TWiG #373: Turkey Funds Game Dev, WB Games Uncertainty & Discord Drama

Feels like PlayStation's going the other direction and contracting. Is that right?
Because that's the right [ __ ] strategy. You know, how many times do I have to say this? And why do you have to bring up Xbox? I was not going to talk about Xbox at all this time.
Hello everyone and welcome to Deconstructor Fun. This week in games 373. I'm Jen Dano. I fill the marketing and publishing role in the podcast. Today we have
a black first chair. Yes. So you lost it. Too busy checking your stocks.
No, no, my black monization's our first chair.
Maybe next week we'll figure it out when we're actually in person altogether. So for the episode today, Tilting Point seeks a correction and well, you'll see in a second. X Supercell and King Team based in Barcelona announces funding for their company and their new game that's in alpha called Misfits. So we'll talk about that. Turkey introduces an updated set of subsidies. Man, it is good to be a Turkish developer. Get a lot of money from the government. Paramount is WB

Games new daddy. Oh god, this is what happens when Mishka writes some of your updates for you. And we're trying to figure out if WB Games is safe. Assassin's Creed gets new leadership in a Parisian game of chairs, which in the US we call musical chairs. Discord has its commastrophe. They're now delaying their age verification until after the IPO. Playa hits a billion in direct to consumer revenue, but it's not going to save them. Marathon Server Slam before their launch is on March 5th, which is tomorrow for us, but probably when you guys hear this. And in some game sadness, EA Skates falls off the ramp and Highguard announces it's shutting down after 45 days. So, it did hang on longer than Concord. So, let's go to the banter section. Phil, it was so lovely to see you IRL in LA in dinner on Monday with our friend Simon Hay, friend of the

podcast. How was dinner? You barely made it, you poor thing. Get off the plane and you were like, "We're about to pass out."
Well, I messaged Simon and I said, "If I could drag my corpse there, I'll be there." And I could drag my corpse.
I got to sit next to Mike Doom, great DOF, longtime listener, and he was basically like two shots of espresso that kept me awake for [laughter] the rest of the evening. Shout out to Mike Doom. But I had a lot of fun. LA is beautiful as always. Downtown still looking kind of sad though.
Oh, downtown. You weren't in Manhattan Beach.
Yeah.
Well, we had dinner in Santa Monica. I'm staying in downtown. I used to live here for Scopely.
Oh, well downtown. Yeah. Well, it's downtown.
Looking deranged.
Yeah. As is every downtown in most cities. [sighs]
Mishka, what's your story?
Last week I was in London and I wasn't supposed to be in London. Like the gist of it was kids have a holiday. We booked the trips to Abu Dhabi. It's not far from Athens, about 5 hours, you know, like all the basic stuff. And last minute, the wife has to go to London because of, you know, public companies,

yada yada yada, and she's a big boss. So, drags all of us to London. And I'm there in London in February. If you don't know what London is in February, it is gray and it is wet. But, um, we're going through all the museums. I'm like, damn. Like, I I got like this is not a vacation. And then last day as we're flying back, we see that rockets are hitting Abu Dhabi. And if we would have been there, so thanks to my wife's job, we would be now in Abu Dhabi. I wouldn't make it in GDC. So, you know, hope everybody's safe in Abu Dhabi as they are, they are getting a lot of frag, but apparently people can get out. Phil's contractor wife included, right?
Yeah. I live in the Middle East now. Thank you for reminding me, Mishka.
Yeah. [laughter] Yeah, dude. Live and die by Live and die by the third world. Live and die of the third world, guys.
Well, [laughter] I I I will say this, like you get messages from Americans and they like talk about it so callously and it's like, "Oh, like I'm in that region. Missiles just hit Cypress."
You want the tax advantages, you got to pay the price. You know,

the le the less taxes you pay, the more missiles you [laughter] see. That's that's the
Oh god, guys. Oh,
well, we hope everyone is safe and Yeah. And let's go to shilling because that's a perfect segue. So, this is the last podcast before GDC. It's next next week. So, thank God Crest is gonna go pee right now as we do the shelling. All right. Sunday is the Beta Hat Deconstructor of Fun Kickoff Party. Monday, this is going to be a really cool event. So, this is Sensor Tower from 2 to 9. They're wrangling us all day.
Three events.
Three events on Monday.
Sensor Tower kind of broke it down. Like there's the summit part, there's the mixer part, there's the dinner part. That's why it's so many so many hours between 2 to 9. It depends on where you got your invite.
So, yeah.
Okay. So, each of us is kind of hosting a panel. I think my panel is going to be kickass. It's all women. It's going to be amazing. So, we're going to be a little bit more marketing growth, business focused on ours, but Mishko, what's yours? Is it
Well, funny enough, I've lost some of

the other people I was supposed to host due to the flight difficulties from Middle East. So, I am wrangling now the new panel. I think Adam Teler is going to be on my panel and I'm thinking about VC because I'm a friend of VCs. So I'm going to bring in one of the VCs and I am thinking about bringing a head of AI from a certain public company that would be very interesting to hear.
What is the panel?
Mine is essentially talk about the market because sensor tower does their market presentation but I wanted to get like a more insight from company's perspective. How are they interpreting the data and how are they interpreting the number in real life? So, I wanted a little bit of a different setup of people and Adam said yes. So, I know at least I'll have one opinionated person on the panel.
I'm going to talk more about mine cuz I have the Tik Tok head of gaming for like kind of the partnership side. I've got the head of marketing for Call of Duty Mobile and I've got the head of marketing and operations for Havali and they work with Runescape and

uh Million Victories and they're all women. So, ha,
mine's pretty cool, too. All right, let's Yeah, let's keep going. All right, so Tuesday we have brunch with AppCharge and us. That list is looking really great for Tuesday brunch
until they realize it's in Tenderloin, but let's move on.
Yeah, that just that that location is amazing. It's just Yes. Be
We did it last week. It was It was safe. It's fine. 10 a.m. Tenderloin, you'll survive.
Yeah. No, it was fine. It was fine. So Wednesday we have the AWS apps flyier live summit. I'm co-hosting on that one. And then our supper club with deconstructor funuzu Morgan Stanley and TEX. Thursday we're going to do our recording. We did switch this. We did last time we talked to you. It's at GBC. Mishka wants a fancy ass place.
Yes.
It's not a live recording anymore. Blame Mishka for that.
Yep.
One last show. Wednesday 10:30 to 11:30

