Highguard’s Character Conundrum, Valve’s New Lawsuit, and Dispatch Censorship | Games For Breakfast

Good morning, Matt. H
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, I have to share a very fun thing that Jamie got me a little bit ago. She found this little thing. It's called Paper Apps Dungeon. Have you ever heard of this, Will?
No. It's a little notebook that's a little RPG that you have to roll. There's different rules and like I always want to show you. I've done the first dungeon. You get to design your character. That's kind of what I look like. I got claws. And then and then you have to roll and you have a certain amount of hit points and treasure chests and your rolls depending on where you go. And the whole book like it's just like an analog dungeon crawl and you keep track of your stuff. So, like whenever I have a down moment, I've just been like rolling dice and seeing if I can get through a paper dungeon. And I

wanted to shout that out because it's pretty dang neat.
So, what I'm hearing is that Jamie is trying to sabotage the studio. Got it. I understand.
Right. Right. Yeah. Uh yeah, it's if you're interested, it's from a a place called uh Gladen Paper Apps. #notsponsored, but I this just blew my mind and uh it was very very fun
and it's part of the So it feels like a combination rolling, right, and solo RPG, which
yeah, there's no like story or anything. You're just like literally dungeon crawling.
Yeah, there are a bunch of different ways that people have come up with like solo board game stuff and that's really cool. Big fan of that. So,
uh definitely. Yeah, there you go. Thunder's gone.
Thunder found him. Yeah. Well, welcome everybody. Sorry. I was I was I was like looking around. I was like, "Oh, what's going to be my tangent to start off this episode?" And I was like, "This thing. I love this thing."
Yeah. I mean, that's that's totally fair. Yeah. Uh hello.
I'm back.
Yeah, we're we're back. Uh the internet [snorts] has been restored. Neither of us is frozen solid, though.
Pray it does not get restored further.

I don't think that's how that works.
Maybe. Who knows?
I don't, you know, we don't know anything. All that we know is that we know nothing. We've been doing a lot of philosophy here on Twitch. It's been great.
Um,
yeah. So, it's been a week. It's been a heck, it's been a heck of a week. Um, first before we get started, uh, we we we pitched it a little bit earlier. Um, we'll pitch it over on uh the tubes of you for later. If you are over on the YouTubes now or uh you know, soon after this is live. Um, I'm going to be discussing in what ways we're going to cover WoW content for midnight release. Matt and I have talked about this on the show a couple of times before. Um, how we're interested in the changes that Blizzard is making to WoW because they're deprecating like weas, which is a huge part of fight design, and we're very interested in sort of the change in philosophy. So, in order to do that, we

need to do two things. One, we need to get the gang back together for one last heist. So, we're working on the gang that we're getting together for one last heist. And the second one is the person who's the camera for all the WoW content needs to know enough about WoW to not die immediately. That would be me. So, we're going to embark on that second part first. So, join us after this show for a discussion um of uh how how we're going to make that happen.
We're going to see. And this is the best part. If we like it, we can keep playing it. If we don't like it, we can stop. We could stop whatever we want.
Yeah, that's right. We could totally stop playing video games whenever we want. We could just go back to playing Deadlock. Matt, you could just play a sleepy little guy. His name is Rev and he's a menace. But we'll talk about that later.
All I listen, all I The only words I know on how to play right now are Duchess, Raider, Guardian, Wilder.
That's it. That's all I got.
Yeah, that's fair. Uh yeah. Okay. But neither but neither of those games is

the direct cause, but maybe the indirect cause of the suffering of one uh brand new uh Oh, that's right. We're not talking about that first. We Matt, we have to talk about your thing first.
I know we're going to talk about High Garden approximately 30 seconds to a minute, but I have to talk about one other thing first.
Okay, you can talk about this thing now.
Abolish Everything season 2 is out right now. It's over on Nebula. This isn't an ad, but it is. I don't know. I'm in this season again. It's awesome. The first episode is up. I believe they're releasing them weekly. I'm not quite sure. There'll be a link in the show notes if you uh want to go check it out. Uh obviously use our code if you're not a Nebula subscriber already. I went to about three or four of these shows along with being in one of them. And it is my absolute favorite thing. For those of you that don't know, it is a bunch of stand-up comedians essentially arguing in front of a panel panel of the quote political establishment that essentially uh is trying to uphold the status quo.

So you could like you want to abolish loud chewers or ICE, you know, all of these different things. And then people basically have to argue back and forth between a PowerPoint presentation in front of a live audience in NYC. It is absolutely phenomenal. And I was reminded of it because actually last night, this is my second to last pitch, I promise. one of the uh uh comedians and a friend of mine, Josh Nasser, who uh is one of the uh political establishment folks who plays and argues with folks. He did a phenomenal show at Joe's Pub at NYC last night called Bada Swing where he essentially him and his partner play like aging Italian lounge singers and they have a full fivepiece band. Like it was in the swankiest location I think I'd ever seen for like this weird comedy show and they sing and they dance and it's ridiculous and it was very fun. So it reminded me, hey, I like comedy. I want to tell people about more comedy stuff. Nebula has more comedy stuff. Thank you for listening to my PSA. Back to video games.
Okay. [snorts] It's been one week since we looked

It's been one week since I got dropped.
Yeah. Right. So, uh almost exactly. In fact, um it it's been it's been a week since uh the game which we only learned about when Jeff Keelley made it the game at the end of the game awards and then we found out more and we found out more and now we're just very confused. Dropped. Can I CAN LET'S EVEN BEFORE WE EVEN get into the week when we were watching the game awards go back and watch our reaction to the game awards. We were watching it and having a good time and this trailer dropped and I was just like, "NEAT, FEELS LIKE MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE." And I didn't think about it again. But apparently, like in the discourse, the last drop of the big commercial show is supposed to be the most specialist little commercial of all the special commercials. And everyone was mad cuz this one wasn't as

special as some other commercials. And I was just like, "Okay, like
neat. We should we should probably also clarify. So, do you know what gets to be last at the game awards? Whatever Jeff Keelley thinks should be last at the Game Awards. Also worth noting, extremely worth knowing, do you know how much the crew at Highguard paid Jeff Keley for the final slot at the Game Awards? Do you know, Matt? Yes.
Nothing.
That's correct. They did not pay for that slot. Jeff Keelley just liked this idea so much he gave them the final spot at the Game Awards. A slot which is worth, and I cannot stress this enough, several millions of dollars. He just gave it to them because he liked their pitch, right? So like that is a thing. But all that to say, Jeff, like all that being last game awards means is that

Jeff Keley thinks your game is cool. That's it. That's all. Right. But also like I just I
I didn't understand the vitriol of even if it looks like a five out of 10 or like whatever just based on the trailer and I don't think the trailer was particularly good. I liked some of the imagery. Again, [clears throat] I'm a fan of Master of the Universe and it had a big buff lady holding up a sword almost yelling I have the power. So I was sort of into it. Uh the but like I didn't get the like oh man who like I just I couldn't follow the hate. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was very interested in in in this game dropped. I would have checked it out myself. Uh because it is a free-to-play shooter. However, there is some is it kernel level sort of antiche? Like what's the thing that like basically has two things? Um it's got colonel level antiche and it's got secure boot. Uh and secure boot's a problem for both of us for different technical reasons. Um it's also just a concerning practice in general. um along

with colonel level antiche. Uh but neither of those is really the main thrust of our discussion.
No, but that's why I want to put point out as we're talking about this, we are talking about the reaction today. We are not talking about like I've watched a lot of Highguard stuff at this point. Uh but I have not played it. And the reason I haven't played it is because the practices that the game implements to make the game run.
Yeah.
Um otherwise I would have tried it out myself before this discussion. Yeah.
Uh I just can't in good conscience sort of um
Yeah. and
do that
right and I think importantly most of our conversational points are not about the gameplay um because we are not
experts in well despite the fact that both of us just listed multiplayer games with sort of similar mechanics in some respect to Highguard although
that's most multiplayer shooter games. Um
yeah,
uh that's not the main thing that we're talking about. Um so

Sagar came out last week
and it came out to about a 100,000 concurrent players. Slightly less. 97,000.
Sure.
And then it dropped like a rock. Just like an absolute plummet.
Came out with very uh with negative reviews. I believe it's back to mixed now.
Uh, as of time of recording, this is 11:25 a.m. Eastern uh on the 20 on the 2nd of February. It is currently
43% positive according to Steam DB with 5,635 players in game.
Yeah. Also, Jar same, very much same,
right?
I have theories on why, but same. We'll get to that in a moment.
Right. Okay. So game gets the best slot, arguably the best slot at the game awards.

