 This is Witchspace News for Friday the 18th of February 2022, I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, the Empire wages a war on terror and the Colonial Bridge nears completion in this week's Community Gold Triple, as video game company Buyouts trend is F-Dev in the crosshairs, Frontiers meet and greet with the community is one week away and more. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe and remember to click the little bell icon and select all notifications and if you'd like to help directly support this channel you can also join our Patreon via the link in the video description. The server refresh on Thursday this week saw no new Thargoid attacks in or out of the bubble but it did bring with it the commencement of three new community goals. In the bubble and colonia the second of what we think is a four week cycle of CG's to finish the Colonial Bridge starports kicked off this week. The Alcor and Colonial systems are both asking for performance enhancers, personal weapons and survival equipment to be delivered in order to install pioneer supplies, a crew lounge and search and rescue services to the stations. In return not only will pilots be awarded with a top up to their credit balance but they'll also receive access to warm white cockpit like decorations with which to adorn their ships. Elsewhere if you've been keeping up with Galnet you'll know that the terrorist organization known as the NMLA that kicked off the last 18 months of ongoing story in the galaxy by initiating a sustained campaign of starport bombings have been roundly dragged into the open and a very big light shined on their support network that comes from within the Empire. Suffice to say the reigning imperial hierarchy is none too pleased with any of their shenanigans and by shenanigans I obviously mean the wholesale slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent civilians all in the name of restoring the empire to a system of governance that better reflects Marlinist values and has met with the private military contractor forces that the Marlinist architects used in their recent abduction of the emperor in the summerland system to duke it out. Up for grabs for participation are imperial hammer railguns, imperial ranks and exclusive decals. One final quick public service announcement the outcome of this particular CG is not in doubt there is only one side in the conflict for commanders to participate in. The Elite Dangerous Pilots Lounge community announced a competition this week running in Elite Dangerous Odyssey to win a voucher for use on the Steam PC gaming service. All you need to do to win is to grab a selfie of your in-game character next to one of the galaxy's many bartenders. To enter the competition head to the Elite Dangerous Pilots Lounge Discord server a link to which you'll find in the video description below. Serial explorer pillar of the SPVFA Elite Dangerous video graphic community and friend of this channel Commander Exorcist is launching season 4 of the Out There Elite Dangerous YouTube series this very Saturday February the 19th at 6pm UTC. If you've never seen out there before now is the perfect time to get on board with what has become a burpit household staple on Saturday evenings. The relaxing tones and beautiful vistas that Exorcist finds and commits to YouTube so consistently are sublime and a great way to wind down from a busy week. This Saturday season 4 will kick off with a live YouTube premiere and you'll find a link below this video where you can set yourself a reminder we look forward to seeing you there. This week an article appeared on the financial website thisismoney.co.uk delving into the current trend for high profile video game company buyouts on the stock market. Financially speaking in a pandemic affected world video game developers have become a hot property as more and more consumers turned toward home and online based entertainment coupled with the encroachment of large entertainment streaming platforms. The article is in particular riding on the back of the recent acquisition by Microsoft of Activision Blizzard which brings properties like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft into the Seattle based stable for the handsome sum of around 50 billion pounds or 68 billion US dollars. A frankly hilarious amount of money. Gaming behemoth Sony announced a similar high profile deal with Bungie soon after the acquisition deal was public and the article goes on to state that the money being thrown at gaming acquisitions this year is already as high as the total of last year's deals and last year's deals were three times the value of the previous year. The article making further note that when it comes to games development companies it's quote quicker to buy rather than build unquote. Interestingly the article further goes on to talk to Frontier's stockbroker in the city Liberum and then also mentions that Frontier themselves are ripe for a similar buyout bid after suffering a share price drop of over 50% in the last 12 months. And although the market generally feels this poor performance in share price will be short-lived the company taking such a serious hit makes it a much more attractive target to any circling prospective buyouts right now. Further as well as Warhammer Age of Sigma the company is developing games and expansions for other big globally recognized intellectual properties such as Jurassic World and Formula One adding yet more sheen to its purchase kudos. It's a reasonable assumption that if Frontier was negotiating with a prospective buyout offer they'd be prevented from doing or announcing anything that would affect their share price. As best we can determine the other live titles in FDF stable are not dealing with any serious share price affecting issues at the moment and are communicating with their own communities as normal. Profit warnings or new title announcements not withstanding the biggest share price affecting gorilla Frontier is currently wrestling is the issue of bringing the Elite Dangerous expansion Odyssey to the consoles a subject they are currently not talking about at all. To add further fuel to the fire as we've reported recently the community team have all but shut down meaningful communications with the community surrounding Elite Dangerous that they manage a community that before Christmas was understandably asking Odyssey on consoles when. It had been our perception here at the burpit that the weird shutdown in any meaningful community engagement from the Frontier's CM team happened on or around the 10th or 11th of January. The company's CEO and figure head David Braben usually very active on Twitter also last tweeted anything at all on the 11th of January. The exact same period that the comms from the community team fell off a cliff this could of course be purely coincidence but it is a strange coincidence nonetheless. There are of course a multitude of possible causes for the comms blackout as we've covered on previous videos it makes complete sense that the CM team won't want to talk anymore to the community until the sticky issue of console release is addressed. Equally they could in theory still be getting details and communication plans for 2022 in order. The Thursday live streaming slot in Frontier's regular schedule is empty waiting to be filled and is the logical spot for the CM team to return to and update 11 and fleet carrier interiors are still expected to be arriving sooner rather than later. We're rapidly however approaching the end of February and it is over a month since we had any engagement from the Frontier team regarding Elite aside from a very bland holding statement from Arthur Tolmy last week. In the absence of any news arriving from Frontier regarding the future of Elite Dangerous and given the current marketplace for video game developer buyouts along with Frontier's profile on the UK dev scene and their currently low share price we do think it highly likely they'd be on someone's buyout radar. Frontier's community team have their community meet and greet event this time next week in Cambridge. If nothing is said during the coming week then it's going to be a very interesting meeting indeed with a hundred or so commanders us included all watching every eye twitch lip twinge body movement or burp for any clues at all to the current happenings at Frontier towers. We shall of course report back on this very channel on how that meeting went and what if anything we learn from it. Are you picking up a particular community goal this week or perhaps taking a run at more than one? Are you headed to the community meet next week armed with a microscope to watch Frontier alongside us? Let us know in the comments below. That's it for now thanks very much for watching we'll be back later this week with more videos until then 07 commanders follow the Greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack. We very much look forward to seeing you next time.