Nintendo Piracy Site Takedown, Subnautica 2 Lawsuit & A New SAG Contract! | Gaming News

Good morning, Matt. Oh, 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 tech news, but then ALSO WE'LL BE TALKING ABOUT SUPERMAN. UH, that's we are going to do it. I'm not going to spoil anything, but as the show progresses, there will be super references to non-spoiler super things. Um, and by the way, of course, you know I'm talking about Superman 64. It's going to be a full guide uh for you uh with no spoilers. It's going to be difficult. We'll cut out all the intrinsic deeply moving story lore from Superman 64 and uh just get to that hardcore gameplay that you really want. There was a Superman 64? Uh, Will, I can't tell, are you doing a bit because Superman 64 is notoriously

one of the worst N64 games ever, or do you actually not remember that there was a Superman 64? I'm doing a bit in that I remember that it existed, but I have no memory of its contents. Uh, shout out in Brador Janet on YouTube or Twitch right now, or message us on Blue Sky on Nebula if you're watching us over there. Hello. Hello, Rocky. Um, if you remember Superman 64 and if you can somehow prove you beat it, uh I will give you a shout-out on next week's show. If you can prove that you beat it as a child, of course, right? Not now. You can't
a photo taken of your CRT monitor. Right. I need you I need you selfie-ing before selfies were a thing with your monitor having beat a video game when you probably had access to neither a camera nor the foresight to understand that many years later two guys on the internet would ask you for proof that you beat Superman 64 as a kid. Yeah. And also, yes, if we want to get

technically correct, which we all know is the best kind of correct, it's Superman the New Adventures of Superman, not Superman 64. Okay, that's good. Uh Well, how you doing? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Um so, we have uh a specific thing where we have we have we have a thing that we need to uh preface about this week's show. And it is that Matt and I have been given a task. A task most serious, a task filled with gravitas, which is during this week's show, Matt and I need to come up with a name for a pet because at Matt's birthday celebration uh several months ago, we raised uh a little over $5,000, which translated into a little over $10,000 with the matching uh the Best Friends Animal Society acquired for their big summer fundraiser. And as part of that, we get to name an animal. So, uh feel free to put your animal name suggestions. We Now, here's the problem. We can kind of give them vibes about what kind of animal we'd like to name, but they can't tell us that there's an animal waiting

for a name. My first question to the team at Best Friends Animal Society was, "Hey, can you send us some pictures of animals that need names still?" And they said, "Sadly, we cannot." Uh so, which is totally fine. Uh so, I got to put this on the desk. I can't push the French press down with my hand. I'm just not strong enough. I'm just not super enough. Um so, we will be uh basically coming up with names here. Martin, short for Martinelli, going on the list.
It's on the list. Uh Also, uh real quick before it zips away, uh hello DJ. Welcome. Now, you do know that we are here. We're happy that you are, and uh hopefully staying up late for you is worth it. I I I I pitch an animal name. Maybe this is all fate. Maybe an animal could be uh named by you. Jeez. Okay. We want to be kind. Katsune Meowku. Yeah. There's some anime fan somewhere that

will absolutely adopt a cat on the basis of it being named Katsune Meowku.
find that very funny. I also want to make sure that like it's something that would entice a person like the I need the Venn diagram of the adoptee or the adopter to be wide. Yeah, that's true. So, I can't call it like Riffs RPG. Like it can't it can't it can't be that
you could. It would just not be a very good name. Walpole I saw Walpole Walpole out there. Yeah. Uh Okay. So, we're going to we're going to have this sort of in the background. The other thing we need to preface is that Matt is going to disappear into the ether momentarily because he's got a delivery coming and he has to get off his front porch. Uh Yeah. Uh we thought it could get here before the show started, but we were incorrect and we're just going to have You know what's going to happen, Will? I'm going to start talking about Superman. Uh and then the doorbell's going to ring. Um

You know, before we talk about Superman, we could talk about the doorbell ringing for a different place. That is a lovely transition, Will. Yeah. Uh because they've temporarily lost signal from our delivery driver. All right.
Oops. Black hole. So, uh we we we know that we've pitched you all Nebula like a million times. But we have a new reason to pitch you all Nebula. And also, there's no reason to pitch you all this on Nebula if you're already watching this on Nebula uh because you've hopefully already watched this. This is uh friend of the show Maggie May Fishes new series that premiered last night. I watched it. I I wasn't able to get to the premiere. It was a couple weeks ago in LA, but it premiered on Nebula last night of Amy's Dead End Dream House, a kid show for adults. Y'all, it's so good. I'm so proud of Maggie and and Will, her partner who who directed this and created this with her.

It is so damn good. It is so It is so damn good. Normally, I I there's a way to do a show like this that just like doesn't hit, and this is the exact opposite. It hits like on all cylinders. There is a I don't want to spoil a thing. There is a fake commercial that had Jamie and I laughing so hard that like I think my stomach still hurts this morning. Like it's It is full of heart. It is hilarious. It is insightful. And I don't really want to spoil anything else about it. Please go check it out if you have an HBO subscription. If you do not, this is how much I believe in this show. Don't use our code for it. Find Amy's code. We'll put Amy's code in the show notes. Like Amy, I keep saying Amy cuz she does it so well. Maggie's code in the show notes. Yeah. Uh because this is an absolute banger, and I I love that Nebula did this. I want more shows like this. Num num num. Eat them up. Uh so

someone said, "Please elaborate on the kid show for adults part." Great, I can do that. Imagine if you were watching Blue's Clues, uh but instead of finding something silly in Blue's Clues, you were finding something like your will to live or an interview suit. Kind of. Uh yes, the I will spoil the first episode. Uh the topic is jobs. Now, how would an adult in a fun cartoony Pee-wee's Playhouse kind of vibe thing deal with the the 2025 uh element of all of our existence of having, keeping, and finding jobs. Go forth and watch Amy's Dead End Dream House. It seems I'm so thrilled. I'm so happy for them for doing it. Uh, yeah. Anyway, I just wanted to to gush for a moment. All right. Uh, next up, uh, we're going to we're going to

give Matt a soapbox. And Matt, this is the way this is going to work. You have until your package gets here to talk about Superman. I have until my package gets Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, you're on a random clock. Ready, go. Tell Tell us about Superman, Matt. What What did you Should I go see Superman? Uh, apparently, uh, kindness and empathy had a really good day at the box office. Yeah. Um, look, the idea that Superman has become a bit of a culture war between like the Snyderverse and and and James Gunn's new DC Studios Superman is on its face stupid. Um, however, uh, this movie dropped and at this graphic that you're seeing here, uh, I did a full podcast. We'll have it in the show notes of the only podcast about movies where Shahir is out of town, so Nando from Nando v Movies, uh, seen in this image dressed as Justin Hammer, which felt somewhat appropriate. Um, uh, basically, the two of us go do a long hour and a half deep dive into it. I'm

not going to talk about spoilers here for the Superman film. However, um, what if a character, a known immigrant to the planet Earth, uh, who stood for kindness and empathy and the ideals of the best possible way, uh, humanity can express itself? What if What if a movie just showed that? Like, what if they did it? What if they did the thing they need to do the thing?
that sounds like nonsense of the woke variety, obviously. Good point here. Fun movie. Very chaotic fights. Every I feel like every character was cast incredibly well. I have issues with the movie. It's not a perfect film. Actually to that chaos of Abara's comment there, the pacing of this movie is the thing that I could see turn some people off. Like that's what I want to talk when I'm talking about this movie, I don't want to talk about the culture war I want to talk about like oh, it does

all this stuff really well. It could have done this. Like I personally like the frenetic kind of wild card chaos energy of it. Because I like that in in in James Gunn's style. I can entirely see a group of people going to the movies and being like Woah, what what like I can I can see it and you would not be wrong to criticize that. I think there's an artistic intent behind it. I have not seen it but I will say that um one of the things that is often left unconveyed in my opinion with Superman is that he's fast. Like flash fast. Right? Like that that like there is there is a sense of power and speed that is conveyed with some amount of freneticness that doesn't come through just by showing like speed lines. Yeah, this this is not so much just in the fight scenes though or in an action scene. This is in the structure of the film and the editing and there's a lot going on in this movie but one of the

things that people were afraid of especially with the the Justice Gang being in it. Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl and Mr. Terrific. Mr. Terrific steals the show. I have I'm not a big DC Comics head. I did not know much about Mr. Terrific and now I want to know everything about Mr. Terrific. Mr. Terrific is one of the underrated like low-key super powerful heroes in in the DC verse that gets overshadowed by Superman a lot.
Yeah. Just like J'onn J'onzz. J'onn J'onzz does too. They're both leaguers, I believe. Uh the Justice League is very different than the Avengers, by the way. Yeah. If you If you have no experience with DC, go watch Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, the animated shows. Uh Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor is great. Rachel Brosnahan's Lois is my favorite Lois ever. I kind of expected that to be the case. And Corn Swet's Superman is everything I want Superman to be.

