AI's insane PR machine, Zynga's failed Supercell deal & EU regulation | Week in Mobile Games podcast

[music] Hello and welcome to the pocket gamer.biz podcast week in mobile games. We chat about the week's news and we provide some insights. I'm Craig Chapel, head of content at pocket gamer.biz. With me today is our deputy editor, Paige Cook. It's been a few weeks since we did our last show. I took a a random week off where I did absolutely nothing. And then last week I was ill. Everyone's dropping like flies. But we're back. We're healthyish and we're going to go through a bunch of stories. But before all that, it's been a few weeks. Paige, how you doing? What you been up to?
Yeah, I I can't even remember what I last spoke about when we did the podcast. But this weekend that just went, I had some family visiting. My mom came and stayed for the weekend, which was really nice. And I've just usually I can be really bad at finishing games. And lately I've been on an absolute roll. I started Wolverine, finished that, got the platinum trophy.
Is it good? I wasn't expecting great things because the reviews were very mixed. I feel like some people have been

a little bit harsh on it. Like it's a good game, not a great game is like my simple thing. Like it was fun. The combat was fun, you know, didn't do anything revolutionary, but the one thing I will say is he makes he's a fantastic Wolverine. Like he plays the role so well. He's very good. I hope we get to see more of him in that. And I'm not a like Jean Gray and Logan fan. I've never liked that like dynamic. This was the first time where I was like, you know what, I'm I'm sold. It works. So, kudos to them for pulling that off. And then I think it was maybe last night, I finished the new Silent Hill game, Silent Hill Townfall. I don't know. That was a weird one. It started so strong, like the first few parts of it. Like, I was scared. The atmosphere was brilliant. And I think they're updating it cuz there's some enemy AI in it that it just knows where you are all of the time. It's obviously not supposed to know where you are, but it was so frustrating. So, it kind of brought the whole game down a little bit for me, but

yeah, it like graphically it was insane. It looks amazing. But yeah, didn't enjoy it as much as I was hoping to.
When you say the enemy AI, is it like all of the enemies or is it their like one specific enemy? And so like all of the enemies have a bit of a problem. Like they seem to see you from so far away, but there's one enemy in particular without like getting into it too much. It's kind of like a traditional stalker enemy. Like you can't really kill it. It's following you around. Like so it's very deadly. And it it just constantly knows where you are. Like I'd be in a room, it's dark, I'm hidden, I'm crouching, and it would just like run in and like knew I was there. So you'd spend like 5 minutes just staring at it being like please leave. And yeah, it just didn't feel fun at all. So yeah, I think they're changing that though. So hopefully it'll be better if people play it like later.
Yeah, I replayed Alien Isolation recently and then famously in that the way it's described is it has two the a the xenomorph alien which stalks you, right? Can't kill it. Has two brains. One that knows where you are the entire time and then the other one that

basically takes clues from the environment and like what the other brain is telling it like as clues. So it's like, "Oh, maybe go over here or there's sound over there. you should check that out or something's going on. So, it's just constantly dropping clues rather than just
I feel like this is how that was intended to be, but this just felt like the AI is telling it where I am and rather than like you said having that two brains where it's like yeah, you know, but you can't really do anything about it until something's drawn you there. This just felt like no, it just knows like no matter what I do.
I've been playing uh I've just been playing through not not finished it just yet. and I've never actually played through it properly before doing Resident Evil 2 the remake and uh it's it's excellent but I I can't actually I struggle with horror games despite how much I love Alien Isolation I really struggle with just the the sheer anxiety they induce out of me and so honestly when when Mr. Rex turns up. I'm just like I don't know what to do. And but it's super impressive how they do it. So it's obviously really imposing stature.

