The best way to avoid clones of your game?

Simon Valve has maybe the harshest, bluntest, and realist guidance on how to not get your video game cloned. And that answer is it's probably going to get cloned anyway, so do better. I'm not sure how to process that and I'm very happy that we can talk about it. For everyone who's listening, my name is Christopher Thomas plant and I am joined as always by the brilliant Simon Carlos. How are you doing today, Simon?
I'm doing good. Although I have to confess that I actually had a dream about Valve last night.
What is What is What was the dream? Were you on a yacht? Were there a knife collection?
I was in the Valve offices with like my kid and we were like demoing something. Um I I but there wasn't anything sinister. Gabe didn't turn up and knife me. So, I I I think we can This wasn't quite even quite a regular anxiety dream, but it is a concern to me that apparently now I'm talking about Steam so much that that that Valve not not

content with um being important part of my business is infiltrating my very dreams. But, but I'll I'll recover. I'll recover.
I do like that you found the one place that you can actually play HalfLife 3. That is it's good to know. Um for folks who are new here, this is Game Discover Co show. This is the podcast that goes right alongside Game Discovery Co., a wonderful newsletter and entire platform that you can use to learn about game discovery, which is especially important right now because there are roughly a trillion games coming out and also one called Grand Theft Auto 6.
Never before has the topic been more relevant. We have a whole bunch of new stories that we're going to talk about today, but I do want to start with the Valve of it all and the clones. So, how where do we start? There were Valve's Tom Gardino uh had some comments at a Korean event regarding the question of how will Steam police or not police the rise of clones, specifically AI

generated clones in the guidancees. I mean, similar to what I said up top, uh, making actually, do you want to do you want to read the quote here, Simon?
Yeah, I'll sort of expound expand on it. Yeah. And this is tricky because um, you know, so so but I believe this was in a Q&A, by the way. This was not like a prepared valve statement. So I I think Tom had to discuss this on in the fly on the fly. And so um and and so what he actually said was um you know rather than relying on a single mechanism that someone can easily copy, you can grow your game by adding features, personality and creativity that stem from your own perspective as a developer. And I think what he was trying to say and something that I do partly agree with is um high hook single uh like low barrier to entry ideas can be cloned a little bit easier. So, um,

you know, so you should think about while those are cool, you should think about maybe making something that can be less easily cloned. I think that is good advice. Good advice maybe from somebody like me. It's a little bit more difficult when it comes from the platform holder whom some people expect to be doing something about clones.
Yes, I feel like it's harsh but on like straightforward advice about the world that we live in. And I think there there are two things for us to dig into. One is the um question of like how and why not this gets policed like why we are not seeing greater moderation on it. But before we do that, the other thing I wanted to talk about was how similar this sounds to me to the arcade designers in the 70s and the 80s. I was actually talking with um game historian and author Paul Terruri uh a couple weeks ago and he had point out that this is exactly what you heard. It was so easy to clone those games back then that

you had to just constantly be coming up with something new, some twist, some variation because the cloning was basically inevitable. You had to accept that as as the premise. And I'm sure that there are a lot of people who are listening who want to say the cloning doesn't need to be inevitable. We can put policy in place. We can create policing. But how realistic is that? like why might we not see policy or policing?
Yeah. I mean, I don't think unfortunately it's very realistic. I would love to tell you that the AI police could turn up and kind of, you know, slap a number on all these all these quotes clones, but you know, there's a couple of problems here. One is obviously that um if you have a low barrier to entry, uh people do can and do recode it from scratch. For example, the whole needle in needle in the haststack clone discussion where where someone invented a game that uh basically you know it's a it's a strong hook which is uh you know you need to find a needle in a haststack and you need to do it via an automation kind of

an automation mental game. But I would tell you like one of those games was I think successfully taken down by another for actually ripping off their code. But but it was one of the one of the clones and one of the other clones. [laughter] So I I I I don't know if you're going to get get too far there, you know. I and and it is very easy to um do it again, especially with code helpers, uh which are not really I mean AI code helpers I think are really uh on on the acceptable side for most people working. I know there's some loud people saying don't use AI code helpers. They're terrible. I would tell you a large percentage of the industry is quietly using code uh code helpers right now. That is really happening. So, so I think the issue is if you're sort of using a code helper to not like clone this game, but just kind of like, hey, I want this and then I want this and then I want this, then you can make something new fairly quickly without kind of directly cloning all the art and the um and stuff. And to be honest, let's not forget, you could have done that anyway without code helpers. Like I I just think like ideas like