It is full of heart. There is moments of actual uh emotional and tragedy. And the entire time Superman is conflicted about things that Superman would be conflicted about. And uh there are other characters around Superman who don't blindly think the way Superman thinks. It It It found a way to to in 2025 display a lesson without feeling preachy. And I I'm I need to see it again because I don't know how it did it. Um It's It was magical. Also, I thought Krypto would be grating. Not like the currency, like the dog. Um It's funny. I just Again, I don't follow DC Comics much. So when I wrote the initial podcast description, I wrote Krypto with a C. And until this morning, I was like, "Why does this look weird?" And I was like, "Oh, it's the same as

the currency. That's Oh, it's with a K. Kryptonite. Krypto. I got it. I'm back." No, James Gunn, I should have known, does not miss when it comes to dealing with animals on screen after Guardians 3. Absolute masterclass in what these movies should be. An incredibly good start to DC Studios, in my opinion. And I hope people can get over whatever personal problems they have and go out to the movies if they're comfortable and enjoy this film because it is worth enjoying.
go give this one a shot. I'm not normally like a movies in theaters kind of person, but um the descriptions of Superman of this version of Superman being more like Justice League because the league is very good at telling big complicated stories from multiple points of view that nobody not even Superman can solve alone and I think that that's a really

big deal, right? That like even Superman needs help, which is one of the things I like about Superman. There's been some criticism in this movie because a lot of the time and I'm this is no spoilers beyond the trailer. Superman gets his butt kicked a bunch. Sick. And some people don't like seeing that. Um but and and and I'll even say this, there's a moment in the beginning where that happens and I'm like, that don't make sense. And it kind of threw me for a second and then eventually because and I do trust James Gunn and the storytellers here, um it did make sense. It just do what all the I didn't have all the information starting and therefore something felt weird, but then it was like an aha. Uh I don't know, man. I've been thinking about this movie all weekend. Also uh there are two Well, there's one sort of like proto-punk song and one pop-punk song in the movie that are very um I don't know. Uh go listen to the soundtrack. Uh it's on Spotify or whatever. The two last songs

on it if you're interested in that. I don't want to spoil too much. Again, it's for some different things, but there's uh is a punk rock vibe in in in in an element of this movie, which I did not expect. Good. Um and yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It was pretty It was pretty great. You should go see it. Uh I loved it very much. And if you do want an actual spoilery time with me and Nando, we nerd out pretty hard on the podcast that is available on Nebula or wherever fine podcasts are are not sold because turns out uh podcasts No must podcasts. No must podcasts. Uh But if you'd like to buy our podcast, remember to subscribe to Nebula. Yeah, yeah, right, right. Uh anyway
Yeah, it was great. It was great. Well, if you do go see a film, it is a thousand percent worth it. Uh I'm I'm going to see if I can rally the roomies and go this weekend. But uh we'll see. Uh okay, cool, great. Where's Where's the package, Matt? We've temporarily lost We've temporarily LOST IT'S GONE FOREVER.

OKAY, GREAT. AWESOME. Uh speaking of Well, it's not really speaking of things that have passed. Okay. Things that have passed one another, a new milestone has been hit on Steam and I find this fascinating. So, there are two different ways that you can rank all of the games on Steam. And they're exemplified by two different websites. One of them is SteamDB, which is what I normally use when I'm trying to find out information about a game, trying to find current player account, trying to shop for games for stream. The other one, which I'm less familiar with, is Steam250.com. And Steam250.com had a shakeup, which is that for the better part of a decade, more than a decade. Oh god, Portal 2 came out when I was in college.
Yeah, that was a long time ago. Portal 2 has been the best rated game on Steam

for very, very, very long time because Portal 2 is a sequel to a game that was an accident. Right? Or remind me that Portal was a tech demo that shipped with the Orange Box and then became a cult classic because it was so flipping good. And then they were like, what if we made a sequel to the game that was so flipping good? And the sequel was so flipping good and did a whole bunch of really great things and great awesome no notes. And now it's not Portal 2 anymore. On steam250.com, it's now Stardew Valley. So uh to to commemorate this, I actually tried to take cuz the Steam thing is always the pictures of the different games sort of sideways. So I just grabbed as many screenshots as I could this morning quickly and made this crap. Yeah, right. Uh yeah, it only came out in 2011. That's only 14 years ago. That's illegal. Stop that. Stop making me feel old. Um the um

So that's kind of a big moment. Now, I should clarify that's only according to steam250.com. Uh it has several I'm not kidding. Hundreds of a percentage of um uh ratio between positive and negative reviews on SteamDB before it is officially rated better than Portal 2 according to SteamDB's metrics. But one of the
anticipating it at this point.
we're anticipating that it will occur. Um and I thought it would be kind of cool to mention this because I just want to point out I just want to point out that the two highest-rated games on Steam are um the sequel to a beloved tech demo that got away from Valve and a one-person project that is better than it has any uh right to be. Like the amount of lightning that is captured in Stardew Valley's bottle is

wild, especially for a one-person project. Like it's wild for a studio of any size. And then you're like, oh yeah, by the way, this is by one person. And you're like
Nuts. Huh? So
Crazy. Congrats to Stardew. Uh this is a huge victory Uh and if you don't own Stardew Valley I don't even play a lot of Stardew Valley, but I will say that like multiplayer, it can be kind of chill. It's very chill. We did it for a while. We did it on maybe hell, you know what? Well, we could go back. We could go back this Thursday when we play over on Twitch. We could go back to our Stardew Valley game if that still exists on either of our I don't I don't know. Well, well, we We can see.
It was a celebration. Yeah, we can we can we can look back. Um Yeah. Uh but yeah, that's so that's that's pretty awesome. Um so we just wanted to mention that. All right. Now we get to get to the big stuff. By which I mean Zoe is here. Zoe's here. It's still weekend for Zoe, so she doesn't have a collar on. Okay.

So, uh this past weekend uh Nintendo part paired up with with a new a new partner. The FBI. So, the this is sort of not new, but I did want to point it out as like the first of probably many for the Switch 2. We've already seen that Nintendo has gotten far more litigious and far more um ban happy, we'll say, with piracy on the Switch 2. They are really trying hard to Nintendofy the launch of their brand new platform. Um and uh they managed to get an FBI takedown of a popular uh Switch 2 piracy site. So, question. Real quick about this story. Is Nintendo the like Nintendo doesn't control the FBI?

Correct. So, it's not Nintendo doing it. It's just that that's the FBI looking into a thing that Nintendo based on Nintendo's copyright etc.
Correct. Nintendo would have prompted this, right? Because it's a copyright and piracy thing. It's I don't believe generally the FBI generally speaking doesn't have time to go after things that are or might be copyright violations. Traditionally, the way that it works is someone says, "Hey, this thing is a flagrant violation of our copyright." Usually, historically speaking for those that remember the MPAA and the RIAA um Who remembers the AA twins from the good old Napster days? Yeah. Um and then a takedown happens uh as a result of a a lot of like um submissions of like, "Yeah, this is a this is a thing." Yeah. So, um I want to be clear. I don't have a I don't know enough about nsw2u.com,

which is the site that was taken down. Um I am not saying that, you know, putting up games before they're out is good. I'm not saying that hosting whole realms of Nintendo games is good. What I am saying is that it's very interesting to me how quickly Nintendo is going for the throat with Switch 2 stuff. Right? If you recall, there was a long protracted lengthy thing about the Switch emulator, right? And the and the original sort of Switch um piracy problem as it was um laid out. And whether because of that or because it's the new system or both, Nintendo is much more quickly going directly for the throat on piracy for the Switch 2. We're seeing a lot of bans. Um I did want to I I
This also Oh, sorry. I'm just jumping in. This also isn't just like uh clandestine US thing. Apparently, the FIOD, which is a Dutch agency uh that investigates financial crimes, uh is in

the statement of the uh FBI on the site I I I believe. So, that basically suggests that the website itself that was hosting has ties in the Netherlands. No one quite knows yet, but that's just all so like this is not just for once uh you know this this feels international. Yeah, correct.
In many different ways. Uh and Nintendo's in a bit of international hot water for their current stance on bans as well. Um uh there is a this was actually from during our break, but we didn't have room to fit it in last week, so I thought I'd put it in here. Um there is uh thanks to Nintendo Life for the story, the um Brazilian consumer rights watchdog uh has um issued a complaint with Nintendo about banning consoles for piracy.

