Golden TWIG 2025: Gaming's Real Awards Show

The point of this is not to badmouth other people's nominations, but Jesus, you cannot throw AI on there because it has nothing to do with gaming. This is a [ __ ] gaming news podcast.
Yes. Thank you, Eric. Thank you. And by the way, I think we totally can [ __ ] on other people. [laughter]
Twig, what are you talking about? What do you mean the point is that is the point. [music]
Hello everyone and welcome to This Week in Games 362. to the Golden Twig nominations episode. Very fun to have that. I'm Jen Dano. I am the marketing and publishing [music] Yoda on the podcast. Today we have in from Canada,
Adam just product strategy and investing.
Phil Black, monetizations are
Mishka [music] Katkov, friend of the founders.
Here's what we have today on the episode. The Golden Twig award nominations. But first, we have to listen to Mishka's world travels and shilling. Let's get to it. Let's get to it. So, I'm back from Riad and and Abu

Dhabi. So, little Arabian tour. I have to say Betawin hospitality is a real thing. People were just so nice and and just going above and beyond to to make our visit as warm and welcoming as possible. Just taking us like 30 kilometers out of the way just saying like, "Hey, we're going there." and somebody would drive you and actually, you know, get back and get you dates so that you can bring your your kids after the trip. So, really, really nice visits,
interesting conversations with the local gaming ecosystem. One of the kind of key takeaways is is that they are definitely want to be one of the hubs for gaming in the world, but the sort of a talk that I've been seeing online that they want to dominate that that definitely not true. So, they just want to be recognized as as one of the main hubs and very humble I have to say. Like again this is might be a misconception that that people there they're buying everything want to dominate but in fact a lot of really great conversations where they really wanted to hear our opinions and and how things are going

and and openly saying like we don't know everything and we want to learn as much as possible. So and finally like a long-term vision so they see the growth of player base. They don't know where the puck is going necessarily but they see that gaming continues to grow. There's more gamers every year according to news. What 5% compan annual growth rate. So they're investing long-term. Great visit. If you haven't been to Arabia, whether you go to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, any of these Riad, cool place. So worth the visit.
Yeah, your picture.
Looking for consulting help.
Yeah. Yeah. [laughter]
To me, game vision 2030. Keep posting though. [laughter]
Let's go on to Schilling. London is coming up. What do you have?
Oh, okay. So, I listened to the last episode. So, we were good to go for three events in London, but we cut it down to two. So, we are having the traditional now supper club, the Sunday roast edition. That's going to be on the 18th. So, pre PGC at Sohole House. We

were supposed to have roundts, but the dwelling office is not fully done. So they offered us times that were not perhaps the best ones and we agreed to do it a little bit later. And also I heard Jen is not perhaps coming. So I was like I'm not going to do roundts alone. Like I'll honestly just blame it on Jen. So if you if you're wondering why we're not having product meets marketing roundts, it's Jen's fault. Really?
Yeah. Blame it on one of my clients for moving dates. That's fine. No, I'm kidding.
But we're doing it later so that Jen can come. So that's that's the that's the end result. and we'll have the mixer on the 19th. So, all those links in the newsletter. Subscribe, open up, sign up, and see you there.
Awesome. What about your latest podcast?
Oh, Simon Hate, now formerly Supercell, before that Space Ape, and now at Dualingo, we had an episode that he fondly calls founder porn. So, if you're

into that type of stuff, there's a lot of learnings. Simon did the editing and Dualingo and so forth because they're publicly listed company. I gave them the the access to it. So if somebody [laughter] what did they call it? It looks like it was janky or whatever the word. But I didn't do the editing. So don't blame me. Blame Simon on that. [laughter] See, I'm reflecting all the blame. I'm reflecting everything.
You sure you want to say that [laughter] about our good friend Simon Duolingo?
Yeah. Yeah. He wanted to do the edits. He was He was very clear. He We wanted to own this because he said a lot of things. Did they Did they do the BBC edit? [laughter]
Oh, yeah. The BBC.
Moving on.
Yeah, they did. They did. It became a highly political episode where I was spewing all kinds of stuff.
All right, quick quick correction on the UA financing stuff. I got the expected call from Jeff Cohen at PBX. I [laughter] knew I knew he was going to call like there was no doubt, right? He wanted to clarify that you can't compare rorowaz to IRR. They're apples and oranges. You need to compare IR to other

costs of capital. So Jeff wrote some really good points on LinkedIn. I suggest that you go look it up and like and subscribe. One thing I got wrong is that evidently they have deployed. They're at a 20 million run rate with 30 plus clients. So they are scaling to that 250 million mark. Good for them. At the end of the day, this is a very expensive way of growth capital. It just is, right? The real yearly rates are 20 to 25%. That's the way you have to think about it because everyone needs to make their chunk of change, right? Which is basically credit card rate rates and we all know what credit card rates are about, right? Now, it's not quite if you don't pay me a by Tuesday, Vinnie is going to come and break your legs, but it's getting there. It's getting there. Right.
It's not Sopranos of the game industry yet.
Yeah. No, but anyway, it is a good source of funding if you fit within their rubric. I wanted to ask, by the way, I listened just to the episode today with you guys talking about it. Uh, it was funny. I was just laughing out loud, but uh, what do you call it?

Like finding pennies in the [laughter]
in the cushions of But it is kind of crazy how VCs are now becoming UA funds. What is that? I I'm repeating my [ __ ] over and over again. Yeah, VCs are no longer VCs, dude. They are registered investment advisors. They're basically going after whatever deals make sense and that give returns because I personally think a lot of these VCs are just really underwater on their primary activity, right? So they they got to make money somewhere, right? Or I think in some cases they have access to capital that doesn't want to do venture capital for good reason and so they are trying to find other uses of that. But these are not venture capital firms anymore, right? When you start doing this type of activity, you're basically Yeah. You're a registered investment advisor. Next is like wealth management, right?
Yeah, just wealth management. [laughter]
It's like a family office, you know? It's [ __ ] I mean, it's it's really [ __ ] You can't really call yourself a venture capitalist.
Is there going to be a big craft credit

card at the end of the year? [laughter]
Exactly.
That's actually a good idea.
Points.
But hold on. Don't you think with all these people offering capital now, it's just going to drive down the margin? So, I mean, PBX might be charging X
100%. Right. The only limitation is that the people that are giving them money need a base level of return. So the people that are going to be losing out are likely the third parties that are on top of that. General Catalyst is going to make its pound of flesh. They're not reducing their expectations. You know what I'm saying? So
yeah, it's a race to zero with all these people coming on board. And frankly, there's just not a lot of supply of clients, right? I mean, you're all competing for the exact same people. I mean, how many companies are actually scaling at this level?
I've done a little bit of research. It's about 2500 publishers that could be funded by this. And in the end, it's it's yes, Phil is right. It's like it's driving down because there's so many capital providers. And I think the the companies that are going to win in this element are the those who can underwrite

