Lab Zero announced it themselves. The fan then posted about it on the Skullgirls forum the very next day, breaking the NDA immediately and making it so that Lab Zero couldn’t use the character at all.
• Don’t be (Red) Cross with me: One of the characters included in the base game of Skullgirls is Valentine. As you can tell, the two biggest features of her character are her being a nurse and a ninja - as such, her costume is decorated with red crosses. This was upsetting to the real Red Cross, which fights hard to prevent its trademark from being associated with violence - as such, when they came to the Skullgirls publisher demanding a change, all red crosses in the game had to be changed to magenta.
• #FucKonami: In November 2013, due to Konami barely helping at all with the publishing process for Skullgirls (they refused to greenlight any patch or DLC until Lab Zero tested it itself on their own time and money, they didn’t help with Microsoft’s certification process for Xbox, etc), Lab Zero dissolved their publishing agreement. This led to a massive snafu where, due to the dissolution, the original Skullgirls was taken down on consoles, and Lab Zero had to scramble to get a new publisher on the consoles side and then reupload the game as Skullgirls: Encore. It was a tangled web of issues which the above YouTube video relays, but required certification from both console storefronts and even the Japan storefront, as their publisher there was also coincidentally being dissolved at the same time without Lab Zero knowing.
• EVO 2014: During one of the largest fighting game tournaments of 2014, Skullgirls was promised a space for airing their tournament stream by controller distributor Madcatz. Lab Zero and Autumn provided a pot for the tourney, and everything was smooth sailing - until a multitude of delays made it so that the entire time Skullgirls had for streaming was replaced with Tekken tournaments. By the time these issues were fixed, only the final four matches were able to be shown.
• What’s the worst kind of ship? Censor-SHIP!: In April 2015, one of the patches of Skullgirls altered the animation of some characters, which according to Lab Zero themselves was because of their own artistic values (while they admitted that panty shots in a fighting game comprised entirely of girls is unavoidable, they didn’t want to go out of their way to show them). As you might expect, this led to a massive onslaught of negative Steam reviews and caustic tweets from people who abhor censorship of any kind. Funnily enough, this brigade started around October, six months after the changes were made, and only via word of mouth - people didn’t even notice there was a change until someone told them about it.
• Backer characters: As part of their Indiegogo campaign, some of the highest-paying backers could have their original characters put in the background of some custom stages. Lab Zero warned these backers that these stages would be a casino and a ballroom, respectively, so their OCs should ideally be designed with a formal flair. Some backers did follow this unspoken rule - ZONE, a notoriously NSFW Flash animator who helped work on the DLC characters, made a perfectly formal look for his mascot Zone-tan. As for the others, well...
• SonicFox: This isn’t included in the compilation video mentioned above as this occurred way after all the initial Skullgirls drama. Basically, SonicFox is a five-time EVO champion and one of the best Skullgirls players in the world. In May 2020, after Skullgirls was mostly complete, they were given a cameo in Skullgirls’ training stage. Of note is that SonicFox is black, non-binary, and a furry, and the character added to the game was their fursona, who has a trans rights flag in the inside of their jacket you can only see for like one frame. People reacted as you would expect. Also, one of the original backers requested to change their character as they were now transitioning, which didn’t get as much flak, so that’s nice I guess.

So as you can see, Skullgirls had a menagerie of problems and issues during its dev time. However, their Skullgirls curse seemed to have faded away, as they had a new game in store.
