Gaming in 2027 Just Got Worse, EA Now A Foreign Asset & FFXIV Gets Classy | Games For Breakfast

GOOD MORNING, MATT. A
GOOD MORNING, WILL.
GOOD MORNING TO ALL OF YOU.
WELCOME TO GAMES FOR BREAKFAST, THE ONLY INTERNET TALK SHOW. WE TALK ABOUT THIS WEEK'S gaming and tech news, but that also has been on a fast for two weeks. But we are back and gouging our gouging, gorging ourselves on all of the gaming news over the past two whole weeks. Welcome back, Will. That's Was that the That was the the gorging.
Yeah.
That's like That's like nibbles,
right? But they're very small. Like story.
But a gorge is like
Right. But like [clears throat] if you eat that much of the gaming news nowadays, you'll get sick.
Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Oh, I just thought of a piece of gaming news we didn't put in the show, but if it comes up naturally, then maybe we'll just talk about it. Okay. Um, is that is that your cue for Brad and Janet to start guessing wildly about what we could possibly have

forgotten before we even begin?
Brad and Janet, guess what story is not big enough but to to have made it into the show, but interesting enough where I just realized it exists right now.
Yeah. Yeah, that's it.
I would prefer right answers only. I will accept wrong answers only and we'll go from there.
Yeah%.
Uh, Jay, uh, we're starving. Internet fathers, please. Food. We're here. We're feeding. We're we're we're it's all it's all around.
Yeah. UH
OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. Sarah got it on try one.
Yeah. I mean
that was exactly what I was going to talk about.
Yeah. No. Uh don't don't worry. Some of these other ones uh like this one. Uh Glums Bethesda announced that Elder Scrolls 6 really exists. We promise.
Sure.
Yeah. That's you know. Mhm. Yep. the fact there is no ram in my veins. I think that's a good good thing.
That's not where the ram goes.
We should we'll talk about where the ram

should go. That's not a place where it should.
You should consult a doctor if there's ram in your veins.
Probably.
I most likely if you could get a doctor.
Yeah. Don't Yeah.
I like uh No, that one we're talking about that one we're talking about. Uh yeah, the the Netflix thing is interesting. Uh it's just like it's it's like a extended preview of some kind. I don't know if it's a trailer or if it's like devs talking about it, but it comes out August 28th like on Netflix. And it makes sense. It's the biggest media property in the universe. So, at least that we know of. Um again, I haven't finished Pokemon.
I haven't finished Blippo Plus.
What was that? Pokemon's still bigger
media event like piece of one piece of media Pokemon is across uh multiple facets of many game shows, movies, cards, etc. Oh man, when the GTA TCG

comes out, better watch our hats. Um, all right. Well, let's get into the stories that we're actually talking about. Oh, there's still some preview things before we get into like our main story because we were gone. We were we were we were gone. Um so uh Matt was in places and that's why
I was in places.
Yeah.
So we're going to talk a little bit about Jen Con. Um where Matt and Jeff both were. Congratulations on Jen Con.
Jen Gen Con was great. Uh before that I was actually in New Orleans for the first time. I don't know if anyone's ever been to New Orleans, but I was there for a wedding. It was lovely. Uh we got to do a second line. Do you know what a second line is, Will?
I do not. I did not know what a second line was, but uh one of the grooms was the was from uh New Orleans and this is something apparently that they do there. Uh where essentially they shut down a bunch of streets and the entire wedding marches in a parade with like police escort all the way down uh to and a little bit through Bourbon Street.

Oh, that's awesome.
Uh so that was insane. Yeah, that's I mean, look, I feel like New Orleans, if New Orleans can be said to do one thing supremely well, it's parades.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh I also did Jamie and I went on a swamp tour, met some alligators. That was very fun. Um
actually, uh yeah, it was it was super fun. And then um we ended up uh going to the uh pharmacy museum where the first actual uh licensed pharmacy was. And it was fascinating and terrifying. There's an episode of Extra History in there somewhere.
I'm sure
uh it's nuts. But um
so that was great. And then Gen Con was phenomenal. Jeff and I were out there. Uh I think I sent a picture of the panel. Will, did that make it into the
Yeah, it did. I got it. I think
uh basically we did two panels. Jeff's panel was on uh why board games mostly uh [laughter] make bad video games. And

my my panel was a thing that Will and I uh spearheaded a long time ago, 5 years ago at Magfest. Uh yeah, uh called uh this one we renamed it to be extra history is not a cult. And on the panel was me, Jeff, uh Jenna, who uh friend of the show Jenna, and then Mary Lou who's a phenomenal uh TTRPGer and improv comic. Uh and it was a blast. Will, last time you won cult, which essentially is a game like you played the game with the entire panel room. So, we make up cults based on card prompts. They all have one of two questions on cards they get handed when they walk in. We call on them. They we have to answer the questions in the form of our newly madeup cult, how they would answer, and then the person at the end who gets the most cards handed into them has the cult win. And not only do they get to decide how the other cults uh perish or fade away, but then they have their cult hidden into a episode of Extra History in the future. Will's cult of the business corgi uh won at Magfest. Uh and

that was hidden in I believe our secret society's episode 4 on Extra History. Um, and this time Jenna took it home uh with with a cult known as Now 2K instead of Y 2K because she was trying to bring back uh the the technology and the hype of technology that was then right before without all the problems or fake problems and then she just turned it kind of into like a party drug cult and I think that's what really won everything over.
Yeah. You know, I feel like that's Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Okay, that checks out. Uh, Jenna is everywhere these days and it is good. She absolutely killed it. We got to get her on on Breakfast one of these days. [laughter]
Get in line. Jeff and I also just talked about having her on Design Club to talk about game reviewing.
Yeah, it's all it's all things. Yeah. But the um what was I going to say? The
the cool thing there. Um, Magfest was overall really really lovely. There was so much going on. I think I feel like I

saw like an eighth of it. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Wow. Um, actually, but you know why I'm thinking of Magfest? There were people, Will, at this panel who showed up who were at the MagFest panel who said that was their favorite panel ever and they wanted to see it again. So, when they saw it on the thing, they came here. They even showed me texts that their friends were talking about all the different cults like like weeks later. And I was like, it was very very sweet.
That's awesome. Um, I'm trying to think. The last big news from Gen Con, honestly, was uh the tornado.
Yeah.
Flood.
Yeah. SL flood. There was a tornado warning. Uh, it's funny. I I'd been out till like 4 or 5 in the morning, the night before the tornado day or the tornado warning day. And I was like, I'm going to go take a disco nap around 5:00 just to to naps. And we were talking about that in the pre-show. Uh, just so we uh so I can power through for the rest of the meetings and parties and things in the next day. And I so I went back to the hotel and my head hit the pillow and then it was just

and then like we all had to like shelter in place essentially because downtown Indianapolis had a tornado warning. So like I hung out in my hotel room's bathroom under the door. That was fun. Um but like the convention center had a big old leak in it. Multiple basements were flooded. Like it was raining down into hall B. Uh it was crazy. So, but no one I don't believe anyone was hurt, so that is good. And the tornado never apparated, which is also good. Uh, but we will always remember the tornado warning/fing of Gen Con 2026.
Yeah, absolutely. There's one other piece of information uh that we need to tell you all, which is that the Kickstarter, which has a mere 13 of days left, uh, has just passed our $7,000 stretch goal. Yeah, it's cooking, man.
It is wild. Uh, and in my opinion, like, and I've told Jeff this, it's real cool that like we we're raising a bunch of

money and we're making a thing that a bunch of people want and we're getting to do more of it with the um with, you know, giving people more um Oh, we just got custom jokers for the card decks at $70,000. So, we got that. We've got
that's going to be Wallpole and Treasure Hunter Zoey. Oh, very nice. Um, we've got all kinds of like new shorts and everything else. Um, and that's all cool and great and wonderful. The thing that continually knocks my socks off is that there are now more than 1,000 homes around the world that are going to be looking at our extra history calendar every day for all of 2027. And that's bananas to me. Like, the fact that you all support our stuff enough to like bring this into your home or like that. It's kind of the same as when people are like, "Yeah, you're on our TV and everyone's watching." I'm like, "Why?"
Okay,
I don't know what to do with that, but that's great. And thank you all so much for that.
Oopsie. We are not doing a a digital one

this year. We have talked about what next year is going to be. We're trying to figure out different thing like basically the offerings that we have for this year are locked. Like there's no like we are uh in order to make delivery we have to lock. Exactly. Like we had a bunch like this grew a little bit faster than we thought it would and we had planned for a lot of contingencies. We didn't plan for everything. And so we were like, "Oh, what do we do if X?" And like we we came to unanimous decision. We can't add more physicality than we've already sort of like hopefully prepped to add. Um so yeah, it's uh it's a it's it's great and we will see what what goes on next year.
I like I like this. This is making history.
All right.
All right.
Well, speaking of history, [laughter]
the bad kind.
The Well, RIP 2027. Not it's not that bad, but it's it's annoying. Uh, will

kick us off here. What? How how how all memory gone 2027?
Yeah. Okay. So [sighs] one of the things that happens in industry BUSINESS guess what I say business um is supplies or manufacturing capacity gets allocated in advance. So in this case um Samsung HK Highix and Micron have officially allocated all of their DRAM and HBM production throughout the end of 2027.

And the problem here is that the people with the most money can out bid for production capacity for the following year. And of course, dear chat, Brad, Janet, who has the most Rocky, who has the most made up money with which to buy capacity? So, just to be clear, just to be clear, these are people spending money that isn't real on capacity to manufacture a thing that doesn't exist yet.
Well, it is. It is real in the sense of the people that are pretending it is.
Yeah, that's true, right? Is it Is it I like I like how Janet and Brad agree. We have Janet, me, I have billions in my mind, and Thunder, [laughter]

is it me? Moments apart on two different platforms. Thank you all for drifting the brain cell around. It's getting a good workout. No. Um, it's AI. They're they're driving up the prices and uh because there is a finite capacity.
Yeah. You can't just make infinite memory,
right?
With without infinite time and infinite resources,
right? of the Witcher bets.
Yeah.
Um, yeah. So, this kind of means that at least for the moment, my read on this eventuality is that memory prices and the current hardware component crisis are not going to get better in 2027 unless something radically changes.
No, they've locked it in. I think weren't you saying before the show, Will, that like this is like the concept of locking in who is buying what early makes total sense because you're

especially if these are components for complicated pieces of tech, then you need to know that so you can hit deadlines and get things out the door in the years that they would need the components for, right?
Um, this has just happened far earlier this year than than before essentially and has locked in across the board. uh no pun intended there. Uh the amount of RAM and where it will be allocated or me memory, graphics cards, etc. will be allocated across all the different companies that use these chips.
Yep. Um
so like so with that in mind, if that's already sold and locked in, that's what they cost. companies aren't going to be bringing down the cost of their products that these are in because they just locked in deals at these prices.
And this this has like real consequences, right? This is so this is sort of like a theoretical thing, right? There there all of the memory for next

year is is spoken for, right? which means that every manufacturer knows what allocation they're getting from these big the three biggest memory manufacturers. Right? So, as an example, AMD is uh talking about the Radeon RX 950. So, uh there's going to be like it's a budget card, which is good by the way. very good. Um, there's a uh the RX950 is an 8 gig model that's launching for $279. Okay. All right. That's like not terrible for once. Even in the midst of all this crap, we get some good news. But the other thing is that they're also making a cheaper, less RAM intensive,

less RAM speed just worse. It's just worse in every axis 4 gig card for low-end gaming PCs because they can't put the the faster stuff in it and they're just like, "Well, I guess we're going to make like the cheapest worst card and you're going to like it or something." Uh, but it only has 4 gigs. It's got a slower memory bus and less memory bandwidth. So, it is less memory, worse memory, slower memory,
but it is still technically a new graphics card. Have fun, right? That's like a real That's a real consequence of this, right?
Uh Grant, I feel this. I keep deluding myself. The bubble will pop and then the AR companies will need to liquidate this RAM and the prices will plummet. I can hope. I think the thing why that what makes this story so upsetting is like the fact that it's all locked in so early in the game means that is less and less likely to happen in 2027. Like

