🖕 Ubisoft Gives a Middle Finger to Your Wallet

Hello, fellow nerds 🧙

You know what’s better than sitting down and watching a Star Wars movie at home? Getting the chance to see a live orchestra play all the music alongside the movie. If you’re remotely a Star Wars fan, we give it a 10/10 recommendation.

We were able to snag some tickets to see Star Wars: Return of The Jedi in concert, and boy oh boy, talk about a goosebump inducing experience. Did Tyler cry some nerdy tears in the club? Yeah, maybe a little. It was honestly just that magical.

Here’s the daily quests in AI to complete today:

• 🖕 Ubisoft Gives a Middle Finger to Your Wallet

• 🎓️ Meet Khanmigo - The Khan Academy AI - F2P Friday

• 🏢 A Korean News Studio Actually Films on Top of a Building

Ubisoft Gives a Middle Finger to Your Wallet

Warning: This is Tyler’s soapbox moment. Buckle up.

Ubisoft just announced Assassins Creed: Shadows which lets you play either as a ninja or a full blown samurai in feudal Japan. This time period has been requested since the very beginning of the Assassins Creed series because, well, ninjas and assassins. And now, we finally get our wish granted. The trailer, I’ll admit, is pretty badass.

But unfortunately, that’s where the badassery ends.

I found my way to Ubisoft’s site to check out how much Shadows would cost, hoping they had learned after the internet roasted them for their egregious pricing of Star Wars: Outlaws—$250 just to get the full unpaywalled version— but oh doctor, not a fat chance in hell…

Here’s the price structuring of Shadows, a cool $130 for the ultimate edition, which lets be honest, should just be the standard version of the game that costs $70.

I’m baffled. Truly baffled. These pricing decisions aren’t for gamers. Period. I understand the price anchoring shown in the picture above. Ubisoft ultimately wants to funnel you into Ubisoft+ to suck you into their ecosystem. Sure, as a business model, great job guys.

But looking at this from a gamer’s perspective, what a blow to our wallets. $70 for a game that wants you to preorder it with no footage of gameplay, an extra $40 for no guarantee that the “DLC”  included in the season pass will even be worth a damn, and the tactics to get people sucked into Ubisoft+ in hopes that they’ll forget to cancel and pay month after month, I call that the definition of giving us the finger.

Well, here’s my middle finger 🖕 

Any Ubisoft game can wait. And for that matter, any game can wait.

If you don’t mind not playing games on day 1— which you should wait anyways because games are generally broken on release, an unfortunate trend happening now—100% wait.

Preorders? Nope. Paying full price? Definitely not. Because let’s be honest, most games will go on sale in a month or two anyways. They always do. That’s just the truth.

And of course, there are games worth the money (looking at you Helldivers 2).

But, right now, especially with Ubisoft. Sorry, bud. Welcome to my version of gamer hell. ✌️ 

Tyler’s soapbox is officially over.

😁 F2P Friday - Meet Khanmigo

Where we share an up-and-coming AI freebie to keep an eye on.

Khanmigo is Khan Academy’s new AI powered teaching assistant.

As a parent, sometimes helping your kid with their homework isn’t a breeze.
 Kid - “Dad, what’s the 7 letter word for a cloud starting with an S?”
 Dad - “Go ask your Mom.”
 Mom - “Go ask Google.”

Not anymore! Khanmigo is the unlimited, always-available tutor for only $4 per month.

Students and parents will have to cough up the dough while teachers get it for free (one of the few perks of being a teacher outside of the Apple Education discount, amirite? 🤣)

As a teacher, Khanmigo offers plenty of AI powered tools to save you time and energy. Everything from learning objectives to lesson plans, Khanmigo’s got you covered.

🤗 Daily Delight

Just something fun and interesting around the web.

There’s a Korean news program that actually films at the top of a building to give that classic skyline background. Could they use a greenscreen? Oh, you betcha. But, there’s something wildly authentic by not. Ya gotta respect the dedication displayed here 👏 

What’s happening inside the Realm

A list of side quests to explore and more.

• 🤖 GPT-4 has officially passed the infamous “Turing Test”, and it’s getting so good that people are starting to think humans are AIs.

• 💰️ Reddit is raking in the moola after striking a huge data deal with OpenAI to help further train AI models with some delightfully degenerate content.

• 😜 Researchers have finally developed an AI that can detect and even speak in sarcasm, but sarcasm tis a fine art, AI. This one’s gonna definitely need some refining.

• 🎮️ Ubisoft is all in on AI generated NPC’s, which is great, but the execution is so up in the air because, well, it’s Ubisoft after all (Ok, Tyler’s done shitting on Ubisoft for today. Thank you for your time.)

That’s all the quests we have for today. Check back tomorrow for more!

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