a.m. room 2016 West Hall economics of a billion dollar cosmetic economy. You're going to want to be there.
Beautiful GDC talk.
I'm so proud of you for for getting that. That is not easy everybody
to get a GDC talk. So what else we got Mishka?
U just on the on the blog side we had Meta's gaming head on the podcast. He said that Meta is back and I got to ask why did they leave in the first place? why they're coming back right now and how can we trust that they will be here for the good and bad times. So check it out. It's all on blog as well on podcast platforms recorded live.
New website.
So I didn't want to talk about the new website. We have a new website. It's in testing version. People are giving bugs. We were supposed to launch it on, you know, tomorrow, but it's been just so busy with work and I'm literally midpacking for GDC. So we might be launching a new site by the end of this week. So, but if not this week, then the next week.
All right. So, let's get into corrections. Go for it, Mishka. Apologies to Tilting Point. We mentioned

it, but I wanted to wait for you since you spoke to them to to do this more officially.
The week before when I was on a podcast, we had a conversation about Tilting Point and that they sold the studio and so forth.
Quick correction. So, we undersold their M&A story. They acquired Budge Studios in 2022 for 125 million when the market was at its worst. and it grew its ibida from 10 million to 35 million and just sold it to Havlli investment at roughly 4.5 return. A lot of people passed on the deal. They didn't. So, credit where it's due. We also framed the AUA funding as their core business and Tilted Point is actually one of the first ones with that business model back in 2017 where people giving money probably off the spreadsheets. Uh so, they were pitching it to developers who'd never heard of it. It became a commodity since which is what happens when you're early and right. It's still part of what they do but not where they are headed. Budge is a proof point and apparently there's

bigger deals coming that they can't talk about yet. Phil,
no. If you invent something that becomes commoditized that just means you don't have a mode that sorry that's not a great thing. [laughter]
Like there's no diff no differentiation whatsoever. I mean thank you for I guess putting it on the map. So after I read this correction, I had to look into this and this stuff does not compute right now. So Tilting Point, first of all, it wasn't Tilting Point that sold this company. It was actually Budge Studios. It was actually General Atlantic that sold this studio. It said specifically in the press release because it's clear that it looks like General Atlantic is trying to get out of this position, right? Because they have a huge position in Tilting Point that was made to invest in this company. So I don't really understand exactly what the mechanics are, but all it looks like is that private equity is doing what private equity does. They made an investment and now they are cashing the out, right? So my question to Tilting Point is what is Tilting Point now, right? Because Budge

was like 60 to 70% of the revenue and likely 100 or 100% or more of their profit, right? Because their other games are not doing that well, right? So it is unclear as if Tilting Point's going to even be around for the next few years. So, I would love to understand exactly what's happening there because Budge was their golden goose. I mean, these guys were super profitable with all their subscription businesses around Bluey and Barbie and stuff like that, but it just doesn't look like there's anything left at Tilting Point. So, explain that one, Mr. Tilting Point, whoever's feeding back to Mr. Mishka.
Tough crowd to sell to send us corrections. Now, just to be clear, General Atlantic got the out of this position, made their money, their PE returns, no doubt. Good for them. But if a Tilting Point wants to survive and become a more valuable company, they actually need games and they need assets and not their best assets, period. Like, so let's let me understand how that works, you know? All right, moving on.

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All right, let's go to our first story. Okay, big investment news in the gaming space. $4.5 million seed round by A16Z and Latin Ventures for Barcelona based anti-hero studios. So these are ex Supercell,
ex King blah blah blah blah blah over and over again. But [laughter] they're building a game called Misfits which is basically a social shooter where you know players dynamically get together and play through the levels. Now this is looks very very similar to Brawl Stars and others. So this thing is going to live or die by the business model. My understanding is that they actually are

doing pay to win, pay to progress. And if that's the case, it could be very very successful. If not, it will not be. So that's [laughter] kind of my my whole take, right? But Laton Ventures, you know, obviously they're a friend of the podcasts, you know, partnered with A16Z on this investment. The only real side note I have here is that like and I don't mean to just throw A16 shade just because they're A16Z, but they kind of put this as labeled as a speedrun investment. And by definition, this is not a speedrun investment because this is a seed round that they are funding. So, it's a normal investment for them to invest in the seed round. Speedrun is a completely different type of thing. So, it just seems like more marketing and self-promotion as opposed to like accurate, but I don't really understand why they would do it in this way. So, nonetheless, I think this is seems like a good shot on goal and it would live and die by the business model.
I mean, I can't talk about that piece, but what I can say is that I talked to Bryce and I he's French and I there's no way I can pronounce his name except for

say Bryce.
Bryce St. St. Martine, is that is that how you would say it in the best possible French? So super talented guy. He was the art director on Brawl Stars, which is why this looks and feels and operates a lot like Brawl Stars. There are lots of other folks that worked on other Supercell games and I think there's some developers from from King and Candy Crush, ironically, but you know, so again, like super super talented guy. When I first, you know, talked to him after breaking out like he had this vision and Phil, you're going to love it because the thesis is super super clear. it is, you know, they want to make games that are worth sharing. And so the interesting thing about their thesis is around the social connections in games. And I talk about this all the time about Gen Alpha is that's what we're seeing is you want to have game mechanics that allow you to play with your friends. And then what's really fun about this one is you can team up either in the game itself or in the lobby and then there's a screw your neighbor kind

of feature where you can betray your friend. So you can leave your friend group during the game and steal all their loot. So, you can imagine that this is going to make for a lot of really fun, interesting gameplay, let alone all of the social mechanics that you're going to see with creators. Can you imagine the creators like going back and forth in wars about screwing each other over? So, the monetization side, I don't think we know enough yet. It's in pre-alpha. I think they're just announcing their alpha. So, we'll need Phil to come in with his economic take to figure out like is it pay to win? I have seen a couple of videos. They talked about some mechanics with coins and and skills and things. So, what's interesting is we last week we talked about Overwatch Rush, which was, you know, obviously going after Brawl Stars as well, potentially more on the cosmetic side. Again, we don't know. We do know that their testing is going to be infinitely better than anything has in the past. So, it's going to be fun to watch the competition in this brawl genre. That's not a MOA. I'm just kidding. I'll [laughter] call it the

