AI Makes Gaming More Expensive, Rainbow 6 Hacked, and Our Gaming Resolutions! | Games For Breakfast

GOOD MORNING, MATT. AH,
GOOD MORNING, WILL.
AND GOOD MORNING TO ALL OF YOU.
WELCOME TO GAMES FOR BREAKFAST, THE ONLY INTERNET TAMING TALK SHOW. WE TALK ABOUT THIS WEEK'S GAMING AND TECH NEWS, BUT THEN ALSO 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. HAPPY FIFTH DAY OF 2026. IS IT GOOD YET? I got bad news on that one. Matt,
Janet, Brad, how is it? I've been literally not looking at anything until right now. So, so fill me in. How is it going? Is it good? We were just talking. Um, uh, you know, Mani is is now uh my mayor and the the edict of I found a French press on the sidewalk and that's where I drink out of now. And I think that's really nice. So, that's going well for me. How's how's everything? Is it good? Is gaming going well? Well, uh, no. And also to your earlier

question, ALSO NO.
OH, WELL,
you know, Matt, when I was a young boy, um, after
your father took right after my father took me to the city to see a marching band, um, I, uh, Nope. Nope. The bit derailed the thought that I was going [laughter] to have because the bit was compulsory when I began it that way. And now the thought's gone. Welcome to 2026. We don't have any brain cells.
No. Uh, Dharmmach when the brain cell fell.
Right. That's right. Yeah.
Oh boy. We were going hard onto some Star Trek nonsense in the pre-show over on Twitch. So, apologies if any of that leaks in here. We also mixed in wait and drops of Jupiter. There was a hype train. Hold on, let me back up. There was a hype train on Twitch which then got us talking about train the band and then I said drops of Jupiter and then someone said anyway here's Darmmach and Galad when the walls fell one when the Wonder Wall fell. Yeah, it's all over the place. Don't worry about it. We're

here now and it's 2026.
Yeah,
we're going to put ourselves back on the rails for a brief moment
to talk about the gaming of this year so far. The first five days of gaming will
hold on. [laughter] When I was a young, [laughter] my father took me into Tagra TO SEE THE WALLS THEY FELL. UM, ANYWAY, [laughter]
I'm so sorry. Hey everyone, if you don't understand that reference, it's okay. [laughter] I just want to say it's fine.
Yeah. Um, we we have we have some really good ones. Uh, by the way, uh, Nec is just here for lobster. I'm so sorry that we've disappointed you consistently since you came here. I don't know. I don't think there's any
Do we have lobster? Like, is it
I don't think we can afford lobster.
I Yeah, I I I [laughter] got to go with a strictly a strictly turf diet.
Uh but not that kind. The kind that goes

with surf normally.
Yeah. Um I I I do think that this is perhaps the most 2026 commentary I've seen so far.
Sure. My family watched the ball drop on YouTube and got an ad 5 seconds before the ball drop. And honestly, strong start to the air. You know what? Accurate. No, that feels like an accurate metaphor and encapsulation of 2026 so far.
Pixel pixel. What was the ad for? You We could You can let us know in a second. I just need to know what the 5-second before the ball dropped because they're at least 15 seconds,
right?
Right.
Yeah.
Or no, they can be five, I guess. I don't know. ANYWAY, HOW WAS EVERYONE?
FIVE. AND NOW A WORD FROM our sponsors. Two. [laughter] One.
Happy New Year. Um, how was how was everyone's uh holiday? Did people have an okay time overall? I I had a a fine time. Will, how was yours?
It wasn't the break I wanted, Matt.

Yeah. No, that's relatable. I um so I lost my voice the
day after we took to break
and I lost my voice for the entire first week of break. I essentially couldn't talk above a whisper
for all of Christmas and most of that entire week. Um so that was that was super not great. Uh it was it was not fun. So but but but on the plus side I got it out of my system and now you all get to put up with my annoying voice even more. So, good things. Good thing. Not the way we want to spend break, but sometimes the way we need to spend break is on vocal rest.
Yeah. Yeah. I I um mine was somewhat restful as well. I was home in New Hampshire. Actually, Ooh. Ooh. Actually, my mother watches this show from time to time. So, if you're watching, hi, Mom. Uh, I was told uh very firmly by the woman who gave birth to me that I needed to for this episode only, for the first

episode of Games for Breakfast for 2026, I needed to not use the void mug because I got a new mug for Christmas to represent represent my my home state. And uh and this is it. [laughter] So, we'll be drinking out of this New Hampshire's quaint mug
with a little cabin in the woods with a giant chimney.
Uh, this will be what I am drinking out of today. So, mom, if you're watching, that that we're getting it done.
Yeah. Uh, yeah. So, um, other than that, by the way, it was it was pretty good. I got to play games with friends. I didn't get to play the games I thought I would because the games the games I thought I was going to play involved talking a lot more. And what ended up happening is um I know a whole pe b bunch of people who got who were getting into Warframe for the first time. So I ended up dusting off the Warframe knowledge and people were like all right well I know you've played too much of this game and I'm

like that's correct. Like how does this work? And I'm like I'm so
glad you asked. Let me explain.
I miss Warframe. I miss
having the time for Warframe. It was It was You know, if you missed Warframe, I have such good news for you, Matt.
It's still the framiest Warframe that could possibly be.
It's still Warframe.
It hasn't changed at all except in all the ways that it's changed ever so slightly for the better. Um, but that was fun and interesting. Um, and other than that, it was a large amount of trying to make sure that I could come back uh today and have a voice. um and be ready to go. We've we've both got I think though as a result of the break a lot of ideas.
Um and that's
I feel like there's some amount of it's a new year so we're going to try a new thing. No chat, that's not that's not how this I don't think that's how it works for me. I can't speak for Matt.

The reason that I always come back from the break and have ideas isn't because it's 2026. It's because I got to sleep for two weeks straight and emerged as if from a fever dream with like a fully formed idea for something stupid and entertaining
and now I get to do that thing, right? It has nothing to do with like new year new shows or new year new plans. No, no, it's we took a break.
I just Yeah, I I didn't get to play as many games as I would like to. Actually, Medusa, to your point, uh no, although I do own a physical cartridge of Hades 2 now, I did not get to start it. I ended up only having time like very early or very late in the evening to play other than when I played we we streamed uh some VR pools uh the liinal space game uh that's basically like a big maze once over the break on Twitch. Um but whenever I only have like oh it's midnight I I don't want to start a new game at midnight when I I'll run a I'll do a night rain run or something but

like I I keep going back to the comfort stuff. I did start Dispatch which is excellent as everyone knows. Uh, Twilight for Boys.
I was gonna say, Matt, is it Twilight for boys?
Yeah, thousand% it is. Thousand% of
So, by the way, by the way, I I I would like to,
but also there's nothing wrong with that,
right? I would also like to lob the following into chat. So is Ready Player One. Deal with it. Ready Player One is just Twilight for Nerds. There's nothing wrong with that. It could be
It also doesn't hold up as well as the Well, the movie I never really liked. The book uh I've I've gone back and I'm like, "Huh?" Uh, but maybe that's some separating art from artist thing. I have no idea.
Yeah.
Regardless, it was a good break. It was fine. It was nice. I'm happy to be back.
Um, we do have a lot to talk about today.
Yeah.
Should we jump in to the thing? Should Are we jumping in with what Tingle warned us about in the thumbnail?
I uh Yes, we can do that first and I will rearrange these uh things.
Oh, no. We don't have to.

No, no, no. It's a good idea. You're right. We should um I just have to uh rearrange a thing real quick. Hold on one second. One second.
Pixel. That's interesting. I I actually did I I heard it it's turned itself around a little bit.
Uh
also agreed. Uh
I will fight you, but like uh Okay.
You you both fight me and Jackstein Steve.
Okay. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Do you mean the Twilight novel or the Twilight series? Because I feel like the novel I agree with you, but the series in my opinion overstays its welcome by one book. [clears throat]
And
I will say the totality of the media based around both properties, I will still give it to Twilight.
I think the movie the Twilight movies are way better. Like that's not a contest. Especially because they abs like far greater to a far greater extent

than most other literary adaptations. Not only does the Ready Player One movie not live up to the mental idea, but so grotesqually misses so much of the point that like it is not even in the same game as the point of the Anyway,
that's fair. That's fair. Sorry, Blazing mentioned Pistol Whip on PSVR 2 and I just couldn't stop.
Right. Because every time you mentioned Pistol Whip, I hear Pistol Whip and then the
Right. Yeah.
Uh God, that game's so good.
If you've never if you own a VR headset and you haven't played Pistol Whip, play Pistol Whip. In my experience and opinion, a superior VR rhythm game to Beat Saber. Uh if you're playing vanilla, if you're playing modded, Beat Saber is way better.
Sure. But that's because modded.
Uh, okay.
All right. Hold on, spider monkeys. Hold on tight. That's a line from Twilight.