If I was Indivisible
Indivisible was a new project of Lab Zero, announced in 2015 as Skullgirls DLC production was nearing an end. Billed as a platformer RPG similar to games like Valkyrie Profile, it would tell the story of Ajna, a young girl whose town is stricken by tragedy and she finds out that she’s a portion of the god of creation, who has grown discontent with the world and wishes to remake it anew. Its Indiegogo campaign focused on Incarnations, party members who came from a variety of cultures, religions, and demographics not usually represented in popular culture. And as you can see by the fact that it got over two million dollars in funding, people were excited to see what Lab Zero could do. They even got enough funding to get Studio Trigger, of anime fame, to create the opening for the game.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Lab Zero without the occasional issue here and there. As shown above, some Incarnations were changed or scrapped during development, which irked some who backed because of that character specifically (not naming any names, but look in the incarnation list and see if you notice any). Backer characters were included again, and although there were more places to add them so they didn’t look out of place, you still had the occasional few that did. Critics liked the art and presentation of the game, but disliked some gameplay issues: the second half of the game became a cakewalk once you progressed far enough, it was a bit of a pain to go from one end of the map to another, especially for side quests, and a bunch of party members simply weren’t complete. Most egregiously of all, the Nintendo Switch version of the game was ported by a different company and released before Lab Zero was even aware of it - which forced them to scramble again to patch it up so it was on par with other consoles.
Still, it was a better situation they were in than when Skullgirls started. They had a legit publisher in 505 Games, people were satisfied with the base game, and Mike Z mentioned how the base game would continue to be refined with gameplay changes, small additions, and guest incarnations from other indie games. NBC even announced that Indivisible would be adapted into a television program for their Peacock streaming service. Things were looking up for Lab Zero.
Everything goes wrong... AGAIN
During the production of Indivisible, Alex Ahad was let go by Lab Zero. Not much is mentioned about it except that he was growing increasingly hostile, making it difficult to work with him, and his art was not meeting the standards for the game. He left, tried to sue Lab Zero, and eventually agreed to a sizable settlement. Mariel became the lead artistic director in his stead, and the art team had to be rearranged to compensate.
Now, as Lab Zero was preparing to transition from being employee-owned, Mike Z was made the temporary head of the studio. In June of 2020, Mike Z did an “I can’t breathe” joke during a Skullgirls livestream just days after George Floyd’s death - he later apologized for this, claiming he was trying to bring attention to the issue. Soon, more people provided proof that Mike Z has had a history of sexual harassment. Kinuko chimes in as well, noting that while she tolerated inappropriate behavior for years, when she talked to Mike Z about it, he blamed her for his actions. She talked with others in the team, who came to the conclusion that Zaimont had treated all of them like this. Some Lab Zero employees resigned on their own, while others pushed for Zaimont to resign. However, as Mike was still head of the studio, he dissolved the studio board and laid off the rest of the staff.
So where does that leave everyone?

• Ahad is still doing art on his own, and gets by with commissions and his Patreon.
• Kinuko, as well as the majority of Lab Zero, created a new studio called Future Club, which has promised to create new titles with the same art style they refined from Skullgirls and Indivisible.
• Autumn Games still own the rights to Skullgirls, and with the help of some former Lab Zero devs, created a mobile version of the game. It’s surprisingly not bad, although it’s of course stuffed with microtransactions. However, they’ve apparently made enough to fund a completely new character for the game for both the mobile and console/PC versions.
• After everything with Mike Z, 505 games put out a statement which signaled the end of all development of the game, leaving it unfinished. Mike Z has been suspended from Skullgirls streams and the like, making his future in the gaming world unclear.

There’s probably something I’ve missed in all of this, but yep. I backed them twice, both for Skullgirls and Indivisible. I don’t regret it, and I’m looking forward to whatever Future Club does, but I won’t lie - I’ll always miss what could have been.

