Shooter Monthly #6: RADICAL Marathon Solutions, Deadlock’s Secret Design, & Fortnite Extraction Mode

This game is going to ship early next year from Bungie and this is the first time anybody has ever seen it. It's the first time they've debuted it. The original Doom was a really significant jump in gaming technology for the time. And there's one more thing we'll bring to Battlefield. So I love that chainsaw. I had to fight for that. Programming lines are building in their own levels in Unreal. For Call of Duty Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, entirely new Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty
One of the fascinating new additions to your squad is a dog. Hey, is that about ready? These things, they take time. Shooter Monthly episode 6 is here. It's the podcast that is never out of bullets and we have a full packed crew at least for the first half of this podcast. So let's get right into

it. Epic has announced huge layoffs. They're laying off over 1,000 people. I wrote a piece this week. This follows up on layoffs that they did. I believe it was in September 2024 where they laid off another portion of the company. This is around a fifth of the company. It's a large share of their employees. They've been expanding to a lot of different regions. They've done remote hiring for us. You know that they had a floor. I think it was just below us in DICE. Man, everyone was in that building. Um Like this is the shooter, right? Isn't this like a bellwether for all other shooters? Like if if Fortnite coughs, doesn't everyone catch a cold because the letter that was published by Epic suggested that Fortnite was running at a loss and that they needed to remove 500 million in book balancing or have other games absorbed this loss. Like are we Are other games gaining on Fortnite's loss? I guess is is another tertiary question here. So maybe I can start with a couple of things. Uh I don't think Fortnite is necessarily an indicator for

all the shooters in the market. It is it is obviously one of the biggest games in the world and still is even with the potentially dropped engagement. But what I see here is a story that's been in the making for a while. Uh so the scale of the layoffs is obviously huge. Like 1,000 is I think 20% of Epic's workforce if I remember correctly. There were 5,000 and now it's 1,000 laid off which is a huge huge chunk of the company. Uh but like if I remember the numbers, total revenue from Fortnite has dropped uh 2 years ago and then now it's been getting back again to almost COVID levels last year. But we don't know the full story yet in terms of like revenue. But I've also been reading that average session length has been dropping. So there's a lot of metrics that's been impacting uh Fortnite. But I think um the way they've built their business is different than other shooters. They have their creative uh program which I think they uh they get to pay for a lot of creators which adds to their uh

lessening their margins in terms of profit. I think they've also focused on having this whole experience of a platform game rather than a shooter game. They went to so many different genres in order to capture the widest audience. Which means you need to spend a lot on user acquisition. There's a lot of things you need to do to be able to keep such a platform uh maintained. I think Fortnite has a different story and then if you remember that season where they brought out the old map and then they had a a huge increase in a month-on-month users because people wanted to stay OG experience. And I think that's one way to look at the story. But also when you focus your market, focus your user acquisition, you can get a huge chunk of users back. So I don't think Fortnite speaks for the whole shooter but it speaks for if your product becomes really really really wild, you need to start treating it in a a multiple different ways than just a shooter and that also includes the how you're going to treat your margins, how you're going to expand from that. And the end result could be like sometimes you've expanded too much and now you need to focus on the fundamentals again

and the result is also shrinking unfortunately, shrinking your workforce significantly. Again, I I stand by that shooters is still especially on console and PC still a growing market. The metrics are showing that. On mobile, there's metrics that are saying it could be shrinking on mobile but that also we know how mobile is. There's a lot of things that could change it rapidly there.
And I could follow up with what Frost mentioned. I think the better lens to look at Fortnite is less of a shooter and more of a platform. And platforms are defined it mainly by their distribution. And if a dis- a distribution-based platform is unavailable for the biggest the biggest platform for games such as mobile, then somebody else will take that spot. And as we know from multiple analysis from Sensor Tower and Newzoo, console console players are not growing at the rate of other platforms like PC or mobile. And really for many people, mainly kids, I can attest to this as a father, their

go-to gaming device are tablets, mobile. And if a game like Fortnite isn't there for half a decade, do they stop playing games? I could tell you they don't. They go somewhere else. I observe them going to Roblox on tablets and then transitioning from that to another platform device for gaming, continue the Roblox journey from tablet to PC or from tablet to console. Do I just not so much on like the growth of all these? Is there a world where the kind of hubris that Epic has had around Fortnite being so dominant and how they they've really kind of altered a lot of stuff in the industry. It's like they became a baseline for a lot of other games. It's like, "Oh well, Fortnite's battle pass is $10 so we have to charge $10. We can't make it 15." Uh do you think and they were getting away with this cuz they just had they just owned the market so much. Are we getting to a point now where all of those kind of goodwill or things that they were doing is just catching up to them? You know, 12% on the Epic Store. Granted, Epic Store like

I don't even know how well it's doing. Um the battle with Apple against, you know, the the

what is it called? The the golden wall?
from a lot of people's lunches without noticing because the metrics get hidden. Like tomorrow a game starts selling like hotcakes on Steam. Um all of us boomers, we'll see it on the Steam Store or our friends, you'll see in the top selling this game is there. While if something goes a huge inside Roblox, it can go unnoticed for a

while. Like there's shooters out there that had huge amount of concurrent users with within Roblox that um a lot of the community maybe have missed on because of their, you know, they're inside that secondary platform. And I think that most probably impacted uh Fortnite quite a bit cuz as Chris mentioned, mobile tablets is a big market for uh that generation. Uh but as well, a lot of them are playing uh Roblox for sure.
So this is why we cover mobile on this podcast is like mobile is clearly important. I mean, we just talked about Garena Free Fire at least by numbers being like the number one shooter in the world. I do think it's notable that for both Fortnite and for Garena Free Fire, the entry point to the sandbox is always UGC. Like they use first-person shooters to leverage themselves into a platform and that's the same thing we saw with Battlefield Portal. That is at least the thesis behind it. This is the biggest Trojan horse gaming has invented is apparently a a shooter. Um and I I think that I think that says something and it's interesting that Fortnite did not

evolve as a shooter ironically enough. Uh and so you you wonder like can Fortnite also get away from its core shooting mechanics? It's always going to be this third-person crosshair. Like that's just what the natural design paradigm is and I don't think it's been able It's not been able to show that UFN can shine with something else whereas Roblox I think has really been able to say like, "Look, you can have a [ __ ] fashion loop." Dress to impress. Do you have any conversations I've had about Dress to Impress? And we'll also be covering Rivals which is their version of a shooter which is very high quality at some point as well. And I I agree with you like not having mobile, this hubris has harmed them. Like you can't be a platform without distribution. To get distribution, you need to do your biggest TAM and your biggest TAM comes through mobile. The biggest [ __ ] device in the world.
Can I throw out a thought experiment to everyone here to almost to beta test an idea? This And this is triggered by your comments, Phil, on on Fortnite's evolution. Well, I do believe, and this came up in a

conversation from last week, I do believe that Fortnite can and should reinvent itself and should take the reins of doing it themselves. And I do think the best way they could do that, or one of the better ways they can do that, if no joke, if they released very soon Fortnite extraction, an actual extraction game, free-to-play for a huge market, I think that would be the biggest boom for the genre and for them that they could do in close proximity. I thought one I thought they had one like in development or something and they killed it or something.
Remember, they had Fortnite Ballistic. Do you guys remember this? And I think they actually announced they're shutting this down
[laughter]
as a part of this? I forget, but this was their tactical CS:GO play. And again, you look at the numbers like this was a brilliant strategy play by them. Why not? Why not go after CS:GO? We were talking about this earlier. The market is either Battle Royale or tactical shooter. And then there's like UEFN weird [ __ ] on the side. I thought this was like a really good idea even if it is done.

For what it's worth. I mean, Apex took their swing, too, remember? Remember Apex? I mean, it's still there, I think, in in Apex Legends. They have the the CS:GO style in round progression, although like there's no snowballing. Right. I think like obviously it's interesting if Fortnite pulls off an extraction shooter, but my my view is more about if the metrics we're looking at is uh you know, shorter session length and we see metrics where like going back to the original like maps, original uh the like hypothesis of the game has resulted in positive metrics, maybe the strategy of doubling down on what made the original game good and recapturing that audience and expanding on that could be a safer strategy than going back to multiple bigger products. If their goal is to actually expand the the number of players they have again and have a lot of different uh games on the platform, maybe that's the way to go. But I feel like on the engaged core user base and maybe

finding ways to make the margin uh better, like for example, uh maybe revisit the creative program in a different way. I've already seen they've changed the prices on V-bucks, which is going to be an interesting experiment for a lot of uh shooters in the market to see like how does that impact anything. Uh but I think that would be the maybe the short-term way to go for them is to just focus on the core community and find ways to re-engage them in a better way would be my vote. Was this not the goal of creative to kind of outsource, you know, a tactical shooter, to outsource an extraction shooter? And then it I feel like creative just ended up becoming like copying what Roblox did. You know, there's like still a brain rot in Fortnite. You know, it's like that comes from Roblox. So it I I thought that was the original goal behind it, but it doesn't seem to have played out that way. Uh I think due to the point you raised, Chris, a challenge in UEFN, if you guys played with it at all, is whatever you make, whatever you create, will always either look and or feel like Fortnite. It's a very hard to differentiate experiences.
That makes sense to me. I've worked with

a for a UEFN developer, which was a very interesting experience cuz they had monetization. And so I got a taste of the platform and it just would shock you how much of the platform needs like core development. I mean, you get leaderboards, basic progression features, basic I mean, they only recently added any sort of persistent state after you log back into UEFN. So like you would start a fresh session every time you logged into a server for a given UEFN game. There was no saved data. Like that's that's a recent feature, guys. Uh how you play with leaderboards or swords, like all of the tools as an economy designer you want kind of go out the window, which is also why you see like certain certain games and their genres be favored there. And I think it's also why Fortnite has basically have to be subsidized by Epic to this large degree is because it takes forever to build out those tools. This is not easy at all. Remember, they have Verse, which is their programming language. It's just been very difficult to build out new planks. None of these modes have retained well. If you look at the share of UEFN DAU, which is something that's

reported on Fortnite.gg, I don't have it in front of me, but they basically have stagnated in terms of growth. There's nothing there. They've declined every single year on both the main platform and UEFN is not growing. Like it's just you if if you don't grow, like you don't evolve. And they didn't monetize, they they weren't on mobile. I I don't know about the lawsuit, guys. I don't know. I I I I think those numbers were disclosed in the Apple case. And it was expensive, but I think they got some of that back. Don't quote me on this, but I'm thinking more of just like the like what Anya's was saying, like the opportunity cost of not being on mobile, less about like the actual cost of the legal the of the legal side. Um is there is there also like a world where players that grew up playing Fortnite, you know, they are the ones that have graduated to more of, you know, the millennial shooters, COD, Battlefield, but then the younger generation is not graduating out of Roblox into Fortnite? They're staying in Roblox. And so Fortnite's kind of in this middle where it's kind of losing on both sides. I think that's an interesting thought that that we we

could look at data to verify. I think that could happen since Fortnite, even though it's uh a platform in a way, it is still for the majority of the users a shooter. And there's a lot of shooters out there. So you can easily graduate from Fortnite to another shooter once you I don't know, your your friends grow up or you grow up yourself or you want to play different game or you're bored of Fortnite. I think Roblox by itself has I don't think it necessarily has a one defining experience. Like Fortnite has the defining experience and all the other stuff, which is equally as important, but there is a defining experience. There is a marquee part to it. And I don't think Roblox is like that. So I think the Roblox users can graduate to almost anything, which maybe is contributing into that. I think it's an interesting point, Chris. And and for us, something that you mentioned about what Fortnite did that got them to where they were, a lot of that, in my opinion, historically speaking, was due to their their distribution, meaning free-to-play at the height of Battle Royale when PUBG was out there premium on PC. They were

free-to-play on PC and console with cross-play eventually down the line. So that model trumped a lot when it came to the success of Fortnite in my in my professional opinion. And I think the opportunity here that Fortnite should double down on is what got them to the dance in the first place, which was, "Hey, in the extraction market, there's not really a competent free-to-play version. If we were that solution, what would that look like?" And I really do think I'm very bullish that probably one of their better options to exercise soon. God, it's like a drug with you guys. You're infected with this now. Speaking speaking of extraction, we enter week three since the launch of the one the only Marathon, and numbers have started to roll in. If you remember, we did some estimations at the beginning of last episode. I would say the low end is where these numbers have come in. We're looking right now at Video Game Insights, and it breaks down those

numbers in a couple different ways. One is looking at total unit sales across PC and console for Marathon versus Arc Raiders. Remember, Arc Raiders, you know, it's one comparison point, it's not the only comparison point. That's obviously a very successful case, but again, it gives you some sense of where this product is. It's looking maybe 1.2 getting up to 1.5 million units. And when you compare that to where Arc Raiders was at a similar period, it at this point was crossing 6.5, maybe around 6.6. The weakness, surprisingly, has really been on PlayStation. Like I'm just surprised when we look at the platform comparisons how poorly it's done on what I thought was a first-party platform. Um but then again, it's still lagging behind Arc Raiders in most platforms. The PC audience showed up for this one, for whatever it's worth. And we finally look at DAU, which is actually in a better place. Like it's DAU has really not fallen off cliff. I mean, don't get me wrong, Arc Raiders was continuing grow grow grow grow grow, but it's decline has been marginal at best. So there is like some evidence of

life and retention here. They released a ranked update, which I thought was one of the coolest features in the game. gating features at launch. I think you should totally overwhelm players and put everything on their plate. The super players are going to go crazy. Do not wait artificially so you can fill your road map with these different beats. Um but that's that's one man's opinion. Firas, you weren't here. What What is your What is the Marathon take that you're going to deliver to us? How smoking hot is it? Um I don't think I'm well known for my hot takes, but but I will give a take. So uh So if there's a person that I would like to meet right now, it would be Firas that lives in a parallel universe where there's no Arc Raiders and he can give me the information and the data of like how does Marathon do when when there is no Arc Raiders? Cuz I think they obviously there's a a lot of people that I would love to meet, not just myself, but I'm not that egotistical. But I was using this as an example that Arc Raiders um has most probably done a lot of things that people have wanted from

the extraction genre before Marathon launched, in a way. So for example, we've all talked about how extraction genre hasn't been a very accessible. Marathon was supposed to be the more accessible version of that, but then Arc Raiders was that. There's a lot of reasons why this could have impacted this game. Uh my view on Marathon is uh as well, it's in a way a bit of a gamer's game. It's less mass market appeal. And if you're already interested in extraction genre, you'll most probably engage in this game. The audience is interesting, it's not huge right now, but it's very very solid retention engagement figures, which means once the game has found its market, these players get to stick in it, but it's not has found its mass appeal. It could be also user acquisition, etc. cuz I remember for example when The Finals was out, it was featured on the PlayStation store uh for a long time. I used to find it anecdotally on YouTube ads everywhere. I didn't feel the same with Marathon. I didn't

a lot of its audience, but that's not necessarily the kind of game to play considering that Marathon is actually much more hardcore, in my opinion the way that I played it, than Arc Raiders, for example. So, I think this is why one of the reasons we didn't see a lot of sales for this game. Uh me personally, between the two, I I I think I enjoy Arc Raiders a bit more, but I was never like a huge extraction shooter fan and I don't think Marathon have changed things enough for me to win me in this genre, while Arc Raiders has done a bit. So, that would be my view right now, but I have to play Marathon a bit more. Did you get your citizenship

approved yet for Sweden? Is this a part of the application? Yeah.
[laughter]
100 hours of Arc Raiders for Just just get just just to make sure. Uh do you do you think that if you are if you're sitting in the Marathon leadership, I was thinking about what you'd do today. And this has been the feedback that a lot of people have given and I think Chris made a very interesting point that you got to remember that Arc Raiders was not an object of contention as this game was being developed, right? And to his point, this would have been a much more accessible Tarkov if it had come out before Arc. So, there's a question of like, okay, well, what do you do now? And if you really need to soften the edges, what what would be your your suggestion here as like an economy designer, a systems designer? What could actions could they take now? Is it about extending health packs? Is it about more resource drops? There are tools in the game economy tool bag to address this, especially in extraction shooters. There's the armory, how it's priced. There's just a wealth of opportunity. It

could be any of those things, but I I kind of what I feel is the following. And again, I I need to dig deeper into the economy of the game to give like solid advice here. But, what I think is the following. Since you have already what seems to be very healthy retention numbers, it's just that you haven't appealed enough for players, then maybe this is it's not necessarily about changing these small things to attract more players. Like, if you do any of the changes you said, Finn, I don't think this will bring more users to the game. So, I think you have like here two strategies. You have like a slow burn strategy since Sony is quite big. You can go down the um the Valorant route. Like, you're going down a a long burn of acquiring your unique space in the extraction shooter genre and you grow gradually with a very strong engaged audience that you have cuz so far the I think the retention figures from uh Marathon look quite good. And then you can go the other route, which is, okay, how can I add things to this game to expand the audience that can appeal

to it and then bring them in. And this is the tricky part when you've had uh already your launch. The second one would be much, much harder than the slow burn approach, in my opinion. Though, it's now becoming very, very rare for shooters in like 2026 to go through the slow burn approach of growing their audiences. I think I would also suggest looking into what what would be the thing that would bring more users into the game. How can you, for example, win Destiny 2 players since you're Bungie? What would be the thing that brings them into the game in the long term without losing the already engaged users? Cuz if you have solid retention numbers and the game is good, then you don't want to lose that. You want to acquire more users that are exactly this game is made for them and then finding the strategy to expand then and reuse your user base that you have. I got a few I got a few thoughts. One, calling it a gamer's game, I think is like a really kind of succinct way to describe how it feels right now. I thought that was a really good quote there for us. I think as well talking about the Destiny 2 point, uh you know, the goal wasn't to take

Destiny 2 players and graduate them to Marathon. Um the idea was to have two successful games running at the same time to build up like a portfolio for Bungie. Um this is again and again, like Arc Raiders wasn't in in the question. This is again kind of why I brought up maybe a couple podcasts ago that like delaying a game is not about the budget. It's not about the cost of making the game. It's all these other factors that you have to, you know, how is the market going to be if you push the game by a year? What's it going to look like? And the delays allowed Arc Raiders to get in before Marathon got there. Now, again, I would love to go back and see a world where Marathon launched before Arc Raiders, what would the numbers look like? We don't really know. Um but I do think it had some impact. I thought it was going to be a little bit more positive. I thought the Arc Raiders kind of I thought Arc Raiders broadened the extraction audience, therefore there would be more eyes on Marathon instead of having to like train a new audience on what an extraction shooter is. It doesn't seem to appear that way, but also their marketing was much more focused on core, you know, it was like escape will make me god, like death is

just the beginning, like these kind of like very aggressive narratives. And so, I think it's kind of hard to back away from that narrative and try to be like, oh, we're we're actually casual friendly. I think it's a little bit challenging. Now, what would I do if I was a leader on the leadership team for Marathon at this point? I would take a pretty drastic route here and I would add an arena mode. I would literally add arena cuz I mean, the thing about Marathon is like the gameplay is so [ __ ] good. Like, it's Bungie gameplay, man. It is so solid. And I think when people talk about, you know, like the map design, people talk about the map design, people aren't talking about like the economy like you would in like a Tarkov, you know, the people aren't talking about it that way. And so, when people are the clips you see, they're all tied to these like very awesome gameplay moments, very tight controls, like all types of stuff. So, if I I would like the nuclear option in my head is to add an arena mode. The second nuclear option is go free-to-play. Woah.
of the two big things that I would look

at doing. Just start with the free-to-play because this is a conversation so many studios are having. It's the mind virus. It's just it like can consume teams and and maybe maybe it deserves to consume teams, but I feel like going free-to-play amplifies a lot of problems. And it like what what is the thesis that makes this work at free-to-play that didn't make it work in box? Because the monetization of this game is not strong. The cosmetics are not strong. The content supply is not strong. That's pretty obvious to me playing. This needs to survive on box sales. And so, okay, what are you going to get except more server cost and less ARPU? What it what does that do for me, right? What's what's the thesis of that? The struggle is that this is so far off of where they need to be. This game would have been great if they didn't bet the house on it. But, the one of the things you also mentioned is like choices were made. These are polarizing choices. And I [ __ ] love what is behind this product and its integrity and what it represents. But, the ultimate reality is is that this is a

very risky set of profile choices. And so, when it comes to the acquisition state, you know, what is the art style doing in terms of acquisition? Um again, I go back to systems design is maybe like that's one way it could be approachable. You know, maybe it increases K factor. But, something is holding back this game and I don't know what it is. I don't I I think everyone has a role to play. I think this is a tough spot to be in. It's it's a very tough spot to be in. You can't pull the free-to-play lever because also people need to understand the stores restrict when you can do that. They don't want people to have buyer's remorse. And so, Steam locks you out from price changes as well. You can't just discount down to $5 to like drive traffic, which is instantly a conversation Bungie's having with their brand marketers. I can guarantee you that. It's like, what does the next season look like? I I I think you Look at the the interesting thing is retention's not bad. Okay, could we start to accumulate DAU? I guess I wonder if there's a strategy in terms of monetization that puts this game in a better ARPU state. Can they get ARPUs to

a much higher level than traditional cosmetic-based games? What what is a good burn rate? You're going to have to downsize Bungie, but how can we make this sustainable? Is there a a monthly ARPU number that we can pull off that makes sense? I still feel like people don't have things like insurance slots. I don't understand why this game doesn't have insurance slots. I don't understand like these are things that to me win on accessibility, win on systems design, are pretty cheap and I would sell. Put put some insurance slots. Sell sell some gameplay. I think it makes the game better. Uh in my opinions, but like there there are a lot of ways to do it that are not just going to the armory and like selling credits, although that's a pull in case of emergency. Um is, you know, let me let me have a special slot, uh let me have armor that regenerates, you know, or drops things. Uh the game is fun to play. I love the slot machine. Like, that is what I've really come to see extraction as. It's a slot machine with variance. The the issue is is that I need the slot to be pulled faster, which is what I think

this game got right, right? That was that was the thing I really loved about this is that I pull the slot faster, but I wish I could go on the upswing quicker.
[snorts]
I wish I could I could Basically, I want rake back. I think I think that's one way to think about like is is is rake back. Can I get some rake more rake back in the game? Cuz the economy doesn't seem broken at all either right now. But, Bungie Bungie, I wish you the best. I I I think they got a tough task ahead of them. The game holds up. I'm going to continue to play. Crypto archive is really cool. They're ranked mode. And I think the the thing that Chris said, like, I know we both reacted to the free-to-play, but I guess we both reacted to it if it's happening tomorrow, which I don't think that's what you want.
my That's not Yeah, it's not like turn it on to free-to-play today. It's just like a long-term strategy.
Send the you know, send the pigeons. Send the send the send the raven. Yeah, I mean, I think Sorry, I think more first is the arena mode. The free-to-play one is just a fun thing to throw on there cuz people like to freak out about it. Uh but I really honestly believed from an acquisition standpoint, that's what I'm talking

about is like cuz acquisition is
war zone. Sure, yeah. Acquisition is the challenge here. Call it a W.
how do you acquire What's the most popular, you know, first-person shooter genre for acquisitions? Arena. I just feel like Splitgate went the opposite direction, too. I don't know why arena. Wouldn't you Wouldn't you go to want to go tactical? Wouldn't you want to play like we were just talking about ballistics?
I'm I'm a little showing my bias a bit where like I feel like the It's really hard to break into the tactical genre because of the amount of time and depth it takes to like be good at those games, but arena drop-in, drop-out, like I feel like if you're looking to grab that more casual player base, it's right there. I guess if you have to do something like that, then I would suggest that part of the game be That part could be free-to-play. Like I feel if you want to charge Yeah, For a Halo That's like a Halo Halo Infinite did, right?
Don't leave Don't leave PMs in a room for too long. Cuz I think they I think

just they the $40 price point, I think would be a big problem for arena players. So, if you want to combine both strategies, you would go with a free-to-play entry point on the arena.
model an upsells funnel. It'll be great. Or even the the long the long-term to play free-to-play or long-term free-to-play is not a bad option cuz again, talk about Destiny 2, that's what kind of worked in the end, going full free-to-play in the end and then having DLC packs. That's not totally out of the park with PvP BP games. If you want to have some sort of DLC packs down the lines, even if they're priced within game currency, for example, like Helldivers war bonds, in my opinion, are some sort of a DLC pack that is priced within game currency that doesn't break the audience. There's so many things you can do down the line with this. Again, my vote would be on the slow burn. So, does it have The game does have a battle pass. It is semi in the war bond vision that there's like pages. Some of the rewards are premium, though, so you can select them even if you don't have the appropriate battle pass currency.

Just very unconvincing. Yeah, it's a bit tiered, too. Yeah, very very heavy. Are you open to including Would you be open to including gameplay on the monetization front? Do you think that's like a Do you think that's like an acceptable design space? I think usually if the game is PvP or has PvP elements, it's not usually the right thing to to do. It can It can cause a lot of issues with the game. Like tomorrow, a game like Marathon, if it starts selling gun packs and one of the gun packs are strong, they're going to be even in worse trouble. So, I wouldn't I wouldn't jump on that. I don't think monetization is the problem they need to be fixing right now. And if they go down the route of selling boxes of weapons, I don't think that would fix it. So, for Marathon, I don't think that's the way to go. It's an acquisition problem, like for sure. That's just what we're seeing. And of course, like when exactly If acquisition goes up, we're not going to see the retention numbers you see now just cuz that's how math works, but it'll

uh it would at least end at a higher base than you are probably going to end at this state.
Yep. Okay, well, we We send our best. We We We send our best to Seattle. Uh we hope we all things Things turn out well, but if we were to switch gears to another Seattle story, there is been another update to the one, the only Deadlock, and that has transformed their numbers. I have not shown Deadlock numbers on the show before, and if I figure out where they are, I will show them this episode. Webstores, you've seen what good looks like, but have you seen great? AppCharge is the direct-to-consumer platform backed by the likes of Supercell and built by monetization pros from Moon Active, Plarium, Huge Games, and others. People who know the difference. AppCharge powers over half a billion dollars in transaction a year for top studios, optimizing every detail. Deeply personalized webstore offers

custom-made design, industry-leading monetization features, in-game payments SDK, and more. 70% of top-grossing games already have a webstore, but the ones scaling fastest, they're doing it with AppCharge. Learn more at appcharge.com. Game devs, here at Heroic Labs, we know that great gameplay is what players love, but integrating meta-game features like challenges, progression, and rewards is crucial for retention and monetization. But coding them is a tedious and time-consuming process. That's why top studios have turned to Hero from Heroic Labs. Hero provides a complete suite of battle-tested meta-game features that are quick to implement, letting you spend more time [music] on the core gameplay experience. Ready to ship fully featured engaging games? Check out Hero today at heroiclabs.com. Deadlock is on the prowl. We're looking at the first show of Deadlock numbers on this podcast. The game has recovered

where it was at its initial limited Steam launch in October 2024. It has hit over 100 and 10,000 PSU on Steam. It's been having a little bit of decline recently, but it is reached new highs. It is accompanied by huge update to the game. I don't know if you guys have had a chance to play yet, but one of the things they added was something that has shocked me. There is something that almost all game designers have tried to convince me of. I think Frost you might have tried to convince me of this at some point, which is a social space, a 3D menu social space. Something that everyone has convinced me as a game designer that is more immersive for the player, and I've hated it. This is where my PM comes out. And this game has a way for you to switch your characters in the home lobby, so you can test out different abilities. It is a brilliant, brilliant design, and I want to give them immediate credit for it. The other thing I wanted to talk about at some point today was its systems design. It's

by IceFrog, who's the original developer of Dota, and it takes the three-stat system uh model into account. So, there's all these different stats. They scale at different rates. They have guns that have different fall-out damage. It basically is to me the maxima point of pushing systems design in a game is how do we basically make every component modular? And then when you How do we add progressive elements around each of the components as players start to level up and scale? So, you can get all these really cool scaling effects that you usually don't get in other games, again, within the context of around. Gentlemen, I don't know if you've had a chance to play Deadlock yet. What are your thoughts? What What is Valve doing with this game? I don't understand the thesis. Like why did they need to go out and make a third-person shooter MOBA? Did anyone ask for this? As a as a Dota 2 fan, I'm really happy that Well, I'm also an original Dota fan. So, but I I've been clean from Dota now for 2 years or so. I had to stop. I think Did I remember going to your apartment and tripping over the syringes? Yeah.
[laughter]

It's just at some point you you have to stop playing Dota because you have to play other games. But I'm really, really excited that IceFrog was working on something. I got asked So, I haven't played the latest update. I'm actually going to check it a bit more in-depth and see what's what's going on. But when I originally played uh Deadlock, uh I think it was about a year ago. I was actually quite excited of how similar it felt to Dota rather than it felt to Overwatch, for example. And I think that's what's going to be really interesting about uh this game. I think from a a market perspective, I'm not sure if it's going to be the shooter fan who's going to enjoy this game more or it's the MOBA fan. And then I know immediately people start discussing, "Well, what about Smite?" And this plays way differently than Smite as well. So, a lot of interesting designs in terms of systems, a lot of interesting designs sort of like gameplay. I think the the interesting thing that I don't know yet, and maybe this new update will solve that problem a bit more, is that they're actually going to Which Which audience

going to play this? Is it going to be like Is it going to be the MOBA players making a a big comeback? Is it going to some of the shooter players going to come in? Is it going to be the Overwatch hero shooter players? Cuz there's not There is shooting, but not a lot of shooting when I played. It's still about laning. It's still about farming. It's It's It's a MOBA more than a shooter. It's just guys with shooters, what I felt back then. You can see the icons just got way better and everything, but I feel at the core, most probably, the game is is the same. Like I would say the the most important thing is to spend time with the systems design. Like there's one page that really shows you how each of the different abilities works. It's super overwhelming to start with. Like I would recommend watching YouTube videos to understand what's going on between the different stat systems and how they scale. Um Yeah. There's a lot. But I remember that I think that's the thing that I meant when it's more of a MOBA than a shooter. Like shooter players, I'm not sure they enjoy this kind of tinkering and figuring out different Yeah.

Yeah, maybe that's why it hasn't really grabbed me, to be fair. Maybe that's why it's struggling to scale. Is this a ceiling? Is it just like lost without an audience? Cuz to me, it plays with a lot of action. Certainly more action than Smite or Paragon. There you go. There you go.
think like For for me, like the thing that I struggled with is if I'm looking for a MOBA, I already have one as a player. And if I am a shooter player and I come into this, I'll be like, "Oh, wow, there's like a huge amount of systems here." And another thing I wanted to mention the podcast and I forgot. They bought the Risk of Rain 2 team. And it's rumored that they bought them to specifically work on this game with IceFrog. And Risk of Rain 2 is a really fun game. It's an amazing game, but it's the same thing. You you boosted up and you think it's just a third-person shooter that is rogue-like, but there's so many layers of systems, buffs, debuffs for you to be able to beat that game. And I can see more and more of their design here. So, my gut feeling is actually the rumors are true that the Well, that that is not so much a rumor that Valve bought the team, but the

