Game Rant published a bizarre article arguing that the tragedies Elden Ring characters endure are gender coded, or, in other words, women and men in the game suffer in different ways and somehow that’s a problem. We break this idea down and also discuss a popular easy mode mod for Elden Ring along with a New York Times article that claims the game is successful only due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Blizzard’s new diversity officer’s influence on games and the company’s reversal on its vaccine mandate, and plenty more.