TWiG #371: Clash Royale's Death Spiral, Blizzard's Comeback, and Why AI Hype is Killing Games

You know, integrating 20 studios is a lot of work. Let's just [laughter] be honest.
Choking on that, dude. There's just there's just
it's it's like one of those snakes, you know, like when they grab like a like like a gazelle, you're like, how is that snake going to eat that gazelle and then you watch for like next two hours? [laughter] [music]
Hello everyone and welcome to This Week in Games 371. And I'm Jen Dano. I fill the marketing and publishing role on the podcast. Today we have
Mr. Katco, founder, friend. I tried to do it for the first time be the first time. So, wow. Yeah, that you guys talk about car paints. They they talked about car paints before this started. So, so I'm aggravated.
It's PPF, dude. Paint protection film. Is there a crest strategy in investing?
Phil Black Monetizations are
all right. Here's what we have on today's episode. We are [snorts] not talking about cars anymore. The creator

catastrophe for Clash Royale say a lot of C's after Supercell CEO blog. Savvy continues its buying spree rumored to take Moonton off bad danc's hands for six or seven billion. Little pocket change. Overwatch drops the two uh from their last Overwatch spotlight. Hab portfolio isn't too happy. Phil breaks it down for us. The future of AI and games. We're going to react to Owen Mahoney's blog post. Uh, this was supposed to be on our docket last week, but we moved it to this week so we could spend more time. And then if we get there, the toy wars become digital wars as Mattel and Hasbro expand their digital efforts. Mattel acquires Mattel 163 and Monopoly Go licensing revenue is up 50% yearon-year. Holy crap. So, um, MGO still kind of working and delivering for Hasbro, that's for sure. So, um, also I just wanted to do a little dice rumor mill. I heard a positive disturbance in the forest that Pixel

Flow, which is the casual game that we covered on the pod a few weeks ago. I think there was a deconstructor of fun deconstruction. Keep an eye on them is what I am hearing. There might be some action going on with Pixel Flow. So, Mishka, what else do you want to say?
Oh, uh, we were not covering Matthew B state of the game industry slide deck. I know that is highly expected, but we're still searching for something that hasn't been presented by other and discussed on this podcast before. I believe we'll be covering it next week.
You're not going to find anything. The the whole thing was just a repeat of last year. And I I honestly I don't think we're going to cover Matthew Ball until he's actually intellectually honest about his catastrophe of a book called Metverse, right? Which is an absolutely ridiculous ridiculous thing. So until he actually comes clean about that, like
it was ridiculous times. It was then it was 2021, 2022. Whatever happened then doesn't count.
He lo he lost all credibility in the

gaming industry when with that book,
right? Well, everyone's going to be disappointed that we're not going to spend an hour [ __ ] on that. So what are we shilling? Mishka,
long list of shillings. So let's talk first about GDC. Now we have finally all the links. So if you get the deconstructor of fun newsletter, you can sign up for there. Sunday kickoff with beta hat and deconstructor of fun party. Monday we're hosting state of gaming summit. There's going to be a summit. There's going to be a happy hour. There's going to be a dinner. So that's a really really interesting event. Tuesday morning side brunch for product marketing friends. Wednesday we have the supper club for our HD friends with New Zoom and Heroic Labs. And I believe we have media passes, all of us. So we can actually record at GDC because the they have these podcast recording things, right?
Yes. Yes. So you just I'm actually talking to them right after this because they they created a podcast booth and so we're going to do an on-site podcast and then thanks to GDC for recognizing us as

media. Like I I feel so important, you know, it's like severance. There's media gen and consulting gen and I we made it guys like we're recognized as media. I'm actually getting PR emails now. Like this is so cool.
Embargos.
I know. It's awesome. What else [laughter]
on content side? So we have review of super annuals newsletter. Then we have a UA monthly dropping in this Friday. So that's with Josh Chanley who's my co-host and we have a rotating expert. So, please check out who's the co-host for the Friday this month edition. And finally, to complete my transformation into a marketer, I am on gaming marketing surviving 25 winning 26 webinar with my lifting buddy John Wright. This is Napsire's seminar. Again, link on the uh the deconstructor fund newsletter. If you want to see me bomb talking about UA, this is the webinar to to check out.
Can I talk to these people? Like, do

they know who you are? I do not understand.
Over the past year, they reached out about marketing content and Jen wasn't available. And so, I started picking up Slack and in a year, I have transformed into my true self, which is a marketer.
All right. Well, I'm doing product podcasts and [laughter] not transforming into a product person.
You've been doing live ops podcast.
I know. That's true. That's true. So, we're cosplaying. [laughter]
Okay. That is true. Game devs, here at Heroic Labs, we know that great gameplay is what players love. But integrating metagame features like challenges, progression, and rewards is crucial for retention and monetization. But coding them is a tedious and timeconuming process. That's why top studios have turned to hero from heroic collabs. Hero provides a complete suite of battle tested metagame features that are quick to implement, letting you spend more time on the core gameplay experience. Ready to ship fullyfeatured engaging games? [music] Check out Hero today at heroiclabs.com.

Eiffel Tower, iconic. Tower of London, historic. The two towers simply epic. But none of them tell you anything about mobile app intelligence. Downloads, revenue, active users, and my personal favorite, weekly cohorted retention. Get the real story. Get the real data. Get sensor tower today. All right. I don't think we have any corrections. Although one of the things I wanted to mention going into our first topic is last week when we covered the Supercell's Ilka CEO letter, we hadn't yet heard of the creator controversy. So let me just re recap kind of what happened coming after the Supercell blog post. So Jinxy accused the company of failing to acknowledge the creator's role in the game's 2025 revival. The controversy centered on a blog post that Elka made. I think it was like in early February and in the blog post basically ILA was you know talking about the game success you know coming from a lot more

of internal reasons and so what this prompted from the creators was demands for better recognition improved creator developer communication a lot of game changes apparently they hate heroes Phil you can tell me all about that later on and then a potential boycott so all over the internet um for so last week Friday the 13th. There's this image if you are watching on YouTube or Spotify video where they were they were trying to promote a Friday the 13th boycott of Clash Royale. I'm not sure it actually did anything, but um a lot of the creators I think stopped streaming uh until some of their demands were going to be filled. So ILA just so you know what he came out and said pretty quickly after this happened within a day or two in his update since the blog was posted on the 10th of February. I have seen the reaction to Clash Royale section and I want to address it directly. In short, I failed to acknowledge the role of creators, pro players, and the broader community and the role that they played in Clash Royale's resurgence. That was