Brawl genre. So, Mishka, what do you see? I'm going to put my investor hat on and analyze what I like and what I like less from investor perspective. So what I do like about this is as you said the CEO is a former artist turned marketer. I don't think he was an art director on Brawl Stars. I think he was more a creative marketing director. So that is I think even better of a title for being a CEO for this. And that's what you see with the focus on distribution from the get-go that goes into the product design itself. I like the location. It's very costefficient and it can attract talent across Europe and Turkey. I like the investors, very good investors, not only Laton, but also A16Z speedrun. I'm just going to give them kudos just to aggravate Crest. So, those are the three things that I really like. What I like less again from the investor perspective, I think the funding amount is quite small. Back like what 5 years ago, I raised a seed round for a shooter with about six people and they have already over a dozen of employees. So that puts them at about 100k run rate,

probably even more. And the amount that they raised is not that much, especially considering the phase where the product is. It's going to the market. So you would assume that they'd be going more towards like a $15 million raise so they can start actually growing this game. The second thing that I like less, and this is going to get Barcelonians probably mad or Catalonians, the city for mobile is pretty much like the Montreal is for console. So there are thousands of very talented employees working on existing IPs for all kinds of big publishers. But when people move to Barcelona, they're not moving there to, you know, grind under the Catalonian sun by the Mediterranean while drinking sangrias and eating pinchos till 2:00 a.m. in the morning. They're moving there for quality of life as you do when you move to Barcelona. So that's I think something to keep in mind. The other part, what I like less is what you guys mentioned. It looks like Brawl Stars. It plays like Brawl Stars. And so the

marketer in me, which which I cosplay often, asks, "Why would somebody pick Brawl Stars over this game?" And I get it. There are certain changes that are being made that makes it probably more social, probably this, probably that. But again, we're talking about plus one in a mature industry. So how are you going to stand out when you already look like Brawl Stars? Like everything about this game looks great. I'm saying Brawl Stars as a compliment. It looks really good, but it looks Brawl Stars. And it looks like the team is pretty much in their 30s. This may be an investor perspective, but I feel like I like when the first time founders are in their 20s, kind of like these sponges that work really, really hard. I like when the second and third time founders are in their late 30s. But when you're in that early 30s, I think that's a kind of a dangerous phase in your career. At least I had that, where you feel like you know everything. you figure things out and um and I think it's a dangerous position to be in a first-time founding position, but I might be wrong. I am a

little bit of an I get to work with as as you guys as well. I get to work with a lot of different founders and I've enjoy all age ranges, but there are different stages for those age ranges. So, I do enjoy the 20 year olds and I do join the later [clears throat] ones,
but for the first time in 30s, tough.
And then finally, kind of like net net. So, let me say this. I think that the ex supercell founders are very few and far in between, which is a sad thing. In gaming, I believe, if I'm correct, there's only two ex supercellians over the past 15 years who have founded and exited a company. And now Supercell even set up their spark program, which actually pulls founders in the company rather than being this breeding ground for entrepreneurs. I very much would like this team to succeed and unlock a new wave of talent that comes out of Supercell. I feel like with the type of investors they have, especially with Laton, that they would infuse more of that Turkish game development DNA into

the team, which means hard work, which is a skill, which means pragmatism, which is a skill, which being market oriented is also a skill. And I know and hire probably more Turks into the company to set up this thing. But as it stands, it's kind of like ex Supercellians are kind of like ex Blizzard or ex-Riot founders. They are really good at raising. They ship something really, really pretty and then they go back to where they came from having had this MBA of entrepreneurship subsidized by venture capitalists.
Got it. So that wraps up that one. Mishka, you're actually on the next topic about Turkey. You were speaking about Turkey. I think you're in love. Why didn't you move there?
I'm in love with Turkey as an investor. [laughter] So, so, uh, that's that's a different type of thing. Um, speaking about these ecosystems, like Turkey has updated their subsidies for game companies. So, I'm just going to read them out. So, for user acquisition, they support now up to 1.14 million per year. I think it was 1 million per year before. So, they cover

about 50% of your UA investments and up to 70% for target countries. I don't know what the target countries are, but I do know that this is designed to help companies to test new games on the market. So that first wave of UA investment gets covered. They also give you cash back on platform commission. So up to $455,000 per year are covered. They cover half of what you would pay of that 30% to Google and Apple. And this of course helps the smaller studios to get quicker on the green. And then they give you the subsidies for all the tools and the picks and shovels. You get the cloud code support for up to 150K. You get data analytics support, the adjust the revenue cats, the mobile action, the app sliers. Again, 50% of of that cost is given back to you. And then what's interesting, I don't think this was here before, is the employment support. So for domestic employees, you get up to $2,000 back per month. And for overseas staff, which is surprising, you get

$5,700 per month back. Are you sure about this?
I I like this.
That's that's that's over like maybe potentially half of a salary and this is a flat amount. So why wouldn't I just bring in a bunch of workers and pay them?
I I have to refer to my source. It's giled outlet. This was from that outlet. I need to run this by
I need to know the details.
Yeah,
this is a strong sub. I mean people forget but like moral provides substantial wave subsidies. That's why Ubisoft is there. Like I I forget the number off the top of my head, but I think it's like a fourth of an employees wage is subsidized by the government. It's absurd. And of course, they never get rid of them. The subsidies never go away. This would be substantial.
I remember like 5 years ago when we're analyzing uh different location Montreal Romania.
Yeah,
that's what this is. Michigan, their limits.
So if you're paying you you're hiring an ex marketer from
a share of salary.
Exactly. and you're paying that person 400k a year, then you probably get x

amount back. So, you're acquiring talent.
But yeah, clearly what's what's great about this is that the Turkish government is listening to game companies and making subsidies based on what actually works rather than coming up with a system on their own. So, kudos to them.
Cool. All right. So going into the media industry in the states there's been a lot of news around the threesome with WB Netflix and um and Paramount. And so last week Paramount won and that was the big news that Paramount is now going to be buying WB Warner Brothers Discovery. And so you know this podcast is about what what does it mean for games? And when Netflix was going to buy WB games they valued them at zero. Like they literally said that in the press release. So this is a little more positive you're if you're WB games. There was a 30inut investor event and the only mention of games in the entire meeting at least they were mentioned was this slide and the slide said you know

the cutting edge gaming and interactive content capabilities like that's the only mention they had with all of these historic franchises. So the other notable news was that Ellison said there would be no devestatures planned at this time. So if you're WB Games, I guess you're kind of cheering that okay, maybe I at least have a little bit of a future in me. But on the bad side is at this time whenever an executive says at this time that is their freedom to change their mind in 3 months. So if you're WB Games, at least you right now think you have a little bit of a future and you might be safe in the short term. So that's the latest in the media drama going on. Okay. All right. All right. All right. Let's be clear here, okay? These guys are raising $57.5 billion in debt to finance this acquisition. And I know they're bankrolled by the Ellison's and they got all kinds of [ __ ]

