TWIG #297 Gamescom Confidential, Why Steam ain't Blocked by China and the TRUTH about Tim Hortons

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hello everyone and welcome to this weekend games 297 where we read and distill all of the weekly game industry news so you don't have to hey everybody I'm uh Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at beta hat and Jaden Inferno and today we have just three of us Eric Crest principal at gossamer Consulting Group three level 8 in World of Warcraft I am on my way to Nirvana oh my God best game ever made thank you very much thank you blizzard and Misha katov founder of deconstructor of fun I've uninstalled Clash Royale for that 1,000th time today and I was very proud and I it was an Instagram moment for me so I don't know what level of how many trophies I have a lot and I installed it I'm very proud so thank you I should do that with Royal match oh my God I'm so deep in Royal mat anyway here's what

we're going to cover today Gamescom recap black myth wukan is just on fire and taking off so first though Mishka I I guess I was kind of wrong in telling you not to yell at Timmy Horton's that the Canadians would Revolt but it turns out the Canadians agree with you what is this yes I can't say I've been Vindicated I was just giving my opinion but it Parish that I'm a man of the people so I I talk about about Tim Horton's not even bad things I was just saying it's quite mid I would like give it 6.8 out of 10 and you know you got me worried because he said I'll be canceled I can't ever travel to Canada they will know look at me wrongly but apparently the Canadians on deconstructor of fun slack group really rallied behind me I'm going to read a quote that I got in a personal message this was from a fellow Canadian I would say the quote says they've gone to total [ __ ] they've bought out by a food holding company in 2014 and immediately killed it they used

to make all of their donuts fresh in store now it is frozen reheated garbage they also switched their coffee supplier to a cheaper one and ruined the coffee as a kid the place was Heaven now it's a soulless corporate crap so that tells you about Tim Horton Tim Horton this wasn't me saying so don't sue us this is one of your former customers so so did you have any Tim Hortons at Gamescom then unfortunately we don't have them in Europe only in US next time in Abu Dhabi I'm ordering Tim Hortons just to celebrate this so games come how was the deconstructor of fun events they went really well so we had two of the events like what happened was my military exercise got cancelled on the Thursday I was at play Adventures that got a call from the Army and they're like you don't have to come next week I'm like thanks dude like do you know how much planning it takes from a Family Guy to you know to plan a week away anyways so then I kind of got the tickets quickly you know it was

kind of like the last year a lot of people I think the vibe was a little bit of a lower than before I don't know I just kind of got the the sort of maybe it's the uh the industry overall but again a packed event I was mainly the hotel lobbies we had two different events as we've been promoting here like crazy we had the uh the Supper Club event and then we had the whiskey tasting whiskey wine and water tasting event and so the supp club was success I mean apparently because the sponsors reached out like a day after and said let's plan the next year fantastic yeah so we had a lot of good things hearing about from from the people who came so there's Improvement ideas that we'll we'll take for the next one and then of course sponsors really like to to connect and and the crowd was good we had about 55 Executives come in and then good conversations around the tables Etc and then the whiskey tasting so I was really worried about the whiskey tasting because it was on the other side of the city so if there's a conf let's say we do an event in Marina like how many people will come to Marina

from like exactly and I was like so so I as I was making my way there realizing how far it was I was just coming up with excuses why there's not enough people and like we do still have the coverage people just don't want to move so far but it again that place was full so we had like line outside and everybody showed up I think it helped that bit craft and supercell had an event next door so that so so we had a little bit of a pull there I admit but yeah it was it was really good cuz it was the same bar as before but now there was ton of people the water was good as I said I was kind of you know laughing who does water tasting I do water tasting apparently I'm the guy I'm so old that I'm drinking water in a whiskey place so yeah good events thank you for everybody for coming I think we had 175 people at the bar Jesus Christ amazing yeah there was 35 last year like I was there last year it was hardly yeah it was almost empty now it was like you couldn't pass to to the backyard patio