my mistake, no one else's, and it runs counter to everything I believe about the impact creators have on our games and business, and I am sorry. I'm actually really happy to see good crisis management response here. So there are three key steps in crisis management that you should follow if you are a PR person or a comms person. One, acknowledge the issue. Two is the top person takes responsibility for the issue. And then three is you overcorrect on the response to the issue. So the overcorrection part seems to still be in process. Uh they're trying to clean up the meta. Like that's what's going on. They're fixing things. They're nerfing things. There's a lot of broken mechanics. And then Chris, last week I forgot to kind of bring up why the revenue declines were happening. You were saying it was just potentially pulling back on UA. One of the things when I was talking to Bernard Kim, his kid plays Clash Royale and spends a [ __ ] ton of money and he's 12, by the way, going to the whole thing that, you know, one of my beliefs is that 12-year-olds

are saving Supercell right now. He spends an insane amount of money and he is the first one who alerted Bernard to the fact that the game was making such like shitty changes with season 16 that a lot of the players were leaving. So all of this happens to be you know in a in a flywheel that happens. I think the final learning here is beyond crisis pre PR framework is we have to recognize that creators are a vital part of the ecosystem now and when you consider everything going on it's the flywheel of product success leveraging the KPIs organic and paid marketing all come into it it's like Voltron the sum is greater than the whole of the parts on this so Phil let's fight go for it
where to start so I think the first the first piece there's there there's three pieces so I think the first part is what's going on in the game. I think that's one piece. I think the second piece is what is the impact of streamers on Clash Royale's success this summer. I think the third piece is what you do about the PR. So, I'd say briefly on the

game piece, the team has been trying to find their next runway after Evolutions. Evolutions was a brilliant design they introduced into the game. You take a card, you pay to evolve it, and then when you play the card in the game, once you on your second or third time playing it within a round, it has its evolve state that it's summoned as. It is a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant design. It's just classic Supercell doing something that adds depth and also gives them a lot of monization runway. There's only so many cards that they can evolve. So, there's a limited runway and they're trying to find their next big beat and that was heroes. So, evolutions, there's only a certain amount of evolutions you can have in your deck. You can't run eight evolutions. You can only run a certain number of slots. And this is the same with heroes. So you can choose these heroes and they have again their own monetization system similar to evolutions. You need to collect hero shards and that's so that you can price it and they can progress heroes at a given rate separate from other parts of the game. This is why you have different currencies to control certain parts of the game. So players are pissed because they feel like it's very pay to win.

There's also real-time elements with the hero. So the heroes have abilities. So when you summon a card, when you summon a hero, you then have an ability that's attached to that hero that you can summon in round, which does, I would argue, feel like a betrayal of some of their design. I'm not a big fan of these kind of real-time reactions rather than the strategy. But look, I I think you could have made the same pay to- win allegations about evolutions. And be honest with you, it's a power progression game. Of course, there's pay to win. I don't know what to tell you kids. So I would say that's [clears throat] one piece. That's kind of where the game is. They are trying to rebalance things. Some of the heroes were overpowered. This is the normal thing players complain about, right? It's the buff monetization cycle. Come out with a new monetization mechanic. It feels overpowered. Get the revenue. Debuff it. I don't think it's intentional. I think this is them just trying to find their next runway for the next one to two years of what they're going to monetize. So, that's the game piece. Streamer piece I think is far more interesting. And I would say we have some data. I know Jen, you brought some as well. So, we're looking at Twitch numbers right now for Clash Royale. And of course, the thing we just need to like come to this debate about is that we're never going to be able to understand the true impact of streaming

because first of all, we're only looking at Twitch. There's also YouTube, although a lot of the streamers for this game were on Twitch. The other thing we don't know is kind of the K factor when it comes to streaming. So, it's not just the people streaming, it's the video clips that come afterwards, it's the impact of the people watching the streams. There's just a lot of noise, I think, in trying to evaluate the true impact of that is. This is at least a floor. And the reason I'm skeptical about the impact of streaming is when we look at the peak number of viewers for Clash Royale in August and July 2025, so when the game was blowing up, was around 100,000. So to give you context, Clash Royale's DAU is 40 to 60 million 40 to 60 million against 100,000 streamers. So it's very hard to square those two things together. And of course, is it X causing Y or is it Y causing X? is the game popular so therefore it's getting a lot of streams or are we very popular we're you know kind of buying streams or we're influencing creators and that's why they're streaming it. So I have skepticism just looking at these numbers

even when we caveat that. So very quickly last piece I think this was an awful graveling response by Ilka. I thought this was pathetic. Uh, I think this is absolutely pathetic. I don't think this is how you deal with teenagers, especially when we just talked about Highguard, right? We just talked about High Guard and how the internet whips themselves into a frenzy because this is content for them, right? And as Aristotle said, politics is the struggle for recognition and these people feel like they want to be recognized. This was not the right place to do it. There is blood in the water and they have attacked Supercell. They know that they're listening now and so they're going to go after they're going to go after Supercell and this wasn't the proper way to do this. You do not negotiate with terrorists. What you should have done is done a separate event that celebrated creators, which was in no way a response to their tantrum. This isn't how you deal with gamers. We need a new PR playbook for how you deal with internet agitators. And this is not it. Stop giving oxygen to this fire. Cut it out. Do not pour more fuel starter on the flames. This only makes things worse in my opinion.
Well, hold on, hold on, hold on.

[laughter] What would What would have you done then? Like I understand you said arrange an event, but to do an event that takes such a long time.
They have player cards. You could have made a player card for the streamer. You could have done an interstitial. You could have done a streaming event. I think they have a variety of cheap tool bag options that they could have gone to that would have celebrated creators in a distinct and different way rather than making it a direct response to this tantrum. [clears throat] [snorts]
Do not listen to the advice of Philip. I agree with with with Jen because the handling in my opinion was like as Jen you said the best type of a crisis communication possible. Supercell edits the post CEO apologizes for leaving out the creators who had clear impact. He explicitly credits the creators and names Jinxy. That's superb coms. The correction is million followers 8 million and he brought in Mr. Beast to start playing the game again. Yeah, it was swift. It wasn't defensive. It was

practical. There was no grandstanding. There was no what Phil suggests, stay in your lane, boy. Just, you know, like, fair point. We'll adjust. Thanks. My bad. Look, I I hate to be the old man in the room just repeating what I said last week is that there was some lie by omission here. Like, the fact that they didn't even mention marketing in the entire piece that I put together. there was some reason why they didn't do this. And this includes not giving credit to these influencers who actually helped boost this game. There is a definitional issue here. Like I would consider anything that you give to creators paid UA, right? I mean just at at the end of the day there was a reason why he wanted to tell this live ops story and he forgoed talking about anything else besides what the teams have done in terms of building this game and failed to mention marketing at all which I think was a far bigger piece than the design changes that they've made right

although that obviously they are relatively significant but I'm not trying to be a conspiracy theorist here but like he got himself into trouble because he went out of his way not to talk about in that piece. So
yeah, I think what's important is in mobile specifically, it is one team, one dream. It is a flywheel that happens between the product, between the marketing and now creators are a core part of this. So let me just talk a little bit about the at Supercell's creator program, which everyone holds up is one of the best programs that that's out there. So you basically each creator gets a code and when a player redeems the code in the game they get 5% of that revenue on the gem purchase or whatever the hard currency is. So a creator does in a sense they are incentivized to stream the game because they do get revenue coming out of that. And so they also get early access to game assets. They get update information. They get merch. They get into the creator academy which teaches them how to be you know a

better creator. They have 300,000 creators in the program across all of their games, not just Clash Royale. Uh, and they have 2.2 billion followers coming out of this creator program. So, I know, you know, Phil, to your point is some of the stats that we see on some of the different, you know, whether it's Twitch, whether it's YouTube. So, this is that 2.2 billion is like the aggregate, and that is across all the games. It's not just Clash Royale. I don't think that these are terrorists. These are your most loyal fans. These are the people that live and dive and breathe for your game. And I think they were just left out of the victory lap conversation. And I think any of us would be pissed. I'm a marketer. I would have been pissed. It's like, wait, you're showering all the love on your on the product team. Like, what about what we did to help support the game? And so, I think the hard thing is when you're giving kudos out, people can get buttth hurt if you leave out certain people. I just want us to to know, again, it's it's a flywheel. And I did pull a chart and Phil's got a couple of charts up.

One shows a little bit about when Jixie started streaming to his 8 million followers. And so this chart is from streams charts. So he wasn't like in the first day that the product update came out, but he's right at the beginning. And then you can see from this chart is like the number of followers and the number of views. So, one of the things at Riot that we discovered in in our analytics was there is a I'll be careful to say correlation, not causation. There was a correlation between the number of Twitch streamers and the success of a game. The more streamers that you have streaming a game, the more the game seemingly has success. And you do see that from this chart here. That's just a little bit of the of the data that I want to pull in to say that creators are almost as impactful as UA and the ability to light a fire under a game.
Yeah. I I just want to kind of like move to the next part and just talk about

maybe the learnings from this. So I think for comm's teams the the sort of a clean corporate story it's good to understand I mean most of them do that it's now co-owned with a lot of external powers like yes there are the creators who are very independent but you have also community leaders you got the platform partners and you even have the podcast with pundits like ourselves that are kind of weaving that narrative that that you're sharing and so I believe that if you're a great communications leader you don't kind of surrender that narrative or try to control it by doing interviews only with controlled media outlets or you know legacy media or so forth that maybe people who don't quite understand your business. I think the best ones include external contributors before they get forced into this sort of a public arguments and to to protect their narrative in in these open forums. So being proactive with your story is really really helpful. And you know, I'm fairly close to a very senior communications leader who does does this all the time, just being very proactive

with with the journalists in in in in the biggest biggest outlets.
You're very close. Like your wife, for example, [laughter]
yes. Yes. So, I'm not fully talking out of my ass. I'm actually wellversed [laughter] on comms at at the highest levels. But but overall like their communication standards like the letter is among the best in in leadership artifacts in gaming or overall industry because it combines so many things the performers the accountability the narrative and the portfolio craft that Supercell keeps showing is is amazing like Brawl Stars then Clash Royale now yes we can talk about how they declined afterwards or what was the role in marketing but nevertheless they made three [ __ ] billion dollar with $1 billion in Ibida so who the cares S and I also like how they are evolving the company especially the company governance like they like the way I wrote about squadbusters as a failure but then use that failure to actually change the processes the way the company runs and for operators again

agreeing here with crest the top message that the west is you know complacent or we need new hits we need bolder bets that's kind of a distraction from the actual facts that were shared and that is that the legacy titles with retained audience plus elite live ops plus holistic marketing is where the growth is factually in today's market and that organizations require middle management layers as they grow that means gates that means budgets that means approval and so forth and so forth and I think that's kind of the key part when the industry needs to copy from this letter is the discipline rather than the uh the topline message perhaps so that's me
yep just tell North America that [laughter]
I I just love that Eric Crest and Mishka both defended marketing on this film with a minor attack, but that's fine. That's fine. All right, let's move on to our next story. And this is a a quicker one. Bite Dance is in advance talks to

sells Shanghai Moon Technology, the studio behind popular mobile game Mobile Legends Bang Bang to Saudi Arabia's Savvy Games Group in a deal valued between six and 7 billion dollars. sources say obviously hidden sources. Bite Dance bought Moonin in 2021 via its gaming unit Newverse. Oh, remember Newverse? Remember when remember when Marvel Snap was part of Newverse? So that deal at the time had the studio valued around 4 billion. So press Savvy is still on a buying spree. What do we think about this? Again, for Shrier and the and Yoast and all the rest of the talking heads out there, Saudi is clearly building, not destroying. So again, they have a unique position. They can acquire all kinds of different types of companies. They're not restricted by CPHAS in the US and other agencies, you know, and right now they're like the only buyer, right? So like there's not many companies that are actually acquiring anything right now now that most of them have been consolidated.