more. And then you can underwrite more whether how cheaply you can get the capital that you're giving away and what type of a data platform are you using in order to understand who you're going to be funding because the original ones that Josh was talking about on the podcast like they were doing this funding off of Excel spreadsheets that's crazy and and so nowadays whoever has access to data platforms as well as who can set up bank accounts in specific countries etc will be the ones that win in the end. So
you make the argument the interest rates are [clears throat] going to come down so it's going to get cheaper in that way but like anyway this is yeah a race to zero this is just a lot of people chasing
2500 is not a TAM right I mean sure
but that's why they were moving to apps now
right right exact yeah good point
this is not a really correction but regarding the Netflix and Warner Brothers deal you know my assessment on the Paramount deal and that Netflix is going to win to you really can't extract the politics out of all this like again all All this [ __ ] is way above my pay

grade, frankly. That's why I don't want to comment on it. But I listen to the All-In podcast and David Saxs is basically saying that Paramount's going to win this bid. And if David Sachs says that Paramount's going to win this bid, you know, you better shut the up, Eric, basically is what I'm saying, right?
For those who don't know, David Saxs is the AISAR who is in the Trump administration.
And if you don't know who he is, then you should pay attention a little bit more. But Warner Brothers did, as I expected, reject the Paramount bid yesterday. So they the board did reject it again, right? But I'm going to refrain from speculating on things I clearly can't possibly understand and stay on my skis or whatever the expression is. Again, way above my pay grade. So
yeah. Yeah. And we were trying to do the the angle of that conversation from the game industry. So it that's okay. You're you're forgetting.
I have absolute conviction that no one gives a [ __ ] about video games at any of these companies. Yeah, that that is unfortunate given the state.
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have over 5 years of game industry experience in the newsletter which comes out [music] every week and then on the blog we'll have the voting form for you to go in. We want you to vote. We want to see what the winners [music] are. We're going to come back in a couple of weeks. We'll see if it's before the new year or not. We'll announce the winners and we also want to go through and announce any [music] of your comments, positive and negative. We do do both. So last year it was fun to talk about [music] a lot of the comments that we got from you, the listeners. So here we go. So the very very first one we kind of do the biggest one first in terms of like from a podcast perspective is what was the talk of the year? So last year's 2024 winner was the mass layoffs. Sadly there are still layoffs this year but last year there was a reported 14,000ish almost 15,000 jobs lost in 2024. That was overwhelmingly 73% voted for that to be the big news. So that's last year.

This year, Adam, why don't you go first? What is the talk of 2025? I would say the biggest news for 2025 has to be EA going private. The runner up for me probably the Ubisoft apocalypse because Crest has said it. I think that's probably number two. The trend, like you said, news or trend like I would categorize differently. The trend is probably rebounding M&A and improving outlook overall, although continued layoffs.
Without a question, it's Roblox's continued growth. I think the things this platform has done has wildly exceeded anyone's expectation. Right now, we're looking at DAU. Q3 2025, they are up 70% year-over-year, 151 million DAOU. And even to Eric Crest's concerns, that includes tier one regions in the United States in Q3 2025. They are up 32% year-over-year from 25 million to 45 million. And they've done it all while

keeping average bookings per DAU relatively constant at $40. Holy [ __ ]
Can I just comment to this that this should be the talk of the town. I don't think it is, but this should be. And another thing that people are not talking about is not only the platform growth, but the multiples that these studios are getting. Like they are mobile 2016 multiples. We're talking about 10x revenue in acquisitions, but nobody's talking about it. So, Phil, I agree that this should be the talk of the town.
I mean, it's something like 50% of US kids 9 to 12, don't quote me on that exact number, are playing Roblox daily. It is just an unbelievable force to be reckoned with. I accidentally maybe pivoted one company that was pitching me today to do games on Roblox. They were well they were talking about how they're going to make Gen Z game and they were showing me like this. I was I was like you're not going to break into mobile. Then I showed them a couple of Phil's graphs from Roblox. They're like
we'll get See, this is exactly why you don't do this [ __ ]

You never me and Phil are Roblox. We ride or die because these vanity metrics meaning nothing. And if you're advising companies to build [ __ ] on Roblox, you're out of your goddamn advising. Especially if they're not 16y olds who are native to the Roblox platform.
It was not paid advisory. Somebody called me, wanted to chat about I gave my opinion, not an advice.
Have you done the math on how much actually goes into the pocket? It's like 21%.
If I would do a company now, I would do a Roblox. It's I would play with
You are idiotic. You are That is idiot. That is an idiotic statement. Just I'm sorry. I love you dearly, but that is not that's I I stand with Roblox. That's it. I'm taking my
Just to be clear, I don't endorse Mishka's point of view here. I don't endorse anything. All I'm talking about
Thank you, Phil. Thank you for clarifying cuz I totally wish we put you in the same bucket.
I I'm very bullish on the platform. I think the platform is doing great. I think Roblox is doing great. I will I admit the fact that Roblox is doing great and likely will continue to do

great as they unlock more revenue potential, right? But that does not mean that it's a viable platform for developers. Full stop.
Let me just say this la last thing. If you were a studio that gets to, let's say, $10 million in revenue on Roblox net, that makes you $100 million acquisition target
currently. And it's it's so hard to be 100 million.
That is like one invis.
Okay. Okay.
I got a Roblox game I'm nominating later on. We can revisit this. Don't worry. Don't worry. Roblox in this episode.
[snorts]
So, all right.
All right, Chris.
I would say the Nintendo Switch launch, the notion that consoles are dead is so ridiculous and that the con, you know, the Switch 2 launch is a good good indicator of that. Run up. I guess GTA 6 delayed twice this year.
I mean, that's like that's like not good. But I think it's going to be a far bigger news story next year obviously on how well that game does.
That did get a lot of talk. I also agree with Adam on EA. For me, I want to nominate basically Tim Sweeney versus

the world, Apple and Google in the lawsuit battles. And so, we basically had both of the decisions coming up which are going to change the future of mobile revshare. So, with Apple versus Google, yes, there's still like a lot going on there, but the 5-year legal battle, you know, is coming to an end almost with them coming to a settlement and being bffs. Remember when the judge was like, "But you've been going at each other's throats and now this sounds like it you guys are BFFs." That was super cute. So, Fortnite's back in the app stores. It's pretty crazy. Um, so I think we need a new category for like what is the drama story or like like I'm just like insert popcorn emoji. Do you remember the the Craftton Subnotica 2 delay with the back and forth between Craftton and the founders just from like a drama? So, I think you know maybe next year or maybe this year we'll we'll add like a the popcorn [laughter] the drama story of the year. Put Ubisoft in there too. Okay. Mishko, what do you have? I think I'm going to take the W here because you guys are too much in the