like people were just like I can't go there because if I go there I can't get out that that's how full it was so I was listening to the pocketgamer.biz podcast that those guys do and it was pretty funny they were doing a Gamescom recap and they talked about the the event they were like yeah we went to the deconstructor a fun event and I was like yeah like and they didn't mention any other events it was like oh okay was there I mean said hi to them of course they were more than welcomed that's it's awesome yeah no I enjoy their podcast they it's pretty fun all right so just a few stats on Gamescom 335,000 humans visitors from 120 countries 32,000 trade visitors opening light live from from Jeff Keeley kicked ass it had 40 million uh video views double the number from the previous year Sony and Nintendo skipped and Microsoft was there in a pretty big way I saw a lot of my LinkedIn is just filled with pictures of Sarah Bond and Phil Spencer oh my God

they just like tons of pictures they had a pretty big presence uh a lot of smaller companies were there as well so they said, 1400 exhibitors which was up from 1,200 exhibitors and then the big news that I saw too were that the Asian companies really represented so Crafton mihoyo level infinite which is 10cent had massive booths and it seems as though one of the takeaways was they were really doubling down and I think cres we talked about this how it feels like some of the Asian companies are trying to knowing that things are challenging in their own markets are trying to come a little bit more to the Western markets did you get did you guys get any of that sense I at least talked to netes there I think they're coming out on a podcast I talked to one of their senior people they are really bullish about their liveops compared to European and American when it comes to especially triaa and um PC console liveops and of course mobile as well so they feel that they have a ad manage

this is just me paraphrasing again from the event I wasn't drunk cuz I was drinking water so I should remember but um they are very very bullish in how they operate and how effective and how much Manpower they have in running live Ops and they feel like that's going to be a competitive Advantage because when when it comes to Western live Ops if we think about it especially on PC console like who's doing it well like of course Bungie is one of the big ones you could say League of Legends you could say Bungie ain't doing [ __ ] dude well out of like like overall like let's say if You' mention somebody who's doing who's done really great live Ops like I know EP bunes having fortnite of course so we have few but apparently they're throwing like hundreds of people like they there was in a report that mihoyo spends $200 million a year on live Ops on one of their games that shit's scary because it's not replicable that's the problem it's not replicable in the west to have that many resources dedicated to a game like that the only the answer is to just

ban everything that comes from from China then we'll be even we can't compete otherwise yeah I don't think that's a strategy sir well we have it for electric cars 100% tariff so let's do it on games too and then we can always always stirring the pot but I don't necessarily disagree like yeah I know gr agrees so yeah then they will be even Even Steven let's do it yeah all right what what do you want a show sir we have a couple of PODS coming up right I just listened to Adam's podcast so Mr T for back he was talking with new's Devin Brennan just two Canadians talking about marginally more positive G oh everything was marginally positive that Devon guy is so [ __ ] smart holy [ __ ] he's so smart but he was saying some stupid [ __ ] on that podcast I it remind me of the new zoo of old right where they completely contradicted the M themselves from last

year's presentation about mid-market double a single a and they didn't cave at it at all it's like oh yeah it's Brave [ __ ] new world let's just make tble a triple so I reached out to him almost immediately I'm like dude what the [ __ ] was that right like it's so [ __ ] dangerous to sit there and throw that out there like this is going to be success like power world for instance which has been being in developed for like 20 years because they started with the first game and then leveraged that with for the second game and then to claim that it only make cost 7 million to make is completely disingenuous and that anybody can make you know these doublea games and be successful is kind of what they imply that it's like a you know open window it's just not um Adam didn't push back on that but anyway he agreed that that should have been said that it is super challenging to find distribution super challenging to find customers but I think the point is that there may be some room for big Publishers to make smaller games and H find some success right but it's not a

