TWIG #359 Unity x Epic, Roblox Controversy, Saudi Money and Why The Game Awards Make No Sense

Heavy cotton t-shirt chain with a pendant. A Swiss moth masterpiece. This is the tech mogul look of 2025.
Yeah, this is the same Zuck stylist.
Dude, he looks [ __ ] shredded, dude. Like absolutely shredded, dude.
This is why you have a woman on this podcast. Um, he looks ridiculous. He looks [ __ ] ridiculous.
Oh, come on. [music] Hello everyone and welcome to Twig 359, the American Thanksgiving version. Gobble gobble. And we have some turkey talk later. Not the kind of turkey you're thinking. All right. I'm Jen Dano. I head up the marketing and publishing role on the podcast. And today we have in first chair, not Philip Black,
Eric Crest, strategy investing. First chair forever [laughter]
until you skip a week. Phil Black monizations are second chair. back back where I should be.
I'm Katkov, friend of the founders, the last chair.
All right, guys. Here's what we have

going on today. We have a really packed episode and we might not get to all of this, but a lot of great topics. Ubisoft is the game industry drama train wreck that we can't look away from. Little rumor talk there. Unity and Epic partner up to make the metaverse great again. Roblox's CEO's tense podcast appearance on the Hardfork podcast. This was about Roblox's approach to child safety. The game award nominees. We meant to do this last week. Um, they're all over the place and we want to give you our take on that. The Saudis PIF cash challenges. Turkey success. How are they doing it? What's their secret? And they are not on the Thanksgiving table. A peak at Battlefield and Black Ops digital ad spend. And October game highlights from friends at Sensor Tower and Nuzu both gave us info. And Mishka is back with a slushy update. Let's hear about it.
Slushy update. So, Slush is the second largest startup conference in Europe. The biggest one is in Portugal, I

believe. We summit.
[ __ ] in Europe. Like startups in Europe.
So much offense towards our beautiful [laughter] beautiful Soviet European nations. It's a big one. Like 13,000 people come in, 5,000 investors. So, it is considerably big. There's a lot of US investors. There used to be, I don't know if there still is, but there used to be like a direct charter from SF with a straight up investor plan just coming in directly with bags. So, it is a very good conference and I want to give a huge thanks to Luis Deakamara who is ROIO's head of marketing for inviting me to do the keynote at Robioon. I think people think that I normally speak to about 600 industry professionals just on a daily basis that like that's what I do. I don't. It's quite stressful. There's a lot of pressure, especially when you know half of the audience and you've offended at least a third of them. So, it [laughter] is always a lot of pressure. So, so huge thanks. It was a great experience speaking at this ROION event. Overall, talking about slush,

considerable drop in gaming people who traveled in Helsinki
cuz I've been at this conference so many times. So, you know, you got that feeling at GDC when you walk into a hotel like St. Reges or W, you can kind of know what's the vibe. And now walking into one of the hotels like Lapland Hotel would be a good example. That's the St. Reges of Elsie or maybe
that's the bougie one.
No, that's not that's the second bougie. That's like the intercontinental. That's that's the one. So you kind of walk in and you feel that there's less people and it's easier to find a space. It's not as loud. So you kind of start thinking about it. And then there was this event that happens every year, the sauna event 32F. And again, same event every year. So this time around, like compared to last year, you can go to a sauna, no problem. You don't have to cram your [ __ ] with another two other people to your closet. So a lot of space in all the events. And I heard that many people in gaming just didn't travel this year. And many
many who I talked to traveled because

they weren't able to cancel their reservations. So they're like, you know,
might as well just come. So that wasn't of course not, you know, nice being in gaming. And Helsinki has gone through some hard times. I think it's the the biggest declined gaming market at least to uh report that I was looking double digits like 21% decline. But nevertheless, on the positive side, Supercell is hiring like crazy, building new offices, new tower complexes, next games. The Netflix studio is releasing their slate of TV games. So, you know, pros and cons. Then that slush gen bummer. You couldn't make it. There was plenty of room at the sauna this time around. I can't wait to go do a sauna date with you next next year. [laughter]
Next year, my friend.
Yeah.
No, there's the people who have gone. They're like, "Let's go." Especially Americans are all about it. They go to the sauna. There's like an executive sauna thing with bunch of investors. There's, you know, the Scop Corp devs and you name it.
I've never seen such a disgusted look on

someone's face as I just saw when Jen [laughter] was thinking about it.
Saw that.
One day, this is this is definitely the goal. But hey, before we jump into all the list of the topics,
I want to ask Phil, Phil Phil B, the tax expert of the crew, who is suddenly promoting Sweden out of all the places at the tax haven for Yanks literally a month after taking his game economist loot and moving it to the Puerto Rico, Middle East, aka Cyprus. So, Phil, what is going on with this sudden promotion on LinkedIn, on Doof, Slack about this one secret trick to get Americans to move to Europe? Tell us about this trick. [clears throat]
So, there's actually two pieces to this that Europeans are just so clueless when it comes to taking financial responsibility for themselves. So, one piece is that virtually every Western European country has an expert tax visa that they use to hire what they call highly qualified or unique skilled people. So Sweden has this, the Netherlands has this, Spain has this

called the Beckham's law, Finland has this, uh I believe Norway has this. So virtually all these countries have this and game developers almost always qualify and it cuts your tax burden by a significant amount. So for the Swedish situation, your tax burden is capped at 30% which is an unbelievable benefit. And not only that, it lasts for 5 years and you get a bunch of deductible things like when you go back to your home country that you can take that as a deduction. No one has advertised this. Virtually everyone that came over to DICE got this. No recruiter talks about it. It's just baffling to me that no one is actually promoting what a significant savings this is from a tax perspective. I mean, this puts your tax bracket far lower than you would in California. Like, most people are paying 50% effective rate in the United States. And so, this gets you to 30% flat no matter what bracket you would normally be in. So, that's one piece is these expert tax visas. And the second is pension, which again, no one no one understands how the pension system works in Sweden, which is that you get a state pension and then you get an occupational pension, which is 30% of your income. And not only that, you can invest in the S&P 500. You

actually own your money in Sweden. And this is exactly what George Bush actually proposed way back when when he was reforming Social Security. And Swedes don't understand this. And I've had to explain this to them because they're losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars of compounding growth if they just moved from the default occupational funds to an S&P 500 which lets their growth come back. Now, we could go on about this, but again, no one actually explains this to you, and it's a significant part of how you're compensated in Europe. And what you do is you go to Portugal. All the Swedish CEOs go to Portugal. You drain it at 55, your occupational pension.
Yeah.
At 5% tax rate. It's the Florida of Europe. And then you move back to Sweden.
I can't believe I'm saying these words, but can we move on to shilling? [laughter] I I need to burst this bubble that that that Phil is telling because like few things like first of all the pension that you accumulate during your 5 years is going to be really small especially since you're paying
No, it is not. It is substantial. Substantial.
It's not substantial. It's not substantial.
Let's cut this [ __ ] out. Come on. We're going to cut all this. I don't give a