Uh oh. Yeah, you can mess on Blue Sky. That was where I WAS GOING, BUT HEY, THERE IT IS.
SO,
WILL, why are these things on our screen right now?
Because it's the 5th of January, Matt.
Happy the fifth day. Dawn of
Dawn of the Fifth Day. So, we made it five days into 2026 and we're already getting massive price increases on hardware. Um, this we're we're leading with the raw ally story because that's confirmed and uh had an announcement that was in English uh or at least more firmly translated. We'll talk about the second part of this in a second, but ASUS announced, and I will quote from their um announcement here,
uh that do I have it?
Do you?
Yeah. Um the [laughter]

it's it's a little it's a little corporate buzzword. Um but they are undergoing a strategic price adjustment um which reflect shifts in capacity allocation by upstream suppliers, higher investment costs for advanced manufacturing processes and structural supply graphs created by rising AI compute demand. Thanks. I hate it. Um, the ROG Ally is uh going to be getting a price hike on top of its already thousand price, which means this is unaffordable. Like, it it was already barely affordable for its target audience and now it is, in my opinion, point blank unaffordable. It's just not
like [clears throat] unless you're If you have stupid money, then like it was always affordable for you. But for

like anyone who's reasonably in a world where they need to consider their budget before they buy a device,
how can you justify more than $1,000 for this? Unless it's your primary computing device, at which point why don't you own a Steam Deck?
Listen, I the use case is is is sort of neither here or there. What what what bugs me about this is the the Ally was always something that was going to be like a tertiary system with a high price for people that want have a very specific need. And look, I uh not the same price point, but like we were just talking about PSVR 2. That's sort of a same thing in the same hardware space, right? It's a very specific thing with a high price point for a specific use case. Uh the Portal back in the day, although the Portal now for, you know, with the cloud gaming, if you want to have a streaming service, the PlayStation Portal, you could actually kind of do it fairly cheaply. What do you got? What are you laughing?
Oh boy, I can't wait to need a loan to

buy new gaming tech and have that loan. Did I buy an AI, which is powered by the same component I want to buy?
That's pretty tight. Almost watchable. Um,
hey, for for for any question, don't don't mind me. I'm just going to go look up how to paint a mirror black. It's fine. It's fine.
I guess my point actually it's it's really uh Watchable's point as well is we are we are now on we're beyond the precipice. We're kind of just in the sort of freefall of like hey we're going to utilize all these things you used to buy to do this thing we want to sell you that you don't want to buy. And it keeps leading me to believe like what what is this ubiquitous product or subscription service using AI that they think is going to be like the the bellweather the thing that like just knocks us over and is like yes absolutely I need this because I I don't

I'm trying to I'm trying to figure out what that could be that is justifying literally making every nearly soon so many pieces of hardware n unaffordable,
right? And and and in addition to that, um not only does it need to be indispensable, right? Not only does it need to be ubiquitously indispensable, how in the world are they going to make back the money that has been spent investing in this bubble, right? because it they cannot possibly hope to both achieve market saturation and make back the per capita cost of the power and computing requirements of running all of these data centers.
Is there a permanence thing? Follow me here. Cuz if there are people with far more uh uh financially savvy brains than mwah. However, what if you know how we always make the joke like haha it's all made up. these numbers are fake and

whatever because they are they're only real because we believe them,
right?
What if there's an actual sort of like darker truth to that silly joke?
Like oh spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure, right? Well, they did of course, but also that's not real. What is real? Having the ability for people to keep drip feeding you currency forever. Like there's a permanence to that so long as the sit the systems are still in place. Like does that like they'll never make back the num the number they spent but knowing that when you get so high up it is all just sort of hypothetical anyway. Like is that the is that the I'm probably forgetting something very important here.
No, you're not. There there is um Okay. So, you ever you ever play that game with like any group of theater kids or youth group or like any group of friends

when you were younger where you get enough people to all sit in a circle where you all stay in a circle and then everybody faces the person in front of them in the circle and then everyone simultaneously sits down on the knees of the person behind them.
No, but I get what you're saying,
right? So it works because all of the forces cancel out and everyone is sitting and no one feels an undue amount of load and everyone can sit down, right? Because the circle is big enough, right? Okay, that's what's happening with a lot of the AI companies,
right? and and Nvidia is part of this and AMD is part of this and there's just a bunch of companies and we're not going to go deep into this and you can look it all up, but essentially they're passing the same giant slug of theoretical cash around in a big circle um without actually like needing to pony up because they're paying each other with debt. It's weird, but it's that right for currency. Um, and so I think you're

right to some extent like the and and I think for the average consumer none of the things that AI has done or will do is going to be as longun impactful to their lives as the ripple effect that it has on other parts of the economy, right? because computing is getting more expensive and also simultaneously is as necessary as it could possibly be for your day-to-day life, right? Um I saw an article over break that um one of the Nordic countries is no longer using no longer has a physical post office because their entire government infrastructure is now all digital. Okay,
there's no physical infrastructure anymore, which is bananas, right? Like if we're heading in that direction, it's becoming more and more necessary that you have access to the internet. Now, I'm not saying you're going to access it through a rag ally, but this is just a

very big sticker price item where we can see
what if we ran the entire GDP of a small country off of a rag ally.
Pretty soon, the rag ally is going to cost the entire GDP of a small country. So probably
um
well here's hoping that uh the rag ally continues its meteoric or me medium rise somewhat okay rise good good good good selling thing please
and the horrible thing is from most of what I've heard it's a good device
that's the other thing like
it's not trash right if it were trash we'd be making fun OF IT, BUT IT'S ACTUALLY like a thing that's cool to have. It's just too expensive.
You just can't have one now,
right? Yeah.
What was was the tin foil hat thing you were talking about before the show, Will, what we're talking about next, or is that sort of playing into this story?
It's It's kind of in the same vein. So,

the other part of this, and this one is I'm not going to say a little thinner, but I'm finding a little weirder. I'm having a little harder time finding a reliable translation because the um all the I want to be very clear about this. All of the reporting on the next story is all, as far as I can tell, sourced back to one article by Nus, um, which is a uh, Korean um, website. Okay. So, every
one singular website,
one singular website that that is that is basing this report on Korean reporting, right? But every all of the English language reporting I can find is going back to that. So, I just want to issue that disclaimer because what Nucus is reporting is that early in 2026,

both AMD and Nvidia are looking at significant price increases on their cards, making the RTX 5090, which is currently it's like $2,000 MSRP, have a MS SRP of not two, not three, nor four, but $5,000 American dollar by the end of 2026.
And why, Will, why would they do that? That's such a great question, Matt, that I'm going to need to take a deep breath before I answer off the cuff with the thing that first comes to mind. Um, the answer is uh because they can.

And they want to make more money off the consumer. And then was was that article the one with the sec the secondary tinfoil hat element of
the the the tinfoil hat that's going around with a lot of this is that um one of the reasons that Nvidia is so willing to raise the price is that they want people to pay for their online gaming game streaming subscription service. I think that that is not likely their first order reason. I think it is a knock-on benefit for Nvidia.
That makes the most sense.
But I think they honestly believe and understand that there are absolutely gamers who make entirely too much money and have no common sense. And I know that these people exist, by the way, because I've sold them Pokemon cards um uh who will just buy these at MSRP

regardless of what the MSRP is because they want the shiny newest thing. Now, I also want to be incredibly absurdly completely clear. Zero gamers need a 5090.
No,
you probably don't need a 40 series. You probably could get by just fine with a 30 series if you could find one.
Right.
Is that what I'm on? I think that's what I'm on.
I think you're on a 30 series. I'm on two 40 series.
I think I'm on a 3090.
Was that a thing?
Yeah.
Am I making up numbers?
No, I think that's right.
It's been a minute since I've had to build a PC.
Yeah. Right. Uh, mercifully. Hope Let's hope that that sticks around for a long time.
Yeah.
Um, [laughter] like like this one.
I need [snorts] a 5090. That's a kind of car, right? That's something I can drive to work.
I mean, if you work from home, then yes.
Right. So, like it this is sort of like a sobering thought

to go into 2026 on, right? that like there are two sides to gaming, right? And and we've talked a lot about game prices, like the price of the per game. Yes. Right. How what it costs to make a game. Jeff and I have talked about why it's impossible to like accurately kickstart a video game right now um without external funding and without like a whole bunch of other stuff. As by the way, this also didn't make the cut because I didn't think it was super uh relevant, but Star Citizen just passed a billion with a B dollars of crowdsource funding without delivering a finished product. Star Citizen,
it's a meme now, right? Like that is literally why people are just dumping money into
Yeah. Right. Star Citizens made a billion dollars of crowdsource funding. Wild. Um
Right. cost of the cost. Yeah, we've talked

about the cost of games, right?
But sort of underpinning that is access to gaming hardware, right?
And while the consoles the consoles sort of did this at the end of 2025 and PC gamers weren't the smugg, but there was an era of well that's okay, we'll deal with it and most of us will be fine. And now it's coming for PC gamers. Both with the RAM price increase that we saw at the end of last year and now with graphics cards. It's kind of scary, right? This is a kind of scary thing where a lot more people are just going to get priced out of playing games.
Someone someone brought up the the the Steam Machine and like what this could mean for prices for it, etc. You know what's kind of interesting? Valve has an opportunity with the literal money that they print to do something um kind of again I'm not a financial adviser so Gabin if you're

listening you know take this with a with a grain of uh salt but consoles in general are usually sold at a markdown like or at a at a loss rate right because you want to get your install base in and uh you want to make sure that you know people it lasts for a long time. You want to get as many into people's hands as possible so that manufacturers of games can sell their games. Some of them are yours
and you get a cut of that, etc. Right. Okay. They have the library already and they want a place where it's easy for people to continue to buy things from them. I could see a world where the Steam machine, maybe like the lowest um hardware version of it, I'm sure there's going to be two or three of them, where the lowest one is so subsidized where it's still like a $500 box like because you could also, this sucks, but this we've seen this also works. Say there's three tiers of power on the Steam

machine, right? If you made the lowest one 500 and the largest one 2,000. Now, I'm not saying that the value proposition of the power you'd get for the 2,000 would be worth the the $2,000 would be worth it, but that's the same kind of like incremental nonsense that Apple does and people eat it up for the people that want the big, strongest, dumbest, most RAM you can't swap out on a Mac laptop, right? Like so like they could like Valve is in a position where because they have the entire distribution system of the largest online like sort of place for games to be sold. They could have their cake and sort of eat it too. It seems they could do both. They could have the high-end luxury thing that is too expensive and the thing that is vastly cheaper than they should be selling it for to get more installed base in beyond people that especially because like we brought up before with the Steam machine, we're getting to the the part of the cycle

