Will Fandom get good again now that its CEO of the last six years is gone? Is the relationship between Nintendo and Retro Studios really better two decades later after Metroid Prime 4‘s extended development? And how will a giant cluster of GPUs deploy AI to make Krafton’s games better? It’s the latest edition of Morning Checkpoint, Kotaku‘s daily roundup of gaming news and culture. I meant to get a couple rounds of Ball x Pit in last night and ended up staying up past midnight. Not good! This era of S-tier roguelike slop (complimentary) will be the end of me.

PUBG and Subnautica 2 publisher Krafton is going all in on AI

It announced an “AI first” strategy in a new press release on Thursday. What does that mean exactly? The company says it will invest $69 million in a GPU cluster that “will support multi-stage tasks requiring sophisticated reasoning and iterative planning, and will serve as the foundation for accelerating the implementation of agentic AI,” according to a Google translation of the statement. It goes on:

Through this infrastructure, Krafton will pursue AI workflow automation, as well as strengthen AI R&D and in-game AI services. By the second half of 2026, the company plans to complete its AI platform and data integration/automation foundation, establishing a company-wide AI operation infrastructure that includes an AI-linked workflow, an agentic AI management platform, and a data standardization system.

Cards Against Humanity announces an Elon Musk set after beating the billionaire in court

The tabletop game company had sued Musk’s SpaceX for $15 million over allegedly trespassing on its land in Texas and leaving it “completely fucked,” according to the AP (via PC Gamer). Musk’s company settled shortly before the case was set to go to trial next month, and the terms of the settlement have not been disclosed. CAH had originally intended to share the money it was suing for with backers who had contributed money to the purchase of the land, but now will instead be making a set of cards about Musk. “Elon Musk’s team admitted on the record that they illegally trespassed on your land, and then they packed up the space garbage and fucked off,” CAH told subscribers in an email. “But when it comes to paying you all, he did the legal equivalent of throwing dust in our eyes and kicking us in the balls.”

Ghost of Yotei’s Atsu will be part of Magic: The Gathering

The PlayStation Secret Lair drop has revealed two more special cards. The first is Atsu. The second is a Twisted Metal version of Sol Ring. Sales go live October 27, 2025, at 12:00 p.m. ET. They are guaranteed to be a shitshow.

Nintendo and Retro got into some tense debates when making the original Metroid Prime

This highly unusual peek behind the development curtain comes via a new book called Metroid Prime 1-3: A Visual Retrospective. IGN has an excellent write-up:

Tanabe describes a Retro Studios that needed to be introduced to a set of design philosophies unique to Nintendo, for example enemy design beyond bosses was something Miyamoto had strong feelings about. “Many Nintendo developers have learned from Mr. Miyamoto that the appearance of enemy characters should be designed based on functionality…this had not yet been articulated quite so concisely. As a result, it took time for us to convey the concept clearly to Retro.”

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 gets workarounds but needs fixes

The new RPG is getting slammed on Steam in part for missing basic features like manual saves and the ability to turn off motion blur. There are also no options for turning off certain parts of the UI and no FOV slider, PCGamesN reports. In the meantime, a rep for the game is telling players complaining about motion blur to “Please try turning post-processing to low” to minimize the effect while The Chinese Room prioritizes proper fixes and more additions to the settings menu.

Meanwhile, The Guardian‘s Keith Stuart asks if Bloodlines 2 is really in such bad shape or is just another victim of the current boom/bust dynamic that prevents games that are interesting but busted from having a place in the current landscape.

The head of Fandom is out

Fandom’s CEO Perkins Miller is stepping down (via The Verge) after an epic six-year run that included the purchase of Metacritic, several rounds of painful cuts across sites like GameSpot, and the ongoing enshittification of the Fandom wiki pages. At least Miller let Giant Bomb go independent. The company has not announced Miller’s replacement yet. Who else could match such an epic tenure?

ICYMI: Watch this: