Discord Data Breach, Warcraft Goes Aggro on Mods & Where Can you Buy an Xbox? | Games For Breakfast

[Applause] [Music] Good morning, Matt. Oh,
good morning, Will.
Good morning to all of you. Welcome to Games for Breakfast, the only internet talk show where we talk about this week's gaming and tech news, but that also we where we bring back the most classic bits, the the the the the time-tested jokes that you crave and certainly remember from three years ago on Twitch. And to celebrate that, I will be having one biscuit.
How you doing, Will? I'm doing bones to dust, Matt. I'm doing Bones to dust. That That is three years ago. But that's fine. That's
Welcome to season 62 of Games for Breakfast.
That's fine. Matt, you know, I I told you I was going to tell you a story. Uh and I'll tell I'll tell you the story as we begin, right? As you're as you're eating your one biscuit because
I'm going to make I'm going to press the

coffee,
right? Yeah, that's right. Um so I I just regret to inform everyone that we will not be participating in the hottest new Twitch meta. Um, Matt and I are illquipped actually to participate in the hot new spicy Twitch meta of going live on Twitch specifically to give birth to your child. That's right. Over the last week, a Twitch streamer went into labor and thought, "At last, my time has come." And went live on Twitch. Now, I should be very clear. I'm really glad that both the mom and the kid are okay. I do have one complaint, which is that the kid is not named Truman, which is just such a missed opportunity.
They left it on the table,
right? Like it was Right. Yeah. Right. Okay. Cool. Great. Awesome. Also, if anyone's like, "How is that okay with terms of service?" It apparently is because the CEO of Twitch was in chat for this birth wishing the mother well.

So, you know, that's great. That's just awesome. I don't
listen what is it?
I don't I'm not against it in any way. I just
I'm confused. I I'm confused. If you are like that's it. I should I should do that. I a person about to have a child should go live on an internet streaming service to live stream the birth. Could you please explain to me the rationale?
It's doing a thing that people haven't done before. Like I I know we're joking. We're calling it like the meta, right?
Right. Yeah.
Uh it's one person.
That's true.
Right. Uh and that's not to say that there won't be copycats, but I I imagine Oh, okay. There's two possibilities. One, it doesn't like actually catch on, of course, cuz it's kind of a in-depth way to uh deal with one of the most natural things in the world, but that normally is not live streamed. Uh, and the other is, hey, maybe like,

how do I put this? In a world that is continually sanitized for a thousand different things, um, even showing it on a gaming site or or a streaming site or a chatting site or whatever, uh, showing uh, someone giving birth is actually probably a net positive in my opinion.
No, I think that that's, you know, that's also a very good point. That's true.
You know what I mean? It's it's very silly and uh it would I it's it's unprecedented, but I guess that's why it's news, right? But I think it's good.
Yeah. Uh you know, RC asking the really important Twitch relevant questions. What category do they listen under? I believe it was just chatting.
That's what every
Seems like they were doing more than just chatting.
Well, right, but like anything that doesn't have another category is just chatting. So,
yeah. It's not talk shows. No, it's not. Just chatting such a big category, right? Like that's the Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, I just thought that that

might be that might be an interesting story with which to begin our show to get to get your takes on.
Uh that's my takes. Everyone else seems to have some takes in chat.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh special events, right? Excellent.
Special events there. I don't know if there's a more special event.
That's true. Uh, were they named Braden and how many did they have?
They are Legion.
That's right. Yeah, that's true. I I think that's interesting. It's just very interesting to me like on a more serious note how much Twitch has expanded from that goofy place where people play video games to like a real hub of community and culture, right? In a way that is very unique, right? Like be beyond the jokes, right? that like there is more to the interactions and to the kinds of like art and uh community that people are trying to make here that like doesn't work on a lot of other sites, right?

We've long discussed the differences between YouTube live streaming and Twitch live streaming even. Um and so it it feels very uniquely Twitch that that thing could happen and be such a phenomena. Yeah, I mean I I think it's all based on the type of community that you cultivate uh and the type of person and the type of content that you are and slashmake. I don't know. It's it's a lot of complications. I do think that we're going like getting on a soap box. I think uh the way that the at least I will say the the US is constructed that a lot of people are starved for actual connection and I think that uh streaming services like Twitch and YouTube in a couple different ways are ways that can either foster connection or give enough sense of the connection that it's it's enough to sort of get by. Does that make sense? like it's it's never it's never a substitute for the real thing, but like or or like

an in person thing, I should say, not the real thing. You know what I mean?
I I have uh I have related my job to being a digital bartender in many ways that my job is to uh is to to hold space in a in a digital version of Cheers. Um and
where everybody knows your screen name.
That's correct. Exactly. So, uh where people come after work and hang out and foster friendships and do all of those things. So, where ping times are all the same.
That's correct. Uh yeah, speaking of, by the way, uh coming together on Twitch to do new, cool, interesting things that foster a sense of community. October the 25th. Mark your calendars. Uh Matt approves of the segue. Um mark your calendars. Noon Eastern to midnight Eastern on October the 25th, both here on Twitch and here on YouTube. We'll be streaming my birthday celebration. My birthday actual is October the 23rd, but we're doing it on the 25th because that's a Saturday. Please join us for some nonsense. Uh we

will be doing 12 hours of uh Deep Rock Galactic Rock and Stone for charity. We're raising money for Direct Relief using Crowd Control. You'll be able to summon all of the things that you can think of that haunt your Deep Rock Galactic Nightmares in addition to helping us. Uh me and a team of mods and maybe some guests are going to be uh diving deep into Asteroids looking for uh treasure. We're going to be diving constantly um over the the course of those 12 hours. We've got dinner breaks planned and other games. We'll have uh all kinds of uh charity goals to work towards throughout that stream. So, please join us for that. It's going to be a blast. I'm really excited. Uh and I hope you are, too.
Yeah, it's going to be very, very fun. Will, how did the prep stream go? It went pretty well. Um,
how many hours do I have to play before I'm ready to join in?
A few.
Damn it. Okay, it's fine. I'll do it.

I'll do it for you and I'll do it for charity.
Okay.
And justice
and rock and stone.
Yeah. Um, for rock and stone is really is really the reason. Shall we then uh get on to our our stories uh proper?
I believe we should. All right, everybody. I need you all to remain calm's
over.
I need you all to remain calm. So, I need you all to cast your mind back back in time to some
season 45 of games for breakfast.
Yes. Do you remember when we were talking about how Discord was doing uh government IDs and how inevitably there would be problems and how one of the primary concerns with giving any company your personal information is that now the company has that personal information and you don't you aren't really in control of it anymore because what happens to that company

is beyond your control. Okay, cool. Do you remember that? Okay, because
I mean I do remember that.
Okay, great. Actually, uh because it happened. So, Discord is trying to make it very clear and we should be clear on this as well that Discord did not suffer a data breach. However, one of their third-party vendors who was handling customer service for them did suffer a data breach and in the process some 70,000 Discord users who were were required to re-upload their ID to have their age manually verified by humans had their full government ID along with other pertinent personal information leaked onto the internet as part of a a data breach at this third party um venture. Yeah, the way that Discord
I really don't want to I told you so, but like
yeah, look, um
the story comes from us from a couple different places, but the main one is

Discord themselves. Uh we'll have the link to their actual post about this, their press release,
and um the way that it's worded is very in interesting to me um and also like played out. Uh, it says, "Update on a security incident involving third-party customer service is the title of it." Now, that's true. Discord's own servers were not breached,
but a company that Discord trusted enough and hired servers were breached or whatever like like it is still under their purview and umbrella. Right.
Correct. Um, and the way this is kind of working, uh, is that the top line is Discord recently discovered an incident where an unauthorized party compromised one of our third party vendors. This, oh, this was not a breach of Discord is the second bullet point, but rather a breach of the third party service provider 5CA that we used to support our customer service efforts. Reads has all

of your information that we gave them. Um, this incident impacted a limited number of users who have uh uh communicated with our customer service or trust and safety team. Interesting. This goes into how many? Now, the next bullet point, bullet point four, before we've got to numbers of the accounts impacted globally, we have identified approximately 70,000 users that may have had their government ID photos exposed, which our vendor used to renew age related appeals. Now, the reason this has to happen and the the policy is not bad, but the implementation is bad. And again, these are my opinions, not the opinions of Will or Brad or Janet or Rocky, um is to is basically due to the stuff that people in the chat probably know more about than me. The UK's um um laws to prove age verification, right? Um there's many many many like it it in many ways it is coming from a good place. I think, you know, people hit the

internet and all sides of it far too young. Uh, but this ain't it. And if if you're going to do the thing that we were all like, I don't know if this is a good idea with how you going to do this with your IDs and everyone's like, no, it's fine. And then it's not fine.
It just gets sloppy, man. Um, it says no messages or activities beyond what the users may have discussed with customer support have been uh leaked. However, um they we've immediately revoked the customer support provers access to our ticket system and are continuing to investigate this matter. That wording feels odd and I don't know like okay, so did they let this place go? I mean that it's already been hacked. Like the stuff's out of there. So like does that mean that they've fired this group? If that's the case, who's doing it now? Like you still have to follow the law. Also, also important that implies that this group had access to a ticketing

system, which was not their own ticketing system, which was Discord's ticketing system, which means that whoever breached the data might have had access to Discord's ticketing system, which by definition, by Discord's own admission here, would be breaching data that was not wholly contained in this other third party company, but which would indeed be first party Discord data. So, which is it?
Uh, here's what I'll say.
That's logic. It's logically inconsistent is my only point. I don't know the details, but logically,
I would like to uh give Discord credit for being honest about it. They they actually say that's it's important that the transparency about the events didn't impact people's personal information. I think that is good. Um, however, the it does and I get why companies do this because the second you admit to fault, you are opening yourself up to massive litigation. And I don't want Discord to be uh, you know, destroyed or by any

means the imagination. It's just uh this is a delicate balance of how a company runs what is essentially a social media site.
Correct.
Right. Um,
it's a megaphone.
It's a delicate dance. Yeah.
And they have to balance I think again I haven't even looked into Discord sort of structure like like corporate structure but they have to balance like actually making a profit so the thing could still work versus making the thing still work.
Not saying that they're doing a great job or not a great job. It's just it's all this stuff has so many levers that have to be pulled to keep it afloat.
Um and this could very well have been a uh rushed job to uh basically push it out to this 5CA group because they needed it to like run instantly with the changing laws of the UK. Um, and then maybe it was running fine and then someone just found a breach or found a found a vulnerability. So,
Chad is on fire as always. Uh, we got

some very good comments. Uh, hippie pointing out that being that transparent is actually the law in Europe under the GDPR. That's a really good point. Also, we had an earlier comment uh I believe it was by Hervox who mentioned that um under the GDPR, if a contractor that you've delegated to do business for you under your name gets breached, you got breached. Like those are
that's the same thing. And that's I think that's why I'm a little bit at odds and a little bit prickly with the our transparency is of course the top priority. But like what they're doing is speaking around the issue, but they're but they're speaking around the issue. I think the way this is worded after reading the entire thing, they're speaking around the issue knowing that people that care about this will absolutely know they are at fault, but they're doing damage control to not be put like the legal verbiage out there that they're like, "We totally messed up, right?" Like,
and that's I guess the balancing act you have to do. I
I'm more upsetty

with this happening with them partnering with the group where this happened. Of course, mistakes happen. it it it's entirely possible um that literally almost nothing could have been done. Um but it's uh it's a it's showing a glaring fault in requirements for a thing that I overall think is good. It's just the way it is done currently uh is not and therefore it should be sort of examined again and try to figure out better ways for a for age verification. Yeah, I I think the in my mind Demor makes a really good point here. Um once a given person has been identified adult, there's no reason to store the data beyond a boolean that is has been verified as adult. So, I'm kind of of the opinion that Discord should just have a service where you call a representative of Discord on a video call on the platform that supports video calls and you talk to that person for like a minute and you show them your ID and your face and then

they mark down that you're an adult and that's it, right? But like that satisfies it, right? because there's a person who's a representative of Discord who verified themselves that you are who you say you are and that you
Yeah, I think that takes about 10 times longer than probably what they were doing though.
Sure. But but can't get hacked, right? Because it ju they don't you don't store any of that video call data. You just literally mark off.
They could also be they could also just not save the d like they could also just not save the data, right? Like,
yeah,
there could be a there could be a way, especially if they're dealing with thirdparty vendors to like and it's a customer service thing.
Yeah. Just I whoever I'm sorry I forgot who just said that comment about like ticking off the thing like, oh, yep, adult. Great. Like, we know this now.
Um, especially because other other sites have used similar logic, right? uh

Newgrounds notoriously said, "We assume that you are an adult under any of the following circumstances, right?" And then listed a long series of reasonable, logical conclusions that could reach the notion that you are an adult, right? So anyway, we'll see how this goes. I I don't want to I want to make it very clear. I like Discord very much. I don't want to like dogpile on them. and they are being transparent about uh a mess up in somewhere in their chain that affects a decent amount of people.
Um
this happens all the time in this sort of thing. It's just now in in this space of age verification we're going to start it's it's another vector
where your information can be taken.
Yes. It's not like there aren't nine other vectors where your information can be taken and is already taken, you know, but like it's just one more and it's it just it's it's more of a feel bad thing. Yeah. To be perfectly honest.
Yeah.
Uh

Yep. Anyway, uh if you're one of the 70,000 people, my condolences and good luck.
And Fenlaw, I think this is actually interesting and you're not exactly wrong. Uh Matt is looking for the company friendly method. Will is looking for the customer friendly method. Um, in a perfect world, those two things either are the same or coincide with one another.
Yeah,
it's that is also
real hard.
Hard. Uh, and I don't think a lot of companies pull it off. In fact, I'm having trouble sort of like thinking of like a perfect synergy of that. Um, I think trying to get the closest to that bullseye is the optimum. Um because a as as as has been our catchphrase since season 11 of this show, turns out it's complicated. Um a all things are and this doubly so.
Yep. Exactly.
Anyway, we we'll keep watching as it goes. Hopefully, we won't be right more.
Yeah.

I'd rather be wrong.
Yep. I Yeah.
I'd rather this whole thing to be safe.
Yep. Agreed. Okay, let's talk about All right, so two weeks ago Oh, I have to have my one my one biscuit.
Yeah, right. Two two weeks ago, uh we talked about the uh decision that Costco reached to no longer carry the Xbox line of product at their stores. Um there's a short out about it, by the way. Uh if you if you haven't seen it, go go check out the shorts over on YouTube. There's a short about uh Sonic eating a hot dog on Xbox's grave. It's beautiful. Um and over the weekend,
what a loaded image
over this weekend.
Actually, hold on a second, Matt. That's the second banger short that we've had with a mascot for a franchise standing over the grave of an opposing franchise.
Let me look at this.

I do just want to point that out.
Right.
Hold on. I'm going I'm going in. Give me a second.
The other one was Sylveon.
Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. All right. We got No, we've had three gravestones.
Yes, that's it. That's our meta.
Oh, wait. No. Oops. I spoiled one. There's another one coming that's not out yet that has a gravestone on it.
Perfect meta.
Um,
that's the meta now.
Uh, gravestone meta going strong um over there. That's hilarious. Yeah.
Um, man, we have to stop putting gravestones on our
It's just such a con like from a from an iconog an iconog
Yeah.
from an iconography perspective. Like I was iconic. That's the wrong kind of word, but it's the right word. Um, it's so easy to get across pieces of information where you have a thing above and then a grave with something and a character looking at that grave. Like, you can get across a lot. Yep.

But I'm gonna make it a point to not do it after this.
We need an extra grave emote. I think chat's right. Okay. Anyway, um so over the weekend, uh rumors abounded beginning on Reddit, uh that some people and and of course all things from Reddit must be taken with a truckload of salt. True. True and real. Um
true and real, Mod Bros.
Yeah. uh that Target and Walmart were both winding down their Xbox uh collection, their their Xbox uh sales in stores now.
Rumors abound.
Rumors abound now this morning. A and by the way, importantly, like every gaming news site ran with this. Like every gaming news site ran with like, oh my god, someone on Reddit did a thing and like did it. and I I picked it up because the the the news sites did. Now, uh big shout outs to uh Mary over

in our Discord who linked the followup that some people have done this morning now that companies are open, now that like it's more possible to get a customer service representative because Monday morning. Um that both uh Target and Walmart have denied that they are winding down Xbox sales and uh there has been push back against this notion.
Yeah. And I'm not trying to tinfoil hat here, but the the the
from Windows Central,
uh the article that will be in the show notes, uh correct me if I am wrong, will or when it happens. It never happens. Um it happens too much. The this is saying that the the person who wrote this article called their local Walmart and that Walmart said they were not doing it. Also, um it mentions uh Larry Major Nelson chiming in saying that he went to a tar couple of Targets in GameStop stores during the week uh for other reasons and they still had them.
Yeah.
So, I don't think there is actually and and maybe it's in here somewhere and

maybe I missed it. Um
the the Windows Central spoke to a target employee.
And yeah, an target employee. What is that? That could be literally at the target that they're at.
Absolutely correct. They're also not reporting on their own um they're not reporting on their own conversation with the Walmart employee. They're reporting on uh an example conversation of many that they saw that Walmart has denying that they're wrapping it up. However,
and Xbox has denied it as well, but they but I want to read the the actual thing. It's and this is from the from the article itself, but they reached out to I believe it was Windows Central reached out to Xbox. Um, and they said, quote, "Target and Walmart, among other retailers, remain committed partners for Xbox consoles, accessories, and games. Now,

if I were fluent in corpo, um
I only took a semester in corpo.
I only took and I to be perfectly honest, I flunked out. Um I was
That's why we're here in a virtual kitchen on a Monday morning.
On a Monday morning. You think we have jobs? Um, but I think like I think that Target and Walmart and other major retailers are definitely going to be exactly this. Remain committed partners to Xbox consoles, accessories, and games. But what does that mean?
That's a really great point.
Like again, this is an Xbox. This is an Xbox, right? Like what
is this? An Xbox?
It maybe I could see. My my bit rate is tanking, by the way. I hope the streams isn't uh so it's all jumpy.
You're fine. I'll I'll let you know if it's a problem.
Um the like

there's no way that Microsoft and the Xbox brand is going anywhere. So, of course, they're going to remain partners. And this article does say, if I take my tinfoil hat off for a moment, uh this article does say how u Microsoft has been really smartly gunshy about how many consoles they produce because they don't want to overproduce consoles in in a in the market like to save money essentially. So they also come in production lines and waves. So, it's possible that some places are gone like it like they ran out of the Xboxes and they're not restocking them as quickly because Microsoft is not building them as quickly.
Y
there's a lot of different reasons,
but it is hard. I hate doing this, but it really Xbox has a bad vibe right now. We're going to talk about the other story having to do with Xbox. And I think the reason why major sites are jumping on this is

because even if it's not real, it feels real.
I think that's the big that's the big thing is that this is plausible immediately, right? Yeah. This is like I I think micro one of Microsoft's biggest problems right now is Costco, right? Because Costco has all of the power in that relationship, right, between Microsoft and Costco. Costco doesn't need to sell Xboxes. They don't just sell Xbox at all. Costco makes so much money, y'all. Costco makes a lot a lot of money.
That's how they can sell those hot dogs so cheap,
right? Yeah, correct. That's how they can loss lead with their award-winning hot dogs. Um, but uh so they they don't need that, right? RC a thousand percent. I do want to make that very clear. Not good journalism, bad journalism, probably not even journalism. Um, but there's there's an interesting correlation between the proliferation of

let's just call it bad journalism or just stories that are not journalism like and the the their ability to transcend and break containment.
Yes,
we're seeing a lot of that across the board with all different things. We're talking specifically here about games. That's just the vi like that plus the again the second story we'll talk about with Xbox coming up. The it it just fe even if it is entirely wrong we're like no that feels right and that's a bad that's a bad place for a company to be in. I think we've seen
throughout all aspects of American and some global life perception is kind of now like overtaking reality like friendship with reality over perception new BFF and that's a dangerous place to be in many places. It's not but again in the specific context of video games and and video game consoles and manufacturers you don't want that to be your narrative.
Correct. if you want to keep if you want

to keep selling the console, you don't want that to be your narrative. And I don't think Xbox is as a brand coming out strongly enough against this and showing proof around it. Like, and to be very clear, they don't have to. They don't owe me or anyone anything. They're a they're a a a corporation that builds uh computers that make pixels dance for our amusement. But if they want to keep having good public perception, this has broken containment. Let's start talking about what's going on.
Yeah.
You know, if they want to. If they don't, it doesn't really matter.
Yeah.
I just loved making this graphic, too.
No, I I think it's very good. Yeah. Um I I do think that um
Sean, sorry.
Yeah. Uh so so we've got we've got some um some very uh I I think this this is a

good one, right? Maybe they'll remain partners, but they're just going to dedicate less shelf space to it. I think that's definitely possible if people perceive that with the rising cost, they'll go down. Um also, it's very interesting. I saw a lot of traffic online that people said that um it wasn't the tariffs, it was greed that caused Xbox to raise the prices. I don't know what to tell y'all. The rising the rising Wait, wait, wait. But when we say that it's the tariffs, that's us reading the press release that Xbox put out, which I read this weekend in preparation for having this talk that says due to macroeconomic conditions within the United States, tariffs. Macroeconomic conditions with the United States means we're saying it's tariffs. Whether or not we believe them is a different story, but we're reporting what they said. But what they said is the price is going up in the United States because tariffs.
Tariffs are such an interesting thing because at the end of the day, it's like

you can blame the company for the the symptoms but not the disease.
Yeah.
Like companies are never going to be like, "Oh man, there's an extra 80% when we ship this into a country. We better eat that." That's just not how it works. It's a tax on consumers. So, and but it's it's such an interesting like second or third tier plausible deniability case because people implementing the tariff would can be like we're not we're not charging the American people anything knowing full well how a corporation will react to a tariff that will charge the people of that country the money. So, especially the hardware, the hardware going up is in my opinion and apparently Xbox's the tariffs. When we talk about when we talk about the second story, yeah,
there might be something different there.
Um, I find this fascinating and sad and interesting and um

there I'll say this. I I want to end this because I feel like we've been kicking Xbox a lot. Yeah,
we've got more kicking Xbox to do later in the show, so use
like I
I want Xbox to succeed what however they want to do whatever they want to do, I want it to be profitable and successful and enjoyable for the consumers because even though I am not in the ecosystem, having them as a belleweather no um counterpoint uh to Nintendo and Sony, it's good. I want them to all be vying constantly because that's the only way that we're going to get good things at reasonable prices.
Yes.
If Xbox was to die or Microsoft just said nah, even though that'd be crazy after the acquisitions that they've just done, um then that would make Nintendo and Sony the deactos outside of Steam. And I don't think that's good for any of them,
right? So, I want a healthy console

ecosystem to be going with people to have choices. I just don't agree personally with Xbox choice to make their hardware of an actual Xbox the piece of the puzzle you need the least.
Yeah.
And maybe that's more profitable and maybe they want to get out of the space. Who knows?
Yep. But like it's also an interesting place to pivot because if they do want to get out of the space, they can't say it because they know how the consumer will react and it's going to have to be a real slow burn.
Yep.
Anyhoo,
all right,
that was a fun one.
Yeah,
I I deserve my one biscuit for the day.
You do. All right, let's uh let's talk about another mess. Let's talk about Mind's Eye.
I don't understand what I read this article twice. Yeah,
let's go.
Okay, so Mind's Eye was a game uh that came out this year, right? Um and uh I'm doing some checking real quick. Uh

there are currently 12 people playing it after its June 10th release. There are 12 people paying playing playing it. The 24-hour peak is 20. It peaked at 3,32 four months ago. It was a um huge uh AAA style game. It's a third-person uh shooter uh released by IO Interactive Partners and developed by uh Build a Rocket Boy,
also known as for this Barb.
Barb um it did not sell a lot of copies by anyone's estimation. It was widely regarded as a hideous flop. There have been there were a lot of stories. We didn't cover it when it came out because it kind of just felt like dropping the elbow on another failed game launch and that's not useful or like interesting, right? However,
however,
from the top rope,

um, the developers of Mind's Eye at, uh, Build the Rocket Boy, Barb, um, have sort of hit the breaking point and want to shed light on exactly why the game launched poorly. and so have published in concert with the uh game workers branch of the independent workers union of Great Britain.
Mhm.
Uh they have published an open letter alleging among other things systemic mistreatment, mismanagement and mishandling of the redundancy processes going into this uh launch. And this was signed by 93 uh current and former staff of Barb, which is kind of th this is kind of an interesting I think window
into a very public very large scale game

failure. Uh I think this is an excellent way to see an example of how games like this fail, right? and why they fail, assuming, of course, that everything the developers allege is true. There's no reason to believe that it isn't, right? But I do want to interject that there are uh potentially multiple sides to uh more information to come out about this. I'm reminded of our recent feray into the Subnotica lawsuit and how that's just a mess. The law a mess. This is less messy than that, but this is still a mess. Um
well, this is just starting. I mean, not the mess isn't just starting. The reporting on the mess is just starting.
Correct. And I think that that um uh I think that grass is exactly right. It's rare to get any insight into a studio, especially when it's about a failed project. Right. And so having the developers uh say having the the the

actual developers, not the heads of the development studio, the developers on the ground who built this game say, "Y'all, this is why this didn't work." Um things like um employees uh receiving dismissal notices with the wrong notice period. Um being put in the wrong teams so that their performances were scored by the wrong people so that they were uh marked as redundant unne like incorrectly. um just uh uh in addition to mandatory uh eight hours of overtime per week for every single employee uh and other like
with promises of something like seven hours of back pay like there's a weird
correct yeah time that there would be time in kind seven hours for every eight hours you worked um but they also mentioned that that was never possible to get because they continued to pressure people to work long hours for other urgent uh matters Right. So again, this is not like

it's not anything new, I think, for a bunch of people who view the games industry and some of the practices of larger studios with some amount of skepticism. But what I do think is that it's a fascinating window, right? I think this is the fact that we have developers publishing an open letter and that with the aid of a union, they are bringing this into the open as sort of a window into the the the picture of how a game this big fails is a fascinating thing for people who have an interest in the games industry and who are uh invested in understanding how the the products that they consume get made.
What is what kind of game is Minds Eye? It's a third person uh action shooter.
Okay.
Very story driven.
I was looking at the at the the images. Um and like when it released, did it like have a bunch of bugs? Was it just not fun? What was the what was the
uh it was uh largely came off as

unfinished, buggy, not high quality? the the like many of the same complaints that are leveled in general against some of the less well-performing AAA games.
Sure. I mean, this this looks like I'm just this is again I'm being incredibly reductive here, but I'm looking at the graphic that we put up like it feels like like Teimu Call of Duty. That's what the That's what the graphic is giving.
Yeah. Um, which is probably that has nothing to do with how good or bad the game is. It's just like I could see why this isn't moving the needle. And if like if the company is in disarray on the inside, I guarantee and and being mismanaged. No matter how good the devs are, I guarantee you that marketing and social media and like all of those other things are not being run great.
Hey, Matt. Yeah,
you're starting to lose pixels.

They found me. They found me. I'm at6069 nice kilobits per second.
Interesting. I'm going to force a refresh on my side. So, Matt's going to disappear. You'll still be able to hear him. I'm just letting Matt know that he's about to vanish. better.
Okay.
What a fun break.
Yeah. Um
purged from the material plane jaded font.
Yeah, correct.
That's what I want to put on my tombstone. Maybe I'll put that on my thumbnail of when I die.
Yeah,
the the tombstone meta of the thumbnails purged from the material plane. Uh Darter asks a important relevant question. Uh when did Mind's Eye come out? Uh that would be in uh June. Uh the

Steam release was the 10th of June of this year.
I'm not saying I'm the most connected person on on games that are being released especially like but like this feels like one that's large enough that I should have heard about it. Will I heard about it when you sent me this article?
Correct. Because
and so that that isn't if you're spending this amount of money that is endemic of a of a studio of a of a publisherwide problem.
Yes, it is also, by the way, 39% positive after only 2,26 reviews on
that sucks. And it sucks for the people that made it. No one. Again, we've talked about this a million times, but no, whenever we do a story like this that feels like it's kind of bodying a game uh for any reason, whether it's the publisher, the developer, like whatever the thing is, no one sets out to make a bad game. Who's who I truly believe that no one actually working on a game, like the the physical task of building a game is making something that they don't want people to like. Mhm.

Like now different socioeconomic factors can play in. Sometimes we've all taken the gig where it's just a gig, but like at the same time you're not actively trying to make a bad thing. You're doing the job that is assigned you. Y
So like it just it sucks for people especially who you you have to love games I think to make games or elements elements of games and to have the thing you've worked for a year and a half come out for any reason and be basically bodied. uh is awful and I feel uh bad for all those devs.
Yep,
that sounds right.
Anyhoo,
yeah. Uh shall we move on?
Yes, please.
So,
what could have been?
This would have been so interesting. And I'm not surprised they chickenened out. I just am sad that they chickenened out.
Yeah. So, it's come to light over the recent week that there was to be another

Assassin's Creed and they cancelled it because they thought it was going to be too political because Assassin's Creed games have never been political. Never.
Listen, I we're going to give Ubisoft, as we do, tons of ish. Like, there's no question that we are going to do that. If I were a company whose job it was to make Assassin's Creed games and stay in business, I got to say I a I don't know if I'd want that to be my business, but if it was They're not wrong.
So, I kind of think they are.
All right, let's go. Let's do it.
Okay. Okay. So, Assassin's Creed um there there there was a scoop and this has been reported from multiple places from Gamef File and from Polygon. We've got both linked in the show notes. Um

that uh there were interviews um with five current former uh Ubisoft employees uh who asked to remain anonymous because they weren't authorized to speak about an unreleased and canceled project. that there was going to be a reconstruction era 1860s to 1870s postamerican civil war Assassin's Creed game where you would play as a black man who had been enslaved in the south and who was moving west to start a new life and would include such missions as uh confronting the emergence of the the clan in the states. And the reason that they decided not to do this um was uh that there were uh and this was a direct call from the management team in Paris. Again, this is according to the report by Game File from these sources um is that uh the

backlash against Yasuke uh at the release of Assassin's Creed Shadows, a historical figure who happens to be a black samurai. people lost their everloving minds and really showed how little history they've actually read when they claimed that it was not. There are plenty of things in Assassin's Creed that are not historically accurate. And they picked the one time that Ubisoft went, "No, let's pick this very real, very historically accurate figure to put in a video game." And then they were like, "That's not historically accurate." For the one time Ubisoft can go, "Yeah, that's actually in history. Here's all the historical records about this guy.
No one worried. No one worried about Assassin's Creed 2 and Etsio starts talking to orb god,
right? Yeah. No, that's not anyway. Um, and uh that quote concern the political climate in the United States was becoming increasingly tense, unquote. That one's fair, valid. um understandable that they would that they

would see that as being a true thing given that that is a true thing that the political climate here in the states is tense.
I I do for once I do like their actual statement. The words the words that they say I don't like that they're true but they feel very true. They said uh too political in a country too unstable to make it uh to make it short is what they sort of said. Uh, not wrong. So, so let's let's talk a little bit about this. Um, I think this game would have slapped.
I think this game would have absolutely slapped.
But, but here's okay, there's two versions here.
Yeah.
And this is why for a company whose job it is to make Assassin's Creed games, it would not, in my opinion, been a smart move for the longevity of the studio.
Sure. So, they seem like they could barely handle the backlash of a um black historical figure in one of their games, right?
Yes.

They they they almost couldn't uh handle it. And Assassin's Creed Shadows sold about the same. This is supposed to be the one that like got everyone back on the on the horse basically. Um but this sold just like every other Assassin's Creed game. It didn't do better or worse really from what I remember. Uh correct me Brad and Janet if I am wrong there. Um, so if they did this, there's two versions. There's two versions of what could happen. Let let's and and we have to look at them both from from a different from a different perspective. So, let's pretend for a moment that the game comes out and it's excellent and historically accurate, but the racists are going to racist and it's going to they're going to take so much crap. the bot farms and the and the wired up monkeys will go hard on on on this and tank it no matter how good it is.
But here's what I think most likely

would happen in conjunction with that. It's still an Assassin's Creed game in a year after 2025. There would be various historical inaccuracies. The game would not run perfectly. It's not this is not a perfect game in a vacuum. Even beyond a positive political message, any flaw, any crack in this game's actual game
would be torn to hell quadrupy. So,
yeah.
And look, I maybe one day we'll get this if if we get through the times that we're in. Um, but I, as much as I would love to see this version of Assassin's Creed, there's too many things that could turn this into a cudgel that would not do the positivity we'd want in our media to have these stories be told. And if I was from a corporate side of of Ubisoft, would hurt the company making it. Like

again, I I want to make it very clear. If this game would exist, if this game existed, I'd slap down the money and go hard on it. Uh but
yeah, it it'll just be Red Dead 3. That's all. It'll it'll just be Red Dead 3. They'll be like, "Hey, there's a call for this. Great. Red Dead 3 time. Let's go gamers." Right.
Yeah.
Um
I think
Yeah. Medusa, this is interesting. this exactly like it sounds like uh the executives used the backlash of the unspecified magnitude excuse to back out of something they weren't all that comfortable with anyway. Yeah. And and let's be very clear they're not comfortable with like I'm going to even take you know it it sucks that they can do this and they have to but it's it's it's less personal comfort comfortableness and they care more about their corporate comfortableness.
Yeah.
They are a corporation. That's what it is. And um I don't know. This this story did not shock me.

No, I don't think it did. It didn't shock me either. Right. Like it's it's fascinating to me. The part that is truly fascinating to me is that they were entertaining this concept to begin with. Right.
So I So here's how I think they were entertaining it. If I had to posit a guess, this wasn't like if this was next on the docket post shadows. This was a long road map from like 10 years ago or like eight years ago. Like I think this was always because to be perfectly honest beyond the polit the uh the over not even over beyond the politics of what this game would be. It is a fascinating time in history. Absolutely.
It is a awful time in history, but it is fascinating and ripe with conflict that would work perfectly in the narrative conceit like other Assassin's Creed games have done. Yes,
there is a world if we weren't living in crazy political divide times where this would also slap like like it would slap

on a corporate level because you know I I I think we've talked about this before like the how do I put it? Video games can and should be about all kinds of topics that any developer is passionate about making. Yes.
And they can be very very difficult.
Um but they also have to be if you're dealing with difficult topics, you can't just make the vileeness or the badness or the uh history sort of like a skin or a um or a or a thing that doesn't matter. It can't be red versus blue when you're dealing with the clan,
right? And like to to use to use a great example of it done well, right? We can look at Seno with Sacrifice, right? All right. Hell no. Sacrifice is a game that deals with incredibly difficult topics of trauma and psychosis and uh hallucinations and personal loss and

like losing one's mind and does so in a visceral way, but the first credit in Helllight Sacrifice is the uh is the um psychology team who helped build the game from day one,
right? Like that is that is different than this is a thing that we're passionate about. Here's a sort of pastiche of American reconstruction which would be worse I think because like a lot of people are saying they'd like to play this pause. Right. How historically accurate about the turbulent complicated time that is the American Reconstruction. Do you think Ubisoft was going to be in an Assassin's Creed game?
That's kind of my point.
Yeah. No, I'm I'm I'm picking up your point.
Yeah. the the the perception of what this game could be in our mind's eye is one thing. A game that Ubisoft develops post 2025 about it is something

completely different.
Yeah,
I think it was very smart to not do this. I think they saved both them and us a lot of headaches. Now,
is there a possibility that other companies or something could do it and do it well? Yeah, absolutely. I just my my trust in Ubisoft to pull off to thread this particular needle not really there.
I I think that's where I land too is that I would love I would love to see a game that told uh real stories about the experiences of black Americans in the reconstruction era
done correctly, which is to say with an eye towards uh telling all of the story, not the easy parts, right? and um with an eye towards telling as much history as possible. And I don't think an Assassin's Creed game is the right game for that. However, thank you so much to Ubisoft for letting me know how badly I want this to exist, just not from you,
right?

Um yeah, I think uh I think that that's that's where I land on this at this point.
Um
indeed. Oh man, this was a this was a rough one. I need my one biscuit for the day.
One one biscuit. All right, let's talk about speaking of uh actually let's not do the next story right now. Let's start our ad break cuz our cuz our break's naturally going to start in like 2 minutes and I don't want to rush this next story. So, we're going to do some uh we're going to do some ads for things that you can't buy while Twitch gets ad for things that you can buy. So, please stick around. We'll be uh right back on Twitch. But YouTube, you just you just get to watch the whole thing. Just enjoy that. Uh
lucky you.
Yeah. Right. All right. Uh, we'll be back in three minutes. Ready? Go.
Will, would you like to start or would you like me to start?
I am currently drawing a blank.
All right, I'll start. Hey everyone, Matt from Extra Credits

here offering you the chance of a lifetime. That is right. With our 62nd season of Games for Breakfast now live this very minute, what better time than to buy the seasons 1 through 61 4K box set. That's right. We are releasing a 4K box set of the over 500 and something uh shows that we have done. You cannot buy. I want to make it very clear. You can't buy this. We're going to put them in a bunker and that way they are there for all time. I mean, if you find the right codes due to some sort of ARG I'm sure we developed, maybe you'll find them one day.
I have so many questions. I
mean, me too.
That's fair. That's valid. 500. I think we're like
We done
like two 200, I think.
Well, I'm putting 500 on these 4K discs.
Okay, that seems right.
I'm I'll double I'll I'll put this I'll put the 200 episodes on it 2.5 times.

out of order.
Yeah, with French subtitles.
With French subtitles. It's M. There's Muzzy. Muzzy. If you can identify all the episodes, we talk about Muzzy.
Yeah, there's there's like a secret code that unlocks an ARG that gets you one biscuit at the end.
Um, the fingers coming down on the button.
Yeah.
Here we go. Well, you must sell us something that does not exist.
Hi there, Will from Extra Credits here to sell you the concept of counting. That's right. Are there 500 episodes of Games for Breakfast? Are there 200 episodes for Games for Breakfast? Is this the only episode of Games for Breakfast? Who knows? You'd have to go back and count them. Unfortunately for you, you can't because Twitch decided a really long time ago that that you can't store highlights anymore. So, no one knows how many episodes of Games for Breakfast there are. So, you'd have to like count in your mind. You'd have to

like go back and remember all of them and then count them. But I I don't actually think anyone can do that. I mean, I don't think I can do that. So, just try counting, but just know that you can.
That's good. That's good. More people should try to use numbers and stop. Um because they're scary.
Numbers are scary.
Numbers are scary.
Yeah, that's right. Can we carry the two? Yes, absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. That's It seems correct. Yeah, that's right. One, two, three, four, six.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right. Just say this is episode number one and everything before this is a negative episode number, you know. I feel like
not bad.
Yeah. I also like the B. I think it was like one or a thousand or something near there. Correct. And none of us will ever know until someone finds that 4K box set.
That's right. All right, we're back.
The box set will come in uh a box that

is the entire table sized of this table case. Like the animated table will be the case.
Um uh so uh no
AO says you go back and find VODs. Uh, actually you could cuz there was a highlight channel where you could see how many were in the thing without actually even needing to dig in. It was over 200 cuz the maximum number in a collection was 200 and we had to start the second collection. So I think we're roughly 250 at this point but I could not give you an exact number. Um,
also Neo. Exactly. If you want to go back for the prequel cent [Music] all the previous episodes of Breakfast in One Piece. Um, anyway, uh,
let's let's move on to our next story, which is
I'm lurker. I like Wait, no, this is a 5K box set. That's worthless.
Exactly. Um, okay. So, a new study has

come out And uh this report indicates something that we've talked about previously from old data a couple of times, mostly in the design club setting with Jeff, but I wanted to bring it up here because it's a really great example of um hard and fast data that you watching this are very likely not the average game consumer. Okay? And this is very very important for us to remember when we're talking about the industry, we're talking about public reactions to things. This is kind of a meta commentary, but I think it's a really really good thing for us to keep in mind because it gives us both as me and Matt and all of you watching this some perspective. Okay. So the um the data which report which reported by Matt Piscatella on blue sky um on Circonana's Q3 2025 future of games uh survey said

that only 4% of US video game players buy a new game more often than once uh per month and about a third of all video game players buy less than one game a year. So, uh, we'll have we'll have the exact stuff linked in the show notes, but the the data suggests that, uh, 12% buy a game about once a year, 18% buy one about every six months, 22% once every 3 months, 10% once a month, 4% more often than once a month, and 32% are less often than once a year. So all told, if you add it all up, it's about 45% say about once a year or less do they buy a new game. So almost the majority there.
Um,
and it's really I think that's really important when we're talking about games because I buy games all the time partly

because it's my job, right? So like every time we have a Rogue Review, I need to buy a new game. So that's like a whole thing, right? or like there are plenty of new games coming out in the indie space that most gamers won't hear about that a lot of us are really excited about, right? Like most of us, actually a large number, I wouldn't say most, a large number of people in the community are super excited about the full release of Orb of Creation, right? Which is a game that the overwhelming majority of the gamer space has no idea about, right? As an example, right? We're just not in the majority of gamers. were much more deeply invested both financially and um psychologically than the average gamer would be, right? And so I I thought this was a very good time to to sort of bring that up and in in inject some perspective maybe into the way that we look at games and the industry.
And um how do I put it? like

how how the industry gaming is one of the fastest growing industries ever.
How the gaming industry got us to this point.
Yes. Um the the article goes on to talk about like one of the reasons why games like gaming uh companies are okay with these numbers and one of the reasons why there's the proliferation of like the $150 special deluxe edition with statueette and and natural fibers on a cloak or whatever um is because those in the 4% of more more often than once a month or about once a month and the 10% are the are the people that are comfortable and that are still spending the money on that.
Mhm.
Um, but as the

as the offerings continue to grow, and by that I mean your options as a person who plays games do, right? Like more games are released now than ever before. And I'm not even like to be perfectly honest, I'm not even talking about like specifically indies. Like more and more AAA and AAA titles are available now and are coming out and vying for all of our attentions. Um, and you have to be good and lucky to get it out there. Um, or or huge, right? Like, so I'm glad there are so many games, but there are also too many games for most people to even play. And like you have to you have to sort of start thinking about like what are the other essentially forms of media, art or content that people are ingesting and spending their time with. Is it social media? Is it Tik Tok? Is it films? Is it

music? Is it books? Is it uh television? Right? Like these are all things that are vying for all of these types. So it to me the this chart sort of says very clearly like how much even though video games have broken containment and are very much mainstream um that there's only so much time in the day.
Yeah.
Uh did this actually the one thing I couldn't find in this survey was this console games or like Steam games? Because I imagine that mobile
all that is uh according to their
cuz I imagine mobile probably throws this all off.
These are video game players
is among video game players and as an answer to the question of how often do you typically purchase a new game? So

self-reported.
Yeah. Yeah. I just I cuz for instance like I know plenty of people that would not consider themselves gamers TM that have bought uh the new whatever iPhone game like that comes out that people like are all talking about and they do it pretty willy-nilly or or they'll do it free and then spend money in that game. Does that count as a purchase? Like right
probably not for for most for most people. Right. But but I will also say right that you all are um that you're thinking about this in a way that someone who is a hyperenthusiast would because most people who aren't hyperenthusiasts don't do those things, right? Like we're thinking of edge cases that apply to all of us because we spend money on the same summer sale or like whatever, but lots of people don't, right? And I also saw a comparison um that you know at what point like how do

we how do we determine uh the catchment of like who counts as a gamer? We got to keep it as broad as possible. The the criteria for the survey is do you consider yourself someone who plays video games? That's the criteria, right? because that's the broadest and only real accurate way to determine what counts as someone who's a video game player is you have to ask them, right? Like you can't you can't you know most people will honestly self-report that data. Um we're not interested in saying like oh you're not a real gamer because you only play Madden, right? That's not a useful way to go about this.
No. In fact, if the numbers are to be believed in the console space, you're the most real gamer. Correct. if you just play Madden like that's that's and but that's just looking at the data in a different way.
Yeah. Okay. So so people are talking about MMO subscriptions. Again I would submit that if you are thinking about those things you are going to report that as a yes because you are in the

upper end buying multiple games a month or buying a game once a month brackets.
Yeah. I just think that they're common are not
but I also think when you when you get into things that are subscriptions or mobile or MMOs I think people don't consider themselves gamers and then wouldn't even be even have access to this survey or even know it existed or classify themselves as it right like online poker RC Fox real talk like what about all this stuff like that like there's a there's a group there online poker is huge chess online chess like
chess.com is massive.
So like yeah again I think this is a we keep talking in ways that like sort of take this apart a little bit and that's not what I want to do. This is a very in like I'm looking at it cuz I believe this is specifically probably talking about fullpriced games or like not full price games you pay for the entire thing

whatever that price is uh across consoles and PC. That is probably where the m in my un knowing opinion it's probably where a lot of this data comes from.
Sure.
Um and I think that's interesting. It's interesting to look at the at the industry. It's interesting to look at we as players, but it's also interesting to look at where maybe this thing is is missing. And there are tons of edge cases of people that literally play like online poker, but if you said, "Do you play video games?" They would say no. You know, anyway, it's neat. I like I like stuff like this. It makes you think about the industry in a different way. And uh I'm glad this this study came out.
Absolutely. Okay. So, it's really funny then that as a survey shows that most people only buy games once a year that we have a shift in the industry as big as I don't know a service that lets people buy games less frequently doing something ridiculous like I don't know doubling its price.

