Why Roblox is ugly and the Mario Galaxy movie is rotten: Autofill's April 1-7, 2026 news round-up

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This issue will cover gaming news from the beginning of April, which, of course, starts with the “holiday” of April Fools’ Day. The video gaming space is often hit with April Fools’ gags, and this year is no different. A week after Fortnite studio Epic Games laid off over 1,000 workers, the battle royale game added giant heads and literal finger guns, while Call of Duty introduced the franchise’s smallest ever map for some chaotic, nonsensical gunplay. Also, big shoutout to Game Informer for its excellent “Game Infarcer” parody articles this year.

Possibly attributing to a slow news week is the fact that many have been observing the actual holidays of Passover, Ramadan, and Easter. But we still have some fun topics to hit today, so let’s get to it!

Some “senior executives” at Disney want the corporation to purchase Fortnite and Unreal Engine maker Epic Games, according to a circulating report. The claim comes from Alex Heath, the former deputy editor of The Verge, appearing on podcast show The Town with Matt Belloni.

Heath adds that these executives are “just waiting for that moment” for an Epic acquisition, and Belloni purports that newly minted Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro was already “500% behind” the company’s existing relationship with Epic, while he being keen on Disney’s $1 billion deal with OpenAI, which got canned right after the latter shut down its Sora video-generation service.

Note that Heath added that there are also Disney executives who think a purchase of Epic is “a bad idea.” Also know that nothing regarding an acquisition isn’t even close to official, though that isn’t stopping any of the scuttlebutt. Disney ending its relationship with OpenAI and Epic Games undergoing financial trouble only further invites curiosity about a potential merger.

There’s plenty of precedent for Disney eating up another company—we’ve seen this with Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox. Assuming that Epic Games would be fine with being acquired, it’s not hard to imagine Disney incorporating Epic’s IP (i.e. Fortnite characters) into its parks. Owning the Unreal Engine, a widely used tool in video game development, would be a great financial benefit for Disney as well.

An acquisition would also grow the already existing relationship Disney has with Epic. Unreal Engine has powered the visual effects technology for Disney shows like The Mandalorian since 2020, and the two companies made a $1.5 billion deal in 2024 to make an “all-new games and entertainment universe” (let’s call it a “metaverse,” for simplicity’s sake). Just last week, Fortnite added Star Wars tools and assets for creators to use in the Unreal Editor.

Long story short, Disney has an on-again, off-again relationship with video games. The corporation’s latest venture in in-house game development was Disney Interactive Studios, producing and publishing games like Epic Mickey, Disney Infinity, and several tie-in games based on Disney movies and shows.

Disney Interactive Studios fully shut down by 2016 after closing internal studios and laying off employees. These days, Disney has gone back to licensing its properties to external game developers, occasionally publishing games like Disney Illusion Island, while Disney-owned labels like Marvel Games and Lucasfilm Games collaborate with other companies to produce games, including Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Marvel’s Spider-Man on PlayStation.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie from Nintendo, Universal, and Minions studio Illumination has been making bank. It opened last Wednesday, and it already earned at least $372.5 million after its first weekend. Its premiere is the fifth biggest global opening for an animated movie and the second biggest worldwide opening for a video game-based movie (only behind its predecessor, The Super Mario Bros. Movie).

It’s also being absolutely savaged by critics. Rotten Tomatoes shows only 42% of approved critics giving the movie a positive review, while 89% of users liked it. The movie also has a “generally unfavorable” 37 score on aggregator site Metacritic.

British outlet The Times gave The Super Mario Galaxy Movie a rating of zero, calling it an “anti-movie” that was “torturous to sit through” and “provoked periods of actual physical discomfort.” The Guardian actually called the movie “worse than AI,” while Vulture compared watching the movie to “being asphyxiated in a ball pit filled with candy.”

This is the type of movie where you already know going in if you’ll like it or not. Predictably, there’s nothing substantial about the story, and now that we’ve all gotten our guffaws out after the voice cast reveals, there isn’t too much in the movie itself to inspire deep discussion. Expect something more like The Emoji Movie instead of Toy Story. As someone who watched it myself, I don’t have anything hyperbolic to say about the movie, and I certainly don’t believe that this movie represents the “end of cinema.”

It was basically, “Look, It’s The Thing From The Game!”: The Movie. If seeing fun visual references to the long history of Mario games activates something positive in your brain, it’s worth a watch. But expect to cringe at on-the-nose moments such as Bowser Jr. shouting “Prepare to meet your maker!” before literally playing Super Mario Maker.