that, which is a first person game with not a lot of assets, were pretty easy to do even even back in the day.
So, um yeah, I don't know. So, so that's sort of my my high level why it's it's difficult and I think Valve is only going to respond probably correctly to stuff like DMCA requests and and that requires one dev to have a DMCA request against against another dev. So
yeah.
Yeah. I I I feel like we're seeing the other side of the libertarian company coin and some people are upset to discover that that other side exists. And a lot of the things that people celebrated Valve for of increasingly making it easier to publish on this system are now becoming the things that are very maddening for people. I completely understand again with with like Gab's own philosophical approach why they wouldn't want to moderate this. I also understand that one it's financially expensive which

does not let it off the hook. But I imagine that there's also questions of politically like where do you start to moderate things that qu like it is a slippery slope argument but once you start to moderate these things where do you stop is it you know code helpers versus clones like what is that line and what
I don't know I don't know where you draw it um I I I will say there was one other quote or a line in the story this is from invent global um that I want to I want spotlight. And here's here's the chunk. One developer shared that indie developers have recently been re receiving extortion emails threatening if you don't pay, we'll copy your game with AI and release it first. While understanding the advice to showcase games before release, the developer asked Steam if it had any protective measures in place. Nothing that such threats make developers noting that such threats make developers hesitate. I they Steam Representative Tom specifically

had not really seemed to have heard of this like it was news to them. Um is this a thing that you have heard about from other developers? Extortion.
Not really. No. So I I mean I think that's I guess that could be where it's all going, but that seems like a very um yeah like a like a very odd end state. So no, I have I have not really heard that. And like my my impression is the main issue here is if you have a really good idea for a game and that idea is easy to recreate then people will recreate it. And this has been happening in uh like for years and years in the mobile space um you know very obviously and in some cases people have tried to like do lawsuits about it but in other cases uh you know you just sort of let it go and compete on the open market. So this is sort of I guess an a known issue. Yeah. Uh, I mean it's obvious to say, but if you are listening to the show and

you're developer and you're being extorted, please contact any law officials, uh, whether that is local police or anybody because that's a crime. You can't extort people. Got another big company to talk about. We have Meta's newest financials. And this is a real look at what the hell is going on with VR, specifically at Meta, who I see is one of the few people still pretty in the VR game in a way that Apple certainly isn't uh going to be for the foreseeable future. They're kind of right alongside Valve. And this is uh a quote within our Reality Lab segment. Q3 revenue was $443 million down 6% due to lower Quest headset sales which were partially offset by continued strong growth in AI glasses revenue. Uh also they noted that Meta will ship new hardware iterations only when quote we have major breakthroughs. Now, I hear

all of this combined, the AI glasses, the sales, the change of an approach on tech, and I I believe that Meta is still in the VR game. Zuckerberg himself has said that they're not giving up on VR, but I'm wondering if you think that this is a pretty conscious shift away from games culture long term and more towards a business class experience because Metav VR glasses are coming out next year. Nothing about them looks like they were designed for games. They let light in. They seem to be focused for like people who want very intensive business experiences on the go. I is that is that what you're seeing? Yeah, I mean I mean what I'd say is that um the you know in the end I think VR has not been an amazing platform to play video games in. And I think there's been there's been a few reasons for that but in the end I don't think although
in theory it's been it's spectacular.