[ __ ] about tax planning and third world to the Americans. Okay. Let me just summarize in this way. If you are like early in your career and you're mid-level, chances are in EU your quality of life is better. I agree with Phil. But if you're top talent and you want to make a lot of money, US is the place. Your quality of life is going to be worse in the EU because the salaries are fourth or fifth or 10th compared to the the US. So anyways, per Eric's request, let's move on to the shills. Two shill pieces. So we had Abslier chief product officer Barack coming in on a podcast talking about the company's AI transformation. Actually this was very interesting. They've done super interesting stuff not in terms of tools but how they how they trained their entire staff gave them was it four weeks of training on how to use different tools. So worth the listen. And the other one is Heroic Labs. Their founders came in. This is what Simon Hay calls founder porn. So, so basically just a very raw episode on on building companies. So that's on the podcast and

on the blog.
All right. For me, puzzle queen Laura Torrento sent me an Xbox hoodie that I'm going to proudly wear and display right now as an OG Xbox fan. Crescott one, too, but I think as he wears his right now, it's going to burst into flames when he puts it on
there. It's in memorandum of Xbox.
That's true. Yeah. No, big fan. All right. So corrections,
the Ubisoft earnings delay was much to do about [ __ ] nothing. It was an accounting error identified by his auditors last minute. Rather than anything like game delay or acquisition or anything, it's just the general incompetence of the CEO, CFO, and the auditors. Uh the deal with Tencent has closed, so haven't helped Paris, you know, but that was about it. Nothing much else going on with that. So very disappointing. It was uh really fun though to watch all the drama porn unfold on Slack. So just when you say the 10-centent deal, so is this the 1.6 billion euro Vantage Studio giving 10

cent 26% stake in the subsidiary that holds the actually the real brands on anything that matters. So Assassins, Rainbow 6, Far Cry, that that's the case right for that.
That is the case. And again, all those studios are in Canada. [laughter]
Not even in
they're not even in Paris.
And then also in franchise corner, Far Cry is getting a TV show on FX and Hulu. Phil is psyched. I saw you posting about it. Rob Mack, who changed his name from Mhenny.
All the things they could possibly need right now as a [ __ ] TV show on FX. I mean, Jesus Christ, dude.
Do you remember the Ooey Bowl movie? Far Cry.
Oh, man. That's going that Oh, boy. Oh, that was bad. Oh, no. No, I didn't remember. [laughter] That was bad.
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All right, so let's get into it. The first topic is going to be Epic Games and Unity have announced a major partnership that shocked many people. So, first it was Google and Tim Sweeney from Epic showing up to court as BFFs, which shocked everyone, including the judge, and now Tim shows up at Epic Unity's Unite conference and appears on stage with Matt Bramberg as BFFs. I mean, that was just like something I never had on my bingo card was seeing them together. So, here's what was announced really quick for those who want to know. Unity developers will be able to publish their games directly

into the Fortnite ecosystem. Games built with Unity will appear in the Fortnite discovery system and the Fortnite creator economy, so you get a chance to make money with your Unity games. Unity will bring its cross-platform commerce platform, including its inapp purchase SDK to the Unreal Engine in early 26. This was just announced a few months ago that Unity is partnering with Stripe on payments. Both CEOs emphasized their shared view of building fair and open digital platforms similar to the early days of the web. So for my take, here's what I was really I was just fascinated with the Tim Bromance tour that he's been on for platforms, for engines, for payments. Hell, he even let AP into the Fortnite platform. Bill, I know you're working on that. Get your take on that in a second. 2025 is the year that Tim decided to really do things differently and push his metaverse vision. While everyone else has dropped it, Tim is still a believer. And he's not afraid to use the M-word. I've seen he said it on

stage at this event. So, this is a move towards the open and interoperable gaming ecosystem ahead of what is going to be Unreal Engine 6, which brings UFN and UFN and Unreal Engine together likely. He's been talking about that. So, in a complete aside, because you are so fashionable, Mishka and Crest, I think I might recommend a fashion consultant for Mr. Bramberg. I'm not saying he needs a suit, but I'm not sure about the choice of accessories with the black.
I love it. I love it.
What are you talking about?
Heavy cotton t-shirt, chain with a pendant, a Swiss moth masterpiece. This is the tech mogul look of 2025.
Yeah, this is the same Zuck stylist,
dude. He looks [ __ ] shredded, dude. like absolutely shredded, dude.
BMI,
look at him.
BMI is
circular circular French glasses.
This is why you have a woman on this podcast. He looks ridiculous. He looks [ __ ] ridiculous.
Oh, come on. No.

