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Overwatch season 4 introduced a rank reset and you know what that means, it's every cat, hog, and retired sniper for themselves as players desperately try to claw back to where they finished last season. As if that isn't stressful enough, we've also got a new rank on our hands.

Slotted between ranks Platinum and Diamond you can now find Emerald, the answer to the growing skill disparity between Plat and Diamond players. "As we've shown in the past, the majority of our players are in Gold and Platinum," the patch notes read. "So adding a new rank closer to the middle of the skill curve gives many players a better sense of rank identity, a new goal to achieve, and increases fidelity in assessing skill for many players."

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Season 4 is full of really smart changes, and this new rank is one of them. I completely agree that there needed to be a buffer between Plat and Diamond, as high plat and low diamond increasingly became a frantic free-for-all with players who had vastly different skills far too frequently grouped together. But the tradeoff seems to be that all this chaos is now neatly packed into Emerald.

I only played in a few Emerald games when I was placing all my roles, as I soon pushed past into Diamond and above, and all I can say is: thank god. Because I wouldn't have wanted to spend any more time there.

The games felt frantic, with players on both sides oscillating between making smart plays and really basic mistakes—I could never predict which way a team fight was going to go. Now, this makes sense when you think about the kind of players meant to be in Emerald: better than average but perhaps not quite equipped for the kind of teamwork and restraint you find in higher elos. But that doesn't make it any less frustrating. If I had a nickel for every unnecessary flank, panic ult, or repeated stagger I saw in those games, I wouldn't have to write about them anymore.

Then there's the people.

This could just be my bad luck, but I saw a noticeable drop off in toxicity once I cleared Emerald. Now, this isn't everyone in a game, but there'd often be one person who just complained and whined the whole time, blaming everyone for their misfortunes instead of looking in the mirror.

I get that sometimes you can play the best game of your life and still not win, because at the end of the day Overwatch is a team game. If your team isn't up to it, there's only so far you can carry them, and that can be annoying. But also, the only person you have control over is yourself, and knowing that is half the battle in Overwatch.

Let's say you have a tank who is constantly in the enemy backline despite not having a dive team, for example. It's definitely frustrating, especially when they have no clue about any line of sight angles, but you gotta work with what you have. So if I have a tank like that, you best believe I'm switching to dive, and more often than not changing to better fit the team around you instead of just whining will lead to a win.

It seems simple, but I was surprised to see how few people were willing to make that change, compromise, or admit that perhaps they're just not as good at a particular hero than they think they are.

Emerald has certainly made a name for itself in just a short time since its addition. Hopefully, the rank will mellow out as the season goes on, a rank reset always ushers in at least a little disorder, but that doesn't mean I don't feel bad for the players who are stuck in Emerald. From my experience, and from what I've heard from friends, it's a pretty dicey place to be right now, so god speed to anyone still in those mines. But rest assured, it's only up (or down) from there.

Saudi Arabia's purchase of Electronic Arts, the biggest leveraged buyout in private equity history, officially closed earlier this month. With that deal done, a new Game Developer report has found that an awful lot of employees are expecting much more stringent control over what kinds of games they are and are not allowed to make.

This isn't really new, strictly speaking. After the buyout was announced, current and former EA employees alike expressed concerns about a potential crackdown on some games, particularly those that are visibly diverse and inclusive, like The Sims. Former BioWare lead writer Trick Weekes summed it up aptly, predicting that "guns and football" will be fine, but that "gay stuff" will likely be out.

Despite EA's various efforts to reassure employees that its "cultural values"—a functionally empty term to begin with—will remain intact under Saudi ownership, Game Developer has found that doubts persist among employees. One current employee told the site they believed the purchase was a way to distract from its "regressive" human rights record by "co-opting an established and comparatively progressive company culture."

That's a known phenomenon called "sportswashing," and it's been raised multiple times previously with regards to the EA buyout—in no small part because Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler and, through his chairmanship of the country's Public Investment Fund, EA's new boss, has previously stated outright that he's happy to use it to achieve his goals. "If sportswashing is going to increase my GDP by way of one percent, then I will continue doing sportwashing," he told Fox News in 2023. "I don't care."

Being a private company grants EA a certain freedom to do what it likes, but that doesn't mean the company will necessarily just embrace an anti-inclusive agenda: Instead, one employee predicted that "projects just won't get signed because they don't align explicitly with what the Saudi government wants," or that EA won't even pitch them in the first place to avoid antagonizing its new owners.

"It's certainly hard to feel good about being bought out by a regime that's very much at odds with progressive society, so it is surely detrimental to anyone who finds this buyout morally odious," one employee said, raising the point that Saudi Arabia's notoriously oppressive regime is in itself an issue for some employees.

Another said that "if EA had a culture that had any semblance of a moral backbone, it wouldn’t get into bed with a prince who's disgusted by many of its current employees' sexualities and ethnicities," adding that the presence of Jared Kushner, through his Saudi-backed Affinity Partners investment firm, "just adds insult to injury."

The problem many employees are faced with is that moral objections sometimes have to take a back seat to the practicalities of survival, and the videogame industry is in an extremely bad state. One employee said they "feel gross just thinking about it, but there's nowhere else to go. I'd love to leave, but the jobs aren't there, and I have bills to pay." Employees who own vested shares in EA will make a good dollar on them thanks to the PIF's premium buyout offer, which may help dull the moral sting, but employees who don't hold shares, including many who are classified as "temporary fulltime," won't even get that.

In a way, that reflects the broader state of EA as a whole. Being owned by the ruler of a regime that continues to oppress women and members of the LGBTQ+ community, and who is credibly accused of ordering the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, is bad on its face, but the massive debt EA took on to finance the deal means massive layoffs seem almost inevitable, along with the cancellation of games that don't meet sufficiently lucrative financial targets. None of that has happened yet, but the mood among the rank and file certainly sounds grim.

"There was a time where execs engaged more and provided more earnest answers about the company, and it genuinely felt like they cared about us," one employee said. "It was years ago though. Now it's mostly just tired corporate bullshit."