Game launches, does not meet expectations for a majority of the player base. I think that is a fair thing to say. We'll talk about why that's really I think the core of the issue. And then drops like a rock off the face of the planet. Um, it also dropped. The all-time peak for Twitch viewership was 377,266. Again, at this moment time of recording, there are 1,610 people watching. So, it is down to less than a third of 1% of the viewership that it had at peak. So, I'm not going to say that the game is irrevocably damaged to the point of fatality by this, but it is a fascinating thing to look at like the way that this week has gone for Highgard. Uh, and why? So,

Matt, why do you think Highguard is having a tough time? Uh, so out of all of this, I wanted to really sort of understand this and the concept actually was brought up, I think, on a on a on the Nando cut. Nando from Nandov Movies sort of brought this up a little bit and I was like, "Oh, this is an interesting take." And then and then finally I was like, "I think this is this is this is the sauce." If you want, you can go watch his video um about that as well. Shout out to Nando. We got to get Nando on the show at some point. Um,
absolutely.
Essentially, okay, the hero shooter. You know what's interesting about the concept and the titling of that particular genre of game
hero come
the first word that is before the mechanic of the game
right [laughter]
it is hero it is who you are playing it is what sort of excites you because in this oversaturated shooter market I don't think and listen and this is my opinions are my own um please if you if

you enjoy them great if formulate your own. Um, the essentially you need to stand out from the pack in some way. And I think the easiest and most effective way, weirdly, is with your characters. Overwatch did this forever ago. Overwatch's gameplay of course was good. Overwatch one. Um, and drew a lot of people in to keep playing. But what got them there were those Pixaresque shorts and interesting characters and and doing enough narrative drops to get people to talk about characters, to ship characters, to want to be those characters. The abilities were neat. The powers were cool. The gameplay was good. It was the right place, right time. But now there are so many choices in this genre. You really need something that is quick to get people on board that is not your mechanics in my opinion. Like the mechanics will keep you there if they're

good, but get you there. You need something else. And that one tried and true way I drew do believe is what Overwatch one did, which is sort of like drip feeding character lore. I went out uh I went out uh I went to basically uh go through high guards I'm trying to pause this thing because now IGN is just playing a video and I needed to stop for my bandwidth. I tried going through essentially like finding out everything I could about Highguard's characters because the trailer especially at the Game Awards uh doesn't do much about that, right? Like I like I couldn't tell you their names, let alone what they did. I knew they rided horses. Um, that's kind of it. God, this this website is so There we go.
Yep.
Yeah, it's so poorly optimized. So, there's eight wardens to start. The heroes you can be, and they all have what I would consider remixes of other

powers I've seen in hero shooters. Side note, that's not a problem.
Nope, not a problem at all.
You can just have that. That's okay. Um, so there's Red Main, Mara, Condor, Una, Attekus, Slade, Scarlet, and Kai. And the way that like I watched every like character thing, and it's their little narrator who's hanging out with a little furry guy in like a booth like talking to you about the character.
Sure.
I think that's a huge misstep. even if like some of the writing is clever and it's like fun, they have little like quips at the end of the the character trailers and they show off the abilities of all of these characters that do look cool and they even have this narrator tell you about lore that if written in a different way and a more engaging way could be hyperinteresting.
Sure. Kai, who is essentially um an ice wizard for for lack of a better term, has a frost troll like fused to his soul or and then basically can transform. And

there's this sort of like back and forth pull tug thing that feels very almost like if you wanted an an equivalency from a narrative perspective, even like a Winston who uh is like constantly fighting against his own stuff, interesting in one way, then rages out, etc.
Right? Like every one of these characters had like the story that the narrator told me. I was like that would be interesting if I saw the story or if I saw the character going through that story or if I saw any of the characters with this story in mind for them interacting in with the other characters outside of gameplay. Like I don't give a crap about any of these people because I've never seen them talk to one another.
Yeah. Like even that first Overwatch trailer with the kids in the museum and the um and then uh Reaper and Widowmaker come to steal uh Doomfist Gauntlet I think is what the plot is and then Tracer and is it Win does Winston come in? I can't remember. No, Tracer's just

Tracer I think. They're sure taking him on. you like get moments of like even even when Widowmaker and and Reaper are like fighting, you can tell that they're pissed at each other
and you're like, "Oo, like what's that little narrative thread?" There's none of that here. And I truly I truly believe,
again, this is not having played the game. Gameplay aside, I'm going to assume that this is a five out of 10 game. Just pretend that that's true. I cannot prove that it's a baseline hero shooter that's freeto play.
If the characters and whatever story was going on with them was strong enough, it would draw enough new people in to keep the lifeblood of this game going till they figure out how to make it better. Like they're trying 5v5 raids because right now it's 3v3 and I know some people have complained that the maps seem too big for that.
Yep. But that's how you that's how you keep people in your game if you have to release your game before you fully

figured out your game.
So like let's pause on that real quick because you brought it up. So again, this game came out Monday.
Mhm.
The team that's doing this cares
because they crunched in 5v5 and improvements on the PC client in four days. It launched. I want to make it very Yeah,
it launched Friday before the weekend. Like
I'm not This is not a complaint to the the devs at all. I think this is a complaint to the marketing team.
Yeah, I agree. I I
Well, or lack thereof because
the other thing that's worth mentioning when we talk about the marketing is that before Keley stepped in and was like, "Hey, I like you guys. You're going to be the last uh trailer at the Game Awards," there was no plan for marketing. zero. They were going to shadow drop this out of nothing and just be like, "Hey, there's a new game called High Guard." Now, would that have gone

better? I don't actually know. I think a lot of people are
No, it would have gone worse.
I I think I think a lot of people are quick to say that. However, I also my secondary puzzlement is
would the game still have launched as not early access? Because I think if the game had launched as early access
because the game is out out this is the 1.x series, right? And I think that does change people's impressions. I think if the game had shadow dropped as an early access launch to fix a lot of these problems to get more information on the PC client to try 5v5 and to get that initial feedback I think it might have done better in the long run. Would it have done better this week? No. Would it have done better in the long run? I I maintain that there's a maybe there.
Yeah. Team worm. Interesting. Uh missed the game awards. Still haven't heard of

this game despite being many shooter circles. Yeah. Like I I think it's because also it is as a from a genre perspective, it's like a mish mash of like three different things. You have like a resource phase and then you have sort of a a runaround phase and then a big old skirmish phase. And I think what the 5v5 is going to try to do is just kind of speedrun you to that skirmish phase because that seems to be what people enjoy.
Yeah. There
um
Yeah.
I I So it's interesting. I keep thinking like look, would they have gotten as much negative press if they shadow dropped it? Uh, no. Would they have gotten any press if they shadow dropped it? Unclear. And sadly, I think in this space, especially in this highly negative space where everyone's looking to get mad at something, enough people are talking about Highguard now that perhaps it will give them time to also sort of figure it out. Um, I don't know what kind of

runway they have for the free-to-playenness of it all. I actually haven't even looked at uh because again I I haven't do dove into the game itself. I haven't looked at their monetization practice. I'm guessing it's skins and things and whatnot.
I have um they've got good they've got uh reasonable monetization. They have a upfront disclaimer that there will be no pay for power ever. That heroes are part of that power so everyone can play all heroes when they release. That's the kind of hero shooter I prefer. I don't like I don't and I prefer that in MOBAs as well. Um
uh and uh to my understanding and again chat comments tell me if I'm wrong, they have the Warbond style battle pass that has become more popular with some of these longer form lifestyle games where once you've acquired the battle pass, you own the battle pass. You can finish it on your own time whenever. You can't like lose out on it because you didn't finish it by the arbitrary end date. you have the pass as you play high guard. You can stretch that content out however

long you want,
which is good. Um I Dog Bird brings up an interesting to give a positive spin. They are in a position to pull a No Man's Sky. Look, it's possible they're exact. They're kind of actually, you know what's funny? No, it's probably the same just with a different group in a different time because remember when what's the lead guy's name on No Man's Sky? I'm blanking. Sean when when Shawn went on like Co Bear
and was like talking about it that was breaking containment and making promises to a whole another group of people that don't do this stuff.
Yep.
At least with the Game Awards this like only people that are that are in it's not like they went on a late show or or did something else to break containment to another area, right? Yeah.
Um, I just think that in in the in the literal hero shooter genre, the world could use more heroes, right? Like it's just like that's what's interesting to me. I I I know that maybe