The way he walks and before he actually arrives like in your room, you can just hear the really heavy steps of him coming. You can hear the doors opening and closing really loudly. And then the closer it gets, the music starts ramping up as well. And the music itself is terrifying. Everything about it really makes you feel on edge. And it's clever. Like I it in a way to me it feels like he kind of knows where you are most of the time but
Oh yeah, he's just constantly pursuing you.
Maybe it's not quite the same as what you're experiencing in Sonic.
I feel like with that I didn't mind as much because because he's so slow like you can sort of do loops around him type of thing. So yeah, like that like Mr. X wasn't frustrating to me. I was more scared than frustrated. Whereas in this game I wasn't scared anymore. I was just like, "Oh god, this guy again." And funny you say Resident Evil. I have a Resident Evil t-shirt on right now. is not fire design. So
there you go fan. Anyway, lots of games page just yeah I haven't been up to too much. Got a lot of travel going. We're going to the mobile dictum conference.

Looking forward to that. Then I'm actually on holiday again. Actually off for two weeks going to Canada. Going to Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto. Couple friends. We're going to see Niagara Falls. It's going to have fun. Take some time away. But before we really get into things, I I wanted to bring up I was going to bring up two things. I guess I'll bring up one. The main thing I wanted to say is is that just is any is not anyone else just sick of this AI nonsense that's been happening? I am so sick of it. So since last time we did the podcast, I think and by the way is this is a some of this has actually gone away which just speaks to what is it like the short term short-term nature of of everything these days like something really controversial happens and then a week later we've all moved on to something else. So yeah, like it's going to kill us all. We should slow down say the tech CEOs, you know, these billionaires that are still investing billions into their product, still releasing new products, and Anthropic is going public. Like what?

Let's slow down. What? It makes no sense. And I think like the go through my notes. The patheticness of all this is off the charts. Like they're now rebranding AI factories to super intelligence factories. So like this and I know that was because of what Trump was saying and then Nvidia for some reason feel like they have to do it. That's just that's insane to me. The PR is completely out of control for AI technology and specifically generative AI technology because they started this sort of fear-mongering started like a couple years or probably at the inception of generative AI really like a few years ago and now the PR is super intelligence factories and and all the way it's going to change our lives and fix everything. In fact, like the Andreas and Horowits, this was a couple years ago, did a did an article which I believe I'll check this before, I believe was basically suggesting that not investing in AI is like you're like a you're like a murderer because you're

not curing someone of a disease that could be fixed. That's so extreme a way to put it. But I'm just I'm not saying there's no value to and specifically going to talk about generative AI because games have been doing AI for a long time. Machine learning many many great applications of AI. Generative AI still has really interesting applications and we know in games that there's been a lot of use out of these various technologies, right? And they are changing things now and they could change things in in terms of specifically terms of say prototyping let's say for example really shakes that up marketing UA building creatives there's a lot of great uses that are being used right now but like for these specifically these generative AI giants like anthropic open AI they've got to make is this a multi- trillion dollar business for them that they can actually also pay back within the next few years. I I just have such massive doubts about

it there. I know there's a history in the US in Silicon Valley or put a load of money in achieve market dominance and then and then you know make hey in this case I think that's a really really really extraordinarily tough ask. Yeah, I just think it's all kind of dumb as I guess. And by the way, and and just the other thing where it says it's going to kill us all like in in retrospect like in h how so is is really the the crux of it like they keep these CEOs like some media outlets and that reporting comments off this oh it could kill us all. It's really dangerous. People leave these tech companies to say oh I'm really worried it's going to kill us all. But like how they are not making an actual general artificial intelligence that is not what they're doing. They're making tools like that. I mean, if I was to be horrible about it, I just I just call it a really advanced predictive text. But like, it is not something that actually thinks. There is nothing that they're making that actually thinks. And I think that's really dangerous when it comes to these hacks that are happening like the hugging face hack or the

Australian government hack. Like specifically hugging face, they're telling it go hack this thing, right? And then human error meant that it could escape like this. I don't know what you call it, but like it could escape like this experiment and then actually do what they've told it to do. So why be surprised when it happens and then they're like, "Oh my god, this like this is crazy. What the hell?" It's like, yeah, but if you you're training these tools to hack and steal from the internet and why are you surprised when it happens? They're not and it's not just agents running a mock because it's an artificial general intelligence deciding whatever it wants to do for whatever nefarious purposes. That is not happening. that is not what is going to happen at least with the current shape of the technology and the tools that they are actually making. Um, so I just wanted to rant about this nonsense, absolute nonsense that we're hearing. And I the thing I worry about most is I think there will still be good applications that you can use in future with this kind of technology regardless