weed because AI has been the talk of 2025. Of course, every web 3 company is an AI company today. Every company talks about how they use AI to supercharge their teams, which of course every developer leads is how they're going to have less than three companies.
Yeah, that's future. You're going by raw volume.
Yeah, raw volume. every every all these tech companies are doing demo reels on the new engine and new ways to do new cool videos with with AI. We have startups coming in raising crazy amount of money. Even like on this podcast we had General Intuition that spawned out out of a gaming company especially metal getting 134 million seed round without even a pitch deck. Let's start there. That's how big of a talk. And then there's talk about AI bubble that happens at the same time with a talk about how the world is ending with an AI just like simultaneously two different scenarios. That's number one. And I'll give honorable mentions to webshops. That's always a good talk. And then now

I would say UA financing is is also a talk of the time. [laughter]
Thank you to press.
Yeah.
The point of this is not to badmouth other people's nominations, but Jesus you cannot throw AI on there because it has nothing to do with gaming. This is a [ __ ] gaming podcast.
Yes. Thank you, Eric. Thank you. And by the way, I think we totally can [ __ ] on other people. [laughter]
This is Twig. What are you talking about? What do you mean the point is that is the
I will capitulate though that general intuition is relevant in that sense. Like that is probably the only AI story of the year for gaming. Everything else has been aing train wreck of epic proportions, right? Don't How about all these AI gaming companies that like were trying to get funded, you know?
But but that's the talk of the That's what I mean. I'm not saying that this is right or wrong. I'm just saying that it's always talking to town. Every time I do a podcast, I have to ask them like, "Oh, so what's your take on AI?" No matter who is who the guest on the podcast, we always finish up with an AI question.
But the point of this whole podcast is to talk about what was the actual news story like the coverage of

like that are happening in the space that have gotten the zeitgeist. There has been no absolutely nothing besides general introducation for AI in gaming the entire year which is [ __ ] scary because that's all that people talk about outside of it is that there is no [laughter] story.
It said news or trend. So I was I was jumping in cuz Jen put it the talk of the year news or trend. So I was pushing towards the trend.
Now you got me all upset now and now I'm going to be upset the whole podcast.
Go to correction of the year left eye. [laughter]
All right. We will we will edit the description of our category. So, correction of the year because we do this really well. We always correct ourselves what we got wrong ourselves. So, thank God for AI. I was able to go back and figure out what mine was. So, last year, poor Phil. Squadbusters will become Supercell's most downloaded game. Actually, to be fair, the voting was kind of close on this. So, Phil Phil got it wrong. Mishka was what? [laughter]

Oh, look at Mishka's number two.
Yeah. which is exactly the problem this time too. AI will revolutionize [laughter] games are being made.
Now, now I'm next year correction is going to be about Roblox.
He's still No, he's still on the AI bandwagon. He just won't listen. He won't learn. I'm on the bandwagons.
All right. So, let's get into our 2025 corrections. Phil, what's yours?
Well, first of all, I didn't get my award last year, Mishka. So, I would love to have a beautiful display case. I'm going for the, you know, the hat-tick this year. I think my correction is just Enzoy. Don't [laughter] get me wrong, like I love this game. I still believed in the thesis. I hate that EA is getting fat off the Sims. I was looking for a challenger. I mean, before it came out, we talked about the challenges within Zoy. They're not connecting with the female audience, which I think the Sims has built a very special connection with that audience. They have direct distribution was way too high-tech in terms of being Unreal 5. But at the end of the day, I really wanted this to succeed. And what we're looking at is a

graph of cumulative revenue on Steam and it's about 40 million. I have a hard time imagining Craftton is happy with that number. And so it looks like this one was I don't think it's over yet. They're still throwing some development dollars on it. I don't think this is the last we've heard of it, but I think this is definitely a miss.
It's so over, dude. Get out [laughter] of here. All right, Adam.
I'll take the L on COD and Battlefield, which I think we talked about Msar just as soon as like Battlefield started to have that announcement. But yeah, I was more bullish on COD's floor than I was around Battlefield Ceiling. I said this, did anyone else say this?
I have to be a co-owner.
Speaking of which, I was super bullish on Battlefield. Don't get me wrong,
but we were all like, "No, it can't be God's Floor."
I said, just to be clear, I said that. I said it.
I think we all said it. It's fine.
Well, we don't know yet. So, December will be a big month for Call of Duty, right? And Battlefield's falling off a cliff in terms of users, so perhaps we won't be off on this, but we'll see. But they've certainly done way better relative to Call of Duty.
Yeah. Yeah. I went back and checked that

I expressed worry about the Switch 2. I said I'm a little worried for them the pricing coming out the same as a nextG console. You know, it's like 450 or 500 bucks. I'm not sure many families are going to be able to upgrade to the new Switch, too, with prices being so expensive. Yeah. No, wrong. Lots of people. Although I do think that the first wave of people were Nintendo fanboys and girls versus families, but yes, wrong on that. Mishka,
I had the conspiracy theory about Apple Game Store or App Store, Game App Store, whatever it's called. And I was thinking that they're doing this to essentially keep their 30% by putting all the games into their new own app and then they're saying like in this app you can only pay using Apple's payment system. But that wasn't the case. It was just a one [laughter] app store like Crest said, "What the have you been doing all this time?" was his comment. That's what they were

doing. So, they weren't that smart.
Crest conveniently, uh, you didn't write anything in for this one. Would you like to add in a verbal?
No. Well, and you're perfect. You're perfect. Right. You know, like I got it all right this year. I [laughter] didn't get anything wrong. I'm not even nominated in this category, which I've won in the past.
You can always ask your wife. She's very good at that.
Short-term memory loss.
Every episode you have a correction.
Okay.
One of the benefits of Alzheimer's. [laughter]
Oh god.
All right. Next category. Most damage received. So this could have been a company, a platform, a genre that took a hit last year. Ubisoft for being unable to ship great games, endless bad press, it pretty much took the category. So this year, Adam, what do you have?
I would call out Xbox in general. the entire portfolio, especially Activision, especially Call of Duty within it.
I am gonna prohibit Crest from commenting on that.
I was just about ready to go off.