there's there's ways when when this was go like if this was happening later in the year like the the timing of it could play out different. I don't know. I I
it it is super it is a super bummer.
It it is also worth noting that um and we've talked about this briefly before
all memory is not the same.
Yeah. One of the reasons that the manufacturing capacity is sold in advance is that there are different options for how this memory can be configured or allocated or the the chips that make up the memory can be manufactured. And the stuff that AI uses in data centers is not the same as the stuff that you use in your computer. You can't just
hot it and then hot swap it. That's not

how it works, unfortunately.
This isn't like the amount of uh precious metals that are in certain cameras posted all around the United States. Uh it's not like that.
It's definitely not like that. Uh nor would anyone suggest or post publicly that there's roughly 64 gigs of memory inside each and every one of those cameras.
Oh wow, that's crazy. You, no one should really be talking about that, I think.
Nor should you be 3D printing, if anyone has seen this, bird feeders in the shape of those cameras to train crows to peck at where the lenses are. Someone [laughter] did this. Someone 3D printed a model of a flock camera and put holes where the bird seed is where the lens would be to train crows [laughter] to pick out the lenses.
What stinks about that is that will just end up punishing the crows. Um, regardless, uh, that's very funny. Um, someone had something that was super

interesting. Where did it go? Oh, could all this push software developers to start optimizing again to allow stuff to run on older hardware? I think so in the in the micro, yes. what we need I think to move anything forward uh because because okay if that let's say that happens that's still not going to make the price of uh current day memory or memory chips go down because the places that are buying them at the high prices will still buy them at the high prices. What it might do is allow like if people had a really good uh new way of uh optimization for games or other things um that could make those experiences better on the crappier cards that we all have because we can't afford or even get our hands on a new one. Uh and a lot a lot of the meaningful technological advances at least in my lifetime have been more on

the software side than the hardware side.
Yeah. Um, and I mean the bottleneck kind of breeds innovation. So
it does and I think that that is particularly true in our um the space that we will proudly call the trash panda indie dumpster. Um, the trash panda indie dumpster is is a big fan of games that run on uh your smart fridge, your phone, your smartwatch, your smart TV, your printer, right? Like whatever. it's fine. Like whatever it is, right? And we're seeing more and more of that with like indie smash hits like Batro with all of the uh optimization stuff that's coming to uh platforms like GDAU. I I do think there is something to that idea. It one of the problems is getting started, right? Like that's great for people who already have

older stuff, for people who are trying to build like their first thing or for console prices or for whatever. Right. Getting in is still a there's still a barrier.
Well, don't worry. Nvidia or uh the Radeon uh RX950. [laughter]
Yeah. Right. Yeah. You you'll get a terrible bad card. I mean, at that point, just get a tablet and play Bellagra forever. Yeah, there's some there's some there's some truth to that.
Yeah. Um,
they did it Hold on. Apparently, they did it as a joke at a Tennocon last year, but I have literally seen Warframe run on a smart fridge. Okay. To be fair though, to be fair though, the Warframe team is committed to making that game run on everything that has a screen.
Absolute mad lads. I popped in and out on Switch 2 right now and it runs like butter. Like, it's great. Yeah, we'll talk we'll talk more about optimizing games for Switch too uh in a bit.
In a little bit.
A little bit. But um

yeah, the
But will Oh, sorry.
I was gonna I was going to move on to the to the other bad news though, which is that while the 9050 is coming out and will be a budget card.
Sure. Um the it looks like the writing is on the wall that both Nvidia and AMD will be raising prices on their mainline GPUs, which uh IGN is guessing that the 5090 might go up to as much as $6500.
Insane. Yo, Mike, neither neither I need to stress this. Neither of the computers that I run as a person who professionally relies on big powerful computers as a [snorts] whole cost

$6,500. Neither of them. And well and and to be fair, I bought this one, the one that's bringing you this stream before the RAM crisis mercifully uh because it has um [clears throat] 128 gigs of RAM in it. Don't worry about it. No, you can't know where I live for a friend. Um
I've trained crows. I've made bird feeders that look like Will's ring.
That's [laughter] right. And the crows are now ready to find it and bring all that sweet sweet RAM to my house.
Right. Yeah. But like um and I think this is this is a very good point. Ninetailed says my car costs less than that. Right. And I think a mentor has it completely right. There is no market for a graphics card at that price.
No.
Right. Um and I think that that's right. That's the the big that's the big thing, right? is that the the money we have reached monopoly money, right? We have reached the point where it's no

longer a real amount of money to buy a graphics card. It is now a fake inflated amount of money that like you're like, "Yeah, sure, whatever. I'll finance it." Or, "Yeah, sure. I guess I'll get it when I win the lotto, get my inheritance, sell a car, hawk a kidney, whatever." Well, I think the most the most depressing part about it is it's not going, at least currently,
crash like a normal bubble would crash. Like the problem is they're going to make these cards cost this money because then they're still going to they a they can't sell as many anymore to people cuz they don't have the the components or resources supply because they're already selling that supply of parts to a industry that is based on vibes. Like, so like I guess what I'm saying is there's no incentive for them to make

cards not only for the wealthy because they're already selling all of the stuff that they need to sell to the wealthy.
Yeah. And so I I actually I agree with the point before of like sadly I think we're going to start seeing and maybe not even sadly but I'm just trying to turn the frown upside down like innovation is going to come through optimization. And it's going to like like Batro is a great example of just a thing that took the gaming world by storm that doesn't need a ton of ton to run it, right? Like, and I'm not saying that every game can do that, but also like I'm I don't want to everyone has the things in games that's important to them. And I and I feel for the people that like, you know, 4K, like 120 frames a second, like whatever. Like those things that like you've built and you've been able to afford up to this

point now becomes unaffordable. Like that sucks. That's awful. That industry shouldn't run like that. It should tech should become cheaper, not more expensive.
Y
um however, the the the place where I have hope, weirdly, even though it you could say it is not the optimal way to play, but like I look at things like Cyberpunk on the Switch 2, I can't believe that game runs as well as it does. It's 30 frames a second normally,
right? And but it looks
gorgeous. Like I I cannot believe what they managed to make that game look like on on what is essentially a potato. I know that it's a newer console, but still like comparatively to other systems and standard PCs, like what are you doing?
Still a potato. Yeah.
Um like so there are people out there that are very good at optimizing and hopefully what what heck maybe now I'm just being I'm being too optimistic at this point. Maybe the absolute need to launch a game

where enough people can play it will lead to games being delayed more so there can be more optimization options and maybe other problems fixed. Probably not, but I'm just trying I'm trying to spit some some nicities into the world where maybe one will latch into a moment of truth.
Yeah, I think that's true. So, all in all, the bottom line on this is it's it's a little bananas. Um, so here, as an example, there's a story from PC Gamer. Um, that
I can I set this one up? Will actually I I have I have a thing here. I have a thing here. So, you know how the medical industry and the insurance industry in the United States is just crackerjack? Like, it's so good that you never have any problems and you never even dentistry, you'd never have to fly

overseas for a medical procedure or to get your teeth worked on because it was 700% cheaper in another country. And therefore you would get a vacation uh out of going to whatever country that h that the procedure is having and then have your procedure for less than the cost of just the procedure in the United States.
Right.
Yeah. So Quakecon said hold my beer. uh and essentially uh is working [laughter] is working with graphics cards manufacturers uh with Nvidia and they're going to have a select number of I believe the RTX 4070 supers.
Mhm.
Uh at MSRP available at Quakecon.
Right. So the this this PC gaming author is from the UK.
Yes. And they did the math that the cheapest flight for them to Dallas, where Quake

Con is
from the UK is about $1,500,428 specifically. And uh admission to Quakecon is $16.50 and the RTX5090 is $199. So that's um the the the total for that is $3,443. Um which is I I cannot stress this enough more than $1,000 cheaper than the cheapest place you can find an RTX5090 online right now. It's not like barely cheaper. It's not a little savings. It is $1,000 cheaper to fly from the United Kingdom to Quake Con to purchase a graphics card.

That's where the market is at right now.
I don't know exactly um how they're divvying these out at Quake Con.
It's QuakeCon. It's a knife fight. They're just going to throw a knife in the ground at Quakecon and people are going to knife fight and whoever gives up last or is the last person alive gets to buy them.
Yeah, that's the round trip. Yes. Well, good luck to anyone going to Quake Con. I didn't know Quon was still a thing. I'm glad to hear that it is. It's kind of like a love letter to all things ID. I think we had a graphic for that, right? Did we not?
Uh, yeah. There it is. This is the 30th anniversary of QuakeCon. AUGUST 6 TO9 is QuakeCon right now. No, wait. Is it August? What year is it?
It is August. Quake Con is happening.
Quaycon's happening. Great by Texas.
What's going on, QuakeCon? What up, Quakecon? I hope someone anyone is watching this stream waiting in line at Quake Con.

Yeah,
that would make me happy.
I also like, Hold on a sec. I have to point this out when this happens. I also like that um we have multiple people on multiple platforms suggesting that we should be doing this Yuyu Hawk show style an anime which came out more than 20 years ago and people are suggesting that we use that as the model. By the way, uh I I was wrong. My bad. My bad. My bad. Yuyu Haka Show finished more than 30 years ago and
happy 30th anniversary. Two different platforms suggest we have a knife fight yuyu haka show style.
Is that not kismmet for the 30th for 30th? Come on.
Yeah, right. Obviously. Yeah. Uh anyway, um if any of you know how to make RAM like and you have all the parts to do it in the facilities, I you know, I might say that might be a good time to to get

on [laughter]
DIY RAM in your garage. If you're just sitting on all the tech and the materials and the rare earth metals just like they're just lying around, uh, you know, this might be your time. [laughter] Anyway, yeah. Um, speaking of Quon, by the way, we do have good news uh out of Quon. So, I guess that means that uh it's time uh for us to uh do a thing, right? It's been it's been two weeks.
It's been two weeks and now I think it's it's good newsy time, is it not?
Yeah. [music]
Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, we didn't do Did we do our main course graphic?
No, we didn't. It's okay.
AH, WE'RE SO BAD AT THIS. It's been two weeks. It it it it actually has been two weeks and we're both

extremely tired.
Yeah.
Um All right.
Get out here, Quake Con. Let's talk about something completely DIFFERENT LIKE THE NEW LEVELS IN QUAKE.
YEAH. SO, pitch pitch me pitch pitch me on this, Matt. I I didn't Matt brought me the story this morning was like, will well, I got to talk about this and then I was setting everything up and didn't have time to watch the video. essentially on most versions. I believe uh the only trailer I have is for the PS4 and PS5, but I believe this is being released across multiple things. You I didn't even know you could still get Quake on on the PS4 and the PS5, but you but now they're releasing essentially for free for anyone who owns Quake, a completely new campaign/map pack uh called Dawn of the Machine. And it's just more singleplayer Quake levels for the 30th anniversary. I think there's 19 like made in cons I want to see exactly what the um in Yeah. Yeah. So, uh the award-winning machine games in collaboration with ID. It's a brutal nude episode building on their critically acclaimed work on

dimensions of the machines and dimensions of the past. And it's basically uh it's awesome. I cannot wait to I I I it speaking of the our inability to play games that are like the the current days games.
Yeah.
When I saw the trailer and it's going to be in the show notes for Quake Dawn of the Machines, it's so old it looks new retro. Mhm.
Like I haven't looked at Quake being played in a long time. And this to me would sit right at home in any of the new retro boomer shooters that like that have have been basing themselves off of this. And so to have uh lovers of this game in collaboration with uh some of the team that actually made it, I think it's just it it really tickled something for me. And I was I I cannot wait to sort of dive back into Quake, which is

so strange to say. Um I I love this. I love that this dropped I think yesterday.
But that's makes sense, right? Cuz that's when Quake Con Quake Con would have started. Um show of hands across both chats if you wouldn't mind. How many of you have actually played more than like five minutes of Quake? Like like back in the day? Like I'm not Again, it's 30 years old. I'm not expecting a ton.
Yeah.
But Quake, I mean, Quake was the next step right after Doom. We, our last episode, two weeks ago or three weeks ago or whatever, was sort of a love letter to Doom. Um, yeah, we got some hands raised. We got some hands raised. Uh, I like it. Um, yeah. And then some people saying they fully played Quake 2 15 minutes. Uh, who here is old? That's really new guy. That's the question. That's really the question.
Yeah. Uh, I do really like but my my Yeah. And more Quake too. I would urge anybody I don't even How much is Quake

right now? Like
hold on.
You will you look it up on on um Steam?
$4. If we're if we're talking about like full experiences on hardware that can run it like and and that is cheap like Quake, if you're a how do I put this? If we we we sort of like glazed doom a ton last episode, but Quake moved it into what is essentially like the super fastpaced and not the streaming service half of you are watching this on Twitchy gameplay of a 3D shooter. Quake is I mean Quake originated the Rocket Jump. like Quake is seinal and fun and for $4 with a brand new campaign already. I forget how I think there's like four campaigns or maybe there's a a few more. Um I don't

know. It's it's it's a full 3D shooter that on any hardware right now will probably run at the blazingest of fast speeds.
You can buy it uh you could buy all of the Quake games, the Quake collection for $1641. Uh, and it runs on an Intel Core i5 at 3.4 i5 3570 with a GeForce GTX 650 Ti. Uh, and you need 2 gigs of uh of hard drive space and 8 gigs of RAM. So, bas basically does is it a computer? In like the loosest sense of the the the question, is it a computer? Great. It could play Quake.
Yeah.
And for 16 bucks, how how long do you think it takes you to play through every Quake game for 16 bucks?
I don't know, but I'm going to find out.
Yeah, that's like a month. Yeah,
I don't know. I just It's great. I was

so happy to hear this. It was a sort of a frown upside down about the Quake Con thing. Um,
and I'm not, TO BE VERY CLEAR, I'M not blaming Quake Con for the Nvidia thing. Yeah,
if Nvidia made this problem and they're doing a gimmick to do something with it that I do think probably unless they have something really on lockdown will cause scalpers to get
Yeah.
graphics cards. Uh but there's also going to be some people that actually love Quake that are there that need a graphics card that will also get one. So,
yep.
You won't need it for Quake, though.
Yeah,
you really don't need that graphics card to to play Dawn of the Machine.
No, no, no, no, no.
Anyway, I don't know. I was I was psyched about it when I saw that trailer. I woke up to it and I was like, "All right, we we've used the word kismmit already this episode." For some catharsis, chat, do you know what one of my favorite kinds of good news is? Drinking corporations salty tears like a milkshake.

It's one of my favorite things that we get to do here. Roblox is shrinking. I have no love for Roblox. I
Oh, why? I uh you could well it could be the injection of AI into everything, the child labor, the failing to protect children from online predators, right?
The uh rampant use of uh like um dark practices and predatory practices to get people to spend more money on their game.
Uh yeah, those are like the big ones. Um so they're they're down. I just think it looks stupid.
I just think it looks Yeah, it's also true.
O,
they're down 70 billion dollar this year.
So, take that bet on this one and times it by like 1.2. I don't know. My math's

not good. Uh 2.1 2.2.
Yeah.
Um yeah, it uh not looking great. They're saying essentially, this comes to us from uh Dextro. Uh they're basically saying things like I [clears throat] love this so much that Roblox blames the lack of viral games for it slowing player growth. So Roblox as a business kind of just puts it all out there right front and center is based on the ability of other people building the games in Roblox.
Yes.
And then monetizing for Roblox through those games. Now there's I mean other game design systems Unreal you know all these things could do this too right like that's fine but no none of them are like tied so cleanly to the sort of like corporate overlord company that is literally require like I believe there was a there was a game called garden story is that correct
I think that's right

garden something that was like a breakout hit in 2025 and apparently the monetization I' I've never played it. I know nothing about it. So, chat, correct me when I am wrong and and found off in the comments if you've played that game. Heck, if I'm even getting the name wrong, but uh essentially it was uh Okay, Oopsie played it. Beat the Garden Game. It's good. Yeah. Like, essentially, it was a game in Roblox that I believe had some monetization inside of it and also like was a viral hit and therefore people came to Roblox just to play the garden game, right? seems like they're basing their business model on that. Like it needs to do that and there's not a real plan to do it. And the thing about virality is oftent times unless you are a scientist recently fired, uh you can't really like track everything that's viral all the time, especially like in media, right?
Um there is a flip side to this story. I have no love for Roblox. This is not me

trying to um I I think their business model is flawed.
Yeah.
But some of the losses are also from focusing on uh things like basically like faster paced games that people play for less time that have less monetization.
Yeah.
Which is good.
Yep. Some of it is on uh even though there's a billion steps to be done, but like child safety and like basically like causing more friction points. Yes. Even though there's a long way to go in the accessing of games and spaces in Roblox that will slow down revenue, these are things that what what sucks is these are good things that will slow down revenue, but because money is made up and everyone bought in and thought it was going to be a free money machine and everything would be fine. There's no way that the good elements here are ever going to be either praised or continued

in my opinion. like it's go like what will happen is innovation unless something random comes along will start to stagnate and the much needed safety rails for something like Roblox will choke it in the environment of a business that has a seuite to answer to
yes
if this was if ro if I I truly believe this if Roblox was still a private company they could weather this. They could figure it out. They could slow roll. They could move with stuff. Would they make all the money? Would it be as profitable as before? Absolutely not. Would they be in this amount of trouble? I don't think so. I think this is a core example of how things that in a lot of ways make gaming spaces better for players and consumers is at direct opposition of the mentality

of what a public traded company values.
Right. So yeah, I I I just I also want to put this in context um because I think I think we we're focusing a lot on the money like aspect. I think that's good. I also want to point out the the that their active daily users fell from 152 billion to 123 million. And how inflated were those? How how many of those were faulty accounts? Like you know, like
sure,
you know,
right?
But I also want to to just put that number in context. That is like if every more than if everyone in Australia was playing Roblox and then stopped
or half of our viewer base.
I can math.
Yeah, that's how math works, right? Like it It's also about the It's not just about the money. It's not just about the decay of the business model. It's also about

sending a message.
It's about the decay of like interest in this platform as a thing, right? So yeah. Uh yeah, it's uh it's funny. My short answer of this is good.
Mhm.
My my wider answer is but it does kind of stink as to why if that makes sense.
Yeah. Right.
And that's again no love to Roblox. They got themselves here.
Yeah.
But
uh this is Ryan Ryan brings up a very salient point. Is this year on year? Yes.
Yeah.
This is yearon year. is not like earlier. This this is not a seasonal change. This is year on year. That's
this is this isn't them thinking the sky is falling because of a thing that they could see continually back and forth. This is like overall

Yeah.
So, YEAH. WELL, GOOD LUCK, ROBLOX.
MHM.
How does it sound? Is it Is that the noise?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or is it deeper? Yeah, maybe a little
O.
Yeah, it's close.
I don't know.
We'll get H Bomber Guy in here. He'll tell us.
Yeah,
he did a deep dive on Oof.
It's so good.
It is. It is remarkably good for being as deep a dive as it was on
I met him I met him once at a rooftop in LA and I didn't shove about that video for like five minutes. I'm sure it was super annoying. Like I I love I love that video so much. That's That's a That's one of the few video essays I will rewatch maybe like once a year. [laughter]
It's too good.
Yeah.
ANYWAY, HEY, LET'S TALK ABOUT A GOOD THING. THIS is good news.
Yeah, it's more good news. So, we we recently put out a short about how

um Nintendo was seeking a refund of illegal tariffs collected by the US government because it turns out that the US government collected a bunch of tariffs based on the EA and that actually doesn't let them do that. It turns out it's kind of illegal. Can't can't do the Supreme Court said no, can't do that. So, a bunch of companies are like, "Hey, you took money from us. You're not allowed to take gimme."
And the official position that's widely been adopted is that they're under no obligation to give any kind of money back to consumers because the consumers didn't directly get charged a tariff. the companies did and the companies raised the price of their goods to compensate and people paid that price for those goods, right? Um, and so that's a whole other issue. But there's nothing stopping a company

from saying, "Hey, we got a bunch of money back from the US government. We can do we can we can do things with that things like what Arctic is doing. where it is rolling back its prices and uh putting the money that they got back into community initiatives. Um
yeah, they basically want to make sure that they're paying back things to their customers as accurately as they can. By the way, Arctic is basically like a cooling company. They're they're a company that makes different things for PCs to keep your your internal components that you can no longer afford nice and crispy cold, right?
Um
I uh side note, I I got a little distracted because uh Basil said I I put this back up, but basically Basil was said they literally came from the short 10 seconds ago, which is so funny that we're talking about this right now.

Um yeah, this is great. This is what you like. We say in the short that N the good thing that Nintendo did here is reminding us that corporations are not your friends. Like that's no matter how much their marketing moves that way, no matter how much it's been a part of your family for your entire lives, like they're just not. I want to make it very clear, no company, I still don't think any company is obligated in any legal capacity to do anything about this. They're they can do whatever they want. We choose to buy what we buy. And I think overall society might be a little bit better if we paid more attention to that, myself included.
Um, but what Arctic is doing here is something that is not the norm. I wish it was because it is a very, in my opinion, moral stance to take. Again, this is their announcement of it and they're already starting it a bit. We'll see how it goes. And and and I don't I don't think there's any ill will here. I just it's always hard to be like, well,

how do you
how do you figure out the number that is the number that you're giving back and then how do you give that back? Because you're not doing like direct payments back to your customers. You're you're trying to give them things that you would equate the same amount of value that they overspent.
Yep.
But like I don't know this like this
made me feel really good when I read it. Like
you don't like they companies do not need to do this. This is a I I I don't know how small but smaller than Nintendo that's like no like and and I would even say it's from a fully altruistic point of view. It's also great press.
Yeah.
Could you imagine could you imagine if Nintendo of America came out in the midst of Sony just shooting itself in the knee a hundred times with the no disc thing? At least from a public perception. We'll see how it rolls out, right? And Nintendo came back and been like, "Hey, we're suing for this money back that your government took from you in a roundabout way. We're going to figure out a way to give that back to

all of our customers."
Yeah.
Could you could you imagine the level of goodwill that Nintendo would receive in that way,
right? But that's not cost effective.
It's never going to happen. It's never going to happen. Maybe it's only possible because Arctic is a smaller company. I have no idea. But I don't know. I um I really appreciate this. Shout out to them. Uh and this is something where the next time I'm building a PC, I will actively hunt for their parts. Granted, that's probably not going to be till like 2029, but like this is something that sticks in my mind as as a as a good move for their customer base and I like companies that do that. So that's there's no better way at least for me to get you sort of stuck in that part of my brain where I want to give you my business.
Yeah, I agree. Also, I regret to inform we missed ads this time around because uh the
because we're slow at this because we've been fasting for three weeks

because timing was off. So apologies to anyone who missed it. It was essentially just us talking about the Arctic story. You missed part of a story that was relatively minor in the grand scheme,
but a really heartwarming one. Yeah. All right. Uh, the industry is also not in the best way when it comes to debs. There have been a lot of layoffs. There are going to be more layoffs. We'll talk about that in a bit. However, the industry is also recognizing that maybe it's on us collectively, them and us, to help take care of the devs who are maybe not having the best time. And there is now a bundle out on it to support gaming workers. Uh, it is up for the next 6 days, 14 hours, and 51 minutes at the tone. Beep beep. and their goal is to raise $200,000. They've

currently raised $171,781.93. You get $127 items that regularly retail for $1,18 for 10.
I bought it this morning. Uh there's a bunch of great games in it.
Yep.
Um there's games I've been meaning to play and I just haven't yet. A Short Hike. Uh Skate Bird, Atomic Owl. Um what was the other one I was sort of going down the list? Oh, I had heard. I'm not sure if it's good, but Dungeon Bodega Simulator, I actually did want to see. I saw that a while ago.
They bleed pixels is in here. I saw another one when I was looking earlier.
Yeah,
they also have things like drywall eating simulator.
Yeah,
you know, in case you ever wanted to simulate the idea of eating drywall. There's also things like asset packs for making games. There's all kinds of uh there's music, there's all kinds of things in this bundle and it is a really

cool way that the industry is trying to take care of uh game workers who have been negatively impacted by the fact that the industry is like 50% fire by volume right now.
So, that's good, I think.
Oh, do we know is this for US-based or international total? Let me see if we can find out. Um,
I believe it is
United Video Game Workers, which is, I believe, a US-based.
That is correct. Uh,
oh, no. Is it? Hold on.
Nature just fix this fund will only be available to developers in North America, US, and Canada.
Okay.
Down. There we go.
Good question, though.
Yep. Good question.
Good question.
And if this one doesn't fit where you the people that you'd like to support, I'm sure there are other ones uh maybe not as large. Why would I eat drywall in a simulation if I could eat my own drywall for free? Because it's not free. Because drywall costs money. And if you were doing any home improvements lately, also the

tariffs have messed that up,
right? Also,
it's cheaper to simulate eating drywall these days.
You know what's definitely not free? The hospital bill after you eat drywall.
Unless you fly to another country to have it way cheaper. cheap, not free, but you know,
go to the NHS. I ate drywall in the United States. Anyway,
Wow. was having an interesting time.
I had fun with this one.
Yeah, I know you did. Uh, we talked about this a while ago. Their relationship with add-ons has been in flux. WoW used to be a game that was about 75% add-ons
and now it's a game that's 25% add-ons. Yeah.
And they're slowly reaching sort of a homeostasis with the add-ons that do remain and with things that they

want them to do. So they are now easing up some of the restrictions and allowing for some amount of things that are kind of like weak oras [laughter] but not legally weak oras to come back into
legally distinct
legally not weak oras. The big difference is that there are now restrictions on which status effects those auras can read. So, it used to be that you could read any status effect on anyone. Buff on an enemy, debuff on a player, whatever.
Now, a little bit different. Now,
now you're only allowed to read buffs on yourself and debuffs on the enemy. You're not allowed to read the enemy's buffs or your debuffs, meaning that you still have to solve those parts of the encounter yourself. I like it.
Which I think is a good middle ground. I

will say I'm still a little I feel like they are backing down because they've tried to design around the need for this, but it feels like the community wants to need this thing. Also, and I think this is in the article in PC Gamer because I don't think I came up with this smart thing myself. Uh they're also kind of realizing that the community can just make this stuff faster than they can.
I think that's true. They're outsourcing a lot.
Like, and that's fine. Like, it's fine. I I like this rebalancing because what I want as a as a new or returning player and I didn't finish um Midnight though will I I I do still want to do a

hardcore run at some point. Um
okay
because I think that'd be a nightmare. Uh I I I
I'm willing to participate in this nightmare with you for content and for no other reason.
We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. But um yeah, I because I I want the I want to be able to hop onto this game as a new or returning player and just be able to play it and not be at a complete disadvantage from the get-go.
It seems like they're and I don't think the pendulum has like stopped swinging yet, but I think that they are trying to find a homeostasis point. And uh I'm glad that they're going back a little bit on this even though I was very happy they went full hog on this. Like it's going to be a learning it's going to be a learning curve. The real problem is that the best way to affect this change would be to release a sequel

is to redo the codebase and to release a new game. WoW 2 that has as a fundamental buyin, you were not allowed to use add-ons. You're never going to need add-ons because we've built all of that functionality in from the beginning. But that's just a non-starter, right? So they can't accomplish the best way to do it and so everything else is a
compromise with the devil sort of.
Of course.
Yeah.
So
yeah. Okay.
Uh let's see. Will, can you vamp for two seconds before we get Oh, no. No. This is perfect. WILL, ANNOUNCE THE NEXT story and then I'll be back and I'll guess what you said.
Okay, great. Excellent. Uh this is the part of the show where I tell you what happened at Berlin. Um, so the Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival in Berlin happened while we were offline and a bunch of cool things got announced. One of them I'll wait to talk about until Matt's back because I think he'll like

that one. Um, but the the the short version for people who don't play 14, if you play 14, just go watch the VOD of the keynote. Just go do that. Don't don't listen to me try and give like a recap, but the brief version is we we did figure uh we did get told what one of the two new classes is. Uh it's a tank called Bastion. It uses two shields. Those shields turn into guns. That's awesome. Um we got a whole bunch of information about quality of life features, about the new way that progression is going to work, about uh customization. Uh we got a whole bunch of information about all of those things. Not a lot of information on the new combat model. Um, but we did also get a bunch of information about the environs of of Everold and and what's going on.
Muggles.
Very good, man. Okay, we did get more information about

the raid series, both of them. The Alliance Raid series, I don't think we talked about this right after uh FanFest NA, is a crossover with Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Okay,
so that's going to be interesting. Um I if we don't get to scream get the mech shinji, I don't know what we're doing. So that's happening. However, much more exciting is that the normal raid series, the eightp person raid series, will contain a um will contain both a new difficulty in between normal and savage. They're doing like a a new difficulty level, which I think is very good and very exciting, and I'm really looking forward to that. But the theme of the new raid series is

Final Fantasy 7. It's called Beyond the Lifream and it is being designed in concert with the team from the Final Fantasy 7 remakes. So yeah, not the first time they've done this.
Yeah, that feels like these are very different games.
They kind of Yes. I mean, from a mechanical standpoint, very much so.
Yes. From a narrative standpoint, which is really what we care about, I think. Not Not so much.
Um, so we're going to see how that goes. Uh, they did lead us into guessing what the raid series was by playing one-winged angel and the crowd lost their minds. I'm excited to see how they do this. I think that's probably one of the I'm definitely more excited for that than I am for Evangelion.
Can I
Not that there's anything wrong with Evangelion, by the way, like not my

thing.
Well, I know Final Fantasy 7 also isn't really your thing, right? Like it's not right. It's not that you have anything against it, but like how do you feel like is it because 14 is still releasing enough like of its own stuff and story and lore and like so like anything else like Evangelion or or Seven being sort of added to the mix like you just see as additive and not like the team being moved off to do something like that's all nostalgia bait. Is that kind of where it is?
I think that's part of it. I think part of it is also honestly um 14 is the property that makes Square Enix most of its money.
Sure.
If you think that there's another Square Enix property that's making them more money than 14, you are incorrect. 14 makes them most of their money.
Sure. And so getting more people get both introducing the 14 player base.

You want more people to be playing 14. Yeah.
Right. And and having it work both ways. I think there is also this other thing where they're just Final Fantasy fans. Like they love all the Final Fantasy games and so for them this is kind of the opportunity to like be told that it's okay to play around in the fandom sandbox which I think is fun.
The fan box.
Yeah, the fan box.
Yeah. Um so I I think it'll I think it'll be interesting. Uh, I'm more
they better love Final Fantasy 8
also to the mechanically they play different [laughter] kind of that's one of the big things that's changing in Everold is that we are getting a more active combat system called evolve mode.
They're changing the combat system.
We have seen some examples. We got no new examples in Berlin which is why I

didn't put in the notes. Um, but there is a more active system that involves like active dodging and has different positionals like to the left and the right of enemies as opposed to just behind or to the side. So there is it's not it it is in no way the same.
Sure.
But we are heading in a more active direction for some of it for some classes at least. and we'll need to see more, but there is some amount of like the real time turnbased thing.
I imagine most people in the chats for for our channel are Final Fantasy 14 heads outside of all of the other Final Fantasies. But let can I I want to make a I want to make a question to Brad and Janet who can answer live. outside of 14 and outside of seven, what are your favorite Final Fantasies? And the reason I ask is when I when we

get if we get a lot of them in in fast order, I want to see if Will could figure out a way that would make a fun interaction with 14.
So, there are already we just had an we just had an entire expansion based on nine. We have an entire raid series based on tactics and 11 uh tactics and 12, excuse me.
12. Okay.
Um
9.
Six is uh we just had Kefa.
You sure can.
Yeah.
Yep. Yep. Six already happened.
Six already happened. Um one is sort of like deeply in meshed. Four is in there. Crystal Chronicles is weird, but I guess kind of in there. Stranger of Paradise. We fought Chaos. So there's there's like a lot of [laughter] [snorts] too real Annie. Um there's there's a lot of things that repeat like chaos as an enemy is in there repeatedly. Yeah. Right. Or like we've

just fought gold beds or
I love this. Evan's like I've only played 15. So 15.
Yeah. There's a 15. There's a blatant um is there a 15 crossover? I think there's
in Tekken. There is, is there not? Isn't Isn't uh what's his name?
15 is uh road trip. I'm thinking of 13. I'm think 13 doesn't have
Oh, 15's road trip. 16's
15's road trip. 16's Game of Thrones.
Yeah.
Yeah. And we've had a We've had a 15, a 16, an 11,
and 11 crossover.
No, eight.
Eight is not as prevalent, although Triple Triad is a very big part of the game.
Yeah. Okay. So, that's kind of the thing. Yeah. I need gunblades back in my life.
Oh. Oh, there's a gunblade class.
Okay. So, they've pulled things.
Oh, yeah. That's right.
They haven't done they haven't done a um like a This is the Final Fantasy 8 event.
No, but they've done things like Okay, so there's a there's a raid series in Shadowbringers called Eden which has a

lot of eight participation in. Not everything.
People are saying that
is like a
this is the crossover with this thing. Sometimes it's like, hey, here's the story. It happens to involve Omega, right, as a character. And so now it has homages back to Omega in other games and the way that Omega interacts with the Final Fantasy lore as a whole. And sometimes it's a call back to a specific game, and sometimes it's a call back in general.
Yeah. And this is just an unusual case because it's Cloud and Sepharoth and uh uh Tifa and Barrett and everybody else that we're getting like a specific like hey this is the crossover with Final Fantasy 7 here you go
because there's a new Final Fantasy 7 game coming out. Side note, if if people are liking uh conversations specifically about 7,8 and nine, uh Jay, a friend of the show, Jay uh Jmate over at uh Second

Wind, has been doing playthroughs and sort of deni design analyses of someone who has not played those games before. Uh they are excellent and I suggest you go check those out if that is uh your cup of tea because they are super fun and uh it made me want to go back and play them though I will never have time.
Yep. Uh, he's actually, I believe, now on Symphony of the Night, which is my jam, and I will boot that up again. Um, what was I gonna say? Oh, my my favorite Final Fantasy crossover is coming down the pipe. I think we talked about it a few weeks ago. Uh, and that'll be Tifa in Street Fighter.
Yeah,
that makes total sense. Yeah, that'll be
like I don't even want like like Cloud and Tekken would make sense or Soulcalibur,
but I was like out of all of the Final Fantasy characters that I know, I think Tifa makes the most sense in Street Fighter.
I agree.
Yeah.
Uh unless you want to do like one of the old Pixel,
one of the old brawlers. Uh but sorry, I know I'm getting off of um I'm getting

off of the uh the topic at hand. Um, is there anything else from Berlin or do we want to go to the uh the other?
This was announced at Berlin actually. Um, they announced that the Final Fantasy 14 Switch 2 port is now live. So, this is important
for
important
for two reasons. [laughter] One, it's on the Switch 2, which is a triumph of um optimization. And two, it now means that Final Fantasy 14 can be played on any platform
that's not mobile.
The only problem with this is you need to buy it again and you need Nintendo online.
You do not need Nintendo online.
Oh, you don't?
They cut a special deal. You need a specific subscription, but you do not need a Nintendo online account. And if
so you can so you can buy the game and then do a specific subscription to Final Fantasy 14.