Um because of the impact that it has on the secondary market, right? Like if if like if you you lose the ability to maintain value in the console if it's banned, which is an angle I had not considered. And Well, but but here's the other thing. So, so far from what I understand, and again, I don't have any love for these corpos, but I just want to be clear what we're what we're saying and what we're accusing folks of. So far, to my knowledge, no Nintendo Switch 2 has been bricked. Correct.
They have locked people's accounts that detect piracy on the thing. Whether or not they're detecting that correctly, you lose that and that then in in in turn makes your Switch 2 with that account, unless you make a new account, kind of useless. My understanding is that it may be slightly more significant than that and that the ban applies to the hardware level and that regardless of how many accounts you transfer to the Switch 2, it may be impossible to get that switch to back online. That is I

have not seen that, but I'm happy to look into it.
that's being launched by the Brazilian copyrights group is that the um is that uh banned switches are showing up on the second-hand market and that that is a problem, right? Because uh someone attempts to do piracy, the console gets banned, they sell the console, and then the only reason that it would be a problem worthy of a um of a complaint of this nature would be if you can't remove that by putting your own account in. Tied to the uses of flash memory cards and specifically the uh mix switch device company. At least one user has now reported buying a second-hand switch to from major retailer with a ban in place prompting fears of the banned console. But like, okay. This is the problem with these stories. Sure. And this is why I I I I want to I don't even know how to dig into this further. So, what this is saying at least one user has now reported buying a second-hand switch to from major retailer with a ban in place, but

it doesn't say what that ban is. Did the retailer in Brazil just have a banned account on a switch to that they didn't factory reset? Like, or is it factory reset and it's still banned like we I have yet to find the answer to that. Tell you what, Matt. You know. I'll grab some piracy cartridges, we'll get my switch banned, and let's see what we can do about it. Let's Let's really Let's really work this in an expensive way.
Let's do some science with it. No, I think it's a good question. I do want to dig more into it. I have not been um I've not been looking uh too deeply into it, mostly because um This is kind of interesting. I don't think that it matters for the merits of the complaint from this watchdog group, right? in Brazil. I think that the the um it's the Oh. Procon SP, which is São Paulo's

office of Brazilian Consumer Protection and Defense Program. There you go. That's the full name of the watchdog group. Um I think their complaint has some amount of merit regardless, right? That like there is a level to which hardware is losing in here is potentially or actually losing value to be resold, which is a consumer protection issue.
But we haven't seen it. Like the second the second that we have verifiable proof that Nintendo can hit a button and make the entire hardware in a Switch 2 inoperable, then I rally and scream bloody murder at them on this show and many other places. Yeah. We have not seen that yet. Mhm. Um and I think the the um I want to keep talking about these stories, but I want to make sure because we live in a headline economy, I want to

make sure like even now companies have not or companies websites have dropped the word bricked. Yeah. I I I've I've been trying to be very careful.
Not not and not dropped, I should say have adjusted it saying like bricked the console's ability to connect to specific online serve Like it's like you're you're keeping the buzzword, but that's not what bricked means. And and like again, Yeah. the second the second that we see this from Nintendo, gloves come off. I just want to make sure that because I have yet to be able to dig up like that specific thing, then that we're not just like getting mad at a thing that is not fully the thing we're mad at.
So, I I think
just my opinion, too. Yeah, yeah, I know. I think I'm a little more

I'm a little more on the I dislike because of the always connected nature of like I love I dislike the Big Brother aspect of this like a lot, right? Like the um the the fact that I would have to Faraday cage my switch in order or turn off or airport mode or whatever, you know, but like functionally Faraday cage or whatever, my switch in order to do something that I feel is within my rights as provided by the DMCA in order to avoid Nintendo doing something that like this to my switch, I think regardless of what the long-term outcome is is the point where I have a problem, right? Like there are software operations which I should be allowed to do because it's my switch. I own it. I

bought it. I bought the physical hardware, right? And now Nintendo's saying that I can't do I can't do things with it because they don't like it even though there's no From but from my understanding, and this is where it gets gray. Again, I know this sounds like I'm defending them. I'm not. I'm defending specificity. What they are saying is if you modify this thing, you cannot access the online services that we provide for this thing. Right. That's what they're saying.
Correct.
Is that a it Is that a dick move? Yeah. Is that well within the knowledge of when we purchased the thing and within their rights? Yep. Like so what I what I think the actual overstep is is if they completely like bork the hardware. So yeah, so I agree that that is a that that that is a specific delineating factor. I just am already annoyed with

them now about enforcing this, right? Like I'm already annoyed with them as is, right? Because I think that while they can, they shouldn't. Right? Like and that It's bad for them.
Like again, I know nothing. Like we we we this website, which uh where did it go? Where did it go? The one the FBI has. Um NSW2U. Oh yeah, I think that's a different case. Wouldn't it be very correct?
Right. Like like if they're just uploading ROMs of unreleased games and and ish, then like yeah, get that thing out of here.
Correct.
I just look, there are so many reasons to hate so many companies. And the I want to make
Sure. We're hating them accurately. We're Yes. Like is that I know that sounds weird, but yes, because otherwise when you come at these things if if if ever there was a large enough thing where the the anger swelled and it wasn't accurate, what that's going to do is deflect off of

what could essentially be something else bad that is accurate. And then there's a well, then none of this is real. Like it's gestures broadly at world. I just want to make sure that when we are criticizing, we are criticizing uh accurately. Mhm. Uh and when and when we don't have the information, especially I think Will, you and I are are fairly hopefully good at this by this point. Um we could say like, oh, well, if it's A, then I feel like this. If it's B, then I feel like this. You know, like cuz we want to make sure that we're kind of covering the bases of that. Um I that's it. I I I This is not a a defense of Nintendo or or anything like that. It is just if we're going to nail them to the wall, we should have all the facts. We should have all the facts and all the staples. Staples will be coming into the storyline later, not quite yet, I don't believe. Uh but we will be talking about that as well. Yeah. Uh okay. Is it Is it Where Where's your package?

This is the This is THE OTHER THING.
KNOW, MAN. I keep checking. P.S. While we're While we're While Matt's checking on his package, don't forget we're looking for the name of an animal. The name of a pet.
Yeah. Okay. Actually, can we back up for a second? I want I want to retroactively start a fun thing. Before we end every story, we need to come up with the animal name that we're calling for that story. So, the first story Sure.
I'll I'll start.
Crypto? Uh well, no. Yeah, so well, that's the second story. Amy's Dead in Dreamhouse. There is a character named Cindy in that show. I'll let you figure out based on the picture we showed which character that is. I'm going to put Cindy up for that one, okay? Just so we can kind of move this forward.
Cindy. Crypto is fine. Uh I think that's A-okay. What would we What would we put for the Stardew Valley? Ooh, what's your favorite Stardew Valley character that would make a great pet name?
Yeah. Chat, what's your favorite Stardew Valley character? We got to get these Slam them in. 7-second delay is really hurting us

here, but we're going to wait for it. Uh Abby. Lots of people like Abby, I know. Abigail. Yeah, a lot The Abigail is winning in in Yeah, Abigail or Harvey. There's lots of Abigails. Yeah. The worms, Emily, Maru. Okay. Okay. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. So, right now, okay. Mr. Valley. I think cuz right now there were three Abbys in a row or Abigail. I'm going to put Abigail. Cool. All right. And then with the FBI uh seizing a Nintendo Switch to piracy site, what is the animal's name, the equivalent of that for this story? Barbossa. Brickie is good. Brickie is good.