I know. That's why I'm like, no, no.
I have to give it another nod to Ubisoft. I couldn't imagine a scarier, more sick story of nepotism. I mean, if I was writing a novel, I couldn't think about [laughter] like this crazy [ __ ] that French family is doing. So, yeah, it's it's horrific. Even if you wrote it, it would sound too much like a fiction and nobody would believe it.
It's like Succession, but like a shitty version of Succession. You know what I'm saying?
French version of Succession. You mean?
Yeah, we we definitely need that.
It's a French version of Succession. [laughter]
Exactly. That's
all right, Phil. What do you got?
I am actually going with Lilith Games here. I mean, this company was once called the Supercell of China, and they're down 35% year-over-year. Again, we don't have Android Chinese numbers, our usual asterisk, but their entire portfolio is in the red. It looks like a disaster. AFK Journey was a total miss. AFK Arena is down. All their Forex games are down. Yes. Yes. Web Stores, but again, Forex is at its highest point it's ever been, and they're not riding

any of that wave. Palmon Survival, remember that's the Pokemon entry point into a 4X, should be much bigger, and it is scaling a little bit. But if they had dropped all this stupid squad RPG [ __ ] and focused on Palmon, I think it could be even bigger. Instead, they're wasting their time with Farlight 84, which they tried to relaunch their their battle royale, their failed battle royale. They just don't know how to take the L and move on. And I think it is a huge miss for them this year.
Launch it on Roblox, right? [laughter]
Yeah. Yeah. Put it on Roblox next to Front Lines.
Gen Z will play the out of it. sell it to Century Games and maybe they'll do it right. All right, so for my primary, I also agree with Ubisoft. Just a couple other things to add. They sold the crown jewels to Tencent. They had about 4,000 layoffs. Star Wars Outlaw Laws underperformed. Exeant, remember X Defiant died and they shut it down. So the one I wanted to nominate was Warner Brothers games. You know, I had a good friend working on Multiveres that shut

down, couldn't come back after the Hogwarts big year. And then also in all of the corporate drama, you know, to what Crest mentioned earlier to be basically have no value assigned to it by Netflix kind of or Paramount, they are losing good people left and right. Uncertain future. I just say poor Warner Brothers games is mine.
I concur. I would put Warner Brothers actually on top because essentially this year they went to zero. Like if [laughter] you ask Netflix CEO like that's pretty bad. [laughter] go. Uh, but since I had to find another pick, I would put Amazon Game Studios. This is something that has been essentially happening for a decade now, and I feel like it culminated in 2025 with King of Meat, and I'm not coming up with this name. Like, [laughter]
anyway,
let's be clear, I worked on this Mishka, so just be
worked on you worked on King of Meat. Anyway, [laughter]
I love King of Meat. There's a lot we can talk about.
Okay. Great spirit.
Great name. So, King of Meat was a commercial flop. It peaked at 320

concurrent players, which is more than some of the Steam games we've been talking about on this podcast, but the internal expectation was 100,000 concurrent players, which just shows how inflated the expectations are inside Amazon Studios. And I was thinking about it, just putting in some numbers to catch GPT, but just thinking about how much does this operation or decade of these AAA studios cost? It must be in billions. And in the end, it's just like they had no ability to execute. They had even their own game engine. You remember Lumberyard? They've done MMOs. They've done hero shooters. They've done MOBAs. The whole nine yard of games that Crest shits on.
Don't Don't say the MOA cuz now he's in the talk [laughter] for 5 years about how Ubisoft just bought the MOA.
Crest, you get two minutes to talk about. [laughter]
Two minutes and that's it.
I almost had an aneurysm when I read this thing. Okay. I mean, it could not be possible. The the headline of the story is just meant to give me either an

aneurysm or a [laughter] heart attack. One of the two. Ubisoft is acquiring March of Giants, the Emma [laughter] the Moa from Amazon. I mean, oh my god.
Are they thinking? Like, why? How is it possible that they can make these stupiding decisions over and over again? Now, so I pulled back a little bit and I want to be clear like if they are acquiring the team, I totally get it, right? They're all in Montreal. They're all buddies. They're all like they've worked together for years and years and years. But the minute I hear that they are actually trying to publish that piece of [ __ ] game that no one wants. I'm is just like unbelievable that these guys manage a gaming company. Like it is unbelievable if that is the case. So anyway, so so back to Amazon that also had couple of MOBAs just for the I think it's a story of an organization that has been essentially staffed with dinosaurs that lived firmly in like 2010. That's what their portfolio looked like and I

think it's coming sadly to an end. Just like Chris always talks about media companies and tech companies cannot manage gaming business.
Yeah, super tough. But one cool thing for Amazon games, I I actually went to the Game Awards and I actually sat in the audience, which was I've never done it before. It was a fun experience, actually.
What What did you wear?
I mean, nothing special. I didn't dress up. No, I mean, a lot of people did dress up, but no one was like in cosplay or anything like that. like people weren't really dressy dressy, but I'm not really a Laura Croft Tomb Raider fan, but it was kind of cool to see that they're doing the remaster of the very first Tomb Raider and then they have a new game, Crystal Dynamics. I think I think people clapped really loudly for that one Amazon games like the only thing left from them. Okay, so let's go to the most disappointing game in 2024. It was Concord, followed by Squad Busters. They were kind of close, but I mean, I don't know how Concord didn't take it. So, Adam, what do you have for 2025?

Yeah. So, I actually messed up last year. I put in Supervive because I was thinking like surprisingly bad outcome, right? Like for a team that was excellent coming from Riot. Surprisingly bad outcome. That's I will correct it this year. I'm thinking like bad outcome overall. Something that we all knew was coming. So, for this I'm going to say Minds Eye. Build a Rocket Boy.
Yeah.
Right. like unequivocally not good,
missed,
right? Black Ops 7 would be my runner up.
And I'll give you credit for Supervive just because they just announced today they're shutting down.
Yeah.
Yeah. Over 300 million in funding, right?
That one's crazy. I'm going to put Borlands 4, right? I think 96% of the Steam players are dropped out after two months after launch, right? They are completely mismanaging this franchise in this day and age, not creating live service type content. They're stuck in the old ways. Even though the game was better than the last one, I just think he's completely stuck in a rut right now.
Phil, what do you have?
I chose to take my [ __ ] on Ubisoft with

Rainbow Six Siege X, which if you remember was the relaunch of Rainbow Six Siege. It was supposed to drive heightened players. Right now, we're looking at average daily concurrence on Steam for Rainbow Six Siege X. And you'll see this big jump around February. Nope, that is not X. You are looking at July when there's a smaller bump and almost looks like a seasonal content update. That is Rainbow Six Siege X. And it has precipitously fallen ever since then and is now near all-time lows. Not good. Just went did not accomplish any of the goals it sought to do. And I, you know, I played the game personally and remember they were trying to speed up the game a little bit. They were having respawns. I think it also flopped for me personally when I tried to play.
And then there's the mobile version as well.
Oh,
cooking. Still cooking
one of these days.
Add that to the list.
The Ubisoft nomination. I also agree with Mind's Eye. 2.4 Metacritic user score. 34 critic score. PlayStation.