Yes. And if you are already subscribed to Final Fantasy 14, you get a discount on that subscription.
If I had it, and I don't anymore cuz my my trial ran out. So Drer Swift is sitting calmly in an inn, I believe, right now. Um, if I if I were to up or change my account to be this account and get it on the Switch 2, right?
Y,
would I then also be able to log in on the PC version that I already have or no?
You would need Yes, you would need two subscriptions. One for the PC and one for the Switch. That's you that's unique for the Switch. If you own it on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, you have one subscription that lets you log in from anywhere. The subscription to the game is sort of the standin for the fact that you don't need online. It
I think I did. I think I did get it on PlayStation. Did I not?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah. You um because you can play on controller.
Uh and so like that's interesting. And like the the logistics of the money

aside, because there's some weirdness with Nintendo and Square and everything else, it's really cool that there is one MMO, a tabtargeted MMO that is available on all these platforms.
Here's a question. Do we know if the port is touchscreen compatible?
To the best of my knowledge, it is not, but I have not seen anything specifically on that
because I could see a version of this game.
Nev says it is. That's That's pretty dope.
And you can use the Switch 2 controller as a mouse if you really want to.
Yep. But you also don't need to because the entire game is built from the ground up to be played on controller.
Yeah.
And
that's cool. It's funny. This is a thing I would try again if um if there was like a free trial type thing, right?
Yeah. Uh,
but I'm not I'm not going to buy I'm just not going to do it because I just don't have time to play it. There's

nothing against the game, right?
Yeah. Um, I don't have all the information that Generic Blue is asking about with the versions. I haven't looked into it because it hasn't particularly interested me, but there is there are answers to all of these questions.
I appreciate the level of This is so funny because it's it's it's sort of a snake eating its own tail or like backwards sort of thing. I appreciate the level of accessibility in the way that you can play this game. I also find it incredibly confusing, almost Destiny 2 levels of confusing prior to its end of like what you need to do to play what, when, and where.
It doesn't help that the Mog Station sucks.
I don't even remember what that is.
Mog station is the is the backend to like run your account and what you have on your account. Yeah.
Right. So like which edition of which expansion you have with like what subscription and all of that that's all in the Mog station
generic. If I have time to try this thing I will. I will go back. I've got to say I don't know who here uh was

around for when uh it was a charity reward, right? I played as many hours as thousands of dollars for a charity.
Yep.
Um which maybe we'll do that again at some point cuz Drer's there. I had a blast. Like the the thing that made me wish I had time to do this was honestly you all in the community that Will and you have all built. Um that's the thing that made me excited about it. The game is good and I like the story, but um I that I I that's the one like itch that I'm always kind of trying to scratch.
Yep. Importantly, by the way, more import anyone can port a game to a system badly. The Switch 2 port's actually pretty good and it was it did have a major problem till last night. The major problem was that loading was taking forever.
So, they took the entire game down for emergency maintenance last night and fixed it for the Switch 2. And now

Switch 2 loads, I'm not kidding, faster than my PC does. I have no idea what they did, but the loads are now like for um
in cities are virtually instant. It's
I wonder if they gave them sort of like a like almost like a fast pass
kind of. We're not sure what they did, but it was both a switch to update and a server side update. But it is truly [snorts] wild. They are really committed to making this work because they could have just been like, "Sorry, that's a limitation. The Switch 2 sucks, right?" But also, it's it's also important to know, by the way, they're not charging people the subscription fee for the first month
because they're like, "Hey, there are going to be problems. We're just giving it we're giving like if you buy the game, you you get the subscription free for free."
That says they believe in it. That says that they
Well, they also need a player base to test things. [laughter] So,
well, yeah, but also like look, I know

that there are versions of MMOs on mobile and and you know, you can play things on the Steam Deck and all that jazz.
Yeah,
this feels like the first attempt at and I I mean this lovingly, getting normies who play on the Switch 2 to play this game.
Yep.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Like uh and I think that's great. I, as I've gotten older, I constantly said I think the only way I'd be able to truly engage with an MMO is if it was portable.
Yep. Yeah. I am uh I'm very excited. So,
have you are you going to are you going to give it a test?
Uh probably not. Honestly, I don't I have a switch.
I know you have no use case. I I I was saying just like to try it if it's free to try. Uh, I will see how much it would cost me to get it, but I think it would be like 60 or 70 bucks to like try it, and that's not worth it for me right now.
Um,
I have Magic cards to buy. Uh, more on

that later. Okay, that is unfortunately the end of our good news, which means it's time to continue on with our show as we begin gaming the law.
[music]
Yeah.
Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. That's not There it is.
That [laughter] [sighs and gasps] Well, break break this one down.
Okay. So, y'all remember Diamond Comics? You probably don't. You probably don't remember the name Diamond Comics because it wasn't a thing that like interacted with the public very much, but you definitely know Piso and you probably know Avatar Press and you might know uh Udon or Green Ronin or Action Lab Comics. Diamond was a major distributor for all

of these properties and then they went bankrupt.
And one of the problems that they had was that because they were a major distributor for all of these properties when they went bankrupt, they had a warehouse full of this crap. Full of crap from all of those companies. Specifically, and this pertains a lot to the Pathfinder crew, a lot of Piso merch. There was a lot of Piso stuff in that warehouse. Yeah.
So, um the bottom line is that the estate the the what remains of Diamond as an in uh as a group that has declared bankruptcy and was absorbed by Oh god, who are they absorbed by? another group called um Sparkle Pop, who's a subsidiary of the holding company AD Populum.
Great.

Yo, dude, I don't I don't make these names up. Um has has reached a deal w with all of these groups that have these consignments in the warehouse. Um, so we are we are getting we are we are getting um motion on that which is I think good. There's there there's a story from comics beat. You can read the whole thing but basically this is motion on a thing that has been more or less deadlocked for longer than I can remember. And I think that's good. It it the all of these companies are suffering. Um the uh the there the the each member of the group is waving some amount of
Sure. You can go in the in the show

notes on Comic Beat. They link they basically break down both what was collected and what sort of was being I I don't know if the words withheld or or like the things that like basically what's in this warehouse and who's getting what money why.
Yes, correct. Um and so hopefully things will start getting freed up and Piso will get back to the business of pisoing and Pathfinder 2ing and all of those things. that that's the real hope is that there's no good like financial recovery from this, but getting the stuff back and getting through this and no longer being actively in litigation would be a huge boon to this entire chunk of the industry that's been affected.
I think we might have brought this up, Merith, in our Dungeons and Disasters episode because I think that there is something having to do with diamonds in that God, everything is a blur. Mhm.
Um, but I do believe we've mentioned it in at least one or two of the animated episodes.
Yeah. So, there's a bunch of legal ease

and a bunch of corporate uh bankruptcy law that I don't understand nor will pretend to. Um, but there's motion and you can read the full text of the law stuff in the comics article in the show notes if you would like to.
Yeah. Next story is interesting.
Yeah. Um, so there's this little thing that we used for a while and now no longer do, uh, called Stream Elements.
And now they have been acquired by Razer, the peripheral mouse, keyboard. I don't even know what else they build things, headsets, shiny LED lights bolted to every piece of tertiary equipment you have.
I have nothing against Razer. Razer's fine. Like, I have no I have no qualm. This to me sounds like precedent would tell me it's bad, but there's also I think a bit of good news

sort of struck into here, right? Like cuz Streamlabs at sorry Streamlabs Stream Elements has not been profitable for a very long time.
That's correct. They've tried a bunch of stuff to become profitable. And it turns out that on a corporate level, it is virtually impossible to make streaming as an industry profitable. It doesn't work. It works for individual creators sometimes. And by individual creators, I mean people in the top 3%.
Yeah.
Between three and 5%. the bottom 95% of streamers go negative,
right? And like that's that's just how it works.
Yeah. There's more supply than demand.
Correct. Significantly. So the zero viewer hell is real and it will eat many streamers.

The weirdness with this is that Stream Elements for a while had something that they thought was going to bail them out, which is that they were the exclusive distributors of uh sponsorships through Twitch. So, for a bit for a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, Twitch had a thing called the Bounty Board where people would pay Twitch to offer sponsorships to streamers directly. And then that didn't really work. And Stream Elements had a thing where they would have with a little broader reach would do sponsorship sort of assignment placement for things like Rage Shadow Legends or Marvel Puzzle Quest or, you know, choose the mobile game, Star Trek Fleet Command, right? World of Warships. pick pick your thing that you've seen or heard an ad read for.
Yeah,
they distributed a lot of those. And then Twitch wanted to bring that

in-house because Twitch got tired of not making a cut of all of those sponsorship deals,
which okay, fine, Twitch, shut up. But they weren't getting a cut of the sponsorship deal. So, they started trying to bring that in-house with Stream Elements. And then something happened and that's really when stream elements started tanking and they started not paying out to creators. My guess here is it's not only that Razer is one of the better companies to like maybe acquire them. I'm willing to bet Razer didn't pay a lot because I don't I don't think Stream Elements is worth a whole lot right now. They've shot their brand credibility. They don't really offer anything that you can't get anywhere else for free now.
Yeah. But they also, one thing that is built into this is um uh they built into the price of acquisition money to go out to pay all the people

that did not get the bounties or payouts that they did. So now that Razer has acquired them, that money will go to the people that it's supposed to go to. So that's a small win.
Yeah. Um, again, I'm not a fan of acquisition, but I also think that Stream Elements would have just died had they not probably bought had Razer not bought it for like pennies on the dollar. And the reason why I think that's not necessarily a bad thing is, don't get me wrong, I I think I think that OBS is doing truly a phenomenal phenomenal job at holding up the entire streaming industry based off of one single Patreon and a team of like three people. Yeah. Uh, but that's not sustainable like in the long run. Like there will be a time when that goes. And so like I'm not saying like this is a thing to jump to by any means of the imagination. I don't think they have a proven track record to make it remotely safe to do so. But I like the idea of there being someone else in the game.
There isn't, unfortunately. And that's

where I have to issue a minor correction. The Stream Elements team built an add-on for OBS.
Oh, well then we're still screwed. But
correct. Just like Streamlabs is just a fork. Yeah.
Of the OBS project, OBS is loadbearing, unfortunately. And to be fair to their Patreon and to that crew,
everyone in the streaming game knows it. And they get they do get some amount of corporate sponsorship from like other companies to be like, "Hey, we need you to exist." And having uh I actually talked with Red at your wedding about how OBS is now becoming loadbearing for the film industry [laughter] as well. Like I cannot stress enough how much this stupid open- source program that does everything is like a toothpick holding up an inverted pyramid of the world. Anyone anyone who does any sort of either live streaming or or at this point sort of like visual media motion

motion motion picture movie films uh should be throwing OBS $5 a month.
Yeah.
Like I know times are tight. OBS will be the if if like you know if pur strings are are are crunched my my patreons and I have to start picking and choosing OBS will be among the last to go.
Yeah. O OBS is is one of those like real open- source projects that is holding up part of the internet. And yes, Blender is the other one, chat. Blender does everything that OBS doesn't do and OBS does everything that Blender doesn't do. And between the two of them, you're fine. Um, so I I think it's just it's
VLC is also great.
Yeah. VC, OpenSSL, GCC. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I think this acquisition is probably okay. I I do agree with Matt's assessment that if they didn't get acquired, they were just going to go under. And I do think that it's important that we have companies that

are competing with each other because otherwise you get things like just Streamlabs and just Streamlabs is like not ideal.
Well, and perhaps perhaps this will give some runway to I I don't know what the what the answer to this is, but I'm not these companies, so it's not my job. Like making something that they offer be profitable.
Yeah. Like right now it's not, but like I could see [clears throat]
the other the other problem is that it's very hard to judge profitability on on streaming itself when what streaming serves as in a lot of cases is advertising.
A case of I mean that's I mean not to get too far into the weeds of our own stuff, but that's truly how we like like if you're looking at the dollars to donuts that Twitch andor the streaming shows bring in to our studio. It doesn't break even. But what it does is allows us to do things that are bigger swings. Uh having Will with us all the time and being able to produce live content and and all of that jazz is invaluable. And

therefore in in the corp the how do I put it in the in the business structure that we have built even though the line item is a loss we can still look at it and say no no no these other gains would not have happened had this not been here. Right.
So, like that's where streaming kind of lies in in in our level and honestly almost every level.
Uh unless you're looking at like Game Awards level style stuff.
Yeah.
Um don't forget to reup your Twitch subscriptions and do all the things and don't uh YouTube memberships.
Yeah. Also, salute to Ty Codecat. As someone who works on OBS, you don't have to worry. There's no way OBS is ever getting acquired. Good.
No, no, no. It's not about BEING ACQUIRED. THAT'S THE THING, TANDI. UH, TONNIE, like I truly believe that everyone at OBS has the best case scenario at heart and they really want to keep it moving and like and like this is important. They see they see what this is for the industry.