Certainly EA is is a is a lame duck. And then Zingga doesn't look like it's going to be acquiring anything or Take 2 is not going to be acquiring anything anytime soon. So the $6 to7 billion seems insanely high. Like that must be some kind of earnout thing or something going on. I I I don't even know how they even can get close to that. I I don't even know how they can get to four billion.
They may have revenue coming from other sources, but they're at like a $250 million run rate according to Sensor Tower. So that does not mean that they should be acquired for 6 to7 billion. So but the details are very scarce. This is just kind of all rumor and speculation, but this does fit within the portfolio though for Savvy, frankly. But we'll see.
Yeah, 67 is definitely a meme price. I mean, if anybody has kids, they
they would get triggered by this. Get triggered by this.
Oh, the South Park episode on 67 was pretty funny, [laughter] by the way.
Yeah. and and we covered this few few episodes ago. They bought originally

Nuverse, Bite Dance's publishing company was called Nuverse. They bought it for 4 billion in 2021. And that's also when you're looking at the graphs currently on Spotify or YouTube. You can see that the game peaked in 2021, unsurprisingly, when they got bought. And as Chris said, they have been pitching this for buyers, but there are no takers for a Chinese studio that is operating mobile that is designed for Southeast Asia, surprisingly. So, I don't know. This this sounds interesting. I think if Savvy passes on this, Triple Dot will surely grab this. Their portfolio is the most eclectic portfolio I've ever seen in my life. So, I bet they could operate this.
Yeah, but they don't have the resources to buy something like this.
What? I'm sure they have some financial engineering like they acquired the 20 studios from everywhere. There's gonna be like a
back tapped out. God, we haven't heard
from them, huh?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the biggest publishers in the world now. And um it's

just silence. You know, integrating 20 studios is a lot of work. Let's just be honest.
Choking on that, dude. They're just there's this they're like
it's it's like one of those snakes, you know, like when they grab like a like [laughter] like a gazelle. You're like, how is that snake going to eat that gazelle? Then you watch next two hours. [laughter]
Yeah,
that that's the Oh, actually that's that would be a good meme. Triple dot acquisition of Applavid's assets. [laughter]
So hold on, m Mr. Eric Crest, there's something there's something like kind of weird here. This is like a Chinese studio selling to someone outside of China. I mean, put aside the United States. I can't think of the last time I've heard this happening.
Yeah. Aren't they Singapore?
And this is basically a shell company for Scopely at this point, too, right? So, basically, Scopi is acquiring Mutton. That would be that would be what's going on underneath the hood, right? I mean, you're just going to hand this over to Javier.
No, no, no. The US though would have, I think, a tough time acquiring this, giving some of the rules.
I mean, I'm saying this with sarcasm,

but I mean, this is essentially Scopely buying Moon. I mean that that kind of a strategic advantage if Scopely wants to go out and do things. They do it through Saudi through Saudi Arabia or or EA at this point. That's true. Good. Well, I don't think you want. I think we've been down that path. [laughter]
I think we're good on that one.
So, just just to talk a little bit about like Mobile Legends Bang Bang. So, it's a MOA Crush's favorite and the success of this game is primarily in Southeast Asia. I'm not sure that like Scopia or others who are very US focused on that top driving revenue from tier one countries would be like putting their hand up saying yes we need to diversify with a MOA in Southeast Asia. So
well I mean they've had a Japanese, a China and a Korean studio over these GMs and I don't know what they're doing. It seems like they've been twiddling their thumbs for a while. You know, put something on their plate. What other asset has like in gaming has actually grown in price from 2021? Yeah,
good point. I mean, although they they

spent an insane amount of money on Niantic, which hadn't been growing, right?
Yeah. Yeah. But still, Niantic is probably cheaper than it was in 2021.
Yeah, probably.
All right.
All right. Moving on.
Take us to the next one. Overwatch, right?
Overwatch 2. Drop the two. Uh it is season 1 over at Blizzard for Overwatch. They released a huge new update and right now we are looking at daily active users on PlayStation and Xbox for Overwatch 2, Marvel Rivals and Apex Legends. And let me tell you, they are all neck andneck with Overwatch 2 having its largest increase in daily active users recorded at least on this chart. They hit around looking like 1.1 across again PlayStation and Xbox neck andneck with Marvel Rivals and above Apex Legends. They are doing a ton of things to this game. I am like super happy to talk about it because
honestly I thought Blizzard was dead. I thought I wrote a piece a while back

called you know who who killed Blizzard and this team has like really reinvented itself and I think they've done so many positive things to this chart. The new features they launched in the season 1 kind of revamp of the game is basically everything that was promised in Overwatch 2's initial launch. If you remember, they were trying to do PvE. They're trying to go in all these different directions. They went free to play and none of it really landed with the player base. And this this is really the launch of kind of Overwatch 2, although again they're dropping the two. Now it's just called Overwatch. So they've redone the UI, which was something that needed to be done for a really long time. They've launched five new heroes. They're also doing a lot more narrative, which again was a huge part of what drew people to this world. This is a lot of what Blizzard's DNA is, is telling really compelling narratives that connect with their audience. And so, right now, we're looking at one of the screens where you have a live ops event where you choose between either Overwatch, which again is the, you know, kind of positive faction inside of the game fighting for truth and justice or

Talon, which is kind of the the evil faction. and you play for one of them and over each week you're accumulating points for each of your factions which unlock awards. Again, it's it's some storytelling, it's some narrative, it's some live ops, it's things that the game hasn't had in a really long time and they're finally again tying in together narrative which I think is really important. So, I I just I give them huge hats off. They've been pushing the collabs when it comes to the monization side. They've also reinvented, I would argue, their monization. So, right now we're looking at mythic skins, which is something that's come in the game. These are incredibly high-end skins, and they have their own currency associated with them. And very similar to what Valerant is starting to pedal, and honestly, Marvel Rivals needs to start to take a look at is you can spend additional Prism points to further upgrade a given skin. So, each skin has its own progression track that you can pay to upgrade. And so, what does this do? Well, it lets you charge more per skin. So, if you want to fully upgrade a Prism skin, you have to spend around $75. Uh,

it's it's not cheap. And so, they're able to build in these additional monization features at a very low marginal cost. Cuz, as you can see, like when you go from level one to level two to level three to level four in these Prism skins, it's very low marginal cost for an artist to put together recolors or to put together some VFX. Hats off to them. I think they're still trying to figure out some of the other pieces of monization. And like if we look at one of the recent bundles they launched which was a Hello Kitty bundle which by the way I just want to point out Epic Games does not have Hello Kitty. Blizzard actually beat them to the punch. They are selling a $70 bundle for for Hello Kitty. I don't think you would have ever seen this in Overwatch one. So they're pushing the price which you need to do in a cosmetic based economy. And they have this beautiful beautiful thumbnail art that we're seeing right here. The problem is is that the fantasy that they're trying to sell basically stops at this thumbnail. And when you go into the individual bundle, you just see a list of items, which is something that you have on the equip screen. So basically, they're trying to duplicate UX. Let's take what