Brave New World for Indies out there just believe me it's in the report you're referencing to the report cuz de was speaking at our e bow investor Summit and he showed that the the play time for existing games versus new games was it like 8% of all play time goes into new games like yeah why don't you grab a piece of that yeah I mean the thing is the message was completely opposite like absolutely opposite I think they have to kind of retool the positioning of of what's happening in the first few months of the year where there hasn't been any big releases and kind of build some big cave no not enough he's a very very very very very smart guy and so is Ben I'm a fan of the new Zoo guys but that was not the finest moment over the last couple years yeah the single player conversation was really cool as someone who you know like I've been a little bit more mobile lately although I've been dealing with some PC console folks what has been interesting though actually not on a single player game and I haven't worked on a single player game in a long time

and so that conversation was just kind of new to me of like oh really having to Think Through I think the recommendation is you only need like 18 to 20 hours is you don't need 40 60 70 hour epics yeah but press you I mean that might be too specific for everybody but no no no I I actually kind of agree with that assessment um yeah I remember like Reese Elliott used to be working at newu and I I he put pieces together year ago on this subject right so it seems very similar to what he was already saying ago um he's a really really smart guy that does his own I 100% agree with that I don't think you need to do a 30h hour Epoch you know and build out all this content I mean you need to you need to get smarter um in terms of what the customer wants yeah so really good podcast yeah so something else we talked about last week it's not really a correction just we were talking about wish list and wish list conversion and so I I did go and look up again there's

a this company gameis discover.co they do a lot of great articles it's how I keep up kind of on Steam and very specific Steam and PC information and so they did an article a few months back around wish list conversion and so this is super Broad and there's a lot of it depends but let me just give you this one sentence A Game's first week unit sales have a median of 20% of its total steam wish list at launch so as a ballpark there you go like a 20% conversion as a median off of a first unit sales go read the article and you can see much much more data it does depend the further you get out and all of that stuff but wanted to follow up on that because Adam's like hey I'm so sorry I brought that up and I was like dude I'll just try to Google it while we're talking I just didn't have it top of mind the swi list by the way is a big big topic right now we were just having lunch today with a fund and and we're going through some of the numbers of one of the fun portfolio companies that had a pretty substantial like it's a a developer had a good amount of pre

signups I think it was like 15,000 and then when the thing goes out it's like I was almost giving a reference of another game that had a very small amount of players simultaneously but it was a very little amount of players and not even close to the signups like way less than 20% I think it was like 5% of the pre signups or the wishlisted people that actually got the game so it's almost like these are numbers are misleading right now yeah we actually just I did a deep dive into prees on mobile right and which is the same idea where we driven to a pre-registration and then how many of those actually convert it launch and it's the same situation where in many even though it's a direct download on your device when the game actually launches there's a very low conversion for some of the bigger games that are really pushing for it and so you have to be super super careful these days around you can't just think all those people are going to show up on day one and so maybe it's something like a 5 to 20%

conversion even in Mobile as well so I think it' be interesting if more people do some public numbers on that like pre-edge to install conversion that'd be good to know yeah all right so let me do a few just one little market recap here you guys might like this crushy might like this or actually Ethan because he loves his handheld so this is a rumor from gamerant a reliable Insider claims that PlayStation could hold a state of play at the end of September 2024 so the end of about a month from now the long rumored PS5 Pro may also be revealed during SATA play the PlayStation Pro is much to do about nothing dude I mean it's it's look I mean for the core they love it but it doesn't help move the needle for them so not a big surprise CR or Mish I'll throw it to you for a little talk around folks moving around at the top of companies supercell you want to talk about the supercell I already said like Gerard G Griffin coming to supercell as CFO

kind of implies that there's something happening and they may be looking to go public many people listen to it you know in helsi especially and they were like hm interesting so it makes sense in many ways but I think this is a hypothesis that you could open up like if supercell were to go public like how would it happen What Stock Exchange would they go to because it's not a growth stock it would be like a dividend stock like how do you see this playing out what do you see happening with the CEO who's you know like like we've seen founder CEOs have good times in stock exchange and we've seen them have less of a good time in stock exchange so it's saw you know the most admirable position to be the person who built this company and is getting all this [ __ ] from random analysts that don't know what the [ __ ] is the business even about and like you have to do that every single quarter and they're up your up your ass about the numbers that you're posting it's very different than than you running a super successful private company so Chris how do you see this hypothesis of an IP kind of going forward you know what I'm going

