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Roblox has done a lot of crossovers and collaborations, but the new one announced today really leaps out at me. The Rolling Stones, the world's greatest rock and roll band, is coming to Roblox in a new game based on the band's 60-year history.

"Players will encounter various parts of The Rolling Stones' legacy trapped inside of colorful crystals inspired by the band's 2023 album Hackney Diamond," the press blast explains.

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"Players progress through decades representing the band's eras, working together to find and shatter the crystals while an iconic Stones track from that time soundtracks the gameplay. Doing so powers up a massive tongue-and-lips that releases a surge of rock and roll energy to disrupt each decade and unlock the next — culminating in a globally shared interactive performance that evolves based on community participation."

Am I irritated, perhaps to an unreasonable extent, by this? Maybe. The Stones are the epitome of rock and roll: "Sex and drugs" are essentially synonyms for Mick and Keith, but you've also got a spot of devil worship in the mix, one of the most notorious incidents of violence in rock history, and through it all, some of the most god-tier music ever made. Have no doubt, the Stones are a full-steam money-making machine, but underneath that corporate engine of commerce the spirit of rock remains pure and true—or at least I like to imagine it's still in there somewhere.

Stuff like this kinda takes the wind out of those sails: I destroyed my hearing for this? It's soul-deadening, yes, but it's also kind of weird. I mourn the dessicated corpse of rock and roll because, well, I'm old. But is your average 14-year-old Roblox die-hard really interested in any of this? As colleague Chris Livingston more aptly put it, "Nothing teens want to see more in their game than some 85 year old men singing songs older than their parents."

(Mick Jagger, for the record, is 82; his current wife is 17 years younger than his oldest daughter. Keith Richards is also 82, while Ronnie Wood is a relatively youthful 79.)

It does make me wonder: Is Roblox bringing culturally significant music to new audiences (do the Stones even need to reach new audiences at this point?), or is all of this just kind of weird—a big-in-name crossover that will ultimately prove more baffling than enthralling for its intended audience?

But then, it works the other way too. As part of the collaboration, Roblox has invited community creators Jazzyx3, CASKA’s HAUS, Touzled, Blizzei, DIONESS, morphist4u, WhoseTrade, Empyro, Bad_B0y, raekaro, Spiraxy, Valkenheim, DuckXander, Clockset, and dvdko to "to turn The Rolling Stones' globally beloved logo into not only exclusive cross-platform avatar accessories, but also a limited-edition, co-branded physical item available to purchase via an in-game Shopify integration that connects directly to the band's online store." And I, a man with fond(ish) memories of seeing the Stones on the Steel Wheels tour, suddenly feel like I need to go outside for a while. Or maybe just have a lie-down.

The Rolling Stones Roblox game goes live today, July 10—it should be live by the time you read this—and will culminate in an "epic finale show" running July 17-19. Rock on.

Plenty of Warhammer 40,000 novels have been written from the perspective of humans and space marines, but it took a while before Games Workshop really got into publishing books from the perspective of 40K's many alien species. If you're into orks I recommend Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh, and for swashbuckling aeldari pirates there's Voidscarred, but the peak remains The Infinite and the Divine by Robert Rath.

It's the story of a long-term feud between two necrons, Orikan the Diviner and Trazyn the Infinite, immortal robots who were once flesh-and-blood and went a bit loopy in the uploading process. An argument over who owns a particular artifact becomes a heated rivalry (not in the sexy way, though now that you mention it…) that encompasses, as Games Workshop's own summary puts it, "clashing with Exodite armies, xenos uprisings, and a spell in Necron small claims court."

As the part about small claims court suggests, The Infinite and the Divine has a sense of humor. While it's not all comedy all the time, it's the 40K book that's closest in tone to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with a perfect sense of the absurdity of these bitter old robots turning their petty grudge into the entire universe's problem.

While it was a self-contained story, I'm delighted to hear it's getting a sequel by the same author. As announced on Warhammer Community, Orikan and Trazyn will be back in The Wicked and the Warped, in which the two rivals have to work together to find out what happened to an expedition lost on a planet corrupted by Chaos. As Dawn of War showed, if you want to force an unlikely alliance in 40K, throw Chaos at some enemies and they'll have to work together. I look forward to Orikan and Trazyn bickering their way through a few hundred more pages while trying not to get eaten by daemons.

The Wicked and the Warped doesn't have a release date yet, but The Infinite and the Divine is being reprinted in hardback in the meantime. I've heard good things about the audiobook narrated by Richard Reed too.