34 dude. 34 critic score is what's so crazy, dude. A game that costs that much money and it's like,
yeah, that's
Yeah, PlayStation issuing refunds. All right, my most disappointing game, I think, is Black Ops 7 1.7 Metacritic user score, the lowest for any Call of Duty ever. Steam CCU is down 68% versus Black Ops 6. Twitch is down, everything is down. They actually issued that pseudo apology blog post, you know, something they probably never done before. So even though there'll be revenue, that has to hurt. That has to not be profitable. And I think fans would probably be really, really disappointed. So Mishka, I think the one that you're going to talk about, do you remember when we did the GDC? We were all together and we did the podcast and that week this game
had that weird launch. So I'll I'll cue you up for your nomination.
Yeah. So I mean I I wanted to say Moco

because you know it it's a game from Supercell. We follow it. But that's not true. That's not Nobody anticipated this game. It came out of woodworks and it had a very very corny launch where everybody changed their LinkedIn statuses at the company and [clears throat] in the end it's like 7 million downloads, 7 million gross revenue. My real pick the real pick is Splitgate 2. Now, 1047 games, the publisher is valued at $1.5 billion. And Lightseed led the round that put this game over at one over a billion dollars. They launched the game, I believe, on Game Awards. So, the founder was making make FPS great again hat. Then it moved directly into apologizing for the joke. Then they had that big bundle. You remember that Phil? uh by somebody who was a PM for Call of Duty and the founder threw that PM under the bus basically. And then they had the official launch which was absolute disaster where they pulled the game down and ended up relaunching it as a Splitgate arena reloaded. And I looked

at the Steam DB so it had 82 players this week. So that relaunch probably did not go as planned. And in the end, like this is kind of like the mind's eye situation where the momentum is gone. They spent probably a lot of money building this game, a lot of money launching this game, and now they've done the layoffs, and essentially this is going to be either a slow decline or or they're just going to shut it down. Either or. I I would say that's the biggest [clears throat] miss. But I do remember before this game launched, I heard from the VCs. I was like, "How's Splitgate doing?" They were like, "You'd be surprised. This game actually looks really good."
Okay.
All right. Here we go. Mice Nuts. So, this is a small game that we liked to play. So it might not have been like huge in the revenue and so last year overwhelmingly it was Bolatro the single developer game. So this year what do you have Adam?
So I I was going to do Dispatch because I actually just played it and it was excellent.
Extale team at their writing was

absolutely exceptional.
But to be honest like the thing that I really love to play this year that I still have not stopped playing is Elden Ring Light. Still love it. still playing it with my friends. Really, really great game.
I know.
It's just that's the thing. You play Game of Thrones, I'm going to play Night Rain. That's what I did. And then Callout's there on Tainted Grill for a similar story from last year in terms of like very very small development team. I think is one person. No, I think must be pretty small. But like being able to deliver a Skyrim dark fantasy with such a small budget, obviously my stat in terms of outcome, but an amazing game. I'm going with Clover Pit, which just to make it certified mice nuts has only done four million in life-to-day cumulative revenue according to video game insights. And if you're not familiar with this game, it is a roglike gambling game, very similar to Elro. I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more attention. I think there's a lot of innovative mechanics here. I'd love to see this port ported to mobile. Habby, Abby, if you are listening to this, this

is your next hit. And I will give an honorable mention to Fish of Fortune, which is the other gambling product I am super excited about, but they're starting to scale from Who. So, we'll see if we can't talk about them next year. Yeah, I'm getting into gambling and I love this. [laughter]
Getting into gambling. Okay,
I will say Game of Thrones Kings Road. I can't believe that this game is not doing anything right now because it is really quite compelling. I'm still spending like an idiot. just really disappointed this game or a game like this is not doing better than it is.
I'm going to say Claire Obscure maybe. Is that the one I'm going to say?
That's not mice notes though.
Well, yeah. So, Crest was going to say it was funny. He he had the steam machine and I was like, "Oh, it's the game." And so, I picked like the next playground which is had a huge Wall Street Journal article that just came out that it's on track for like $150 million. It's sold out everywhere. It's, you know, it kind of exploded to the top cuz basically I I said something on the

podcast last week. No, I'm just kidding. It's just filling that gap for something. So, the only reason why I had as my son's game clear obscure is because it kind of blew up. It was a smaller kind of opportunity that just got like all this momentum behind it and and did actually kind of blow up. But, okay, I hear you that that's not like total mice nuts. So, if I had to pick one, Phil always picks a client. So, I'll pick my Animal Company is my client who has a VR game that is going to go multiplatform soon. The number one.
Come on. Too much chilling.
No, that's that's actually at least the definition. Her her two other examples are completely not the definition. [laughter]
I mean, that it has to be under 100 million first of all.
Oh, we have Oh, I didn't know that. Had to be under 100 million. They're under 100 million. Yeah, it's the, you know, one of the top games on the MetaQuest VR that's going to go multiplatform soon. Gen Alpha Darling. So, Animal Company will be mine. A VR game. So, you can [ __ ] on me for that. All right, Mishka,

what do you got?
Oh, no.
I'm going to take a contrarian view and give roses to Ubisoft on two games cuz you can be [ __ ] on Ubisoft. So, first of all, Ano Pax Romana.
That game is amazing. city builder.
City builder Roman era and you can also choose the Celtic tribes to build your Celtic settlement. No fighting, just building. This game is fantastic. [laughter]
Like North Guard to this. I can see it.
I can see it all.
This is Sim City meets Rome essentially and then plus with the Celtic. Anyway, amazing game.
Like you should just talk to Paradox. Like go play, dude. Paradox scams. There's way better games.
You should live in Germany with all the shutins, dude. But I don't know what why you keep bringing this [ __ ] up. I don't understand. No one plays Ano besides the
under 100 million sales. It's amazing game. It's a It's bigger here in central in southern Europe. The second one again going to Ubisoft, Heroes of Might and

Magic Olden era. Now, this is just because I'm an old dude and I used to play the previous Heroes of Might and Magic games. So, it was great that they sort of kind of got back to the franchise, amazing turn-based strategic battling. And then, um, out of the ones that you would expect, I would name Ball X Pit. It's like perfect hybrid casual game. I mean, if they if it wouldn't have the movement for the character, that would be the game to copy. And I know Hab has already copied it to one of their titles, but it doesn't quite deliver on Ball X pit. So, if you are a hybrid casual publisher, make about 12 iteration of this one. One of them will surely hit.
Don't think we're going full sto these games were hybrid casual like 10 years ago.
Yeah.
Right. Like the beginning of Hyper Casual already had B game by Voodoo.
Yes. This is essentially it. And this is like Survivor IO that came from the Vampire game. This is another one that that are going to spawn another, you know, $200 million game out of this. So fun game, fun to play. I would love this on mobile.

