Steam Controllers and Black Flag are back like it's the early 2010s: Autofill for April 22-28, 2026

Hey, readers. I rolled credits on Pragmata this past weekend, and I found it to be a quick and satisfying new release to chew on. That being said, I’m now stuck in a retro game vortex (if you consider games from the late aughts to be “retro.”)

After writing about Portal 2 for GameSpot, I got the bug to replay the first Portal game—specifically, Portal: Still Alive on Xbox 360. From there, my nostalgic rampage included both Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection and BioShock: The Collection, where I’m playing Assassin’s Creed 2 and the first BioShock (both games I never finished back then).

Maybe when more new titles come out in May, I’ll round back to playing something with the zeitgeist. But for now, I’m content pretending like I’m back in my middle school and high school days playing old-ass video games.

We’ll talk about some concepts from the past emerging in the present in this newsletter, and as always, please tip through Ko-fi if you enjoy reading this!

Valve finally confirmed that its new controller for Steam is out on May 4 for $100. It looks a bit different from controllers you may already be used to, featuring two touchpads very much like the ones on the Steam Deck.

Promising a 35-hour battery life and full customization, the new Steam Controller is part of Valve’s new hardware lineup, which includes the aforementioned Steam Deck and the forthcoming Steam Machine console-like device and Steam Frame VR headset.

You might remember that Valve released a controller in 2015, one that placed a round trackpad where a right analog stick would otherwise have been. Having bought one myself (at a deep, deep discount when that product was on its way out), I can say that it works fine in certain situations, but it’s largely an ugly product that isn’t any better than the controllers I already own.

But this new controller looks quite promising, if you ask me.

That probably depends on how much you play games on your PC or if you’re planning to buy a Steam Machine down the line. If you already have a Steam Deck and you like its button and trackpad layout, you’ll probably like the Steam Controller as well, as the trackpads act as an excellent alternative to using a mouse.

Early reviews praise the ergonomics and overall quality of the controller, along with the ease of connecting it to PCs. It isn’t the slickest-looking controller, but it’s quite functional.

An ask of $100 is a big one, though. The Steam Controller is probably only worth it for PC players who want a “pro” controller experience, especially those investing in Valve’s hardware endeavors. Casual players are likely better off sticking with whatever Xbox or PlayStation controllers they already own, but the new controller might be perfect for the Steam Machine.

Valve is quite insistent that the Steam Machine—the cube-like device that will run SteamOS—is launching sometime in 2026. Originally announced for an early 2026 release, Valve signalled that the launch will be further down the line due to the ongoing RAM and memory shortage crisis. In other words, your guess is as good as mine, but some reporters think that Valve is close to landing on a final release date and price internally.

When asked why the Steam Controller is coming out before the Steam Machine, Valve engineer Steve Cardinali said the obvious: the Steam Controller “doesn't have RAM in it, and it's not as complicated to start getting out the door.”

The beloved 2013 pirate adventure game Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is getting a remake, but pretty much everyone remotely tuned into general gaming news has been long aware of this. After over a year of leaks and rumors, Ubisoft finally rolled back the curtain on Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced, releasing July 9 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

If you aren’t huge into Assassin’s Creed, know that Black Flag is a massive fan-favorite, namely due to its open-world and for heavily featuring naval combat. Taking place in the Golden Age of Piracy, players take the role of Edward Kenway (voiced by a charismatic Matt Ryan, aka TV’s Constantine) and cross paths with figures like Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet—though you can guess that they’re depicted quite differently than they were in Our Flag Means Death.

Critics at the time opined that Black Flag was a better pirate game than an assassin game, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If you’re looking to sail the seas and you’re either fond of Black Flag or have never played it before, Resynced might be the experience for you.

Roughly 13 years of technological and graphical advancement since the original release will do Black Flag Resynced some good, with the game being completely rebuilt with Ubisoft’s newest version of the Anvil engine. In other words, it’s going to look a lot better.

Combat will be a lot faster and more strategic, with a heavy emphasis on parrying enemy attacks. Players will also have more parkour and stealth-related movement options. Additionally, there will be new characters on Edward’s ship, along with new storylines involving Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet (which is already giving me false hope for references to Our Flag).

Most importantly, you can now have a pet cat or monkey on the ship! Oh, also, those pesky missions where you have to follow someone from a distance and instantly fail if they spot you have also been totally reworked, so they’ll be so much less frustrating. But also, pets!