of what happens with anthropic open AI. But it's very dangerous what does happen with them like if if they actually can't if they've overhyped themselves into either regulation or overhyped themselves into getting too much money and spending too much money. is so dangerous for everyone. That's the danger. Yeah. And you can argue like how people use these technologies is also the danger, which is very true. But yeah, anyway, I I I just felt the need to rant.
You had to get it off your chest.
I was going to put it in like the last newsletter and I was like writing. I'm just ranting. This is pointless. It's not really It's not Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. So, all this has been happening and I've been dying to talk about it. Right. So, we're actually going to get into some actual news. I will let Paige do the talking now. I've talked too much. But firstly, as always, a few shout outs. So, we have a few events coming up. We have PGC Nordics in Helsinki on October 20th and 21st. Got some great speakers there. I think we we've got Remedy in town. We've got Embark in town. We've

got loads of really cool companies and speakers that should definitely check that out. We've got PGC Jordan November 7th and 8th. We've got PGC Summit Montreal November 10th. and the big one PGC London January 18th and 19th 2027 we'll be back at the brewery and the barbecue. So with that uh Paige what have you got?
Yeah so first up from me this kind of a lot of this happened sort of last week but has sort of come into this week as well. So it's stuff about the EU Kids Act. There's some pretty significant implications for games if the the current wording of what it all is would make it through. Um, so one of the the main sort of focuses is how games encourage children to essentially, you know, like keep coming back and playing. And the proposal sort of says that games shouldn't encourage like compulsive or excessive use of that. So it's not to say you can't try and encourage someone to play your game, but there is an excessiveness of that. So things like

features that you know might like reward you for coming back or undermine like you know a child's decision to stop playing. you know, that covers things like, you know, penalties for not logging on, not playing for certain periods, that kind of thing. So, that could obviously have big implications for some of the, you know, most common engagement mechanics that we see, particularly in, you know, mobile games, you know, things like daily login, activity streaks. I would say all those things fall under that banner of, you know, rewards. You know, if you're if you don't log in for the fourth day, you lose your reward. I suppose all those things would factor into that wording that they've said. We had some like insights from we reached out to Wigan, we had Isabelle Davies, she shared some insights and she sort of broke down a bit more of the games angle of it as well and yeah, she just said that, you know, how it is currently described like those mechanics, you know, could be under a lot of threat in that current draft. So yeah, definitely something to be very mindful of. But it is obviously

important to also note that this is all still under a proposal. It's not that it is happening, it's that it could happen. But yeah, it's all just part of like obviously we've seen the wider push around child safety. Uh we've seen a lot about digital regulations, so there's definitely more coming for this. We also at the beginning of this week had a guest post from Flux Digital and they did a really good job because I feel like you read these things and it's just pages and pages and pages of it and if you just want to because obviously a lot of it's also to do with social media. It's not just games related. We're just obviously focused on that angle. And yeah, the guest post that we had on Monday, like do go and read that if you kind of want a good outline of what elements are actually relevant to games and what the impact of, you know, mobile games could be because yeah, that breaks it down really well. So yeah, I'm I'm curious to see if the draft that is currently there is what goes through or not because yeah, if it did, that seems, you know, pretty pretty huge. So, I wrote my news the the newsletter the other week and I called it like the

European triple threat for games and it was the EU kids act as you've explained it was the digital fairness act which we expect to hear more by the end of the year perhaps so in the next couple months um I think that was first announced last year and I said that would that could kill Europe's games industry and another act EU digital services act so there's a lot a lot going on that developers kind of have to contend with I think My one of my points is and I know there's there's a lot of people that don't like regulation and think it restricts companies, businesses. Sometimes I think people think that why, [clears throat] but it's also because sometimes people can't be trusted. But like I think it's important to think of some of the context around some of these things and I think specifically the EU kids act of why why is this happening? And some of the context is obviously around the social media and and how it's impacted children. There was of course Facebook or Meta conducted its own research or as Instagram conducted its own research and found the very real negative impacts it