Game Information

Game Title: Assassin's Creed Valhalla
Genre: Action-adventure, role-playing, open world, Vikings
Platforms: Playstation 4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PC, Stadia
Media: - Opening Hours Gameplay | Norse Mythology
Cinematic TV Spot
Post Launch & Season Pass Trailer
New Gameplay Walkthrough | Deep Dive Trailer
Story Trailer
Official Soundtrack Cinematic Trailer | Eivor’s Fate - Character Trailer
Gameplay Overview Trailer | UbiFWD July 2020 | Official 30 Minute Gameplay Walkthrough | UbiFWD July 2020NA
First Look Gameplay Trailer
Cinematic World Premiere Trailer
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal ^Info
Publisher: Ubisoft
Price: Standard - $59.99 USD (contains microtransactions)
Gold - $99.99 contents
Ultimate - $119.99 contents
Release Date: November 10, 2020
PS5 - November 12, 2020
More Info: /assassinscreed | Wikipedia Page
Review Aggregator:
OpenCritic - 84 | 92% Recommended [Cross-Platform] Score Distribution
MetaCritic - [PS5]
MetaCritic - 85 [XBSX]
MetaCritic - 85 [PC]
MetaCritic - 82 [PS4]
MetaCritic - 82 [XB1]
Viciously arbitrary compilation of main games in the Assassin's Creed series -

Entry	Score Platform, Year, # of Critics
Assassin's Creed	81 X360, 2007, 77 critics
Assassin's Creed II	90 X360, 2009, 82 critics
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood	89 X360, 2010, 81 critics
Assassin's Creed: Revelations	80 X360, 2011, 77 critics
Assassin's Creed III	84 X360, 2012, 61 critics
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag	88 PS3, 2013, 36 critics
Assassin's Creed Rogue	72 PS3, 2014, 53 critics
Assassin's Creed Unity	72 XB1, 2014, 59 critics
Assassin's Creed Syndicate	76 PS4, 2015, 86 critics
Assassin's Creed Origins	81 PS4, 2017, 63 critics
Assassin's Creed Odyssey	83 PS4, 2018, 86 critics

Reviews

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Website/Author	Aggregates' Score ~ Critic's Score	Quote	Platform
Kotaku - Zack Zwiezen	Unscored ~ Unscored	Overall, it feels a lot of care and thought went into making Valhalla feel less like a checklist of things to do and more like a world to organically experience.
Polygon - Nicole Carpenter	Unscored ~ Unscored	Valhalla’s most intriguing story is one about faith, honor, and family, but it’s buried inside this massive, massive world stuffed with combat and side quests. That balance is not always ideal, but I’m glad, at least, that it forces me to spend more time seeking out interesting things in the game’s world.	XB1
Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Alice Bell	Unscored ~ Unscored	For fans of the series it’s really entertaining. It might not set the world on fire, but you can set some virtual bits on fire yourself if you want.	PC
IGN India - Shunal Doke	Unscored ~ Unscored	Its new skill system promotes experimentation with different builds, and gear has been streamlined in a way where you’re not constantly chasing bigger numbers every single moment. Level grinding has all but disappeared, and the new setting just oozes atmosphere and theme. Boring protagonist aside, Valhalla is definitely the strongest of the new Assassin’s Creed RPG trilogy.
ACG - Jeremy Penter	Unscored ~ Wait for Sale	Some amazing changes to the way the game is presented, all for the better, can't get out of the way from somewhat weightless combat, bugs and other issues.	PC, XB1, XBSX
Eurogamer - Tom Phillips	Unscored ~ Recommended	Valhalla is another enormous Assassin's Creed saga, lavishly designed, with its sights set on story direction over narrative choice.	XBSX
Daily Star - Tom Hutchison	100 ~ 5 / 5 stars	Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is another success in the series.	PS4
PowerUp! - Leo Stevenson	96 ~ 9.6 / 10	Assassin's Creed Valhalla is the best Assassin's Creed ever. Fully embracing its new genre and giving players so much choice and freedom has paid off handsomely. There's not really much more to say. You simply have to experience it for yourself.	XBSX
Gamers Heroes - Blaine Smith	95 ~ 95 / 100	Assassin's Creed Valhalla is the best tale the franchise has ever told, featuring the most varied and rewarding gameplay the series has seen in years. Valhalla will forever dine in Odin's Hall as one of the greatest RPGs of this generation.	PS4
Vamers - Edward Swardt	95 ~ 95 / 100	It is, undoubtedly, the best Ubisoft has to offer at this stage in time, and will forever be regarded as one of the greats in the Assassin's Creed franchise.	XBSX
Game Informer - Joe Juba	93 ~ 9.3 / 10	Assassin's Creed Valhalla is full of interesting stories and fun interlocking systems, making it an engrossing world you can easily get lost in	XBSX
Impulsegamer - Stephen Heller	92 ~ 4.6 / 5	A intriguing change of pace that gives the Assassin's Creed series the breathing room it has so desperately needed for eons, without making any compromises on content. Well worth you time to enter the gates of Valhalla.