Uh let's see what else we got. Fido. Mulder or Scully. These are also good. Oh! Hoover. Pink short for Pinkerton. I don't want to force an animal to live with the name Pinkerton. That seems That seems cruel. Captain ACAB. Steely. Jack. What animal name says I'm Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Is it Bandit? Bandit. Bandit's also the name of the dog in Johnny Quest, a show that I have not thought about in a very long time. Uh so
Cool. We're going to keep We're going to keep this Oh, Swiper's good, too. Swiper? Yeah.
But I I when I I said Bandit, we're going to move on. Bandit is very funny. Okay, I like this. This is good. All right. Uh in
Hey! Good news.
In better good news, uh we're happy to follow up that the SAG-AFTRA

membership approved 95 to 95.04% to 4.96% the interactive media agreement of 2025 for SAG-AFTRA. Um this is ratifying their current deal with the industry and concluding the video game strike. Um which is bit which had been suspended pending the ratification of this deal. So, that's good um that But is a deal that the membership voted on overwhelmingly and that uh folks in SAG can get back to work and that's good. Yeah, I believe it was What did you say the percentage already or no? Yeah, 95.04 to 4.96. Sorry, I was checking the six stops away, but now it's a block away as opposed to being 10 blocks away. So I don't know what's happening. Um Matt, it went to the back rooms to get to you faster. To get to avoid traffic. Fran Drescher, uh president of SAG-AFTRA, which always puts a smile on my face. Uh says, "I commend the strong leadership of interactive media agreement negotiating chair Sarah um

Elmara, uh who remained steadfast through 3 years of hard bargaining while facing many challenging headwinds during a challenging negotiation cycle. This deal achieves important progress progress around AI protections. The progress it is in the name The progress is the name of the game. My sincere respect goes out to the entire video game performer community and all of their allies for their solidarity during the strike, which provided the necessary leverage to secure the deal's many essential gains." Mhm. So Look, and I 95.04% is a good like that means a a a decent amount of people are happy with this thing. Yeah. So I I would well Yes. Yes. Happy enough with this thing.
Happy enough with that thing to get back to work. We've talked about this a couple different times about uh negotiation and if everyone's happening uh sorry, if everyone's happy, it's not an actual like it's not confirmed. Like nothing's actually moved.
No, that's fair. Yeah, you have to kind of
Yeah, they they are satisfied. Yeah. Yeah. And again, these are protections

for the next coming years. The problem the the the real problem is like contracts run out and then you have to do it again. Um And a lot of times, you know, things are are moved to kick the cans are kicked and while there'll be some gains then in what, 5 years or whatever when this I don't know when this contract is uh is up.
There's there's provisions that go into 2027. I don't know when they renegotiate. Yep. But I mean
It's good news. I don't want to I don't want to dour it with uh the world. Yeah. All right, what's our what's our pet name for the SAG-AFTRA strike? Yep. Chat, what what what what pet name would you give a pet named after the SAG-AFTRA video game strike?
Collie is good. It's specific to a type of animal for collective bargaining. That's good. Yeah. Ziggy, Saggy Siggy Striker?
Lassie Striker I like striker.
Striker's good because it's it's generic

enough that could go to a lot of different things. Fran is very funny. Union, Teemo Are you really going to curse a pet to be named after the worst league champ? Yeah. Like you're really going to you're going to launch that curse at them? Like why?
I think striker's good. I think striker's good. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. All right. Um Cuz striker could be so many different animals or a reference to uh your ninth favorite Mortal Kombat 3 character. So
Ninth favorite. He He has it Okay. Anyway. Um Next up, let's talk about a really good a really good move. Okay. So y'all remember when the Switch 2 launched? I remember. Okay, you remember how there were like no stories except for two, right? There were two stories, one good, one funny bad that got fixed, and that was it. And other other than that, the

Switch 2 launched went so well that there was like no news, right? The news was the numbers, right? Okay. So, one of those stories was that Walmart gave everybody snacks, and that was cool. And the other one was that GameStop employees, in attempt to overzealously do some loss prevention, ended up stapling the receipts directly to the front screen of a switch too. Not great. Through the box. I mean like the way it's packaged the screen is right to the top cardboard and they were stapling the the receipts on Yeah. And importantly, um they immediately made everything right. They gave everyone who was affected new new uh switch twos and uh you know, apologized and was like, "Yep, that's our bad. Someone was a little overzealous and all of that." Well, they decided, and this is a rare GameStop W. This is super
Call it out when you see it. They decided that they were going to get the stapler, the stapler in question, uh a a certificate of authenticity along

with some staples that actually went into switch consoles and they repaired the first switch two that got stapled, they got it repaired, and it's part of this auction and they're auctioning it all off for charity, which I think is a surprisingly good move. Um at when it when it initially launched like uh like a week ago, um this article from Polygon's from the 9th, they'd already raised uh $15,000 uh or the the the top bid was $15,000. Uh it ends in two days from when we're recording right now and the uh lead bid on this again, charity auction, is $249,900 to charity for auctioning off a stapler, a switch two, and a certificate of authenticity. I think it comes in a nice glass case, too. I Yeah, right? Like that's pretty cool.

Right? Like to take to take what is uh like and they're owning it. They're like, "Yeah, we goofed." Like if you want to own our goof, right? Then like donate to charity and you can own the goof that we did, right? And like that is a very rare corporate W to just take the uh to to like take like we screwed up so big that everyone on the internet made fun of us and we're owning that. We own that everyone's making fun like that's great. 100% um big fan of that. Uh yeah, incredibly rare GameStop W in in a in a period of time where GameStop has been a terrible company full of crypto and mistreating their employees and a bunch of other stuff and this erases none of that. This is a This is a W. Um so if anyone's got 250 grand to spare You know, it's kicking around on the couch cushions.
You know, just just chilling. You can give it to charity or you can give it to us. You can just give it to

us. The package that's waiting for is actually a duffel bag full of small denomination unmarked non-sequential bills. Yeah. So Uh yeah, I don't know. I I this this this warmed the the the heart a little bit that that GameStop This feels like at the initiative of like employees at that specific GameStop that then like went on You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Like it feels it feels grassroots, but maybe I'm wrong. Uh Who knows? Yeah, absolutely. Uh Okay, what's
Also, I like to tax um whatever the name of that character from Office Space is the name of for the name of the pet for the story. The name is Milton. So unless anyone can come up with something better than Milton. I feel like lots of people are going to assume it's Paradise Lost. No, it's Office Space. Yeah. That's fine. Stanley like the stapler cuz it is a Stanley stapler.

Yeah. Bradley Bradley, Meowton if it is a cat. That's See, that's the problem. We don't know what kind of animal it is. That Yeah. Yeah, that that that is the problem. I like Swingline. I like Swingline.
Swingline is fun. How many How many human names do we have on here so far? Martin, Katsune, Meowku, Walpole, Abigail, Cindy, Crypto, Bandit, Striker. Yeah, let's do Swingline. Okay. I think that's good. All right. Uh Matt, where are we at with le package? I'm sorry I'm checking so often, chat. I'm just trying to make sure that I know whether I'm going to have to vamp in the middle of the story for Matt or not. It has moved the other way down a one-way street further away from me. So, I don't It still says six six away.
All right, chat. Place your bets now on whether Matt's going to get the package before or after the episode ends. Okay. So,

So, you remember how last week we talked about how Microsoft laid a bunch of people off? You know they made it worse, right? Like they Like we're going to talk about two things that they And it just So, one of them one of them uh is we're going to go a little more into Romero Games. So, we mentioned briefly that Romero had kind of gotten hit as a collateral. Romero isn't owned by Microsoft, but they did have a developer or publisher relationship with Microsoft. And as part of the cuts, Romero's game got canceled. Romero has since released a statement that says uh hold on, let me let me get this. We want to address recent reports regarding the status of Romero Games. These reports have contained inaccuracies. We feel it's important to set the record straight. The funding was our pro uh for our project was pulled and our game was canceled. Due to confidentiality agreements, we cannot disclose the publisher's identity, though some may infer it from public information. By the way, that is the best That is the single best we are obeying the letter of our NDAs, but heck you language for

that. Oh, it's beautiful. Um As a result, we have to recess the entire staff of the studio. Romero Games is not closed and we're doing everything in our power to ensure that does not come to that. Any suggestion otherwise is factually incorrect. Indeed, we are we were in the studio today to discuss next step with the team. We've been contacted by several publishers interested in helping us bring the game across the finish line and we're currently evaluating these opportunities. That last one's really important because it means that Romero owns the IP or has the license for the IP that they Microsoft didn't that license wasn't part of the developer publisher relationship with Microsoft and it means that the game can continue. That's really big for Romero. Very happy about that. But it is pretty interesting to see that like a whole studio with a a crew and a reputation as strong as Romero Games is now out there shopping a mostly finished game around to other publishers because Microsoft is like, "Nah, we know you're almost done, but we

don't want it." Yeah. Yeah. Which is just wild. This is the you know God, this is the this is the state of the industry right now. Sorry, I got distracted. I want to be fully transparent. So I was looking at this Kotaku article which will be linked in the show notes. And you know how all these sites now just have an infinite number of ads next to it, right? Like of different different products and things. So when I made the graphic for the FBI Mario holding the badge, I went on a on a website that had like a bunch of like I didn't even I didn't even go to the website. And now it disappeared cuz it knows I'm talking about it. But it it was basically like a eBay thing or something you could you could find fake badges on, right? So I photoshopped that out. It was an advertisement next to the story of like 10 different fake like law enforcement