Yeah. Back on Mishka's like strategy game. The other big impact from the Game Awards was the Total War Warhammer collaboration. All I could do was think that Mishka must be watching this.
Just drooling. Drooling.
Total War and Total War. You put those two together. Nerd Paradise. [laughter]
It looked really good, by the way.
Thanks for sending me that. You actually pinged me like, "Hey, they're coming out with a new Total War." I was like, "I need to reduce clients just when the game comes out. It's going to cost me like $50,000 to play that for a month.
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I will put Moco and boat game mainly for their launch strategies but also a big call out on their progression design. Like I think learning from Brawl Stars,

learning from Clash Royale what they've got there. It just feels like they've taken a step back from learning from progression design and launch strategies. I don't think their experiments were successful.
I have to say the spin out from Vantage from Ubisoft like all super super sketch. All the best franchises gone from the studio and owned by 10 cent.
So Apple's this goes back to Mishko what you said earlier. Apple's dedicated games app paired also with the liquid glass update feature. So, all of this was announced at WWDC 2025. And then, if you remember, Liquid Glass turned into liquid ass when they had that error on the thumbnail where the little the the play sign covered, you know, GL and so it said liquid ass. But anyway, that that Apple's dedicated games app is really gone anywhere or actually done anything.
Yeah, they spent five years probably building that.
[laughter]
Yeah,

I'm going to say Netflix Games 2.0. Is this 3.0? I kind of lost account. So, essentially the big screen pivot, especially after the CEO put a value of zero on the entire WB gaming business. It's like what do you value your own gaming business at then? And this this whole thing is like now they make TV games which honestly sounds like a great idea. Like you have these casual and party style game like Sudoku Jigsaw. They have Dead Man's Party, Knives Out game. I tried to play them to be honest. I tried to play them today. I don't know. I don't know where they are. I opened up my smart TV. I don't know even how to play them. I looked at the Google search data. I looked at the YouTube videos on how this is trending. It doesn't seem to be that exciting. There's not a lot of talk about these games. I don't I feels like this Netflix 2.0 is going to be Netflix 3.0 back to licensing in 2026. I'm going to say Royal Kingdom. Literally, just the whole thing. I'm not even just going to say the brand launch. I'm just the whole idea of this game

where they were trying, I would argue, to pivot a little bit towards males was rotten from the core. They should have gone after 3D Match or one of the other exploding genres inside of match. There's no more room in this genre anymore. I think the whole thing was rotten from the beginning. And I think they're paying for it now. Revenue per download is flat when it should be accelerating just like we saw in Royal Match. And I don't predict good things for Dream unless they can pivot out of this. and they're very smart and I hope they do. But I still think this was this was
let me continue on that and ask you a question. If this is what it looks like for Dream's second game, what the does it look like for Turkish gaming industry cuz they all essentially look like made by Dream with less money and the same game.
I mean, I think that the bellweather case is Match Villains, right, which has been in soft launch forever. You know, it's still I mean, it's scaling in the United States. There's no official launch anymore for anything. This genre is just at equilibrium and I think it's time to pivot. But I mean, don't me wrong, you still have Match Factory, right, which has been an enormous success. So, I don't think it's over for Turkey, but I think they need to start to explore other parts of match and

casual. And I think they are on the hybrid casual side. I don't know. I don't think it's over for Turkey. I just think it's time to explore the edges of the genre.
I met I know that they're exploring, especially Role has been coming out. Yeah. Yeah. If you're doing match
last any of that [ __ ] Yeah,
I would say that with match three, like you could have said the same thing 5 years ago. You could have said the same thing 10 years ago. Match three as a genre has always been evergreen with people pretty hungry for the next one. Obviously, it's still around like what is that next version of match 3 that will pull people together, right? This the same thing can be said like why did dream games even rise to the level that they had right now? I think it's a bit dismissive to say that match 3 is now booked.
Adam, I didn't mean that. What I meant is like every game coming out of Turkey right now. Every match three game looks like it's made by Dream in terms of art in terms of gameplay games. Most casual games coming out correct look like it's being made and they already are exploring a lot of the fringes of the casual categories, right? Like you look

at something like grand
to intentionally is not going after match 3 and is quite successful in that. But many of those other genres have ceilings.
I don't agree with this analysis. Like we're now at the first time where match is less than 50% of casual match revenue when you think about all the different subg genres. Like it's just not where the growth is happening. And not only are we talking about Royal Kingdom, but you got to remember that Playrex has had all these spin-offs that have been in soft launch forever that we haven't talked about like family scapes. I think we've never talked about family scapes. There's all this [ __ ] that's just hanging out in soft launch that can never get to the plate because CPIs are so high. The paradigm can always shift to your point, Adam, but this isn't where I'd be looking next.
Titilating conversation about puzzle. [laughter]
All right. The most brilliant move again investment acquisition talent. So last year it was a little bit close. It was Disney and Epics's kind of coming together and then MTG buys Polarium. So Phil, what do you have for this year?