rumor was that they bought them to work on this. And the more we're looking at things right now, I I feel they're most probably around this game.
see it in like the action gameplay. I can see a lot of like Risk of Rain 2 inspiration. I can feel it. This is just one small part of the stats which they exposed to the player. So, again, you have three sets of stats. You have weapon stats, you have vitality, and then you have spirit. If you just look into the sub menu, you see like you have What is this? This is nine stats in the top panel, and then another five that are exposed to the players. Sprint speed, stamina recovery, cool down, move speed, uh debuffs, spirit resist, melee resist. Not only that, but like you also have overall improvements as you just level up the stat category, right? And so, that is a deep level of systems design. If you look at weapons, it's like all the stats are specific to the weapons like reload reduction, clip size increase. Like this is a huge change from other games. The melee damage becomes an important part of this game. There's parry, guys. You can parry melee

moves in this game. There's There's dodging and rolling. Like that's a huge action element, which is another reason I would put it I don't think it maybe not shooter for us, but I would put it clearly with a ton of action references. They make use of the third-person mode in a way that Paragon Paragon was never like this. And if you play Predecessor, which is the one that spun out from the mods, they they tried to There's the the game was actually growing, by the way. The gameplay plays actiony, I guess. It feels more fluid. I think that question Yeah. But like maybe you guys can help me with this. Like from a live service game right now, which which which game would the players leave to play this one instead? Like an Overwatch player leaves Overwatch and jumps into this, they're going to get confused as [ __ ] right? I know. I have no [ __ ] clue. This game is hard to sell. This is the point.
[laughter]
Like it looks cool. I I think like it has to be the Dota players, but it's like why do the Dota players want the

action piece? And I'm not sure they do.
that I found interesting. I have friends that only play Dota. Like they just play Dota. And then one of the only games that I've seen them play other than Dota was Risk of Rain. There's something weird with the the if you stack the systems enough, you might attract the MOBA audience. At the shooter aspect of it, you might attract some of the shooter audience. But how you package this and sell it And I'm not saying that this it's bad. I'm saying there is an audience for this once they find it. And I think I'm I might be even one of the audience for this game cuz it looks really good. I I really hope it succeeds. But I think this is going to be really really hard to sell. You have to let players to try it, etc. And if it's a company other than Valve making this, you'd be worried. But I think they have to the time to gradually put players in. Artifact is not the same example cuz Artifact was $20, actually. I don't think it was really a good game. Artifact wasn't as good as
I I Well, what what what what Silence. I will have no other I will have no

other I will have something on this. Not even close. No. It was It's one of the best CCGs I've ever played. [clears throat]
at its announcement. Don't you remember that video? I was excited for it. I Yeah, I I am sorry. It just wasn't that great.
Lane Lane-based gameplay was the future. Marvel Snap owes a lot to it. That's That's an interesting point. Yeah. Uh there's a lineage that was developed there. They They also had a relaunch that made it much faster and never made it out of that period. But I I still think there was a lot to this game that has never been appreciated. Let me Let me Let me ask you one more question, then. Do you think Deadlock struggles with defining a target segment to go after? That was kind of the undertone of some of our marathon conversation. I think Chris Anzalone asked a very interesting question, which is give me your elevator pitch of like what is this? What is What is the sell? And that helps define the target audience. Do you think Marathon suffers from the same issues Deadlock does? I don't think so. I think the audience for Marathon is extraction players. This is why it's bigger on PC. And this is why it's not huge. Like

[laughter]
But you think that that was the That was the point. I I I was for so long. That's something I've argued for a very long time on extraction on this podcast is that the the TAM has never been shown to be real. Uh then what then what did Arc solve, then? What Work me through Arc, then. What did Arc unlock? Arc is not necessarily at the And I know we could argue semantics, but like it's also how they branded the game. Arc is more of an extraction adventure. It's about the social play. It's about
like that. It's about being accessible. It's about being approachable and has a lot of nice elements around that. Yeah. And PvE is much more built out. Can Can I I want to add a very strong piece of evidence around this, which is that one of the things that happens in extraction shooters is when you meet another player, you don't have to kill each other. You can both extract. You're not necessarily rivalrous when you enter a given shard. And so, what happens in Arc is that frequently you will have interactions with players where you agree not to shoot each other. Like you're people are immediately calling out and yelling "Peace peace peace peace peace." So, nice people will just like be unarmed, which is interesting. What's

just show of good faith. Now, sometimes you get betrayed. That does happen. Like I've been in the extraction point waiting to be extracted, and the other guy will shoot me in the face. It does happen. It is the internet. However, far more cooperation in Arc. Marathon, everyone [ __ ] shoots to kill at first sight.
[snorts]
Like that is a huge difference. The map size. I would argue that Marathon maybe has a fourth of the map size of Arc, if at that, and more dense shards as well because Well, maybe not dense shards, but they still have the royal royal mechanics where things or players get decreased. There's the rook. We can debate what By the way, one last thing. We can debate the importance of the rook. Right? That was one point I wanted to make about Tarkov is that like it it is true there is sessioning there, and the the the What is it? Scav. Thank you. The scav The scav feels like it's a constant presence, and I very rarely have felt it in Marathon, for what it's worth. Uh but Marathon definite Excuse me. Arc definitely does continuous insert of

players during a during a session, which which I think is also interesting, by the way, when you consider O core costs is that they can basically keep a server going rather than spinning one up and just like inject players at a steady rate. Very interesting move on the P&L. We shouldn't ignore. Yeah, but that's that's the thing. Like we we talked about it before in this podcast. I think was like maybe it was the second episode or something. We were talking about like what could make the extraction market bigger. And then we were mentioning making it more accessible, making it more approachable, reducing the intensity. Uh like the the things you mentioned that Marathon is not doing so much, while Arc Raiders does. I think also readability is a thing for And maybe this is me cuz I'm not super skilled, but in Marathon, I struggle not to shoot at anything that moves because it's also sometimes hard to see things. In Arc Raiders, it's a choice. I'm I I can clearly see he's an enemy. I can clearly see this is another player. But this again, maybe it's a skill issue. Maybe I'm getting old, but I do think there I do think something like a subtle thing that makes Arc Raiders more kind of casual friendly