where people might, if this price hike wasn't already happening, start thinking about upgrading pieces of or their entire PCs.
Right. Anyway, it's an interesting, weird, terrible time, and I'm curious how some of the larger players are going to be maneuvering through it.
Yeah. Um, and I speak now, of course, to our PC gaming audience, which I I actually am kind of interested, chat, by show of hands or
Can we put a poll? Can we put a poll?
Is that possible?
Uh, yes, but I can't do it ACROSS BOTH PLATFORMS.
NO. [screaming] OKAY, EVERYONE, JUST SAY THE THING AND we'll count them very quick.
My show of hands are hype emotes. How many people in here would consider themselves primarily a PC gamer of some description? Laptop, PC, Steam Deck.
Use the beach ball. Use the beach ball for that. So, we're going to do a different one for the other ones.
Uh
or Yeah, I would. We'll count these two.
Yeah, I did. Hands are hypes.
Yeah. Okay. So, it's it's it's a lot of

people, right?
PC PC PC. Yeah,
we're looking at 20, 30, 40.
Yeah, it it's it's it's a lot.
We'll wait for these to come in. Yeah, we're easily at 50.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even more.
Even more than that. Yeah.
So,
so you know, now once these are finished coming through, I also want to ask the other question. I don't want to do it yet cuz I want to like separate it ever so slightly. Yeah.
But I I imagine it's going to be less, right? Like
Yeah. Yeah. because uh and and for those people while we're while we're waiting for everyone to to get to their keyboard and click into chat and chime in um consider there's sort of a weird thing, right, where if you're thinking about upgrades, there is an impulse to fire it off now before it gets worse. And I'm not telling you that's not an understandable impulse. I don't know what the future holds, but if you haven't been thinking about what

upgrading your PC would look like, consider what that path forward looks like right now, right? And obviously make smart economic decisions. Don't like go out and rush buy things. Don't do anything silly. You need both your kidneys. I promise. Um, but have that in mind, right? Because console gamers kind of get this one for free, right? Someone is a PlayStation gamer. What's their upgrade path look like? Well, at some point I'll probably get the PlayStation 6.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's it. That's their upgrade path. Now, will the PlayStation 6 cost an arm, a leg, your first born, their arm, their leg, and your spouse's arm and leg? Probably, right? But that is the path forward for them, right? PC's path is a little more nebulous because it's do I replace components? Do I build a new PC? What do I actually need to do to upgrade my rig? And that I think is part of the reason that this like whole individual

components are getting more expensive thing feels kind of doomerish for PC gamers personally.
Sure.
Um, so that's sort of a thing I wanted to bring up and put in people's mind is what is the path forward for you personally for the thing that you need to upgrade your PC?
Yeah. Now, let's do real quick. Let's do a show of any emote you want cuz it's fair. uh you know separated enough for people that consider themselves uh not I know we all span the the gamut uh but that are more of console gamers than PC gamers
primarily console
primarily console that is and that's not I would like to say that that I don't count the steam deck as that I count steam deck as PC
yeah Steam Deck is PC I will however throw in I will also count um mobile devices
if you're mobile in there too
because they're because they're consoles right how many of you are primarily Um, some kind of console, some kind of mobile device gamers,
Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, uh,
Android, iOS, any emote, just just some

emote spam. If if you are one of If you are one such,
any emote, any emote spam will do.
Oh my gosh, that's such a cute emote. What? What? What is that?
Yeah. What is that?
What is that dolphin? Hold on, chat.
Is that the one from Little Nerd Annie?
Yeah, this one. That's so cute. I don't even know what that emote is and I love it.
I love it. Um, YouTube has some cool defaults.
So, it's funny like obviously there's a bunch of people that are saying that they're console here too, but it's at least right now and we'll wait for the numbers to come in. This is easily like a sixth or a fifth of the people that were on PC.
Yeah.
Or that play majority the majority of it on PC. And and that's and by the way, that is not representative of gaming as a whole, but it is representative of our audience when we're talking to you all about these things, right? Um, and we're both, and I think that makes sense, right? We're both
at this point, Matt's more balanced than I am. I'm almost 100%. Like, I played

some Pokemonite when I was feeling down, right? Because I can play Pokemonite from bed on my Switch, too. And then I got tired of it because Pokemonite has mobile interface problems. Yeah.
Um,
yeah.
I feel like um I used to be so much more um console. I feel like I'm probably 50/50 now. Uh but even like again, everyone's thing is sort of different, right? Like I play I have Night Rain on both PS5 and and PC, but most of my friends who play Night Rain are on PC at this point. So I've stopped playing it there. On the flip side, uh my buddy Nick, uh even tonight, he messaged me yesterday because he very rarely has time to play games. He's like, "Yo, he he calls it literally the Ready Player One reference." He goes, "Yo, you want to jump in the Oasis tonight?" He calls GTA Online the Oasis.
Sure. And and uh and I was like, "Yeah." Like, cuz I haven't done that in a long

time. So, I have friends that play different games on different things. Um, but it is interesting and it's always good to see what the community here on both Twitch and YouTube, Brad and Janet and of course Rocky over on Nebula. You can comment, you can message us on Blue Sky and let us know. You you can vote your console and PC uh andor PC uh allegiances. Also, side note, I take back the word allegiances. It's just what you use primarily. I think all of us kind of dance around where we can what we're using for what game when based on what's going on in our lives. And prices are things that often times do drive us towards specific ways that we play games. And I think in 2026, sadly, we are going to see a lot of that be the case.
Yep.
For various reasons, we have beaten to death uh like a horse which does not live. [laughter]
Oh, that got me. [snorts] Oh, all right. Let's move on to another story.
Happy 2026, everybody. So, um, now for

some happier stuff. So, [laughter] in light of all of that just doom and gloom in 2026, we did want to start the year off with some gaming resolutions, things that we're working on because last year, it was kind of interesting. I actually I I have a specific reason for this, and I don't think I explained it very well to Matt, if at all. Um, N didn't really.
No, it's okay. Okay. So,
did I answer mine right?
Yeah, you did. You did great. Okay, great.
When we did the uh co-stream for the game awards last year. [laughter]
Sorry.
You good?
It's just funny. [laughter]
It's correct.
Correct. That That is the joke.
Um uh some of these are good. Anyway,
technically this is an aspect ratio. I'm just I'm just throwing it out there, but I get it.

Okay. Um uh someone asked during the uh during our game awards stream to hear more about what we do as gamers because you all get this like snapshot. You get more gaming from me, but it's not the games I play in my free time. It's the games that I'm playing to like for your entertainment or for analysis or to uh learn something or to review, right? Those aren't necessarily the games I play in my free time. So, I thought it would be a cool way to see a little bit into our minds as gamers uh what our 2026 gaming resolutions are and why they're not 4K.
I was going to get to the joke eventually, but chat me too cuz Chad's funnier than me.
Also, Aquasake brings up a really good one that I know a lot of people uh struggle with. Haven't thought of it since I don't do resolutions, but I guess my resolution is to figure out a way to game after a second kid at the end of this month. First of all, congratulations. Second of all, yeah, that's a tough one, right? like uh you have to there's a lot of different ways you and your partner and your family have to prioritize to make the thing

that's also important to you as well be able to be done and uh it's doable. Absolutely. It's just uh figuring that that balance out is always difficult. So I wish you luck.
Yeah. Um so uh I figure we can rally these. So, my my top resolution for 2026 um is I would like to be in the top 1% of Final Fantasy 14 players for achievements completed.
How where are you now?
I am currently top 2%. Um there are about 1700 players between me and top 1%. Um, of course, that's a nonlinear thing. Uh the top player in the world has about 30,000 achievement points and I have about 20,000 achievement points. Um so I've got, you know, some ground to catch up and some stuff to work on. But in the background, that is one of the things that I work on regularly. Um is cleaning up old achievements, going through doing stuff. Um uh because they're all evergreen. Uh if you're a 14 player,

lots of ARR stuff. There's so many achievements in AR that nobody ever gets, right? There's like achievements for every crafter and gatherer for ARR stuff that are very annoying to get. So, I throw on a movie or I throw on someone else's stream or I throw on a YouTube video and I do those um in my free time and that's that's my goal. Um uh weirdly, uh I do not have some fishing to do um for the most part. I have a few fishing achievements left, but the majority of them are not fishing achievements because I've already done those. Sorry, llo was scratching at the door. I think he had a resolution and it was literally just to lick my face. That doesn't have anything to do with gaming, buddy. You know, so maybe maybe we should
we should wait. Are you sleepy?
Are you He's not normally just just sort of like chill, which is which is strange. Um that's a good resolution. So, how long do you think will that's going to take you? most of the year probably in um with I'm not