People get old. That that's that's not a slight to anyone. That is a fact of life. And if you don't have and maybe there is a succession plan, maybe there is all this stuff, but inevitably I that's my worry, right? Like when you only have one thing, that's one simple vector that has to go wrong as opposed to an industry. Again, it's why I don't like monopolies. Uh granted, this is an open source one and that's the best kind. Uh but there's it's just a
Yeah.
I love how everyone's like we do we get old. that.
Sorry. Spoiler alert for life.
Uh, [laughter] God, I was
I like I like this take. Hold on. To maintain OBS, we've begun [laughter] to work on immortality. That's great.
Open sourced immortality.
It's so funny. I was at a birthday party for one of my friends kids last night, and it was just a bunch of middle-aged men essentially in a room talking about

media. And I was just listening to the way my friends talk about media. And this is no slight to them, but like it was the like it was both the argument of everything the way that like media literacy and things is so bad these days and like what's being popular is kind of silly, but then also like just pure yelling at cloud. And I had to stop and be like, "Guys, we're yelling on the front porch right now. Like this, like it doesn't even matter if we're correct or not. like we need to have a little a little more compassion and respect for the uh for the for the upandcomers. It was very funny. It was it was a very um um humanizing moment.
Yeah, absolutely. All right. Uh let's keep rolling because we got more stories and I overplanted this episode because
that's okay. We It's If this one goes a little over, it's totally fine because after this we're going to be playing I believe Destiny unless we want to check out Token Fighter which did get delivered I saw. So we can figure that.

Yeah, we'll figure it out. Uh, all right. So, uh, in Japan, we spin the globe. TCGs are a big deal. Pokemon specifically, but TCGs in general.
Yeah. so big a deal that the Japanese government is now having to set up a specific task force, a working group in their parliament to work on the problems of TCGs in Japan, which is bananas.
Yeah. Um there's now an entire uh there there are increasing problems with counterfeiting, with scalping, with uh unruly behavior based on uh people not getting the thing that they want, like it's it's not it's not great. And if you think it's it's both better and worse, right? There are like more social norms that prohibit people from being absolute jerkasses in Japan than there are in the United

States. um looking at you dude with a scale in the store weighing Pokemon packs. Get the hell out of here. Um but there are more TCGs in Japan. Um and so it's a big problem. Um, among those is this new push that is a little dystopic on its face. Um, [laughter]
what would that be?
There's there's going to be facial recognition to buy Pokemon cards and and I Don't [screaming] don't
I don't like it. I'll say it. I'll say it right now. I'll I don't like that at all.
Yeah.
What's another way to fight scalpers?

I have an idea.
What is your idea? Not great. But like if we're going to throw money at things like facial scanning technology, could we just throw money at employing more people to work at the stores?
Probably.
Like like why not? Like I [sighs] I and I know listen I am I I am I know that is a naive statement but if but think about the complexity that is needed to run facial scanning technology. Couldn't we just take that energy?
So, I I also I I also want to be clear that these are related stories from two different sides. The working group is proposing legislation and um things that will help on a national level with all TCGs, facial scanning specifically.

Oh, we're getting package from ASMR now.
Sorry.
That's okay.
I got excited. I know you did.
Um,
god damn it.
It's punching. What, Jamie? What?
It's always a DVG case.
Did you hear that?
Yeah. [laughter]
Um, this the facial scanning specifically is from the Pokemon Company to get entry into a Pokemon company store. um that you're only allowed to be in once, one visit per person per day to help cut down on scalping to prevent people from doing the thing where they go and they buy the maximum number of things that you're allowed to buy in a visit and then go get back in line and then do it again.
Yeah. Um, so there there are two different angles, but like they sort of come back to the same point, which is that there is a cultural problem with the way that TCGs are perceived and sold and marketed, and this is part of that, even if it's not a

governmental origin.
There's a lot of people bringing up stuff in the comments uh that make a lot of good points as Well, as a retail person, I can guarantee a lot of people working these kinds of stores with the mindset of I'm not paid enough to care about that. Yeah. Then pay them more, right? Like that's the I agree. I I don't think I would care at the rate that people are being paid. But again, if you're paying for facial recognition software, somewhere down the line that needs to be somewhere else. Also, because loss prevention training for retail is often racist, if you're trying to stop people from making mobile purchases, actually makes it worse because you can just wait for a different cashier. Again, I I agree with that entirely. I just think there's effort being put into one side of this that makes things worse. I wish people would have and it's not people. It's not a specific store. It's like policy. Like again, this is naive, but again, it's not my job to figure this out. I'm just spitballing ideas. You make it if you're going to sell TCG packs, you need to have a certain number of employees at the ready. Like, it's almost I'm sure

there's um things in different countries and stuff for like gambling and casinos. like what you need to have for what and when, right? Like, and I'm not saying that this is exactly the same, but if you're going to regulate something along those lines, having things put into place to protect consumers and the industry.
Yeah.
And I know that even if it costs the exact same amount of money, they're going to go with facial recognition because then they don't have to deal with a person. I just think it's better if you deal with people.
I agree. Um, and there's there's lots of good observations in chat about quantities of cards being printed and whatnot. The reminder that the key culprit to this is the Pokemon TCG and they have run out of entire shipments before and this is the Pokemon company. The problem is probably not that they don't want to print more. It's probably that there isn't enough capacity to print more.
Yeah. 29. Uh I live in more rural part of Japan where Pokemon cards are behind the counter and rationed like four packs per person. Japan is much more willing to ration in the US. It helps a lot.

Yeah. I'm gonna I c can I can I issue the spiciest idea?
Yeah.
TCG packs are gambling.
Pretty straightforward, right? You are uh paying you are betting a certain amount on objects of an uncertain secondary market value within. I just legislate that they need to be controlled like gambling. scratchers.
Well, I mean, you know why? You know why?
Yeah. Because there's a whole bunch of people making a whole bunch of money and they don't want it to be.
Yeah. They'd make less money.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah. Yeah. But like,
but again, that's where that's where regulation comes in. That's where
Yeah.
No, I I think this is a
we would also need to do the same thing for sports cards. Yes. But if we're like I guess my other point is that if we're

going to push all of these restrictions and legislations around digital gambling, which yes is not identical, right? The ways that digital gambling on things like gacha games um and loot boxes are more instant gratification. It's easier to pull the trigger for hundreds of dollars accidentally or in a moment of like impulse spending, right? like it's way easier to than like to drive to the store and get a booster box or whatever. Um, and it's money in only. So like it's again not identical. But if we're going to build in all those protections, we're going to worry that much about that. We should also be worrying about TCGs and the ways that they are having a cultural impact and the way that like Japan the is probably the country with the most TCG investment per capita.
Yeah,
they're having this huge problem. We should be aware of that and take the same kind of steps for TCGs that we're willing to take for loot boxes. And for
like I get I get the idea of

because the kid in me and and the choice monger in me wants to be like no I like I love magic packs. I love sort of like uh uh uh turn the I mean essentially at a at a drugstore turn the crank after 25 cents or it probably cost a dollar now. like get the random toy that drops out of the thing. Like there is
there is a joy to randomization uh in general, right? Like because when it depending on your buy in like if you miss it's not that bad and if you hit it feels great, right? where it turns into gambling, I think, is when the thing that is whether or not it's intended or not, but when the market for the thing that is basically randomized becomes out of the essentially the creator's hands. Like the creator could pull levers to adjust things, of course, but like I'm going to speak in poke magic cards,

but I feel like Pokemon cards are the same thing, right? Because the idea of the business model of a Pokémon card or a Magic card is there are so many sets that come out every year because the companies that own them need to make money. So they adjust the game to make new things hit for those games like and you they basically want an influx of people buying the thing. What and they and they make sure that the most recent thing is the thing that is hopefully the most relevant for the most amount of people playing the game. Yes. Essentially, truly, every one of us could stop buying new Pokemon and Magic cards and still have infin near infinite numbers of decks we could build with what is available now uh and have a very good time and and do whatever.
This is demonstrabably true in uh in Magic. There is a format that is all cards that have already been it's a locked format called preodern and no new cards are introduced to that format ever and it's still a thriving format.
But this is so this is my point. I think Sultan's actually hitting hitting this right. This is where I'm getting to Sultan. If you don't want the joy of randomization always feels extremely dangerously addictive, especially when there's a pull per cost connected to it

and this makes it me really against it. Yes, this is where I'm going. The randomiz I go back to like the the machine outside a drugstore for like the gumball machines, right? Like that's something where the action of it is not dependent on you doing it all the time and it's not the most fun thing. It's like a kind of small thing that you do and like, oh, it's a throwaway thing and the cost is low. What these essentially institutions for for cracking packs of of game cards or or collectible baseball cards or whatever cards that are have a monetary value is it's taking that simple thing at a low cost and turning it into an addictive thing at a mid to high cost. And that is where I think more regulation should be put into place because it's no like you just can't say it's not gambling with the point of you continuing to gamble

like the business model is you continuing to buy the random things. It's not a oneanddone random thing. So if that's the business model and and the interesting thing especially in the US and I've noticed this across the last eight yearsish maybe maybe really four but I it could have bleed back and forth the the personal online gambling market. I actually started no actually this was way earlier. Let's back up. I like going to a casino from time to time. It's one of the things one of the only things me and my father kind of have in common and we take trips and we go see shows and we like go to like that's just sort of a thing we do from time to time. I never gamble with much money because I don't have it and like but I like doing I like playing blackjack. I like doing that stuff and you go in with a specific amount of money and I know that there's addictive things in here. For me it works and it's okay. But what I noticed in the last 10ish years, let's say it used to be you had to go to Native American reservations around where I am. Uh Foxwoods, Bohemian Sun, like like you that's where it was legal to do this.

There are now casinos open near my hometown near there's one in New York now. There's one in like like gambling has become so legalized it it has become in my opinion dangerous. And that's not even counting like the case in point one of my favorite malls growing up where I was a mall rat now has a casino in it.
Yeah.
And it's like that sucks.
Same actually. There there is Yeah. There's one in one of the malls where I was a mall.
And there's this there's this normal like cuz what I liked about going to a a reservation or something like that is like it's it takes time. You can't just walk out your door and go to it. Like it you have to plan for it. It limits it. It's it's the ball machine outside the drugstore, right? But when the second you make it ubiquitous, and I'm not even talking about Kelshi and and and and uh DraftKings. I saw oh god there was a commercial on a podcast I listened to for rebel betting and it was like the dumbest like yeah you want to bet your

you want to bet like a rebel and it's like this like it's totally it's awful but like the online gambling at this point is rampant and those like that all gets away with it now so what hope at least in the United States do trading cards TCGs collectibles have I like that Japan's is trying to do something
there. Like this is a small bite of a very large problem.
But I feel like the only the only thing that has ever sort of floated at least in the last year and a half is facial recognition.
Yeah, maybe let's not do give everyone all the biometrics because
I like this. [laughter] Amy Amy Day now finally gambling for men. It's like
Yeah.