we have in the equip screen and let's use that when someone goes into the bundle and they can preview items. But you need to extend the fantasy when you sell cosmetics into the point of sale. And if you look at like a loot box based economy, you don't need to do this. You don't need to do this at all. You don't need to sell the merchandise. And this is something I talk about often with clients. Like when you're in cosmetic based economy, the merchandising is just as important as the merchandise. When you have loot boxes, you don't need to build any of this. When you're in Apex Legends, there's there's the only page that matters is like, do you want to buy one loot box or do you want to buy 10? But again, you're trying to sell merchandise in a direct purchase economy. You need to make that captivating throughout the salesunnel. So, they're still trying to figure out, I think, some of the finer points of their monetization. But in terms of engagement, the game is as healthy as it's ever been. The community is as positive it's ever been. Hats off to this team. I hope they continue to pump and [ __ ] Marvel rivals. Let's go, baby. [laughter] USA.
I want to I want to double down on your your compliment. And so Blizzard has done something really interesting, which is February is this like spotlight moment across all of the games. And I

don't know if you guys got a chance to see the I think it's the 35th anniversary video that that they put out where the camera pans over like this desk and it's basically like old school computers like you know and as it pans over it comes up to today. So it's really this moment of marketing and product and strategy all coming together for what feels like Blizzard 2.0. I think, you know, one of the things we talked about a couple years ago when Johanna Ferris took over as president of Blizzard. Crush, you were like, I don't know, she doesn't have a lot of game industry experience. They've done a lot of reworking of all of the different teams and it feels like things are going really well. It feels like Diablo has had a couple of moments. I think they shadow dropped some new Diablo content. I think WoW is getting a ton of new, you know, updates and and like longer term story arcs. So, and then back to Overwatch, I think wasn't obvious to just drop the two and just go to Overwatch. They didn't necessarily know,

you know, is that going to feel like a broken promise or not? But coming up to the 10th anniversary of Overwatch, you know, it's the right time. They did the right things. A year-long story arc, you know, going up into Blizzcon this year, like, you know, wow. Lots of good stuff coming from Blizzard. Interesting.
Oh, yeah. The WoW expansion looks amazing. They unlock housing, which is a huge feature that people have been asking for forever. Yeah, Blizzard's actually doing pretty well. All right, I'll give you that.
Yeah. Yeah. All they need now is like a Zillow integration, you know, for Wow Houses to show up and
I think that's actually happening.
I can't believe that's a PR beat, you know? It's so bizarre to me that's actually even a thing. But, you know, whatever. Whatever floats your
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All right, let's go to mobile. Phil,
let's check back in on Habby. If you remember Habby, the makers of Archer were in an incredible place ending 2025.

They had an incredible cohort of games. So, we had Archerro 2 finally. If you remember, Archer 1 has become an absolute cesspool of mechanics. So they basically slapped everything they possibly could onto it to increase monetization. If you remember, this was also the inventor of the term hybrid casual. You had Capy Bear Go, which felt like an incredibly fresh and innovative new take on RPGs and storytelling. And you had Widow Defender, which I fell deeply in love with, and I think was kind of their potentially sleeper hit. And so they looked poised to enter the top 20 publishers just in terms of strict revenue based on where they had been trending. they were just kind of hanging around 30 in terms of the global ranking. And again, it's can be sometimes hard to get a complete revenue picture because of our usual caveat when it comes to China and getting revenue. And so, where do we uh see where they are right now in 2026? Well, it's been kind of dog [ __ ] All [laughter] of those games are kind of in in the [ __ ] Uh our Cherro 2 is not doing well. Our uh Cababie Bear Go is not

doing well, and neither is Widow Defender. And so when we look at their portfolio revenue for January and we compare it to where they were, you know, way back in even July 24, uh, they're trending downward. They're trending downward in a really significant way. And of course, you've got to consider that development costs have likely gone up because they're running three games rather than just relying on Survivor.io, which was their monster hit. And so I kind of start to wonder whether or not that this studio is a paper tiger, whether or not there's been anything behind this, whether or not to Eric Crest's point on recent podcasts, they were just blowing money on blit scaling these games in terms of user acquisition. And there was nothing really underneath the hood here. Uh which would which would surprise me, but again, like I look at run rate, and again, I'm I'm being a little bit unfair when we look at run rate because I'm only taking January and I'm projecting that out. But if you just take where January's revenue is and project it out, it's the worst they've ever been. And again, I just just caveats. Remember, ad revenue is a huge part of their business. All those things are true.

There's there's web store revenue. All those things are very real. But these numbers are just so far down from where they've been. It looks like they're going to leave 2026 in a worse place than when they entered it. And certainly these cohort of games have not performed. I think there's a pretty clear explanation and that is the gorilla that is not in the room which is gorilla games. So guerilla games is the developer that made [clears throat] games such as Archer 1, Archer 2, Punball, Survivor, Capy Barago. So essentially every hit that Habby has published has been made by Guerilla Games. And while Habby is a well-known Singaporean publisher, just like I'm a well-known Greek podcaster, Guerilla Games has maintained [laughter] a very low public profile and folks who have their ears close to the Beijing development scene would know that Guerilla Games is about thousand developers in the city and uh Habby probably has a tenth of it in Singapore as well. Uh so in short I think this is

the type of a ku cao situation or roio chillingo type of a scenario kind of happening all over again. So you have a publisher that got very very reliant on one single studio and that one single studio just blew up in size and that studio as they grew they outgrew the publisher and that kind of breaks the business relationship unless the publisher acquires the studio early on. So I would definitely stay tuned on Guerilla Games and what type of a publisher that becomes and I have clearly operates the sort of a legacy portfolio done by Guerilla Games while they're you know scrambling to find new monkeys or gorillas to to make games for them that would be as successful as the previous one. And I would expect, again, this is not a knockoff on Haby, it's just business realities. And I would expect Habby to be in a sort of a crisis mode where they're probably gonna, you know, start venturing to other platforms as well.
Is Guorilla Games gone? Is that what you're suggesting?

