It has been a while since FromSoftware released the critically-acclaimed PS4-exclusive Bloodborne, with fans still clamoring for a sequel to this very day. However, despite that apparently not being on the horizon, fans have still been able to keep the good times rolling thanks to a comic series based on the popular game.

This new comic is called A Song of Crows, and Amazon has recently posted their product page for it that reveals lots of information. The following is an overview:

“Discover the twisted story of Eileen the Crow in the continuing comic series spinning out of Fromsoftware/Hidetaka Miyazaki’s critically-acclaimed Bloodborne videogame!

The City of Yarnham is buried in snow.

Eileen the Crow buries the Hunters. But one eludes her. Poisoned and overcome with beastly senses, he prowls Yarnham causing misery and havoc. Meanwhile the bodies mount, reality shakes, and strange things are amiss in Byrgenwerth. On the hunt for the Hunter, Eileen struggles with her own sanity and the disturbing change that a glimpse beyond reality brings.

Blood and death pervade Yarnham and those who travel in its wake. Follow the quest of Eileen as she looks to uncover the truth of the city, and her most inner turmoil.”

Bloodborne: A Song of Crows will release on August 20th, 2019, with the price being set at $16.99. You can check out the cover of the comic below.

LitRPG is the up and coming new genre in science fiction and fantasy. But where’s a good place to start if it’s something you might be interested in diving into? There are several really good series by various authors out there. There are even a lot of Russian authors who have had their stories translated into English. So here are the best LitRPG books for beginners.

The Land by Aleron Kong

The Land is an interesting tale about a gamer, Richter, who is transferred to another world. The premise is that humans are in fact what would be called Chaos seeds. This is important because it plays a dramatic role in The Land. Being a chaos seed allows the protagonist to have some interesting powers and make choices that are often not available to everyone else. This is because the entire foundation of chaos is free choices. So the protagonist is allowed to make choices where anything can happen. And it in fact often does.

Play to Live by D. Rus

Play to live follows the premise of merging alternate realities. The character is actually terminally ill, but is allowed a second chance to live by essentially downloading himself into a game. This is a fairly common situation in this world and makes it an interesting story as the protagonist and his friends actually end up back in the real world as their player characters. D. Rus is one of the Russian authors and manages to add in a complex battle between nations within the game world in the story.

The Gam3 by Cosimo Yap

The Gam3 diverges a bit from most other LitRPGs. Whereas many of them are set in fantastical worlds where knights and magic exist, The Gam3 takes place in a science fiction based world. Cosimo does a phenomenal job of making an interesting character with original powers in an interesting world. It follows the tale of a lowly boy working to make money in the game, but he must first pay off his debt to the man who supplied the equipment to get into the game.

As with all genres, there are many more quality books out there to read. The best advice is to get out there and find the ones that interest you personally. I wouldn’t write it off though if you find a few that stink. The subgenre is relatively new and so quality can range widely, especially with the easily available self-publishing we have with digital technology.

It’s time to go back in time to 2014. It seems like it’s a trend to report about things that started in 2014 today. Anyways, a Dutch consulting firm Ecorys was commissioned to research the effect piracy had on sales of copyrighted content. The final report was finished in May 2015, but for some reason it was never published.

This becomes concerning because the results of the report would’ve made an impressive development in history. Why? Because the result is a very shocking development that nobody would’ve expected. With the exception of recently released blockbusters, there is no evidence to support the idea that online copyright infringement displaces sales.

People usually think that copyright infringement has a direct negative effect on rightsholders’ revenues. The most recent example for this kind of reasoning is the Commission’s highly controversial proposal of requiring hosting providers to install content filters to surveil all user-uploaded content. The Commission claims this measure is necessary to address a “value gap”. Which is a supposed displacement of value from licensed music streaming services to hosting services like YouTube, which host a mixture of licensed and unlicensed content.

Major credit of this breakthrough deserves to be credited to a Julia Reda. Who found out about this major breakthrough with an access to documents request she filed under the European Union’s Freedom of Information law on July 27, 2017, after having become aware of the public tender for this study dating back to 2013.

The report talks in its 300 pages of content. And draws the conclusion that piracy of negative content doesn’t affect sales of said content. According to an extract from the report:

In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements. That does not necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect. An exception is the displacement of recent top films. The results show a displacement rate of 40 per cent which means that for every ten recent top films watched illegally, four fewer films are consumed legally.

It seems like the cat’s out of the bag. However, there is another fact that turns this case on its head. It turns out that the EU Government was the commissioner of the review. the European Commission paid Ecorys 360,000 euros (about $428,000) to research the effect piracy had on sales of copyrighted content. Why would they hide the study and the conclusions?

My theory is that the EU wanted to present this as an end all be all argument. Present the study as evidence of negative impact in the industry to finally take measures against pirates. However, since the results were the exact opposite, they had no other choice but to cut it down. This isn’t going to be something they’d admit. So it’s all speculation for now. The Streisand Effect kicks in again!