There's just not a lot in terms of absolute immersiveness where people are like this is leaps and bounds. I'm just going to spend all my time in this. And so, as you know, as a platform, Meta Meta's Quest uh really a lot of the active users are more like, and we discussed this before, like younger boys, uh playing sort of Roblox adjacent stuff. And actually, it's it it's fun for them, but there's things about I I mean, honestly, I think one of the things that kills it, frankly, is the lack of multitasking. Uh and actually, multitasking is like a like a super big deal nowadays. A lot of people play video games while doing something else. And the fact that you can't you can't multitask VR easily at all, I think is a is kind of a big deal. And so, um, yeah, I mean, this whole concept, I'm still sold on this concept that we may eventually get rid of screens and have something in our glasses which controls all our screens, but I think people are starting to come around to the idea that maybe that that's not including a a fundamental uh uh difference in how we

play games. And in fact, you may still be playing games on a screen in a window while multitasking in your glasses, for example. And at that point, everything is going to move towards more of an AR centric approach than a VR ccentric approach.
Yeah. I I wonder if people took the wrong signals from smartphones. and that is that you could look at what happened with the app store and see just how many games blew up on the app store and how much how large of a percentage games are in terms of what people are purchasing and and using the app store for. But the reality is like you still use your smartphone because it has email, it has text as the group chat and then the games are the bonus. So, even though your email is not you're not downloading 5,000 email clients, it's still the reason you have the smartphone, it's still the purpose. And it feels like with things like MetaQuest, they never had the the core purpose. They had the the supplemental stuff. And

I I I just feel like people have gotten confused that games are often a supplement. I love them, but they are they are not the core reason you buy your computer. Uh or at least for most people are not the core reason you buy your computer until you become a gaming PC weirdo like you know ourselves. Um yeah, I I'm especially curious about the the hardware uh statement that they're not going to be shipping anything until it's ready. that feels like it feels like a very valve approach. Um, and not something I associate with meta which I tied to Silicon Valley startup culture where you know we move fast and we break things and we ship ship ship ship ship and we take you know uh our guidance from our customers and that reaction. Do you think that this is a change because of the rising cost of hardware? Is it because of the economy? Is it because of lack of interest? Why this sudden change in approach? I I think that comment I was just trying to look it up but I don't think I'm able to. I think that

comment is slightly based around the VR side of things and I think what they're really signaling is they were trying to do the kind of traditional well I guess even consoles have backed this off but the traditional iteration pretty often. Um and um yeah and I think it is a little bit like you know what Valve has said with the Steam Deck is they're not going to do uh like minor iterations on that. they're just going to stick with the old Steam Deck until they're going to have something that is very different and then they will do a sec a Steam Deck 2. And so I think the same is true here. I think they're basically saying, you know, we're not going to ship every two years cuz that's kind of what they were doing. They were shipping every two years something incremental. So I think what they're saying is past Quest 3 because honestly the AR stuff is more interesting at this point to um you know uh um to meta. Yeah. I mean we we might not get anything past the Quest 3 for a while. And also in the background here, of course, is floating. Everything got so much more expensive uh to make. So I imagine a much nicer Quest 4 would be high hundreds of dollars and people

might not go for that.
Yeah. And to what end? What would you even do [laughter] with a nicer Quest 4 at this point? Um let's keep it going to Valve again. The company of our dreams, as I like to say.
Indeed. Um, this, okay, this is a story that I need you to guide me through because anytime we start getting about uh UI placement of sales and stuff, my brain just becomes like an actual bowl of stew. So, can you please explain to me what changes are happening on Steam? Yeah, I I put these in occasionally just to mess with you, but also because they're [laughter] um fair, but but but also because they are interesting for any uh any listeners uh who who are kind of into the meta. If you have a bunch of games on Steam, you pro you probably care. And basically uh let me give you the the background and then the latest thing. I mean basically what happened is I think for Elvis is doing a series of changes because they feel like they gave a little bit too

much power to people to essentially uh control what people see on game pages third parties and and really you know the first part of that was you know they used to be way more permissive with these publisher sales which comes with banners that you'll see at the top of the page. So, like if if Resident Evil's in a sale, then you'll see the banner, really big banner at the top of the page. And obviously PE devs are interested in getting in as many um as many of these as possible, but some of them are a bit some of them are a bit weird like um like I can't remember where Resident Evil was made, Tokyo or Saka. So, so there may be at some point a um you know a Tokyo gamedev sale and then that means every time you go to Resident Evil during that you see a big banner that just says Tokyo gamedev sale. I think Valve has correctly noted uh and they say people have talked to them about this that some of these seem kind of weird and off topic and or semioff topic [clears throat] because ultimately I suspect the person buying Resident Evil doesn't doesn't care that it's hit a bundle with other other games