badges. And I'm like, this is the product you think I am interested in? Welcome to 2025 internet where you too can buy fake law enforcement gear. Yeah. Uh
We're just going to leave that one alone and just
Yeah. Yeah, we're good.
So you can buy it on eBay. Good to know. Anyway, um uh So So we'll see what we'll see what happens we'll see what happens uh with Romero Games. I hope uh it does find a new place. I hope it does gangbusters and I hope the team gets a better deal than they had uh with Microsoft. And uh yeah, that's kind of the hope of all this. Yep. Meanwhile, Microsoft in choosing making the active choice to load rock salt into something and shoot themselves in the foot as many times as possible at point-blank range

in a week released this graphic. Well, I've I've modified this slightly.
I know. So the background graphic for this I am ha happy unhappy to report is a genuine AI graphic that they were trying to use on LinkedIn to recruit for Xbox graphics. So let's just I just want to be very clear here. So they laid a bunch of people off and they probably laid off too many people. So now they need more graphic people. So they think that the way to hire graphic people on LinkedIn is to use an AI-generated image to hire people in that industry on LinkedIn. I just want to be very clear that like that's the chain of events that's happening. And you better know how to use a monitor

with the screen on the back. Right.
you're not going to be able to do any graphics for Xbox. Now, okay, look. Microsoft and this again, this is totally tone deaf and BS and I hate it with the passion of a thousand fiery sons. But when you and this is this is more reasoning not excuses. When you are as large as Microsoft is, uh nine 9,000 people was like what? 4.7% of its workforce, which is baffling. Um often times one hand does not in fact wash the other. We Here's what we don't know. We don't know if a bunch of graphics jobs were laid off and now they're hiring again. We like it this could be different things they're looking for, could be anything, but it it it really doesn't matter. Like I just want to make sure that like we're not saying like these jobs are gone and now they're hiring jobs with with garbage practices. We don't know if that's apples to apples. What we do know is it's a bad look to use this image after a big layoff to talk about wanting

to hire graphic designers. Or uh there's some discussion about whether uh it's for the graphics like graphic engineering or graphics designers, but either way this looks terrible. Like it doesn't it doesn't matter whether this is graphics design is my passion or for like graphic engineering. All of it's bad, but go on. Okay, now I want to my next statement is my most conspiratorial and I do not believe it. I think never never assume malice when incompetence will do. Um but if you are looking for graphic artists or or engineers or anything um who are comfortable with AI and and and for for either good or nefarious purposes, they probably won't mind that it's an AI-esque generated image. I think that's actually a really good point. Um again, I

I think truly what I think is Microsoft laid off 9,000 plus people. And this team at Xbox needs graphic designers. So now I don't it is it is a very very very poor timing thing and a bad look. I I I don't know if this is still up. I think as of this morning it was. Um we could double-check the LinkedIn post. I just want to make sure because like it just it is a really bad look. It is still up. Um like your team can need graphic engineers and graphic designers. Maybe you're even comfortable with using AI nonsense to get the kind of people that you want for the hire. But once you and maybe they don't even know, maybe the teams don't even know that they're this is sort of happening. Although it'd be hard it'd be hard to work at Microsoft and not hear about

9,000 people getting laid off. There's just something there's a lot of like paper cuts wrong with this with this story. Uh that does not diminish at all a team's need for graphic engineers or graphic artists. Like of course you need those things. Um but it's like it's a it's a congruence of small issues that make this a larger issue for me. Does that make sense? Yeah, I
I'm trying to be as fair as possible without just screaming Microsoft bad because like it's so big. There are pocket teams within pocket teams within pocket teams that do need people. And I would like people to have jobs. That's true, right? The the the big the bigger problem, I think for me, is that the team that was not consulted about this is the PR team. Right? Like and that that is the the sign for me is lack of a cohesive brand image when it

comes to presenting themselves as a force in the workforce. Matt got to go. Just moved way further away from me and still says the Amazing. Um like I I think that that's my big my big um sort of my big critique of Microsoft here is like regardless of whether or not there are jobs, people have correctly pointed out in in uh chat that uh it is a not uncommon practice to have open job listings on LinkedIn that don't actually ever get filled to make it look like you're hiring as a company, which makes it look like you're growing, which makes some people happy, but you never actually fill those jobs. That's an Another great use for AI slop in a graphic advertisement. Yeah.
Correct. Um but I think the presentation like Microsoft's presentation of itself to the industry is getting worse and worse and worse and less coordinated and less coherent. Right? That's my criticism. Is that And it is incredibly like Microsoft's one of the biggest names in in the world. Correct.

It must be a Herculean task to wrangle that from a from a public relations perspective. Yes. Um but you also have near infinite money. Mhm. But until again, it all goes back like until something like uh the layoffs and or a small things like this or whatever like start like I often think of of uh corporate tomfoolery as one of those machines in an arcade. You know the ones where you put the coin or the token in and you shoot it and it goes down a thing and lands on a little um a platform where there's like an arm that like pushes the coins and slowly like the coins keep inching towards a ledge that will eventually give you points. You know what I'm talking about? Do you know the machine I'm talking about? Yeah, those little little coin pusher gambling machines. When it's just one like one coin pushes the whole pile over the edge eventually, but it's never as soon as it looks like. Yeah, those because of how

much the tower weighs, because of the weight of because of the the coins on coins on coins right inertia, it takes way more coins than you'd think to make that thing fall over and that is That's a good point, right? That it it is hard to understand what the tipping point for a company's image is going to be, right? Where is the actual cuz like lots of people will talk about the trust thermocline, right? The point at which trust has been completely broken between a company and its consumers and it can't ever be repaired. And lots of for the problem is that for individual people that's at different points and it's a different point for individual people than it is for other companies to do business with them and that's a whole part of this Microsoft equation, too, because one of Microsoft's biggest clients are other businesses. Right? So, it becomes kind of hard to say where the tipping point is, but they're definitely not doing themselves any favors this week. Um

No. So, that's that's fun. On the plus side, I haven't looked at my LinkedIn in 30 years. Um Yeah, I haven't either.
are deep. I'm just going to close that.
Yeah, I I the the more and more LinkedIn began to resemble Facebook, the less and less I really wanted to participate with LinkedIn and I was like
It's I don't
because No, sorry. I I just I don't I don't like it. I Listen, there's plenty of uses for it. I do have some friends in very different industries that still use it quite a bit. Um it does have a real Facebooky vibe to it. And I've not used Facebook in forever. So uh I don't like it. I listen, although I will say full full transparency, I've actually gotten contacted the last time I looked at LinkedIn months ago, a very a person I met at PAX from a game a small gaming company messaged me just saying how nice it was to to meet. And like that's great. Like I would have never had I we didn't have

each other's cards, all that stuff. Like sure, that's lovely. Um but like when bots are wishing me a happy birthday, like that's not why I'm on LinkedIn, man. Like, you know? Yep. Anyhoo. Yep. Okay, cool. Let's do an ad. Wait, hold on, Thunder. Apparently over on Twitch there's 400k channel points and when your package gets in. Some people are hoping your Amazon driver falls into a black hole. How dare you? Uh I shh What if it was something for the show? What if it was a present for everyone? Then maybe you know, you would be gone.
knows? But you know, they're they're willing to gamble on it.
It's distinctly not. But what you don't know that. That's true. Quoth How dare? Let me get over to Twitch. Yeah. Oh, we doing fake ads now? We're going

to do uh 3 minutes of fake ads to keep your rolls off over on Twitch, but if you're on YouTube, don't worry, you'll get to see our fake ads instead of real ads. So uh we're going to sell you fake things that you can't buy with money um while uh Twitch sells some people ads for things they can buy with real money. So we'll see you ad viewers in 3 minutes and we're going to do some fake ones. You want to go first or you want me to go first? Uh oh, I You absolutely go first today. All right, ready? Here we go. Hi there everybody. Well, from Extra Credits here. Do you want a bunch of channel points? Can I convince you in acquiring Matt's Amazon box? That's right, everyone. For the low low price of a bucket full of channel points, you too can acquire the hope that Matt does or doesn't get his Amazon package. That's right. Hope and and the feeling of a victory can be yours if you dump your channel points all willy-nilly into space because the box might never show up. That's just That's just how it works.