[snorts] I feel like even if folks don't think that kind of thing truly matters to them, I think it gets more people through the door than we think it does. Like
that's true.
Um I'm not saying everyone who's playing a hero shooter wants deep lore with their characters all the time. I'm saying to make a healthy community, you need people that do,
right? Let's take another hero shooter that does this pretty well. Warframe.
Sure.
Hero shooter. You play a hero. There's a um there's a uh a wide array of them. There is deep lore, right, that you can use. It's a PVE hero shooter, right? there. Uh I've been watching um people go through the story. Uh I've

been watching uh Alchemy streamer go through the story. Um, and I've talked with her some about it and watching like her reactions to things as they play out versus the actual giant gaps of lore, like the actual gaps of time that were in lore is kind of fascinating because they they will like DE dumps a bunch of lore on you and then says nothing for like six months, right? And it's kind of the same, right? You don't need lore constantly. You just need like, oh, I feel this way about these characters and now I'm going to go play the video game for six months, right? And there's just
And Overwatch didn't either. Like Overwatch released a hero trailer what once every two I think maybe there was like the first time that came out it was like once every month and then it sort of like moved to like every like four to six months. Then when they had new characters, they do it like they do new story things. Then
um I just Yeah, I I think there's a
you don't have to have a constant deluge of story and lore.

Yep.
What you need is enough drip feed to make people interested and want to know more even if that doesn't exist.
Um it's the curiosity gap. It's YouTube thumbnails. It's all this stuff. like you you want people to come in and engage so you then have time to do it's essentially it's faking it until you make it.
Yeah, 100%. You don't need you don't you need a plan to have a plan when you launch. You don't actually need the plan, right? Um but I had a
Medusa Medusa you could Oh, sorry. Will I was gonna say this also is a good take to No Man's Sky had a concept of scale that felt unique when it came out. High guard is the vibe of more of the same. There's no expectation to meet. Yeah.
Um, possibly. Yeah.
And maybe that's the thing that what I'm saying. Here's what I'm saying. I think Medusa, I think I agree with you. I think there's ways to mitigate that and so far they haven't done it.
Yep.
Sorry, Will. You were saying,
um,

so I have a slightly different take on why it's not doing well. And it's more of the streamer perspective, I think.
Sure. So, we've sort of uh discussed high guard as a hero shooter, right? Um, but hero shooter nowadays is the chocolate drizzle of game. It is not the thing itself for the most part.
Sure, you can drink chocolate like sauce, but probably don't. Well, if you do, make sure you only put 50% in and then put more milk in your mouth and then shake it really hard. So then
But then you're not just drinking chocolate sauce. You're drinking chocolate sauce and milk
at at the beginning you're just drinking chocolate sauce.
Sure. Okay, that's fair. um
semantics
and and the problem is that I would say that Overwatch and Rivals are the only two hero shooters that are

really circulating widely in the gaming market right now.
Is Overwatch still wide? I don't I just don't pay attention to two.
It is. It just it doesn't like we don't talk about it because we don't play it, but it still does numbers, right? Like uh
I mean that's good. I I don't want anything bad to happen to Overwatch. I just
I just Yeah, there there is a degree of apathy in it, right?
Yeah.
Um let's let's take a quick look. Uh Overwatch 2 currently has
Yeah, it's got an average viewer count of like 12,000 on Twitch, spiking up to like 35,000. It has some consistent It has consistency in the content creation space, which is generally the metric that I use when I am looking to see if people are engaging with it. Sure.
Because we don't have battlelet numbers,
right? So, we could look at the Steam numbers, but Steam numbers are only a fraction of the Anyway.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Um, so because it's sort of the chocolate

drizzle of um of this. It's a It's what they led with, right? This High Guard is a hero shooter about wardens. Okay.
I would argue it's not about wardens. High guard is a hero shooter,
right? Okay. But it's also about looting. Okay. Like a battle royale. Okay. I dig. And it's also about mining resources and acquiring currency like a moa. Ooh. Okay. And it's like base sieges. Okay. like like like Rainbow Six Siege or or Valerant. Yeah. Okay. And at some point we've had too many mixins, right? There is too much

mixin and the chocolate drizzle that you led with of it's a hero shooter is sort of buried in all of that, right? Cuz like we could think of hero shooters in each of those genres, right? There's a there are mobile hero shooters, right? Smite, Deadlock. There are um uh base defense hero shooters, Valerant, um Rainbow Six Siege, right? There are uh battle royale hero shooters, right? Apex comes to mind, right? And H Highguard is trying to say, "We could take on all of these fights all at once because we could pull players from all of those places and they'll all flock to our game that includes things from games that they don't play and they'll like it." And that's sort of the puzzling thing to me, right? that like the goal here appears to be to pull a large number of characters from a bunch or a large number of players

from a bunch of different like weird hero shooter adjacent like subg genres and I that's not how that works right cuz
it's also you're jockeying for a position that have like you're you're trying to take people away from their lifestyle games that is a specific thing that they are into and your game is 25% of that specific thing that they're into.
Yes.
Right. Like so you're you're fighting an uphill battle already. You're you're trying to get people's time and eyeballs away from something that they have probably maneuvered a large bit of their life around. Like I'm not saying people can't switch. I mean, I think the the the rise of Marvel Rivals I think Marvel Rivals I I think it Marvel Rivals kind of goes back and proves my point a little further, right? Like I think Marvel Rivals got more people into like got the most people into her shooters since Overwatch. And that's because of the IP.

It's because of the characters. People liked Marvel wanted to try new Marvel game because they like the characters and want to be the Punisher or Rocket Raccoon or, you know, Mantis or whatever, right? like the uh and so they they marketed things based around that and that helped keep the game healthy enough and the game even though I do not connect with it, I do feel like it still feels like I'm piloting a spaceship no matter what character I'm playing. Um the the numbers on that game don't lie. So I think that game like the the way to eat Overwatch's lunch in its specific space is to have more powerful characters. not not not like in-game, but like knowledgewise of the IP of of people's reverence for them. The only way that like something like a Marvel could do. Um, in the case of Highgard, I don't want to say one way or the other if I think these characters could ever sort of like be that level of interesting,

but I think someone someone in chat said this earlier and I forget if I put it on screen. It's like the difference between a really interesting character sheet in an RPG and having someone who is a world-class storyteller tell you about their character they just made, right? Like the it feels to me like the bones are here, but you can't you can't break into this space if you don't do the thing that will have it break containment. And to Will's point, it's an uphill battle regardless because Breaking Containment, you're you're fighting four different fronts. You're fighting like three to four different play styles of games that people play on the daily.
And there are there are um I think they tried to innovate in too many directions all at once and ended up in the dead zone in the middle,
right? Where it doesn't have enough of any of these things, right? to to sort of um stick as them. I also think to

Matt's point, and this is kind of to my point, too,
they keep trying to sell the game mechanics as the main character of the game.
I think there's more time spent on telling you about the shield breaker, the big sword that the guy's carrying in this shot.
Yeah. the special magic sword that breaks through the enemy shield and summons a siege tower and does all the magic phase change stuff than they do about the heroes, right? The mechanics are the star of the game and that doesn't work,
right?
It doesn't work unless it's incredibly simple,
right? And it it I would almost argue that it doesn't work in Counterstrike
or wouldn't work in Counterstrike now, but does work in Counter-Strike because it's been the like the defining factor of Counter-Strike for so long, right? The Counter-Strike is five faceless people versus five faceless people over the mechanics, right? Um but they they keep trying to sell the mechanics and the mechanics aren't cohesive in their

marketing material, right? I again I've watched some of it and haven't played it. It might feel more cohesive when you play it, but as a pitch, it doesn't land because they're like, "All right, so you're gonna essentially genre hop like that weird Badger from the Game Awards chat. You probably REMEMBER MORE OF THAT BADGER AD THAN you do of the High Guard ad, right?" Yeah. Okay, cool. Um
the um But they're bouncing so quickly, right? So like first you're going to hero shoot and then you're going to moa and then you're going to siege and you're like oh but why wouldn't I just do each of those things separ separate separately
separately [snorts] and then of course there's the big silent thing in the room which is that I don't I don't know we'll talk more about um old god's new blood later

I I do think that for their marketing. They did get stepped on pretty hard, which isn't their fault cuz they couldn't have known, but they really did get stepped on because their top concurrent player count for a game that released with Game Awards top billing
was 97,000. And Deadlock, a game you cannot buy or access without a code that you have to ask someone for, right? So deadlock, you have to ask for an invite from someone who's already in the game. And there are plenty of ways to do that. It's not a high barrier, but is more of a barrier than clicking I would like to install Highguard.
Yeah.
And adjust your BIOS,
right? Yeah. Uh most people don't have to do that. We're just weird.
Really?
Yeah. Mo for a a majority of people it's fine. Um, it's not as big a deal unless you upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11 on a PC, which is Matt's case specifically, or you have a very weird

build of Windows that's designed to be extremely stripped down for reasons. Um, they got stepped on because Deadlock had 98,000 players. A game you cannot buy had more players than a game that was free. And I feel like that's part of their problem, right, is that a game that they are not directly, but like in the same genre competing with stepped on them. Um, and they couldn't have planned for that. And I I don't want to like
visual genre, right? Like cuz we've talked about Deadlock as more of a MOA than a hero shooter even though it is first person and blah blah blah.
Yeah. Right. So like I think it's I think that that is worth mentioning when we talk about this this failure to launch well is that there are there were a lot of external factors competing with them.
Yeah. Well, let's let's do this uh show of emotes in chat. How many of you have played High Guard?
Yeah.