that were made in Tokyo, you know. So, um yeah. So, so I think and the other thing that was happening was like Capcom, for example, was running a lot of sales for cross promotion reasons um that were just like, "Hey, it's our June sale." and then they would get cross promo on the banner everywhere. So, so the first thing that Valve did, and this was, you know, a couple of months ago, was they changed it so that you can only have one franchise or publisher sale per year that triggers that.
And then the second thing they did, which I think is part of their plan here, is is they decided that that banner should still exist or a version of that promotion should still exist, but it's going to be lower down on the page. It's going to be closer than more like this stuff. So, it's not above the fold. I mean, that's an old print phrase, but um you know, we say above the files sometimes. I think it's I think it's I think it's I think it's a website phrase.
I know. Yeah. Speaking to the right audience.
Yeah. It's um it's not really it's not really so obvious. And also, they actually redesigned it interestingly. So, it's not a static banner. It shows the other games in the sale that are most relevant to the play. So, I think

that's actually,
you know, if they just downgraded it, people might be like, "Ah, whatever." But I actually think they've improved it, but at the same time kind of like like shoved it down the page. So yeah,
I mean I I'm still catching up to like this corner of video games culture through doing this show. Is this something that Steam and Valve have always been doing or or is this like kind of a throw spaghetti at the wall moment that that is a little unusual? Um, I mean, I think they've always been fixing stuff, but I think I think they've had the opportunity recently to look at this stuff and they've sort of said, "Oh, I think some of this stuff got a little bit out of control." And I think what they think got a little bit out of control was the third party sale ecosystem got very big. And it's really cool that Valve allows third parties to run uh sales on Steam and then uh recruit other people into them without Valve sort of say so. But if you look at some of the uh sales that Valve has been doing recently, I think I was thinking about

this, they've really been signposting what they want to see and what they want to see in third party sales, incredibly specific stuff, not incredibly generic stuff that you can then invite and not invite anybody to. And that's really what I think they've been having some trouble with because people have been doing these sort of blanket sales with vague titles and then inviting everybody and then not inviting some people who get pissed off and complain to Valve about it or maybe favoring their own I mean subtly but subtly favoring their own games as publisher because they're the people who organize the sale. So, so I think there's just been a lot of stuff there and I suspect some of it has been leaking back to Valve where they're kind of like, well, we created something good, but really I think what they're trying to encourage people to do is very specific sales and um also they're trying to get people to Yeah, they're just making it so it's less life and death so they don't get complaints, which I suspect they do. It's really difficult to tell, by the way, what's happening because we often speak to nice people and there's a bunch of grumpy people or bad actors who are currently

often complaining to Valve about stuff or exploiting stuff. And I think there's been a lot of people either complaining or exploiting on the sales side of things. And so I think this is an attempt to sort of the latest part of a of a multiot attempt to subtly re this in. I don't think this is particularly negative for most people. Uh but I I think I understand why it was stuck.
Yeah. No, I get it. It's you want to give people the tools to help themselves and at the same time you don't want them to exploit those tools and you won't know how they'll gify them or exploit them until they're out there. Um I'm really proud of us this week because we've had a long run of like got to talk about Xbox. Every week there's always some Xbox news and we do not have a big Xbox story this week. And in fact, we have PlayStation and Nintendo stories to hit this week. So, let's start with the the PlayStation of it all. The latest results uh are in and they it seems

fine. Revenue up 9%. Wolverines sold okay. You I believe put okay here. I have questions about that. 2.4 million units sold. Um and then not as great. Uh 2.6 6 million PS5 sold during uh Q2 and that is down from 4 million year-over-year. Obviously, those numbers are going to go up with GTA. Let's let's start though with the the Wolverine. Is 2.4 million for Wolverine really okay if it's not going to be on PC in the future?
I mean, it's a good question. I'm a glass half full person as we discussed previously, so I don't tend to kind of like immediately throw Sony under the bus. It all depends how it sells long term, I guess I'd say. Because because the good thing about them selling on a console is they get the console cut themselves. Like they're paying themselves out. So if if you were to generously say Woling gives itself the