to hold off on my commentary around this because now that I think about it it's like where would you sell this I don't think this could even be put on the NASDAQ come to think of it it seems like a very you know European thing where anything can go public for no was like I don't know let's let's hold off until next week we could talk about it okay yeah we Maul it over and and next week we'll talk about crest's hypothesis like if this would be like just a hypothesis an IPO like how would it go cuz I'm curious to hear about it I don't know anything about Stock Exchange so that's for next year just don't know why game companies want to go public G all right the next thing Bloomberg has reported that Matt fiser is stepping down as part of the company restructuring after more than 14 years leading the App Store into absolute chaos and destitution fiser will exit in October the App Store group will now be divided to two teams one team will manage Apple's Apple app store and the other will Al see oversee alternative

app distribution Phil sh Schiller made the decision to make these changes as regulars are forcing iPhone makers to allow alternative stores and payment methods across all devices Carson Oliver will run the App Store group while an Ty will lead the new team responsible for alternative distribution both managers will report to Phil Schiller so what does this mean I really don't know my sense is that Matt was always the really the tail wagon the dog right the dog being Phil Schiller and the old Apple Mafia right meaning that that none of the decisions in the store were ever actually made by Matt they were all made by the six people who actually run apple right so can a new person or new team like a new structure actually fix this probably not it's likely going to be just more and more of the same and you know they're going to keep optimizing the store and not for their publishing partners but just for themselves you

know and create a store that is a fever dream of misguided intentions that is what they are ultimately like going to do you know let's throw some more editorial at it why not who gives a you it's it's a wonderful thing for a store to have more editorial you know Matt you had a great run let's hope the next guy and gal can push back a bit to the powers of be and make a store that has functioned both for Publishers and for your customers because it has been a [ __ ] show absolute [ __ ] show for the last decade so anything could be Improvement to this [ __ ] so anyway that's kind of my take on the new structure at Apple I I was just thinking about like because at Apple if you're a boss of like whatever if you're a boss of like like the headphone business it is like the size of a Samsung just in terms of Revenue so I was looking at App Store like if you run app store You' be like you know it's just one small part of Apple it's a 22 billion doll business like think about

it $22 billion in annual revenue is App Store so this was a big cheese that's what I'm trying to say this was a big boss that is stepping down I mean 14 years he's probably you know made his cheese so that's that's fine he's going to ride to the sunset but just for context like all these pieces of Apple you know whatever the vertical might be they are massive businesses on their own like they're much bigger than than than most of the S&P 500 yeah I think the biggest piece is this poor guy maybe not poor guy but he's a sacrificial lamb right anything this rich guy yeah this room is probably rich guy who you know probably navigated the rode the waves of the political waves going on at Apple but poor anti who was responsible for alternative distribution oh my God what a challenging job right like hey you're the savior of us with Regulators an I hope you can and you know know as we've talked on the podcast they keep

announcing different business models for this alternative app store distribution and and so like you're kind of throwing this person to the Wolves seriously you you need you need Hazard pay for that [ __ ] because you're going to be subpena you're going up against the [ __ ] Senate the UK board C dude you're gonna be every on everyone's radar now that you're in that role dude I I mean need a bulletproof vest to play that [ __ ] be that in that job [ __ ] that dude that sounds that sounds [ __ ] horrific why would anybody sign up for that [ __ ] I don't I don't get it I just don't get it it's it's not worth any amount of money to do something like that misery well you know wish her luck I wish her luck yes I wish her luck this podcast is brought to you by apps flyer in today's Digital World understanding your apps Journey from Discovery to download is more than just insightful it's essential enter apps fer