Both in Brad and Janet YouTube and uh and Twitch. And obviously if you're watching this later on Nebula, feel free to message Will and I on on the old blue skies. I'm just curious. We've been talking about this for a minute.
Yeah.
Jimmy has. Nope. Nope. Nope. Did not. Nope. [laughter] Okay. Aqua did. Yeah. Oh, man. Oh, wait. I got to get there. He goes tried but couldn't connect.
I think that's fair.
Uh Sappa played it. Yeah, it's also not possible to play on Linux and it is possible to play Deadlock on Linux and many other games. So that that is that is they they cut themselves out from the Linux market as well on purpose. But yeah. [snorts]
Yeah. So most have not.
Yeah. Um,
I I think the

I think that the I I do really think that there is a world where the marketing could have saved this. And I know that seems weird, right, not having played it, but I do feel like if they were able to deliver a compelling case for it, that it would at least have smoothed out the spike because I I have I have the high guard player numbers pulled up and by so it launched Monday the 26th of January at 1900 hours UTC. to 97,000 players.
It's um in the first 24 hours, so the 27th of January, 1900 UTC, it had fallen to 18,274 players. That's the 24hour fall,

more or less four fifths. I'm not saying the game is great. I am saying that successful marketing campaigns and a ability to deliver would have changed that ratio and that might have smoothed out the rest of the week which has been it's peaked at 11 to 12,000 per day
since then and has not shown and it got
zero bump over the weekend from 5v5 being added. The devs busted their butts all week to get 5v5 in the game. the most requested piece of feedback and on Steam they received zero lift from that which is heartbreaking to me that devs crunched all week to add a thing that the community was adamant would change their minds about the game that would improve the game and they got zero lift on a weekend for it and that sucks.
They also could have been that could have also been in the works too. like that could have been they you know in fact I'm guessing it was I'm guessing

I'm guessing this game went through a lot of different iterations with modes and play numbers and all this stuff because it does feel like such a mishmash there's no way that that they didn't play with the levers and like try to really make it
something different and feel different um you know I just realized cuz someone said it in chat you know what I could do to actually check this out is play it on PS5
you could so maybe I'll do that over the week just to get bit of it because I always feel like again I want to make it very clear I can't talk to any of the gameplay of it. I can only talk to the marketing and what like what I have found in the ether sort of around my general internet usage and what I've found when I try to deep dive into it.
Yeah, it is it is fascinating though because I think there is this is so weird. We're at a point in games, particularly with games as a service, particularly games like Highguard, and this is why I wanted to talk about it from this angle because I think this is fascinating,
where it almost doesn't matter as long as the game is not actively bad

and that we're not talking about like strategy or or anything like that. Sure, there is a market for finding your niche gamers
in the world and that the marketing can deliver at least a can deliver you more of a core group than 5,635 players who play on a Monday morning.
Yeah.
Right. Like that I feel like this is um aside from the gameplay mechanics, this is a marketing failure because they didn't come up with a clever new name for the genre. They didn't introduce any of the heroes and provide a compelling reason why you're interested in their combat, right? They didn't deliver you the world in an interesting way.
You know what's interesting too? Actually, I just sort of you just you brought up something. It's also the story that the battles are telling. Like I just for the first time and again this is me looking like in Wardens on their thing. This is I guess the story of how this game works. Can I read this real quick?

cuz like for instance in Overwatch
every map has a story. It is it is built in into the into the design and the decoration of that map. It is a base that was taken over. It is a skirmish that happened. It is you know and while it doesn't make complete sense if the characters are the same like that actually happened there like you get the point of the battle that is essentially like uh hold the hold the point capture the flag move the robot etc. So says this, "These arcane gunslingers are some of the last and most powerful magic wielders in the realm. They are mysteriously immune to the fatal effects of magical exposure in Highguard, making them the only ones capable of exploring its many mysteries. Now under the watchful eye of the Iron Vigil, they mount incursions into the uncharted reaches of Highguard, establish strongholds to secure diverse interests for paying clients, and destroy those of any rival crews looking to do the same." So that to me says everyone's a mercenary. There are companies that are paying them

to set up and keep bases and you have to kill the other base.
Yeah.
I don't know if like especially with characters that I think again I want to make it very clear I think sound interesting on paper. I don't like I want to know like what the difference between Slade who essentially is supposed to be like an underworld kind of like piratey roguish kind of guy who like works with the underbelly and d like a smuggler or Mara who is a literal evil Lin necromancer. I get that they're all mercenaries. Why are they doing this? Like I feel like Slade's motivation might be a little bit different from Mara, but it I I'd have to dig so deep into all of this to know what the hell is going on,
right? Yeah. Anyway, sorry. We're I'm sort of rehashing the issue.
No, no, I I think that's fair, right? Like the um and I did want to bring up

something. Somebody in chat uh mentioned that the market can't support another hero shooter. Disagree. I think that it can't support another pure hero shooter, right? Rivals and Overwatch take up all of the air in that space. Rival, there was not a lot of air left in that space from Overwatch and Rivals went and just took up all of the rest of the room in that space. But I do think there is room for more exploration in the hero shooter subgenre, right? If it was hero shooter battle royale Halo style, right? um where you're you start out with default weaponry and you go and find guns out on the map and like you're trying to achieve an objective. That could be something, right? Um or to be lean further into the um mobileesque currency acquisition and upgrades path. Okay. Or the siege aspect. I think that all of those there is room in the industry for those,

but I don't think they knew that. I don't think they aimed at that. I don't think they they found like a coherent path forward for that.
Yeah. I think most uh Mo says it pretty well. My schedule can't support another. They better give me a solid reason to play theirs. Exactly.
Yes. And I think that Demon Works has it exactly right. The market can always support a new thing if it's got the jobs. If it's good
and here Yeah. And and and I I'll even put it forward this way. Being good isn't enough. like you you need to you need to inject enough interest in either that market or new markets to get your player base up in a game that's core mechanic is based around playing with other people
like that's just that's just what it is.
Yeah.
Uh anyho, that's a lot of high guard.
I like this. You know, complicated gameplay reading instruction booklet in the car ride home after buying the game. Uh, yes, but it's very difficult to read

because you have to do it by street lights.
So, you only get like a couple moments unless you're real lucky and you stop at a stoplight under a street light so you can read some in the car on the way home. And I've just unlocked poor memory for some of you.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yep.
Well, uh, real quick, and I think this is the order we were going in the show notes. did want to pivot away a little bit from games around the thing that I actually thought Highguard looked the most like at the Game Awards,
but we're going to have to do THAT AFTER ADS.
OH NO.
AH, I WAS GOING TO GET THERE AND then you started your segue.
That's okay.
So, we're going to do we're going to do some fake ads for things you can't buy while Twitch chat gets real ads for things you can buy for like threeish minutes. So, don't go anywhere. We're going to play a silly fun little improv game with you uh while Twitch chat gets ads and then we'll be back with Matt's thoughts on what he thought High Guard could have been or was and now there's a trailer for the thing he thought it actually was. So, you know,
yay. Hey, Will, go first.