going on, but they are going to sell every non-cor asset possible in order to help pay this down over time. So, it is game over.
No, this is game start. Who Who buys this? I don't know what they do, but it is a lost leader for them. Like there's just no way they keep this asset. But
did you see that Ted Sarandos came out and said that they're going to have to sell 16 billion in order to make this work? And then I think I think in the same presentation they only talked about cutting cost six billion. And so Ted Sandos is like, "Oh my god, he's the winner of this entire thing." I mean, Netflix pocketed the $2.8 billion breakup fee. Their stock rose, I don't know, 30 or 40%, something crazy. Harry Potter makes [ __ ] money. That's a juggernaut franchise. There's something there.
The game. The game.
The game. The game. I mean, they're working on
They're like years away from actually a new version of that, right? They're spending without generating revenue, dude. That's the whole problem, right? It's on the P&L.
That's how the software works.
I know, but that's not the business that

they're in.
That's not the business that they're in. No, there's no [ __ ] way that they maintain a gaming business with this transaction. This is bad news, Bears, for gaming. So, what are you suggesting though? Like, does Harry the next Harry Potter get shut down? Does it get sold to Disney? Maybe they're looking to hop back in bed. Like
there's like three studios that are great assets, right? Harry Potter studio,
Avalanche,
Avalanche,
and Rock Steady.
Rock Steady, but there's three studios that matter. Those will get sold out to other other places. I think they're valuable in of themselves, right? There's just no way that they can maintain this thing given the fact that long development cycles, losing money every year, they have no products.
That's fine, but you think no one else is willing to take on that that shortrun capital burden to get something like Harry Potter out the door? Like that sounds great. Like I that business,
dude, EA will buy it right now with a
used to have the the license, remember?
But that's not the point.
I do.
The point is that like the notion that

this acquisition is good for gaming is ridiculous, right? This is really bad. Like this is means that they get sold again. And maybe they do find a home and it'll be better, right? But
yeah, the mobile business is gone. Like that is dust. That is dust. Right.
Did that exist? What did they do?
I know exactly.
They had they had 4x game out of
Yeah. Game of Thrones.
Was it Turbine?
The Boston studio.
Boston studio.
Yeah. They have another one coming. It's called Game of Thrones Kings Road.
Yes. It was in soft launch already,
but Conquest makes them money. Like that's Forex game.
Like before that they had Hobbit, I think. I know that was licensed with Kam, but yeah, they their game that that came out, the new Game of Thrones game, the Forex,
great IP, very outdated product. [laughter]
Yeah, no doubt. No doubt.
They should give it to Chinese and just just
minimum guarantees. Line them up like Coke.
Just like they did with with with Kabam. Just give it away. to stop. Yeah.

Yeah. I just licensed the stuff. I So, Chris, my point is not that this is good for WB Games, that it's like the lesser of two evils. Anyway, I think the outcome is the same to your point. I think everyone's going to shut them down.
Yeah.
All right, let's go to you, Chris. Assassin's Creed.
Yeah. So, after bagging on Ubisoft for the last like 10 years, [laughter] so there was an announcement that Ubisoft put veterans in leadership roles at Assassin's Creed. Now, this is PR 101, making sure that everyone thinks that things are going well. They're existing people, so it's not like they're hiring new people. That would be even better. But like the fact that these people are sticking around and Mark Shelling, Jean Gustin, and Franco Debilly or whatever the name is, right? All of them are actually joining the Assassin's Creed franchise teams in leadership roles. This is very, very, very good, right? Generally speaking, it shows some levels of stabilization. And I know I'm getting sucked into the PR, you know, vortex,

but this was actually my negative thesis is that this manchild nepo baby bullshiting position guy, it wasn't going to be able to maintain these relationship and keep these people, you know, but he seems to be doing that, right? And he seems to be solidifying those teams to go after what was clearly what was completely destroyed, the value that was destroyed over the last 10 years. So, I'm going to eat some crow here a little bit because I thought this would be a more of a significant challenge for the Nepo baby and Vantage Studios in general. So, they have a long road to go. They definitely need more operators. They need more people to manage these studios. It would be a really positive thing to see if they actually found someone that knows how to manage studios and puts them in place underneath this, you know, Nepo baby. But from a strategy perspective, and I want to reiterate this as well, is that what I've been arguing about Ubisoft for over the last decade is focus, focus, focus. And I think what Vantage Studios

does is actually get that focus in play, right? Where they're focusing on three franchises. They should have included Division as we said before, but nonetheless, this is a positive step in the right direction for Vantage in particular. So, let's hope these things continue and they don't lose people going forward. Yeah, I don't think you're eating crow, Mr. Crest. I think you're right to still call this out as an uphill battle for them. Yes, they kept some people, and I'm glad that they're able to build the franchise and have some adults in the room. If you're going to have a manchild, I guess to your point, it's nice to have some man adults in the room to to help with the franchise.
But part of the thesis is the reason that you don't put someone in charge like this that doesn't know what he's doing is that people like these people will don't want to work for him, right? But clearly I mean they're also lifers, right? So this is all they know. So and they're in Montreal. What else in the you going to do in Montreal, right? But like anyway I Anyway, it's good. It's good news.
Yeah. No, it's good. All right. This story I want to do just a little bit

quick. It's about Discord. I call it a comm's catastrophe because, you know, similar to what happened with Supercell and Ilka's blog post, if you go out with something the wrong way in this day and age with your community, the backlash is quick and swift. So, Discord is going to delay its global age verification roll out to the back half of this year, 2026. The CTO came out with a blog post. It was actually again like pretty well done. And in the way that you do crisis management is you acknowledge the issue, have you have a senior person do the messaging and then you overcorrect. And I thought that the blog post did a really good job of doing that to be fair. So, they acknowledge that they failed to clearly communicate what the six the system actually does. Many users thought that Discord would require face scans and ID uploads from everyone and that's not the case. Conveniently, this is delayed till after the IPO. Wink wink. Likely potentially. I also wanted to include this because if you are a game that's really global and it's just

something to watch out for because the global laws are very specific and different right now. So, Discord didn't do this on their own because of the good of Discord and worrying about things. The UK and Australia have age verification laws that are in place. Brazil is very close behind with their own age ver verification law in Europe and multiple US states are not far off. And so they're trying to comply with these specific laws and they're working with third different third parties. Ironically, this is so funny, they decided that that Roblox's age verification third party was not adequate for them. So that was like a little shade in the blog post. If you're kid ID or someone, you're like, "Yeah, that's awesome." So Chris, is this an issue for people going forward with Roblox, with Discord? Do market investors care about the impact of this age verification news on these social networks.
From my perspective, it's all about advertising, right? if they really want

to get in the advertising game, they need accurate depictions of who their user bases are and they need to be able to target those because they can't really advertise to under 13 first of all and they certainly the value of under 18 is really not that significant from an ad perspective. So
in some ways it actually solidifies their those type of strategies because that's the way particularly discord which can't make any money other any other way. So like they need you know they need this so does Roblox for that matter. So, I think that's where it's relevant to some degree. Any type of lawsuits that are outstanding against the companies is bad juju, particularly for going public. So, that's probably why Discord's like trying to get this [ __ ]
move on from it until after they go public. Right.
The one last thing I'd like to add here is we've been talking about growth drivers the last couple weeks and like Adam was big on this. You know, what are the growth drivers for the industry? We really landed on AI, but like the other win here is just better marketing. And what I mean by that is more inventory for user acquisition because that moves the supply curve out and drops price.

