Chucklefish has issued a statement in response to multiple allegations that it exploited around a dozen volunteer contributors on the 2016 outer-space exploration game Starbound. The complaints came to light earlier this week when Damon Reece, who is credited as a writer on the game, said on Twitter that they worked "hundreds of hours" without pay on the game, which went on to sell more than 2.5 million copies less than a year after it went into full release.

Reece's allegations were supported by at least two others connected to the project: Rho Watson, a graphic artist who worked on Starbound, and Christine Crossley, a concept art who said the same thing. Composer Clark Powell also tweeted to say that they "almost did the audio and music" for Starbound until he was informed that it was an unpaid job.

"We're aware and saddened by the current allegations against Chucklefish regarding Starbound's early development," Chucklefish said in a statement. "During this time both the core crew and community contributors were collaborating via a chat room and dedicated their time for free. Community contributors were under no obligation to create content, work to deadlines or put in any particular number of hours. Everyone was credited or remunerated as per their agreement.

"It's been almost a decade since Starbound's development first began, and from then Chucklefish has grown considerably into an indie studio that has a strong emphasis on good working practices, providing a welcoming environment for all employees and freelancers. Our doors remain open to any related parties who wish to discuss their concerns with us directly."

Reece acknowledged signing a contract, saying that contributors were required to do so if they wanted to work on the game, and that they were further enticed with the promise of possible employment at Chucklefish in the future. They also refuted part of the studio's statement, saying that "deadlines were absolutely in place—if not formal, then definitely heavily implied."

"I was a naive newcomer to the industry and my trust was utterly betrayed. There is no moral defense for this," Reece said.

"Regardless of any contracts signed, it's massively unethical to allow workers to contribute huge amounts of content for no pay when you, the ostensible leader of the team, are walking away with millions of dollars in personal revenue share. If your game sells over two and a half million copies and your only excuse for not treating people ethically is, 'but the dozens of teenagers whose labor we exploited signed contracts,' you may need to do some soul-searching."

Watson, who founded indie studio Igloosoft earlier this year and is now working on an unannounced project, was a paid contractor on Starbound but said they're aware of at least a dozen others who signed contracts to contribute to the game without pay. 

"Those who were passionate and wanted to help with the game that wasn't a paid member was given a standard 'contributor contract' and told it was 'industry standard'," they said. "Put simply, it was either sign that contract and get your foot in the door or get out. A few people were happy to donate their time or just wanted to see their work in the game, but for most people who wanted to work their way up to a paid position, they'd be forced to sign that contract and waive any right to compensation."

Chucklefish was founded in 2011 by Finn Brice, and has published a handful of notable indie games including Risk of Rain, Stardew Valley, and Timespinner. Starbound was its first in-house developed game; its second, the turn-based strategy game Wargroove, came out this year. Both Reece and Watson singled out Brice as the source of the pressure on volunteers to produce during Starbound's development: Watson described him as "a really smooth talker and excellent at making people assume the best and feel bad for requesting fair deal/compensation," but Reece went even further, saying that "shame is a powerful motivator and Finn Brice is highly adept at using it to manipulate people."

Sci-fi survival game Starbound, still one of the best space games on PC, has finally added bounty hunting. First announced way back in September 2017, the 1.4 Bounty Hunter update adds a new Peacekeeper faction aimed at corralling criminals and restoring law and order to the universe. You're their newest recruit.

The gangs you're hunting won't be easy to find. You'll have to follow a trail that leads between planets, picking up clues as you go. Each gang has a final hideout where you fight a boss to complete the bounty.

There are new story missions linked to the update, and if you follow them you'll rise through the ranks of the Peacekeepers, who have snazzy bases set up around the universe. Along with these story missions for specific gangs, the update adds procedurally-generated bounties and criminal gang "microdungeons" to battle through.

Update 1.4 isn't just about bounty hunters, though: it adds rare elemental variants of certain monsters, and you're encouraged to catch them and add them to your Rare Pets collection. 

It also introduces plenty of new items including drones, seven new weapons, a mining laser, and eight new armor pieces. You'll find plenty of new furniture, too, much of which is related to the Peacekeepers.