has on young people including people wanting wanting to kill themselves, right? And then that was basically like came out in a report by a media publication. So I guess that wasn't being shared up front, right? And al obviously with Roblox, we've had problems with the safety of that platform. And I appreciate that they have gone to great lengths, especially in recent years to make it a lot safer. They're implementing a lot of interesting technologies which could actually be used all right or as an example for for for future regulation of well maybe you should take these kinds of steps for example like the tiered accounts that they have like kids select and then when you're over 16 or 18 have a normal Roblox account like all that's really interesting but I feel like when when this is like the background and obviously not necessarily that I agree with the stuff about loot boxes obviously that's very been very troublesome specifically to do with monetization and when this is all the background around eventually if you don't deal with it within your industries. So within tech, social media or games industries, governments or

regulatory bodies then do step in and they don't understand the industry. I think Yaki Mackan from elite game developers said like it feels like they don't understand games and I think that's very true, very unfortunate but but yet they don't. So they come in with a heavy hammer and it always happens and I think it has really been incumbent on really trade bodies should really be at least attempting to ed educate and tell members come up with frameworks for their members for certain business practices and I I feel like that probably hasn't happened a lot across any any of these industries. So is it like you can't blame anyone but yourself in a way but some of this stuff is a bit is a bit crazy. So I can see the other side of like well none of this makes sense to how games actually function which I think is very true right. So gonna move on to kind of a similar similarish story. So again within Europe. So when I call it like a triple threat and I is actually just so many different threats for games at the moment. So the consumer protection cooperation network which is a network of national authorities responsible for

the enforcement of EU consumer protection law protection laws across across is the EU and EA I think which is the European economic area. They are taking coordinated actions against a string of top games companies as they look to investigate compliance with key principles on in-game virtual currencies which was announced last year. So the key principles effectively are like are you being clear with how much something costs? So one of the ideas was this costs 100 gems but you should say this costs £5 alongside that. And then also you know how are you selling stuff to kids? Are you encouraging kids to buy stuff? Are you trying to elicit money out them etc? Kind of covers those things. But this this was such an odd one to cover because initially I was reading through all these documents and it's when things just start not really making sense. That's when like okay I'm going to speak to I'm going to speak to an expert because things don't add up. So I did I spoke with Celia Ponin at Flux Digital Policy about this. So uh but then just quickly to set up so they

are they have asked Activision Blizzard Cryc Inner Games King Mojang Plarium PLR Worldwide Sales Riot Games Super and Ubisoft to bring their commercial practices in line relating to in-game virtual currencies to these principles and the games being assessed include Hunt Showdown, Forge of Empires, Candy Crush Saga, Minecraft, Mechena, Gardens Gates, Valerant Clash of Clans, Fore Honor, Diablo I Mortal and Call of Duty Mobile. But like basically to to kind of sum that part up, it sounds really dramatic when you read the press release. Oh, you know, they're up to no good. And then when you read it and you go through the documents and then when you specifically when you read the references at the bottom of these pages, the full story actually comes to light. These games appear to be investigated because they are just simply big games and they were chosen for that reason. And so there's no actual indication. It's very strange thing for a regulatory body. It's not even a regulatory body. It's I don't know. It's just a very strange thing for this body to do which is like go we're just going to look at these random games because they're big

because that maybe they're breaking key principles that turns out aren't maybe aren't enforceable because they don't interpret the actual consumer protection laws properly was my
Yeah, this was this was what confused me because obviously when you were doing the article you shared things and I was sort of reading it and like you said it was very like dramatically worded but it see like and it confused me. But what they're essentially saying is that these games were just being assessed. It's not like they've actually broke any rules or laws. But yeah, the wording made it sound a lot more like severe than that.
It was so bizarre. I'll try to look for how I summed it up after after it was being explained to me. Maybe maybe this is a poor kind of explanation, but my my then summary was like, "Wow, so they are taking some vague actions against games that may or may not be violating principles that might not even be law." If I if I understand this right, I think it's a little bit more serious than that being a little bit flippant. So, for example, if they do find something wrong, that could be used in future as like the basis for actual actions, but at the moment, they're not actually