Who knows? Maybe it's stuck in the backrooms. Maybe it's just in traffic. Maybe it's already here and Matt doesn't know it. We'll we'll find out soon. So, two things about your fake ad, Will. One, I love how you basically turned me getting a package into the Running Man. And then, two, the term willy-nilly, I feel like needs to be an alternate ego for you because I instantly thought of Milli Vanilli. And so, if it was if you were willy-nilly
a picture of Milli Vanilli. Milli Do you know who Milli Vanilli is? Looks nothing like you, obviously. They were a duo who famously got in trouble for lip-syncing all their songs. There was like other singers behind their songs.
Right, that's right. They're a German R&D R&B music act from Munich. Right, right.
Okay, got it. Yes, that is that is who I was thinking of. Willy-nilly. No, okay. Great, awesome. Here we go. Hey everyone. Matt from Extra Credits here. May I interest you in perhaps, and this is a a product I want to sell

specifically to one group and that is amazon.com. Maybe don't do this nonsense pizza tracker BS because I don't want to just keep looking at incorrect data. I understand that Domino's initia- initialize What's the word I'm looking for? Domino's really fueled the space in making sure you know exactly in what process point your pizza is in, but now when you're doing internet talk shows about video games, you don't know when your things are going to be delivered because it is inaccurate. I would rather know nothing. Tell me nothing. That's I'm selling I'm I'm selling the concept of um obfuscation. I have another one. Okay, yeah, go for it. Wait, what what's this I need someone to sell me something that makes digital lineups faster? Mhm. That wasn't what I was going to sell people.
No, okay, well, here we go. Even if you've got that one. All right.

Hi there. Well, from Extra Credits here, here to sell you something you probably can't buy because chances are if you're watching this, you already own it, but you to watch Dave Amy's Dead End Dream House over on Nebula. That's right. If you're already a Nebula subscriber, you don't have to spend any money for this. You can just go watch a cool thing that another cool Nebula creator made over here. When you're done with this, if you're watching on Nebula or you know Tag me in. Tag me in. Tag me in. YEAH, TAG ME IN. YEAH, WE DID IT. KIND OF. UH IF YOU'RE NOT A NEBULA SUBSCRIBER, WE WILL put Maggy's link in the description here. We love this so much, we're going to give you that link to do the things and the stuff. Go check out Amy's Dead End Dream House. It is dope. Here we go. Oh, I see. Yeah, um okay, so I will I will explain where Michael's at. So, today um the Secret Lair for Sonic the Hedgehog in Magic the Gathering Ah. is out or is is trying to be out and Wizards

has once again completely failed to create a good digital queue system and so it is currently yet another Secret Lair disaster, which is the reason that even though I like some Secret Lairs, like they just finished one that was like for charity, I would rather just give I'm going to look up the charity and just give the charity money rather than continuing to deal with secret lairs because secret lairs are getting worse and worse and generating more and more hype and none of the money they're making off secret lairs is into going is going into improving the customer experience for the secret lair products. It's awful. Um and that is that is what's going on. Uh before we move on, we do need a story, a pet name for the Xbox, the aftermath of the Xbox layoffs or about uh tone-deaf hiring notifications. So, we need we need an animal name. Zoe has lots of

thoughts. I don't know if you can hear her right now.
Clippy. Clippy. Clippy. Yeah. Uh Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there a Sonic was never good card? No. There are There is a Sonic card. The cards are Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Dr. Robotnik are the new mechanically unique ones and then there's another secret lair with reprints of a bunch of other cards in the style of Sonic. Um like there's a swift foot boots that's Sonic's shoes. Cuz fast shoes.
said. Yeah. Um all right. Matt, are we Are we ready to dive in?
I think so. I Admittedly, when Will presented this story, I read it all last night, got really confused. Then Will went back and did some very um helpful, which I think will be good for all of us here as well, like sort of like timeline breakdown of

what we're talking about because this has been going on for roughly like 10 to 15 days or something like that. I mean, obviously longer, but the story has has around. Uh and I was getting quite confused, but I think I think I've got a handle on it to add any sort of color commentary that may or may not be helpful. We'll Let's talk about a thing that I think is going to be broad reach it had going to have broad reaching impact for the industry, but isn't a big story yet. Sure. Let's talk about Subnautica 2. So, I'm going to try and lay this out chronologically to the best of my ability. Subnautica 2 is developed by Unknown or is being developed by Unknown Worlds, the creators of the original Subnautica game. In 2011, or not 2011, sorry, 2021, talked about the 2011s earlier with Portal 2. 2021, October, Krafton acquired Unknown Worlds and all of their current work on Subnautica 2. And

Krafton is the PUBG people? Krafton is the yes, is the people who originally made PUBG. So, they are a whole they are a publisher that wholly owns Unknown Worlds. Okay, that's important to making this story make sense cuz if you don't know that they're wholly owned and also the publisher of everything that Unknown Worlds is making, some of this doesn't quite make sense. On July 2nd, so 12 days ago, Sure. Krafton announced that a new CEO a new leadership in the form of Steve Pautler would would be taking over for the former triumvirate heads of Unknown Worlds, that being Ted Gill, Charlie Cleveland, and Max McGuire effective on July 2nd. He's the former formerly of Visceral Games and most recently, I believe, the CEO of Striking Distance Studio, the the Callisto Protocol. Yes.

So, um
And this these stories you can get them all the things all of our timeline in the show notes. It comes to us from PC Gamer, comes to us from a couple different tweets and Blue skies, comes to us from The Verge. It's all over the place. and everything. Okay, so that's the first thing. Now, that's a little weird. That's a little weird, especially because Ted, Charlie, and Max, the triumvirate, have been at Unknown Worlds for a long time and were pretty integral to the development of this and it's also worth noting, and we'll establish this a little bit as we go, that Subnautica 2 was headed for a 2025 early access release. Okay? So, right before or as we're heading into the early access release for Subnautica 2, the publisher and the owner of the studio says that the leadership needs to change. Mhm. Okay. So, that's July 2nd. July 9th, um the uh announcement is made that Subnautica 2 will be delayed to 2026.

The early access, by the way, for Subnautica 2 would be delayed to 2026. Later that day, um and by the way, no one likes this. Nobody's happy about this. No one likes that announcement, right? Very unhappy. Lots of people have been super excited for Subnautica 2. Devs don't like it when their early access gets delayed. It was supposed to be this year sometime and now it's getting pushed back a whole year. We're like real close to the finish line and it feels like there's more going on. Um Jason Schreier reported that the um at this point, Well, even even before this, I think the talking about the post, sorry, if if maybe I've got this timeline wrong. Uh the post that um what's it called, Krafton put out about the delay is kind of worded oddly. And it is um more incendiary than usual corpo speak, which says that there is a

lack of media training in this uh avenue. You can see it in the PC in it will have sort of like the timeline breakdown as Will has done in the show notes in the show notes. But basically they put out a thing that says in the background of change of leadership they they break down a deal that they had made with these three gentlemen about Subnautica 2. They mentioned specifically in addition to the 500 million purchase price we allocated approximately 90% of the up 100 200 of the of the up to 250 million earn out compensation for the three former executives with the exception they would demonstrate leadership and active involvement in the development of Subnautica 2. However, regrettably the former leadership abandoned their responsibilities entrusted to them. Going off script here for a second. Real weird to be saying it like that here. Going back into Subnautica 2 was originally planned for early access

launch in early 2024, but the timeline has been since significantly delayed. Krafton made multiple requests to Charlie and Max resume their roles as game director and technical director. Again, kind of seeding that they weren't doing that or they weren't those things at the time. Respectively, but both declined to do so. What does that mean? What they they declined to do their job title that they currently have. Jumping back in. In particular, following the failure of Moonbreaker Krafton asked Charlie to devote himself to the development of Subnautica 2. However, instead of participating in the game development he chose to work on a personal film project. Regardless of whether or not any of this is true. Tone here sets a lot of foundation for me in this story. I'm not going to read the entire thing, but that was the section where I was like are you flipping kidding me right now? Like

this is this is burn bridge city. This is like and and and what I think the goal here is is to get again, regardless of blame, regardless of anything with this new timeline, it feels like this is poking a bear. This is this company trying to get these three guys to blink and say something and maybe break an NDA or do something else. Like it it feels very like uh uh like the tone is off. Sorry, I just wanted to Yeah, no I I I think that that's um yeah, okay, cool. So um that money, right? That that money that that is referenced, the $250 million earnout for the um for the executives, their claim

their claim they are making is that they were not going to keep a significant portion of it. That that instead was going to be dolled out to people who worked on it, right? That they were going to take that they would they were going to receive that money and then kind of like a trust fund pass it out to all of the different developers in the form of bonuses for their hard work on Subnautica 2. And They've done it in the past when they sold their studio, they did the same thing from what they've said. So it the precedent seems to be there.
Yeah, um so
deal is if it gets if it breaks a certain amount of money in 2025
If the studio breaks that amount of that the an earnings target for 2025, they would earn this money. But without a new major release like Subnautica 2 entering early access, it seems increasingly unlikely that they'll be able to meet that earnings target, right? So there is some amount of conjecture that this is being done specifically to avoid paying out the $250 million earnout to these executives. To be very