30% cut,
uh then um yeah, you're looking at maybe, you know, maybe $140 million gross already. And I think I and I'm guessing the thing is I'm guessing that game was um you know, 250 $300 million game. Um, although I did see Jason Shri, if you didn't spot this, uh, but recently did a YouTube post where he was talking about he's very annoyed with people taking these, uh, how much a game costs he he thinks out of context. Um, and I kind of agree, but actually I would say um, it's just an orders of magnitude thing for me. He deals with people complaining about difference between 300 mil and 500 mil, but for me it's like 500 mil versus 50 mil versus 5 mil versus 500K. That's sort of where where my stuff comes in. So I would say yeah I mean I think Wolverine is okay. I would guess if Wolverine had been on PC it would have done another I don't know like million million and a half. Um so they're definitely losing some revenue there but clearly uh and they just instituted actually a PlayStation exclusive tag that's on the

store now for PlayStation exclusive games. So clearly they're saying we need to sell more consoles and this is and and and this is how we're going to do it. But um
that's that's the part that breaks my brain though because the council sales themselves are down and maybe that that justifies the logic, right? Council sales are going down. We need to find a way to get more people to do this. They're going to see the spike for GTA 6. But after that, you see the 4 million yearoveryear to 2.6 million for Q2. Significant drop and not a surprising one. We're getting to the end of its life cycle. the number of people who probably want to buy this thing is smaller and smaller, but then we're going to move into a new life cycle where that machine could cost $1,500. Like, you know, maybe a grand like a grand starts to feel like the low end of what we could expect this hardware to cost. How how do you expect more people to buy

this machine on levels that you know match the PS4 and PS5 at their launches?
Yeah, which is why I'm not convinced that we are moving on anytime soon to a new life cycle. Actually, I I I think I and I believe I didn't look at it in closely, but I believe Sony's overall results were quite were decent and that includes obviously, you know, like film and everything everything else they have. Yeah. Um, so I think Sony is actually kind of doing okay right now. And um, you know, they obviously have some writedowns uh on, you know, they've had some bungee writedowns. They may have some more bungee right downs. Uh, there's there's there's some messy stuff out there, but they're not like falling off a cliff or anything. So I actually think even though that was a little bit eh, um, I think they'd be okay. Like now year on year, they only have to do 2.6 million to be flat, right? So, so, so I I I think I think I I think we're going to run this for a little while. And I, you know, I definitely don't think PS6 is launching in 2027. I'm not convinced it's launching in 2028. Like, like I

think we it could well be 2029 by the time we see any new um at least new conventional home hardware. I know there's been some
rumors about hand handheld possibilities and I guess those I might come earlier.
[snorts]
I increasingly think that we could see the PS5 portable before we would see anything else.
And that to me feels logical in a sense that you could justify the cost.
Yeah.
If you could tell people, hey, it is $1,300, $1,400. It's also a portable PS5. Uh you can take it whenever you want. You can play COD, whatever, whatever, whatever. How much you can pull that off, I don't know. I'm not the expert on that. Um, but I agree looking at these numbers, the more I like just tried to process it, the more I was like the only acceptable answer would be to double down on the PS5, offer a better version of it that is the portable

experience. But yeah, I just I truly cannot imagine what a PS6 looks like in this market. And I really can't imagine it because I want to get to our last big story of the week, which is Nintendo's earnings. These are also reasonable. They're not like worldchanging, but revenue down 12% year-over-year, but we're comparing it to a launch quarter. So, let's be a little realistic there. Profit up 11% to $1.4 billion. And Switch twos are selling. 6.49 million Switch 2 sold. 8.8 8 million Tomodachi Life copies uh sold truly unhinged. Um and they have said that not planning on another Switch to price increase. They have apparently secured sufficient quantities of memory. So I look at that in contrast with the PS5 and I see a company in astonishingly great position for the

