Pocket Gamer Connects London 2026 preview | Week in Mobile Games podcast

[Music] Hello and welcome to the pocket gamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we discuss the week's news and provide some insights of Craig Chapel, head of content at pocketgamer.biz. With me is our deputy editor, Paige Cook, and our news editor, Aaron Assel. How you both doing Paige? What you been up to?
Doing good, thank you. Nothing major to update on, which is a bit boring. I did just me and my partner just binged watched a new show on Netflix. I think it's called His and Hers. Um it's kind of like a crime drama type thing. It was very good. It was if you like crime stuff with lots of twists, then give that a watch. Uh we really enjoyed it and it didn't overstate its welcome. I think it was like six episodes. It was kind of like, oh, enjoyed it and now it's and now it's done. It's not like one of those ones that goes on and on.
Yeah, that actually said
Yeah. Other than other than that, yeah, nothing really gaming wise. I'm still

really addicted to Arc Raiders, which I I never suspected because I get bored of multiplayer stuff very quickly. But I don't know, maybe maybe I need like a new game to come out to take my interest. But yeah, for now, that's pretty much all I'm dabbling in.
I've already bounced off Arc Raiders, so I've not been back to it yet. The the one I want to check out is Peak, which I bought,
but yeah, not never never really got into Art Raiders.
Yeah, I remember you saying you tried it, but you just didn't really like find it that fun.
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure I'm one of the only ones if I was to quickly check the charts. Uh, it's the number four most played game on Steam right now with uh current players 218,000 players. Peak today 300,000. So, it's obviously I'm obviously wrong.
Yeah, like I said, usually it wouldn't be like multiplayer things. I can usually play it for like a week or so and then I'm bored and don't go back to it. But, I don't know. I don't really can't really put my finger on what it is

that I'm even enjoying so much. Yeah, it's definitely got its hooks in me. So, yeah, I'm enjoying it.
Yeah, it's good times. Aaron, what have you been up to? I have been watching a series called Blurabus is um yes with my dad which um we've both been enjoying. We just finished it actually. So yeah that was good. My dad watched it without me actually and then um so I went to see him the other weekend and he was like I just watched this whole show like yesterday and now you're going to watch it and then he started watching it again with me and then yeah we finished it a couple of days ago which was yeah it was pretty good I guess. No, no big spoilers because it's still pretty new, but worth watching if anyone's not heard of it.
I loved that show. U and the best thing is to go into it not knowing a single thing about it
because I think if you know the premise, it ruins the the initial stuff as well. So,
uh yeah, I loved it.
Yeah, brilliant show. I got one of my friends into it as well. I was like, "You should check this out." And he watched it. He was like, "Yeah, I love

it as well."
Yeah, I also binge watched that one. I think I watched it like over the holidays. But yeah, really, really good.
The most unspoiled thing I can say is a nonspoiler thing I can say. It's just that it's just different to what you else kind of watch on TV. So, and in a good way.
Yeah. And I think even without going into it, like even if you think you've worked it out in the first episode, like it feels like it's going to go in one direction and it it is more unique than it may be.
I think that happens quite a lot, I would say, as well.
Yeah. Very good. And other than that, gamewise, so I finished Pokemon ZA a few weeks ago, so I've um I've gone right back and started playing Pokemon Yellow for the first time. I I played Red when I was about 16, but um I thought, yeah, you know, revisit Gen One. It's a little bit overrated, but you know, I'm having fun with it.
I mean, things have changed since then.
Yeah. Yeah.
To be fair.
Yeah.
It's like 30 years of
Yeah. I think one of the hardest things

is the item limits like that you can't just keep everything
even like so I just because you can only hold I've not counted how many items it is but like I very quickly just ditched the map because it's like well I want to be able to hold potions and focals and TMs and stuff. Now it's reached a point where I'm just having to throw away TMs that I don't want to teach to anyone to make room to pick up a new thing and then
you put them in the computer
that fills up as well. So yeah, I did do that for a little bit. So it's made me appreciate the modern games a bit more.
I bet there's a meme about this, right? This is like like everyone in an RPG gets upset like, "Oh, I can't carry anymore." But like if if it was in real life, you'd just be carrying like this like this truck.
Oh, I can't believe I can't have any more stuff. 100 potions I'm never going to use. Thanks, Aaron. As for myself, I actually went ice skating at the weekend. It was very cold, obviously, but I had a very good time. And then other things that I've been doing, I watched Knives Out, the Wake Up Dead Man. I really did. I want to say I think

I really liked it. It is very good. It was a bit different from the others, but it's the same kind of thing. I hope there's more. It feels like it might be the last one for now, but I hope there's more to come, especially from Rianne Johnson. If he wants to do Star Wars, I wouldn't complain, but I don't think that's going to happen anymore. Then I I've been watching Fallout as well. I think it's really good, and I I quite like the the stupid stories that are kind of happening. I actually think it's kind of quite fun. I haven't watched this week's one yet, but yeah, I'm looking forward to where it all goes. It's a fun little series. And uh I actually think I said this, sorry, I actually think I said this a couple weeks ago, but I played the most recent game new game I played was Dispatch, which I I did really enjoy. Uh yeah, that was very good. The story is great. The game play is kind of minimal. That was fine, but that sort of just services the story. Some of your decisions do actually matter as well, which is interesting. I have one ending. I need to watch the others. But it it can definitely go down different paths and it's not something you can just kind of fix like once you've made a decision, you've kind of made it. So that was cool. Also play played a bit of Pixel Flow which I

think we talked about last week. Uh which is really cool new game. Definitely want to check that out. It's already making launched three months ago. It's already making millions each month. So yeah, really good game. Just before we came on this call, I didn't get time to look at it properly, but I saw that they're uh I think it's Amazon maybe are doing like a Fallout reality TV show. I think it's like called Fallout Shelter or something like kind of Squid Game like like people go into the shelters and they have to like do competition type stuff. I'd literally saw it just before we came. I was like, "What is this real?" So
it's breaking news page.
Yeah.
What the hell? What is this?
Well, yeah. I didn't get time to look at it properly at I was like, is I didn't even know if it was real, but then I saw it had been reported on somewhere else, so I think it is.
The trend of turning dystopian drama series into reality competition continues. This is deadline. Amazon has added a green light to Fallout Shelter, a series based on its Ella Panel fronted drama. The project comes from Studio Lambert, the company behind Netflix's Squid Game, The Challenge. Then it's

going to be a 10- part series based on the game set inside the the Vaultex Bombroof vaults. A group of contestants take part in escalating challenges, strategic dilemmas, and moral crossroads as they chase a cash prize. I wonder if like in the background
they're all part of an experiment that that surely that has to be like
Yeah. Yeah. You would think so, cuz all of the vaults have an experiment, right? So,
yeah. So, hopefully that's kind of a weird fun part of it. It should be it should feel quite weird and funny to watch.
Yeah, that's kind of the Oh, wow. Okay, that's pretty cool. Doesn't I can't see a uh release date. Uh it's just it's just been green lit. So yeah, that's pretty exciting. So Trans Media, here we go. Which I guess brings us on nicely. We'll do a few shout outs before we get into the news and and a certain event happening next week. So uh actually speaking of that event, so Pocket Gamer Connects London January 19th and 20th.

So that's coming thick and fast. Be a few days away once this podcast goes live. still obviously a chance to register for a ticket. Definitely come. It's going to be our biggest It might just be our biggest show ever. If certainly feels that way at the moment, London's always the big show of the year and so I'm looking forward to seeing everyone there. And obviously, we'll have the Trans Media Summit on January 20th. So, obviously, please do come down for that as well. We've got some uh we got actors, we've got people kind of making films there. It's going to be a great great show and we'll talk about that more in a minute. But, as well as London, we have loads of other events coming up this year. So, we have the Pocket Gamer Connect Summit San Francisco on March 9th. The Dubai Game Expo Summit powered by PG Connects May 20th to 21st. We're going to Malmo on May 27th. Barcelona June 15th 16th. Shanghai July 30th. Going back to Helsinki for October 13th and 14th for a slightly rebranded Pocket Gamer Connect Nordics. Bangkok October

27th. And in November, we'll be in Jordan. And in December, we should be at the Canary Islands. It's a pretty patched year of events. So, for some reason, you can't make London. Hopefully, you can make one of those various shows that we have. Not to forget, we'll be doing the mobile games awards again as well this year. Right. So, we're going to kick off. We're just going to do a few highlights for what to expect at Pocket Gamer Connects London and what we're looking forward to. Uh, mine's going to be pretty brief, but I mean, there's so much to look forward to. We we're expecting up to about 3,000 industry professionals at the show. So, it's going to be great. A lot of those are actually we worked out like kind of sea level. Uh there's a lot of development and publishers there. There'll obviously be a bunch of investors. I think on investor connector, which is where investors meet developers and maybe some other games companies. Best of luck for anyone looking for a deal at the show. The things that I'm most looking forward to are one just meeting people. That's like the thing I love the most and just learning different things. It's just networking. And then I've got a I think

we kick off the show with some with some fantastic talk. So we have Chris James, CEO, Steel Media. He'll be kind of introducing and kind of setting the scene for the two days. And then after that, I've got a fireside chat with Arcadia Gaming Partners's Akimbo and he was formerly a triple dot. Bloomberg called him the mobile gaming kingpin when he was setting up Arcadia Gaming Partners. We gave him the mobile legend awards at the mobile games awards last year. At a connected with a lot of the industry and knows a lot about it. So that's again kind of a really good start to the show. And then after that we've got the video games council. So we'll have Nick Paul from Yuki, Donowski from Chucklefish, Sard Shri from Mini Clip, Emily Bailey from Jeko, and Nick Button Brown from the Games Angels. And that's going to be a Q&A with the newly formed video games council. So, uh, that is definitely one to attend, particularly for people in the UK games industry. And then we've got Sensor Tower kicking off,

I guess, the state the state of the gaming industry. So, there'll be a lot of data there. And then the last one I'll say on that is just after that, Chris James will be speaking to Dualingo Simon Hay, who obviously was one of the co-founders of Space A Games. So, it's going to be that's that's just the start. And there are I think we've got something like 310 speakers at the show. It's going to be loads. And lastly, two two more things. I'll be doing a a fireside chat with Steelfront CEO Alexis Bonte. And a lot of that is about direct to consumer, which is one of the big trends that's kind of the perennial trend of the past two years probably that I'm looking forward to learning about more. And then the other thing is UGC. We do have a track for that and there will be other people kind of talking about that and that I'm really looking forward to that because that is a sector that there's still not that much knowledge on even though it's perhaps one of the it's one of the largest segments of the industry at the moment specifically with Fortnite and Roblox and we'll be starting a

newsletter uh hopefully in the next few weeks. So stay tuned for that. Um I'm excited. Paige, anything you're in particular looking forward to? I suppose just like a little bit in general just with PGC London. I always just find that like it's the perfect show to have in January because I feel like a lot of people feel this way, but I feel like January is in general a bit of a tough month for some people where it's just in general work-wise, but like you have sort of like the holidays and then you like you've got that like getting back into the swing of things and like I know it's our show so it sounds a bit cliche but genuinely I do just feel like it's a great show in the sense of like it helps get your start like it just gets off to a great start. I think it gets you really excited about the industry. you get to kind of reconnect with everyone, see a lot of people in person, meet new people. So, I think for me, yeah, it's a lot, you know, I I tend to focus more on sort of the networking side like when I'm there obviously because of work. Um, so I don't always get to go into as many sessions, but yeah, for me it's a lot of the networking stuff that I enjoy just sometimes like the spontaneous conversations that happens like they