Word on the street [laughter] among the hot pots is that um that they are not working together anymore. At least not making new games together.
Yeah. So, I was going to give Philip a hard really hard time for using January run rate to estimate 2026, but I actually by the way,
no, no, no. But I looked at the data, dude, you're not wrong, dude. This is like going straight down, dude. Like, they're at a 14 million run rate last year. They were at 51 million in January. [laughter] They're down at 19 or 14, sorry, 14. Holy crap.
It was a good run. It was a good run.
It was a good run, dude.
What about Savvi picking them up?
What's you and the Saudis? Do you want to? You clearly want to go. I'll [laughter] take you. I'll take you.
Well, there's nobody else buying anything.
He's He's glazing so hard. So, okay. Why Why Why doesn't Scollet pick up Gorilla Games? That's your question, right?
I'll pick either of them.
Stop talking about Habby. Tabby is a publisher. They're not developer. We don't need to talk about Hab.
All right. Isn't
isn't hybrid casual. Like, that's just

not their IP.
They're one gorilla away from being hybrid casual. [laughter]
Jen, we both looked at Wheel of Fortune's numbers. you know where that product I mean we'll look at where
child
yes however I mean most of what Scople is known for is not hybrid casual they're in for it for an ad business on top of it does Scopi even have well they can't buy anything themselves but that we know what they just took on Niantic they I think they're looking for casual but I don't know hybrid casual
the challenge with guerilla is probably the language and the culture barrier and the location of those studios. That is not a Singaporean company.
That's what I
is probably, you know, pitching them already to [laughter]
Arie is trying everything they can, dude. There's like absolutely no M&A activity happening at all. Like they're, dude, they're like they're they're shining the shoes of the prince and Saudi just so they can get a deal done this [laughter] year.
Sean's fire.

I love you guys. [laughter]
But that's like the point though, right? There's nobody out there doing M&A right now. There's no money out there except for what feels like.
We just talked about $67 billion acquisition. What are you talking about?
Except for Except for Savvy.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Guerilla Games is [ __ ] monster. Like look at that track record. Just hit after hit. Any hybrid casual publisher would be happy to have this studio. I assume this is just a hypothetical that they are going to go their own route and they're going to start self-publishing. All right, Chris, take us to your AI topic.
All right, so AI has been a topic dour obviously for the last what 12 18 months. So Owen Aon of a friend of the podcast I would say wrote a piece in AI and gaming called DSX Machina, which I think is a movie, right? I almost actually went and watched the movie again.
Is it Machina?
Oh, you're right. Machina. Sorry.
Yeah. Yeah.
Is that a Greek word?

Shut the [ __ ] up. [laughter]
Shut the up, dude. Stop it.
Okay. [laughter]
Go get your hummus and like go off to the side.
Hummus is what they eat in the Middle East.
Yeah. Taziki of God damn it.
Don't miscure us.
Yeah. [laughter] Yeah.
Us. I love it. Oh god.
All right. Let me get through this. Okay. So, I'm a big fan of Owen, dude. I think what Owen's done in this industry is quite phenomenal in terms of bisdev at EA, you know, all the work that he did at Nexon, etc., etc., etc. I even actually recommended him to take over Xbox in the eventual spin out, right? Because I think he'd be really good at figuring that [ __ ] out. But I think Owen in his early retirement has started to mistake the plot. And I think I know why. Because I think he's becoming a delusional venture capitalist, right? And all I can say to Owen is find the light, leave the darkness. Okay? Because clearly you're going down the same path as other venture capitalists before you.

Okay? So, some of his conclusions regarding AI and gaming. What? It's going to cut AAA development by 90%. Absolute horseshit. Destroy competitive advantage of large publishers. Triple the size of the game market. Create a generalizational opportunity. All right, I could probably get around that maybe. Transform the medium and self, not just improve existing workflows. Look, I think AI is a very seductive thesis, right? I would agree, right? And I will concede that is different than blockchain, streaming, VR, and the rest of the [ __ ] that was sold to us that never made any sense, right? I agree. But the notion that the technology will transform the industry just doesn't make sense at all when you actually break it down and think about the challenges that we have in front of us as an industry. Right? First, cost reduction is a [ __ ] fantasy, right? Developers do not pocket efficiency gains, right? They build more [ __ ] right? It's the same story every time. You know, Excel didn't

shrink finance teams, it exploded them, right? It just and raised expectations for the product, right? AI will not make games cheaper. They'll just make them bigger and more complex, if anything. Second, IP still [ __ ] matters, right? There are thousands of soccer games out there, but only FIFA FC that makes billions of dollars a year and has been growing at 10% annually for the last 20 years. Okay. So why is that the case? They have IP relationships. They have [ __ ] athlete licensing, deep communities, network effects. AI doesn't do [ __ ] to that, right? And it won't actually impact that at all. Third, and this is actually probably the most important thing is that we do not have a [ __ ] content problem. We have an attention problem, right? We have too muching content. We are swimming in content. I was corrected on this. Steam did 20,000 games last year. 20,000 [ __ ] games. That's too many games. We don't need more [ __ ] Okay? We don't

need millions of people making AI [ __ ] and throwing it out there. That just does not is not solved the [ __ ] fundamental problem. What I think he is fundamentally missing about this particular technology is that the biggest opportunities from these texts is not stuff that looks like the same. It's the stuff that's new that comes out of this technology. Right? And early radio like for instance was just people reading newspapers and early TV was like film stage plays right what we need is actual new content that's created withing AI that is built with AI that is actually unique and attracts bigger audiences broader audiences and most importantly monetizes better than mobile and other platforms right of course that AI will improve workflows for a lot of different things but the idea that it's going to 3x the market by making existing games cheaper. Dude, that's not the way the [ __ ] world works. You know, again, the real opportunity is finding truly AI native experiences that we can't even imagine yet and not just making, you

know, NPCs chattier, you know, like that's [ __ ] or anyway. Anyway, all this is [ __ ] I think this is like just absolutely completely overblown. So, anyway, I've been going down this rabbit hole for the last three or four weeks because people keep asking me this question, particularly after the [ __ ] Google fiasco, the [ __ ] about the Google thing. So
the genie. Yeah. Genie 3.
Yeah. Apocalypse.
Yeah. And so this is why it's become topic to jour. He actually wrote this piece in October of 25 when I think we were in the absolute AI hype cycle around gaming specifically. You know people like Morates are like waxing poetic about [ __ ] right? So at the end of the day like you know he probably may have changed his tune like the sober reality of what's actually happening out there and the companies that have been trying to do AI native [ __ ] for like the last two years and nothing is happening right so maybe his change has happened and I also believe from my understanding is that to defend Owen is that Owen is actually looking at not being a venture capitalist or let's hope he isn't anyway

and he wants to do more of a publishing thing so in that capacity he could actually be more of an operator as well as a VC and rather than these pretend [ __ ] venture capitalists that think they're game publishers, right? These are actually real publishers that knowing gaming. So maybe he can bring these type of games to market. Last thing I'll say is that I think what we really need is a new platform. We need basically something like Roblox with that's AI native, right? that actually has tools that are AI native that can build experiences again that monetize different audiences that attract bigger audiences and that grow the market and that are not trying to build the same [ __ ] for mobile and console, right? That doesn't even make sense anymore. So anyway, that's it. That's all I got.
Endorse. Endorse. Endorse. You know, I got I actually got a piece coming out about this in a couple weeks.
Is it spicy?
It's always spicy.
We've discussed this. We've discussed this.
Yeah. Phil's like spicy. Yeah, he's like uh he's like hummus with chili.