next 5 years because they're not going to have to raise their prices. They're already cheaper than everybody else and they play most games because the hardware can't get fancier and we actually need to start like developing down. So they have hardware that's cheaper. We'll probably play what 85% of what comes out more 90%. Um and the stuff that they're making is selling. Like I am I right? Am I is there something I'm missing here or is Nintendo like really better off than than all of its competition?
Um I'm just looking at this cuz cuz one thing I did realize is Tomodachi Life also runs on on Switch One, right?
Yes.
So uh so so here's my comment. I think Nintendo is in great shape. Um but I do think that um there's still this

danger um you know they really have to sell quite a lot of unfortunately they've launched Switch 2 in a timing where people's purse strings are a little bit tight and in addition cost of hardware is going up. So I do have this concern still that um there needs to be quite a wave. If you look, I think I linked last week in in my newsletter the sort of wave of sales you'll need compared to switch one to keep sort of going up here and and it can't start like like trailing off like you start trailing off you're going to end up with switch two like trickling out like 50 mil instead of 100 plus mil. Um so so I so for me I still think there's a danger there because I think there was a stat that you know switch two upgraders were like 75 or 80% Switch one players. So, uh, if you sort of work it out, you're going to have to get, you know, you're going to need new adopters here. And and so I I think I think that's my question, like where are the
or maybe people will just buy multiple devices. I don't know. But, um, you know, like like where are the 30 or 40

million new adopters for for Switch 2? I think that's the long-term question.
I I this is where I get to be the glass half full person. I look at what they have put out so far and they've largely been focusing on their C D tier of of franchises. I love Donkey Kong. Don't get me wrong, that is not Mario and I love Tomodachi Life, but that is not Animal Crossing, right?
Um I love a a new Zelda remake and remasters, but those are not the the new Zelda game. and it feels like they still have most of their arsenal kind of waiting to be spent. Uh so seeing these numbers with that is shocking and and I yeah the the Tomodachi life thing is interesting to me because yes Switch One is out there but at the same time I just talked about this in a broader industry. How do you release Wolverine
2.4 4 million and then see Tomodachi Life nearly out sells at 3 to one and I

imagine cost a fraction of what it costs to make that game. A fraction of a fraction. Yeah. And I that that's where I get, you know, everybody has trouble ahead, but I just I look at where Nintendo is at compared to its peers and I see one that you know what, like the storm's coming and they're in like the tornado shelter and they're like,
"Yeah,
we'll probably be safe."
Yeah, I I I would agree. I don't see I Nintendo has not had a habit of overextending itself as you probably know. Nintendo Nintendo is a is a conservative Japanese company who's done a good job I think of not going crazy. So you're right. I think Nintendo is going to be fine. And Nintendo historically has had to almost justify having small dev teams in a sort of an apologetic way. But but you know but but where we're going you know uh having small dev teams actually seems like a great idea because small dev teams can can still do a lot. So yeah. So I think

you're right. I think Nintendo is really well positioned and and it is a great point like I think Animal Crossing in particular and Mario are perfectly new versions of those will really capture the zeitgeist and I think people will be really excited by them. And the reason Tom Dachi life did so well is it did do really well on streaming which is super interesting because Nintendo games don't always do really well on streaming because it's just a very goofy streamable streamable game. So I think that's one of the reasons it overperformed. The other thing to note by the way is I do think a weak yen has been helping Nintendo because they are based in Japan and uh just you know like and and then they have a lot of sales outside of Japan. So I think they have been helped a bit by uh by currency exchange. But yeah, I think you're right. If you're talking about the next kind of like 3 to 5 years, uh I think Nintendo is fine as long as they don't run out of consumers who want to who want to buy Switch 2. And the way they would stop it stop from doing that is to release some of their marquee franchises. So they're going to have to get on with that. Yeah, that's that is certainly true. I want to start wrapping things up. We've