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[Music] let's do a little um recap on some games so a little news about medicor who launched merge Mansion they hit 55 million downloads and uh half a billion 500 million in lifetimes Revenue so 2 million da for a merge game so you know good on them one thing about metacore it's interesting because I was just looking at recently on merge games for forever we thought that you know not thought we believe that that merge Mansion who kind of created this whole genre is still the number one but they're not number one anymore they've been taken over trip travel I always say Triple Town travel town but now goip is I don't know if they passed him already but it's kind of neck and neck I need to look at the other censor Tower so so they haven't per se lost that much in terms of the Run rate but the whole genres being taken over by these other

aggressive titles and and take the number one position so merge game overall growing but just making a point that they're not the number one anymore and they're going to be number three soon yeah no for sure I think again like Laura and I talk a lot about merge games just because I haven't played recently because I was super busy I had to drop them but the live Ops the collection mechanics the social mechanics like they have been really really on both those games adding a ton into them adding mini games so they could do UA anyway so I don't know what metacore is or isn't doing I'm I wasn't a merge merge Mansion player but hopefully they are doing that as well all right moving on just really quick I was looking at this game a lot Harry Potter magic awakened and so this game was uh really big in Asia it is however being shut down in America Europe and Oceania so nety is publishing it there so I think the takeaway here is that IP doesn't always equal success and it's hard to translate hits in the East to the West there are other Harry Potter games that

are still doing really well there's one from Jam City that we talked about which is like a great narrative game there's another one I think Zinga has a puzzle matching game probably not as good but but okay so I would objectively say what you said is that that game was certainly designed for Chinese market it certainly was not designed for the West okay the next one is Concord the hero shooter on PlayStation and steam seems to be one of the bigger failures recently I I described it as like Guardians of the Galaxy meets OverWatch with a really cheesy 70s branding that I didn't personally get and see how that fit in it failed to break 700 concurrent on Steam and a few thousand on Playstation reportedly Everyone's a Critic but the top reasons for the I guess we could say pretty massive failure seem to be a $40 price too many hero Shooters are out there so oversaturation the market black myth is just dominating everything so you know maybe that drowned it out 8 years in development unappealing theme

and character aesthetic no real marketing probably because they might have pulled that back knowing it wasn't testing well and too much focus on character cinematics versus gameplay any any thoughts Mishka what's interesting to me is like every time there's this this game or the black myth happening it's on LinkedIn or Twitter the VC's give their take like they clearly haven't been following this haven't played it but they kind of like take the most sort of a edgy takes from the internet and kind of bundle them together and give their expert opinion on either blackm or Concord whatever is the site guys you'll see the sort of a most edgy take from a VC kind of showing like hey I know what's going on in I want to be press I want to be press and say something spicy yeah but it's always like they combin like the most sort of a like grest takes from the internet into this one list of things so that's what I

find funny is VC's being experts on everything gaming whenever something big happens in gaming despite actually playing these games so that's it got it not all of them there are VCS who play but just there are several of them oh since we were talking about single player games earlier our friends at newu uh I forgot about this until we got here they give us a lot of monthly stats and some insights and so they did a follow-up hearing us talk about single player last week so this is from Michael Wagner who's a senior market Analyst at newu so qualitative Insight on single player versus multiplayer games in 2024 he says that in this year hit new multiplayer games have generally outperformed new single player titles there has been a notable lack of large AAA single player titles while Indie and able a games have performed well this year the AAA sector has not released many single player titles most of the releases in the category have been remasters remakes DLC or ports to new

platforms and then so he points to Hell divers and po World seem to have captured like a market segment eager for Co-Op then we also see that free-to-play games like last descendants and ex defiant you know they're kind of keeping an eye on them to see if they make it but they've not really seen multiplayer games release this year demonstrating long-term staying power which is kind of interesting I think we've talked about how you know finals are some of the others have been you know somewhat like pop and drops and it it seems as though you know players are kind of like trying the the game of the day and then moving on and so I know that they said they're watching that and so he finishes with while single player titles are known for their limited staying power there's no indication of an existential threat to this game mode within the industry we do not foresee any significant decline in the popularity in the near future so that's from our newo friends saying hey everybody if you're making a single player game you can still make a single player