Well, let's get the Tim Sweeney fashion.
Yeah, the Tim Sweeney look. That looks terrible. He looks
That is expected. That is expected from Tim Sweeney. He rocks that same shitty outfit everywhere he goes because he's a gamedev. He's an engineer.
Pants are like Yeah. totally like baggy and completely
That's a billionaire look.
That's why we love him.
That's me buying a Clippers look. That's That's [laughter] what it is.
Look, all I'm saying is the EA BMI factory is turnurning out the successful CEOs and executives constantly. Dude, it's unbelievable. Anyway,
it's the gym. I used to go to that gym at EA at ears. All right, Phil, what what's your take on this?
Well, first thing just as an update is if you remember UFN was going to allow V-Bucks to be spent inside of Island. So essentially, they were allowing MTX inside of the UGC platform. That was in December and they had not announced a firm date for that. That has now been moved to January. And what I will give Epic credit for is they've been very communicative about when these things

happen. They've been doing Q&As's with developers. I personally have been consulting with a couple different devs who are implementing this and let me just tell you loot boxes are on the menu boys. That is what has been communicated to us and that is something that I am certainly marching towards. But the other thing that you see when you look for instance look at their public trellboard because remember they have a public trellboard where they have the features things start to slip dates start to slip. Same thing with MTX. They are building this thing in flight. Remember, it took Roblox 10 years. But when I look at this Unity news, I have no idea how this actually works. Like, what what happens when I go into UFN and I click a tile. Does it load Unity? Are you going to move an entire Unity game in there? I mean, there just so many questions. It just feels like they're throwing the kitchen sink at things.
I just can't even My head is exploding trying to conceptualize this. No, you that's what they're saying is it'll behave just like any of the other games. When you go and you upload it into the Fortnite ecosystem, it appears in Discovery. It's in the creator ecosystem. It's going to
Is it on mobile though? It is on mobile.

Like this is the games within games that got banned from the app store. Remember Facebook tried to do this with instant messenger games. Like I just have so many questions.
You said it exactly right. This is like being built in flight. This is crazy. like to implement this type of thing where the platform itself has been completely unsuccessful, let's be honest, right, so far. And now you're adding another layer of a different engine into the mix and games that in theory the majority of them or like 98% of them actually are predatory monetization mechanics, right? So it's like of which that's supposedly not allowed or maybe it is allowed depending on how you interpret what's going on over at Epic. So, it's like I'm not really clear as to how this is actually going to actually work and function with for the consumer, right? It seems like a complete Frankenstein monster um ultimately and none of what the coverage seemed to articulate really helps me feel better about it, you know? So, I

think it's all good on paper and it seems like a very high flutin thinking way of let's bring everyone together Kumbaya, but like the logistics of actually pulling this off seem almost impossible. We'll see. Maybe they can pull it off. Who knows?
All right. Okay. The other interesting things was the
the Unity SDK going into the Unreal Engine games that aren't necessarily inside of Fortnite as well. So, that was like another point that I just wanted to make sure it didn't get missed.
The Roblox CEO I Jen actually boarded me this podcast. I've I had actually never heard of it before. It was It's a New York Times podcast. It's actually quite good even though what I'm about ready to say is going to make me people think I don't think it's good. But um so the CEO David Bizooki, he was on this podcast um from the New York Times called Hard Fork. The goal of the podcast was to talk about the new system and what was happening at Roblox that can basically use facial recognition to tell which is an adult, which is a minor

to to determine who is actually speaking to each other within these games. Supposedly, it's going to add more, you know, reliable verification methods compared to the self-reported methods, which I've been critical of forever, right? The podcast got really brutal really quickly. These guys on the podcast were [ __ ] [ __ ] Like, they were just complete dicks, you know? They weren't they were being super aggressive and super argumentative with him and just rude, right? Um, now I've never really listened to them before, so I don't know if that's kind of their their sticktick. And I did listen to a few others after the fact, and it is kind of their stick. But I want to be clear, like I'm talking on both sides of my mouth on this. Roblox has done more than any other service that I know of in order to ensure safety for children. Like that's been their mo from the very beginning. It took them years and years to de develop what they have, right? And the host had no [ __ ] idea. They had no idea. They had no background. They had no context whatsoever to be talking to

David about this about what Roblox track record was on this po this point. So they were just on the offensive. They were just attacking him in every moment. And so when David asked the question specifically about, you know, what research has you done in to these hosts about this particular subject? The host had no answer whatsoever. They just pulled it back. Well, why don't you answer the question type thing. It was clear that these guys were not prepared at all for this podcast, right? They they had not done any work. They're basically repeating talking points from
Yeah. They even brought up the Hindenburg article and and he's, you know, they went out of business, right?
Exactly. And then again, he actually cornered them and said, "Hey, what do you know about what we're doing on this thing?" And they had no idea what they were talking about. Right. I personally thought the hosts looked like a idiots, right? It was embarrassing just to listen to them and how uninformed they were. And these are like real journalists from the New York Times. These guys are no joke. So what's so sad

is that David is such a huge fan of the podcast. I mean, he said so himself. And the fact he was pretty much blindsided by their line of questioning. This is not what he was expecting at all. And I'm actually a little bit surprised the PR team let this thing air to be honest. And maybe it's because kind of David did have the upper hand to some degree because these guys just came off looking like jerks, you know. So, I don't know. That was kind of my take on the whole thing.
I thought you would enjoy the the the banter there. Um, and then yeah, so these it's Kevin Roost is and by the way, this is the guy who made the early Clawude version of the AI chatbot. Fall in love with him. And he wrote a whole article about it. And then Casey Newton from Platformer. So these guys are super super wellresected. They have access to all of the big tech guys. I listen to this podcast weekly. They often interview, you know, like the leaders of all of the tech companies. And so this came on the heels of the Roblox announcement that they're rolling out face verification, which is why he wanted to go on. It's a technology that they're using to improve child safety.

So just really quick for those who haven't seen the news. So this is going to verify users age which will restrict communication between age groups and unlock age appropriate features like chat for those 13 and older. Users can now voluntarily complete a facial age check and starting in early December the requirement will be enforced in certain markets and then globally. The process involves a video selfie analyzed by a third party called Persona with images and videos deleted immediately after processing. If the face scan incorrectly estimates your age, you can verify your birthday with governmentissued ID. And so I think he was trying to say, look, you know, look at what we're doing there. A lot of people are covering us negatively. How about we talk about what we're actually doing? And so the the guys brought up, well, aren't kids showing pictures of video game characters to get around this? I mean, we've talked about this before. I mean, I have now a 19-year-old and a 16-year-old, and they were hacking all of these things at 8 and, you know, six and five. So, kids are going to find