got our usual uh end of episode stuff. One, let's talk about last week and this week's new Steam releases. What popped off last week?
Yeah. So, I'm looking at last week. Um it was kind of medium busy. There was that game Arc Age Chronicles which was kind of like MMO like that did okay. I think that came out to about it was it's probably a bit like New World that that MMO that Amazon Amazon did. Uh although I I said in my in my round up it's a little oldworld in terms of it feels like an MMO from a few years ago but it's done okay. It did it did 26,000 CCU which is nice. And then this game Loftier which I guess it's from the same people who did Hearttopia and I was vaguely paying attention to um I I believe they're an Asian dev and it's sort of like a cozy online world with a lot of house decorating and exploring and and cosmetics and so yeah. So yeah. So, it's a $30 game and and that did 10,000 ccu. So, that was that was pretty good as well. Uh, and then and then underneath that, I did want to mention Horses of Hoof Print Bay because it is a

horse a horse game made by uh I think it's lady Alice who's like a horse the known video game horse expert and really nailed it and it and it's got overwhelmingly positive almost 6,000 CCU and people really love their horse games and I'm always I I may eventually try and interview her for the newsletter because I'm always pleased to see these like awesome niches do well and it was actually in the top five uh launches for the weekend in terms of CCU which is Right.
I love that. I am much less certain than usual on what is popping this week. Here's some guesses I have. There's a Warhammer Survivors game coming out. Um Ramy's new game with uh Aesthetician Labs Australia did it is coming out. There's a fishing Lovecraft game. There's a game called Monoon. There's Nine Kings. Are any of these trending? Well,
yeah. I think nine kings is a one 1.0 and I'm sure that will do decently. Yeah. So to two of the ones you

mentioned are two of the top ones that we have by outstanding wish list and that's Dreadmore which actually just launched I think uh and is doing quite well. It's like first person creepy fishing adventure. People like their fishing it. It looks well done. So I'm I'm happy to see that doing well. And then yeah, as you noted, Warhammer Survivors, which is literally a license of the V, it's not just the Vampire Survivors like it is a license of the engine uh by by a third party, which they've which they've done for a couple of games now, which is kind of interesting. I mean, the engine's a bit [laughter] basic, but it but it's but it's but but it's yeah, it works. It's nice to see games and it feels a little bit similar except we've all hammer created. So, I think that one will I think that one will do well. The interesting one that you didn't mention is a game called Casualties Unknown. I don't know if you've seen this game, but but Casual Unknown is like a 2D kind of explory kind of game with physics. I think it's published by Oro and it's actually got 380k wish lists and also it's um yeah and and also it's done it demo's done pretty well and it's kind of unconventional and a little bit weird.

Uh and I think that one might do might do quite well. So I think definitely let's let's watch out for that. Yeah. Um,
I am stunned [laughter] that this is uh I, you know, when things look this hardcore and strange, it really is one of two directions. It's there is no interest or it's the most popular thing on the planet and somehow I could have never predicted it, but this looks really intense and really interesting.
Yeah. Oh, and the other one I want to mention since I think it is out this week is that game Draw Aquarium, which just had a trailer that people were excited by, but I think it's out already. And and Draw Aquarium is a game where you draw a fish and then you put it in aquarium and then you uh and then you manage the aquarium. Draw aquarium. So yeah, I think that's Yeah, I it had a really viral trailer. People were super into it.
I love it. Uh what is going on with Game Discover Code Plus and Pro?
Good question. Yeah. Yeah, we're just in the middle of finishing uh I mentioned this our our publisher um charts. So something we just added to our publisher charts is one of our clients was asking

us like can we see rankings for every year? It's kind of fun. So, which publishers uh where were publishers ranked in in every year? So, for a certain publisher were you know if and this we tried to do it for I think uh publishers had more than five or 10 games. Um you know it was like uh like like where are you ranked? Are you number 50 for 2025 or are you number 100 for 2025? So we've actually added all that into our system now because it's it's really good to see publisher rankings. We're also doing some merging of um publishers cuz I don't know if I mentioned this before, but like some publishers have hilariously split cataloges like Bandai Namco like half their games are in Bandai Namco and the other half are in Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc. or whatever. So, this is unhelpful when you're looking at stuff together. So, we're we're manually merging some publishers so that they all appear at one place at one time. And I think that's just just finishing. But yeah. Yeah, we're basically getting getting towards the end of um of of of that which is making our making our publisher views way more readable and making and and making them load properly and then we'll be and then we'll be on