game thank you for the thank you for the I don't want to say master of obvious but you know it's always nice to get different perspectives and and I personally love single player games I don't love multiplayer games as much because I don't like to be yelled at by a 15-year-old so every every VC is like changed its priorities now overnight right because now single player games are working multiplayer games are out right okay let's let's let's throw some money to single player games like go where the wind blows you know double a single a Indie you know like let's do the buzzwords let's go see what's at the a16z speedrun this [ __ ] week you know it's like ridiculous absolutely ridicul well let's talk about a single player game Star Wars Outlaws Mishka you want to talk about Outlaws so I have not played this game I added this here because I read the review just to be clear I'm not a VC who pretends or knows what's going on so massive entertainment this is UB soft Studio I believe it's the same one that made um division

division division yes and this is kind of division like third person multiplayer shooter so the criticism it launched with a 77 Metacritic which is not great not awful but not you know something that you would expect from a game like this that has been built by 400 people over four years on on an existing engine the criticism towards this game according to the critics is that the characters are shallow of course when it's a Star Wars people expect the characters to be larger than life and it's hard to reach those they talk about linear gameplay where it's kind of like these like even though you're in open world you're still doing like these Canyon missions or some kind of like crawling missions in in a close quarters and very linear type of a gameplay that is quite also repetitive the review talked about a very poor enemy AI that just didn't make the game fun actually vice versa and the main criticism that was coming through is they were comparing it to the GTA to the breath of the wild and all the other

current open world games and even the games from the past years and saying that this game is really not open world per se like you have few planets but it's very constricting and doesn't give the same feeling that you are in the Star Wars Universe haven't played it this is not a VC take this is what I read today I wonder if somebody else played it I have not played it yet I'm definitely going to play it I just haven't gotten I was we traveled yesterday but I think the hate on Ubisoft is absolutely shocking like I didn't realize how much hate there was this is like almost an 80 Metacritic game you know like it that's actually a really really good score particularly for a game of the scope and scale right so it's like ah you know we'll see how it does right we'll see how it does it doesn't look good from the coverage but let's see if it finds an audience of people that want to play an open world Star Wars game like Rogue style Star Wars game the other you know

push back I would get give on the game is that like it doesn't there's no lightsabers there's no Jedi you know it's not like that kind of game and so that maybe limited its appeal compared to like the Jedi games from um from EA but uh yeah we'll see yeah the it's The Smuggler fantasy right and so in in the world of Star Wars way way down on the list of like what's the fantasy you want to live in your Star Wars Universe oh I want to be like that isn't on solo right but the game play is is fun right the shooting gameplay is always yeah yeah I see IGN gave it a seven out of 10 Star Wars Outlaws is a fun Intergalactic Heist adventure with great exploration but hindered by simple stealth repetitive stuff so yeah yeah I mean like I don't know like back in the day that's not like a horrible rating but yeah I I agree that maybe it's the Ubisoft hate the one thing about the open world something that I was just watching YouTube videos like people really seem

to let like I don't play GTA per se either that's not the fantasy I want to live in but people really like to do in that game or in [ __ ] the other Cowboy version Red Dead red de redemp Red Dead yeah yeah exactly like all these things where there's like this old lady who's kind of protesting for women and they kind of like do all kinds of mad [ __ ] to to her in that game like drag her to be eaten by crocodiles and that kind of stuff and they post on yeah yeah you can do all kinds of stuff in Red Dead like and so and they're kind of comparing like here you can do whatever like and and you know the game kind of reacts in Star Wars it's much more limited they don't allow you to do crazy [ __ ] and through that it doesn't feel like open world but I understand Star Wars is an IP and they don't they don't want to be like the GTA Star Wars like you have to be you know on the this it's super ironic that you're comparing it to something like GTA which cost like a gajillion dollars over a billion dollars to make in compared to Red Dead Red Dead is the same thing dude that cost a

million I mean I I think that probably cost at least $750 million to make you know like over a long extended period of time with experts in that particular genre I actually made this argument by myself like that's why it's so hard to compete in this this space is because that's the comp comparison you're making yeah I think this game is good for what it is yeah having said that I we'll take a step back I okay first of all this game was supposed to be division in in the Star Wars universe so it's supposed to be a multiplayer looter shooter RPG the same type of mechanics as we saw in division which the original promise I was on board for I thought that was really cool Midway through I think they realized that they couldn't execute against that type of game in the Star Wars universe so they changed it and they changed it up to more of a single player open World adventure game right and for me personally is less compelling but in theory should have opened it up a little bit more but this is not their