[clears throat]
Okay. Hi there, Will from Extra Credits here to sell you on the concept of market surveys. That's right. You could ask people in the market about an idea that you have. I do it all the time. Mine just normally starts with, "Hey, Twitch chat." And then I ask them about a thing that I want to do. You too can do this. It's called asking people before you full send an idea out into the ether and then it plummets like a rock tied to the African or European swallow. Really, um, you just you got to ask people. You got to like do market research and then figure out whether or not people are actually interested in the thing that you're selling. So try that.
There we go. Um let's see. Hey everyone, Matt from Extra Credits is Will's Extra Credits. Max Extra Credits here. So you might be thinking, "Wow, High Guard's out." And it does remind

you [music] of a specific other thing, but you can't quite put your finger on it. Well, let me be the first to sell you on the concept OF QUIT WHINING, YOU BUBBLING BOOB. [laughter] THERE IS NO WAY THAT THIS DOES NOT GET ITS INSPIRATION FROM SOME OF THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. AND NOW WE WILL GO INTO TALKING ABOUT THE FILM THAT IS STARRING ONE OF THE MOST EVIL AND WEIRD PEOPLE ON THE PLANET TO PLAY ME, SKELETOR. [laughter] I just want to like snaps for managing to land that timing exactly. Well done. Well, props. We've been doing this bit too long that we like know how long it is, right? Um, so that's Yeah. Yep. 100%. Uh, 10 out of 10. No notes. Great. Excellent. Uh again, I will take this opportunity, by the way, in the middle of the show while while we're doing stuff to pitch, uh because we've had more people now. Um

right after this stream, uh I'm going to be planning the runup to WoW Midnight. Uh not a thing I normally stream. I'm going to need a lot of help from chat. So, I'm asking for help from chat. Uh we're going to have a discussion over on Twitch about what that might look like. What So, if you're a WoW head, come hang out. just come hang out and help me understand why you love WoW and the things you want to see a new player do in WoW. Um, this is actually like really crucial uh for me because my brain is not engaging with this without external help. So, come come hang out right after this stream over on Twitch and the VOD will be up on Twitch if you miss this live and do it later. Um, but come come hang out with me and talk about WoW. Uh, so that's done.
There we go.
Okay, cool. Um, Aaro asked a really good question as we transition here. Matt, why do you like Skeletor so much? Um, I think it's because so growing up, He-Man was the thing that was like the action

figure dour, right? Like that was kind of my my jam. And we can go to the next slide, Will, whenever you get a moment. Um, and the cool thing for me about Skeletor in particular was his ability, even as a child, to be like silly and bumbling, but also like completely terrifying. And there's something that I have always found fascinating about riding that line. In fact, I don't know if for me, and there's millions of characters, so like this is different for everybody else. I don't know if there's ever been a character that actually has landed that level for me. And maybe it's cuz I was at the right age. You know what? You go back and you watch it and Skeletor is not scary. But you know what? I still stand by the old 80s um or early 90s. I I never remember when it came out. uh the Master of the Universe film, the Dolph London Frank Langela uh Master of

the Universe film because Skeletor in that film is Frank Langella, all current uh nonsense aside, it uh brought a level of um craft to that movie that no one else was even trying to do. He did that movie because his kid liked Ske He-Man and so he did it and he brought like a weird horror and sympathy and pathos and nightmare to the way you play Skeletor which is insane. He again does the adult version of silly and scary. So that is kind of why I really really love Skeletor. Now, the reason why we're talking about this is the new Masters of the Universe trailer dropped um more of a uh than the the teaser that did before. Will, have you watched this yet at all?
I'd be curious your thoughts, chat. What What are who here has watched said

trailer? That is that is really the question. And then also,
it's a Okay, it's another fish out of water story.
Sure. essentially spoilers for the trailer, but Prince Adam, He-Man's alter ego, is sent to Earth to like save him from something bad happening in Eternia, which is where this whole thing takes place. Um, and I hate fish out of water stories. I really, really do. Um, but this looks like it at least has somewhat of a point. And they've dumped a ton of money into this thing. A bit too much money in my opinion. I think they think that this is going to be like like I I of a larger cultural moment than it will be. I don't think He-Man as a brand has I I think the biggest thing that He-Man as a brand has going for it is that Shira uh cartoon on Netflix was it? Um and and and is either has just left or

will soon be leaving Netflix and be very difficult to watch.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um the only other thing is the the Kevin Kevin Smith uh crafted uh animated version. There's two seasons of that on Netflix as well, but that's not nearly as big as the Shira Princess of Power uh series.
I like I watched the Kevin Smith um version. I like that a lot because it because it did it did the thing where it was like, "Hey, you remember the thing that was silly and fun when you were a kid."
Well, you didn't understand it, but there was actually a story there and there are actual characters and it's dark as hell. It's like just like Transformers, right? Like you didn't understand. There's some dark as hell stuff in Transformers or Gundam,
right? Because Transformers is just American Gundam. Fight me. Um,
yeah, Mark Campbell was excellent as a as Joker, as a as a Joker, but also a Skeletor. Um, and now another person who has played the Joker and Skeletor is sadly going to be playing Skeletor is

Jared Leto. Um, luckily it seems like we won't be seeing his face, but I don't know. That kind of sucks. But look, this this looks like from what you've seen, go watch it if you haven't. It looks It's like this weird edge case of like hyper generic and really specific but also makes it feel like the action figures felt. Uh Allison Brie as Evil Lynn. I am so looking forward to seeing her choose scenery uh in a way that like I keep thinking of like whenever Annie on Community was playing something evil like it just feels like it's going to be that. Uh, Idris Alba is Man- in-arms, I believe, if I'm not mistaken.
Sure. That Yeah, 100%.
And they got lot they got Trap Jaw, they got Beastman, they got a whole bunch of of these characters. So, I'm hoping that uh I'm hoping that it's good. I just wanted to sort of talk about it for a second and see if folks had watched it.

Yeah. Okay. Speaking of evil things,
price fixing. I think we'd probably all agree that it's evil. and now Valve has been accused of it in the UK. So, uh there is a classaction lawsuit going in the UK over um the way that it does pricing. Um and this is specifically as it pertains to UK anti-competitive pricing laws. So, if you're not an expert in UK law, this guy not an expert in UK law, right? This may not I think the big thing is that this isn't going to make legal sense necessarily. I think the interesting thing is that people are once again taking a shot at Valve. And I think if this is successful, and it's

already been partially successful, other people in other markets may be taking shots at Valve for this. Um, I say it's partially successful because Valve tried to get this whole thing thrown out, uh, and was unsuccessful in doing so. So, there was enough merit that a judge looked at this and said, "No, we're actually going to do this thing." And Valve was like, "Dang it. A a dang it." Um, so the um I had a thought and then I looked at Twitch chat and then it left. Oh, that happened. I just had coffee,
right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um I am kind of curious to see how this goes. This is sort of like a a beginning of this is this is the beginning of a big long legal story that involves the largest gaming market in the world.
Well, Valve tried to have it thrown out.

It's a 90 mil a $900 million class action lawsuit. And the way that class action lawsuits over there and again I am not a lawyer specifically one in the UK but the way it kind of works is they are able to just say that the user like the a group can say there are 14 million users and we're going to uh unless they opt out of it we are going to represent them at a class action lawsuit. And then Valve came back with something along the lines of like, well, there's also like children who like sign up for Steam accounts that don't have access to bank things and whatever. So then that basically the people bringing the suit were like, okay, it's 13 million. And then it no longer had the chance of getting or getting thrown out, right? There's I'm paraphrasing and simplifying, but that's kind of how it went down. So now it's going to have to go through the the entire process,
right? Okay, here we go. So, and this centers around an argument that um Valve has unfair trading conditions that prevent or hinder others from competing with them. Uh, and this concerns Valve's uh requirement that games sold on Steam not be made available at a permanently

lower price on rival stores and that once you buy a game on Steam, the only way you could buy further content from that game is also v via Steam, which is, I believe, untrue.
Yeah, I don't think that's the case. I'm I'm reasonably confident that is untrue. Uh at least in several key cases. Um I know of several like MMOs that you can purchase or run via Steam and then add value to directly from other places, right? Or like Warframe. You can run Warframe through Steam and then buy platinum from the Warframe site. Like there's all kinds of things you can do. So, like, uh, um, so that's sort of a an interesting assertion that is provably not the case. Um, and then this the the lawyer Vicky Shockbolt or Shotbolt, excuse me, uh, says that this um allows

Valve to hold a dominant position the PC gaming market and that we have used this position in ways that violate the UK competition law. [snorts] I genuinely don't think there's a case here from my understanding, but again, I'm not a lawyer and this did get past the sniff test of, "Hey, we'd like to dismiss this because it's stupid." And the judge said, "No, it's not stupid enough that I could throw it out." So, I don't obviously $900 million is like not nothing, but also have you seen how many yachts Gabin has?
Look, no company wants to pay $900 million. like that's just it would be bad. Um I'm very curious to see how this goes. Um again, not knowing the specific laws in the UK, I I do en I do like that the UK has a larger sort of like I guess government groups to try to like help keep people from getting ripped off specifically in the technology space. Um I

it's curious because like on one hand yes you don't want if Valve is doing something that is causing this to happen that is bad. On the other hand there are other places to buy games but they those places seem to be dropping the ball all by themselves.
Yep. Epic's not doing great. GG has a good service but is continually completely unable to market their own service like or acquire users, right?
I just can't believe Epic I I don't understand how Epic ended up where it like sort of landed. The Epic Store.
Yeah.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Yeah.
Like they have not nearly as much money as Valve, but essentially infinite money.
Yeah. Um, how can that not work?