ways around things, but Roblox should be applauded for the work that they've already done when you have 150 million DAU. And Chris, you've talked about this before is like, how about we talk about the good things that they're doing? Yes, there's always going to be problems and bad actors, but let's talk about how they are pushing tech beyond what is currently out there. So, it was super cringey and I was disappointed because I like the podcast that the host didn't do more homework and they used outdated references on, you know, trying to be fair and balanced. I thought that was not the best moment for them.
I'm surprised at these takes. To me, I listen to that podcast and I expect nothing more from journalists. It's always going to be man bites dog stories. That's always going to be the case. There's no sense of proportionality at all. And of course, like the safety issue on Roblox has been growing. If you remember, they banned a vigilante who was trying to catch groomers on the platform, which then triggered a Twitter [ __ ] storm. So, there's been incidents leading up to this, but I don't expect anything more from journalists. What I expected from Roblox was for David to be more prepped

going into his interview because of course he's going to get toasted by these guys. And I'm surprised that team didn't do better prepping him. And I would say he did not handle those questions well, and he did not handle the questions afterwards well. And it just reiterated to me that Roblox is not one of us. They are not a game developer. David does not care about games. He's not identify with games. I mean, he's posting tweets afterwards saying, "Hey, Kevin, thanks for having having me on. Always happy to talk about our commitment and safety to other fun and industryleading stuff that Roblox is working on. Looking forward to next time. High five." I mean, come on, David. Just try to be a little bit more authentic and realistic with PR. That is not a good look.
And he says high five all the time. I mean, give me a [ __ ] break, dude. If Roblox [ __ ] this up for all of us, we're going to be in a much worse position than we have been in the last decade because the salience of this issue is increasing and we need to turn down the temperature on this because the regulars are going to get involved. If you saw Australia, they recently passed a law banning social media for minors and Roblox is not a part of that nor are

games and if we start to get back on the menu for regulators, we're going to be in the crosshairs for a lot of these new regulations coming out and we'll be a part of them. So Roblox needs to play their cards carefully because in politics perception is reality. Doesn't mean what their commitment to safety is. It matters how they market it and advertise it and deal with situations like this.
That's a really really good point. First of all, David probably should not be on this podcast is is what you're suggesting, Philip. Right. They should have sent the um the VP of economy guy or they need a PR trained person that's ready for anything, ready for blood because
these bottom beater like New York Times guys are are just out there trying to get headlines and they were successful, right? You know, David is is is a is not the the right guy for this at all. And I met with some of these PR guys, but I think the PR people I met at Roblox are gone now, but like they [ __ ] up. I think it's like actually all on them
that they made this that this happened, right? And then the fact that he's writing this kind of response like
Yeah. [laughter] I mean, dude, he got [ __ ] crucified out there and they're

sending out a high five. Dude, [ __ ] them, dude.
He had the upper hand on a couple of the of the pieces that made them sound bad when they were
No, no, but but to Philip's point, I hadn't thought about it from that perspective. Like, he should have been prepped for this, right? They they he should have known what they were going to ask and not got blindsided by by this [ __ ] that they brought up, you know, with the [ __ ] Hindenberg report, which is completely outdated and completely they the guys went out of business. You know,
CEOs are usually really really well prepped. Like I I have hard time imagining that he wasn't prepped. And then again, like when you watch it, you can walk away from that seeing that, hey, he had an upper hand. He had good points. Nevertheless, the sort of a thing that we get out of it is him saying that the pedophilia on the platform is actually an opportunity, which was was quite the quote. They really rode with this, but I think they were rude and they were attacking him in that really small recording room, which is kind of like interesting setup. And when it comes to the confidence of your attacks, I watch a little bit different

type of podcast [laughter] mainly with African-American hosts and the attacks are really good, but they watch you in the eyes when they insult you. In this type of a setup, they were kind of like like watching to a different direction when when attacking the person, which is not nice. Like when you talk a [ __ ] about about a guy, watch him in the eye when you say it since he's sitting in front of you. Anyways, I think the good part about this type of a thing is is that they challenge these CEOs. It's like most podcasts are softballs, pre-written interviews and they kind of go in and do their, you know, talking points and get out and nobody gets anything interesting out of it. But the bad thing is is that they take these sound bites out of context and then these quotes go everywhere and people are requing without watching the podcast, without getting the context, without understanding the conversation. And that again leads to PR team who was probably shell shocked at Roblox for you know not putting their their executives to these type of setups which again leads to less transparency because now we can't hear a CEO of a company you

know kind of like free you know unhinged founder talking about unhinged founder stuff. So, I think, you know, clicks are important, sound bites are super important, but this one felt quite manufactured based on the outburst and what's in the ether afterwards.
So, Mishka, is your takeaway that as podcast interviewers, we need to be more assholy to get more clicks or are we not being [ __ ] enough?
I I don't know. Like, maybe you have to be New York Times to to bring it in. But but I wish that if you are an [ __ ] and you're in the same room with the person you're insulting, watch him in the eyes when he [ __ ]
Well, that's interesting. I Yeah, I I listen I actually listen to podcasts. I didn't watch it on YouTube, so I didn't get the same.
It's a tiny room. It's such a small room. When they film you, they fil like there's a back of the head of David and the guys are there and then they switch to the other camera which is in front of them. So, they're really close and you can see the the journalist. I forgot his

name. God bless him. But he was kind of like, you know, when he was putting the attacks, he was looking up or to a different direction, kind of squinting his eyes. And I'm like, dude, if you attack a guy, attack him. Like, let's go. Like, watch him in the eyes and say your platform is [laughter] is not good. And, you know, I'm not going to
The New York Times should be held to a different standard. and the fact that they were being such [ __ ] about how they were pursuing this and again quoting things that were completely you know discredited like months ago years ago now right I mean when press they couldn't even respond they had no response to actually what he does they do for privacy what they do for protecting kids and whatever like they had no idea what they were talking about right this is the New York Times dude we can't compare it to people like us that are just out there like talking [ __ ] on a podcast these guys are real like journalists. [laughter]
What? I mean, our journalistic integrity is well, it's absolutely zero.
Yeah, I think [laughter] they were they were they were just basically trying to

stump the chump and and that's just not the way real journalists should be. They should be tough, you know, and ask tough questions, but know what the [ __ ] they're talking about.
All right, let's move on.
Yeah. All right, here we go. It is game awards season, so let's talk about the game awards. It's happening in LA on December 11th. So, I wanted to just check in on the game of the year and then the mobile game of the year and get everyone's take. So, here are the nominations. Claire Obscure, Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2, Crest's favorite, Donkey Kong Bonanza, or maybe this is Laura's favorite. That's from the Switch, Hades 2, Hollow Knight, Silkong, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. We were going to do this last week when Adam was on. So I pulled up this slide which is copy sold on Steam and console from Alenia just showing that you know these are not like World on Fire copies sold except for Hil Silkong. I think Paul Knight does you know really really well when that thing came out. I remember it