I'm not like logging on to 14 as soon as I finish work and then like grinding away at these. These are like things that I'll plink at when I want to cuz I find that grinding away constantly every day is a really great way to burn out. It's just a fascinatingly quick way to just burn out entirely on a game. And I like 14 and I want to keep with it. And Savage drops tomorrow, so that'll be fun. The new the new uh hardest raid tier uh drops tomorrow. And uh I'm going to fly into party finder and smash my face to the first fight. It'll be good.
There you go. Lasso has gone completely limp in my arms.
Yeah. No, you're stuck with him now. I don't know why you picked him up and expected to not be this is where you are for the rest of the show.
But this is where you are for the rest of the show.
Um I will say I I'll go to mine now. Here, Leslie. I'm going to put you down so you can go under the desk. Um mine would be um something that I I found last year I didn't do a lot and

that is finish games. I I don't have to 100% them. I don't have to platinum them. I don't have to do any of that. But like I think finishing a game on my own terms of what that means for the game and like that could just mean roll credits, right? Like, but often times in the type of games I play, that's not really the the thing. Like, for instance, I just And oh, and also, I'm going to keep track of them. I know other people do this of games they've they've rolled credits on in a year. I never do it. Um, and I rolled credits on blueprints on the second. Lowi wants out. Hold up.
Get out of here, bud. Good visit. Um, so I've already done one, right? Uh, I know that there's tons more to do in blueprints. I was going to say, which time did you roll credits?
Well, you know what's funny? Uh, not to get too into it, but I I did the shrine on the run where I won. Or is that the one where for the next however many uh you can start uh in your draft pool, you

can start with the with the room that you uh ended your day on.
Yes.
Cool. So, I beat it on that. So then I opened the little garage thing, the little side room on the side and it was
the um vestibule
and then I went and found a secret thing in the back and did a bunch of stuff. So like I've done a lot of like weird like sideways broken stuff in it. Anyway, I've only scratched the surface, but I got credits on it and I'm counting that as a win. I'm going to keep picking away at it, of course, but like I would count Night Rain as a win when I've cleared all the remembrances. I have all the achievements and stuff too, but that's what I consider beating all the like just doing all the content, right? I also just want to beat a game. I just started and we might be streaming some of it on Thursday. Uh Dragon Warrior 1 and two uh remake uh 2D remake or whatever. Um I just want to finish games because I

feel like I pick up a lot and I don't I don't stop them. I don't I don't complete them at a at a at a at a pace that I am comfortable with. So, that is something I'm going to actually try to make space for. Um, yeah.
Cool.
Give it the old the old out of college for far too many years try.
Uh, by the way, uh, not sponsored. I use Backlogged for that.
Yeah,
I'll I'll send you a link to it when we're done. Um, I'm actually working on setting it up so that I have an easy place to point people when they're like, "Well, what have you played?" That's a great question. I don't remember. Yeah. So, I'm working on that. Um, uh, my next one, I would like to go to all seven Magic Pre-releases this year.
There's seven.
There's seven. They're coming out with seven sets. But there there's a reason. Um,
why didn't we talk about that for the most financially detrimental thing in 2026?
We talked about it last year.
Yeah, you're fair.
We talked about it last year when they announced it. Um, the reason I want to

go to all of them is not because I'm particularly excited for all of them. Look at you Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle set. Not super excited, but I am excited to play more Magic in person with people because I feel like one of my sort of um it's very easy for me to be a little joyless about Magic when the main place I play is arena and I lose the gathering part, right? This is a common thing that happens with with Magic players is that there's just magic and there's no gathering. Um and I think for a lot of us, one of the big things you can do to repair that is go play games with people. So, I'm trying to find local community and go to pre-releases and talk to people and hang out and do those things as a more social event, right? Because pre-releases, I don't really care whether I win. I would like to win because I get more stuff if I win. Sure.
But like that's not the point. And so much like the it's kind of weird. The

cards aren't almost even the point. It's just a really great excuse to like go hang out with a bunch of nerds and talk.
So, I want I want to do all this.
That's the only time I even engage in magic is it cons is it paxes. Like I'll play with Jasmine or Sephy or or any group any people that are out there like just because I and I love that. But it also like I would there's plenty of places in New York to go to do this. I'm not My favorite thing is in person magic. It's also the hardest thing to do. So, I think it's also kind of a good resolution to to set.
Yeah.
Uh, Glom, I I do want to comment back to my last one if I could. Did I click it right? I did. Is it your fault that you don't finish games or is it the game's fault for not maintaining a good level of engagement throughout? Could be either. I would probably pause it though. It's probably more my fault than the game's fault. Uh, I normally don't pick up like look, we're all surprised sometimes and we buy a game, we're like gh. And we like I wouldn't have a

problem not finishing a game in that respect. These are games that like I know I really like um and I want to continue and beat.
Yeah.
The there's also many games that I've sort of tried that are like, you know, more industry darling stuff that I don't click with and I won't finish, you know. Um, but
I I think it's also really hard because um content games get stale like in terms of content, right? So like here's a great example. We've both we both have taken far longer to play Elden Ring on stream
Yeah.
than Elden Ring lasts as a piece of content. So, there's like this weird tension between like, do I finish that game on stream or do I um do I leave it? Like, how do I do that? Right. So, there there's this weird um content creator relationship with some games that we

have. That's part of this whole dilemma.
Yeah. Right.
Well, also, oopsie even brings up could be depression. I have that issue where everything is the best games I end up getting it bland fast. It could be, but I don't think that's I don't think that's uh my case either. Like again, I go back to and I picked Awaited Over Break. Final Fantasy 7 uh Rebirth. I love that game. I love all the dumb stuff. I love all the filler. I just don't have time to do it. I I'm still in the coral region of that game because I want to 100% everything because I enjoy it. I just don't I don't prioritize it because I have work, you know, coming up or family or I'm planning a wedding or I'm running two D and D games. Like there's just it's it's it's a lot. Yeah. Um, so I want to try to figure out ways another thing and this sorry I know we're talking about this for a long time but this sort of plays into the resolution. It also might be um not just starting the game that is in the current discussion cycle when it is. I think will you touched on that with your sort

of addendum to my thing but like I go back to Hades 2. Hades 2 is kind of out of discuss out of discussion at this point and I haven't played it yet. Y
and I'm fine with that. But like the draw for me to start it even if I knew I wouldn't finish it when people were talking about it was grand.
Yeah.
But then there's games like Silkong that I know I started when the hype was out, but I also knew I would never finish while the hype was I didn't finish Hollow Knight till like five years after it was out or something like that. So
I fun fun reminder. I bounced on Hollow Night the first time and I had to go back for stream years later
and actually like beat the game. Yeah,
which is great.
Anyway, uh yeah, the uh so sorry we kind of jumped back. Uh your pre-release plan is a good one. I wish you uh luck and I wish your wallet patience.
Uh I budgeted for the pre-releases. Yeah.
Um because like that's probably the only stuff I'm going to be getting from the

at least two of the sets this year. There's a Marvel set and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle set. That's probably all of it I'm getting. It's probably all I'm getting of the Hobbit set, too, because I did not like The Hobbit movies at all. And my hope is that they're based on the book and not the movies. But I'm worried.
We'll see.
I'm kind of worried. Anyway,
um my next one is a kind of a simple one. Uh but it falls into my finish more games. I need to platinum returnal before Sorrowos comes out. Um, I'll probably do some of that on stream just to keep me honest and and and make it both content and a thing that I like doing. U, so the adventures of Shotgun Chan will Shotgun Chen will return in Avengers Doomsday. Um, the I just want to platinum that game so bad. And it's it's funny because like I'm at the point now where it is just randomness. Mhm.
Uh and uh but the game is fun and I'll

very much enjoy it. So that'll be a good one to uh roll in true full credits on in 2026.
Yeah. Um okay, my my last one I guess I have two under other stuff. Um but one one of my uh big ones is to approach new games with more optimism. Your boy's been jaded. I have become increasingly cynical as in part from staring too closely and in part from um the level of scrutiny we are forced to put games under right now because of the increasing amount of like interesting times that the gaming industry is in. Right? I would I I know that I have become really cynical about games and I am trying very hard to repair that. So I would like to approach games with more optimism, approach new

experiences with more devivve more um this is going to be good. this is art that someone made and loved for a reason as like a core belief going in and wait for the game to disappoint me rather than going in with the cynical attitude that of course the game is going to disappoint me because so many have um
that's hard man it's real tough and and I want to I I also want to reset her just just for a second. This is not normal. [laughter]
This is a content creator thing. um I think for me um and so I really after this show over on Twitch, we're actually going to be going through and looking for the next game for a let's play and we're going to talk about that process a bit. But my goal is to approach things with more optimism in kind of a hope punk sort of way because I think that that's really important and it's really important to model that behavior in gaming when we're talking about $5,000 graphics cards. when we're talking about

things, right? We're going to play more games that run on a potato. We're going to play more games that are made by indie devs. We're going to play more things that try and make us feel good things as the world does world things around us. Again, if you're watching this later on YouTube in the VOD, fifth, it's the 5th of January. We're having a year already.
We are having a year already. Um, sort of uh piggybacking off of that uh ever so slightly. Um, this one's a bit of a more pie in the sky thing that I like the My last one is more of a I'm going to say it out loud in hopes that it kind of uh makes me do it or makes it sort of come true. Um, I would like to in 2026 start at some point and I don't know how this will happen or or the mechanics of which that it could uh but saying it is always the sort of first step. I would like to find a way to create uh through the EC lens uh but maybe over on Nebula,

maybe somewhere else, I don't know. Uh an actual play show that fills a hole in the market. Uh I have been along with some some friends kind of picking away at what that could be um for a long time and we're getting we're getting places and we don't have the idea yet. I don't want to actually just like go do like this is the sad part. All of my resolutions kind of come back to like time management, right? Cuz like it there's just too much going on all the time. And while I would love to just put on an actual play show that like didn't actually sustain itself monetarily, that is not in the cards for what I have time to actually put effort into. So, uh there might be some streams even on Twitch or something like that where we sort of brainstorm what things like that people what shows people are watching. We make some chart. We almost treat it like a will even like a design clubesque discussion before you actually do

something. But, uh, there's some stuff sort of so my rough ideas in the works. And I'm actually basing a lot of my my research and structuring of wanting this to happen uh around the the the episode of designing a game you'll actually make that James wrote back in August I think on EC August or September because that teaches a lot of lessons in like product management or product formulation that you'll actually complete as opposed to just uh you know either having it be a pipe dreamer forever or and please Don't get me wrong, I love our our charity uh reward actual play streams. I think those are an absolute delight. I would love to design something and run a campaign and something even like and I'm not talking like Critical Role style. I'm talking like, you know, four to six episodes and then see where it goes. You like make sure it is a complete arc that people could enjoy. also that does something that you are not being served