I don't know.
I mean, it's just not hiring the right people and having the right ideas. That's basically what it is. They they I think they thought
that pe I think they thought that money could do it and not people. I think that's why there was a lot of free games getting people to come over, you know, that sort of thing. thinking that it would just oh they can do the the they can do the [snorts] work of marketing through free giving away stuff but giving away stuff is only a very small part of marketing
right I think yeah I think that they tried to skip the people portion and just skip straight to the throwing the money at people portion and that doesn't work
as we've discussed
so anyway I look I'm very curious to see where this Valve lawsuit goes in the UK I I do not know enough about it to know how many legs it actually has. But we're going to find out and we'll be keep talking about it right here.
Yeah. Also, brief clarification because I probably didn't make this clear enough because again, I apologize chat. I looked at Twitch chat at the wrong time

and there were like two conversations and my brain hit a penny on the track and just derailed. Um, it happens sometimes. It's great. Uh the one of the problems with the assertions they're making, by the way, is that the protection against selling games cheaper elsewhere than you do on Steam only applies if you're selling it as a Steam key.
If you're not selling it as a Steam key, then you can do whatever you want not on Steam. That part is not the best understood by large portions of the market or by lots of people who talk a lot about Valve's hold over the market. But that is a thing that has come up before and I believe we've talked about here before that the reason that the way that Valve uh cares is if you're using their content delivery services essentially to distribute your game, you can't sell it cheaper elsewhere and then make them foot the bill for doing your distribution.
Yeah. So,

um, okay. Also, lawsuits happening in the magic space.
Now, keep in mind, this is a photo from a a similar story in 2023,
correct? But
it holds true today.
Yes. Um, the lawsuit is over mostly the 30th anniversary Magic the Gathering set, which many people may not remember because you memoryhold it. So, allow me to unmemory hole it for you. Hasbro tried to sell four booster packs of non- tournament legal cards which were reprints of the original Magic Printing for the 30th anniversary, right? They were cleaned up, had, you know, u more modern text boxes, more modern art, um, and were were cleaned up but had a different back and so were not tournament legal, thus not violating the reserve list. Um, and they tried to do this for $250 United States dollars per pack of 15 trading cards.

The lawsuit further alleges that um they were never going to actually sell all of the material that they made, that they were going to artificially make it seem like it had been a success by pulling it from the shelves at an arbitrary time without informing consumers that they only had a limited time to purchase the product. Um, essentially the lawsuit centers on the idea that Valve complete or not Valve, woo, that Hasbro completely screwed this up and um did so in a way that damaged consumer confidence in the brand and damaged Magic as a whole. Um, there is some other stuff in there about the increasing number of Magic sets there. Um, IGN, it's in the show notes, has a great diagram of all of the sets that have ever come out. Uh, and it's pretty clear to see that there are more sets than ever. Um, and that is that is just

true. Um, and that that is the the assertion is that that is a bad thing that is damaging the Magic Brand. This is another like, hey, a lawsuit got filed, we'll see where it goes story. Um, because I do think that this is interesting because uh, Magic makes most of the money for Hasbro. that's like it's their big cash cow and lots of people have been on this very similar like this is the thing that's killing magic as a game path. Uh and to see legal action taken on it is very interesting.
We may or may not have an entire Extra Credits episode coming out about that in the coming months. Um, yeah, it's an interesting time for magic, but this this specific story about essentially getting rid of it is this this there's only one noise that I feel like can really fully encapsulate building a making a bunch of overpriced

product and then trashing a bunch of it to trick your shareholders into thinking that it's sold. Yeah,
that is basically where we're at.
Yeah, that's correct.
Um, regardless, we'll see how this goes to the so many so many lawsuits. Will
Yeah, I know. By the way, the Hasbro comment, which Hasbro delivered to IGN, is as follows. These claims have no merit. Our strategic plan for Magic was implemented and the results underscore the strength of that strategy. By underscore the strength of that strategy, do they mean like it's under a pile of landfill somewhere in New Jersey?
Uh, no. It's in a landfill somewhere in Texas, Matt.
Oh, well,
Wizards dumps all their stuff in Texas.
Things are bigger in Texas.
That's true. Including landfills.
Yeah.
Uh, okay. Next up, let's talk about some censorship.

Matt gave me several options for this slide and I picked this one because of the toad. It's the Toad actually. Like it's the best Toad for this. It's perfect.
So So [laughter]
who here has played Dispatch? The phenomenal game by Ad Hawk. Uh that is uh been lovingly crafted uh sort of said it has a tone of like Twilight for boys and I'm here for it. Um, I love Dispatch. Uh, I really I I devoured it when I played it. It is It is absolutely phenomenal. Um, it just got released on the Switch and the Switch 2 and uh there's been a bit of a kurfuffle about uh some censorship in regards to the nudity portions of the game. There's like I think three or four moments of nudity in this. One of them, which is another graphic uh that Will did not use, is a character named Toxic who he's covered his like whole body is like toxic sludge and therefore his

clothes like burn off. So you just see whatever's dangling down there going the entire time while he's fighting a giant robot. Um it's an M-rated game that you know that's to be expected. Also the writing in it is absolutely phenomenal. Um Mayana uh who who was one of the lead writers on it just absolutely killed it. I got the I was I was able to play with her and Jasmine and I Ify at um PAX Unplugged. It was lovely to meet her. Um, but this game is great and now it's getting a bit dragged because of some interesting I would say international politicking between ad hoc the company uh Nintendo as a company and the uh essentially the CIO board which is a computer entertainment rating organization which is a nonprofit organization in Japan that does rating age ratings for video games like the ESRB does here. It's like they do A, B, C, D, or Z, I believe.

Now, there's a lot going on here. Um, because like people were kind of shocked that well, there's a couple different issues here, but let's I'm going to kind of go down them as we go and I'm sure people will yell out some other things in chat that I haven't sort of gotten back to, and we'll keep going back. Um, first the Switch 2 and the Switch has um games in it like The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 which you can see full uh genitalia in the first five minutes of character creation in in in that thing.
Both of those games actually I believe.
Um so so at first it seems like well why would Dispatch be censored? Why would they why would this happen? And everybody, and you know, this is where your reputation sort of gets you, rightfully so, kind of went Nintendo Nintendo bad. Nintendo normally do bad thing. Must be Nintendo fault. Um,
yep.
And

but then you kind of go back and forth. Well, like, well, then how did Cyber Punk, how did Witcher, like how what
how did Conqueror's bad fur day, Matt?
Yeah. Yeah. Um Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My Mystic sort of says it. Um, and and then you also, even though I I don't know uh particularly how much uh nudity and or lud is in these things, but the Nintendo e store has been uh a bastion for a trillion hentai titled games uh that just litter that thing entirely. So, it's not like there's been some things on the Nintendo store,
right?
Um and this is where it gets a little interesting. The other thing is um this censorship was not publicized well. Um I don't think it was not publicized well on purpose. I just don't think it was publicized well. I think this is a a moment of this is a this is a misstep. Essentially they didn't announce from

what I understand that it was going to be censored until a week before release which is well after uh people could still pre-order it. Um, and uh, even then on the Steam on I'm sorry, on the Switch page where you where you buy it, it was like the the that comment about it being censored was very low. I believe they've moved it up north or in the description now, way up top instead. Um, so there's there's some issue there to be taken with, you know, letting the customer know. I from what I understand, they have been issuing refunds for people that are not happy with it. you know, that's neither here nor there. But where it gets really interesting is sort of the why. Um, and after sort of digging through this, it seems like the reason why this was even a thing and why something like a cyberpunk could get away with it, not even get away with it, just have their game come out uncensored, is they essentially release different versions per uh region that has different