I think much of my disappointment stems from Nintendo being such a creative powerhouse in gaming while producing something so trite for the big screen. Nintendo is also producing a live-action Legend of Zelda movie with Sony, currently filming for a release date of May 7, 2027. I couldn’t blame anyone for not being excited for that one.

Ever since Nintendo got into the movie business, fans have speculated that the company could adapt many of its franchises and build toward an Avengers-style Super Smash Bros. movie. Fox McCloud from Star Fox having a major role in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie only bolstered conjecture about a potential Nintendo cinematic universe.

However, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto plainly stated in an interview: “Right off the bat, I’ll say that unlike something like Super Smash Bros., I don't think you'll have a situation [where] all Nintendo characters would be joining.” It doesn’t sound like a complete ruling out of the idea, but if you take Miyamoto at his word, Smash Bros. isn’t an immediate priority.

(Every week, I’ll address a question or curiosity about gaming from readers! Submit your inquiries through this Google Form and read my explainer in a future newsletter!)

Dear reader Laura submitted a very pressing and candid question about one of the most-played gaming platforms today:

To tackle the first question head-on, I couldn’t find any official quotes from anyone involved with Roblox about its “art style” or why it looks the way it does. What I’m about to write is pure speculation, but as Roblox was built and released in 2006 by a company with an educational software background, I’m going to say that graphics and art weren’t really strengths or priorities of the platform’s original creators.

The emphasis was on user-created content and social networking, which is probably why environments in most Roblox content lack detail, while characters have low polygon counts and nightmare resting smiley faces. Looking “ugly” also likely helps Roblox be accessible on a variety of smart devices, regardless of how powerful they are.

As for Roblox’s popularity, I can say with confidence that 20 years later, the kids still love Roblox. In fact, its enduring success is almost concerning for the rest of the video games industry. According to a widely cited report by analyst Matthew Ball, Roblox was the “singular driver” of any growth in the video game industry in 2025.

According to Ball, Roblox’s audience even grew by 69% from 2024 to 2025, and the platform’s playerbase spent over 10 billion hours on Roblox in total each month, more than hours spent on Steam, PlayStation, and Fortnite combined. Meanwhile, creators on Roblox are making millions of dollars, while actual game studios are suffering from layoffs and closures.

It’s making industry veterans, analysts, and journalists such as myself question if the world at large is phasing out “traditional” video games. Are kids eventually going to stop playing Roblox and transition to, uh, “real” video games? That’s hard to say, but traditional games like the ones many of us grew up with are in danger of becoming luxuries with the rising costs of game development and consumer hardware.

Why invest hundreds or thousands of dollars in new hardware and games with fancy graphics when you can just play Grow a Garden on Roblox for free? When even Fortnite can’t succeed in chasing Roblox’s success with user-created content while providing traditional triple-A gameplay, the future of the industry is foggy and uncertain.

Let’s hope all video games don’t become ugly like Roblox as a result.

I have fond high school-era memories of playing Grand Theft Auto IV online with friends, zooming through the sandbox world of Liberty City in attack helicopters. To me, GTA was more about the physics-based vehicular nonsense you can get up to and the morbid humor once other online players and unlucky NPC pedestrians get involved. But don’t forget, there’s a whole story in here too!

Almost two decades after the game’s 2008 release, I dusted off a save file and was reminded of why I abandoned the story in the first place. While I eventually became fond of protagonist Niko Bellic and his bowling enthusiast cousin Roman, I remembered how miserable I found the cutscenes and mission design. Almost every supporting character is unlikable, a trait in fiction I can usually stomach, but the crassness and worn-out stereotypes (even by 2008 standards) made them unbearable. The dark comedy was severely lacking in comedy.

Eventually, I was able to swallow much of the characterization and outdated mission structure and enjoy GTA4 for what it is—an attempt at a realistic reboot of an otherwise over-the-top and cartoony series, with some Bush 43-era satire. As heavy as the physics and car handling were and as stiff as the shooting could be, my appreciation for those mechanics grew. Driving and combat felt impactful, and there’s a weight to GTA4 that is missing in modern games. Early on, it felt like I was fighting with the controls, but I learned how to meet GTA4 in the middle and modify my typical strategies to get things done.

It’s funny that it took me forever to roll credits on GTA4, considering how easy I found it to get through the stories of GTAV, Chinatown Wars, and even the GTA4 expansion The Ballad of Gay Tony, all literally over a decade ago. I suppose all three of those fixed a lot of the issues I’ve always had with 4. Like everyone else in the gaming world, I’m eager to see how GTA6 turns out. We got Chris Compendio finishing GTA4 before GTA6!

Thanks again for reading Autofill this week! Tell your friends!

‘Til next time,
Chris Compendio