by by people that are better at it and funnier or more emotionally resonant than we are. Like I want to find the things that we are good at that we um that we are I won't say specialists in that what whatever the jiqua as to why you are all here put that into uh uh the format of actual play and make something interesting that hasn't been seen before. So we'll see if I can cross that finish line. But that is something that uh I would like to attempt in the year of some lord 2026.
I think that's good. And of course I'm signed up to produce all of this, right? Like Okay, cool. Great. Awesome. Cuz Matt Matt mentioned this and I immediately went I can do production stuff, which is one of my favorite parts, right? I I like playing uh role playing games in theory way more than playing role playing games. I love producing role playing game shows. It's a lot of fun. So very much looking forward to um and in the same vein as Matt's my last one um is that I'd like to learn more of a genre I have no

experience with. Um and that might be there are a couple of options for that. I think for my brain fighting games is probably the top OF IT.
LET'S GO. UM, but I would I would I've uh downcheed a couple of games in the past for not having experience with it and I would like to broaden my understanding if not my skill base at other games. I would like to become competent, not good, competent at other genres of game because I think that's important because we're we're doing an EC episode that's based largely on Jeff and Mai's competence with a particular subgenre of games.
It's a doozy, chat. We recorded it before uh before break and we've been working on some stuff.
We're taking some swings with EC this year, I think. Uh so that is going to depend on how many games I can become competent with and understand right and so that's my goal right is to do more of

that. So um yeah those those are our resolutions.
Those are our resolutions.
And now a word from our fake sponsors. We're going to do fake ads while Twitch chat gets real ads to keep our pre-rolls turned off. Um, so please uh do not adjust your viewing device as Matt and I attempt to sell you things you cannot buy while Twitch chat gets ad for things you can buy. Ready? Okay,
will you take the first one cuz I'm dealing with a minor thing for cat right now.
Sure,
go for it. Oh, I have to the button.
You have to take the button. Hi everyone, Will from Credits here. Here to sell you on the concept of own your own soundboard. That's right. Are you tired of not being able to play the music for your own bit that you get to start off because you're the one who looks at the timer for when you need to do the bit? Well, consider actually setting up your own soundboard cuz like you have a soundboard, but you don't use

it. So, you don't have the stuff set up to do your own background music for the bit about ads. So, maybe you should fully use the things that you already have um to do that. And that way you'll be able to do the bit that you actually planned on doing in your head but have now forgotten because you got so deep in the bit about doing soundboard stuff that you can't remember what you were going to do in the first place.
I think that's a great move. I think that would be a lovely move um to do.
Um okay. Yeah. No, that's that's a great one. Hey everyone, Matt from Extra Credits here giving you uh the option of never allowing your co-host to get their own soundboard. And you might be saying, Matt, how could I possibly as a person wanting to buy a fake product ever do that? Well, let me tell you exactly how it's going to work. First, there's going to be this bubble of AI technology that drives the cost of every piece of technology through the roof. When that

happens, it's inevitably going to get to soundboards. So, all you have to do is distract your co-host, in this case, Will, don't tell him, far enough along in the timeline to make sure that he doesn't buy the soundboard so that then you'll always have control to be able to do this. I need you to do this. I need you to do Hi, I'm TB's Matt from Extra. [laughter]
I just need Matt from Extra [laughter] Credit.
Wait. Okay. Okay. Hi, I'm TV's Matt from Extra Credits. I'm here to talk to you today. I can't turn my gaming chair around. Actually, can I? Hold on. Let's see. So, you messed up at school. [laughter]
See, in the past when we've done the folding chair bit, Matt's actually had a

folding chair on hand. And that is not the case today because we planned to do that.
You can't you can't really turn it backwards. You can't do the old Captain America sit.
Uh yeah, chat. Um I have a soundboard. My my um XLR mixer has a soundboard functionality built in. I've just never used it because sound gimmicks aren't normally what I do on stream, but it might be worth broadening that horizon um and doing more things. Uh so I can do
the dawn of the fifth day. So, I think it's time for a soundboard.
Sure.
I have lots of fun stuff on here. Actually, not as much. I had to I had to redo it. You know what I do have though, Will, from fromever ago, which I wouldn't mind doing at some point.
Oh, yeah. We got to go. We got to go trucking.
Truck. Truck. Yeah.
Remember, we are proud graduates of Truck U, where you can go truck yourself.
Home of the fighting trucks. Go trucks.
That's right. All right. Uh let's move on to the slew of news that happened

whilst we were away.
A slew news, a new slew if you will.
The slew of news. The first and foremost of which is that CDPR is going to be spinning off its uh GOG, which is
is it CDP, not CDPR? They're different groups. Like I know that they're reporting this weird, but then every comment I read about this IS LIKE THEY'RE DIFFERENT THINGS. My understanding is that it's CDBR.
Okay.
My help us out here with all due respect to Twitch chat.
They're the worst source of news.
That wasn't Twitch chat. I'm talking about comments on articles.
I know.
Yeah.
What I was going to say is Twitch chat is the worst source of news and a even worse source of news his comments on articles.
Um yeah uh the so regardless GOG is going to be sold to CDPR co-founder uh Maokinsky

Kasinski. My ability to pronounce Eastern European names sucks. I do apologize. Um so uh
Bob got it. This is what it is. Red is the dev studio. CDP is the parent company. Yeah. Um so, uh that means the GOG is changing hands and is going to be it looks like privately singularly owned. Um what this means for GOG is unknown. However, we do have a private functionally singularlyowned company already in that marketplace and that's Valve. Right? Gabin functionally owns Valve. He doesn't actually own Valve, but he functionally owns Valve because it's a private company. He can do whatever he wants. So, it will be interesting to see what happens with GOG as a result of this. I know lots of people are big fans of GOG for their work in games preservation and in DRM free games, both of which I think are

laudable um parts of the ecosystem. But it will be interesting to see what happens to GOG as they move forward with this ownership change.
Yeah.
Yeah. cuz cuz GOG is and and their work in games preservation is is very important. It's also expensive and it's not terribly profitable. Like is that the sort like people are wondering what this is going to to actually do this sale will do, right? Like it I don't I'm not deep enough in this to know like oh is this a good thing or a bad thing?
I think that's a time will tell thing, right? Like as with as with all of these, right? like short of one of our other sales stories.
Yeah.
Which is almost certainly bad. Um this one I'm willing to suspend more judgment on. I do want to see like what changes,
right? Because it could go in a bunch of different directions. It could get run into the ground. It could blossom and flourish and we could have a giant kaiju

battle between Valve and New G. And that would be great. That would be great for the consumer. That would be great for the industry. Let them fight kaiju style while all of us, you know, reap the rewards of a giant kaiju fight.
Is go is GG big enough to even do that?
I'm not talking about like amount of games. I'm talking about like value.
Not yet.
Okay. Again, all all competition would be good. Uh Epic is also not really doing much in that regard, but it's good that they're there. Yeah. Although the I will say between the two, if I had to pick like if I had to rank them, uh my my ordering for me is like Steam, itch, Gogg, Epic, because
as far as what's the ranking system?
Where I would go to look for games?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like because Epic is having some problems with um

to say that Epic's store looks kind of like an AI fueled nightmare version of a Wii games shelf circa the Wii shovelware era.
Uh would be a disservice to Wii shovelware. It does really really really fascinate me that with the amount of money that Fortnite prints, they couldn't like Epic as a company with all the games that they were like giving away and like all this stuff like they couldn't they couldn't really nail down like a true strong foothold over the over years like
and it and it it's worrisome because it feels like are they is is that company does Epic have as much money as it does only because at this point they lucked into the being the pro not progenitor but the

most popular and famous and uh IP ubiquitous battle royale in history. Like
I'm not saying that's no slight to like the development prowess of that game and the people that work on it. It's it's a phenom for a reason, but like you can't take that success and hire people who understand essentially digital commerce enough to to make something that like people want to go to. Like for whatever reason, Steam is an exciting place to go.
So, as a reminder,
uh and Unreal and royalty licenses, etc. Yeah.
Yeah. Um, uh, Amazon couldn't do it and Amazon has even more money than Epic,
but Amazon, this is the thing, Amazon is too big of a ship to do it. Like, unless you have a visionary that actually cares and enough uh, corporate power to do an actual carveout to keep a lot of fingers out of a lot of pies that don't need to be there, they'll never do it. Like,

it's it's not that they don't have the power to be able to. It's their management style and how their company is run and the size of it that makes it so they can't. Right. I would say that Epic is much smaller than Amazon and therefore and their their whole thing is games and game engines. So, like now that doesn't make you a, you know, a a worldass e-commerce site designer, but it feels like
you they have a cleaner chance at getting through corpo red tape and hiring people that could design some like again I think Steam is a great platform because it's kind of it's no frills in the right way. Like I get mad at the layout and the design of like friend lists and stuff in Steam because it's just it's not how my brain works, but like and I would even say that the Epic Store I haven't opened it in a minute, but like I've never been confused as to where to go, but I don't

like going there.
Yeah. So, there's some untangible or barely tangible thing, at least in my in my use cases, that makes me excited to boot up Steam and roll my eyes. This is a pain when I have to boot up the Epic Store. Someone should spend some of that Fortnite money to figure that out.
Yeah,
sorry. This story is about Gog. Um,
no, but I mean this is all really about like the future of GOG, but the the short version of the story is that GOG has been sold um and uh will no longer be under um CDP and will be its own entity. Um and we'll see what happens. Uh marketing fluff aside, I don't know that we'll really
we will need to see the actual changes. This is one of the cases where like they they've released a marketing fluff about like an ambitious road map. Jo me.
Yeah. I I just hope that the the game preservation stuff that they're doing is continuing. And um

