Each week, Fast Travel helps you get caught up on everything going on in the gaming industry. We start by highlighting a few of the week’s biggest news pieces. Then it’s on to a little dollop of indie news. Followed by a helping of “The Best Thing on the Internet, This Week.” And finally, we gather up all the week’s headlines and smash them into a TL;DR pie for you to enjoy. 

The FCC Kills Net Neutrality

The FCC this week shot net neutrality in the face. It isn’t dead yet, but it is on life support. The only things that can save the internet now are Congress and the court system. Whether either of them will step up to the plate or not is a big question mark. What we do know is that Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC and form Verizon lawyer, has decided that internet freedom is a liability.

With this ruling, ISPs can go back to the underhanded tactics they were trying to get away with in 2014 and 2015 when net neutrality was first implemented legally.

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Steam Cracks Down on Pornographic Content

There is a lot of weird stuff on Steam. It isn’t just issues of poor content, though there is plenty of that, and it isn’t just an issue of toxic developers. Steam currently has an issue of how it wants to regulate its own marketplace. Because Steam does not follow the ESRB, rating systems are irrelevant to its process, but with their recent removal and ban of the game You Must be 18 or Older to Enter, Steam may finally be taking steps to gate content. 

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Patreon’s Service Fee Reversal Demonstrates the Power of Community Understanding

Patreon took a serious misstep with their new service fee system and the Patreon community let them know it. Forums and social media erupted in backlash over a policy that most said would break the platform at its core.

“We messed up. We’re sorry.” That’s how Patreon CEO Jack Conte started an apology letter to his community. The core message behind that letter was this; Patreon’s new fees – the ones that would seriously impact patrons donating $1 and $5 and that resulted in a small exodus of users – would no longer be implemented.

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Wonderstrom trio from Avatar, Riot, Uncharted are Making a Show/Game

The newly formed company, Wonderstorm, was founded by three entertainment industry veterans. Aaron Ehasz served was the head writer for Avatar: The Last Airbender (the show, not the movie). Justin Richmond was a designer on Uncharted 2 and director on Uncharted 3 and Justin Santistevan was a head of finance for four years at Riot.

That makes Wonderstorm a small, but incredibly stacked company. All of the properties the founders hail from are regarded as titans – Avatar for its writing and animation, Uncharted for its cinematics and fun and Riot for its longevity and domination in the field. All of that combined creates a trio that has a better chance of making this series/video game crossover work.

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