expertise their expertise is like lutter shooter like RPG progression type thing and so I think they were somewhat limited by the Star Wars IP in retrospect I think they should have not made a Star Wars game I think they should probably have just stuck with division or make something else like division in a different universe and [ __ ] Star Wars IP right like but that's my my qu hot take I suppose oh makes sense I think that's a good take all right so let's give our takes on the other hot thing that's going on which is black myth Wukong so let me just do a little bit of a recap of what's going on since the game has launched steam broke records this past weekend with 37 million concurrent users driven by of course black myth specifically in China black myth became the best performing single player game of all time on Steam with 2.13 million players at launch pubg is still the top for for concurrent users on Steam which was at 3.3 million

players at its peak game science who's a developer said that on their social media that they sold 10 million copies in 3 days and had 3 million concurrent players across all of the platforms not just steam so Regional split so I again game discover co. Co is doing a lot of takes on this total players sampling countries that players list on public steam profiles is 87% China 1 .6% Hong Kong and review languages 93.6% simplified Chinese so I think obviously this is a a china hit as a comparison they looked at po world and and poor was which is also a Chinese developer by the way 36% China almost 20% us and so remember there's still you know 3% us owners of black myth so the equivalent is they they go in on and say you know 60,000 CCU so likely half a million us week one sales so which is

still a pretty strong number so what they also saw was that like a you know streamers were really streaming this so niik Partners talked about all of the streaming platforms blackm myth beat League it beat honor of Kings it beat valerant so it was a record-breaking launch for them as Gamers were streaming as well so really going it apparently cyberpunk 2027 was like the the biggest game that they streamed in 2020 so anyway I think this just goes to show that and and Chris I know you'll talk a lot about this is you know can a Chinese company develop a AAA title that resonates worldwide and can East come to West and right now it doesn't necessarily look to be that case but but maybe it grows I don't know what do you think I don't know I it's really shocking like 3.1% in the West for I know isn't it crazy like with how much press it's getting too yeah I mean actually frankly that seems very small I imagine that

percentage will go up over time given the popularity of it but again this seems like another like almost a false positive kind of the same issue we have with mobile where these this is a Chinese company that's making a Chinese game that's making with a really like popular Chinese theme so that's great for Chinese companies right so it's like this doesn't mean like some slew of Western developers are going to create AAA games with other Western IPS and be successful on Steam you know so it's in some ways like kind of a false flag right I can imagine like light speed and and Griffin are out there investing in [ __ ] triaa games you know for American Publishers they're gonna make like three kingdoms game with American developers you know like believer is gonna like shift into a trip game because of [ __ ] Wukong you know like come on give need a break right what a disaster that would be but but on a positive side this is absolutely fabulous news for a friend of the

podcast named Robert win right who and his partner ashou I'm gonna [ __ ] up that pronounciation they are rumored they're speculatively building a Chinese game with Chinese developer with a Chinese theme with a relatively obvious project name called project Great Wall I don't think you're getting any points right there for creativity there Mr Robert Robert was at blizzard and suffered a few years at Activision so I'm I'm sure he's feeling pretty [ __ ] happy right now and pretty smart at this point so he's actually doing exactly what likely will work with this success this is actually the bright strategy for seeing what this success is um actually do think it like all joking aside I heard that it sold two million units on Playstation which is crazy I didn't think there were 2 million PlayStations in China you know oh sorry two million yeah anyway two million units on Playstation in China which I is insane