Here comes We had the shot before and now is the chaser. The digital chaser. This would be This is the pickle juice, y'all.
Yeah.
Um Yeah. Did you hear Did you hear that Game Pass doubled its its highest tier? I I want to make it very clear. Um, I I was so mad at this that after I verified that truly like this will cost $360 a year, hence why it costs the 360 a year. Um, I kind of stopped looking at the other tiers. I know you can still get the other ones that do less and do whatever. Like that's whatever. But the inshitification of Xbox Game Pass, we all knew it was coming. It's not This

is not a thing. There you go.
That's the best response I've seen so far.
So good.
Oh, I cancelled Game Pass to save money and now thanks to them, I'm saving twice as much. Also, Dave, because your icon is I'm assuming you at the piano, I just ass like like what I pictured was you like just like stroking the ivories here with like a two and then just like looking back over to camera and just saying that and then just like going back to the song like that's I hope that's how that happened.
Yeah.
Um yeah, this isn't the return to the 360 I prayed for Microsoft. So, okay, this is happening for a lot of different reasons. Uh one general initification. The reason why this was so cheap is to get you used to paying for it. And the the the general goal is to slowly but surely move this up over time. Also, Microsoft said when they did their mergers that this wasn't going to happen like this, and oops, it happened like this. Uh, this is such a massive jump

that it is causing a shock. I'm There's a And there's a bunch of stuff in this, too. Like you're also not going to I'm trying again it's all over the place but like it was also recently reported I was it Forbes or somewhere else oh god I can't remember the source that like someone was estimating that like Call of Duty sales last time because of game pass lost in the hundreds of millions of dollars of potential sales. Again who knows you never know. But if I think they're judging it based off of previous Call of Duties before Game Pass was so ubiquitous and like most of the sales of Call of Duty was on PlayStation, which it all makes sense. Why would you do this if you're paying 15 or $20 a month to get all the games and you just get through it as quick as you want, right? Um but the but the so they could have very easily done a couple different things. kept the price the same but said, "Hey, this actually did hurt sales of Call of

Duty, so we're not including it in this thing or it's not day one or you know something." And that would have caused some ruffled feathers and maybe put a dent in the armor that is the Game Pass business model, but it wouldn't have been this sort of like catastrophic in the news reporting of it because like they're tacking on a lot of stuff like you you are getting a lot of things for this $30, but they're all desperate things that again going back to the conversation about having limited time. I guarantee you the percentage of gamers that will utilize every aspect you are getting for their $29.99 a month plan is infantessimal. You you basically start getting um let me pull this up. I had a graph of it earlier. Uh uh where are you Xbox Game Pass? Here we go. Gonna knock all these off. Uh essentially I just want to read off the disperate the desperate things you

get. Okay. So 400 plus games on PC, console and cloud, 75 plus day one games a year including all Xbox uh published games. Fortnite Crew coming in November. This gives you essentially uh a,000 V-Bucks and a couple other things for Fortnite specifically. Ubisoft Plus Classics. It gives you a bunch of different Ubisoft stuff. It comes with their Ubis. It's you're basically getting Ubisoft streaming service or a version of it with that. EA Play, another another service for around this thing. Uh unlimited uh cloud gaming with the shortest weight times. That's right. They're going to lock your weight time for your cloud gaming based on your tier. Uh which I'm not sure if that was the case. also online or console online multiplayer in-game benefits and then play and earn up to $100 a year in the store with rewards. Meaning they're going to gify and basically try to make you do like jump through little hoops that are probably advertising opportunities for their partners anyway

to make you play certain games in certain ways so that you can try ever so desperately to claw some money back from your subscription. What I have just described is more time than anyone has. Correct.
So, so while the value proposition in an infinite void of of places where people don't have work, family, and other activities to do and sleep, sure. Wow, what a deal.
But we don't live this is this is the really real world and that doesn't function. It is not a value proposition. You're throwing more stuff at this thing while making it more expensive when truly people are probably going to only UFi utilize 20% of that.
Correct. And there are a couple of downsides. Uh one um as as correctly pointed that the uh the Microsoft rewards are taking the place of the previous game pass discounts which came with the ultimate tier. Great.
So normally there was just like a there was a a discount if you already had game pass that you would get it a little cheaper. Not the case anymore.

What if we made getting the game harder?
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Also worth noting that only Ultimate has the day one stuff, which is why most people are uh that that is the primary driving factor behind most people getting Game Pass is that instead of spending money on a risky new release, you can just have the Game Pass subscription and see if you like it before you buy it. Right? And here's the thing.
It's a demo.
This is why this is why it is truly in shitification. This is not just me swearing. This is the word that is for what this is. um the proper term dictionary.
The idea is you start selling an online subscription service at an incredible loss to make it become part of your daily or monthly usage andor spending. And then as it slowly creeps up, you don't realize it and eventually given a long enough runway and Microsoft has a long runway, they could start charging enough for this thing to make it profitable. This is a long game. They just like passed go and didn't collect

$200 here. They collect 360 apparently, but like that's the like it feels like such a misstep and it says to me it's either a gamble that who knows if it'll pay off in the long run, but their things seem to be going fairly fine though. They have spent a lot of money on acquisitions and the tariffs are kicking their butts on hardware. Like I'm wondering like how and they're seeing drops in sales they think of the people that are supplying games to them which means those people those publishers and developers need to be compensated more to keep putting to want to put their games on Xbox Game Pass to keep the value proposition up. So this feels like a hailmary. This feels like a lot of smarter people than me got in a room and did all the pros and cons of like how they can make this survive and this was the only way. Yeah, this is recall math, right? So, if if it if the total they don't care about the number of subscribers, they care about the total take-home profit.

Yeah.
So, the the the proposition is do they believe that by doubling the price they will lose fewer than half of their subscribers?
Yep.
So, if they lose a third of their subscribers, but they double the price, they come out ahead. So they don't care because they've done the math on their they've done the math on retention and they believe rightly or wrongly that they will keep the majority 51% or more of their subscriber base with this.
It actually works out better for them because that's half let's say it's 50% or 51% that's 49% less customer service they have to do.
Correct. They get to get more money out of fewer people which is less work. Yeah. Now, it's funny because the everpresent tendrils of capitalism will eventually claw back and be like, "But what about all the other money?" Like, like this this will things will happen in that direction, but initially
Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, it sucks. Uh, if you think you might accidentally have an Xbox subscription that's gone unnoticed because it's been cheap, check and see if you need to cancel it. That's a
talk to your kids about Xbox Game Pass before somebody else does.
This is from your internet grandpas. We determined on the pre-show that we're internet grandpas.
That's great.
For some people, not everybody. We're your internet dads
for a lot of you,
right? But for some of you, we're internet paw paws. Um, all right. Let's talk about speaking of old men yelling at clouds.
That's us. Cloud storage.
Yeah,
right. Okay. So, uh, we talked about this briefly a while ago, but it kind of got swallowed in the one button rotation conversation. Last time we talked about WoW making sign significant changes, but uh a recent uh dev report

um from Blizzard says that the midnight alpha and the uh that the lack of mods, the the new mod block will be in the midnight alpha and would go live on live servers. as early as um the pre- patch for midnight, which means
after midnight, they're going to let it all hang out.
That's right. Which means that mods on WoW would be going away. So, I wanted to talk about this for a couple of reasons. One, because I think it's a fascinating change to the biggest MMO. two, because the player sentiment that I'm seeing based on my very limited snapshot has changed radically since this originally got generally talked about in April. Right?
So, here's what's up. When this came out in April, along with the one button

rotation, lots of people did not like it. The general sentiment that I saw expressed towards this was negative. that it was
Yeah. I know we did, but like that it was ruining the game, that you couldn't have an MMO without mods,
but I also don't play it,
right? Yeah. I mean, but you don't play it for different reasons. Um that it was uh and there were some fair criticisms like that it was a blow to accessibility. I agree with that. That's absolutely true. So, there are very valid concerns, right? But like the idea that it was impossible that that all raids would be impossible without weak auras. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's fine. We we promise. Um yeah, correct.
I'll eat one biscuit to that.
Right. And then some 14 players did an entire world race without any bots. Correct. Um because the most recent uh I don't know what they're called in. Wow. The most recent set of raids, right? uh has uh been made without with

with the idea that you might not have to use weak oras to solve everything in mind. Um, and I think this is a very interesting turning point that they're that they're going to continue down this road because I think that this is weirdly, and I cannot believe I'm saying this on Breakfast, the first time I've been like, "Oh, I could look at WoW for like I don't know, maybe like a week or so. I could look at that." Right? Like
we could do when when midnight drops if we wanted as an experiment, we could do like a series of streams about like and it'd be interesting. I maybe I think it'd be interesting from a ex player 10 years ago and a current Final Fantasy 14 player on your side of things. What this is?
Yeah.
Because how many Okay, let's How many users does WoW have currently? Uh, north of 100 million. I'm going to guess.