PC Gamer - Steven Messner	92 ~ 92 / 100	Bloody and captivating, Valhalla is Assassin's Creed at its best.	PC
Critical Hit - Darryn Bonthuys	90 ~ 9 / 10	A saga for the ages, Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a breathtaking journey of discovery that has a cold charm to it. It is both serious and ludicrous in equal measure, an RPG that has added more than it has removed from its core experience while delivering a game that feels familiar and completely new at the same time. Skal!	XBSX
Digitally Downloaded - Matt Sainsbury	90 ~ 4.5 / 5 stars	That being said, as far as the gameplay is concerned, this series is going nowhere interesting at this point there while there will be more, and I really implore Ubisoft to take a good, hard look at the bloat and consider whether a more streamlined approach that doesn't get in the way of the best feature (the history and narrative) would not be wiser next time around.	PS4
DualShockers - Cameron Hawkins	90 ~ 9 / 10	Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a combination of everything that made the series great up to this point while cementing all that it needs moving forward.	XB1
Game Rant - Joshua Duckworth	90 ~ 4.5 / 5 stars	Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a love letter to fans of the classic action-adventure titles as well as the newer role-playing mechanics.	XB1
GameZone - Mike Splechta	90 ~ 9 / 10	As an Assassin's Creed fan who has stuck by the series through its high points, and was certainly disappointed by many of its low points, I can confidently say that what Ubisoft has crafted here was not only crafted with an immense amount of love and respect for the series, but for its fans as well. Assassin's Creed Valhalla is one Viking adventure you certainly don't want to miss.	PS4
Gamer Escape - Eliot Lefebvre	90 ~ 9 / 10	Like I said at the beginning, you kind of want these games at some point to stop working, but… Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla really works. It works in all the ways it wants to work. It takes the bones of its predecessor and improves the overall gameplay significantly, giving players plenty to do, characters to invest in, and a satisfying core gameplay loop that’s been refined down to a careful formula at this point.	PS4
GamesRadar+ - Louise Blain	90 ~ 4.5 / 5 stars	With a sprawling world to conquer and gory combat but also the chance to use that iconic hidden blade, Assassin's Creed Valhalla brings a triumphant balance to the series.	XBSX
GamingBolt - Shubhankar Parijat	90 ~ 9 / 10	Assassin's Creed's third crack at the massive open world RPG formula is also its most confident, making for a streamlined yet sprawling adventure that ranks as one of the best the series has delivered since its inception over a decade ago.	XB1
Glitched Africa - Marco Cocomello	90 ~ 9 / 10	Assassin's Creed: Valhalla may be an even further step away from the traditional Assassin's Creed recipe but it is still a great game. Besides the addictive combat and fantastic skill tree, I loved how it fixed the pacing issues from Odyssey. I had a purpose this time around and knew where I was going and what I was doing. The Viking setting is refreshing too and delivers some decent tales to experience while exploring a breathtaking world.	PS4
Noisy Pixel - Azario Lopez	90 ~ 9 / 10	Assassin’s Creed Valhalla takes the advancements of the series found in Odyssey and applies it to a whole new setting. As brutal as the period of Vikings is, there’s something beautiful about this adventure. Every action is rewarded with some great moments of storytelling, and aside from a few narrative roadblocks tied to the player’s level, there’s an amazing world here just waiting to be discovered.	PS4
Press Start - James Mitchell	90 ~ 9 / 10	Assassin's Creed Valhalla blends old and new to create a unique experience and one of the best Assassin's Creed experiences yet. It combines series-best combat, a compelling story, and mesmerizing locales to dually offer a definitive Viking and assassin experience.	XBSX
Pure Playstation - Chris Harding	90 ~ 9 / 10	Ubisoft delivers another open-world epic, but this time it's a focused and streamlined affair. The graphical overhaul works to announce the end of one era and the beginning of another as Assassin's Creed continues its ongoing evolution as an accessible action-adventure for the long-time fans, while still offering a deep RPG experience for those introduced via Origins and Odyssey.	PS4, XB1
Rocket Chainsaw - David Latham	90 ~ 4.5 / 5 stars	It’s hard to find flaws in Valhalla unless you’re a die-hard Assassin’s Creed fan.	XB1
Stevivor - Ben Salter	90 ~ 9 / 10	Like Origins, Valhalla benefits from a year off with a fresh audience. It doesn’t reboot this time, but instead improves upon the duo it’s following, introducing proven elements from some of the best in the business.	XBSX
TechRaptor - Nirav Gandhi	90 ~ 9 / 10	Assassin's Creed Valhalla streamlines the best parts of Origins and Odyssey while trimming the fat, though is hampered consistently by bugs and technical problems. Still, it's a journey well worth taking.	PC
Video Game Sophistry - Andy Borkowski	90 ~ 9 / 10	This is not a tactical assassination simulator - it's a complicated, crafted and nearly perfect open world experience that (if you give it a chance) it will win you over
WellPlayed - Adam Ryan	90 ~ 9 / 10	Valhalla brilliantly mixes brutal combat with satisfying stealth to offer up a package that ticks many open-world boxes that are so often missed	PS4
Sirus Gaming - Jarren Navarrete	85 ~ 8.5 / 10	Eivor's tale is an interesting story to experience and the gameplay that comes along the journey is liberating without being repetitive. With that, we recommend the game fully. It's not without its flaws. Even under the shadow of its predecessors, Valhalla is certainly a game that stands on its own.	PS4
Wccftech - Francesco De Meo	85 ~ 8.5 / 10	Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a definite step up for the series, thanks to the many tweaks made to the RPG mechanics that powered the previous two entries in the series, better storytelling, great atmosphere, and meaningful side-content. Even with the tweaks, however, Assassin's Creed Valhalla is still an Assassin's Creed game at heart, so those who are not into the Ubisoft open-world game design will hardly change their opinion with the game.	PC
Cubed3 - Drew Hurley	80 ~ 8 / 10	Fans of the series are going to adore Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Origins and Odyssey felt like Ubisoft trying something new, stretching out and seeing what worked, and Valhalla takes what was learned there and expands upon it. Some things, like the combat, don't feel quite there yet, still, but other elements absolutely have evolved for the better. There's a lot to love here, and not just in the frankly absurd amount of content available. The story is fantastically enjoyable, with Eivor really shining throughout (play Female for what feels the canon story!) - they are truly deserving of standing alongside the icons of this long-running series. This is a legendary tale and an addition to the franchise that is good enough for the gods.	PS4
GameSkinny - Jordan Baranowski	80 ~ 8 / 10 stars	Assassin's Creed: Valhalla builds its world around a familiar formula, but with a compelling story and plenty of things to do, it's a game series fans will find inviting.	PC
GameSpot - Jordan Ramée	80 ~ 8 / 10	Though its campaign takes time to get going, Assassin's Creed Valhalla brings a satisfying finish to the current saga of the franchise.	XBSX
Hardcore Gamer - Chris Shive	80 ~ 4 / 5	Assassin's Creed Valhalla brings quality of life improvements to the new Assassin's Creed model but doesn't stray too far from familiar territory.	PS4