And right now Discord needs to pick up its weight. Like it has quests which are interesting and are also for HD based games very similar to lot what a lot of rewarded apps are doing. But like we need more inventory desperately. Like this materially touches our P&L and like they need to pick up the pace. Like let's start moving here Discord. Like time to pay your bills back to gaming. Like we need Discord to succeed for us to see more opportunities for games to grow. Yeah, they've been testing mobile rewarded ads. I just don't know where they are on that. I haven't checked in on that in a while. Have to do that for next time.
There was also more recently a lawsuit against Roblox from the Los Angeles County. Basically,
oh yeah,
accusing it of being a digital and real life nightmare for children.
Well, they're going to call you to testify, Eric. [laughter]
Alleging the platform provides tools for predators to target, groom, and exploit minors. This is LA County, dude. That's not good at all. This is always part of the thesis around Roblox that eventually this is stuff is going to catch up to

them given the nature of the platform.
I think you're wrong about this and I actually think they're succeeding because when you look at Australian social media bans and a lot of the social media bans that are happening for youths, Roblox is essentially dodging those regulations, which means that all those teens are going to turn to Roblox. So now they're starting to have regulatory lock in. And if they keep the lobbying going and they don't this up, this is actually a strategic advantage for them is not being talked about as social media,
which is why we should stop dating weird stuff from David. Like, drop the dating stuff, dude. It's weird.
Yeah. No, I agree. And and that I was talking to friends about this that Roblox isn't considered a social network when it's absolutely the social network for children and they are skirting that Australian. only a matter it's only a matter of time. I don't necessarily agree that's the case. I think that the key will be when that ban goes in, do we see uptick in Australia? Do we see anything in the DAU charts?
But it's temporary at best and plus it's Australia which is really tiny, right?

I agree. But you got to look at as a test case as these regulations start to roll out. Like California is talking about this like the steam for banning social media for under 13 is picking up steam politically.
I mean it's in the UK. It Brazil's about to launch their law. So it's starting to roll out. We have to dodge this. Tim Sweeney better buttering be liquoring up these EU politicians to make sure Fortnite doesn't come under this either.
Right. Right.
All right, let's keep going. Mishka, let's talk about DTOC and Play Tikka.
Playa hit $1 billion per year in direct to consumer revenue and 74% of its business is casual games thanks to Super Play acquisition. So, their financial year 25 highlights include their revenue being $2.76 million, up from two two and a half. So, you know, about two and a $200 million up in a year. Their DDC revenue went up from roughly $700 million to now over $800 million. And their net losses were

up to $26 million compared to the net income they did just a year ago in 162. But that is probably due to the acquisition of Super Play. Could be wrong. Chris, what do you think?
Uh, [laughter] poor Play Tikka, you know, like the whole narrative of pushing direct to consumer has been like out there and I've been poo pooing it ever since because it doesn't make a difference, right? At the end of the day, yes, you earn more margin on it, but ultimately when you're paying 60% plus more in user acquisition, it doesn't really matter if you're doing direct to consumer or not. So they are an absolute 100% win story for direct to consumer. Let's just give it credit where credit is due. Yet their stock is down to $2.77 from its $30 peak. Less more than 90% and stock is already down 30% in 2026. So direct to consumer revenue is great, but it's not saving them, right? Because they don't have a great gains pipeline. They don't have organic growth and their UA costs

are going through the roof. And that's probably why they're less profitable. Super Play is doing well though. It's It's really scaling. But they did they did call in.
First of all, no. No. No. It's not scaling profitably. It's not scaling profitably. If it was profitable, they would be doing a lot better, right?
So, no. [laughter]
Okay.
Incorrect.
Incorrect.
No rebuttal.
I don't know the detailed numbers. I was just looking at it. I didn't go deep.
They're like losing money. They're losing $200 million in
I said from what I hear Super Play is doing well and the games are scaling and you said you said no they're not scaling profitably. I don't have a reply for that. I was like could be [laughter]
I need to look deeper.
Phil, you you want to talk on this? So I I grant almost all your points on this this topic, Eric, but I would still say it's interesting to see, for instance, in Ilka's letter when he talks about Supercell's annual revenue that they

have to report to the government and what's tracked on sensor tower. That gap has been increasing. And I think Supercell has been best in class when it comes to DDC. And of course, like we we glue to play Tikica because they were the first ones to really disclose this in their quarterly earnings. But if you go to Supercell and especially since the Fortnite ruling, we haven't seen anyone actually do what the ruling allowed you to do, which is more direct linkouts because everyone's been in huge [ __ ] about pissing off Apple. And it looks like Supercell has grown a pair because they have a beautiful store. I'm going to add the Clash Royale player since the updates. And right now, we're looking at a screenshot where if you go to Supercell's shop within the game, you'll see that there's a free daily gift and it's a green button. and it says go and you can tell that's the link out to the web browser which finally is a direct link to get you into the store which is something that like remember Monopoly go have the tycoon club you could drive but this is a loop that they're getting you involved into hey get get your free claim go to the daily store it costs almost nothing to be able to pull off and yet they're going to be able to get

more margin the UX is beautiful here it pushes you through the funnel I get linked in the website where I am my signin is already pre-filled in I claim the free item and then guess what I have another upsell to buy the battle pass. Like just really well done from Supercell. Like best-in-class right now.
I I look, I'm not arguing that it's not an important aspect of the business. It's like for bigger companies, it's like you have to do it, right? There's no question that you have to build out a direct to consumer DTC business. What I keep telling people is that it's not the saving grace or the holy grail of being successful in mobile, right? The fact is that every nickel
said that though.
Everybody was saying that like that's what the way they were positioned.
Matthew Ball did say that. [laughter]
Yeah, Matthew. Yeah, Matthew Ball that was part of his thesis last year which was total [ __ ] which I called out then. Right. The reality is that every nickel you're saving in DTOC is going straight to AppL, right? [laughter] Like there, you know what I mean? Like there's no
Do we have any evidence though that margins are that those margins are basically being returned to advertisers?