was it was huge. And just the other thing to note is that the cuto off is I think November 21st for the eligibility inclusion. So you're not going to get a lot of the shooter madness that happens after that. Although technically Call of Duty Black Ops 7, you know, would have been because I think it launched on November 17th or something like like that. So Mishka, it looks like they're missing a lot of the big names. What did you see when you looked at the list?
Uh yeah, Battlefield 6, Arc Raiders, Escape from Dook, Duck Duck,
Duck Off, Duck Off
Duck. My favorite from Ubisoft, Ano Rome just came out. That was [ __ ] amazing.
Get the [ __ ] out of here with an [ __ ] dude. No shutins in Germany. No one gives a [ __ ] about
deserves all the credits for this amazing simulator. The Sim City with Rome.
Why do you keep bringing up Ano, dude? Ano is like the dirtiest because [laughter] I love all strategy games. And also
have no friends [laughter]
and no life.
Ubisoft deserves W's. Ano is one.

Anyways, Ghost of to Cotay, Split Fiction, Dispatch. There's a lot of games that that weren't here, especially Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders. Like those should be here, right?
Yeah. I I think they just came so late in the voting system and that what was you know, I mean it gets worse. So, well, I guess most anticipating game is not worse. So, let's take a look at these really quick. 007 First Light, the James Bond game, Grand Theft Auto. I mean, come on. No [ __ ] That's like stupid. Marvel's Wolverine, Resident Evil, Reququum, and the next Witcher, Witcher 4.
The Wolverine game is a really exciting I can't wait to see what that is, but obviously Grand Theft Auto is the one that everyone's cares about.
The Wolverine game did look good. Like I think I've seen some takes of him fighting and it's like kind of old school. It reminds me of old school the Brawlers. It looks really cool.
[ __ ] that. [snorts]
Rest in peace, my sweet child.
All right. most nominated Death Stranding 2 and Claire Obscure. I mean, that one, Expedition 33 is all over the

place. And then in the indie dominance in all throughout all of the categories, Hollow Knight, Hades 2, you know, is just really everywhere.
I have no issues with the indies this year. I think the indies really did take the world by storm and they deserve all the credit they get. The Death Stranding 2 is the one that bothers me all the time. No one gives a [ __ ] about that game except like super hardcore Kajjima fans and I'm like I know why it gets nominated so much, but it's just it's just noise like in the space in my opinion.
It's always like a Kajjima fest every time I turn this
this award show on it it's like they're the biggest fanboys, you know. So, actually I wanted to talk about who actually nominates these things. Um, the game awards are chosen by an international jury of over 100 global media and influencer outlets selected for their history of critical video game evaluation. I would like to interview these hundred people and ask them are they actually talking about what's going on in the real world?
I think the only thing that should

missing should have been Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders in particular, right? should have been put on they should have definitely been on this list versus Donkey Kong and Death Stranding I think were the ones I would take off but the rest made sense but given the success of both games it seems like these are the ones that are really going to have actually meaningful impact on the the game space
that makes sense and so best mobile game oh my god this is just awful Destiny Rising
Sonic Rumble Persona 5 the Usamame, Pretty Derby, the horse horse girl one, and Weathering Waves. Um, Crest, just please [ __ ] on this for me.
Actually, [laughter] this list is not that bad this year. I mean, it's far better than last year. Last year was stupid, right? I think Destiny Rising has no business being on this list. I mean, unless it's a list of the most failed games in the in of the year, it should not be on this list at all. I mean, it's a beautiful game. It's

really well done, but it was such a big failure financially that just an unmititigated disaster. They should have Kingshot on this list. I mean, Kingshot's been like absolute monster, right? Sonic Rumble, I I can have, but Persona 5, Uma, whatever the [ __ ] that game is. Wthering [laughter] Waves, all of them were relatively successful games and they were, you know, beautiful. So, I I'm not I'm not hating it. I'm not hating at all.
All right. How about you hate it, Mishka?
Yeah. I to me this makes very little sense. It feels like the nominees for the mobile game of the year awards went to some pub in in pub I don't know in a bar in Tokyo or Beijing and just threw darts because here's the thing there's only five games like they couldn't come for the sixth. Anyways um one game has failed badly and that's Destiny. One game is still in test marketing which is actually Sonic Rumble. There's three titles that almost entirely monetized from East Asia and all five games have

been made either in China or Japan non-meaning represent western mobile make gaming markets or has any success in the western mobile markets. So just like breaking it down like Destiny rising I mean yes Crest said it all it's downloads didn't materialize revenue collapsed immediately live ops evaporated and I don't know the the criteria could be like the most expensive most [laughter] cinematic because definitely it's not best performing then you got Sonic Rumble which is still in soft launch so we're now not like nominating test marketing builds like what's next like the pre-production art bible gets nominated [laughter]
dude you're funny today. I love it.
Actually, I got corrected on the Sonic Rumble thing cuz I posted this on LinkedIn today. And um turns out that game has been launched globally. It's made $300,000 with 3.3 million downloads. So, it's not in soft launch. It looked based on KPS. [laughter] It's actually just dead on

arrival. So, that's better. We got Uma Uma Musu Muma like whatever. It launched in 2021. It peaked in Japan. 90% of the revenues lifetime come from Japan and it has been actually declining for years. It is an amazing game. Huge cultural moment in 2021, but I don't know why they're nominated today. Like somebody discovered Horse Girls and they're like, "Yes, let's put this one on the list." Withering Waves again, beautiful game. Saw it launch. 80% of revenue coming in from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong. Like big in Asia, which is great. It's Asia with subtitles and it qualifies. You got Persona 5. Never heard about this. Again, 85% Asian revenue. So, all I want to say is there are a ton of games that are missing like Kingshot, like Royal Kingdom. And you know, they why didn't they put Clash Royale? Because they put the the Horse Girl game that that made a huge
that game ages ago. This is supposed to be here.
Suma was 2021.
Yeah. Not not in the West.