taking any actions other than looking into things because it sounds like, oh, they're taking action, there's going to be fines. No, there's nothing like that. So, yeah, today there's been reaction from European Game Developer Federation, video games Europe, but yeah, it's was it was a very odd one. And I think at the moment, obviously, it's a bit it is kind of concerning. It comes alongside all these other things. But I mean, as far as this specific news, like nothing's actually going down yet, as it were. So yeah, odd one, right, Paige. What else have you got?
My next topic kind of just comes about because we had a Mavens up on the site this week. So this time we spoke about cloud gaming. There was quite a range of thoughts. So do go like read the the full article. But generally speaking, there was a lot of debate around where cloud gaming actually fits in the current market. So I think like a few people talking on the positive side of it, a few people mentioned the same thing of you know its potential around you know the having no need for this you know expensive hardware particularly as

we're going to see the cost of you know like I mean PC parts at the moment. I mean, still very expensive console prices, you know, they're higher and next generation, who knows what price they're going to be, but you know, we know they're going to be expensive. But then comes, you know, the negative part of it, which is, you know, again, I think everybody basically mentioned, you know, the connectivity issues, latency, uh, you know, the cost of running cloud infrastructure. It means it's just, you know, it's not an easy or cheap thing to scale. And you know, in regard to it, I remember like when cloud gaming was sort of first coming about. And it kind of was pitched as like it's this thing that's going to replace, you know, PC or console gaming. That kind of was the message for a little minute. It seemed like, you know, everyone will be able to play without all this expensive hardware essentially. Um, you know, I personally don't see that happening. A lot of the mavens kind of said that, you know, at least right now, that doesn't seem to be something that's on the on the cards. And again, sort of linking back to that, the general issues and maybe main ones being around just the infrastructure and

the, you know, e economics of it all. It would need to be a lot stronger to see cloud gaming be, you know, more mainstream. We had a comment from Adam Smart and I know I missed the podcast where Adam was on it, but I believe he spoke about cloud gaming when he was on our podcast and he said that as a full replacement for gaming PCs or, you know, console gaming. It's not there yet. I don't think it will be until connectivity is solved everywhere, not just at home, which you know I think is a very fair point. I'd kind of even push it further that like you know even in the [laughter] home I think it's still a struggle for a lot of people. I think it was we had Will Luton and he had said as well that like depending on where he is in his house it it completely changes. I've had that issue. I mean I don't really to be honest I don't really use cloud gaming but on the odd occasion where I have just to test it out. I can game in some rooms and then if I go in like this room for example and like there's a sofa over there if I sit there can't do it like it's you know it and and that's just in your home so taking that elsewhere you know it just has a

lot of problems and then you know looking at sort of the wider market you've got things like what's happening with Xbox they introduced this you know like a monthly limit for cloud gaming for game pass subscribers so essentially you know players will have to buy additional hours once they've hit an allowance and to me like that just highlights some serious challenges around how this is all going to work. Like that doesn't sound like something I would personally want to do. I kind of just see it as I might as well just buy a console then. But yeah, I don't know. Like do you do you use any kind of cloud gaming, Craig? I'm curious cuz not many people I know really bother with it.
No, not at all. I have tried out cloud gaming. Was never impressed over the years. Not a big fan. I have so many feelings about it. I'll quickly sum them up. So I'll just go through games. People say it will reduce costs. Okay, but let's think about that. Games are still expensive. So, if it's not part of a subscription package, games are still very expensive. So, you're going to be charging people 70 quid for a game to

stream. Like, if you So, your plan is to get into emerging markets. Games are still expensive. A subscription is still not cheap, I would say. And then now there's limits on that. So, renders it all useless. The ecosystem isn't actually set up for some of these markets. So for example, I believe Xbox Live and PSN. So across Africa, they're only actually set up in South Africa. So if you're expecting all these other countries to suddenly pick it up, like the ecosystem isn't even set up to be there for this. So if you're like the the imaginary numbers I think that sometimes people come up with for the potential market opportunity is currently not there because these companies haven't bothered with it even when there's PlayStation and Xbox cloud gaming already live and yeah hardware cost is going to go up. So, I mean, ultimately though with cloud gaming, these companies still have to bear those costs somewhere in the cloud for you to play your games, which is why and that's