happen to be the best ones. Um, so yeah, I'm looking forward to that. There are some like talks and stuff I'm looking forward to as well. You mentioned a couple in your bit and definitely the trans media stuff like it being a bigger show was having two venues. I feel like that's like that's crazy that there's going to be two whole buildings to go through. I'm really looking forward to the the trans media summit. I'll be on stage on one of the days but just sort of compare hosting. And then on the other day I am hosting a fireside chat with a contours about how they transform from a games company to a trans media superstar. So I'm going to be chatting on stage about that which I'm looking forward to. I did my first fireside chat last year. Um, and it went well. So, I actually quite enjoyed it. It's the 20 minutes goes very quickly. So, I've got plenty of questions planned and hopefully make that a good insightful talk. I also saw on LinkedIn, this is like not like this is just very random, but I saw that Charlie put that the guy Tom McKay that voices Henry from Kingdom

Come: Deliverance is there. That's very cool. So, um, I just feel like there's going to be lots going on. very excited for the trans media stuff and also seeing you guys. I feel like that'll be nice because we work from home. We don't actually get to see each other very often and I know we're so busy during the show. I think last year when I finally saw you Aaron, we were like, "It's been 2 days and I haven't seen you."
Yeah. Like it it was after the event had ended by the time.
Yeah, I think it was like the end of day two and we just saw each other in like the lobby and we were like, "Oh, hello." Like Yeah. We lally had
nice seeing you here.
But yeah, obviously in the evening sometimes we get uh you know, we have like a team meal and stuff. So yeah, it'll be nice to see you guys in person as well.
Yeah, I I mean I'm just looking forward to actually making it to the event this year.
Yeah,
after last year's fiasco. And for those don't know, I've just got very ill. I tried my best to be at the show. I actually did travel down and then immediately when I was in London, I was like, this is a huge mistake.
Yeah, I remember you saying you you had actually traveled down,
proceeded to be ill for three weeks. Uh, all right. Thanks, Paige. Aaron, what about you? Is there anything in

particular that you're looking forward to? Um, so I guess kind of the opposite of um, Paige in one way that I'm usually the one who's in the talks, you know, running from room to room trying to choose the most interesting looking, you know, seminar to write about. But this year I'm going to be of interviewing a couple of people. And um so I think that will be kind of a new um kind of a new approach to the event for me of actually like speaking to people while I'm there instead of just quietly in the corner typing away the whole time. Um obviously in the evenings, you know, it's all um be going out to the event, you know, partying type things. But yeah, actually like during the bit at the brewery, I think that's going to be new of actually chatting to people. So that that should be quite nice. And yeah, obviously seeing you both. Um, and that'll be 2 years then since last saw you, which is crazy. That's gone way too quick.
Yeah. So, plenty uh to look forward to. And as I say, just as we all said really, one of the main things, just

looking forward to kind of seeing everybody uh from the industry at the show, learning a bit more about what's going on and just catching up, meeting new people. It's going to be great. Two days, lots of lots of networking events in the evenings. I've got plenty of parties uh these days. the event's kind of grown quite a lot. So, we're we're pretty proud of that. Pretty happy with that. And uh yeah, hopefully hopefully it all go actually all goes to plan by Tuesday. I'm sure it will always does. Uh but yeah, looking forward to it. Right. Uh after all that self-promotion, we're going to jump into some news. Uh I try to go through it fairly quickly, my one, but um some some negative news to start with, I guess, is Plated plans to reduce its headcount by 15%. Uh this was first reported by uh Calculus Tech and it was also in an SEC filing. Is it SEC filing? Whatever the wherever they're public uh a public filing and uh that could affect between that could