or more welcoming is the strong distinction between PvE and PvP silhouettes. You know, in in in Marathon, This happened in Tarkov, too. Like you see a scav. Like any any time a player plays Tarkov for the first time, it's like "Is that a player?" It's like "No, it's a scav." It's like tell people. Um but in in Arc Raiders, like it's obviously not a player. And I think it's like a really subtle thing that I don't think it gets enough credit for really allowing the onboarding and the approachability of that game in the extraction space. Um and you just don't really see that in in Marathon because they still are pretty humanoid, the the PvE. And of course, Tarkov, they're they're literally people. So, So, let me let me bring you guys home. Let me bring you guys home. And I'm completely serious when I ask this question. If Deadlock doesn't have an audience, and it doesn't have or doesn't have a strong defined target market, and we're talking about like other franchises pivoting, trying to capture adjacent segments, should it build an extraction mode? Like isn't the core gameplay of this

from what we see with Arc Raiders suggest that maybe this is actually where you take extraction is appeal to the MOBA stats-heavy audience? So, my argument about extraction since like DMZ launched in COD is that you can't treat extraction as a mode. Uh I don't think it like I think the thing that makes extraction shooters so um engaging for that audience, I don't think you can replicate in just like a mode. It would have to go down like the Delta Force route where like it's literally more like it's a full game. Like that's not a mode. You know, um DMZ was a mode in Call of Duty, but the extraction mode or extraction mode, quote unquote, in Delta Force is a full game. So, I don't think that you can shre treat it as a mode. That was kind of always my my hypothesis, at least. Um I haven't really seen a a game prove it yet where like it can just be a mode alongside to the main mode of something else. Um Yeah. I think uh I'm with you, Chris. Like if if you want to have extraction, you need to build meta systems around

it. It could be part of the game if you connect other experiences to it, or if you again go like that out of Arc Raiders where it is an extraction game, but it's not like you know, in in the way that hardcore extraction shooters are. I think like Tarkov even tried that with their I think they had a secondary game, and then they tried to connect the progression together. Yeah. Yeah, I guess my point about making arenas kind of [ __ ] on by Tarkov cuz Tarkov Arena did nothing.
[laughter]
Well, well, first of all First of all, first of all, I don't think anyone was coming to Tarkov for the core gameplay, though. They're coming for the mode. They weren't coming I think your argument is at least more sound in that people would show up for Bungie core arena shooter gameplay. Yeah, modern shooter reader gameplay. Like they're not getting this from Halo, to be honest with you. They've completely dropped the ball.
Yeah, but I feel the extraction loop is compelling enough that you can have additional modes to it and it it it will work. But you need But you need the loop and the meta around it. I don't think it should take Deadlock and make it an

extraction cuz I think that will even confuse the audience even more. I've been saying that at X Square Enix that they bought company or going to publish a company that's working on a an extraction MOBA. I played the early playtest for them as well. They're a company in Denmark. And so so there are stuff in the market that's going to show up like that. It was fun. Was it Super Dive also that?
Yeah, Super Dive was a battle royale MOBA. That didn't work out either. Was it battle royale? I thought it was extraction. I I can't remember. Uh it was called There was extra- It's interesting. I I that that was a label that could be thrown around. You're leaving with some You're They didn't have a lot of vertical progression. That was the problem. They added an extraction mode actually I think late.
Oh, I see.
I'll I'll edit this into be seamless. Or they they had one that's similar to Delta Force. The other thing that I heard is there's a potential full-on PvE experience for this game that some some players have found hidden traces of it in the code. And if that is a thing that I'm going to be really excited. Um usually Valve don't make uh console

games. So they usually just go for, you know, for PC. And if this game becomes really successful, there's already some uh you know, developers that are looking at this and making a version of Deadlock for console. I think there's something There's space for that out there. Unless Valve decides to do something different and release this on everything. I think there's a space for a Deadlock on console already is what I'm seeing. I don't know what What you, Chris? Yeah. No, I was going to say like I'm not, you know, MOBAs are not really my uh wheelhouse, thankfully. I didn't I wasn't I didn't get that uh addictive gene for MOBAs specifically. Um but
Sorry for you. Yeah, I think when I look at Deadlock outside of like the the real mechanics like inside the game, I think the way that Valve has done this kind of rollout strategy and in a weird way they made people feel like special for being in it because it was like oh, only like it's a small segment right now. It's a group of people. I actually kind of think that was all a narrative. I think they sent out like millions of them and just told said it was like a small sample size. Cuz like I was invited and I don't play like there's [clears throat] nothing in my Steam

library that suggests this would be a game that I enjoyed. And so I I think that what they've done from like a rollout narrative in this like soft launch go-to-launch strategy have been very interesting. Now, my naive question and I'm looking for somebody who has more experience here. What makes this so much different than like a Smite or like speaking of Epic like a Paragon What was that? 8 years ago or whatever. Like what makes it so much different? And I know we call it like a shooter, but shooting is there's it feels like there's a big mix of just ways to do damage. I I actually don't I'm not I'm not on board with Frost's interpretation of this game. I don't play it as a MOBA disguised as a shooter. There's a couple things I would point to as being interesting points of differentiation that also I think help the Smite question. One is that to succeed you need decent coordination of just aiming their hot or crosshairs and then firing. Like that undoubtedly is a part of this game is just aiming properly in a way that is consistent with using the

different XY axes you do in a shooter. Like XYZ axis. Like you're moving through space, you're aiming up and down with the mouse. That's That's a little bit different than you had in your traditional MOBAs which were the isometric view. So I think that becomes an element that's interesting. The other is that they have things like crouch. They also have things like these points these action points which you can use to slide and use dodge moves. And so that to me adds these action elements which I don't think were as persistent in the MOBA genre or in Smite either. Like there was just a There was just It felt a lot boxier to play those games and here I don't I don't find the the gameplay the core gameplay as boxy. I would say it's also just again a remarkable Tour de France in systems design. There's different spirit abilities which have its own spirit damage which means you need to have different resistances. There's physical damage. If we go to like one of the units' pages, you can also see things like the drop-off in bullet damage which again is something a lot of first-person shooters have started to do is show you what that chart looks like. But they have things like spread. It's unbelievable the level of detail over