clear, we're like halfway through this story. I want to make something clear up up front. Even no matter where Will and I land on like who we think what is this is literally based off of reports and things and us doing our own internet sleuthing. Chances are everybody is in some way at fault. Like that that that feel but like for for the for the delay for whatever of the game is. But that also doesn't mean that well, I keep Krafton wouldn't make a better deal if it didn't come out in 2026. It also doesn't mean that well, maybe they did not work on their stuff long enough to work on a movie. Like all of these things can be true. It's funny where my where my like who did wrong? Like I I don't know. But I'm I'm inferring who I think did who is at fault or who I would again, who cares what I think but like who would be blamed based on a lot of tonality of of wording. Mhm. But that also could be a misguide too because

what if what if Krafton actually isn't at the majority of fault and they're just crap at writing statements.
Well, we're going to find out Matt because the day after Subnautica 2 got delayed Charlie Cleveland posted on Reddit. And that update is will also be in the show notes but essentially that the the Reddit post is that Charlie and the other leaders Max and Ted will be suing Krafton. And that's why I think this is a really big story. There's a little more detail we'll get into a second but the this is the heart of why I think this is really big story. What we have here is a very interesting case of former heads of a studio, right? Because Krafton owns uh Unknown Worlds. They can

absolutely remove the leadership or replace them at any point for any reason because they own them, right? Not we don't like that, and that's not good, and that may impact whether or not people buy Subnautica 2, but they're they're above board at least on being able to do that. Sure. But what we now have is this very interesting lawsuit between former developers of a project and a publisher over a contract. And my understanding is that uh contracts in this case are this is an international contract law lawsuit. About a developer-publisher relationship. This could get This could make the Keyser Söze board look simple. I'm playing Outer Wilds right now. I said Outer Worlds a lot in the notes for this, and Matt had to correct me this morning cuz I would think he said
confused. I'm like, what does this have to do with Outer Worlds?
Yeah. So, uh and and there's a big old There's a big old red string board in that, and those look simple compared to the amount

of red string and weirdness that I think is about to ensue here, right? Because we have this lawsuit over um who is in breach of contract over um over like what it means to be in this developer-publisher relationship, and which boilerplate terms are and aren't going to hold up to scrutiny in court. It's all really weird. Um Larky, I look forward to seeing the settlement with no culpability of three. Yo, that is certainly a possibility. That is I mean, that if I was a when I am a betting man, that is what I would bet on. Yeah. Um that doesn't mean that people don't get paid, though. Correct.
know what I mean? Like, just because one party does not admit wrongdoing, That obviously does not mean that money was not spent. Correct. So, um in the midst of all of this, in the midst of announcing the lawsuit, there's a And and and the last thing that Krafton did, which absolutely boggles my mind, is that someone leaked on Imgur

um that thing that we all hate, which is when someone takes pictures of a screen with a phone. But, I understand why in this case.
is real.
Right. Yeah. Um of the Subnautica 2 milestone review review in May of 2025. Okay. So, this is the May review. This is recent um for what the recommendations of um the uh for the future of Subnautica 2 are based on certain milestones that have been hit or have been been hit or the way that the developers handled requests that the publisher has made to change things. And you can look at them Well, like um I'll put them in chat. You can look at them and and you know, see that information for yourself. Um Quoth, I'm so sorry. When your screen can't be signed and the dots don't align, that's a moray.

That I'm That is I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Pausing the story. Uh I am a sucker for a song pun. I don't know parody and that was that is amazing. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
good. By the way, the the the the the Subnautica 2 name is moray. m o r a y Yeah. Okay, great. Awesome. So, we're all on the same page. So, they've released this So, these screenshots have come out. And then, the absolute most bizarre part of this, The absolute 100% in my opinion most bizarre part of this, Krafton confirmed those screenshots are real. Yeah. They could have They could have listened to Will's patented school of shut the hell up and said nothing and left debate about whether or not these screenshots, which some people are viewing as like the evidence of malfeasance on one side or another, are

real or not, but Krafton is like, "Nope, those are real. And they're the reason that we fired those guys, and they're the reason we think Subnautica 2 isn't out yet." So, there's a couple different things here that make it kind of interesting. So, it seems like the original three creators are for the most part taking what they've learned at Will's patented school of shutting the hell up because they've just said one statement about suing and saying the only thing that they corrected they wanted to be correct on is they were planning on on distributing that bonus to their workers. This is interesting because you you can look at the images yourself. Um They on the surface, the as is and to be, like this is like This doesn't really prove anything other than a Christmas list. Yeah. Like Like And again, you can have these things that are that that the, you know, higher-ups believe is necessary versus what the devs believe is necessary. But like Yes, there are more boxes in that first image of the to be's than in

the as is's column, but that doesn't take into account like polish on those initial things or like if if early access is specifically to get you into the core gameplay loop, like if that's what the Subnautica 2 team believed would do it, then perhaps they spent their time doing that. Again, I I always want to side in my in my brain in my heart of hearts with devs. There's also a very real thing that this just wasn't at the level where they thought it could survive in early access and keep the hype going up. However, I keep going back to the tone of that initial image. I keep going back to these morayed pictures from a screen that then they said this is correct. Because on one hand it makes them look good. Now, conspiracy tin foil hat time, is this a plan?

Is this the plan? Make an incendiary thing, hope the guys get mad, post these things, be like, "Yep, this is leaked and it's accurate. Someone leaked this so it proves it." Uh I don't know, but also the fact that at least as of time of recording the three initial devs have not said anything else about this yet means or have they? Well, they've said the important part. We're suing them. Yeah, well, no, I know, that's what I'm saying, but they said that before.
Right, but but once you say that, the the absolute lawyer correct move is to shut up. Right? Because
And they're doing that. Right, yeah.
Which says to me
sense. Either they believe they're in the right or uh They have a really good lawyer.
I mean, that's kind of that that's kind of what it said. The The again, the tone specifically from Krafton is in my opinion

again, based only on these articles, I don't know anybody there, I don't know anything, it just feels sus. It does. There is a world where everyone is wrong. There is a world where things were not met, Krafton didn't handle it well, and now this is blowing up even though everyone has kind of not done the thing. This could be a way and and maybe both sides believe that legally, and we know the three gentlemen do, believe legally they can prove that it wasn't their fault. Right? I I'm But we don't know. Like, it's I'm 100% with Demon Works on this. Pursuing for show, you don't shut up. You do it you do it and you keep talking, right? You keep talking to build like public you know, and you get people to pay for your lawyers and stuff and like so that makes sense on their side. A trillion percent. And my gut lizard brain reaction is these three guys are getting screwed over. That doesn't mean that is true.

That's true. Uh they and if it is true, that also doesn't mean that they didn't live up to their part of the bargain for the game and this could be kind of the out to make them look like they were trying. Maybe they were trying. Maybe there was people in the way of them trying. Maybe everyone just thought everyone was doing a job and no one was paying attention and the whole thing collapsed and now everyone's doing the Spider-Man pointing fingers blame game thing. There's a lot of unknown information here.
My guess is that everyone did something wrong and now we're going to they're going to this whole battle will be over Yeah, but like who did the most wrong thing? And with the contract and the way that Krafton is working here, it's at least right now and everything could change, it's hard for me to to sort of look at them as as any sort of victim where I could in certain lights see these three devs as the victim. Again, I'm not saying that's what it is, but if the

diagram has shifted that direction. Yeah, the Krafton has earned themselves no favors with the tone of their announcements, with the way that they have handled this, and by um just in general trying to saddle hey, this like instead of working collaboratively like cuz they're sinking no pun intended, Subnautica 2 a fair bit by saying, "Hey, this didn't meet up to standards. Maybe it will later, right?" That poisons a lot of the goodwill of the customer base, of the players, right? Cuz like now they have shot sales of Subnautica 2 in the foot pretty hard, right? Because there are now two groups of people, right, who won't buy the game. There's a group of people who won't buy the game out of protest for Krafton's treatment of these developers, right? And that's a completely understandable reaction. And there's another group of people who won't buy it because now they have concerns about the quality of the game and they're going to wait. And when you

wait on games like that and say, "Oh, I'll wait and see." Sometimes you just never get them, right? So that's that's a group of people that won't buy the game. And so it feels so incredibly suspicious to me the way that Krafton is handling this. I feel like we're going to find out more when the lawsuit hits, but again, the reason we're talking about this is not cuz it's drama. The reason we're talking about this is I want to see what happens with this lawsuit and in what ways it has any kind of impact, right? Because again, we have a lawsuit. I don't think we have a specified cause. Let me pull up Charlie's uh Yeah, I don't I don't believe there is yet. Uh they're they're just filing.
filing a lawsuit against Krafton. For what, right? In what court, right? How is this going to potentially impact the way that the way that publishers and developers interact and specifically the way that wholly owned developers interact with

the publishers that own them, right? What is this going to like is it going to change the way that that looks? But this is a fascinating lawsuit that really might have, I believe, implications for the broader industry depending on how this turns out. I like Bio's other tinfoil hat moment. Again, I want to make sure before when we're talking about tinfoil hat moments that they are they are interesting speculative fictions that uh that that is what they are not like aha, but Krafton figured that even after the settlement Krafton will pay less than 250 million at the end. Yep, that's definite that is absolutely on the table, right? That's recall math. Right? If if if the cost per settlement is less than the if the cost per settlement times the expected number of settlements is less than the cost of a recall, a company won't do a recall. This economics lesson brought to you by Fight Club. I'm sorry, what? We don't talk about that. Uh well, we also don't talk about that.