Yeah. I just I I hope this is a good thing. It has a good chance to be a good thing.
Yeah. All right. Speaking of not good things.
Are you talking more about about gaming sales, Will?
Yeah, but in a different way.
Oh, so we were talking about the future of gaming sales. Let's talk about the past of gaming sales. So, the sales data for um November 2025 is not great for the gaming industry. Um it is down 20 uh hardware spending in November was down 27% year-over-year. um which is the lowest spending for hardware since 2005

and
no 1995.
No, hold on. Hold on. The the total spend
Oh, I see.
was the lowest since 2005. And the unit sales were the lowest they've been since 1995.
This comes to us from IGN, by the way.
So there there's two different metrics and both of them sucked, right? because one of them is dollars and that would have changed significantly since 1995 and I don't want to do an inflation adjusted. Um, but the unit sales is the lowest it's been since 1995 which is I
kind of horrifying. I mean it makes sense but at the same time
I need to pause this story for a moment because I went to IGN to just look at this and I saw the line that Will was correcting me on and it's right there. Of course, there is an advertisement at the top of I just need to describe this because it seems like it should be a Cyberpunk 2077 billboard. Okay, it is a it is a full top of the browser banner and it's it's a picture of a closeup of

someone holding a controller like this, right? And an explosion on a screen with some junk on a table in front of it, but it's all blurry and there's like a almost like a motion blur thing happening. You don't see a face. You see like the back of a jawline. The text on it, big white text, says ultimate immersion. And then it's on the left. And on the right, it's for a service called Weed Maps. And then it just says shop dispensaries. [laughter] I'm like, [snorts] oh yes, let's look at the industry news here. Which ultimate immersion weed maps?
[laughter]
It felt like I was being punked, but I guess I am being punked. I I don't I don't know.
You're being punked by capitalism, Matt. It's time we had to talk about that.
I'm so Maybe that's where all the money's going.
Yeah.
Weed maps.
Yeah. Um, [laughter] new Mario character Luigi.

Oh my god. Yeah. I'll screenshot it the Discord. I'll do it right now. I'll do it right now. Hold on. Yeah.
No. So, this was uh chat wanted to know uh this is US spending. Um and so this is not like a great sign for game for the games industry. Now, this is November. I think a lot of people are probably holding on for um may have been holding on for holiday deals um which is fair, understandable, valid. However, November does include Black Friday in the US,
which is when most of those deals start. So, it's really not good.
It's not a It's not a great bell weather, right? Like, it's it's um I mean, look, we we are not the first people to tell you nor the first place you would experience this. Everything is more expensive now. You can talk about why that is some other place. Uh but it rhymes with also just poor leadership. But the the

element that we're seeing here is like yeah, all of us are going to have less money to spend on leisure things. Like that's just how it's going to play out.
Yeah. So I actually want to uh I actually want to um address this, right? Uh the bull says it actually bad to see these companies take a hit. That's not the point. Let me be very clear. This is not a oh wo is these companies.
Oh no.
This is an economic indicator statistic.
Yeah. This is a luxury good, right? This is a an indicator that the industry that we participate in the most and care about as a thing that drives our free time and the news that we bring you and talk about, right, particularly on this show and elsewhere, is not doing well economically speaking, right? I don't I'm there is not a shred of oh wo are these companies. This is a sign that we can point at and say this industry is not doing as well as it has historically for a variety of factors

which we can't necessarily discern like we don't have a causal relationship directly between pirates and global warming or whatever, right? Um this is just us pointing at a thing and being like this number not good. Number not good is all we're saying, right?
Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. Uh, and the bull brings up this question, but does it force companies to innovate and make things affordable? I in a in a sane world perhaps, but most times we're going to see uh layoffs and trying to save money through using AI in dumb ways and uh trying to maintain a level of faux profitability for shareholders due to fiduciary duty even though the money is not coming in like it was in 2020. Like there it's it's a perpetual imagination machine where no one will it like where where the people at the top

very rarely feel the hit and they'll try to ride out whatever this is this downturn without those people ever feeling uh you know a remote flick on the ear, right?
So and that's the general thing, right? Like there's obviously outliers. Not everything is pure nightmare fuel all the time. just the larger stuff that we talk about here. Um, that's sort of where we're at. It's it's it stinks. Like we were just talking about like the expensiveness of hardware and and all that jazz, but like I don't know even when I can't afford the new thing. Like I like that the new thing exists.
Yeah.
Right. Like I like talking about the Steam machine. I like figuring out like the Valve the new VR thing. I like all this. Like I like the idea of technology that I can be excited about and be like like just something to talk about with people with all of you and and and the the trend that we are seeing now is if this continues is going to be less and

less of that because people are going to play it more and more safe. Will that open up other opportunities down the line in a few years for companies these ones or other ones to take interesting swings? I'm sure. But it will also make for a stale u environment for a while and hurt a lot of people on the way down.
Yep.
Ready for more pure nightmare fool?
Oh, come on.
So, we thought we'd check in on this cuz it's the beginning of the year.
Yeah. How's it going?
How's it going? So, uh, there were two major hurdles that EA needed to clear in order to get their sale to the I'm simplifying here for time.
Functionally, it's the Saudi Arabian government. It's not directly the Saudi Arabian government. There's a bunch of intermediaries. There's a bunch of conglomerates. Functionally though, the sum the net result of this sale would be that Saudi

that the Saudi Arabian government would own and control EA.
Yeah,
we can quibble about that later. Just go with me on this one for now. Um, thank you for bringing out the void creature while I scream about nightmare.
I mean, I needed comfort, Will.
Yeah. No, that's fair. Uh, I do. One of the things I love about Zoe is just the the on the back pause straight out thing. It's very cute. Yeah. Um so uh there were two major hurdles. One of them is that they needed to get regulatory approval from a bunch of places and they still have not done that. The other one was that the shareholders needed to approve the sale which they did over the break. Um so that is one of their two major hurdles down. The remaining one is the regulatory concerns from various insundry government agencies here in the US and I believe abroad. I don't know how much of a fuss is going to happen. I don't know

I I just don't I can't imagine this getting stopped. Um
no there there's no there's no stopping this train.
Right. So uh that is sort of probably a formality. the shareholders rejecting this would have been the last big move, but they got offered a lot of money per share. Um, and so they approved it. So, that's kind of where we're at with the EA deal. Just a reminder that it is likely that at some point during 2026, the sale will be finalized and Saudi Arabia will own EA, which is
EA Sports.
Yeah.
Right. Is that going to be the new Is that going to be the new uh thing that says it at the beginning of the game?
Yeah, probably. probably. Um, so that that'll be an interesting occurrence and we'll see what exactly happens out of that when it gets there. But that's that's where it is. That's where we are. Yeah. Uh, and I think that's that's a lot of people I think a lot of people are on the no more EA games for me. I personally wouldn't feel that to be much of a loss

for like my own recreational time. Not much of an EA gamer. But if you are and you feel like this is impacting your ability to um your desire to purchase EA games, I would love to hear from you in the comments or on Blue Sky or wherever. I would like to hear your opinions, right? Because like I'm not coming from a place of being deeply emotionally invested in EA games at all. Um what do you think? What how are how are you feeling? Um
I mean it can't be good. I think the Sims is probably Sorry, I'm gonna put you down because I need to I need to She's like, "No, here you go under the desk now, too. Everyone's under the desk."
Um the the Sims feels like the thing that would hit the closest to our community. I know lots of people that The Sims is a huge cultural touch point and a and a gaming staple of them, even though, you know, EA has been nickel and dimming The Sims for as long as I remember The Sims. The Sims 2, right? Yeah.
Um,

Dragon Age is another one. Boware, sure. Um, but I think, yeah, like it's not going to affect me much. I also talked about this a little bit before, but like the sports washing element of the Saudi government, you know, having control of EA is is going to happen. Uh, and we'll see like how the, you know, campaigns and various military game storylines happen after this goes on and like all that stuff and we'll be the first to sort of point all that out, etc. But, um, there's also the possibility that this is kind of just a long form way of tearing this large thing down and making money as it hits every branch on the tree. as it goes tumbling to the ground.
Yep.
Um I don't know if the institutional

knowledge andor excitement of people that are actually boots on the ground working on things 4A will continue. I don't I doubt I doubt working conditions will improve. I would love to be proved wrong. Um so I don't think like there's going to be a golden age for this company. I think it's going to slowly wither on the vine. um which says to me that the way they're going to make money off this is based on uh betting against it in some shady way.
Y
um and they'll have to torn down and uh you know the the entirety of it will an American media company will will be gone.
Yep.
Again, I'm not a the hugest fan of them anyway, so like oops. But at the same time, you know, that sucks.
Yeah. And and and towards question, yes. Yes, it is. Is is this deal still making EA own all the debt that they probably won't be able to pay off? Correct.
Yeah,
same deal. The law hasn't changed
to the best of my knowledge. So, yeah,

not great. Not not not great. Even if you think that like even if you think that the Saudi Arabian government owning EA would be great absent that the hanging all of the debt on EA part of the sale is like okay that's really hard to see a positive in I think
yeah there's no there's no there's no carrot to make them run the company well
correct
you think there's not better ways to make money than this Yeah.
Like,
yeah.
Yep.
Okay,
let's get out of here. I hate this story. Let's
No, I don't like the next story any better.
Come on. [sighs and gasps]
Yeah. Well, this look, this is a tragedy, but in a in a very different way.
Yeah, this this is a this is a Yeah, this is a human tragedy. Um over the break, uh Vince Empella, who was uh a um titan of the game industry in pretty

much everyone's estimation, um died in a car crash. uh and I have se there have been a lot of influential people who have retired moved out of the industry passed in the past couple of years and I don't think I have seen as great a unanimous outpouring of sorrow and um emotional uphwelling as I did when Vince got uh in that accident. Um the entire the entire um gaming industry pretty much came out and and mourned. Um he was
the link we have in the PC Gamer article has a ton of quotes from just like u so many visionaries in the industry just sort of like talking about what Vince meant to them and and and all of his contributions. Um I I sorry this I got sad when we started this. I don't know what you exactly said will at the beginning. He's a co-founder of the Call of Duty studio Infinity Ward and then