They relaunched it in the West. I think that's that's what but I I hear your point on it was already out. Is that really the right way to look at that category?
Yeah, exactly. Then we had Disney solitire that was I think really solid game as well. How it brought the Disney IP to to mobile.
These are actually market shaping games across revenue, across downloads, across creative innovation, across geographies and across all audiences. And they're not just games that are aimed exclusively for Asian markets where Western developers are simply not welcome. We can't go out and launch a game in in Japan. I mean, we can't. It won't do anything. We can't do it in Korea either. And we're banned from doing it in China. Just give them your source code and shut the [ __ ] up. That's the model.
Okay. But, okay, let's just be clear here though. The biggest fundamental problem is there weren't that many big releases this year. That's the problem, right? In the west, right? So, I think you're right. Kingshot, Archer 2, Disney Soliter are the top three that I could see. DC, Dark Legion as well.
When did Pokemon launch? Pokemon TCG.

I think it it won something last year, I think, if I'm not mistaken. But um anyway, the point is it's like it's been a really tough year for they just shouldn't do mobile because mobile is mostly free to play and it's really hard to give these awards to a free-to-play game because essentially the game kind of like launches and just grows from there. It's rare that we get a game that is big out of out of the gate. So
now moving from one east to a another east
just do a Middle East. Let's let's meet in the middle.
Yeah. [laughter]
All right. So, there's an article I forgot whe pocket gamer, but I think it came from New York Times, right? Um about the fact that Prince Muhammad bin Salman has pledged a trillion dollars investment in the US. But however, there the the PIP is facing some liquidity challenges because of these enormous projects that they've been funding over the years, particularly this the city Neol, which is ridiculous, right, by the way.
Oh, yeah. That's a failure, right?
Yeah. So anyway, so they have these budget deficits internally as a country,

but also like they have all these huge investments that they need to keep keep going, right? And so there's a notion that they really only have like $60 billion left in the trillion dollar fund that they have. So perhaps now with that kind of information that maybe that makes sense why they put debt in on this deal with EA rather than paying cash because 20 billion out of the 60 billion would be a significant amount of of their cash reserves that they have right now. They talk about this article and this was my experience when I lived in Saudi was that they have these resorts that they built up that they spent I can't even imagine how much money they spent in the in where I lived in Jedha that sit completely idle and [laughter] no one's actually using. So totally unprofitable, but maintenance on those type of things is tremendous. And then then obviously this huge city that they're planning on building, which just seems absurd um is the other project that they have to continue to fund. So there is some risk here um from the perspect risk and opportunity from the perspective of EA from my perspective

anyway is that the risk is that if they need the funds then they may have to sell assets, right? If they need to fund some of these other projects, it's possible that they have to sell. I don't think that will happen. I think what's more likely is there'll be more push to try to, you know, bring this thing back public in the next two to three years to actually cash out and show some returns on these investments that they are making. So that actually could be good for the space. But having said all that, I still think you know they are pumping oil out [laughter] and and they have like an endless supply of cash, right? So while they seem overextended at this point and the New York Times really wants to make point of that, I still think that they likely will be fine.
Yeah. In Saudi Arabia, the revenue comes from the ground. It's all good.
Whenever you say they have unlimited cash, like the economist, the economist in me just dies a little bit inside. No, no, no. We have unlimited needs and wants and limited means to fulfill them. Eric, this is the counter thesis to the thing you keep saying. They clearly

don't have unlimited cash. That's the whole reason behind this, right? They have to ration what they have. This is the whole point of the 2030 vision.
Again, like this is the New York Times, right? This is not like a unbiased source. I don't want to get political on this. I know
reasonably certainly that these guys have almost unlimited funds.
I don't think they're suffering.
I I don't think they're suffering. I think that's fair to say. But here's here's what I don't understand, Eric, is they've made all these investments. Scopely has been purchased. EA I haven't seen any of the talent being brought back to Saudi. Like I don't see anyone opening Saudi studios. If you remember there was what was it? It was Sandsoft one of the studios that did get spun up there that recently shut down because of basically one finicky investor. And like we know how economic growth happens and all these hubs around the world. Like DICE is what grew the Swedish games industry. We could talk about Texas where a lot of the original first-person shooters came from. Like we can go through the list of things and I just don't understand what their strategy is

to actually grow homegrown talent. They don't have the education ecosystem. Where are the pieces to fulfill this vision? It just feels like they're buying random financial assets.
I've made the same argument. I totally agree. There's no evidence whatsoever besides Brian Ward talking out of his ass about making investments in [ __ ] Riad where no one in the world wants to live, right? Like I'm with you on this. I'm with you. There's no indication whatsoever that they're building up infrastructure that's outside of oil, right? They're using their oil wealth to buy assets. Period. End of sentence. Right. All that other stuff is lip lipstick on a pig. Dude, I I'm with you. I'm totally with you on this.
I think you're talking about two different topics. Yes, Phil, you're absolutely correct that there is the investments that are going in into building a local ecosystem, but Savvy is not part of that. Savvy is in the end a private equity vehicle.
Yeah. Right. I think what Philip's point is is that it shouldn't be.
It should be.
Yeah, but there are other vehicles there that are doing Phil what you're saying.
You're going to tell me you're going to

buy two of the biggest financial gaming assets ever and you're not going to use any of it to grow homegrow vision 2030. I mean that's asinine. I mean it's pretty obvious that one of the easy plays here say Scopely. You're setting up a support studio for Pokémon Go and for Monopoly Go in Saudi.
But that's a bad business decision.
This is what we call investment. You have to start the ecosystem somewhere. And now you start put money in colleges. You need those acclamation effects.
I I think you're talking two different things. On one hand, you're criticizing them of of poorly using their funds and you know this and that and then you're criticizing the investment because it's not like a strategic type of investment that builds the ecosystem. I think those are two different things. What's going to happen here is is they're going to acquire at least one more gem into that gemstone of five top companies. Like they do have now EA as the big gemstone. They got the Scopi as a huge gemstone. They got Niantic. I think it's missing one or two. They like League of Legends. I think Riot is going to be one of the gemstones and I think it's going to be put back in into the market once they