The full list of new monster variants, items and furniture can be found in the patch notes. I haven't touched Starbound for years, but this may well draw me back for at least a few hours.

Thanks, RPS.

The contents of this article are not safe for work.

I totally get why people jerk off to Skyrim. I'm not trying to be facetious here. From an objective, ontological perspective, I get it. If you're going to spend half a decade playing the same game—furnishing living spaces, brewing potions, brokering peace between the Nords and the Imperium—it makes sense you might also want your character to fuck. 

This is an emphatically, painstakingly immersive role-playing game with real characters and real emotions. If Bethesda wasn't focused on selling their wares to as broad an audience as possible, there could even be some romantic, Hot Coffee-lite functionality built into Tamriel. Regardless, a truly prolific community of libidinous modders inevitably picked up the slack, constructing mods like "big naturals bodyslide preset" and "Whiterun Brothel Revamped," which empower the exact sort of fantasies you'd expect. It's a tale as old as time; where there are videogame communities, there are probably sexy mods for those communities.

All that being said, the existence of pornographic Hearthstone mods threw me for a loop.

Hearthstone is a wonderful game. It's also about the least sexy thing Blizzard has ever made. Yes, there's a small amount of world-building—something about a magical tavern where Warcraft characters play a CCG—but design-wise, it's about as removed as you can possibly get from the complex pageant that makes Bethesda RPGs so ripe for horniness. And yet, the world's thirstiest modders were undeterred. One of the top upvoted posts on the r/LewdGames subreddit (which is the primary bazaar for stuff like this) is called "An In Depth Guide to Lewd Mods For Hearthstone."

It's essentially a directory, written by Reddit user Whiskey_And_Cigars, that points us in the direction of Whorestone, which replaces the card-art in base Hearthstone with a set of nude portraits for Jaina, Tyrande, Scarlet Crusader, Nemsy, and pretty much every other female presence in the game. There's also Monster Hunt Additions, which does the same thing for the single-player content added with The Witchwood expansion, and Boards, which simply projects pervy images across the game's battlefield. It’s as if you were playing Hearthstone directly onto a Playboy pinup.

Keen to understand why a largely cartoonish card battler would provoke such feelings of desire in, well, anyone, I decided to speak with the modder in question. Whiskey_And_Cigars said he understood my confusion. He totally recognized why Skyrim, or Fallout, or The Witcher represented more traditional conduits for gamer lust—considering those are all games where you encounter other humanoid beings, instead of digitally rendered hunks of cardboard.

As it turned out, there was a simplicity to Whiskey_And_Cigars' doctrine that I couldn't help but appreciate: "While I do play Skyrim with [porn] mods, I just really like playing Hearthstone," he explained. "I see that other people enjoy an immersive experience… but I'm not about that life, I'd rather just look at some boobs."

"I'd rather just look at some boobs" is the defining aesthetic treatise of the lewd mod revolution—fundamental proof that such a basic desire can apply to just about anything, even the proverbial children's card game. Inevitably, this creative drive for constant titillation is not limited to Hearthstone. Shadowverse, one of the many other digital CCGs bobbing around the Steam marketplace, has attracted its own community of randy reskinners, who convert the already buxom anime girls in the card art into images that leave even less to the imagination. The person responsible for the Uncensored Shadowverse mod tells me he thinks most people use his work for "pinup" purposes. Meaning: they aren't actively whacking it in the middle of a tense match. "I try to keep the art I use in my mods as decent as possible," he says. 

A whole galaxy of sex mods

I suppose there is some tradition here, when you consider the long history of murky backroom poker games and pool halls, with the walls paneled with torn-out centerfolds, and the cardbacks replaced with a calendar's worth of Playmates of the Month. Still, as I investigated further, the unlikely nude mod scene continued to subvert my expectations. I stumbled across a website called LoversLab, which Steven Messner wrote about in relation to Skyrim previously, and positions itself as a paradise for all sorts of niche porn mods. 