affect around 500 employees or just over 450. Apparently it could cost about 12 to 15 million um to do that. Plate employs somewhere between 3,000 to 3,500. This is a very significant uh cut. I guess 4 500 would be 3,500 anyway. Very uh very kind of deep cuts. They're not, you know, Playa does this uh has done it before. They closed some studios or they folded did like acquisitions back into the kind of the Israel HQ like they did with Seriously at Best Fiends. I think they did it to a degree with Redecor last year. They laid off a few people on the Wuga team that were working on I forget the name of the game, apologies, but they're working on a game there that got cancelled. Um, and then so some of the reasons so the CEO in an email sent to employees said it was a fundamental shift in how the firm operates. For years we operated with a broad growth mindset applying similar resource models across our portfolio of games. The economic reality of our

industry has shifted. If we do not adjust our cost structure today, we compromise our ability to invest in tomorrow. We cannot afford to resource mature titles by historical levels while simultaneously trying to build a new future. By right sizing our investments across our portfolio, we unlock the resources needed to fund our higher potential games. And the interesting bit, which is perhaps the real part of what they're getting at, is they're moving away from a headcount heavy. They're moving away from headcount heavy operations to streamline teams powered by AI and automation uh which is really interesting. And uh they mentioned there a few things about also kind of new games, live games. Player I feel like isn't a company that offered releases hit new games. They usually buy them. 500 layoffs is quite interesting timing when not that long ago they spent $2 billion on Super Play, which is doing just fine. like Disney Solitaire was straight away uh a hit for them and if I quickly look it's still it's still doing very well is net

revenue last according to app magic in December $10.6 $6 million. So yeah, it's it's doing very very successful. I guess it's quite an interesting reflection of well I don't know there could be many number of reasons why these layoffs are actually occurring but it is part of it is at least an interesting reflection on the impact of that AI is having on the industry whether that is uh player has seen okay we've we've seen it working for some of our studios now we're going to slash staff and kind of replace them or it's just I've wrote about this before is it just like the hype and potential of that that they're they feel sure that it will make a difference and maybe it won't. Some of this also could just that part could also just be a bit of PR bluster. Um to be honest um to kind of hype up investors. Oh, they're investing in AI. But yeah, that was an interesting one. So, you know, shout out obviously to all the people affected uh by that. Paige, what have you got?

I'm going to switch around what I was going to talk about and lead with more bad news since it's a similar topic, layoffs. So yeah, I was just going to speak a little bit about Ubisoft who have recently laid off 29 staff at its Abu Dhabi studio. The details seem to originally sort of come, you know, as we often get these things, LinkedIn posts of people that were affected by layoffs and then Ubisoft ended up, you know, confirming it. Um, some projects were cancelled. They did say that the it was sort of to refocus on Growtopia, which is like a MMO game. Um obviously this also follows recently the closure of Ubisoft Halifax uh in Canada. So I think it was 7 E1 employees lost their jobs there. Um Ubisoft have kind of said you know the the usual stuff we expect. So it's companywide cost cutting and you know restructuring and things like that. But you know I just I don't know you know over the last few years we've had so many layoff stories and I feel like we've had Ubisoft layoff stories specifically a lot as well. And you do

just kind of have to wonder like what when is this when is this going to end? And if you're you're saying it's a restructuring and it's a cost cutting thing. Well, when does that come to an end? Like what what is the goal? Where is it that you feel that all of your teams and all of your studios are now working in a viable size? They've all got the right projects. The team sizes are all correct. Because yeah, I just feel like to be, you know, a Ubisoft employee right now, it must be must be a little bit scary to be honest with you because this just yeah, it just keeps happening. be it, you know, a few layoffs here or entire studios, entire projects. Um, so yeah, just more bad news unfortunately. Yeah, I just I do worry about the state of Ubisoft and what comes next for them. Like is this the end of layoffs? I would like to say yes, but it wouldn't shock me if we see more from them.
Yeah, I I wouldn't be shocked. And uh this obviously comes after the Ubisoft massive layoffs not that long ago. And then like you say all the other ones that unfortunately there have been. I mean if I was if when I'm looking at