getting really expensive because of all this AI technology. So, Microsoft's causing itself its own problems, right? It's investing billions into AI and it's now like, oh yeah, but now it's probably too expensive to run our our cloud gaming, so we have to limit it. Like, it's expensive for them, too. There's just nothing to it for me. And I've lived through so many of these cycles now. I've only been doing this like long enough, but I've only been doing this like 15 years. And when I started, there was on live just came and went. Maybe it's too early. Gai came about as like a challenger. It was bought by Sony. I really never heard of it again. And I guess the technology became part of PlayStation now, which I've just never hit literally anything about. Pointless. And then all the all the problems you mentioned with Xbox. It it it's just it's not going to happen. Oh, a Stadia, of course, a massive colossal failure. That was before everything was ridiculously expensive. There were other reasons probably why that failed more to do with how the whole thing was managed. And like you announce you announce your console and your big studio that's only just started working on a games. It's

like great. So your games like years out like ridiculous. Yeah. I I really think there's nothing to cloud gaming. That's that is a that is a scalable business.
I agree. Like I I don't want to like I I don't like to like completely be like yeah that's like rubbish or whatever. Like for me, I I also just don't I feel like it's one of those things. It sounds good. Like the idea sounds good and on paper it does, but actually in practice, I just don't really see it ever being as big as what you like some people seem to think that it it will be.
And you can't use it for competitive gaming or any esports stuff. Like you just can't like any type of latency that you don't normally get. Like it's just not good enough. And so especially if even if there's like you're playing it for ages and there's like a like a few 10 seconds a minute where it happens, it's just like it's just still not good enough. So I I just think there are just
and like some people take this so seriously. Like some people won't use a wireless mouse when they game because they're worried it will slow down their reaction by like a second or two. So, you know, they're definitely not going to want to play on something where, you know, you know, my game is just, you

know, sort of, you know, the latency has slowed me down, you know, 40 seconds a minute. Like, there's no way.
Yeah. Yeah. I I just I I've never I've just never thought much cloud gaming and it's proven to be a flop. I don't know. I don't know what else to say about it. Right. Uh before I rant again, thanks that thanks to that, Paige. The other story I wanted to do, so Paige wrote this, it was actually it was an interview with Deconstructure of Than and Mishka Katov. So they had Zinga founder Mark Pinkis on the podcast. He's got a new book out. And one of the things that he said was that he had a handshake agreement with Supercell CEO Il Capan to acquire the Finnish developer for $400 million in cash. This was back in 2012. However, the board rejected the deal after the company struggled with previous acquisitions. So he said to quote I went to my board and they were grumpy and they said until you prove you can manage what you have we don't want you to buy anything else. So he had or Zingga had really just bought

Draw Something developer OMG for $180 million plus earnouts which I think was another 30 million then that that was at the time that was a mass that was like a really really big viral hit. Like can't underell how big that game was at the time. But I guess as we later learn about these things, it just turns out to be like just a massive flash in the pan as by September 2013 actually shut down the studio after such a massive acquisition. And I was looking and I I guess I don't know the exact month. Sorry if that was mentioned. I can't see it. So I was looking at like when did Zinga share price crash because I guess that's the other context here. So Zinga Zinger went public at the end of 2011 on the highs of its kind of Facebook Farmville Mafia Wars heyday, right? It was so big on Facebook that I think it negotiated basically special revenue share deals. Like it was that big a player on that space and obviously Facebook has a ginormous audience. Cut to either around that time I guess early