head of Respawn.
Yep. And his his first major credit was Medal of Honor Allied Assault.
Yeah. And he died in a car crash uh in Los Angeles.
Yeah.
Um and it's funny because like this is a guy who I knew his full name first and last and and knew that everyone liked him and I don't play the games he makes.
Yeah, that's a big deal.
Um and that not because they're bad. they're just, you know, they've I've never gravitated towards like, you know, military shooters and et whatever. Um and um yeah, it was a real it was a real uh gut punch when this story hit. Um I don't really have I don't have a ton more to say on it. It was just it's it's the the the tragedy of this and then seeing uh so many essentially titans in this entire industry come out and have nothing but like
glowing praise across across a spectrum

of people that I don't think would agree on a lot of things.
Yeah. Yeah.
Um was just really um in a in an absolute tragedy a very heartwarming thing to see.
Agree. Um yeah.
Yep. Okay. Uh let us then move on to some different news uh which is kind of an interesting one. One of the other things that happened is that Steam released their best of 2025 and it is if you are a data driven person, if you are a person who wants to see more about what the rest of the gaming world is doing outside your own play style, bubbles, whatever. This is a fascinating look. This is an absolutely fascinating look at the data behind last year's game sales. They don't give you all of the data. Um, for instance, the top 12 games of the year uh for 2025 in

terms of sales are randomized in order in so it's always in no particular order,
which I like.
I I like that as well. Um Oh dear. Now I was going to bring it up and I should have screenshot it. Okay, cool. Great. Awesome. So
I love the I love new releases versus top sellers in this too.
Yep. Um, so, uh, the top 12 games of the year in no particular order are Arc Raiders, Battlefield 6, um, EA Sports FC 26, Dune Awakening, Civilization 7, Monster Hunter Wilds, Silkong, Borderlands 4, The Oblivion Remaster, Night Rain, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and the game that made me talk about this list, schedule one. Now, you might you would be absolutely forgiven for not knowing what schedule one is.

It's a drug empire sim,
but then you probably aren't a person going to uh weedmaps.com,
right? It's like an incredibly low poly looks like an asset flip like game that is in the top li is is up there with Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Dune Awakening and the New Civilization game in Silkong because it has and I cannot stress this enough 245,000 user reviews and 97% of them are positive.
Yeah. So, it's just like and I like I use this as an example to say that if you cannot imagine a world where schedule one is up against these other games, do yourself a favor and look at the data to understand the games that people are playing that you don't hear about and know nothing about. Um, I just find it fascinating.

I love that Night Rain is on here. Um, I'm sure it's on the lower end, but I love that this is so top 100 products released in 2025 by revenue and Night Rain is up there, and that makes me very, very happy.
Then you go to top sellers.
We're just talking about the top here. There's the first through 12th sorted randomly, and it's it's a bit clearer of a picture, I think, of what's going on. So, that is PUBG, Battlefield 6, Dota 2, Kingdom Come 2, Counterstrike 2, Arc Raiders, Rivals, Schedule One, Monster Hunter Wilds, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, and Repo. we both.
Now, if you're looking at this top sellers overall, right? Like this is of you know, these are just the products that were sold, not that came out. Um there's a lot of there's a decent amount of free play stuff on here and uh which means the revenue from that is doing the work and it's kind of like where the excitement seems to be on Steam for uh for for for who is playing what, right?

Yeah.
Um I what is it? One, two, three, four games on here are free to play. Yep, that looks right.
Five. Five.
PUBG, Counter-Strike, Dota 2, Apex Rivals.
Yeah.
Yeah. And
they got most played.
Yeah. I I I think we're going to see a lot of that um in this year as costs rise. I think we're going to be seeing a lot of people spending a lot of time playing freeto play games.
Um just because
Well, here we go. Buckle in for for most played in 2025. Grand Theft Auto 5, Delta Force. I don't know what that's a free to play game. Dota 2, Marvel Rivals, Apex Legends, PUBG, Terraria, uh, Repo, Peak, Counterstrike 2, Stardew Valley, and the GOAT, Left for Dead 2,
which is currently on sale for $2.

If you have a Steam account and don't own Left for Dead 2,
spend two bucks. Now might be the time. Uh this is Steam only. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh I love I love that that and Terraria and Stardew and Peak are all on here. Um yeah, it it is truly wild to me that like these again we are sort of in a in a weird bubble, right? You are here watching two dudes in an animated kitchen talk about the gaming industry on a channel that focuses on gaming news and game design and gaming culture. You are not the average person playing games probably. And so getting this lens into like what people are playing outside of our bubble that probably doesn't make like I don't think I heard anyone play heard about anyone playing or suggest playing Left 4 Dead 2 at all in 2025. I can safely make

that right.
I might have said it once.
Okay, maybe Matt said it once, but like
it's here on Stardust. You do uh I would not play Left 4 Dead 2 by yourself. You technically can. There's also random lobbies, I believe. Um, it is better with friends. It'll run on a potato basically at this point. Um, so it's $2, so if you know anybody, just have them fork out that that two bucks if they if they have it available.
Yep. Yeah, it just uh it's a fascinating way to take a look at the the year in stats and maybe get some ideas for games that you might want to play. Um,
uh, Steam Deck was interesting, too. Elden Ring, Baldersgate, Cyberpunk, Silk Song, Hollow Knight, Bolatro, Hades, Hades 2, Stardew, Red Dead Redemption 2, The Witcher 3, and Vampire Survivors. Those all feel like games that are really, really fun on the go.
Yep. I like that both Hollow Knight and Silkong made it,
right?
Yep.
Uh then they have controller like that

played by how many games you played on controller, which is sort of interesting because Yeah, there's some weirdity there. Uh, I I would also suggest don't take this with like too much um don't take this too seriously. There are some irregularities with the way that Steam counted this. I know people have reported that like their own Steam year and review numbers for controller play were wrong.
This one in particular. Um,
well uh it's funny. Uh, uh, Miss Ingitch says, "Is E33 on any of these list?" Yeah, it's on this list. Uh, Expedition 33, Split Fiction, Hollow Night, Forza 5, Silkong, Night Rain, Blackmith, Wukong, Skate, It Takes Two, Elden Ring, Monster Under Wilds, and Red Dead Redemption 2.
Also worth noting that uh 33 was in the top 24 on most of these, but not in the top 12.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
Anyway, it's a fascinating look. You can check it out in the show notes if you want to sort of dig more because they

have like the they've cordoned them off and the first 10 or 15 uh things are in the platinum, then it goes to gold, silver, and bronze. And I like that it's not like in a definitive order because at a certain point it doesn't actually matter,
right? It's these are these are the well because it's different groups of people, right? I uh for the most part I feel like Forza, the group of people that are super into Forza, playing a ton of Forza are probably also not the same people who are playing a ton of Night Rain. Those both feel like competing pickup after work games. There are certainly people who play.
What if we mod cars into Night Rain? And what if we mod night lords into Forza,
right? But like those feel like there are definitely people who play both, but the people who are driving the total play time for those are people for whom those are each their individual singular games, right?
Yeah.
Um so yeah. Uh
nice.
Yeah.
Nice.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, okay.

Next up, oh, we got to talk about uh Mad Fear Roar. So, lots of people were wondering what the heck happened um at Zenamax um last year. Uh Zenamax um got hit with some pretty heavy cuts in one of the rounds of Microsoft trying to make all of the money off of AI and Xbox trying to hit 30% profit margins and BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH,
RIGHT? UM, but among all of that, M. Mattfe, who's one of the OGs at Zenamax, left and a lot of people were wondering why. Um, and if there was some darker mination and the the the short version now that we have it is pretty much that he thought that the game that got cancelled, Project Blackbird, was like the game that he'd always wanted to make in the gaming industry, and then Microsoft canceled it. And he was like, "Well,
okay.
Guess I'm done here.
Deuces."

Yeah. Oh. Oh, hold on a sec. Oh dear.
What happened?
Oh,
what happened?
Uh, hold on. I got to check. YouTube has exclusive content. Uh, because Twitch has not Twitch has dropped the connection.
Twitch dropped our connection.
Yeah.
Janet, now is your time.
Yeah. YouTube comments unite.
Yeah, I chat. Chat, I got it. Okay, it's fine.
Unfortunately,
we can't do anything about it without also losing and segmenting YouTube. So, we're going to keep going.
Um,
so it won't it won't be able to come back at all. Just curious.
It it may auto recover, but we won't be able to recover it on Twitch without doing some serious work that would split the YouTube video.
Uh, I could message here. I'll message the Discord just to let it know that it's still going on in YouTube and we'll go from there.
Yeah. Uh okay. So, um yeah, Twitch, it just works except when it doesn't. Um

because clearly my upload works fine as exhibited by the fact that YouTube is still going, but Twitch has decided they don't want the frames. So, um two brain cells become one. Yes. Brad, say hi to Janet. Janet, say hi to Brad. You're now all
Hello, everyone.
Um, okay. So, uh,
play nice.
Yeah. Uh, to to sum that up, uh, Matt Fior's big thing was, um, watching Blackbird get gutted, watching all the the the um sort of heavy-handed stuff come down for Microsoft was kind of it. And he decided that that was a good time for him to dip. And I cannot say that I blame him.
No, not at all. Um, so yeah. Um, I've completely lost track of things cuz tech issues melt my brain.