Someone created an API for Starbound, the spacefaring pixel art building sim, called—of course—Sexbound. It "aims to enable creators to quickly and easily create prefab and custom sex interactions in Starbound." Here's a just a snippet of its description:

Please, note that the NPCs have been enabled to automatically climax.  If your actors use the pregnant plugin, then you can expect a village's population to grow steadily over time. Remember, you can increase the "trimesterLength" in the core pregnant plugin to slow down population growth since it will take longer for an NPC to give birth.

If pixel art doesn't suit your fancy, there are other head scratchers, like a lesbian-oriented rework of Crusader Kings. 

The most thrilling and beguiling discovery I found on the site was the shockingly active scene surrounding Paradox's Stellaris. For the uninitiated, Stellaris is a fairly buttoned-up grand strategy game set in the deep recesses of space—you colonize planets, you work your way through serpentine tech trees, you build a Dyson Sphere around a white dwarf and watch as the surrounding solar system dies a silent, frozen death. Safe to say, I have never gotten a boner while playing Stellaris. Which also holds true for Hearthstone, but at least Hearthstone is colorful and playful and doesn't force you to stare at line graphs.

Clearly, dear reader, I was not imaginative enough. I made contact with a mad scientist named TheMan221, who has constructed a mod called "Sexual Gameplay" (seriously), which literally morphs the mechanics of Stellaris into a game of carnal conquest.

In his universe, each of Stellaris' space-faring races are bundled with a few "sexually-themed" traits, which can lead to a number of "interbreeding" events. For example, one trait enables you to lay eggs in the members of an unsuspecting rival clan, thus dropping their population rate. A perfect symbiosis of bizarre teratophiliac fantasy, and tactical gamesmanship. Finally, you can live out your oily intergalactic fantasies in grand strategy form.

"I still think a game like Stellaris is immersive, but on a different level. Making lewd mods for it fulfills certain niches that a game like Skyrim cannot, like commanding a civilization of nudists bent on conquering the galaxy (people like me have weird taste,)" said TheMan221, when I asked him why he's captivated by the titillating promise of an empire building sim. "I just like the combination of sci-fi and porn, as well as the larger scale that things are happening [on]."

I'd guess that Blizzard and Paradox aren't stoked that some of their beloved creations have become fuel for the latent libido that courses through the games community, but there's little those publishers can do, as these mods are unsanctioned and stay on the client machine—your Hearthstone opponent will never know you're looking at far more lascivious card art than they are. 

There's a depressing but wholly unsurprising dude-ishness in wanting to play Hearthstone with naked ladies, and the mod scene is most definitely a boys' club—as evidenced by the telling lack of male nudity. But it's hard not to laugh at the absurdity of it all, and how brazen their compulsion to see smut at all times appears to be. You have to blow through so many red lights, so many well-intentioned warnings and concerns, to arrive at a Stellaris porn mod. That's a wicked dedication to horniness I can't help but grudgingly respect.

Blaze your own oversexed path. Colonize a planet if you must. Just be sure to clean up afterwards.

Starbound, the spacefaring sandbox, will be filled with criminals awaiting capture and judgement, making work for bounty hunters, in the 1.4 update. Players will be able to become a space cop, arresting naughty humans and aliens for the Peacekeeper faction. 

If you decide to walk down the path of a righteous crook-snatcher, you’ll need to hit up the bounty board, beginning your mission to clap some naughty criminal in irons. Catching them won’t be simple, however, warns developer Chucklefish.

“Tracking down one of these criminals isn’t a straightforward affair though—you will have to follow leads across multiple planets, raiding safehouses for your next clue, or fighting off members of your target’s gang. Sometimes you’ll have to take targets alive as well, using the Peacekeeper device known as the Long Arm. This gauntlet lets you handcuff targets remotely, but requires careful aim to lock down the perp!”

Chucklefish will spill more details over the coming weeks.  

After a few years in Early Access, Starbound launched in full last year. Chris liked it, and it's since introduced some pretty wholesome updates—the latest of which will let players craft and customise their own space stations. 

"All for a relatively reasonable cost", personalised interstellar dwellings will come with an entrance for your mech and a teleported for your convenience. Stations can then be upgraded and expanded, so says developer Chucklefish in this blog post, so as to create the "intricate corridor maze of your dreams", should that be something you're into. 