2012 Facebook decided actually we're not really interested in games anymore and then so they start chasing you know ad revenue and doing other things on their platform. I I can't remember the full history now. I think it was a there was virtual currency that they kind of I think just got rid of Facebook something like that. Anyway, so at that time so maybe around the time of this as well. So he they've just had a failed acquisition and also a couple things are happening. The browser gaming industry is just sort of disappearing in front of them, right? The share price of the company collapses in 2012 way below. I think it was down it was by the end of that year. I think it was like a fifth of its peak which is at the start of the year. And I guess at that point maybe you start thinking okay I guess we need to move to mobile which this acquisition would oddly have facilitated. By the by 2013 I wrote a by the end of 2012 actually I think I wrote an article which was called supercell. It was for develop magazine. I think put on the cover it was like the billion dollar startup and like it it grew massively so

quickly. [snorts] So I think there's just a lot of compounding factors unfortunately for Zinga that I think you could almost reasonably say well I guess we can see why they didn't make that purchase but then it's very unfort it's very odd then so later then they get the new CEO Dom Matrick and they let him buy natural motion for $527 million sorry in 2014 and they did I think he says they have he he doesn't actually name them right but he in insinuates and they said a business having no revenues or no hit games. Well, that's not actually true. So, Natural Motion bought Boss Alien and CSR Racing and CSR Racing 2 are hit games and they still do well now, but there CSR 3 has been soft launch forever. So, they did have a game, but like they didn't have anything else. I think to the point they like they did things like clumsy ninja. They actually had really good tech called Morphe and something else, can't remember, which was using GTA, but then they stopped really working on that. So ultimately

with hindsight, what would you rather spend that money and you'd rather spend it on Supercell? But they didn't do it. Interesting. Always these things of like this could have happened, this could have happened. It's hard to know always at the time. I think I'm sure there's always discussions and 100% [clears throat] there's always these big presentations that companies do internally of like going here's the here's companies maybe we we should talk to about buying. But yeah, that would have definitely changed Zingga's history and perhaps Mark Pinkus', this sounds really dramatic, Mark Pinkus' fate within Zinga as well as like the CEO and they wouldn't have had so many years struggling in the mobile space with so many headlines about is Zinga coming back over many many years. They spent a lot of money premium acquisition prices really great studios in the end, Peak, Small Giant Games, Graham Games, but yeah, Supercell was a miss. Really interesting. Yeah, like you said, I I kind of get it for at the time. Like I kind of understand why the board would be like, "No, we're not doing that." But then I also see that in hindsight, he's

going to look back on that and be like, "Yeah, that one stings because you know what could have been kind of thing." But yeah, he also had like some interesting comments at the end. He didn't really hold back on his thoughts about just the industry in general. and he was kind of saying that like there's just a huge lack of like creativity and innovation because all these companies are just sort of like playing defense which he said he had also done when he came back to Zinga like
he said he had to sort of like get some things back on track but yeah he yeah he didn't really hold back on those comments. Yeah, I I can kind of see I mean Ilka himself has made this point recently, right? There's not enough innovation going on. But then mobile for the longest time, a lot of it has been we're just going to copy what works. I'm not saying there's never been innovation. There has Clash Royale was really good. Brawl Stars was I I guess it was innovative. It was just interesting different kind of different experience on mobile and there's and then but I think like innovations have just been in different areas like it doesn't mean like there's a whole new game experience. Sometimes they innovate on social side or mechanics or or they

just do a really really well polished game that's beyond maybe what's currently on the market. Right. Royal match. Exceptional job there. Yeah. Interesting interesting times. So I had a couple other stories but I think we will wrap it up there. So the other things cuz we missed a couple weeks. Uh obviously very very very big news in the industry. There's more announcements around Xbox. So they announced this year they're going to lay off 300 3,200 staff and they started that with 1,600. They are they've said they're now 3/4 of the way through this kind of as they would term it a reset. Unfortunately, one of the things in that is that Ninja Theory, which makes sa and makes Hellblade, they may close. Apparently two potential buyers are no longer they either fell through or they're just no longer interested. Um long-standing UK studio. I hope it works out for them. And obviously, best of luck to everyone affected because yeah, it's just it's just devastating. It's obviously a sad indictment on the Xbox's just strategy before of we're going to do the and and

things just not working out. But yeah, so best of luck to to everyone affected, right, we're going to we're going to end it there. I've had plenty of rants this episode. I guess I had to get them all out my system after a couple weeks off. So yeah, it was been a fun one. Thanks very much, Paige, for being on the show.
Yeah, good to be back. Thank you everybody for tuning in again. So, I'm going to be away, but the podcast will continue. Have a good one. We'll catch you soon.