essentially zero or ESRB rating systems. Um, and but to do that adds another and maybe Jeff could even talk to this more at some point, but adds another vector and expense area like a cost of keeping another essenti this is the wrong terminology, but I'm just going to use it because I I understand retail a bit more than like the digital store. Essentially having to keep updating and keep track of another skew, which can also lead to more costs on whatever platform you are on. uh a and and can exacerbate the price that you pay to put your product on something like the Nintendo eShop. I think and again I have no insider information on this but it feels like because Ad Hoc is a small studio that again I think spent their money very wisely on voice acting and writing and and sort of like and the animation. The animation is is lovely in this game. uh they only had a limited amount of budget to do certain things and I think that

somewhere along the way after it was a a complete success story like through and through. Uh somewhere it got lost in the sauce that this was a line item to save some money and they just wanted to have one universal release and to do that it would have to be censored due to the zero uh rating system in places like Japan. So, since it had to be censored there and they only want to do one across the Nintendo eShop, it got censored everywhere.
Yep.
Um, is that does that did I does that sounds right? Yeah, that sounds right. That there that this is a question of selling a game to different markets with different sensibilities when it comes to in this case new to you specifically and the way that games are classified, right? that as a result of it being a smaller studio that didn't want to create a separate version, this was this was the version that they got essentially. Yeah.
Um
so we'll see. Again, I don't think this is a malicious thing. I think this is

something that fell through the again I think in the world that we sort of discuss whether it's your high guards or your dispatches or or your [laughter] your deadlocks or leagues, right? Because games that have infinite money and games that have no money are kind of sold and marketed if done correctly the same way. I think sometimes we just think that like everything is created equal and then oh why couldn't they do this because of x y and z and it's like well because everything at the end of the day is people and you only have so much time in the day to do it. Um and I think that this is one of those situations where because dispatch was such a huge hit, we all assume that it's a team of of a ton of folks that like totally are on top of all of this stuff. And I think this thing just sort of fell through the cracks. So, we'll see um what sort of

happens. I don't think they're going to do any changes, at least as of now. But I I wanted to talk about this story because again, in the climate of everyone getting so mad at everything instantly, like it also like didn't take me long to figure this to get as far down this rabbit hole as it did. Took me like five minutes,
right? But see, you wanted to understand and didn't just want to sit in your big upset and use it as an example to point at Nintendo and scream Nintendo bad C.
And there's plenty of things to do that for. Like, and I don't want to do it with this because it waters down that like,
right? We should do it accurately, right? We should be very willing to point at company and say company bad,
but we should do it for reasons that company actually deserves and not international ratings nonsense that is a little arcane and uh sometimes stuff like this happens.
Uh also, uh shout out to anyone who romanced Blond Blazer uh because that is the correct path and I'll fight anybody

else who says otherwise.
Oh, okay. Uh speaking of Nintendo and doing good things. OH YEAH,
Tomodachi Life. So, the last Tomodachi Life came out in 2014 and was met with some criticism for being very heterosexual and vanilla um essentially. And they promised that the next one would be more inclusive and better represent all players. Okay. And apparently they didn't forget that promise because the new Tomodachi life that just had a direct last week um has full options for your your character, right? Can um look like anything, have any pronouns, and date anybody. Uh which is essentially all anyone was asking for was you you'd sort of

like locked it down to just like heterero relationships. Maybe don't do that. And now they didn't. So great. Awesome. Um, very happy about that. Uh, by all accounts, the u my my blue sky feed just blew up right after the live went out. I'm not a big fan of games like Tomodachi Life. Just for me, I think they're really cool for the people who love them, but I look at them and my eyes glaze over. Um, but I'm real happy for the people who are like, "Oh my gosh, I was waiting for THIS AND IT'S GAY. IT'S SO GAY." GOOD. YEAH, this is an absolute win. I'm glad that they didn't sort of forget this because this is a long time coming too. Like
this is not something that was uh that was sort of like a hot the hottest button issue, right? Like
Yeah.
Uh or the freshest, I should say. Yeah. I believe the IG article, the headline is a decade after [laughter] like Yeah. They're they're they're doing it.
Yep.
So that's good.

Yeah. Okay, cool. Next [snorts] up in less great news, let's talk real quick about uh this GDC report uh that came out.
Yikes on bikes.
Yeah. Okay. So, the 2026 state of the games industry report is out uh and um we got the analysis through PC gamer, but the link to that PC gamer analysis and therefore the link to the report itself should you wish to view it directly will be in the show notes. the uh survey covered 2,300 respondents and in the United States 33% of respondents to this GDC survey of the industry said that they had been laid off in the past two years.
Yeah. 28% of all respondents internationally, including the US did.

That's not really a great sign in my opinion of a healthy industry.
Also, Richard, just to answer your question, I added that that is not a thing they put on the report. Dear God,
how Yeah. No. Um yeah, this is um this is the kind of report that like in other industries causes the government to get involved.
Correct. This is very very not good.
Yeah.
Yeah. Uh, and I think the main reason, by the way, this isn't like the top story is that there's not a lot of good analysis to do on this. There's not a lot of like soften the blow or say something more. If you want to dig deeper into it, you can look at the report, but this is just a giant warning

flare essentially that says, "Hey, the industry is not doing well." And there's not a lot more we can say about it than that, unfortunately. And there's going to be a lot of like I think the next two or three years is going to be really interesting and kind of not the best because of reports like this and because of how that's working and then the overall economy is probably going to spin down and then also hardware is going to get harder and harder to get. And I keep seeing like the reports of like, you know, again, this is stuff that they've been saying for years, but like they want companies want us to rent our systems or like space, I should say, like or speed or to play games remotely, right? Um, and I just don't see that like taking off the way that they think it will, but that'll also stagnate the other way because they're going to throw resources at it. So, the entirety of the games industry is going to take another hit from that side. Um, so I don't know. I

I'm this medium that I absolutely love. Um, it just keeps getting hit from every possible angle and
I don't know exactly what to do about it. I mean the the only silver lining and it's a it's will be good for a certain amount of people but still you know if if the industry tanks that will leave more space for like indie indies to sort of shine.
Yeah. But that still is not counting the irreparable damage to, you know, thousands upon thousands of of devs and people who work in this space's lives and livelihoods. Um, yeah. So, there's a there's a there's a depressing nonsense report. Um,
I didn't even quote some of the worst ones.
I know.
Yeah. There there's some stats in there that are like harrowing. Um because I

think the other thing and this is like worth bringing up is that it's not merely that the people being laid off are being laid off and um companies are engaging in these practices. It's also brain drain in the industry.
48% of those who responded to this survey who were laid off have been unable to secure a job at all. and 36% of the ones um and 36% haven't found other games industry employment at all. So, we're losing a ninth more than 10% third of a third of the games industry's talent and knowhow to this, right? That that's not sustainable. just just as like a note like losing that amount of talent and experience in a in a a medium that is an art form as much as it is a technical science.

Yeah.
Bad. That's that's the other part that I'm really worried about is that we will continue to lose talented people who will just go work retail and that makes the world like less great when it comes
the the burgeoning uh industry of retail.
Yo, I I I don't know that that's better or worse than gaming right now.
No, no, but I'm just saying, you know what I mean? Like even those jobs are not
Yeah. there, right? Like
Yeah.
Yep.
Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Let's uh Hey, hey, you ready to talk about layoffs and uh and brain drain?
Oh, wait. Didn't we just do that?
Oh, hey, Matt.
Can we go to a happy story?
No, we got one more. Everybody who you put on your taking off caps. Ash,
I don't know. I don't KNOW MUCH ABOUT THIS.

OKAY, GREAT. EXCELLENT. I HAVE THE DEEP DIVE for you. Several years ago, Ashes of Creation Kickstarted for $3.2 million with a whole bunch of promises and a whole bunch of promise. Um, it it's an MMO that started on Kickstarter. If you see where the story is going, congratulations. You have good pattern recognition. Um, and so it chugged along. It the streamers picked it up. It got some amount of social media traction. I'm eliding a lot, but it was it had a long development roadmap and um people were optimistic. I think if you were into the thing that Ashes of Creation was offering, which was a very grindy by their own description, old school RPG with heavy PvP, sort of in the same um millu as Oh god. Avalon.