I don't get out margins and common sense.
All right. I I know it's a matter of time until it gets bid out. I just would be interesting to see evidence for that.
We didn't get a chance to talk about this a couple weeks ago when I pulled the numbers for Monopoly Go. When they reported their royalty revenue to Hasbro, year-over-year, they were up 50% in what they were paying out to Hasbro. And I'm glad that you actually mentioned Monopoly Go Tycoon, their their web shop. Scopely is like undercover because we don't know what those numbers are. I think there are much many more games do using these web linkouts than we actually think. And I think a lot of that increase in the payout to Hasbro up 50% is from web shops. Just in my opinion.
Hold on. Hold on. But generally these payouts are net of marketing, right? So I think they're spending less on marketing than they have. I do agree that I think they're spending a little bit less on marketing, but that's because I think they're retaining really well. I think they're pushing people to,

you know, to the workshops where they're getting a little bit more margin. So, I don't know what the math is on that to be honest. I just I think one of these things is is not like the other in terms of like, you know, we're seeing their their revenue go down in Sensor Tower, their overall revenue go down, but the payout's going up. So, yes, combination 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. Guessing where your users come from? That's so 2010. Absier is like having a cheat code for mobile marketing. Pinpoint attribution, real-time insights, and analytics that actually make sense. Stop flying blind and start flying smart. Apps flyer because your data is your best co-op

partner. [clears throat]
Let's be honest, you're tired of chasing installs across the same crowded networks. We all are. That's why Wibes built a new playbook. They're the fastest growing gamified rewards platform, and they are helping studios scale smarter, not just bigger. Their AI powered targeting means you will finally hit the audience you want. And with their new raw optimization engine, performance doesn't just grow, it actually levels up. So, if you're looking for growth with a fresh angle, check out Vibes. It's built different. It's designed for growth and it's powered by good vibes. So, head over to vbs.co and get yourself some good vibes. All right, let's go to Marathon. So, this this was a little bit of a buzz going on. Take us through the story, Phil. Shooter monthly.
Jesus, Jen. This is the moment of truth.

Like, [laughter] does she survive? Does Bungie die? Like, so much hangs in the balance of like this game doing well. And so, they had a server slam, which was essentially their free trial to it's always a free trial, although always under the guise of like a tech test, which is I guess a side benefit where you could play the game for free. It will launch by the time you're listening to this podcast. Remember, it's a $40 premium title.
And I had the opportunity to play over the server slam weekend and we'll also be covering this in shooter monthly episode 5. I think everyone's hyped for this. But I'ming in love. I think they did a ton of really great things to this title. They did not [ __ ] away when it cames comes to the sci-fi element of this title at all. All the way down to the menus. like that original trailer, that sci-fi trailer you saw with a very strong artistic choices
is driven through the product in its heart and soul and I just got to give them a lot of credit for having some integrity. Remember when we talked about Concord just having a really weird aesthetic and not really driving through its IP into every part of the product? Well, this one does it in heaps and

loads and it's cool to just see a first-person shooter have swagger like this and really immerse you immerse yourself in its world. I think the question is like what does this mean for Bungie and how much money are going to make off this game if if at all and so you have to compare it to Arc Raiders at least to start this analysis and so right now we're looking at wish list and follower time series for Marathon and Arc Raiders up until its launch period and so right now Marathon is not tracking anywhere near where Arc Raiders was tracking. So if you just look at followers for instance, they were already hitting around 250,000 by the time Arc Raiders launched. While on a days since launch basis, Marathon's maybe doing a third of that. And when it comes to wish lists, we see a very similar gap. So if we kind of take a look at where Arc Raiders did in terms of converting its followers and wish lists into actual sales, which again is one data point and had particularly strong conversion because it picked up steam. We can take a look about where we would think Marathon might land based on

its numbers right now. And so you're looking at like a 30-day revenue of maybe around 60 to 100 million. Again, that's just Steam number. So maybe we get higher to 250. Now, these are complete shots in the dark for me. There's a lot of assumptions that underpin this, but I don't think that's an awful result for Bungie. I think, you know, they probably spent 300 million on development from what I've heard, although all sung costs. So, all they need to do right now is beat the variable costs for this thing to survive. And I think it'll be able to do I think there's a ton of genre innovation here that is that is worth talking about in a moment.
I mean, obviously the competition is really heating up in this genre. You've got two premium games at 40 bucks, right? The new Magic price point, especially when you're on PC on Steam. So, Arc Raiders versus Marathon. Marathon actually should be thanking Arc Raiders for making this genre a little bit more accessible. I think a lot of the magic of Arc Riders has been the accessibility and bringing people into a genre that has been really a niche genre. Now, on the challenging side, I

will say I talked to, you know, I don't I I can't play these games anymore cuz one of the sad outcomes of my stupid brain surgery is I get super motion sick. I always got motion sick, but now I get like extra motion sick, so I just talk to people and watch videos. So, a few of my friends said that they played in the play test. they were a little bit disappointed and that it was like super difficult. They said versus our creators, it felt like immensely more difficult and challenging the it's going to be hard for newbies or people to want to pick up and want to keep engaging on this. On the marketing side, I'm seeing a lot of posts that they're leaning into gameplay, which is smart because one of the challenges on this game has been like the gameplay, I think when we talked about it when they released some of those marketing videos looked like it was outdated. it looked older. And so from what I'm seeing just again anecdotally as people are appreciating the kind of more honest forward gameplay marketing that's going on. So you know

they also had to overcome the whole I don't know if you remember there was like a little bit of an AI art like kurfuffle where some they they blame a contractor for putting in some like art that was played
a sci-fi game
for somebody else.
Wow. Amazing that AI would be used. Well, and I think there was like a plagiarism thing and so anyway, they had to like six months ago completely revamp all of the marketing and so that's that's done and here we are in this place. So from a marketing perspective unclear that this is going to overtake Arc Raiders.
I was just looking at Sensor Towers data. So the basically they have on their latest report well the latest state of gaming report how downloads and prices and you can kind of see the top games and I did a quick calculation. So if they sell this for 40 bucks, they keep 28 bucks, right? And that means that they would need to sell almost 9 million copies to break even. And of course, there's freetoplay aspect. And that would put them pretty much just a million units lower than Arc Raiders to

break even.
Oh, to break even. Arc Raiders has sold 12 million, if not more than that, right?
So now Deluxe Edition, baby. We need Deluxe Edition.
So it says Arc Raiders has According to Sensor Tower, this ended in 2025, so they probably picked up, but by 2025, end of the year, they sold like a little under 11. So, yeah. So, this would kind of be have to hit the arc raers numbers to be profitable,
but break even remember some costs. So, they just got to be variable costs to survive right now,
Philip. Okay. No, please, please, please. So, here's the problem. like at a high level of 30,000 ft. Sony made an absolutely massive investment in Bungie, right? And 5 billion or whatever the they paid for it, which was a ridiculous price back then. So this is the fundamental problem is that four to 5 million units, which is what they're tracking to do, is not going to cut it, right? That's not even close to cutting it, right? To justify Bungie's existence really. And I think Mishka's for once