Okay.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Sorry, we're talking about this too long. It's just I I will your spicy take in my opinion is correct and really not that spicy.
Yeah.
I think a lot of people compartmentalize it away from that because they don't like it. Um
well because it's we're let's finish off this story with this. I agree with you. We are going to have to come to terms over the next couple years uh the things in the industry that we do not like that are bad that we could kind of keep in the periphery for a long time are creeping forward due to massive consolidation.
Yep.
Look at Sony. Look at Xbox. Look at uh the way that TCGs are being handled in this capacity. There are multiple good things about all of those activities, but it's getting harder and harder to ignore the bad. And I think we're all going to have to come to terms with what we engage with moving forward. And everyone there's no like moral high ground here. It's just like I think we

can it's going to be harder to compartmentalize moving forward.
I agree.
Yeah.
Okay. Um Hey, Matt. We have We have a chance that we don't normally have. You want to do you want to do some fake ads for things we can't buy for the second ad break on Twitch because we're
Sure. IT'S AN EXTRA LONG EPISODE of games for breakfast.
Yeah. Right. Okay. Um so, uh Twitch ads about to get ads for things they can buy and hopefully not too many of them are for gambling sites given Yeah. Right. Um uh so we're we're going to we're going to do fake ads uh for things you can't buy. Um, I I can I can go. I think I
Here we go. You go. Ready? Here come music now.
Hi everyone. Tired from will credits here. Join next to awake bat from also [music] credits. Consider sleep. What if good sleep? Get good sleep. You can't

buy it. You can pay money to try and get it, but nope. Nope. God. Good sleep. priceless. Get good sleep, not bad sleep, not sleep full of weird dreams about stuff and also things. G get good sleep and [music] you will feel more like a human. Uh if anyone knows how to do that help, please give now. Thank you for your time.
I'm going to piggyback. Hey everyone, super awake Matt from Extra Credits next to sleepy weepy Will over here. Listen, Will said that he's really tired and needs sleep. What if instead of gambling, every time you booted up Kelchy or DraftKings or whatever the Rebel Bets or whatever the hell it is, YOU INSTEAD TOOK A 5-MINUTE NAP? Why not just disco nap whenever you think you're going to spend your money on a gambling app? Heck, EVEN MAYBE WE DOWN YOUR YOUR pack cracking in anything that you crack packs in. HELL, YOU COULD

EVEN not bet on sports games. I know it's crazy. Just take a nap. If you're like, "Oh, I bet I can make a bunch of AND THEN YOU'LL FEEL GREAT LIKE ME. You good? Did you just use the last of your energy doing that?" Okay, great. Awesome.
The energy is not gone yet, Will.
Okay, great. That is true. The streamer is EP and requires a small sleep.
Uh,
who can nap for only five minutes? professionals. [laughter]
That's true.
Um,
no, technically the best kind of nap is a disco nap, and I think that's around 40 minutes. I know it differs for people, but that's my that's my favorite.
You can do the um you can also do what is it? There's there's a sleep schedule that a whole bunch of people I knew tried in in college where like you only sleep for like an hour every like six hours and then you just

do that forever. It doesn't really work like at all in any way, but they tried it.
My cat is sleeping now to prepare for five hours of gambling on ad.
This is correct. Yeah. Yeah. Right. No, that's correct. And then you died. That's true. Yeah. Yep. Yep.
All right. What's What's the next story?
Uh well, the next story, Matt, uh is is you because it's time for today's matinea. [music] And they say THAT A HERO CAN SAVE US. I'M NOT GOING TO STAND EVEN AND WAIT. HEY, it's a brand new day, everybody. I went and saw the Spider-Man movie, and boy oh boy, was it the most Spider-Man movie that has ever spoomed. No spoilers here. I'm not going to spoil a single

thing. Here's what I want to say. This is a uh the thumbnail from a podcast episode that we dropping Saturday on Nebula and Sunday on the regular the only podcast about movies feed where Shahira and myself and guest uh friend of the show Jonathan Blade uh go over all things Brand New Day. Now this movie slaps. Um this movie it it's it might not be my favorite Spider-Man movie. I think that still goes to Spider-Man 2 because I'm an oldman. But this is, and I say this with no irony, the movie that feels the most like a comic book. We've had tons of comic book movies, and the MCU has taken a slurry approach of just throwing characters together in both the Spider-Man, uh, the Homecoming, Farah Home, and No Way Home, like trilogy, uh, and across the MCU of just like mashing the action figures together, which has become a staple in the MCU. But there's a certain value to

how this movie does it with Hulk and Punisher and a few other characters that really hearkens back to how a like why characters in a comic book are added to a person's story. So like I don't know how many people read comics or graphic novels from Marvel or DC when there's a bunch of crossovers. But normally, if there's a character in there, because it doesn't cost Marvel anything to put Punisher in a Spider-Man comic, but it would cost, for instance, movie studios, Marvel, uh, Sony to deal with Spider-Man and then deal with the Punisher IP and get John Bernthal over here. Like, it's far more there's more, uh, corpo math when it's when it's a movie. And therefore, I feel like the narrative structure as to the why gets buried by the how. here. Everything is balanced. Like, I saw the trailers for this and I was like, "Oh, Hulk is in it. Oh, Punisher's in it. Okay, well, I don't even whatever." This movie feels like they picked the

right characters for the arc that Peter Parker is going through. There is true heart. There is true um this movie lets you have a lot of different cake and eat it, too. There's flaws in it and I can't really go into those flaws without spoiling, so I won't. But if you are a fan of comic books, not even Spider-Man movies in general, I really do think this film is worth your time. Oh, and another reason why I think it feels so complete is there is so much practical stunt work here and actual sets. It actually feels real. Like one of the things that I had a real problem with um was with the home trilogy was everything was shot on luma screens or green screens. Like even down to like Peter Parker standing in a graveyard like it's flat lit. There's no shadows. You know they're not in a graveyard. Like it's just like whatever. Here they actually go to actual locations and it

feels like New York City. Here here's my one super minor spoiler. You know how at the end under credits they have like uh the last three movies had like stylized like scribbles like when it says Tom Holland and you know whatever. This was just a wonderful uh documentary artist I can't remember the name just shots of New York like actual like filming moments of all around New York that as someone who lives in the city felt real and placed and it felt like summertime in New York and it was like it's well worth sticking through the credits. I'm I'm getting a little I'm getting a little misty thinking about it. It's a phenomenal film. I think it is worth your time. This has been the non-spoiler movie matinea for Sputterman Brand Nao.
And uh yes, chat, the best part of the Sputterman movie is when Tom Holland yelled, "I'm going to spooter." And then spootered all over those people.
Yeah. Oh, also it is not One second. The plot is not this.

The plot is not this. It is a new story. There are elements a little bit from it, but it is not this.
Okay.
So, if you don't like this, don't worry.
Okay. Great. Excellent. Excellent. All right. We got four stories left. We got this. We got the lock in everybody. Lock just lock in. You're going to need to cuz it's time for the We finally made it to to to the bad the bad the bad dudes. Okay.
Oh man, there's bad news.
Yeah, there's bad news.
I was hoping if we just talked about Spider-Man long enough.
No.
Um, we'd hold on to the wings of an eagle.
No.
Okay. So,
[ __ ]
Yeah. No, that's correct. That's Yep. Mhm. Yeah.
Well, it's done.
Yeah. EA is officially now owned by Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner. And

granted, Jared Kushner only owns like 7%. But
yeah,
that's too many percents.
Yeah.
I mean, okay, can I say can I say the personal silver lining of the story?
Sure.
I was already boycotting EA games.
Yeah, I know. That's that's true. Yeah, right.
But that does not help the industry or anyone else.
Correct. This is not bad for us individually because I know plenty of people weren't buying EA games, right? The problem is uh the math. So the math is that um they have promised that one of the ways that they're going to help deal with the cost because remember a whole bunch of this was debt financing that EA absorbed to get sold. Don't don't think about that. Don't do

not it's not don't just don't. Okay. Is that they would cut $700 million in annual costs. Cool. That's not a real number.
No.
Right. They are cutting 700 MI. This is a bloodbath. This is no developers are going to work at EA anymore. This is so the industry is about to lose so much talent, right? This is not good. This is incredibly absurdly not good. Um, so, uh,
it's so funny because we often see so much in consolidation, big company buying smaller company like that started up to do the thing bigger company did but better and then they buy it to

basically inshitify it, right? Like it's normally like mid company to small company does this. We're now at the endgame where big company is doing it to big company or or or big government entity is doing it to big company. Like I don't think anyone involved in this acquisition has based on precedent any overall driving force to make video games or the creation of them better.
Y
this is to this is at best uh essentially a a money-making andor a little bit laundering scheme, right? At worst it is trying to buy culture and in a way kind of succeeding.
Yep. I agree.
Um I am super sad about this because like

and yes there's been rumors of the some looking to sell off boware which I think is the best case scenario for boware to be honestly like get out and get bought. Um, yeah, video games as investment, Ryan, which I think is absolutely uh counterintuitive and the antithesis of what makes a good video game. Video games, this is a weird statement, but it goes back to the story that we were just talking about about uh TCGs. Video games are not TCGs. There are there are video games that are TCGs, but you get what I'm saying? Like there's like you can play a speculative game of nonsense and make a bunch of money with a TCG or something that involves a gambling mechanic. Right now it's like they're trying to do that. But like how much money can be extracted from something before it goes belly up?
Yep.
And but the difference is you're playing with

thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people's income and lives. Um, I know I'm conflating a couple things here. I'm just sort of uh trying to grasp the severity of this. This was It's funny. Uh, it was between this and uh the RAM and the memory shortage of 2027 being the main story in the thumbnail. And like this one I'm glad we're actually talking about like nearly two hours in because it's the depressing one. Like the other one's depressing. Like, but there's the memory shortage is depressing based on the fact that like we can't get hardware and therefore we won't be able to play the newest games. But that's okay because there's some probably some ingenuity and a back catalog and a bunch of other things that we can kind of keep going with. This is depressing. But I I have trouble outside of not already buying EA games,

I know a lot of people do, seeing any sort of silver lining here.
Yeah, agreed.
Um,
this just bad. Like I I I anticipate that the the brain drain here will be so bad that this this like EA will continue to lose money over the next 5 years, not be a cultural touch point, not release something that is uh moving the needle anywhere and then somewhere down the line it will be sold again and the people in these investment firms, Saudi Arabia, Jared Kushner, whatever will make money on the downswing.
Yep. They'll have destroyed something and made a profit off of it.
That seems correct.
Um, yeah.
Yep.
Okay. [laughter] Can't wait for the Muslim right short in five years. Boy, oh boy. I can uh anyway,
let's talk about being not intelligent.

Damn it, Bobby.
Yeah. So, we even have Bobby Hill propane demigod in chat, which is great.
Amazing.
Uh, okay. So, imagine that you're a company that has offices all over the place, including in Sweden.
Okay, I'm imagining it.
Okay, great. Awesome. Now, imagine that the workers in Sweden, a European country famous for its union laws and union protections, come to you and say, "Hey, we'd like to collectively bargain." And you say, "Nah, we're good. Are you
There we go. The pact is fulfilled, by the way. Thank you, Daffft. I think that was Dafted, right?
Yeah.
I uh Are you stupid? So, that that's what happened to King. Um [laughter] King King has offices all over the place, including but not limited to uh Sweden and the workers in their Swedish office.

um filed a collective bargaining agreement requested under uh the Swedish trade union. I'm not going to try and pronounce that.
Why not?
Cuz it would be insulting to everyone in the country of Sweden. Um so
wait, I want to try. [laughter]
Okay, great. Awesome. The Swedish trade unions union geninis engineer engineer is that is that
yeah I don't think either of those
sleepy panda sleepy panda give me a percentage give me a percentage
yeah grass grass and sleepy panda percentages please um 2% great excellent j is y Okay.
Oh, J is Y 2%. Yeah, I I only have the

Swedish chef. That's really all I can do.
Okay, great. Actually, you know what? Grass says they knew what you were trying to say. So, you know what? Wasn't wasn't Wasn't the worst.
Thank you. Thank you.
All right, cool. 64%. Okay, great.
Engineer.
All right, cool. So,
God, I wish I could speak. I I
Yeah,
it'd be so cool to like be able to say that correctly.
Yeah. Okay. So, the best part about this is the letter that the CEO of King sent out. Okay. And I've got some I've got some um some quotes. While entering into a CBA doesn't prevent us continuing offering the same benefits, it will require us to change the structure of the benefit benefits we offer, which we believe would be negative to employees in Sweden. So, you're stupid is what I'm hearing.
Well, no. I mean, I I don't think

they're stupid. I think that they're they're creatively lying. Again, actually, people that are closer to this geographic area in chat and Brad and Janet or if you're on if you're Rocky on Nebula and you've made it this far, first of all, thank you so much. Second of all, messages on Blue Sky about this, but like I know that Sweden has some really really strong like uh almost like um uh not I don't know what to call it, but like umbrella unions almost in a certain way, right? Like is there any truth to anything at least from your anecdotal experience of what King is saying? Like my gut based on big company making statement is they're full of it, right? But like I want to make sure that like it's just not my precedent meter going off. Like cuz it's not it's it's not a system that I am like we're so used to getting the boot on the neck here. Like there are some protections from boots over there and I'm just curious if this holds any water.