so yeah it's an amazing game and actually the quality of the game is super high like I mean supposedly it's absolutely amazing my son is gonna be playing it this weekend I G to check it out but like like it's a really really well done game and uh I'm sure they have Legions of people working on it I mean I cost I it would cost a western publisher hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to execute against something like this so again there a lot of caveats to this success but it is absolutely amazing success so good for them yeah development in China is not cheap like it's comparable like it maybe not West Coast us but it is high development cost in most of these places I remember going to Beijing even in 2018 and the salaries were at the level of Canada back then already no come on in games I don't that's that can't be true and also the the amount of hours that they work is a completely different thing yes okay per hour yes they did not work like Canadians let's put it that

way how about the French how about the [ __ ] French so they work like three days a week right for you know great three hours a day in France be careful about France they can there's no freedom of speech in France so let's let's let's be clear on that good point yeah we didn't even talk about the telegram CEO being arrested but um from everything I'm hearing you know my intern my previous intern was telling me that who's Chinese is that this is a cultural Zeitgeist moment in China right now if you're a gamer in China they are everybody is talking about this and so like listen I I'm excited that they are getting this type of an opportunity I hope it means more you know AAA you know games that might bleed over I I do hope it means more for themes I think from a theme and an IP perspective I love seeing new IPS hit the market and so you know I hope there is some more of that coming one thing that I learned about China just a small

thing from the netes know you mentioned it so person said like yeah yeah we I mean we keep breing deconstructor fun like it's it's great source I'm like no you don't cuz I don't see any Chinese audience in our data it's like yeah I mean it's all translated and shared through WeChat so apparently there's like a deconstructor fun that would just take the content and somebody does it to Mandarin or CES or probably both and and that's how they uh engage with the content and we don't get any of the traffic so oh interesting good for them well maybe we should do that yeah the other side point to this just to be even more negative and critical but how the [ __ ] I'm gonna say this again how in the [ __ ] is this steam service surviving in China like why isn't 10 cent shut this [ __ ] down like they are competing directly they don't have the same power they don't have the same 10 cent doesn't have the power isal this [ __ ] is illegal in China like you cannot publish games without the approval of China like of the Chinese bodies and so like everything

they're doing on this platform is [ __ ] illegal in China it's like it blows my mind that this is still happening right so like with all this PR and success of these games like the more attention they're going to get right and imagine imagine if if this was shut down overnight in China dude 50% of the audience of steam would go and then we' be having a completely different story you know the VC firms would [ __ ] go absolutely apeshit because their entire strategy is completely [ __ ] because the whole Market's gone that they were counting on you know so I really want someone to explain to me how they've been able to operate this way for the last like two three years without any type of attention from the government I it doesn't make any they must have sign some deal or you know giving giving [ __ ] people money I don't know what the [ __ ] so steam is done here's the thing here's here's a craziest hypothesis maybe the CCP leadership likes PC games just they just play it just like in just like well you think

about this in Saudi Arabia they [ __ ] love Esports you're like why doesn't make any sense and maybe MBS just loves Esports that's the way it works if you have single leader then it's probably because they like and they playing Wukong or whatever black myth or game Golden Panda Dragon frankly that's not so ridiculous but that you would think that there is a steam version that is legal in China that no one [ __ ] uses so why wouldn't they just push it to there so that they can monitor it and right I mean this is all off book this is all gray Market [ __ ] dude like all gray Market stuff it's nuts it's really nuts it's like you keep saying about Andrew Wilson the CEO of EA like he hates mobile maybe they have their version in the CCP leadership like the the minister of digitalization who just [ __ ] hates mobile and just comes up with rules and then like you know what and then he goes home and plays PC until 2 a.m. exactly he's like you're not shutting this down because I'm playing these games you [ __ ] off exactly and

that's it that's not a stupid idea that's not a stupid idea in a communist country anything is possible all right all right well we're going to wrap it up here and we're going to save that other story till next time um so thank you everyone see you next week next week you did it you made it to the end of the episode as a fan of the show it would help us out if you subscribe and leave us a on the podcast service of your choice more importantly are you a member of the deconstructor fund slack group if you have 5 years or more of gamesindustry experience go to deconstructor of fund.com slack and apply to join join the games industry's best professional Community filled with peers always willing to lend a hand or subscribe to our newsletter to get all the latest insights from the deconstructor of fund content creators thanks for listening