right. It's [laughter] like, yeah, even even if they hit numbers from our graders, they're not they're not barely break even at best. Like from a company perspective, they need to knock it out of the park and this game ain't going to do it, you know? Like I I think it's going to be four to five million units and that is a that is not okay. That is not okay, right? It may seem okay. It may be reported as okay, but it's certainly not okay for Sony.
Chris, if you're correct, what happens then? I think they consolidate to one team and they make one more shot and make the next Destiny
Destiny 3 and that's their Destiny
and this thing shuts down just like the rest of them. [ __ ] looks pretty. I I think it looks really cool. Looks difficult.
I just don't think the game is good honestly. Like I think the game plays well
during the server slam.
No, I've just been talking to a lot of people about it. But I I and it shoots nice but in terms of the core dynamics of the actual game to keep people engaged, it doesn't have that hook that Art Raiders has. I don't think that's fair at all. I think they first of all, they're very different games. I think

you really got to think about Ark as appealing more to the Destiny players. It's far more of a PvE RPG. There's a lot more persistence. You remember, you go in the expeditions, which your 60-day seasonal cycle, you prestige your character, you get some baseline upgrades that you carry forth to the next
expedition. Whereas, this is going to wipe every 3 months. It's only firsterson view. And I think the thing that's become really important in both of these games is thinking about the drama curve. what you experience in terms of player density over the map and how conflict happens. And that's where a lot of these games have innovated in terms of taking Tarov's formula and changing it. So, if you remember Tarov, you would spawn into a persistent server and some players could have already been there for 30 minutes and that completely changes the in-game dynamics. And Arc Raiders tunes this down in terms of match length. They still have some injection, but the injection of new players is only during a limited window. Marathon starts with all players simultaneously spawning into the serp and they have that kind of midame lull

that can happen but they also play with this with having like for instance the certain sleeve called the rook which can eject mid round but they still have this convergence that battle royale has at the end of the match where you're trying to get to the extraction point just as you would have battle royale have the circle shrinking so like when I think about marathon I think it's tam to go after is much larger than arc raiders because I think it can go after battle royale like that's been the question is like, can this genre become accessible enough to go after that massive tam that no one else seems to get a bite of, you know, beyond the initial players? This is the first attempt I've played where I can imagine myself leaving Apex Legends or leaving one of my modern shooters. Like, I think they've softened the stuff around the edges. For instance, you could get revived in the round by your teammates. If you remember, Apex Legends was big on this. They've softened a lot of things. If they're able to pull off the seasonal structure, which is a core part of these games where you have the 3-month wipe, then you can get something close to Path of Exiles PSU curves, which we're looking at here. They just have these like beautiful curves that spike at the start of each season. And

that's an opportunity from a marketing perspective. It's season dynamics on crack, right? Because it's a wipe, which means everyone has a new opportunity to jump in just like in FIFA. And I think that's something that we haven't seen in the mainstream. And I think that's something that they can master to give this thing some legs.
All right. I'm sure you will have a ton more in shooter monthly. I think you're recording tomorrow, right? Or today.
Yeah.
This is just my prep talk to myself.
Yeah.
Phil, one one other question before we go. What is the like it's premium plus? So what is the plus part? Like how much money can they generate?
It's [ __ ] No, nothing. They have nothing right now. I think the question is is
Oh my god. See that that Okay. I mean
their cosmetics is not well done either. That's a problem.
Well, then then it's over, dude. I mean, it'sing over, right? It feels like the world is very rigid, too. Like, you can't have like Pokemon.
No, no, Philip. Because you're basically saying that this game may retain users better and maintain an audience better, but if there's no way of monetizing them and it's all just the initial purchase, then we're basically all we're talking

about is the current demand. And the demand is tracking well below our graders, like a third. Hold up. Hold up. Hold up. So, I agree with you. I agree with you. The thing you got to remember is first of all, there's been like a cult of personality against this game from gamers which I think will start to fade as this get into more hands. I think the server slam already did some things to change expectations. So that needs to be changed and I'm sure it will. And you're still getting, you know, maybe $45 ASP over a longer life cycle if they continue to pump some content in this game. I agree. The key question is like, can they get more rigid monetization beyond cosmetics into a title like this? I think the answer is yes. Like we've seen games like Call of Duty DMZ play with insurance slots which are gameplay affecting and so I do think there is an element of gameplay that can be monetized in these franchises. They just don't want to start with it. I don't know if they're going to do it but I think the design space is finally there for Western shooters to go after this. I I don't disagree with what you're saying. I'm saying it's not designed within this game. They are already tracking a third of Arc Raiders which would still make it unprofitable.

Even if they even hit Arc Raiders targets wouldn't be close. And they're not going to generate revenue after the fact. Like it's over,
Eric.
They could go the skate route and they can reneg on their promises. [laughter]
Oh, that is that your transition? All right, we're we're almost at the end. So, let's [laughter]
let's do these super quickly because there there is a hot off the news press. I just I just want to read that out in a second. But so, Highgard is shutting down and then so is Skate. So, Mishka, talk a little bit about Skate. Yeah. So, Skate is the game that I played. No, it's not a game that I played, but I was I was recording with Sensor Tower on the state of gaming and I was surprised because we're looking at the graph. This is again till the end of 2025. It doesn't take the this year into account. And when you look at the X bar is price and the Y bar is the amount of downloads. And it has basically divided into freetoplay, indie, double A, remastered, all the way, AAA, and then AAA. And what you can see here is that there's three top games when it comes to

downloads of last year. Two of them are free to play, which is Skate as the most downloaded game in 2025. Second, Marvel Rival, and then third is Battlefield 6. So despite being a $70 game, it was a third most downloaded game last year on PC and consoles. So I was very surprised when I heard the news that that skate the team behind skate is being well part of it is lay being laid off and according to our Slack members they were saying that 100 people lost their job. So the question that I had based on this is of course I looked at the Steam charts that we're showing here that there's quite the collapse. Did EA just ship a paid game for free or did they essentially up with the monetization a classic self-restriction AAA way? Let's just just come in unison, just hold hands together and say, "Please don't let your brand managers decide what your messaging is for monetization." Like, they're obsessed with like making these virginity promises, and you always reneg on them. Do not sign these. Do not let