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So, so this is a piece on mobile gamer BZ. So, shout out to Neil. He ran the Turkey piece Turkey piece about the ecosystem. So, this is not the typical of why Turks are so great type of a piece which we have read at plenty. You know, they do talk about that Istanbul is the capital of mobile gaming, but they interview actually akin Baba who is the founder of Triple Dot and now a founder of Arcadia VC and he offers a note of caution in the article suggesting that Turkish ecosystem could overheat if too many investors put their money into the same sorts of match three and hybrid casual studios. Well, lo and

behold, I do I do agree with Mr. a keen and I would say that the market is quite overheated when you're starting to see $55 million seed rounds and $50 million A rounds on games that don't have rorowass and I also can think that Mr. Akin has been deploying quite aggressively on the market. So he hasn't actually been bringing down the thermostat. So it's clear why Turks are so good. They are phenomenal at execution. They put in tons of hours. They have a mad focus on detail. they don't have some kind of a fail option. Like when your startup fails, you don't go to Riot, back to Riot or back to, you know, Google or other type of companies to own your fat check. It's like it's this or bust. And and I also like how business focused they are. They don't do games that they want to per se play. They do games that the market wants to play. And also I have to mention that the government is supporting gaming industry quite well. So there's a system

where you get 400k per game per year 60%. So basically 400k is going to be 60% of the refund for the new game that you're launching. So they subsidize launching of new games and also they give 200k for a gaming company per year for different type of services. So essentially the way Turks are talking about is you get in their lingo it's 500k per game. So they do usually two new games per year. So, the government is subsidizing and helping companies to launch new games. And 500K, by the way, goes far in Turkey, unlike, I don't know, LA. That's not even considered sketches for the type of MOA you're about to do. So, what sets the cap for the industry is there's not much of innovation. Aim talked about it as well. The Turks are more about outexecutioning each other than actually evolving, per se. So, everything is about puzzle. But then again, they've had some bangers on PC. So, there is ton of talent. There is

ton of that and hopefully more to come.
What bangers have they had on PC?
Uh, Battle Bit, the Supermarket Simulator, they had um
Liars Den, Liars Bar. There are some really good kind of like smaller Steam games done by one to three developers. I think it's great if
I don't think that'll be scaling outside of the five people, though.
Yeah. But like for the five people, it's it's as big of an exit as as you know, a ground game probably for them. Like it's a you know, people got paid and made a fun little game, so why not? Anyways, they focus on the most expensive genres. Puzzle CPIs, we're talking about tier one, are over $25. Imagine the [ __ ] rounds you need to raise to test out a puzzle game, like one of those match three games. Then all these games look the same. I mean, we have an image here. I just pulled in a couple of different games. Every game looks like it's made by Dream based on art style. Oh, this is a king. Oh, this is a chef. This is a villain. This is a [ __ ] I I [laughter] don't know, a pig. Like, everything looks the same. It is beautiful. I'm not saying that. But it

looks like one company makes all these games. There's brutal competition for talent. And actually with Turks, it's brutal competition for everything. They're very competitive in my experience. They don't do much of outsourcing. So it's just hire internally to these studios and and they they haven't evolved that much when it comes to tools, tech or the way they lead these companies. It's compact teams working insane hours at crazy focus and again out executing each other. And then the final cap that sets to these companies is that Turkish economy like you guys talked about Saudi Arabia something like Turkish economy is a disaster. Like we're talking about a country with an annual inflation consistently above 30%. And you know it's also all self-inflicted because that's a great you know territory great great geography beautiful location smart hardworking people but they are just very unorthodox when it comes to their economic policies. I leave it at that. I travel too often. Anyways that's that's my take on Turkey. I you know everyone

hopped on the bandwagon which usually means it's time to get off. And I've talked to some of the smart funds actually even on slush who have been exiting the market because they see it already as overheated. So we visiting Istanbul last time like a couple of months ago.
Many Turkish developers said that they are really counting the days before Chinese come and outexecute them and take over puzzle. So that's that's you know my little bit of a bleak take but I think future is PC and hopefully more evolved genres. That feels like the secret that none of us talk about that the war's already been won by China in mobile gaming. We just haven't really admitted it yet. I mean, if you start to look at the top 10 games, top revenue games, every month there's another game made by China in that. So, I don't know. Sorry, Phil. Do you have some data, some chart?
Well, I mean, whoa, hold on here. So, match villains, first of all, bombing. It's not going well. Not good. And I think this goes back to what we were talking about. Match 3 has reached equilibrium. When you look at where the

downloads are for matchillions, it's been Indian, Brazil, it's not tier one quality countries. And Airrest is right about this. All that matters here is the United States and they're not doing well in that segment. Spike Games, don't know where you are. Um would love to see you guys again. Casual casual puzzle does seems to be dead for them and it looks like Match Factory has really taken off and and Spike Games missed the boat on this one. The last thing I would say is I don't understand where you guys are coming from when you say China is taking over. Like Truckstar does not look like it's it's slaying from Century Games. looks like it's doing okay. Looks kind of neck-and-neck with match villains, which to me is mostly a failure. And that again just points back to CPIs not being in a good place, which is I think what scared away the uh Chrome Valley Customs team. Like ultimately, I think they had the right user acquisition thesis, but it was simply just too high when it came to CPIs and so they abandoned the project. But I don't see anything from the Chinese going into match. I mean, Mishka, you talked about them going into merge, which makes a lot of sense.
Project Makeover, Project Makeover is doing pretty well. And also like Phil, you're you're pulling in a game against that that went Truck Star. So it's not

even a competitor to Matchville. It's as you said competitor to
Chrome. Was it Chrome customer?
I don't think it's a I mean that's that's basically a you remember the Forza puzzle game. Let's not forget Forza puzzle game. Somebody made a Forza puzzle game. I just want us to recognize it. It was
I just think you're overrating the Yeah, I think you're overrating the Chinese in match three. I mean, don't me wrong, we can pull the data on what the share is in terms of publishers, but I I think that that's mostly been carved out by the by the Swedes, the Turks, and the Russians/ Ukrainians. Ne
next year, we'll see Chinese puzzle game with a [ __ ] 4x monetization.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, I'm sure it's already exists. It already exists. We can talk about it in a moment.
All right. So, let's go from puzzles to shooters. So, our friends at Sensor Tower really kind to pull some custom info for us. We had a bunch of burning questions on the podcast LA last week, especially around like ad spend. And so, but first, let me start on a couple of player charts. So, this is showing Battlefield 6 is still tracking ahead of Black Ops 7 on DAU. And then the other