IGN - Brandin Tyrrel	80 ~ 8 / 10	Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a massive, beautiful open-world fueled by brutal living and the dirty work of conquerors. It's a lot buggier than it should be but also impressive on multiple levels.	XBSX
PlayStation Universe - Michael Harradence	80 ~ 8 / 10	Assassin's Creed Valhalla is everything I hoped it would be, and more. It sells the Viking fantasy flawlessly, is brimming gorgeous locations, vistas and interesting characters, and will keep you busy for 100 or so hours if you want to grab everything on offer. It's buggy in places, and the grinding is overwhelming at times to the point where it spoils the feeling of exploration and progression. However, these shortcomings can be overlooked if you're willing to stick with it. And you should, because Eivor's journey is one worth soaking up.	PS4
Shacknews - Bill Lavoy	80 ~ 8 / 10	Ubisoft is known for their fun open worlds, but it appears that experience and previous stumbles have seen them take big steps forward, making Valhalla one of their best Assassin's Creed games in recent memory.	PC
The Digital Fix - Seb Hawden	80 ~ 8 / 10	Assassin's Creed Valhalla is fun, with its many activities and a rewarding gameplay loop. There is nothing better than rocking up to a monastery with your raucous crew and robbing them blind.	PS4
Windows Central - Jennifer Locke	80 ~ 4 / 5 stars	Assassin's Creed Valhalla provides a gorgeous playground to explore with excellent combat. Though the story seems unnecessarily long, it's a fun Viking tale mixed with the series' own flare and sci-fi elements.	XB1
Screen Rant - Rob Gordon	70 ~ 3.5 / 5 stars	Enjoyable, but struggles with scope.	PS4
USgamer - Reid McCarter	70 ~ 3.5 / 5 stars	Assassin's Creed Valhalla's vision of ninth-century England is a beautiful place to explore, populated with a great cast of characters who make up for the bland new protagonist, Eivor. Nevertheless, the tired overarching story of Templars and Assassins, and a design ethos that overstuffs the setting with side activities, add unnecessary bloat and distractions to the experience. Valhalla's a solid action-adventure game that does well to capture the turmoil of its historical era, but it's weighed down by the increasingly ponderous legacy of the series it represents.	XB1
Destructoid - Brett Makedonski	65 ~ 6.5 / 10	But I also found myself making excuses for Assassin's Creed Valhalla until I couldn't any longer. It mimics the Odyssey formula but takes a step backward in almost every way. It sacrifices story for scale. It's designed to discourage stealth in favor of epic battles. It's true to the Viking experience, but it isn't true to the Assassin's Creed experience. That's why it comes off feeling like the least essential game in the whole series. Impressive in some of its accomplishments, but inessential all the same.	XB1
Worth Playing - Chris "Atom" DeAngelus	65 ~ 6.5 / 10	Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is a mostly solid, if somewhat unambitious, Assassin's Creed game that is dragged down by a shockingly poor PS4 release. I look forward to seeing how it runs on a PS5, but the last-gen version is hard to recommend due to the sheer amount of issues that I encountered while playing through the game. If you discount those issues, Valhalla would be a comfortable 8.0, but one can't just ignore those issues. Fans looking to continue the franchise's story should wait until Valhalla receives a series of patches or until they can pick up a next-gen version.	PS4
Gadgets 360 - Akhil Arora	60 ~ 6 / 10	Assassin's Creed Valhalla is too much of the same thing, and it's not nearly engaging enough.	XB1
Game Revolution - Michael Leri	50 ~ 2.5 / 5 stars	Obsessing over playtime and Content™ at the cost of innovation and depth puts Valhalla‘s ability to actually get into Valhalla in question, as it doesn’t quite earn the kind of glory that only the best Vikings achieve.	PS4

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Thanks OpenCritic for the review export