Product management through the lens of pop punk, anime and game dev.
Break the rules · Build cooler products
EA closed BioWare on October 21, 2026. A year before Knights of the Old Republic shipped, E3 players couldn't tell when they were even in a fight. BioWare kept the rules and put the combat state on screen.
Read moreWhat's moving in anime, metal, J-pop and punk right now, told as one sharp take instead of a recap.
Updated Oct 22
Anime Weekend Atlanta (AWA) has now run in October, December and November across three straight years. Each move followed a venue upgrade, not the calendar settling into a rhythm.
On September 30 the Tokyo District Court found that a performer’s voice is protected under the right of publicity the way a photograph of their face is. The same ruling dismissed Kenjirō Tsuda’s suit against TikTok’s operator because the videos he said cloned his voice had already come down. Two weeks later the Japan Actors Union published 22 articles of its own on generative AI and voice work, covering written consent, overseas dubbing and pay for training and use. Article 11 bars unfavorable treatment of any performer who refuses or withdraws consent. The union is writing rules for the casting call, before there is a clip for anyone to take down.
For years Ian Hill told anyone who asked that he would keep playing bass in Judas Priest until his performances suffered. Unsure he could finish the 2026 European tour, the band had Davey Rimmer of Uriah Heep and Elegant Weapons learn the set as cover. When Hill snapped a tendon in his left shoulder in Brussels in September, the closing London show at the Eventim Apollo went on with Rimmer, the first Priest show Hill had missed since joining in 1970. On October 9 he retired, with his bass already recorded for a new album that doesn’t have a title yet.
In 2012 Johnny Rotten let Danny Boyle use Sex Pistols songs at the Olympics after talking to him. In 2021 Boyle's Sex Pistols series ended up in the High Court. The contract never changed.
Barlog directed the game that won Game of the Year. For the sequel, he handed the wheel to someone whose whole toolkit he didn't understand.
4A Games won Best Visuals for Metro 2039 at Gamescom 2026 on a story about Ukrainian wartime survival. The studio that actually stayed in Kyiv the whole war gave up that name a year earlier.
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