like the Halifax there maybe not so much the massive ones theoft massive one but like I guess it's they've got this big investment from 10 cent which is was it was $1.25 billion. Uh they also now owe 10 cent a 25% royalty on it on their top IPs. And so once as much as they got this cash injection, they also have to now give out money to this other publisher and they're focusing on certain IPs. So they're probably focusing on certain platforms. So then if I look at things like Growtopia, maybe maybe unfortunately that just doesn't fit in with what they're this new structure that they have, which looks like it's to keep the Gillamos in control and maybe that's all been a detriment to the company. I mean you could argue originally why were they doing all these different things and not focusing that's another topic but uh yeah I think that's some of the reasons like like Ubisoft Halifax I was working on mobile stuff maybe they just thought oh we don't well okay there's two things on that right maybe they thought well one we don't need to be doing that

because we want to focus elsewhere and secondly obviously with that one maybe that's slightly unique in that they unionized and then immediately all got laid off immediately the studio was closed so maybe that's its own thing yeah it's a shame game. Yeah, more layoffs. I've got one I've got one more story myself if I can find the document. I've uh I've got a story. So, we did the uh we updated our January 2026 movers and shakers article, which is the jobs roundup basically. And al there was one in particular that was interesting. So, there's been a number of layoffs at Meta Reality Labs and I think it was they were going to cut Meta said it was going to cut 10% of staff uh and employs around 15,000 people. in that division. Um that was reported by the New York Times. So what's interesting about that is this company Facebook renamed itself to better because it was so all in virtual reality. And then now like it's almost like the bottom's fallen out of VR. People people disagree with me I think on that. But like it's not it

still feels like it's very far away from being mass market. Maybe maybe AR glasses will become the thing. We'll see. But yeah specifically not so merch. But the as part of those layoffs, uh the global head of developer relations, Alyssa Brown, was laid off. Uh she's been working there since 2020 when it was Oculus. She said, uh yeah, as you've no doubt heard, metadata of deep cuts. She was part of it. Uh met prize itself on moving quickly and operating in ambigu ambiguity. Have no doubt that anyone who spends some amount of time at the company is more than ready to tackle difficult problems in emerging spaces and create something beautiful. But in terms of her departure and departures well of everyone really but like a lot of I'm just curious what the future is for reality labs because if you're getting rid of your head global head of developer relations that's not that doesn't give a good signal to the industry that you're serious about having developers make stuff for your

platform and it's not that wouldn't be a very future-looking redundancy either. I guess I don't know all the ins and outs. Maybe maybe other parts of the the company are sort of dealing with this. I don't know. I don't have that information. But on the face of it, it feels a bit like not I guess not what's how how do I phrase it? It it doesn't look good, I guess, for the future of of reality labs. I guess in particular maybe like the consumerf facing stuff, but we'll see. And then another one was Larry Major Nelson from he used to be at Xbox for over two decades. He has been laid off from Unity. he was their director of community and advocacy. That's quite a surprising one because that's obviously a bigname senior hire there and uh and that just comes back to there's been a lot of layoffs unity is particularly been struggling but then this guy kind of comes in and tries to help raise the the reputation of unity which that work still needs to be done like whatever whatever they say however they say it's been repaired. You can have the CEO shaking hands with Tim