No way. No way. No, not 100 million. Uh, 100 million is insane. Uh, 1.6 to 1.7 million.
Okay. Under
uh concurrent players. So, sorry. 7.25 million active subscribers of Q1 2024.
They reported that. That's amazing. Normally, normally they'll never report. Yeah.
Um I'm trying to find where this is sourced from because at its peak what was it like 14 mil, 15 mil, 17 mil? Like it was something crazy.
Model says 17 mil. So who knows? Yeah, those are estimates. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So, right. So uh and and I I totally get um Jacob's uh note that you know I agree with a lot of design goals in the change but you're concerned about implementation especially for healers as sure 100%
anybody like that and that's why I'm

curious about it.
Yes. Because yes
because on the surface uh non-believer and cynic Matt is like you're going to break everything like it's going to be bad now. But I there's no possible way of knowing that. And especially especially now that 14 has kind of shown that it can be done that and this is how long-term games and their development should be done. You see a group doing something you're like that's cool. I would love to iterate on that in the thing that I'm making that is similar. Not copy it, not whatever, but like you learn from one another and you you can find better ways forward. And they've also said that that the um the some of the and I think this is generally true. Some one of the reasons that this is very difficult um for players to grasp is that they've been part of a silent arms race for a really long time. So, like a lot of the push

back against mods and the the question of like, how do I run this without X is because the game never made overures at solving certain problems because mods existed to solve them, right? Healer targeting. Why would you bother solving that? You can just, right, you just have the mod do it for you. And we can make fights as arbitrarily ridiculous as we need to because someone will simply write a weak aura for it and it will coordinate all of the players in a raid to do the thing. So it stops being about um about actually designing human solvable raids and starts being about designing raids that are interesting to play through with weak oras. Right. Which is a completely different design goal, right?
Yeah. That's a completely different angle to making the game an interesting thing,

right? And so I'm very interested to see what Blizzard gets to do freed of the constraint of needing to make the game interesting for people running weak oras.
Yeah.
Right. I think that's actually a fascinating thing. Um so we we will see. I am very curious about Midnight. Do I have time to play an MMO? Absolutely not. Could I dedicate like a week to like exploring like where WoW is and maybe even get an episode out of it? Yeah. Like that could be interesting. Um so yeah, I don't know. Like again, Wow. It's kind of like what 14 I think is for you. Um, maybe maybe a little bit different because 14 also has a moving story from what you tell me. Like I've liked Wow's story, but I've never been like, "Oh man." I mean, maybe way back in the day.
I I'll I'll I'll I'll make it really easy. How many times has WoW story made

you cry?
Warcraft 3.
Okay, great. Final Fantasy 14 makes me cry at least at in public on stream at least once an expansion if not more.
Sure.
And Walker just made me sobb for like
like again while that sounds more effective I also don't want to discount uh
there are different stakes. There's different stakes and there's different the the the WOW at least in actually real quick before I say this. How many people still actively play WoW in chat right now? Is there anyone here so that when I say the next thing you could be like that is true or Matt you're insane or both.
There there are more than a few I I I know. Yeah.
Um so so my question Thank you. Thank you. My question is in the current state of WoW story, does it still feel because I again I left WoW after I completed

Pandaria. Um my druid or my druid my um I break this out all the time. I got my fingerprint of my warlock Dmitri. He sits on my shelf. I love him very much. I made his hair gray and I put him to sleep in his completed farm and that's where he is right now. uh he at last his watch has ended. Um the the story up till that point felt very much like you were sort of along for the ride like everything was happening around your character and very rare like you would help the characters do the big thing like the NPCs
right
14 from what I understand it's you.
Yes. And it balances that very delicately considering there's a million U's
that without um because I would like more people to play it. I will say that there

is a canon explanation for the there being a million use that there are actual that like all of the MMOness has been addressed explicitly in the story to make it all make sense. But this is my point because Final Fantasy 14
focuses on all the use.
And unless I'm wrong, Warcraft, World of Warcraft still makes it feel like you're the main character's best friend in the story. Am I wrong there? Tell me if I'm wrong. Um,
uh,
yeah. Yeah. Compai Warcraft is a much closer to this is a story about you, but it's still more focused on the main NPC characters in the play. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Okay. So, I I hope I'm I hope I'm making enough sense. Um, it is easier for emotional stakes in the case where you are actually in the in the main protag shoes as opposed to the BFF of the main protags that's helping them out. You can care about those

characters. I cared about Sylvanas and and um I'm trying to remember the other characters names has been for ages, but like I remember like knowing a lot about them.
Yeah. Um, so I don't know. I I'll rewind. The reason why a large change to WoW excites me again is not because I think I'm going to have time to play it. It's because
stagnation in these spaces I think is bad. Like 14 has reinvented itself a bunch. Like some in very large ways. And if you're gonna have a longunning game in an MMO like this, you kind of have to do it. And you have to change if you're like, how old is Warcraft? When did it come out? Cataclysm was in 2010. Wow. Release date.
I was in high school.
2014. 2004.
Yes.
So, this game has been around for 21 years.

Yeah. the the the way people play and the reasons why they do is going to change and therefore your game needs to change as well. Now I want to say many people have said in chat the accessibility options being there is crucial. Will they nail that? President would say no and it's going to be a slower go and that sucks. Um, but I would rather they take the swings to ensure that the game continues. I'll I'll controversial statement. I would rather they take swings trying to ensure the game's longevity and that game missing so hard it fails and goes away than them just staying the course and slowly dying out.
Yeah, I think that's true.
It's better to burn out than fade away. Yeah,
that that's a more that's me. That's my opinion. It does not it that's it. But

like I I would rather they do that. Does that make sense?
Uh some of the add-on accessibility features will still be there. The TTS callouts have hooks in midnight that can be accessed by add-ons still. Okay, cool. That's very good.
Good, good, good.
Yeah, that's that's that's very good. Um quick, write it on his tombstone. Correct.
Quick, write it on tombstone. Yeah, I I I I just think it is a very interesting choice and I will be very interested to see how hard players slant towards this is awful and unplayable or this is great, I can't remember using add-ons at all, right? Um when this comes out, right? because I kind of want to put a pin in this now and see where it where it exists when like midnight like properly comes out because it's in the midnight alpha and so there are some people who are getting to play around with the client without all of the weak ora hooks and all of that. I just think it is a very interesting proposition for something that's been this deep in this space for

this long to suddenly be like you know we don't think we can keep going this way.
Yeah. And it's funny again, I've I had very minimal mods on when I when I played. Um I was always someone who again I never outside of being in a top guild in like 2007 like I never like tried to be the very best like no one ever was. I very much was a casual who was exploring it with my friends. Like we weren't firsting things, you know what I mean? Um the so so my buyin for mods was very different. Yeah.
I wasn't trying to shave time off. I wasn't trying to have the most intrinsically planned out and thoughtful raid experience. Um
so my buyin is different and therefore when I see that mods are sort of going away and they're trying to do great more I instantly think it's a good thing. Yeah.
But I also want to make it very clear. I understand where people's trepidations are because you're playing this game a

certain way. I guess at the end of the day though, and again, I'd rather they take the swing and miss than not take the swing at all. This is them saying, "We see the value in these things, but we want to maintain control of what we are making. So, we're going to add pieces of what you've been making into the game."
Yeah.
Whether or not they hit that remains to be seen. I think after this conversation, I'm going to watch the space more closely. Uh, when does Midnight come out? uh the later this year. Midnight doesn't have a firm release date, but is expected to drop early next year according to PC Gamers report.
Yeah, it says anywhere between February and June.
Yeah. So, yeah, maybe we'll maybe we'll visit it. Maybe we'll explore it.
Yeah. Yeah. Um Kane brings up that some high ranking Wild players spent time and played 14. Do they have an influence? Probably not. Uh, raiders sometimes do, but I imagine

that what's more likely, I'm going to be totally honest, what's more likely is that uh, a whole bunch of Blizzard employees spent time playing 14 and Guild Wars and ESO, all of which do have add-ons, but not in the same way.
Yeah, this this is an institutional thing that they're adjusting.
Um, and I like Here's what I like. I like that we are in the eb and flow of MMOs learning from each other. There's no way 14 could exist without WoW. And now it feels like WoW wouldn't continue to exist without people doing things like they're doing in 14. Like it this is how it it should be.
And 14 does need a shakeup. And we're hoping that we get one in 8.0, right? Because that's that's
they needed to reset the story. And now that we've reset the story and we're crossing the level 100 threshold, we're hoping for a change. Um, so, you know,

we haven't got any info on that yet because we're still waiting for info on the next two patches before that, but we're hopeful.
Uh, what's the level cap in WoW these days? Is it 80? They've knocked it to 80,
I believe.
Yeah, it's 80 according to chat.
Wow.
That's another interesting one. Kier points out this is a very good point. It's suspected while be on console. That is a that would be that is another advantage, right? Is that you level the playing field by putting um by removing mods so that people can play on console. Uh that is a big leveler, right? Because right now the de facto console tab targeted MMO is 14 because it's on all the cons.
When I played 14, I was playing on PlayStation and it was good.
Yeah. And that was playing seamlessly with me standing next to him on my PC clan
and the entire guild. I side note, if that stream is still up somewhere

