A Popular Gen Con Board Game Gets Pulled

One of Gen Con’s hottest games is dealing with blowback over a bad art decision. Find out the details, including what they are doing to make it right. Plus Nintendo held a couple of press conferences over the past two weeks. Check out what was announced. All this and more. Let’s go!

More games coming to the Switch 2

In the past couple of weeks, Nintendo held two press events to announce new games for the Switch: a partner showcase and more recently an Indie World Showcase (above). Most of the announcements involve games that are available for other devices but are now also on the Switch 2. Some of these include UFO 50, Content Warning, Star Wars Outlaws and Little Kitty, Big City. However, a few of their announcements caught our eye. They include:

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales

A new action RPG from Square Enix that is set to launch in 2026. 

Once Upon A KATAMARI

The King of All Cosmos is back, and his son has to clean up after him. Roll up items of all shapes and sizes to help put the stars back in the sky.

Glaciered

An aquatic RPG where you play as a dinosaur ancestor. Level up and evolve with Glaciered, available this holiday season. 

Check out everything announced at Nintendo’s Partner Showcase and Indie World Showcase.

Redraw, partner

One of the most popular games of Gen Con was Devir’s Ace of Spades, selling out 120 copies per day in about eight minutes. When those who were able to get a copy got them home, they found slavery depictions in artwork that were disturbing. Devir responded quickly, saying: 

At Devir, we have made a serious mistake that we recognize and deeply regret. In our recent game Ace of Spades, we included two inappropriate illustrations: one depicting a black person in a state of enslavement, and another portraying an enslaver. Both were originally intended as visual references to scenes from the film Django Unchained, as part of the game’s homage to Western cinema.

However, we now fully understand that this approach was misguided. Depicting imagery tied to the violence and trauma of slavery — even as a cultural reference — is not appropriate in a board game context. These illustrations trivialize a painful and deeply rooted historical reality. They should never have been included.

Devir stopped selling the game immediately on their website and plans to issue new versions of these cards for free to those who already bought the game.

Dispatches from Gen Con

Our editor attended Gen Con, the “best four days in gaming,” and wrote about the highs and lows of the tabletop gaming event. From games selling out to how board games have changed this year due to tariffs, the article is worth a read. He also posted his favorite games from the con. Check it out if board games are your thing.

Side Quests (more stories worth reading)

😶 Sony’s CFO says he wants to merge Bungie into PlayStation Studios, and that Bungie’s independence is “getting lighter.” 

💳 Valve calls shenanigans on Mastercard’s comments that they had not “evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms.”

🚀 A former BioWare executive producer discusses “what really happened” to Anthem.  

✊🏼 After three years, Call of Duty development studio Raven Software secured their first union contract with Microsoft. 

👋🏿 Game technology outlet Digital Foundry is now independent from IGN. Meanwhile, IGN’s owner Ziff Davis laid off eight employees at IGN. 

☹️ Four years after it was initially announced at E3, Microsoft stopped development on the game Contraband. 

📈 The PlayStation 5 has sold over 80 million units. 

🎸 Rhythm game genre veterans established a new studio called RedOctane Games, and plan to announce their first game later this year. 

💻 Google is ending support for Steam for Chromebook in 2026. 

🎤 Singer Eminem apparently does not mind when people refer to him as “the guy from Fortnite.”

New Releases this week:

Check out our article on 10 New Games to Play in August.

8/12: Echoes of the End (PlayStation, Xbox and PC)
8/12: Fallen City Brawl (PC)
8/14: Drag x Drive (Switch)
8/14: Madden NFL 26 (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC )
8/15: Bendy: Lone Wolf (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC)
8/15: Robert on Earth (PC)

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