your brand manager dupe you into this. Don't sign the paper.
I don't know what [clears throat] you're talking about enough to fight.
Don't go off with a positive message. There's no pay to win. Don't commit to any of this. Not necessary. You have a whole life ahead of you. You don't know what you want yet.
Yes. you you you know in in the world especially at Riot this is like the thing that they teach you very very well is you have to be transparent and straightforward and not make promises that you don't know if you can't keep so I agree with you in premise I don't know what the specifics are in this case Phil
again 30,000 ft here this was a passion project from the guys in Vancouver right I mean that's all this was really right I think they kind of set this thing up to die you know this is actually very reminiscent of Ubisoft of old, right? Like just doing stuff that clearly is never going to work, but everyone absolutely it's a beloved franchise and the people really wanted to work on it, right? So yeah, I mean, you're trying to give people what they want, but it just there wasn't much hope for this game

from the get-go. And I talked to people at EA about how can you say that, Eric? Like we're just looking at Mishka's chart. Most downloaded game above Marvel Rivals. They had over 150,000 players or 134,000 just on Steam in terms of top PSU. Like what are you talking about? There was inucking insane funnel for this. They never had any business model. There's no business model for it.
But see, but see that's that's more specific. That's saying that they weren't able to change Skate into the RPG it should have been [clears throat]
to be able to build the retention.
It's not the right people. It's not the right team and and it's almost not the right IP to monetize in the way that that needs to be monetized. Paying to win in a skate game.
No. This is a vibe game, dude. This is like vibe coding for games, dude. This is like getting on and just skating [laughter] around, dude. It's just It's all about the vibe, dude. You know, and so this is not a recipe for making money. And I I hate to be a capitalist all the time, but like that's why this thing is going to fail is because it just can't make money. I would love to see the research that they would have

done on this like in the pricing study because crush you know you're you're right as usual which is is can this kind of a game be done in freeto play cuz you can't do pay to win you're skating around I want to put my Adidas shirt on I'm going to pay for that. [laughter]
No you have to work backwards from the proposition that these are the mechanics we need and we need to figure out how we're going to make this something that makes sense inside of this IP. We can't keep going back to these questions, these like wandering questions about like, can it work? You know, you need to be more confident and work backwards from what we know works. And I think they could have pulled it off. I think expectations are changing.
I think the Roblox audience is changing things, but it doesn't matter. Like I just People sign up for dumb [ __ ]
Yeah, there I I I love what Crest said. Chris had this notion that the executive basically gave the studio the permission to do the game that they really wanted without giving it support. I think the term for that should be children's crusade. You just kind of let them go. [laughter]

This is like the story of Ubisoft, you know, let them do whatever the they want to do. [laughter]
Yeah. Just be damned.
Just go. Just go. Children's crusade.
Well, but and then the other sad thing is but it it didn't even work. It didn't work because look at that concurrent number that's falling off. So people came in, they're like it didn't delight players. So, even if you let them do what they wanted to do, it doesn't look like that resonated with the player base as a freeto-play game. All right, before we sign off, I just wanted to read out this news that dropped. We're not going to get a chance to discuss it unless you guys want to try on the fly.
So, I'm actually not
Well, I Okay, for for Phil. For Phil, I was going to say Apex is partnering with Gundam, and that trailer looks amazing.
KPI's through the roof. Buy [ __ ] now. Buy it now. All right, you're going to have to you're have to get [ __ ] from me because I don't want to let the segment pass. Gundam is the greatest franchise of all time that's been undermonetized. Its mobile performance is embarrassing. It's done 2 million units on HD. Remember, there's a freeto-play Overwatch game they made called Gundam

Evolution. Could do way [ __ ] better there. It's actually fairly big, by the way. Apex Legends in Japan. Want to throw that out there. But 300 million in mobile revenue lifetime from Gundam is an absolute embarrassment. Bandai Namco, hand this thing over to me. Over to me. I will happily go make this. Like they found some success with SD Gundam, which is the most recent gotacha game that they have. It's the most successful one of all time. But oh my god, it'sing 2026 and you still don't have a Banner Squad RPG for a game that's about Mecca's is it. It's so it's so bad. It's so bad. And this IP could be so much more. And I hope the Netflix movie with Sydney Sweeney is not a joke, but I do not have good things in my heart when I think about that franchise on Netflix. Sorry. Go ahead, Jen.
Well, okay. I'm glad that I I put this I did put that in there just for you. The ape. And by the way, did you see the trailer? It's like it's really good.
Beautiful. You're going to get hair items like the beam saver.
Yeah. Good. Probably collab of the year. Hopefully. We'll come back and see.
Way better than the Overwatch one. No,

no, no shade intended, but it's just the way it is. They got their own items.
Yeah. So, the news I wanted to read out from Polygon, Sony will stop bringing PS5 exclusives to PC because they're not selling. Holy [ __ ] So, according to a new report, Sony is rolling back its strategy of releasing big exclusive singleplayer PlayStation games, the likes of Marvel Spider-Man, Last of Us God of War on PC, Windows PC. Uh, and so live service games from Sony like Bungie's Marathons will still see plat multiplatform releases, unsurprisingly given the huge success of Hovel Divers 2 on Steam in 2024, but the single player action adventure games that are PlayStation stock and trade will go back to console exclusivity. Holy [ __ ] Is that a thing? I don't know. It just felt like big news. So, I just it dropped this morning, so I wanted to read it out.
Look, I mean, they're trying to protect their ecosystem and make it compelling with the single player stuff and keeping that on PS5. I think it makes total sense. And then the multiplayer stuff maybe they'll bring to PC on a case- by

case basis like Destiny and whatever else.
It's just so funny cuz last week we talked about Xbox is like everywhere. Like literally they're a publisher and they're like sure we want to publish our stuff on PlayStation and so it feels like PlayStation's going the other direction and contracting. Is that right?
Because that's the righting strategy. [laughter] You know how many times do I have to say this and why do you have to bring up Xbox? I was not going to talk about Xbox at all this time. It's like this is exactly why they fail is because they are not maintaining some kind of like reason to own a Xbox. The same way you have a reason to own a PS5, right? And so in this type of world, that's the right strategy. I think the PC releases 6 months after launch makes sense. I think that's a good idea. Like that doesn't bother me at all. But like if it's not selling, then it's just not worth the effort. Right.
Got it. Yeah.
So there we go. Well, I just wanted to toss that hand grenade at you and and wind up wind up the like the the crest monkey that claps and like starts yelling. All right. Uh, I was just going to wrap it up. We will see everyone at

GDC next week and excited for that. I'm excited to see you guys in person, have our lunch and everything and All right, let's do it next time.
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