Right. Yeah. Because uh also from a logical perspective, if the employees voted collectively to have a collective bargaining agreement, they believe that you are not currently offering them adequate compensation. You need protections aside, right? Yeah. Like
I like David. Is this is this complete BS or grounded BS?
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So like it's not that's not how that works,
right? And then we get the more honest one, right? King believes it's quote current operating model is the right fit for King, including our operations in Sweden at this time. Entering into a CBA would require significant changes to how we operate in Sweden, including our processes, policies, and way of working.
No duh.
Yeah,
that's the point. So, we don't want to because we don't want to. And no. And they're like they this is

like the most transparently stupidly evil like CEO communicate on union busting I think I've seen in a very long time. And they're trying to do it to an office in Sweden. This is not intelligent.
Yeah.
They ran Tesla out of Sweden cuz they wouldn't work with the unions. Like I don't understand what you think you're doing here, but you're wrong and also stupid.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, we'll see how it goes.
Yeah. All right. That is, believe it or not, chat, all the bad news.
Yeah, we just have one other little fun thing.
Yeah, we have we have Well, we got two other little fun things.
Oh, do we have two little fun things?
Yeah, we got two little fun things. We got my thing and then we GOT
OH, WE DO HAVE TWO LITTLE FUN THINGS. TWO LITTLE FUN THINGS. FIRST LITTLE FUN THING. [music]

It's my magical moment. Yes. Um, we have often criticized Wizard of the Coast for not listening to people and they don't except when they do. A couple months ago, a um a secret layer, their limited time offering came out and it was for a goblin commander deck. Um and it was quite popular. It had really fantastic art. Um and
I should have got that for Jamie.
Yeah, unfortunately for you.
Yeah, it's not really there anymore.
Uh correct. The Oh,
yeah. What's that running? Uh, the last check I saw was like north of $600. [laughter]
Um,
oh, people are saying the stingers are still loud. That's so crazy.
We've done tests upon test upon test.
Yeah, maybe. I don't know.
Maybe it's linking back again. We'll figure it out.
Those don't exist on my PC anymore and

they sound
crazy.
They sound normal to me, so I don't know. Um, so the the goblin deck is like $400 or $500. Um, and it originally was like 150. And uh, part of that was that they got snapped up immediately and people could not get them and then they got resold on the secondary market to be way more. Now, this happens a lot of the time with secret layers. Um, but it was particularly egregious for this one because commander is the most popular format and they wanted to people wanted to get in. Um, where is my high to low? Um, so they Yeah, the the the the deck is $550 right now.
Okay.
Yeah. $550. So, um, this is in part due to the way that

secret layers have worked, which is that they print a limited quantity and then sell that limited quantity. There's an argument to be made that that limited quantity is the limited quantity that they sell and the limited quantity that they print are not identical. There have been accusations that they have um been cutting off the sales at a particular t period of time and an arbitrary number of sales to make it appear as though a product is more popular than it is. That's not a thing that um has been confirmed or denied, but that is an accusation that's been made. Wizards is now officially listening because they are releasing another commando deck featuring featuring you're my our favorite routine guest here on Extra Credits, Hatsune Miku. That's right.
That That's right. There's a Hatsune Miku Commander Deck. And that's not important. People will like or not like the Hatsune Miku Commander Deck. And I'm not telling you you should or shouldn't buy the Hatsu Neiku commander. What I am telling you is that Wizards is um has

announced that the they are changing the way that this layer drop works to be more in line with some uh charity layer drops that they've done in the past, which is they are they have preprinted a number of these. And for the people who get them first, they will ship immediately and be available as soon as the sale ends. But they will honor all sales for the entire 24hour ordering period
and they'll print that many
and then they will print that many and send them to people. They are saying that the printer estimate for that is April 2027 which is far from ideal but
but this is progress on that front which
is that an interesting fix for [snorts] the general malaise of the secondhand industry into like scalper territory like there like for for secret layer specifically because it's not like it's

a power thing or you need these cards to be competitive. This is this is this is skins, right?
Like there's something like Yeah, the weight sucks,
but in order to maintain that they haven't like they're not printing too many for a set that might not be popular, this does seem like a way that like it could help deflate the scalper or secondhand market writeups because like well if you want them and you get them, yeah, you have to wait for them, but like rather than pay 300% the cost, you pay the cost. You just get them a little later.
Correct. Um and their their time estimates on that have not been the worst. I uh ordered a secret layer for um the women's drop. There was a charity drop and I got a couple copies of that and I was told that it was going to be next year before I got them and I just got confirmation that that is not the case that I will be getting them sooner than that. Um, and so,

okay, right, like we're seeing how it works. Now, I want to be very clear. This is not perfect. Secret L still sucks. They should all be print on demand all the time. Um, this is the prices are still super high. All of those things are still true. This is not saying that Secret Layer is fixed or that it's great or anything. This is progress in a direction that I am happy to see that they are that the this announcement came with an announcement from the head of secret layers who was like, "Yeah, one of my jobs is to iterate on the way that we do this that one of the things that we've been trying to do is iterate fast and fail faster and to do this thing." And so to see them have a disaster like the Goblin Commander deck 100 bucks. the the Dandan deck that I got. Oh god, how much is the Dandan deck now? I think the Dandan deck that I got for like a hundred bucks is now like several hundred, right? Like

um it it gives me it gives me hope that they are iterating this quickly on the problem that they are moving in a direction that they are doing so transparently. Those are all good things and I think we should say good job, keep going. But we should we we need to say like okay this is this is the kind of thing
great first step
great first set. Yeah.
Uh no no no not not Dan Dan. No no no no no Dan. It's a forget.
Like I probably it's so funny. Had like the Strod uh secret layer been run like this I probably would have bought it.
Yep. I don't want to like fight in like a twominute window.
I've had to do it like when I've really
during show. I know. I've been here. I just I I just I
they I feel like they'd make far more even if it's a purely imperfect system. They'd even make more money this way.

Like the company that makes them, not secondhanders. Like
Yeah.
Yeah. That guy Jimmy, you betcha. We've been fasting for three weeks and we're still going. We got one more story for you before we close up the kitchenet for the day.
Yeah. So, we've talked a lot about public companies, about companies doing things because of their stock price, about companies being bought and sold because of their stock price. Once again, we turn to a company who will not save us, but who is leading the way to being less terrible. You're by our favorite deeply unhinged game publisher, Devolver Digital, who has announced recently that they will be going private.
Well, they want to
they want to go private. They they'll probably get it. So, um, Deolver Digital is, uh, available on the UK a market.
Yeah. Side note, while Will tells his story, everyone in chat, both on Janet and uh and Brad, give us your favorite

Devolver Digital game in the chat.
Yeah. Um so, uh the [clears throat] uh their assertion is that the stock price has not been good for their company, which is true. It's gone down by 96% since they launched. It's not good. Um they uh they the the the the announcement from them says Deolver and its board are seeking shareholder approval to Dlist believing becoming a private company is in the best interest of Deolver, its employees, its partners, and its shareholders as a whole. The purpose is simple and positive. Being private will allow the Devolver Digital team, especially the finance, legal, and executive team, to singularly focus on the long-term health of the company and thus on satisfying the requirements of the public market, which have nothing to do with being a successful game publisher.

Companies are not your friends, but I would respectfully offer a crisp high five to the personification of Devolver Digital. Yep, that's correct. Everything they said is true.
Um, I love that I'm doing here. Like I've been I've just been clicking through everyone's responses and I've been trying not to double up and I don't think I did.
That was easily 15 games.
Oh yeah. Deolver has a track record of bangers. Also a reminder that Deolver Digital is the company who has a completed game. There is a publisher sitting on an unannounced completed game that they will release the same day as Grand Theft Auto 6. Do you understand from a business perspective how incredibly absurd that is? It's beautiful. It is art for its own sake. They are losing money every

moment that that game is not generating revenue.
Yeah.
Right. and they're willing to do it because it's going to sell like hotcakes because it'll be a PC game out the same day as Grand Theft Auto 6. All of us PC gamers, it's just another day. Remember, it's PlayStation exclusive.
We can't get it on It's It's PlayStation and Xbox. It's console exclusive. We can't get it on PC
because they don't want us cracking it probably.
Right.
Anyway, this is good news. It it hearkens back to many things we've spoken about over the last hour and a half or whatever it's been. Uh I'm very happy to hear they're trying to do this. Hopefully it goes through and we report back in a couple weeks saying that it's a done deal and it's moving forward.
Yep. This uh the vote is in just un just over a month.
Okay. So it'll be at the uh at the um their shareholder meeting on September 8th.
So
there we go.
Yep.
I think that's the show.
We did it. We did the show. We're sorry

it was a little long. Except we're not really because
uh I'm not.
Yeah. No,
not at all.
No,
people are able to pop in and out. We We did the whole thing. We had a lot to cover because we were gone fasting for 2 weeks, 3 weeks, whatever it's been.
Um, so thank you everybody so much for sticking around, hanging out. Thank you for I I really liked the list of Deolver games. It reminded me just how how many and how many good times I've had with their stuff.
A reminder, uh, don't go anywhere. Um, we'll be back.
We'll be back with some Destiny 2 here over on Twitch. If you're over on YouTube and you want to hang out and talk while we play SC2, you're more than welcome to come over. Also, if you're a a fan at all of tiny indie smash hit 1,00 times Resist, I've been playing that this weekend. I'll be finishing it on Monday. No spoilers, no hints, no back seating, no trip, no tips. I didn't read anything. I didn't read the Steam page. I just bought it in the blind because uh one of our mods recommended it to me and I've been having just a great time with it.

So, uh please join me for the epic conclusion of that on Monday. And next Wednesday, we'll be beginning our new game. Next Tuesday, by the way, we do have a um there was a story that broke at Gen Con that we did not discuss here because Jeff and I are going to be talking about it on Tuesday, and that is Universes Beyond in Dungeons and Dragons. We're going to be taking a deep look. Jeff has worked on licensed IP games before in the past. So, we're going to be talking a lot about working with licensed IP, about its advantages and disadvantages from a design perspective. Um, about how we're feeling about this Universes Beyond coming to Dungeons and Dragons and the expansions of Universes Beyond for Wizards as a whole and um crossover. Jeev and I talked about that a decent amount uh at Gen Con when it was released and it's so interesting the but if you just look at the two things both both WoW and Star Wars.
Yeah.
Um one seems like an excellent fit.

Yep.
And the other I'm not so sure.
And I think it's entirely possible that either of them is either of them. by the way.
Perhaps. Perhaps.
Yeah. Anyway,
anyway, that'll be next Tuesday.
Next Tuesday afternoon. Uh,
I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the WoW book. I have I don't think I'll even pick up the whatever comes out, the Star Wars book. I don't think I have like I I feel like Star Wars is an IP. Sorry, we're just sort of finishing this up. I feel like is so burnt out on me. I do not care. I actually feel like culturally a lot of people don't care. And if you look at Mandalorian and Grou,
yeah, it didn't do well.
Insane.
I love Mandalorian and I didn't go see it.
No, same. I I think Star Wars is at the lowest it might have ever been as far as cultural cache.
This is
it can't it can't stay on Andor forever.
Yeah.
Um

anyho, hey, this has been C for breakfast. Thank you so much for joining us everybody over on the Twitch. few Brads out there or the Janets over on the YouTube machine OR THE ROCKIES OVER ON NEBULA WATCHING THIS THING ENTIRELY ADREE EXCEPT for our fake ads for things you can't buy. Um, I guess the only thing that is left before we go play Destiny 2, uh, is to do our traditional sendoff that I admittedly everybody while it is the same every every week to foster a sense of community. Um I I will say I am feeling a bit rusty at what what the what it is because we haven't done it in so long.
Yeah, it's true.
So uh so if everyone could just do the same thing with me and sort of help help this move forward, I would very much appreciate it. Um and that is of course of course uh gambling no amount of real money just on yourself. I want you to write down on a piece of paper what the number on the piece of paper that I'm

going to write down is. And then we're going to see how much everyone gets it right. So, let's see.
Let's go here. Everybody get your number. Everyone get your piece of paper and get your number.
Right. Okay.
Give it a second. Hold on. This is the same we do every time. So, you should be able to get it,
right? Yeah. It's the same number every time, even.
It's the same number every time. Oh, no. My pen's running out. Hold on. Wait. This happens every time, too.
Right. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yep. Yep. Yep. We got some good ones. Uh about tree fitty Uler's number.
Okay.
Yeah.
See you next week, everybody.
A