I'm actually putting Scopely buying the Intac. So right now we're looking at portfolio performance for Scopely and I think buying NATAC actually covered a lot of weakness they've had in their portfolio. A lot of bets that they've made have not played off. If you remember there was Garden Joy which we talked about which is interesting. Tag Games, Stumble Guys, none of these things look that great and I think buying Pokémon Go immediately makes it first or second in terms of the importance in their portfolio. And now they're just Monopoly Go. They're just a Go company. you know, whether it's Pokémon Go or Monopoly Go. And I think that was a very smart move for them as a firm, you know, from what I know about Javier and Walter and what they were trying to accomplish. Like we don't have the end ofear publisher rankings, but now that they've bought me and TAC, it's immediately pushed them into a top five, top 10 publisher, which is something they've always wanted. And regardless of the game's performance, I think it was just an absolute, as Eric might call it, gangster move to go ahead and pull this off.
I have kind of two. one, forgive me for saying AI, but this has a reason. AI and adtech and AI and ad creative has been

just a fundamental saving grace post IDFA. All of the change, yes, CPIs are more and all those different things, but had this not come along, we would be in such a worse place than we are post IDFA. The other one I think I'll go back to something I said earlier is, you know, Tim choosing to spend his $120 million, whatever that was, or his five-year legal fight to finally get to some resolution on the settlements against Apple and Google.
He capitulated. He didn't he didn't win anything. He capitulated to Google. What are you talking about?
Yeah. Brilliant move is he invested all of that time and money to go up against Apple and Google to win in a sense better rough share. There is no not a resolution on their agreement.
Okay. All right.
Because Yeah.
The little birdies are telling me is that Tim is getting pressure from shareholders and others toing capitulate on this [ __ ] and focus on building a platform as Roblox takes the world away

right now. Right. So his agreement to do this thing with Google was a an absolute horrific event that should never happened given his how much he's fought for this. He's just going to capitulate on that [ __ ] you know. So I Yeah, he's not above board right now in terms of what he's doing, right? So I I don't I'm not going to agree with
So the the what we thought was a brilliant move that we were all applauding has now turned into a skeptical move. Is that what you're saying?
I applaud him for trying his best to do it, but now he is completely capitulated to the man, right? Like he's no longer our our champion. What? What? The DMA getting the cosmetic. I mean, no one believed in this guy to start. I mean, this is a long project. I'm with Jen on this one. I think you're off your He's not fighting the fight anymore.
He's still paying the legal bills, so I don't know what you're talking about. I'm sure his legal bills are in, you know, tens of 100 million.
Okay. Okay. All right. Fine. You want to

say this is brilliant move this year? We'll see what happens next year as he capitulates further because he's of all the pressure he's getting. So I think we're at the phase where this year we thought it was brilliant
as we are starting to learn more. Yeah, maybe next year we swap our take on that.
All right.
Uh Mishka,
call me Mishko of Arabia. But I'm going to say the brilliant move has been Saudi's entry into the gaming. So starting from the esports world cup that is insane looking event with you know the biggest guests to now the top-notch acquisitions from Scooby to Niantic to EA to EA to now Moon because everybody needs a mobile in their portfolio and most importantly the postacquisition companies are doing quite well. They have IPs as a moat. They're now in all the platforms. They are becoming one of the significant players in gaming in just a couple of years. So I would say brilliant moves. I'm gonna say EA's sale to the Saudis. Like they're looking down the barrel of a gun over the next two or three years in terms of growth and

profitability at EA like is going to be a real big challenge for them. Selling out at this time, at this level, I think was brilliant for not only for EA and shareholders, but also for the legacy of my favorite CEO with the best BMI in the business, Mr. Andrew. I heard subsequently, not only is Andrew the best, really good friends with the guy from Goldman, he's actually really really good friends with the guy from the PE firm Silver Lake. [laughter] So, it's like this was like a dirty ass [ __ ] deal, dude. This is all back hand backend shaking hands. And anyway, whatever. It's really kind of gross. But for EA shareholders, for EA employees, as well as for Mr. for BMI. I think it's a really really good brilliant deal.
Yeah. Especially cuz they were stagnant, right?
He leaves a hero. He's aing hero. You know, his legacy is intact.
Got it. All right. Let's go to Mr. Disney Solitire. You got a good one, Adam?
They take us in a rough spot, but I

would call out that their acquisition of Super Play was brilliant. Like, it happened in November 2024, but I think 2025 really showed it was smart. And I think the partnership there between Play Tikica and Super Play has really shown like oneplus 1 equals 3 for Disney really raising the ceiling for solitary. So shout out to them.
Oh, I want to add a quite small note. So since you mentioned Superplay, that company was essentially funded to the top by UA Financing as one of the example on the podcast where we had PVX and General Catalyst on.
Oh well, there you go.
$2 billion acquisition. So you know, so all that [ __ ] talk about UA financing. Here's here's one.
Just to be clear though, Blade is down 50% from the time they did that acquisition.
I started that by saying that they're in a rough spot, but this one move I think would be called brilliant.
They would have been wor down worse is probably what. [laughter]
All right, so we have two more categories. This one is you crushed it. So this is a both creative and a

business success story. We are kind of the only ones I feel like that look at it through both of these lenses of creative and business. Last year what won pretty handedly was Brawl Stars Live Ops and IP Collaborations really bringing that game to the top. Adam, what do you have?
Centure Games. I think Kingshot obviously is scaling really really well. Also shout out to Tasty Travels where like they're going broader. They're not just 4X extremely successful team. They'll
find Roblox. Yeah,
a Roblox game.
They have a Roblox game. They are an incredible company. And speaking of Roblox, my nomination is Grow a Garden. Oh my god, talk about results. This has been one of the biggest successes of the year. The biggest success in my opinion when we just think about gaming at 21.3 million players at one point.
This was seven times higher. [laughter]
What's the revenue? What's the current recorded player count? Why did you leave

this chart
team in history above PUBG? I don't have the revenue numbers in front of me. I'm trying to work with Joe from GameFan to get us better time series data. It has sustained pretty well. Yes, is a little bit on the decline. I think the reason this is important is not just for this small team which has made a [ __ ] ton of money on very little investment, almost none. The other thing is that I think this proved that you can launch new businesses on Roblox. You can shake up the top 10 charts. And to your point, Mr. Eric Crest, if we were look at the sheer price of Roblox between this and steal a brain rot, it has marketkedly increased since these two games were successes. So they're not even capturing the value that they're creating on the platform. Really, Roblox is the winner here because they proved that this model can work. You can build live service businesses, you can build original businesses. So absolutely grow a garden, not just for the team, but for the platform as well. Does that answer your question, Mr. Marketap? Market. You're bringing it up to the the peak in May. Since then, it is down. It is down huge.