Sweeney on stage all you like but like that work needs to continue. So again, that's just another one to watch. Curious about that one. And then yeah, there there's loads of other kind of hires and hires and departures. Check out the article page. What have you got?
A quick one from me. It's kind of a like this is a new part to this every week, but it's more on the Paramount Warner Bros. Netflix deal. So we ran a story last week that Warner Bros. had basically rejected an amended offer from Paramount. The board was pretty unanimous. uh the message was quite clear that they like they simply just preferred the the Netflix deal and see that as the better offer and now things have kind of escalated and Paramount are taking legal action. So they filed a lawsuit against Warner Rose and the general thing around it is to sort of force more disclosure around the terms and more of a financial analysis of what the Netflix deal and their bid actually is. Paramount is saying that their cash offer is actually superior and it would

face like less hurdles with regulations. So yeah, they they've gone ahead and filed this this lawsuit. I don't know about that as a a tactic. I suppose you make an offer, it gets rejected, you make another, it gets rejected. So then you just like, well, let's let's sue them. They say that it's kind of, you know, it is to open these discussions and it it's not like this, you know, this malicious thing. is to keep conversations open and you know keep things all very transparent but yeah you I can't help but see it as like it's a very bold move if you your offer gets rejected and then you sue them. I'm not sure about that as a business tactic but I I guess maybe it will work. We'll see. Um yeah, I'm just I'm intrigued to see what the the next part of this is. It does seem like either way this deal is going to get a lot more complicated before we see any actual end results of it. Um, they're obviously fighting very hard even though, you know, they've kind of stated they're very happy with what the Netflix deal is, but yeah, I guess we see what happens in terms of this

this lawsuit. I don't know if I can recall another story like this. I don't know if you guys can think of anything where, you know, they've made offers, it's been rejected, so they're just like, okay, to court in this kind of way where they're kind of saying, you know, it's it's to open discussions. Like I I don't know if I would feel that way about it. I can't think of off the top of my head. I'm sure it's happened.
It probably has, but yeah, definitely when I saw the story, I was like, that's that's a move.
I I can think of like battles and regulatory stuff like with Activision, Microsoft, and uh was more of a battle between
yeah,
Unity and Apploving to buy and source, which loven's probably pretty happy it didn't at this point.
No offense to the team there, just just the trajectories both companies have gone on. More referring to since then. Yeah, I can't think of a similar situation.
What?
It is a hostile takeover. Let's not forget there's no friends here. Like they want it. And to say stuff I don't

know about I just be guessing and I have no insights is pretty stupid. But like I guess like if if you try if you do this and keep trying to delay get more information out creates a bit more either Netflix has to up its offer. So it's going to apparently it's going to change it to an all cash offer and then it it just creates a bit more trouble bit more debate around it and then maybe that leads to later you know these are Trump's friends ultimately Paramount so Paramount Sky Darts so maybe down the line they it gets sort of a bit more political involved so it's probably maybe it's a move to that end I have no idea but yeah they want it they think their offer is superior brothers has said kind of some of the reasons Why? I think some of it was debt. It's too much debt on it and they're not sure about I guess the future of parts of the company and whereas Netflix's offer is apparently just a bit more clear about what they're going to do and then part of the company will spin off. Yeah. I I we've spoken about before I just don't know I just don't know what part the games business plays in all of this and

if someone could buy that like I I don't see any use for Netflix despite people talking about the trans media stuff. The fact that this co-CEO Griff Pierce said basically no they sorry they assigned no value to the games business in a massive deal when the games business is worth more than nothing says a lot about what they think of it and for Paramount I guess they do have the Sky Dance interactive stuff so maybe but also it's not part of their plan shorter anyway another one to be like we'll see how that goes this this year if you want to learn more about trans media head on down to Pocket Gaming next London we got the Trans Media Summit January 20th or if you don't If you don't care about trans media and you hate it, you can come to the show anyway. Uh we're doing plenty more at Pocket Game at Connect London. So hope you'll see everyone there. Right, that brings us to the end of the show. Thank you both. Thank you Aaron for your insights today. Paige, thank you so much for being on the show again. And yeah, we're looking forward to seeing all of you that are listening slashwatching the show. We'll see you soon. If we don't see you there,

hopefully we'll see you at another event soon. And uh please do listen in on next week's show where we'll talk about what we learned at PGC. All right, have a good have a good weekend everyone.