uh with Drer Swift uh making her debut, my tune there, uh I having the community show up so hard was like legitimately moving.
Yeah.
Uh I'm sorry that I don't have time to continue it, but that was a really that was a highlight uh for me when that happened.
Yeah. Um and yes uh it is it is difficult for people who have never done it to understand. The one I would say reasonably major hiccup in my experience cuz I have played on controller as part of like a charity reward thing. Healing on a controller is a little more awkward than I wish that it was.
Sure.
But that does not mean it is not doable. It just means it's more difficult. The reason, by the way, that I did go PlayStation, I thought I could actually trick myself into uh playing more was on the Portal.
Yeah. And that's
like I because I was like, "Oh, I can I can keep up with the Joneses, right?" Uh

spoiler alert, I could not keep up with the Jones.
That's okay. It it it'll be here until I have a feeling that I'll be playing 14 till they turn the lights out and kick everyone out.
That makes sense.
Um or something big happens. But um yeah, uh so yeah, that's that's just the state of WoW right now and them taking away add-ons and kind of our thoughts on it. I just wanted to get in here and say we see this happening. I'm kind of interested in it. If you're interested in that conversation, let us know. Um because that is a thing that we could like maybe we get Jeff in on it.
Oh my god.
I think here's the thing. So like okay, let's go let's do some deep EC lore. Back in the day when I first started Scott artist extra extra credits artist Scott really wanted as just a um not a streaming thing just like a community building thing cuz you know I was coming in Jeff was coming in we were trying to

you know get the team sort of uh you know teamified and he's like let's start a WoW guild and we did because back in the day I believe he was fairly deep. him and Nick were. Um, and we did it for a while and it was really fun. Then life gets in the way and it and it falls apart. Um, I think there's lots of people on our team that would do this for a week.
Yeah. If we could if we could mess the schedule around and say for a week we're all gonna raid together, we could do it.
But let us know.
There's something interesting there. Yeah, for sure. All right, Matt, are you ready for just a susant of dessert?
Wait, I need to have a susant of my first biscuit.
That's right. Okay, now that you've had your biscuit, I'm so excited. I'm I'm so
Talk to me about this. What's going on?
All right, so Backyard Sports has been around for longer than WoW, I think. Uh,

and by I think I mean I know. Backyard Sports has been around for a dog's age, but it's sort of uh it's not always been the most updated, most taken care of franchise. However, um, it's coming back. So, the Playground
Somehow Backyard Sports has returned announced in Fortnite.
Yeah. Oh god, no. Playground Productions is um relaunching the Backyard Sports series and it's uh completing its Backyard Sports Bure collection with Backyard Basketball 01 and Backyard Hockey O2. Um and they're going to be doing high scores and events in Backyard Baseball 97. If you play Backyard Sports as a kid and remember it, it is returning. There is gonna be an animated special. Like
that's cool.

I'm so excited. I just wanted like th this is this is my like hey this is part of my childhood returning and I'm very here for it. Backyard sports was great. Backyard sports was remains one of the things that came out in the 90s that I loved as a kid that you look back on you go yeah there were no problems with that. Like for instance,
there were no problems with that.
Well, like it was surprisingly diverse cast. It had, you know, um it had good gameplay mechanics. It was fun and replayable. It stood up for like a long time. It still does. It holds up. Like it's it's really good. Um yeah, shout out to Pablo, the real MVP. Uh Pablo remains the MVP and goated in every backyard sport. It is true. Uh but my favorite is uh Kenny um Kawaguchi who is the best pitcher in uh in baseball

and he pitches from a wheelchair which is dope because he gets to do wheelchair tricks while he pitches.
Nice. Um, I was looking up one thing. Whenever you talk about backyard sports, and I know this is not the same thing, but I think it it it maintains the same mental space of a childhood game in me.
There is an NES game called Cyber Stadium series Base Wars. Is that just
Is anyone in chat old enough to remember Cyber Stadium series base wars?
Someone please, please, someone lie to me at this point.
You're on your own. Oh god, Copsight remembers. I think
uh
Okay, so there's at least one person who remembers. Uh, it is a phenomenal baseball game where there's a bunch of

different teams of robot players and as you make money and win series, you upgrade them with different things like hover bodies or wheels or treads or weapons because when you steal a base, it becomes a fighting game. It's I you know what? I gotta find I gotta find the ROM. We're gonna play on stream sometime because
it is it is so fun or at least I remember it being so fun. Uh what year did this come out? 91. Konami. Um yeah, Base Wars, man. Uh anyway, that's that whenever you talk about backyard sports, it's the I know it like tonally incredibly different, but uh I I constantly think of that.
Excellent.
The cover art is amazing.
Okay.
Um I have one other mini story.
Yeah.
Uh Chris, you're right. You are so

right. You are so right. Anyway, sorry enough dopamine hits there. Um, real quick, uh, for those of you who also know, um, I do a podcast erroneously titled the only podcast about movies. This week, we are releasing an episode on the film Prime Minister. It's an HBO doc about Justinda, um, who is the prime minister of New Zealand during COVID and during the Christ Church thing. Please check out that video, that that episode. It's very, very good. We have a um tech tech influencer and and uh political podcaster uh on that as a guest from New Zealand. It's great. However, I'm going to back up one week. Last week, we did one battle after another. I don't know if you've seen the the trailers for that movie or anything. Excellent film. I suggest you go see it. We talked about something on there that I don't think we talked about yet here, which is related to video games. one battle after another. The incredibly divisive political film that it kind of is

has a Fortnite tie-in. You can play basically like series of missions and then a multiplayer thing. And I've tried playing through some of it literally based around the movie and it is one of the most tonally dissonant experiences I have had. I've recorded a bunch of gameplay. I kind of want to make an episode about it, but I don't know how long it's going to last. So, if this scratches your particular itch of like, oh, that movie's interesting. What the what? You can try it and play it for free and see it for yourself. It's weird. They replace um Sean Penn's uh like sort of very evil and vile and uh racist antagonist character with just a dude uh with like a face mask and goggles and a

cowboy hat named Mr. Sunshine. But every other character down to Leo and like a bunch of other people like are all in the game. It's weird. Check it out if that it's it it is weird. I just had to call it out because I don't know how long it's going to last. Um sorry.
Okay. Yeah, that Yeah. Yep. That Yeah.
Oh, and lastly, I should also pitch this too, Chris. Thank you very much. Last week was also when the jet lag magic thing came out, which was awesome. Uh, the thing I was on when we did that,
was that last week? I thought that was more than la a week ago. I'm not confused about
Was it? I have no idea.
Anyway, it is.
Check that out, too. It's on Magic's page.
Sorry, that was a long tangent. I just had to get out that thing because it's I meant to make a graphic for it and talk about it, but I was like, I don't believe this exists.
Yeah.
Uh, excellent. Excellent. Excellent. All

right. So, that is going to do it for us uh this morning. Um, if you are interested in all watching me beat my face into what I believe, but I'm not confident is the final boss of Silkong, please come hang out after this. We're'll be doing Boss Prague for a couple of hours. Uh, so please look forward to that. Uh, you can also find us this week playing Meabon in the Rogue Review or um something on Wednesday or me and Matt playing games on Thursday and design club will also be Thursday.
Thursday we're checking out what are we checking out on Thursday? We have um
Foundation.
Foundation. No. Uh yeah. Is that what it's called? The rating. The rating simulator.
What's the What's the Mythic Plus dungeon rating sim?
I have it in my calendar. Hold on.
Fellowship.
Fellowship. That's right. It's the other f word.
It's the the early access hits Thursday. We haven't even installed it yet.
Yeah. Uh
so hopefully that happens.
Yeah, it'll be a good time. Uh please join us for that. And then
yeah, we'll be back.
I was going to say you can check all that out on Twitch. Otherwise, Will will be back here with Jeff for Design Club on Thursday.
That's correct. We don't know the topic yet, but you will know as soon as we

know.
Psych. Sick. Uh, hey everyone. Thanks so much for joining us for Games for Breakfast, this inaugural 62nd season premiere uh of our over 675 episodes that you can find absolutely nowhere but in a bunker somewhere. And at we've we've we've ended each of the 600 and whatever other numbers I said episodes with the same ending every time because we want to foster a sense of community. In fact, actually on that community, can you put up the blue sky links? By the way, we should also end it every time with this because if you'd like to talk with us, especially Rocky over on Nebula, this is how you get a hold of us. Uh we are over on the Blisski. Uh please come say hi. Also leave comments here. Let us know what we you liked, what you didn't like, what we got right, what we got wrong, what uh h how are we your internet kids, dads, or granddads? Let us know in the comments. I think that would be very fun. But now we have to end games for breakfast the same way we do every time. So, if you would all join me in eating

the one biscuit that we all have been saving the entire episode to eat, and then we will say goodbye to each other in the only way we know how. Have a good week. [Applause] [Music]