"This is something we’ve wanted for a really long time and it has finally found its place in the upcoming update," Chucklefish adds, in reference to the incoming but as yet dateless update 1.3. 

When that arrives it'll also come packing a new mech assembly feature which, as you might imagine, lets you assemble your own mechs. Doing so involves visiting a Mech Assembly Station, where you can swap parts, paint, and view the appearance and stats of your mechs. Horns are optional too, apparently. 

Again, Starbound's update 1.3 is without a concrete launch date for now, however its updates are typically filled with gifs. Here are but a few:

When it's not working on its two new games, Starbound developer Chucklefish finds the time to update, well, Starbound, its spacey, science fiction sandbox game. True to that, a new post on the Chuckleblog sheds a bit of light on an upcoming patch that will revamp the way space travel works. You'll soon be able to fly freely around star systems in your little pixel spaceship, or in a bunch of new vehicles that will be added as part of the update. Here's a GIF that shows the work-in-progress system off (I do like how your craft appears to automatically orbit planets if you get close enough).

"Space isn’t just about stars and planets," Chucklefish's Molly explains in the update post, "it’s about the space between them, so you’ll now be able to fly freely around systems and explore all kinds of new locations, from space stations to traveling merchant ships to mysterious derelicts! Systems won’t just be static, either—moons orbit planets, planets orbit stars, and rich opportunities come and go, rewarding patient explorers with brand new perils and plunder!"

All of which sounds fab, particularly in a space-focused exploration sandbox game like this one. There's no date for the patch yet, so while you wait you'll have to make do with Starbound's current method of space travel. (Thanks, RPS.)

Update 2: That new image has now started moving, as Brice tweeted a short video this morning showing off movement and combat. You can watch that in the embedded tweet above. 

Update: After Brice tweeted again saying "Chucklefish is working on two new games and will continue to support Starbound," we reached out to him for clarification, and he gave us some further details on their upcoming projects. He confirmed that the tactics game shown above and the RPG-style video linked below are indeed two different games.

"The first is a turn based strategy game, a more modern spiritual successor to Advance Wars that retains some of the pixel charm," Brice told me. "The goal is to make good use of modern tech, online multiplayer, [Steam] Workshop support, that kind of thing." Thinking about a tactics game with full mod support is incredibly exciting.

Brice also commented on the game in the "Art Style Demonstration" video, saying it's "an RPG/Sim set in a magic school, something like Stardew Valley meets Harry Potter." That's probably where the Spellbound name is going to land, given the magical theme. Brice continued, saying that "Lots of the sim features are present, day night cycles, dating, classes etc. But with some interesting gameplay twists." 

Original: After Starbound finally left Early Access last July, Chucklefish Games' CEO Finn "Tiyuri" Brice tweeted that they were already considering their next project. He showed off a mockup image of a game he described as "Advance Wars meets Fire Emblem, with online multiplayer, on PC," which is about as exciting of a game pitch as you could possibly say to me. Nearly five months later, it seems that idea has stuck, as Brice tweeted an new image of the game with the message "Chucklefish back to work!"

While Brice has been tweeting out occasional mockup images of the concept, he also posted a brief video last month that showed the beginnings of a level creator and unit movement. Chucklefish still hasn't officially announced the game, but given the progress that's been made and the length of time the studio has been working on it, I think it's safe to assume it's more than just a proof-of-concept.

He also posted a video called "Art Style Demonstration" to his YouTube channel in October that teased a game's work-in-progress art style, but it's unclear if that's for the same project or not. It looks similar enough in theme and style that my guess is it's what the tactics game will look like out of combat, but that's just an assumption. 

Brice posted the video with the message "Personally, I'm spellbound," then also teased a similar gif titled "Spellbound library" with the message "this mockup has me even more Spellbound." So whether or not the battlefield images above are related to these art tests, it looks like Chucklefish is continuing Starbound's naming trend by most likely calling one Spellbound. 

Following the success of Stardew Valley, which was published by Chucklefish, reinventing celebrated Nintendo games on PC is looking like a pretty good business strategy. We'll keep an eye out for more teases.

