🚨📢BREAKING NEWS: 15% Google play fees, EA layoffs, Microsoft saving face 🤯

Then we have good genie 3 world models start to break down [music] after around a minute. Yes, you heard that right. Those were the models that shave off like billions out of the gaming stock market because everybody [music] thought they would be creating GTA 6. Two and a half gamers exclusive. Breaking news. Literally breaking.
Hello. Hello. Welcome to [music] breaking news as usual. Our new segment on the two and a half gamers podcast. This time I'm going to do the news. So let's get on to it as there's lots of stuff to cover this week and of course it's the GDC week so there are few interesting announcements on the list. First one. Uh if you remember last week Google uh reduced the fees [music] on the stores. This is quite important.

That's because of that all best buddy deal with Epic which is still up to the judge to actually pass. So we'll still see but for now they revealed some more details on the GDC conference which they said that Google will be taking a flat 20% store commission for IPs made through the Play Store rather than the 30% which is the main main thing. And then it's also adding 5% commission for IPs made with its default billing infrastructure for developers in US, [music] EU, UK, Australia. And then the interesting part that they shared is that Google will enable you to get even lower fee which will be the 15% commission fee if you enroll into some of their programs or rather all of them. So what you need to do is you need to have Google Play Games program where if I understand you will [music]

be part of the kind of a this Google Play Games system and then also Google's cloud save system which enables progress synchronization across devices. So after you go into this, you will be pretty much just considered to be reduced for that 15% flat. So yeah, let's see. This is getting very very interesting. We had the latest episode with Chip on the podcast which explained these changes very well. So nothing's final. So we're still waiting for the end of that will see but yeah, it's getting quite interesting. Let's just say that especially that finally something's moving the right direction which means lower fees at one way or the other hopefully even higher. Okay, moving on. Electronic Arts lays off undisclosed number of employees because Battlefield is doing record revenue and people are losing their hair over it. Yeah, this is just the life cycle of games in triple A. Now it sounds bad but that's how it works because there's a completely

different team on a successful game that's being driven into live ops and that is being just built for release. Different skill set, different team size, different setup. So yeah, projects are contract base. So I guess this is just a normal nature and yeah, people are just throwing it from left to right because it's like record revenue da da da da da. Yeah, it's just automatic. It's guys. Sorry. This is how it works unfortunately. Then we have good genie 3 world models start to break down after around a minute. Yes, you heard that right. Those were the models that shave off like billions out of the gaming stock market because everybody thought they would be creating GTA 6 on the fly. It seems they cannot keep the world consistency for more than a minute. So here we go. Yeah, so as Google outlined like Genie [music] 2 could do that like only for a few seconds. Now Genie 3 can do it for like a minute and this was again

shown pretty much on GDC how these look and like what what like, you know, you can do that. But again, these are not game engines. These are not game making tools. It's more of like stepping stone for artificial intelligence to show its qualities, guys. So, yeah, this is just like a giant nothing burger company to like if this is a replace yet. Like it won't replace yet. Definitely not short term. Long term maybe it will do something, but yeah, this this is just it as usual. Then we have Scopely celebrating 15 years with more than 15 billion in lifetime revenue. Congrats, guys. Keep on rocking. New research shows over 90% of gamers find playing with AI-powered NPCs to be enjoyable and rewarding. Yeah, definitely. Because everybody hates AI until AI finally can do something useful, which is like enabling some more [music] player interaction with NPCs or whatnot. So, yeah. Uh water is wet and we're moving on.

PC will overtake console revenue by 2028 according to Newzoo. Yeah, some bold prediction from one of our favorite uh premium revenue companies. So, yeah, let's see. Uh we'll see like they still had those charts about VR completely taking off. So, let's take it with a grain of salt. But yeah, it seems inevitable because PC is really on the roll lately. And these are on the roll premium seven. Of course, GTA 6 should be released this year. So, that should be also a big push. But that's actually on the console side. I'm sorry. It will come to PC later. So, it will be actually the other way around as for the dynamic, but we'll see. PC is definitely in a good spot and yeah, I guess could be could be going great. Go check Steam scanner as have it on the channel released this week. Epic increases Fortnite V-bucks to help pay the bills. Yeah. Stuff is going to be more expensive from

March 19th because that's the start of the new Battle Pass season. And in real terms, it means stuff like 800 V-bucks was for 8.99, uh will be for 8.99 and instead before it was 1,000 bucks. They shade off pretty much 20% lower or let's say get you 20% [music] less for the same amount of money. So, yeah, that's there. Yeah, I guess uh Epic's not making enough money or whatever after their best buddy deal with Google reducing the fee. Let's see. Again, see it loot boxes will be rated PEGI 16 from June as part of a sweeping change to the [music] age rating system, says director Dirk Bosmans as the European body is rethinking how it rates games. Some more regulation as usual coming from Europe. Then we have Xbox unveiling the first tech details of its new generation console, the one that's code named Project [music] Helix. Yeah,

so guys are just trying to prove that they care about gaming even though they care about AI much more, but yeah, [music] let's see. On top of it, there was also this kind of a fireside Q&A chat with uh Asher Sharma, the new Xbox chief of gaming, and Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, where he literally Satya stressed that Microsoft will always invest in video games after this kind of a leadership trying to assure the whole ecosystem that they are not abandoning the ship yet even though everybody thinks they are. So, yeah, let's see. Let's see how this goes. Valve responds to New York attorney general Also, it again because of the gambling with loot boxes as of course Wolf denies it and says that it doesn't believe that loot boxing Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2 games unlawfully encourage minors to gamble. And saying [music] it was disappointed to see action against it.

So, yeah, usual loot box drama. This this is just happening until we have some final lawsuit resolutions. This will take probably years or like we'll see what happens there. NCSoft acquires 70% stake in mobile developer Just Play with a $2 million deal expected to close at the end of April 2026. South Korean giant continues expansion to casual games market. This is just like classical stuff. One interesting thing is that NCSoft also acquired Vietnam-based casual games developer Leehulu Games, which is one of those first Vietnam acquisitions, which means [music] that we could see finally Vietnam market being opened and you can catch me in May in Ho Chi Minh City because I will be there on the Games Forum event. And then we have the long-awaited Unity GDC AI announcement. I literally pretty much watched on this whole GDC Unity product update video where there's guys talking about it like what it can do,

but honestly I'm not really impressed. Like it looks like yeah, we have this kind of a version of Copilot that you can use in Unity. It's like nice and great and everything and could help you with like profilers and all these other nice technical things that I probably [music] don't get like 50% of those. But it's definitely not that thing that the announcement was hyping up before like you can just seamlessly create games out of nothing because Genie 3 just shaved off 50% of its stock value. So, yeah, I guess the is continuing going down the drain unfortunately because I still don't see anything tangible out of this. They also released this uh real-time 3D uh web browser Unity Studio that's going to be launched web editor for like other industries. Or stuff like manufacturing, automotive, healthcare, architecture. So, yeah, that's nice, but again gaming wise,

we're still running around in circles. Let's see how this goes because again, I don't really see this company having that bright of a future at least short term. Let's see what happens. Anyway, that was the news. Uh where you stayed, join the channel. I mean, the Slack channel. Comment on under the video if you want and see you next time. Have a nice day. Ciao.