The most recent mainline title in the series is Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which released last year on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch 2. Set in Feudal Japan (a highly requested setting for the series), the game had a dual protagonist structure, focusing on young shinobi Naoe and samurai Yasuke, who is based on a real historical figure.

As for what’s on the horizon, the next entry is hitting some speed bumps. Codenamed “Hexe,” the next AC game is rumored to focus on witchcraft. There’s not a lot of information out there about the game, but the project just lost its director. You might see this departure as an ill omen, as the game’s previous director left just two months prior. Maybe this game was cursed by real witches.

Netflix is also filming an Assassin’s Creed television show in Rome, taking place in the year 64 AD. Surely anything they do will be better received than that 2016 Michael Fassbender-starring Assassin’s Creed movie.

(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 Jimbo writes in with a question about an evergreen gaming genre:

We’re, of course, talking about massively multiplayer online games, but the space is mostly dominated by MMO role-playing games (MMORPGs). You know, stuff like World of Warcraft. And it’s a sound point, the fact that there haven’t been any new MMOs introduced in the past decade that have endured as long as the classics, many of which are still alive and strong today.

If you ask most MMO players today, the biggest games in the genre include EVE Online (2003), WoW (2004), Guild Wars 2 (2012), Final Fantasy XIV (2013¹), Black Desert Online (2014), and even Runescape (2001).

Meanwhile, Amazon took a big swing with the MMO New World, but despite making waves after its 2021 launch, it failed to stand out from the competition, and it’s getting shut down in 2027. Amazon also has the MMO Lost Ark, which is getting by—for now. Several MMOs are dying off, with some being canceled before release. Most recently, Ashes of Creation was removed from Steam, causing a legal fiasco I can’t even begin to explain.

There are a few reasons why this might be happening, and they overlap somewhat. Conventional wisdom is that MMOs are hella expensive to make and maintain. Game development budgets are already ballooning, and with the games industry more or less still having an affair with live-service gaming (which we touched on last week), making an MMORPG, which would almost certainly be more esoteric and less approachable than, say, a Fortnite-like game, is a risk publishers wouldn’t want to take.

Also, the prospect of competing with the likes of WoW and FFXIV is daunting. Those games have had years to build their community, and with players’ attention being split in so many ways these days, plus the economics of it all, it’s hard to build a new playerbase these days. Players have repeatedly proven that they're happy to stick with older MMOs as long as they’re still getting new content and support. Heck, Final Fantasy XI, which came out in freaking 2002, is still active enough today that it has server overpopulation issues.

Times have changed, as have many facets of video game development. It’s hard to make a new MMO today that would stray away from the tenets established by EverQuest and WoW, but if you make a new game that plays just like that, why bother playing it when WoW is still thriving?

That still isn’t stopping developers from trying, with upcoming projects including Soulframe (already playable in pre-alpha), Chrono Odyssey, and whatever League of Legends MMO that Riot Games is cooking up. Good luck to all of them, I suppose.

Looking at the video games I’m currently playing or have played recently, I think almost every single one of them involves violence in some form. Even Mario has you mercilessly stepping on Goombas. So maybe that’s why I subconsciously decided that a lovely puzzle game by the name of “Is This Seat Taken?” (on PC, mobile, and Switch) would be my cooldown game on most nights.

Developed by Poti Poti Studio and published by the appropriately named Wholesome Games, this puzzle game has you placing and arranging people (who take the form of adorable little shapes) based on their preferences. In a bus level, for example, one person might prefer to sit by the window, but they also might be playing loud music, while another bus passenger can’t stand loud music. You’ll have to do some thinking and shuffling around to make everyone happy.

Is This Seat Taken? proved to be a real brain scratcher. I’m proud of the fact that I completed most of the game without any external guides, but I will admit that one level had me stumped. I suppose you could finish a level without every shape satisfied, but I was too determined to never let that happen.

All of my gripes with the game are nitpicks, such as the relatively short length (I could do these puzzles forever) and some repeating scenarios (i.e. seating at a soccer game or a movie theater) got repetitive. What probably bothered me the most was that there were always shapes in every level who hadn’t showered in forever, causing me to upend my arrangements several times to accommodate those who hate bad smells. Take showers, people!

That’s it for this week. Next week, we’ll talk about Saros and what else is happening in May!

Sayonara (Wild Hearts),
Chris Compendio