to the next thing. Yeah.
Uh I do have my question of the week and then we'll wrap things up. Grand Theft Auto 5 topped uh $800 million in its first day, you know, over a decade ago. Sold I think around 12 to 13 million units. Do you have a prediction for GTA 6's first day sales?
Well, there was some people talking about pre-order numbers, right? Um in millions. Uh and and we've actually not really I guess Sensor Tower was saying uh 750 million in pre-orders. Uh like that that was a a couple of days ago. Um and and and so that's seven seven million pre-orders. One of the issues here is um there's not a lot of public PlayStation and Xbox. There's not a ton of stuff you can look at besides like I'm sure pre-order charts and I'm sure it's been top of the pre-order charts for a very long time. So, you're going to have to do some some serious extrapolation uh to work this out. And and obviously some people have the other

thing is and we don't do it this way like some people have actually paid their money already if you pre-ordered. I just want to point it out. So, it's not really it's really it's it's it's really earlier. We we we also do this to be honest in our charts where we we count all those as day one sales. Technically people have paid for it already.
Um but but yeah I mean yeah I mean I'm I'm definitely expecting I mean
I think that sensor tower number is is is is reasonable. I I would definitely expect
um in between 10 and 20 million people will have access to GTA 6 on on day one. I'd be surprised if it was if it was less than that. And so um yeah. So, so, so I think it's quite possible it'll be immediately billion dollars, but but I think I think the question is obviously the combined the combined install rates of uh of of PS5 uh install numbers for PS5 and then series are uh what likeund 120 million or something I think I don't know. So, so the question is going to be what percentage of those 120 million

people are going to are going to are going to pick it up? uh you know cuz if that's 30% that's quite a lot. [snorts]
I know that they're they're doing preload in the next few days like that'll begin. Do you think people should be concerned about the stores like Xbox PSN going down still on the day of release?
Um actually someone asked me about that. I think games industry.biz is running an article about this and someone asked me some questions about about about that. So, um I'll see if they ran it yet, but um but basically basically what I said was yes, there is going to be a really big spike, but they started they started pre-loading really quite early. I think pre-loading maybe started today or somewhere around there or tomorrow. So, I think they will have time to deal with it and I think they're going to make sure their day one patch doesn't replace the entire game. So, so, so I think I think it's okay. I noted like you can like like you can see I don't know if you saw recently Near unfortunately unfortunately messed up their game and like um someone someone said they accidentally put the whole game in each of the DLCs or something. So so it was

suddenly 250
GB. Yeah, I don't know how you could even get to the number that it was for
I think I think every single DLC had the full game in it as well somewhere. So that was how they did it. But but yeah, um but yeah, so so yeah, I mean I'm expecting it to be pretty crazy and and it's not out of the question that the the stores will go down because people are hammering a lot of people won't pre-order when they're hammer hammering the buy button. Um but you know, but I think there's going to be a lot of contingencies in in in place for this. And I do think the most important thing was having a robust pre-order and and you can look at some numbers on Steam like when Black Myth um did a preload before Black Myth came out on Steam and there were some articles about that. That was like what 18 months ago or whatever. And um and and Steam's bandwidth, which is public, got to like uh three or four times normal. So So as of preload, yeah, the PlayStation Xbox is going to be pushing like three to five times the amount of it normal bandwidth just to get all this stuff preloaded. It's it's it's going to be a big deal. But, you know, I I would say that I'm not expecting any multi-day

outages, but it is possible that some Yeah. Some of these platforms may have some issues on launch day. There's there's no question. Yeah, it will be interesting. Well, I think that is a good place to wrap things up as the, you know, tropical storm Grand Theft Auto uh barrels towards us. Uh thank you so much for listening everybody. If you enjoy this show, be sure to tell other folks or just subscribe and listen. You can find us on YouTube or you can find us on your podcast app of choice. You can also find so much more on the game discover co newsletter or you can become a supporter of game discover co pro uh and get so much information. There's just so much information.
Too much information. That's that's that's our tagline.
Some might say. Um thank you all so much. I am Chris Plant. Simon, you want to take us out?
Yep. I'm Simon Carlos. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time. Bye.