[laughter]
Moving to Cyprus has added a little spice. [laughter]
Dude, no moreing cultural references about Greece or Cyprus. [laughter] Okay, enough dude
or whatever.
The fraud, man.
Okay, enough.
Um, [laughter]
so I'm I I have seen decks that suggest the Chinese and major games are using AI to generate 60 to 80% of their content. No, take it for what you will. It's a bunch of hearsay. And of course, like everyone's pumping their bag when it comes to AI. Like when you see Anthropic CEO or Sam Alman talking about how AI is going to change everything, you got to remember they're raising capital. So, of course, they want to like, but but don't get me wrong, like I I agree with the sentiment. Like it's changed my workflow. I mean, every day I sit in a Codeex window. I sit in Chad GDP. I got I got an open cloud mini that came today. So, it certainly is real. I think what people are struggling to conceptualize is this supply side elasticity. I think people are trying to figure out okay what the cost of production goes down what happens. So,

first of all, has anyone reached out to Cosmic Lounge? But putting putting that aside, I I think the comparison here is YouTube, right? With YouTube, we dramatically decreased the cost of distributing videos. And then that was also predicated by the fact we had the smartphone, which made it much cheaper to film content. And so, it's taken a very long time for YouTube to have liftoff. And right now, it's what Netflix is citing to the FDC as their true rival for time when it comes to TV. watching YouTube is starting to rival Netflix. Where is that revolution for games? And I think you hinted at it, Eric. It's going to come from new teams, right? It's not going to come from the existing incumbents. Like this is classic innovators dilemma. So where is that AI native platform that makes creation easier? Because just making more content just shifts the problems down the production line. So if you can make 20 new characters in League of Legends per year, now what you got to do is you've shifted the problems to how do we balance that? How do you release those characters? Like that's the next set of problems. Again, remember, games are are pipeline production. It's like swallowing a big piece of food. You got

to digest it. You got to go through the rest of the the workings here. And I don't think we figured out what the next part of that pipeline is that can absorb all this content. But by and large, I thought this was a bad piece by Owen. I'm with you on this, Eric. I think it's kind of just this this VC glazing AI is going to change everything without kind of critically examining it. I wanted to share a little bit of a insider info from DICE and some of the rumors I was hearing there as well is that keep an eye on a lot of the Chinese game companies major layoffs are coming and those layoffs are being attributed to AI efficiencies. So while I agree with you guys that how we should be thinking about AI is for sure right now today it's looking like efficiencies doing things faster getting things done and I think there is a different perception of how AI is being used in the east versus the west in the east they're like we're going to lay people off in the west I think we have player leites that are out there we've talked about this many many times which is players might have a

backlash to games being made with AI in Hollywood. I don't know if you guys saw the 15-second clip of Tom Cruz versus Brad Pitt on a destructive rooftop building that was done with two lines of input in AI. I think there's a lot of players and creators who are starting to have the lite like reactionary to AI that might make a lot of people allergic. So, that's going to be something interesting I want to keep an eye on. But Chris, where I also wanted to agree with you is you're right that we have a share of time problem and share of wallet problem. So share of time is everyone is paying attention to short form video and these other things and with the glut of content discoverability is a problem and spending time on things is a problem. And so without something a new platform, a new reinvention, you know, we're all taking share away from each other because there's only so much time in a day. So, Mishka, what else you know glow about CEO's ability to write blogs?

Yes. Yeah. I mean, CEOs write gooding blog post. I do have to say that this is the second one we're talking about in in this podcast. And, you know, just as a background, like this piece is written by a former public company CEO who is clearly very bullish on AI. And yes, it does have several hallmarks of the hypewriting. the grand historical sweep that comes in kind of like really tells you that this is the big thing that is changing. There's the uh the quintessential Eric Hoffer quote sort of a VC type of a call for beginners mind type of an aspect but overall I feel like it's more intellectually honest than most in this genre because the subtitle is literally if you have a strong opinion about the future of AI in games you are probably wrong and Owen applies this humility somewhat consistently but since this is a pundit's podcast with some criticism I have some. So first of all, I want to

start with what Jen said. The piece is very careful to say that AI replaces production labor and not creative labor. This is the common and sort of a comforting distinction that the executives in the west feed the employees who they want to train the AI models and the AI tools that make each of them so much more efficient. And where that efficiency leads, well, we don't know, but we have to grow quarter over quarter. And yet Owen kind of cites the history himself with monks being replaced by printing presses, with carriage makers being replaced by cars, and he doesn't really support the idea that the creative layer is actually safe in gaming. And just kind of going back to the printing press that he was talking about, it didn't get eliminated by copying it. It restructured who got to be the author. And AI is in same way restructuring who gets to be a programmer, who gets to be an art director, who gets to be a designer, who gets to be an analyst. So this kind of is taking that that layer away. There

was also a claim that we as game developers have an unhealthy fixation in Hollywood, its metaphors, the job titles, the production structures, the sort of a whole green light process. I don't know where this comes from.
We totally have an infer inferiority complex. You kidding me? were just talking about Dream Games blowing all this money so the CEO could go meet LeBron.
Was that the case? Like I don't I don't think and plus since when LeBron is Hollywood, that's NBA.
What What is the number one fact we love to shove to the general populace when we talk about games? Jen, please do the line for us.
The games industry is bigger than movies, music, and TV combined. [laughter]
Thank you, Jeff.
Well, I think it's just an easy to understand as a business when you're comparing it to business. What should it be like? Oh, gaming is bigger than printers or like printer toner sales. Like what? Like people just understand that. So, it's a good reference and it's also entertainment. But again, this might be my bias because I grew up in this industry in Finland, which is as far away from Hollywood as you can

really get. And I don't remember anybody talking about the way Hollywood movies are being made and how we should copy that. So, I I don't know where this comes from. Maybe it's Owen's perspective as somebody of a generation older than myself and kind of living through the uh the heydays of Hollywood. Then there was the Ben Thommpson's unbundling framework which was interesting and genuinely very useful to understand the history of media and the sort of a sequential value chain. You create, you duplicate, you distribute and how he was kind of showing how that changed throughout the history. But then again, let's unbundle that games are interactive systems. They're not content per se. So the unbundling metaphor maps cleanly into linear media, text, audio, video, because the value chain is very sequential. But with games, it doesn't work the same way, especially free-to-play games. And Mahoney actually acknowledges this briefly, but then kind