There's a fantasy Eve. I think it's Avalon,
but Eve, that kind of thing where like there's a [cough]
playerdriven sandbox economy with playerdriven interactions and uh heavy focus on like realism, like real travel times and goods and markets and all. Okay, great.
And if you're into that, that seems cool that there would be another game to do that in that's not Eve or the other existing couple of handful in the space. Um, and uh, again, I'm eliding a fair amount here because it's not super relevant to this, I don't think. Um, it came out on Steam like a week ago. And then Friday, Friday, uh, one the one of the two co-founders of the studio that, uh, was putting together Ash of Creations spoke in a personal capacity on Discord and said, "I'm resigning the board. is uh making choices that I can't

ethically stand by and I'm resigning and most of the senior management is resigning in protest along with me. At which point the board issued warn Act notices. Um the War Act requires advanced notice of layoffs uh that are um incoming. And in this case, it was kind of interesting. The letters for the Warn Act were going to be dated um for over the weekend and said that essentially Ashes of Creation and the studio that created it, Intrepid, would cease to exist as of end of business today, February 2nd. Now, there's some interesting stuff going on. Some of which is deeply rooted in that uh gamers are furiously trying to find public access documents about Intrepid's corporate structure. I encourage people who are not corporate lawyers not to do

that.
Yeah,
that's a real easy one. The other one, and this is more of a feeling thing, is that a large number of people are feeling a little bit like it's hard to stand, like someone has sort of taken hold of the edge of the rug and begun sliding it ever so quickly in a specific direction at increasing speed because
a carpet drag.
Exactly. So, because this of the timing of the Steam release. So, there was a clause that they put in all of the Kickstarter stuff and a bunch of the backer documents from forever ago that if the game didn't release on Steam, they would refund everyone's money fully as sort of an anti- Rugpull protection clause. And the current line of thinking is that they released it on Steam to get the Steam bump. And that's a lot of money as people buy

it at 50 bucks a pop on Steam
and then, oh no, it doesn't work. Ethics problems. Guess we're going to have to shutter the company. That's the part that doesn't smell doesn't really pass the smell test here. Um, so there is more complicated stuff. I have seen some brief amount of chatter this morning as we were preparing that Valve is very aware that this is a problem and is looking into it, especially given the suddenness of this because I went looking on the Steam page for more information. And there were posts last week talking about February 13th dev streams and upcoming update roadmap timelines and like giving the appearance of a game that is still in early access and attempting to improve in a way that we would expect an early access live service game to do, right? We would expect that an early access um live service game would continue with updating their player base about further

improvements and continue to move through their early access roadmap because that's how early access works.
Mhm.
And then they just warn act and shut the whole company down in like 72 hours. That doesn't feel great. Doesn't check out. So, we're going to watch this. I don't know what, again, not a lawyer, not versed in corporate theory, don't know where the money went or any of that. Merely bringing this up as a thing that is breaking recently that seems a little weird. It's a little weird, Matt. Sometimes weird. Sometimes I just bring you stories about weird little guys. And turns out Ashes of Creation is just a weird little guy.
[snorts]
Maybe we get that UK those UK lawsuits going.
Yeah. I don't know. It'll be very interesting to see if Valve clause back.
Yeah.
Um
well, they might be a little busy. Uh

yeah, Valve's big. They can handle it.
That's true. That's true.
Okay.
All right. Final story.
Are you ready for some good news, Matt?
Yes.
Okay. I'm not gonna I'm I'm gonna be very happy now. This is a very good story and I'm very excited about it. Okay, so I've been playing a Butch Deadlock for reasons, TM, some of which you will see in the future. Um, and uh, part of that has been the Old Gods New Blood update, which I am going to say feels like they're about ready to take after after they finish with this update process, and we'll talk about why it's still in process. I think Deadlock might be ready for like actual release release in like the not terribly distant future. So, we'll see. Um, Old God's New Blood is the I would say one of the biggest updates they've had during the closed beta period. They have completely revamped both bases. They look amazing now. The patron is no longer a floating ball. It's a giant like ethereal

projection over like a Wickerman style effigy of the of your patron. Looks great. The bases look visually distinct from one another. That's great. They also did this amazing thing where they have six new characters. So they are in order from left to right. Apollo, Celeste, Graves, Rem, Silver, and Ventor. Now, may I say as someone who doesn't play a lot of Deadlock very quickly, um, not to harp on the Highguard stuff, but the way that even this image is put together, the way that the characters are presented, even in a still image, And it comes down to art style, but it also comes down to sort of like pose and and a bunch of different things. Like teaches me a lot about them. I don't know a thing about the lore of Deadlock and I already can understand kind of sort of what these folks are about. You put that next to the the hero

matchup like thing on the High Guard website and I have no idea what any of them are like. There are micro ways to do this character design and get characters out into the ether and there are there there are macro ways and this is a very nice micro way that they seem to be doing.
Yep. So, uh the way that this works is fascinating and lovely. So, when Old God's New Blood came out, none of these six characters were available. Instead, what you got in your hideout, in your lobby, was a box for your votes. And you earn votes by playing games. is you get four extra votes for the first game of either standard or street brawl. It's the new AAM equivalent. It's 4v4. You don't control your items. It's very fast. It's a lot of fun. Um and you would vote for new characters. So, so far Rem, the little purple Snoozy boy.
Yep.
Um who is full of character and just wants to take a little nap and also wants the entire enemy team to take a

little nap directly into a Dynamo. um one uh and is an absolute menace and I love them. Uh Graves won last week. Uh the necromancer also a terror. She summons zombies and floating skulls and has an undead hand and tethers people and drains their souls and all kinds of you know normal necromancer stuff.
Yeah.
Um
but the remaining four up for a vote and so the we're we're getting characters like every three or four days. I believe it's going to be Mondays and Thursdays it looks like based on the pattern. We get one tonight, we'll get another one Thursday um until they've released all of them. And I'm super excited. Uh they're also doing a whole bunch of under the hood changes. And the street brawl mode, I think, is really excellent. If you have access to Deadlock and we're like, "Wow, this looks really cool, but there's a lot of complicated stuff that I can't get into right now." I encourage you to boot it up and play Street Brawl because you will pick a character and a lot of the decision paralysis has been removed from you. You get to choose between three items three times per round. Pick the

one that looks cool and games are like 10 minutes.
Yeah, that's cool.
Much faster. It It really leans into the hero shooter side of Deadlock while also allowing you to sculpt and build.
Caveat, it is hideously unbalanced because it's going to be there's a whole bunch of RNG involved both in team creation and in item selection. Hideously unbalanced. Don't take it seriously. just go and have a good time. Um, but I'm really enjoying this update and I feel like it is emblematic of the improvements that Valve is making to Deadlock and I really cannot stress this enough. I am so excited for Deadlock to hit full release so that we can see the rest of what Valve has planned for this because I really do think it is both as a game that I love and as a game that I'm watching in the space. I think it has a lot a lot a lot of potential to do something really good for MOBAs and hero shooters by being this weird crossover.

I'm really excited about it and I like it a lot.
Nice.
Yeah.
Well, there you go. Well, everybody, this has been Games for Breakfast for February 2nd, the year of some Lord 2026. Thank you so much for uh indulging in all of these gaming and tech news and some He-Man stories with us. Yeah, [laughter]
you man stories.
Uh, right after this, WILL WILL BE GOING over on Twitch to basically help have you help him figure out what there is to like about World of Warcraft as we craft our world of content around it over on Twitch. Um, I'm very It only took 184 days to get to February. [laughter]
You're not wrong.
You're not wrong. Um, but yeah, so please uh if you're on Twitch right now, stick around for that. If you are on YouTube and that sounds interesting, head on over to twitch.tv/extra credits where we'll be uh doing that. And by we, I mean will because I have to go and do other work and meetings and stuff.

Yay.
Unfortunately, but you do get to do one last fun thing before you go.
That is true. my favorite thing, which is doing the same outro that we do every time on this show to help foster community and make sure we all start our weeks correct and in the right mindset, even though there's some negative stories in this in this space. Hopefully, the positivity of the show has washed off and therefore we can all engage in this moment now. So now, just like always, okay, I need you to roll a d6. I just need you to roll a d6. is the first person to roll a d6 in chat is where I'm going. Here we go. This is just like we do it every time. Number one through six. One through six. I got a six.
Got a six. That is an even. Okay, I'm going to go this way. Then I need Oh, a three. That's a diagonal. Great. Got it. Four. I'm going up. Another four. I can't qu Oh, I can do that. I can go that direction. Oh god. Oh no. Oh no. [music]