Starbound has just received a whopping update that adds Ancient Vaults, which, as you may have guessed, are chock-full of Ancient Loot, Ancient Bosses, and Ancient Stuff You Can Use To Terraform Planets To Your Liking. To access the crafting-sandbox game's procedurally assembled dungeons, you first have to finish the main storyline, and then chat with a "mysterious" trader at the Outpost, who will send you on a quest to activate the Ancient Gateways "found floating in some systems". You can see one above, and while it's definitely not a stargate, it totally is a stargate, and that's pretty cool.

Wait, what was that about terraforming? Well, after you've explored the aforementioned vaults and defeated the equally procedural vault guardians, you'll probably have acquired one or more of the ancient devices contained therein—devices that will allow you to "transform regions or whole planets into entirely different biomes".

Terraformers "can be used to expand a region across a planet’s surface, replacing natural blocks, objects and plant life, and eventually changing the type of the planet itself", while Microformers are "consumable single-use terraformers which provide even more region types to add to your worlds".

Exciting stuff. Bug fixes, festive items and other tweaks round out the enormo-patch, and if you want the nitty gritty you'll find the full patch notes here.

Thou shalt have a fishy, on a little dishy, thou shalt have a fishy when you load up Starbound and play around with its new fishing system, which has just been added in a patch. Update 1.1, as the name suggests, is the first content update since the sandbox-crafting-space-etc-thingy released a couple of months ago, and if you're wondering what PC Gamer's Chris Livingston thought of it at the time, then wow, that's a pretty specific wondering, but he reviewed it and liked it all the same.

To fish in one of Starbound's procedurally made lakes or rivers, you'll have to first craft a fishing rod, then plonk it into the water, in search of one of the 48 unique kinds of fish. Rare fish, as in the real world, can offer up rewards, including upgrades for your rod.

But that's not all the update updates. There's a new Collections interface, Novakid villages for those chummy Novakids to live in, and a Relocator tool that will let you move peaceful creatures out of the way. Don't do what Starbound developer Chucklefish does in the explanatory gif, and 'relocate' them into a pit of lava.

You can the full list of changes on Steam here.

The fandom surrounding Overwatch can't be contained. First it was the mountains of fan fic and artwork (some more family-friendly than others), and now it's even beginning to seep into other games entirely. Starbound is the latest to be bit by the Overwatch bug, and thanks to the effort of two Steam Workshop modders, SolarPug and Spectral Minister, you can now play as your favorite Overwatch hero as you scour alien planets for resources.

Simply called the Overwatch Mod, this pack contains a pretty wide selection of armor and weapons inspired by 11 members of the Overwatch team that you're free to mix and match as you choose. The weapons aren't just simple skins either, but are pretty faithful to their functionality as seen in Overwatch. Soldier 76's Heavy Pulse Rifle, for example, comes equipped with a secondary grenade launcher that you can spam similar to his right-click ability only without the cooldown. Others, like Mercy's staff, have been changed to compensate for what's possible in Starbound, instead creating an area of effect heal rather than a constant beam. Still, after a few hours spent hopping around I'm fairly impressed both by the quality of the skins and the fact that the weapons feel useful and fun to use blasting away aliens as Reapers is quite a joy.

There's even a few extra nifty add-ons, like sprays that you can plaster on the walls of your ship, a storage box that resembles the loot chest you get Overwatch skins from, and a special healing item modeled after the canister Roadhog drinks when he heals up.

The weapons are meant for players who are at or near Starbound s endgame, but the clothes can be crafted easily with any tier one spinning wheel which shouldn't take all that long to get if you're just starting out. Alternatively, SolarPug and Spectral Minister have provided the item IDs so you can spawn all the gear right away if you don't feel like waiting. Open the chat bar and type "/admin" to enable privileges for your character and then type "/spawnitem" followed by the item ID of the equipment you want to make it appear. Just remember to type in "/admin" a second time to switch off privileges once you're geared out otherwise you'll be invincible unless you're into that sort of thing. Hooray for cheating!

To get a look at the armor and guns in action, I threw together some quick little gifs for you to enjoy.