Well, there you go.
So, um,
um,
I was I was going to move on to the next one.
Oh, yeah. Well, he Yeah, he breaks it down. It's a good It's good to sort of hear what's going on. It sucks that that game is not going to be made. And uh we hope that he uh finds uh a good place to make something new.
Yep. Absolutely. Okay. Um uh Rainbow Six Siege over the over the break uh got hacked [laughter] pretty hard actually. Um got absolutely completely uh wrecked by this hack. So, um, interestingly, it may have been multiple people all exploiting the same vulnerability, which I believe has now been patched. The how isn't as important as the fact that it happened. Um, and that the first thing that hackers did was begin distributing millions of dollars of premium currency to random accounts. Uh, which they all rolled

back. But it was sort of a very interesting occurrence watching um Ubisoft devs work on this and watching Ubisoft socials team try and keep it under control while everyone was flipping out.
Here's what sucks.
Yeah.
Sticking it to Ubisoft. That's pretty punk rock. Making the social team and the team that has to fix this problem work. Uh was this over the holiday?
Over the holidays. That sucks.
Yeah.
Like, uh, yeah. I, as much as I'm like, haha, Ubisoft, at the same time, I'm like, this is awful for the actual boots on the ground people.
Yeah.
Um, and it's awful for the player base overall because no matter what happened, like then there was reports of even though they said that they will backtrack any of this stuff, people who spent the extra money that they were gifted getting bans, that was more reported than actually happened. But if it happened to anybody, Ubisoft said

they're going to make sure that they unban those people because it's not their fault.
Um, yeah, just a interesting little uh Hackerman double feature, triple feature for uh Rainbow Six.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, so um
Oh, this is interesting. Compsai, this wasn't just Ubisoft either. I work in webdev. The underlying exploit has been a huge issue in the industry. Yeah.
Yeah. Um, so some of it is probably fixed. Some of it is one of the problems with this, um, and and I've heard some about follow-ups, the the exact nature of the follow-ups, I don't think is important. Um, one of the big problems with all of this is once your server's compromised, you never know for sure that it isn't compromised anymore.
Yeah. And that is sort of an ongoing problem, right? Because the only way that you can be sure that um once you've had an

access breach, uh the only way that you can be sure that there isn't some lingering back door that you missed is to, and I cannot stress this enough, burn it all to the ground and start over, which isn't really an option.
Do that,
right? And it's yeah, so like this is going to be an ongoing we're gonna we're going to hear stories about follow-up attacks. We're going to hear stories about um other stuff happening. It just it kind of sucks. It really sucks for the devs. Super sucks for the player base. Um
but it did happen over the break and we thought we should tell you about it.
Indeed. Uh, okay. Let's let's talk about we got one last interesting news story and then a piece of dessert and we'll we'll wrap it up there.
They're both interesting.
They're both interesting. Arc Raiders has confirmed that they are trying out a new kind of matchmaking. So, if you've

not played Arc Raiders, which is totally understandable for a variety of reasons, it's an extraction shooter, right? You go into a place with a bunch of friends, you get stuff, and you leave. And there are two kinds of combat in this extraction shooter. One of them is uh fighting against drones and other mechanical uh environmental enemies, PvE. And then there is a PvP component. You can kill other players and take their loot. And there is skill-based matchmaking involved in making lobbies. Right? When you load into an Arc Raiders game, you are loading into people with a similar skill ranking to you. This is not new. This is a common thing in multiplayer games. However, what is new is that the second tier of matchmaking that um Arc Raiders is now attempting is aggressionbased matchmaking. That is to say that if you are a person who largely engages in PvE combat, you are going to eventually, as the system works its way

out and distributes, find yourself primarily matched into lobbies of people who also do PvE combat. And if you are a big PvPer, you will find yourself in more and more lobbies that do PvP stuff, which is a fascinating way to sculpt player behavior and a fascinating way to tackle one of the biggest problems in extraction shooters, at least for me, which is I just want to go in and get my stuff and go home. And there are people WHO ARE LIKE, "HAHA, I AM HERE TO KILL all the players." And I'm like, "That's cool. You're the reason I don't play this game." And then I play a different game. Right. Uh we I don't think we touched on this much in this episode, but I just found it. I'm going to put it in YouTube chat right now, which should play here. This is uh our episode on why matchmaking sucks. And we talk about a lot of different element. This was like in 2023, so I I don't remember all of it, but I remember really liking the episode because we were sort of talking about like why things are structured the way that they're structured. Um, and uh, I I love this as a concept because it is

taking for game for a game that people come to for a variety of reasons. It is now making it so uh, you can engage with the game more specifically for the reason you've come here before, right? Mhm.
Um I just think I'm I'm hoping that especially like you know I'm uh I'm on the Dusk Bloods train for whenever that drops on Switch 2 from Fro fromoft and that's going to be something that I feel like is PvE and PvP. So like I'm hoping that like maybe this works well and maybe other PvE PVP games are going to implement things like it because I think it's really really clever. At least the concept is clever and I want to see how it's implemented.
I think this is a fascinating experiment, right? And and by the way, it should be noted,
I'm sure there are other games that have done this. The problem is that matchmaking is not a thing that scales well. And so this needs to be done at scale by a big hit game. Yeah. And so

seeing Arc Raiders do it will be very interesting to get the information out of that. And like Bob says, um the the the breakdown in five years of what parts of this worked and what parts of it didn't will be very interesting. I look forward to a GDC talk from the Arc Raiders team about this. Um, it will be a fascinating thing to see how this shakes out in the future.
Yeah.
Um, all right, chat. For our last story,
I love it. I love this story. This is my favorite story.
We should go if you have any PlayStation 4 games.
Yeah, let's let's ask them if they have it before. Should we How do we want to do it?
I'm gonna I'm gonna tell them. So, if you have any PlayStation 4 games kicking around, you should go and see if you have a physical disc that is a copy of Star Wars Racer Revenge, the re-release for PlayStation 4, specifically because it is now one of the most valuable PlayStation 4 games

for one of the most bizarre reasons ever.
I would be so happy if someone in our chat or in our community owned a copy of this. Yes. And I see a lot of confusion in chat and that is okay.
We were shocked too. So, it turns out [laughter] that the port, [snorts] the PS4 port specifically of Razer Revenge is now a key part of the PlayStation 5 jailbreak. Beyond fascinating.
Yeah,
let's dig in. So, it turns out that some part of the port code is part of the way that people are making it so you can completely jailbreak your PlayStation 5. And you need a physical disc in order to accomplish this hack,

which means that these are going for $300$350 a copy over on eBay.
It's amazing. It's amazing.
Fascinating on several levels. one. What an amazing find for someone who's like, "Yeah, I just had like a copy of this silly game that I bought on a whim and now it's $350." So, that's cool. Great. Great for those people.
Yeah.
The other one is, how did they figure this out?
Who who figured out that they were like, "Yeah, what if we use the port of Racer Revenge to kickstart a jailbreak?" My guess is they found what could be a possible exploit and they were just going down the line of games that could hit that specific switch or whatever, right? Like
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's uh
they use the force.
Yeah, that's Yeah, that's that's it. Yeah. I just think it's it's it's absolutely fascinating. Um

Yeah. What a what a what a amazing way. This is probably my favorite start of 2026 story. Yes, we've had a lot of bummers this episode. I'm not going to lie. It was
and I'm glad you stuck with us to this point because this is the this is the this is the way.
This is the way.
Yeah. You just got to use your instincts. Medusa skirt. You right.
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Um friends, thank you so much for joining us for this our first episode of 2026. If you want to leave YouTube comments, you can do that down below or you can hit us up over on the blue ski. Um, when we're done with this episode, we'll be live over on Twitch once I get the Twitch stream working. I don't know why it dropped, but clearly I still have internet, so it's not that. Um, uh, I'll be I'll be troubleshooting that. And if I can go live again, I'll be live with some um, uh, catching up after the break and figuring out what the heck my next let's play is going to be. So, do join us over

there on Twitch for that. Um,
uh, Naro, we did not talk about the Larian and Genai thing yet. That's been going I'm sure that's not going to stop anytime soon. There will be, uh, discussion upon discussion.
Yeah. Um, I had to prioritize things that I thought could all fit in an episode. And I also think that that is a there is a bigger deeper talk that we want to have about like that and the expedition 33 Gen AI accusations um and some other stuff that's been going on. Arc Raiders is actually a part of that discussion too.
Yep.
There is a bunch of stuff but I think it would overpower a lot of u [snorts] the other discussions that we could have this week. And I don't think
Yeah,
we got a whole YEAR [clears throat] WE GOT A WHOLE year to be upsetty spaghetti.
Yeah, it's
nervous already.
Knees week. Palm sweaty.
Palm spaghetti.

Um, thank you so much for uh watching Gears for Breakfast. Everybody, please jump over to Twitch if you'd like to hang out with Will and talk a bit more about all that jazz. I have to go to work now. This surprisingly what may shock all of you is not that much work. I mean, I feel like it's not work. It's work, but it doesn't feel like work. This feels like a nice thing to kick off the work week. Now, I got to go back and uh start going through a myriad of things uh because we were on break for two weeks and this was the first official act that I have done since I have returned to the control station of extra credits. So, I guess the only thing that's left is to do our traditional outro that everyone can join in on because we want to, you know, we've wanted to do this for years. We want to foster a sense of community and and togetherness. And you all know exactly how this is going to play out. In fact, I would pause it that even if this is your first Games for Breakfast, raise your hand in chat right now if this is your first one

you've ever watched. And congratulations that you made it to the end. We know that's no small feat. We are grading. But um the [laughter] the basically we want to make sure that we can all go into our week and in this case our year feeling good and right and one with the gaming world even when sometimes it's a little sad. Uh so yeah, there's a lot of firsts on YouTubes because because uh
Twitch crapped the bed.
Because Twitch crapped the bed. There we go. Yeah. Well, kind of the uh the the So yeah, sorry I got distracted. So now let us uh be taken away uh by the thing that we say every time when we leave a show. Hey fellas, big gulps, huh? See you later.