I didn't said I don't have a time series. [laughter]
All right, let Phil have his nomination. Let's keep going.
I mean, we're going to yell at each other.
Yeah, Mr. Super Play, Mr. Playa guy over there. [laughter] Sure.
Down 25% trying to [ __ ] on. It's really hard for me to come after Adam and not completely agree with Century Games. So, I'm going to go and say Chinese game developers across all platforms are the winners. If I had to pick one, you know what Gossip Harbor is doing in Merge, which is Micro Fund, also a Chinese company, has really just absolutely exploded from when I used to be a massive player. What it's been able to do over the last year is absolutely amazing. Then you've got, you know, everything going on even in PC console Chinese developers, you know, Netis with Marvel Rivals. Like everything going on is is great. My golf clap is because this is not a game is to the Battlefield marketing team. They they just

absolutely crushed it and I think they deserve as much kudos as the game. The game was great. Thank you. Thank you. It gives give some clap to some marketing folks. So just really redeeming themselves on, you know, all of the past stumbles and especially taking advantage of Call of Duties like [ __ ] the bed on that. So Mishko, what do you have?
I think Supercell is going to take it this year as a repeat. So last year was Brawl Stars. This year is Clash Royale and especially Sarah Jessica who's the new president and he used to be the head of live ops. I mean Clash Royale 135% revenue growth on a 9-year-old game. Third highest year after 2016 2017. So, we're talking about way over half a billion in net revenue for this game.
Is this a troll? Is this a troll nomination? You can't be serious with this one. This is a joke. This company's in the [ __ ] man. Everything looks bad. Yeah, Clash Royale did great, but the winner now that is impossible.
This is a fairly fair.
What's I'm getting blasters from Phil Black

like I'm I'm blacklisted. [laughter]
No, I I will agree on Glass Rail. [clears throat] I will agree. the designation and I get it shortlived, but I think it's going to be bigger than before this one. And it's just super impressive. And most importantly, this game keeps Supercell relevant much more than perhaps the AI labs and the sparks that nobody even talks about anymore.
Yeah, I'm kind of surprised you guys didn't put Supercell in for skeptical move with all the AI stuff and everything.
We we don't we don't want to talk about
We just don't want to talk about it. [laughter]
Yeah. Yeah. Enough Superell. I'm going to nominate Battlefield. I mean, I I I really do believe that EA put all hands on deck. I think they had five or six teams working on this. Hundreds and hundreds. Someone said a billion dollars of spend on this game, you know, given all the fixes to Battlefield 2042 over the years, and they got the sell through, right? There's no doubt that they overperformed their their expectations on the sellrough. Having said that, I think the audience does look a little bit weak. They're not really executing as well on the live ops

side of it, but they did execute almost flawlessly at launch, both on the marketing and the product. So,
okay. And and just to help your data point, recent news today say number one premium selling game in the United States. I for the exact quote, but it is numeral.
They're estimating they still have December.
I think you got to give credit.
Yeah.
All right. Brilliant move from Saudis.
Okay. So, the Living Donkey, what this means is it was a former kind of unicorn company or game that's now in trouble. Last year it was Forte that raised over 900 million.
Phil, who do you have? I have Dream Haven here. So, if you remember, Dream Haven is primarily funded by the Morheims, which are the founders of Blizzard. His wife is also uh involved in the company. Um, I really thought this was going to be the second coming of Blizzard. I thought they were going to steal all of Blizzard's most important people, and they were going to go out and just like run the table from Blizzard, which was really behind the eight-ball on a lot of things. Instead, they basically I think Mike Marime looks like Bill Bich at UNCC. I think the game

has passed him by. I would say that Wildgate was a complete and utter failure. As Adam has pointed out, Sunfolk just didn't have the TAM. It was a thesis that was rotten to start with. And I I'm just disappointed because I want to see them make great games. As we do on this podcast, we [ __ ] on people, but ultimately it's because we want to see them make great games. And I expected way more out of this company. I expected second dinner level innovation regardless of the financial success. I don't
publish some of the games that have been published before by Paradox Arc. That was so weird. I'm going to nominate believer. We didn't get the news story that we wanted because it just was went under the radar. But the company almost went belly up after all this money that was raised for them from Lightseed, A16Z, Bitcap, Riot Upfront, OneUp, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. But they are definitely on a respirator at this point. And then the other one is I would say is TheoryCraft which is exactly the same kind of thing with A16Z BigCraft Griffin Makers End of Days happening at that studio as well. That might be more of a new story both of those for next

year but but I think
yeah theory Craft just announced Supervive is going to shut down in February I believe. So sad to hear a bunch of X-Riot folks I used to work with. Adam, what do you have?
Would but would you call that an L for those teams or for A16? A16
everyone both like like if we're talking about who is the limping donkey are you saying
maybe maybe say light speeded A16Z [laughter] and light speeded I'll do it that way
let's do let's do big VC in gaming A16 and light speeded across the board
gaming VC that that's what you
yeah I'm going to do Ubisoft for this because it just this feels like the definition of what we're talking about in terms of Olympic doc
mine sorry Adam I know it's your formal PO I'm going to say Bungie. Destiny 2 is kind of really falling off. Marathon delayed to 2026 and Marathon is on the struggle bus. Remember we looked at their the cinematic trailer. Amazing. The gameplay trailer. Oh no. You know,

they're, you know, underneath the Sony umbrella. They get called in to do live ops triage on other people's games. A lot of headcount reductions. Doesn't feel in a sense to me like the same Bungie that we used to know. I I think there's like a song in there that kind of represents that. Mishka, what do you have?
I wanted I wanted to also kind of say gaming VCs just because the valuations have gone down and we have seen how little do gaming VCs deploy. So if you have a fund that is specifically focused on gaming, you might be a limping donkey, especially if you raise in like 2021, 2022. Not talking all of them, but I would say maybe even 90% of gaming focused VCs are limping donkeys if they haven't pivoted already. But I'm not going to say that because I love the VCs. They're the most fun company. So, I'm going to say
No, you're not gonna say that. You're not gonna say that. [laughter] You just say
I'm not gonna say that. I'm I'm gonna just say like like yes, I know A6Z Games pivoted away from games and they're not doing it. They're doing drones and and defense contracts and cyber security.

I'm not going to say that because because I absolutely love their events. They're amazing people and super fun to hang out. So, I'm not going to say Gaming BC. What I am going to say once again, I'm going to say Forte because this company has raised $900 [snorts] million from the likes of A6Z and Griffin who happen to be gaming VCs. They are valued in billions. They have never shipped anything. They describe themselves as leading provider of blockchain solutions focused on compliance, trust, and user safety. and with you know top of the bait investors they operate in web3 gaming that we have collectively agreed is a rugpull and a scam and at this point I think Forte is not only negative to the shareholders and the investors but to the gaming industry as a whole through their acquisitions of Phoenix Labs Network Rumble anything that they touch turns to [ __ ] so I know Crest has had a siege on Embracer for a couple of

years and that was successful he breached the gates so I'm camping in front of Fortune until the walls come down. [laughter]
All right, that was a good one. Mishka, you redeemed yourself in the last one right there. This whole time got me insensed. That was a good one.
Yeah. No, I I agree. Well done to to wrap us up. So, that is the 2025 Golden Twig nominations. Again, look in Slack newsletter and blog for voting and we will come back in a couple weeks with all of the results and read your comments. Thanks everyone and see you next week.
Thank you.
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