#377: Universal truth

You ever get the feeling the universe is trying to tell you something? During dinner a few days ago, an exhausted racing pigeon landed on our patio, and was immediately set upon by neighbourhood cats. We got to it just in time, but it could not fly. I dragged the old puppy crate out of the garage to keep it safe, and used the code on its ankle tag to report it missing to the UK’s pigeon-racing association, which until that very moment I had no idea existed.

The owner got in touch a day or so later. She, and therefore the pigeon, live in London, about 100 miles away from Hit Points Towers. There'd been a race in France at the weekend, and our new friend obviously failed to find its way home. We agreed to keep it fed and watered, and let it out of the cage every so often to see if it would fly.

And so, for the last few days, we have lived our lives by this pigeon’s rhythm. We top up its water, feed it crushed cornflakes, clean its lodgings of the endless torrent of shit it emits. We scare off the local cats. We have steadily filled out the pigeon’s spartan habitat with foliage, fallen branches, and an impromptu shelf for him to sleep on. My youngest took about 90 seconds to give the thing a name, because of course he did.

So, yes, my point about the universe and its signals. It is almost a year since the family dog died. I have, in the intervening months, fielded repeated pleas for a pet hamster, or a guinea pig, or a rat. I spent one tipsy evening seriously considering adopting three brother cats from a local shelter because, and only because, they had excellent names. But losing the dog hit us hard, and all along I have said no, not yet, we’re not ready. And then the universe sends us a fucking pigeon, and when we try to get it to fly away it tries to walk inside the house instead, and he’s called Gary now — fucking Gary! — and he has given the family a new shared responsibility and many topics of conversation and, god help me, I must admit he's kind of cool. I have joined r/pigeon. I am pricing up bird seed. I was up at 5 this morning to make sure the foxes hadn’t got to him overnight.

We are pigeon people now, it seems. And in the increasingly unlikely event that Gary elects to fly the nest, I am going to find it pretty much impossible to tell the family we’re still not ready for a pet. So thanks, universe. Fuck you.

Anyway: videogames. The universe has been up to its tricks over here as well, with a couple of game-related headlines catching my eye for the little hidden signals they contain. First up is Valve, which has finally succumbed to cost pressure and cranked up the price of the Steam Deck OLED. The 1TB model will now run you $949 in the US, a hike of 46%; the 512GB version is up by a ‘mere’ 43%, to $789. Sheesh.

Now, you might think it a bit rum for a company like Valve to follow the lead of other hardware companies. Valve, after all, is a private company, and is therefore immune to the line-go-up mania that plagues the publicly traded likes of Microsoft and Sony. It has a small headcount and makes an unfathomable amount of money, its estimated revenue of $50m per employee the envy of the tech world. And of course it is has a huge vested interest in the success of its hardware operation, given that it takes a hefty slice of every game sold on Steam. With all that going on, surely Gabe Newell and co could afford to take the (hopefully temporary) financial hit on component costs, rather than passing them on to customers? How many yachts does one man really need?

At least one more, apparently. There are a couple of things to take away from this. First: while I am not dim enough to think any of this will stick, it bears repeating that Gabe Newell is not the sainted messiah he has for so long been portrayed as. He likes money just as much as the MBA loons and their vulture investors, and believes he needs it more than you do. Secondly: fucking hell we’re never buying anything again are we. The Steam Deck is a wonderful thing, but is starting to show its age; I know, from talking to developers as part of my shadowy consulting operation, that it is becoming an increasing pain in the hoop to support. But if even that now costs the thick end of a grand, what chance have we of an updated model with beefier innards? What are Gabe and co going to try and charge us for Steam Machine when that allegedly arrives at some point this year?

The message from the universe is pretty clear, I think, and has been for a while: unless you are made of money, you are stuck with what you already have, and likely will be for some time yet.

This is, once again, a bit dickish of the universe, I think. Particularly since we videogame lovers live on technology’s bleeding edge, eagerly seeking out new experiences at ever-higher levels of fidelity. Sure, everything with a computer inside it is more expensive these days, but it’s particularly unfair on us, dammit! What are we to do? Just keeping playing the same old games?

Yes! But also no! Sort of? This week CD Projekt RED announced a new expansion for The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, a game that somehow came out 11 years ago. Songs Of The Past, to give it its official, bit-on-the-nose-if-you-ask-me title, was announced a few days shy of the tenth anniversary of the previous expansion, Blood & Wine. Due next year, it’ll put players back in control of beloved series protagonist Geralt of Rivia, and while it was no doubt first dreamt up as a way to keep fans fed and watered, Gary-style, while work continues on The Witcher IV — not to mention the remake of the first game in the series, which is also in development along with some sort of online game Hit Points would rather not think about too deeply — its timing could hardly be better.

We are of course accustomed, in these forever-game times, to games having long tails, and for the most successful of them to still be getting updates a decade or more after launch. But almost all of them are live-service things with multiplayer servers to fill, battle passes and cosmetics to hawk, and all that. Singleplayer games, though? We are in new territory here, I reckon, and the potential of it is fascinating. For developers it’s an opportunity to re-engage with an established playerbase in a relatively low-cost way; for consumers it’s a pathway to cool new shit that they don’t need a second mortgage to access. For everyone involved it feels like a way to navigate our current economic hellscape without working ourselves to the bone and/or spending our way to insolvency. Sounds pretty good, I think? Increasingly necessary, too. If it wasn’t for Gary the bloody pigeon, I’d suggest that the universe, just this once, deserves our thanks.

There you go! No news round-up today. My brain is a puddle after the UK's latest heatwave — record May temperatures, two days in a row! I'm sure it's nothing to worry about! — and craves a nice sit down. No doubt we’ll make up for it next week, when not-E3 2026 kicks off. Paid subscribers will get the lion’s share of Hit Points’ coverage of Videogame Christmas; free readers, here’s that button for you. Bye!