chart shows CCU. Um, and this is even after Black Ops 7 launch. So, from a player perspective, Battlefield's winning, guys. I think many of us predicted something like this. I don't remember. I don't remember actually what we predicted. We're going to have to go back and look. Anyway, so on on marketing, this was actually um more interesting. Sensor Tower has a service called Pathmatics, which is kind of digital ad spend. If you haven't heard of it, it's panel-based digital ad data. So that's kind of the source for a lot of this. So Black Ops 6 is bigger than both Battlefield 6 and Black Ops 7 on US digital ad spend according to PaMetics. So, they really invested into Black Ops 6 for Call of Duty Black Ops 6. You know what I've been hearing? I think we've talked about this many times. It's the Modern Warfare 2 to Modern Warfare 3 issue is Black Ops 7 was never really anticipated to do well. You see that in

the lack of ad spend. And then you also see a massive massive Black Ops 7 drop off shortly after launch, which is typically what I call the let's pull the rip cord everybody because Black Ops 7 wasn't working and we've got to cut budget and cut our losses. So this next chart is Black Ops 6 and Battlefield 6 used um OTT as the primary channels. So this is think of this is like streaming marketing on streaming channels. Black Ops 7 was really leaning into just YouTube, which also tells me that Black Ops 7 had less budget after their very, very kind of underwhelming launch. They didn't want to go for the expensive CPMs on OTT. So, thank you guys for Sensor Tower for giving us that info that kind of just points to what we had known, which was even Activision likely didn't know that this was going to be a winner because the marketing budget was never there to begin with and they've kind of pulled it. So Crest, this all leads into a little bit of what we're seeing in

October. What do what are you seeing there?
So Newsu put out a list of top 20 games both from a revenue perspective and MAU. Illustrating what I was trying to talk about with the Steam machines last week is that 15 of the top 20 games are not compatible with Steam OS. Like 15 of the top 20 revenue and the the MAU is very similar in that way. Fortnite, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Roblox. Only two games in the top 10, which are Counter-Strike and Arc Raiders, are compatible with Steam OS. Um, and primarily it's related to the anti-cheat stuff, but there's also technical limitations as well. And there's like workarounds for some of these games, but they're just kind of a pain in the ass, right? This is what makes me a little bit worried about these type of Steam machines, even though I am supportive of them doing this. If these things are priced more like a PC, which which was what came out in the press since last week, and they're not subsidizing it, we could be like a 700 or $800 device. So, this is a very niche device that's

incapable of running the most popular games out there. So, it's not a mass market device. It's a device made for the super hardcore Valve fans. And those type of fans are going to want a high-end rig with like a dedicated GPU. So, none of this really makes sense to me, right? This seems like a complete actually this is not even innovative anymore. It's almost absurd like releasing something like that. What should have happened right is that he should have made the effort and worked on making these all compatible with all the best games. These issues should have been resolved before launch now right they should have lined up all these third parties to make sure that it was compatible. More I think about it the more I don't think this was really well thought out at all. And you know all the analysts lauding this as some kind of innovative move by Valve. It's just not. It's actually three steps back, right? If I were any type of like discerning consumer, you'd buy a PlayStation because they're compatible with all of this, right? More or less, right? So, so for obviously counter space, I just want

to be clear like this is just not a mass market device and it's not going to be p priced at a mass market price and so this is again just a niche product for super hardcore Valve fans. Just talk about what we've what we mentioned last episode. Steam Deck is doing two million this year. Xbox did five million. Those numbers were shocking for me, right? That's pretty shocking about how well the Steam Deck has already done. I agree. It's a hobbyist device. It's not a mainstream device. I would say the same thing for the Steam Cube, which by the way, all indications point to a $700 to $800 price range for the Steam Cube. That is a big problem and shuts out the mainstream. I completely agree with that. I think the thing that we're starting to see, especially when we start to consider the Steam VR headset, is where they're going with the ARM chipset. And if you remember, if they start to invest more in this ARM chipset and it really starts to become the centerfold for the Steam Cube, which it isn't right now, that means you're going to get Android games on the Steam Cube. And I think that's where they're going to go. I think they're going to do Android Steam distribution on Steam as well. I think they're going to appeal to

the Chinese audience. I think that's going to be really important. Do I think that's a Hail Mary that solves any of the problems that you pointed out, Eric? No, I don't. But I do think that's an interesting aspect that deserves mention. And I do think with a Steam Cube, they can get to 5 million a year with the Steam Deck plus Steam Cube, and that puts them above Xbox. And I think that's that's a pretty big shift in the market. Again, it [snorts] says more about Xbox than it does Valve.
I just need to see the consumer insights on this thing because this feels like a tweener. It feels like kids have a Google Chromebook or a low-end PC to do their homework and they're going to play the five and $10 Friday night, you know, repo versions of the game. If you are a Valve fan, you've got your $3,000 rig and you're going to play your Counter Strike and do that. Who is this for? And typically when you do this, you do some really, really indepth consumer insights like figure out what's the market fit for what audience. And I don't know if they've done it here, especially because they don't they haven't
G's on his yacht. [laughter]
He's in New Zealand. He's on his yacht.

They don't give a [ __ ] They just shoot.
Somebody should Well, okay. The right way to do it is
Okay, just to benchmark this quickly though, like 20 million units of Switch 2 will be sold in the first 12 months. Easy, right? Xbox Connect sold 10 million in 60 days. And that platform failed, mind you, right? Completely failed ultimately, right? So Steam Machine may sell like six million units in three years. Dude, that is nothing. And none of those games are actually being used. Mo, I mean, none of those devices are likely being used, right? Unless they're playing like Silk Song or like
small indie games.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
What makes the consoles great is that they're an ecosystem, right? They're an ecosystem that works as compatible with content and games, right? That's is just that is not this, right? So anyway, all right. [laughter] All right, everyone. That is it. Sorry, Phil. We didn't get to what you had. We'll get it next week. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. And see you next week.
[ __ ] the Cowboys.

[ __ ] you.
You drop that in at the end, [ __ ] [laughter]
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