Nintendo’s Reportedly Fixing Those Broken Joy-Cons for Free

Greetings, friends. Welcome to Replay, WIRED’s look at the week in gaming news. What’s happened since the last time we checked in? Well, we have some new details on Google Stadia‘s approach to the cloud, a look at Nintendo’s evolving customer service procedures, and a very good game recommendation. Let’s get going.

Google Isn’t Worried About All Your Games Being in the Cloud, But You Probably Should Be

At its core, Google Stadia solves a big problem: the total and utter lack of a solid streaming videogame service. But, as an all-cloud gaming system, using Stadia means that your games are at the mercy of the cloud itself. If the servers go offline, or get knocked out, or if Stadia just stops being a thing, well, there go your games!

Google, however, doesn’t seem very concerned about this happening. During a recent Reddit Q&A, Andrey Doronichev, the product director on Stadia, addressed this question by noting that people had the same concerns about music and movies, adding “eventually all our games will be safely in the cloud too and we’ll feel great about it.” The “we” in in this case presumably means Google.

Nintendo’s Fixing All Those Broken Joy-Cons For Free, Finally

Remember last week, when I talked about Joy-Con drift, a huge problem affecting a lot of people’s Nintendo Switch controllers? After Kotaku’s report on the matter came out and it became a big talking point online, Nintendo decided to (privately, of course, until Vice received an internal memo on the matter) revise their customer service procedures. Now they’ll repair affected units for free, and they’ll do it whether or not the controllers are within warranty.

This is a good move for what seems to be a manufacturing problem. It’d be cool, though, if Nintendo would respond more publicly about this kind of thing.

New Study Proves You Should Always Mute Your Mic in Online Games

It’s never been a huge secret that playing online videogames can be a minefield of harassment. Now the Anti-Defamation League has some new stats to back it up. In a survey of 1,000 people, the ADL found that 65 percent of players had experienced “extreme harassment,” 29 percent reported being doxed in some form, and 35 percent admitted to harassing others themselves. Finally, 23 percent reported being exposed to behavior of an extremist or white supremacist nature.

In other words: Mute your mics, only play with friends. It’s a nightmare out there, folks.

Recommendation of the Week: Sniper Elite 4 by Rebellion, on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4

Sniper Elite 4 is my comfort game. Why? Because shooting Nazis while sneaking around and muttering gruffly is just, like, fun. Soothing, straightforward, and surprisingly clever, this is a game worth playing if you’re hankering for some old-school WW2 gameplay. It’s just cathartic. Check it out.

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