the stats they give you and how the stat system interacts. So it's kind of hidden as like It It a lot of it is execution. I would also just like maybe even spend a moment talking about the the IP is [ __ ] cool. I mean, it's like what what is this? It's It's like a neo-Gothic. It's got some steampunk elements in it. What is this? New York? Like New York demons? I mean, [ __ ] Like cool cool [ __ ] very fresh IP. It's also great to see that it's got like demonic and satanic things.
That looks really cool. Yeah, it it looks like something you want to spend time in. Just looks really really beautiful. Yeah, it feels like they've done a lot of the things just They've just [clears throat] done a lot of the things that are known very well. Like is that kind of where we get to where it's like just it's solid at the stuff it does and it's not I don't know if it's like I don't know how drastically it's pushing the genre in a certain direction or not, but it does seem like everything I see is like it it just is done very well like with care. You can like feel um the kind of effort that's put into everything. Even like little subtle animations and everything. It just It

feels really nice. I think they have a lot of their time to iterate things as well. That's one one good thing about how Valve develops games. Like when when this game was in early like very limited access, all the icons were whip. Everything was like very clear that they're focusing on the core gameplay and they gradually go from that. I remember also when Dota 2 showed up early on on the Steam page, you can actually play the game in alpha. Like a lot of time these days when game's in early access or it's in an alpha state, it's way more polished than that because the players will look at it in a a harsh way otherwise. And Valve just doesn't do that. They're like no, this game is in alpha. And you play it and it feels like I think even the setting screen in Deadlock last time I played it had the UI from Dota. Like you could tell they just like took that, put it in. They're rapidly prototyping, rapidly iterating on the game. And I think the way they develop this combined with the, you know, the wealth of data they have from both MOBAs and shooters cuz Valve Valve has, you know, the biggest one of the biggest shooters and one of the biggest

MOBAs out there. So most most probably it's one of the best companies to be able to pull off a MOBA shooter hybrid with with that wealth of, you know, data from the players that they have.
You're talking about UGC and one of the things I started to think about is how Valve doesn't launch games anymore. They launch platforms. Like even their games are attached to these major key plays they've made with Steam Workshop to basically source crowdsource cosmetics and split revenue with creators. They also have a lot of mods or custom maps for CS:GO. Like some of the most I mean the thing that's ironic about them is that they're all just purchasers of mods, right? Like Dota was a mod, CS:GO was a mod. Like they they've been building their entire business based on mods. They hired Andrew Garfield for the for the Artifact CCG game if you remember that. They haven't done actually a lot of original original work, but they built all these key pieces that means there's an engine that could be attached. There's a Steam marketplace to buy and sell cosmetics. I mean, one of the interesting things is like can they also put loot boxes in

this game which to me remains TBD. There's no monetization in the title. And I do wonder whether or not they're grandfathered in as a publisher to be able to do loot boxes like they do in CS:GO or they're going to try to get completely away from that model and go with the battle pass model. I think we'll be fascinating to see and like decides a lot for the rest of the industry on whether or not loot boxes survive in any form. I would argue this is like the one last vestige. Um I don't know what's next for this game. Like I don't I don't understand what else do they need to launch it. Like right now you have to like you get this stupid refer-a-friend. Why not just Why not just let this thing rip?
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Okay,
[laughter]
fair enough. usually you don't you don't like get a chance to launch a game twice. Like I remember how long Dota they in beta. It had like huge amount of users while it stayed in beta. Fortnite, too, actually. It stayed in beta for what? I think it was the biggest game in the world and it was still in beta because you can't really launch a game two times. Why would you lose an acquisition beat like that? So, I think they're taking their time to ensure the metrics are great. And again, I think there's going to be challenges in acquiring the right users for this game. I don't think we should undermine the concept of this is a MOBA and a shooter brought in together. I think this is a bit

it's going to be challenging to to kill off. Yeah, and I guess one thing, too, is like although they you know, 100K concurrent is is great, but relative to their other two games, it's tiny. So, you know, they still although like these are good numbers, to them it may not yet be where they want it to be. You know, they they they're pushing for, you know, top one to they want to own one, two, and three of their platform, probably. Um And so, that's kind of why yeah, I don't really see the rush here to to really call it a launch. I think what they're doing is like this like pre-soft launch go to marketing is awesome. Like this is what I wish kind of High Guard kind of took a direction from, but you know, they they probably weren't they weren't in the same spot as Valve. But I think the the interesting thing I see when I look at Deadlock's launch is like it's it's interesting that Steam hasn't been the place to build your launch strategy, to build a community. Like that's one of the things we talked about was building with your community over time, or like having more with smaller pieces of validation from a wider audience. Like trying to open up those books a little bit more and see how things are going.

And yeah. I'm not I'm not so sure. Um I'm not so sure that is this is this the way you do this? Like do you do the invite a friend? Like could they I'm surprised that like this this should be where this should be like Discord has been the place to accumulate all this. It's not on Steam. I'm I'm bummed I mean, people are constantly bummed in the Steam platform. I'm bummed Steam isn't the place for me to build my community, right? Like I feel like Steam is supposed to be that place. It's supposed to be the distribution center. Uh and I I you have the Steam store page and the algorithm does matter. But I they're not the kingmakers in the way same way we talk about Apple and Google, right? We talked about them as the kingmakers for so long in mobile publishing. And I'm surprised we don't talk about Valve in the same way cuz I don't think they control distribution as much. I'm I'm not sure that is true though for PC, right? Like wasn't there I don't know, there wasn't an article there about this I wish I could remember the name of the game. It was like a game that was that Valve made a mistake and

instead of publishing it on the store or is it going to feature? It didn't. And then basically, the guy's work was for years got like deleted just because of one mistake that happened. And I think this is the power of that store. I think I think Valve does have a lot of power when it comes to PC games distribution. I'm not sure I understood what you meant, Phil, by them not being kingmakers. I think like you being featured on the Steam store is a is a is a big thing. I I I think just relative to where Apple and Google were, like their ability to drive millions of downloads, generally mobile is more frictionless. So, so maybe it's just a flexible number, but I I would expect them to be able to do that type of that type of traffic and it doesn't it doesn't look like it is. So, remember, one thing you can do is that you don't have to go to the the home page when you log into Steam. You can change your defaults to be in your library. So, they don't always force you into traffic. One of the most successful things they do is they hit you with that a game update recommended update on the end of flow, which is a [ __ ]

brilliant [ __ ] brilliant mechanic. But if you remember, they're also coming off of Artifact, which they were unable to drive traffic in. Um That's that was very disappointing. They've [snorts] they haven't been on a winning streak for a while. I mean, beyond like the the odd sums of money that they're now making from China. You did it. You made it to the end of the episode. As [music] a fan of the show, it would help us out if you'd subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice.
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