of moves on to the next thing. Then there's a lot of sighting of Embark which makes sense because Nexon funded Embark and they're proving as like repeatedly as a proof that AI can deliver AAA quality in games at 10x lower cost. Th this whole narrative about Embark. I mean this is basically DICE 2.0. These are like the most expensive developers in the [ __ ] planet that are working for one of the biggest gaming companies on the planet. There's just there there's no AI achievements of efficiencies for a team like that. Like it cost them at least $200 or $300 million to make their game after the finals, right? Which was like a proof of concept of building out the engine and stuff like that. So it's like obviously he's far closer to this than I am. But I can't even imagine that they didn't make it for less than 200 million, right?
And Mark's AI story, especially when it comes to cost cutting. First of all, I don't know if they've made any cost cutting claims, but there's a lot of

smoking mirrors and how they view it.
It's just the way he positions it.
Yeah, it's all [ __ ] I Owen, I love you, man. But like Jesus, like stop that. Stop referring to Embark as any like proof of concept around efficiencies around AI or anything for that matter. There's no efficiency with that team. It's the same team that was at DICE, you know.
But it's great writing. It's great. He talks about like the how he played against the boss and then the boss kind of sat on him and he tried for the third time and now he sat faster. Like even I remember that like it's it's a good writing. I'll give him [clears throat] that.
Well, Patrick Soderland is Embark, right? Like Patrick was on the game business podcast and he did have this section that I heard intently which he talked about how AI
was used to enhance their content pipelines, how it helped them to make content more quickly because they were having to compete against how do we make content to keep up with the Chinese developers and how do we be 10x better. He didn't talk about that going from 300

to 30 million or anything like that. You know how much money [laughter] [ __ ] Sodderland blew on the goddamn engine from DICE that tried to like force it and on everything at EA dude he was partially responsible for the [ __ ] disaster that was EA development for years decades like before that it was all the Canadians righting Don Matrick and those crew nothing those guys say about cost efficiency and making the right investments has holds any water for me right because They don't know sh They know so much but they did so much too, right? It's like it's [ __ ] It's absolutely [ __ ]
Do you know how much he spent on just the jump sequence and anthem? I mean, Patrick Sland was [laughter] in so many design creeks about getting the jump sequence and Anthem right? I mean, they probably blew 10 million just on that.
No. And every story I've heard about him is is all about feature creep and coming in last minute and making all kinds of creative decisions that cost time and delayed products. These guys do not have a leg to stand on when they start

talking about this [ __ ] you know? Like honestly, they just don't, you know,
those are all true stories in the past. I I am telling you what I heard most recently. And you know, him now doing a new studio and now learning what they learned from the finals and then seeing what they've learned and applying that to Arc Raiders. Could they have evolved their thinking? Could they have set up these pipelines? Because he had to because he doesn't have the power. I mean, he had Nexon, you know, supported by Nexon. [laughter]
What are you talking about?
This is laughable. Like, this is [laughter] a PR spin. It's a total PR spin [ __ ]
I would love to go deeper.
Dice, you know?
Yeah. [laughter]
How big is Nexon? Is it bigger than EA?
Well, didn't Nexon get their ass kicked in earnings, too? Crest, you'd probably know this.
Oh, I didn't I haven't I haven't looked. Sorry. I'm trying to stay away from the stocks [laughter] these days
cuz you're cuz you're like semi-retired. But I

that's what I want to get away from is the stress of the stocks going up and down all the time. But Jesus. Yeah. Have you seen Unity, man? Unity is on his ass, dude. You ask Josh [ __ ] Chanley about why the was he pushing Unity so hard? These guys are getting absolutely annihilated, right? Anyway, all right. I don't know.
Sorry. I want to make two more points before we go. I did get some good feedback on the post. Generally speaking, some people are so like enamored with user acquisition, like that's like the holy grail of all things growth in this industry. I just don't think they understand like cost of user acquisition has gone up so dramatically that that is not aing driver of growth. That is like a absolute value for the rich, not like growing this business. Anyway, what what I want to say is this is that mobile was the last bastion of growth for this industry, right? 20% kagger for 10 12 15 years. We are no longer seeing that growth. What we need in order to see 3x growth from here as

as Mr. Owen suggests is a new platform that opens up opportunities for geography, for demographic, and most importantly for monetization. And so for the UA people that are out there commenting on this stuff that don't know a all about this business besides UA mobile is [ __ ] right? Because it's a 3% conversion on most downloads that you're getting, right? Like that is a monetization disaster, a nightmare, right? We need to improve that, right? And so your UA funnel, all that you're doing for UA is trying to attract this small percentage of people that are spending. We there's a huge audience of people that are playing mobile games on a regular basis that aren't monetizing. We need to figure out a platform that does that. If AI can unlock something there, that is absolutely huge, right? Absolutely massive for the potential of growth for interactive. That's what we need to look at. We don't want to create more mobile games. We don't want to create more AAA games. We don't even want to create more indie games. We got more indie games that we know what to do with, dude. We are like getting shoveled indie games constantly, right? That is

not the answer. The answer is something new that captures the hearts and minds of different audiences and most importantly the wallets of these audiences.
Yeah. Share time and share of wallet. Like if you don't get both, then there there's not going to be
takes them away from [ __ ] Tik Tok, you know, like get get them off the doom scrolling and start to play interactive which is obviously a far better entertainment than uh
and UGC is or isn't it or might be it part of it?
Could be. I think it could be. I mean, I think if you build the right platform potentially,
but it can't be highip.
Yeah. [snorts] [laughter]
Stop it. Stop. I want to tie a bow on my point on Owen. Owen's post is like I think it it's a thoughtful bull case from very sophisticated insider. And I think the most honest sentence is in the subtitle, which he then spends 5,000 words walking back. So, [laughter]
that is a good point, right? And Owen, walk away from the dark. Go to the light light. Stay away [laughter] from venture

capital.
Oh, all right. Well, that wraps it up for this week. One plug I forgot to mention. I'm gonna be at Appsfly's uh Mamma event next week. Exciting. I'm going to go talk to UA and be a marketer. I'm going to cosplay being a marketer.
I've done that event. It's a good event. [laughter]
It It'll be awesome. All right. See you guys next week.
See you guys.
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