Anyway, we'll see how this story develops. Yeah. It has been a wild 2 weeks though. Like this has been an absolutely wild 2 weeks to like try and read through and a lot of it again is press releases that don't read like press releases. A lot of these read like Twitlongers. Like I'm going to be really honest, Krafton's stuff reads like a Twitlonger not like a press release. It's like and it's these guys' fault that the game's bad. And we're going to blame them and we kicked them out of our club. It's very very very weird. Like uh I don't know. I don't know where I'm going with it. But uh yeah, we'll keep we'll keep looking into it as as the story goes. Uh end of the day, I'd love to see Subnautica 2 get released um in a way that the devs are happy with it and in a way that makes it so it can get out in front of the most people as possible. Yep, I agree. Uh do we want to settle on a name before we before we hit the last one?
name the name the name. What's the name for this one? I thought Leviathan or

Levi could be very fun.
Levi's good, uh Moray's good, um Moray's good, but yeah, I mean Moray yeah. Uh legal beagle. Shady. Shady fish sharky. Cyclops I saw or sci, moby, subby, Regina George, Marie, George, marine, peeper. What do we think? Naughty? Guppy? Chum? Chum? Chum's good. Uh, freebird. Crafty from Crafton. No, I don't want to name them after Crafton. Let's not do that. Yeah, there's nothing there's nothing that's jumping out at me right here. I did I did like Levi or Leviathan. Cuz I there's something cute about like imagine if it's a tiny dog named Leviathan but you call him Levi. That's

really funny. Yeah. Everyone this is Levi short for Leviathan. It's sort of It's sort of has Hey everyone this is Bella short for Beelzebub um, energy to it which I kind of like.
to see if Laszlo was around to pick him up but he's not.
Sue? Calamari?
Sue? Uh, but it's a human name again. I I I do like Sue. Aurora after the big ship from the first one? It's good. But Aurora's also a human name. Got big attitude. Boady McBoatface. Athan, Leviathan. Boady McBoatface. I'm going to do Levi. I'm going to I'm going to pull rank here. Okay. All right. So we have one more story and it's our dessert story for today and it gave me a chuckle. I thought that this was uh, funny. Okay, so I'm going to say that I think that this is because pride month's over and we didn't get enough pride related promotions. That's not why it happened but I'm going to say it's cuz of that. So Sims 4

has a bug right now and I just thought it would be funny to talk about. So, The Sims 4 bug um started on the 10th when there was a a new patch to prepare for the upcoming DLC. And um it broke some of some of the game. Just just
Yeah, instead of doing a a flawless patch, they just chugged an entire case of Power Thirst. That's right. And made 400 BABIES.
So many babies because part of this is that every Sim is pregnant now. It doesn't matter if the Sim can normally carry children. It doesn't matter if the Sim has ever woohooed with anybody. Every Sim is pregnant, which I just think is like My favorite part of The Sims is the stories of all of the random crap that goes wrong with The Sims. Like I don't play The Sims. It's not my kind of game,

but it's really funny to me that every time this patched, there's just another another big problem. And now all of The Sims are pregnant. Like it's it's just really funny to me and I thought that you all might enjoy that, too. It is quite funny. No no going out and hitting the clubs for everyone. It's now Now now you got to stay home and be and be pregnant. And raise your kids. Yeah. That's that's right. 100%. So yes, that's our dessert story for today. I just thought that that's a a little a little funzies. Um Wow, Medusa pulling the junior reference. Hot damn. I got to believe that there's a pregnant Arnold Schwarzenegger Sim somewhere. Um so yeah, that brings us to the end of our show. If you have thoughts, comments, leave them in the YouTube comments below. If you're ever on Nebula, do hit us up on Blue Sky. We're We're on there like

regularly. I'm normally posting about Yeah. Yeah, I'm normally talking about magic stuff or stream stuff or whatever. Um I'm normally talking about movies or video games or cats. Yeah, cats. Um sometimes I talk about cats, too. Just not mine, my roommate's. Although Whisper sometimes thinks that I'm his human when his human isn't here. It's kind of funny. Ships around. So, uh that brings us to the conclusion of our show, which means we need to choose a name for an animal.
here's what we're going to do, everybody. And I I I I I ask you kindly to only type the names that I say. Right. I know uh for a lot of times we do bits where the joke is you do something different, but it's going to be harder to figure this out in the next 13 minutes if you do other names. And I would I would prefer if you stuck with the list. Uh Here we go.

Martin, Cindy, Katsune Meowku, Crypto, Walpole, Bandit, Abigail, Striker, Swingline, Clippy, Leviathan. We didn't do one for the pregnant one, we're going to skip it. Okay, cool. Uh
Again, those names are Martin, Cindy, Katsune Meowku, Crypto, Walpole, Bandit, Abigail, Striker, Swingline, Clippy, Leviathan. Let's see if we can We got a bunch of Walpoles. We got some uh some Bandits. We've got some Leviathans. Bandits, 1 2 3. Walpole, Walpole, Walpole. Walpole, Walpole. Walpole. Walpole, Bandit. Leviathan. Okay. Okay. Okay.
a bunch of Leviathans and a bunch of

Walpole's here.
we go. I see a lot of bandits. So, now let's pause. Let's do a Let's do a pause break. So, everyone just write the word pause. p a w s. Type that in so we know where the break point is. And we're going to do top three. Okay? This is the least correct way to do this, but we have to roll through it fast.
the best way to do this. And also, um if you uh if you're on the YouTube comments after this, uh let us know what name you would have Okay. So, the three we are going to go with after Okay, here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. You can only type these three words. Actually, they I I Okay, we're just going to do it this way. Walpole, bandit, Leviathan. Go. I love I love that chat.
Go is not a word we're counting. It's just those three.
no, no, no. Don't They They're being mostly okay.
They are. They're being great.
Don't give them ideas.
These three word Thank you. Okay.
Walpole, Walpole, Walpole, Walpole,

Walpole.
Bandit. I'll count bandits, you count Walpole's. Sorry, chat. Counting is hard. This is kind of ranked choice voting. Yeah. I counted 10 bandits, and I'm going to go back and get Leviathans real quick. This is great content. Uh I counted 11 Leviathans, uh 10 bandits. What do you got on Walpole's?
14 Walpole's. We're going to call it there. We're We're going to call it Yeah, we're going to call it Walpole. People People are asking why we're not polling. Uh two reasons. One, uh too much work. And two, this is funnier. And

three, we don't have a way to poll both platforms.
Both things at the same time. We will We if in the future, uh perhaps if we have something like this, uh we could do like a Google Sheet that everyone we could give a link and people could do it in a Google Sheet together, but it's it's just hard.
a bunch of ways to do that. We wanted to keep this fast and loose and silly. Yeah. Uh so, uh we will tell Best Friends Animal Society that Walpole is the name we would like to name a pet. I think um uh maybe with like a nickname of Wally or something. Like I want to make sure that like for instance, not that this is I think Walpole's a fine name. Um but it's also a bit of a channel meme, and I want to make sure like for instance, Zoe's original name at the ASPCA was Mocaccino. Was she in a litter that was all named after different coffee beverages? Uh no. No, absolutely not. The her two siblings were not named uh coffee beverages, which would have made more sense, but that is not the case. Did they let the people

people can change uh you know, the name fine. Uh but we'll Walpole we'll we'll send that over. Um All right. I think that that means that all that remains for this episode is uh for Matt to lead us in our in our group sign-off uh and to tell us whether or not his package is going to be here. It was supposed to be here more than an hour ago.
got something. The driver has to make a few more deliveries on your way to your address. Well, we're going to do the same outro that we do every time here on Games for Breakfast. Thank you so much for joining us and talking with us about all these stories. Again, messages on Blue Sky or leave a comment below depending on where you are watching this uh, if comments are available. Um and we like doing the same outro we do every time to ensure a sense of community and that we cuz we're all on the same page. We all know how this ends, right? We know how the show stops and our and our final thing that we say. So, everybody, I hope

you have a lovely week and my package will be delivered now.