TWIG #407: Roblox’s Steal Economy, Tim Sweeney Goes All In on AI and Xbox Loses Its COO

[music] Hello everyone and welcome to Deconstructor of Funist Freaking Games 407. I'm Chen Danho. I head up the marketing and publishing role on the podcast. Today we have
Eric Strategy Investing.
Oh, jump the line.
Just jumping in the line. Adam, [laughter] I need a better tagline. There you go.
Just product. Just product.
Just Adam. Just [laughter] guest host with the most. Go Phil. Phil Black uh monizations are.
All right, here's what we have going on today. So, Phil continues to push his narrative that the top Roblox games are not to steal or not to steal. That is the revenue question, but we'll debate about that. Tim Sweeney says, "AI will bring about the golden age of gaming." Elon agrees, but not everyone else does. We're going to break that down. Time to look at the top 10 mobile publishers and compare Pocket Gamer. Business chart with Sensor Tower. Shockingly, they are

very different. And so, if you're listening, start taking bets on number one. The the top ones are different, but you know, let's see if you can get there. Xbox continues to make news, so we'll cover it at the end. I banished this topic to the end because there is a lot co changes. Netflix deal falls through for entertainment. Rumored private equity bid that's 3x more than EA's. And then Microsoft is offering 60,000 employees a voluntary separation package. like the news is just ever ending out of Seattle. And then finally, it's three weeks to GTA 6 and Miami has almost completely transformed into Vice City. I pulled a quick little Tik Tok video that shows you some of the fun and maybe I'll break down a couple of reasons why this is actually interesting to every other marketer. I know that not all of us have GTA money, you know, making it rain, but you know, what can we learn from that? All right, so Mishka free Wednesday. Uh, he's off playing paddle in some far off land. I don't know. Phil, were you there? Did you go

to the paddle thing?
No.
Were you in the same place? Different place.
No, I did not. I did not return to surf.
All right. So, [laughter]
so to speak. [laughter]
All right. We found a friend. Uh, Adam, what have you been up to?
I've actually been surprised. I've been playing a [ __ ] ton of games. I assumed that the fall would be pretty dead in the leadup to Orcina of Crime, let's call it GTA 6 and Orcarina of Time, but it's been nuts. Like, I don't know if you guys have felt it, but like the amount of really high quality games that have released over the last two months. I've had some really good times playing them. So, I don't know if you guys had the time for it, but like Blood of the Dawn Walker was incredible by the Ex Witcher team, Zero Company. I know you've got some news there, but like great game. Galactic Racer, The Burnout Team, incredible game. Ace Combat 8, almost like a 90 Metacritic on that thing. Fire Emblem, almost 90 Metacritic. Just played through Modern

Warfare 4, which the campaign was amazing and I think we'll cover it today. And then on Emushia and Phantom Blade Zero, which is well Blade Zero is coming out tomorrow. Really excited. But like the reviews on that like nuts. So for me it's like I I've been pretty excited for Orcarina of Time, but like there has been a real runup of quality games. It's been fun.
Yeah. Wasn't everyone trying to shove their game out in advance?
Yeah. But usually when you shove games out, you don't get quality. But here you're like the amount of like high8s games coming out right before GTA 6 is nuts.
Overwhelming mobile game presence. [laughter]
Sorry. Go ahead.
Games there.
No, there are no Are there any good mobile games that have come out?
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, there's just a ton of like fun ones. I would say a lot of them are coming out of Turkey and a lot of them are coming out of China. They're more the hyper hyper casual.
Anyway, do not forget Aon 2.
Are you playing Are you playing that? I I not playing it.
Oh my god. Like aing crack addict, dude. It's it's it's it's taken over my life,

dude. This is
This is part of the reason I don't like, you know.
Yeah.
Are you going to join WoW Forever next week?
Well, I don't know. I'm so into this AON. I was really going to do it. I was really keen on actually doing the WoW forever. And I leveled up my WoW character to the level that I I don't think I need to go any further.
So, I might, but I'm so into this AI. Dude, the Koreans know how to layer system upon system upon system. I mean, this is like a 3D version of a mobile game, and it's really well done.
You are a sucker for vertical power progression. You are a sucker for like the longest grind possible, which is literally Korea. That's how they design their games. As long as the numbers keep going up, I'm in. Right? As soon as the numbers slow down, I'm out. Right? And it's all, see, for me, to me, it's always about trivializing the content with power, right? That makes me feel like a badass, right? But anything that scales with you, that makes it it's just too frustrating.
Why aren't you into Idol RPG then? Like, idol RPG is like the pure Coke of this.

Absolutely. I played those like Legend of Th.
Yeah. I mean, I've played them all, dude. I played them all, but I just
I fall out.
So, next week though, Wow Forever comes out. I've actually never played WoW.
That's like my one thing that I'm embarrassed to say. Never played it, but my group of friends were all going to jump on WoW Forever. And actually,
really,
I might not be on the pod for a few months after that.
The problem with WoW Forever is they've taken away all the quality of life improvements over like the last two decades, right? So, it's like it's pretty raw. Like, it's it's [laughter] a grind, you know? So, you have to be able to
I've never played it. I'll try it out. I know. I play a lot of janky survival games. So, we'll see.
We'll see how long this keeps me. I am getting to a point where the incremental hours spent are not really improving my power score [laughter] the way I [snorts]
Your life power score or or your game.

Okay. Okay. Since we're talking about here's the fundamental problem with this game is there park is parkour is involved and I am so bad at parkour and anything
Assassin's Creed kind of like bouncing off
dude I'm I'm so embarrassed to say this. It's like when you're in a dungeon you actually have to jump on things and move around. And every time I do it as I'm just navigating I'm not we're not fighting anything. I'm just navigating the level. and falling and falling behind [laughter]
platform. I'm like spending like half my time catching up with the rest of the group and it's really embarrassing because it's like it it is the most basic [ __ ] right? But I just I can't
spatial awareness is
it's old man [ __ ] dude. It's total old man [ __ ] But anyway, other than that, I love it.
So, I did an interview with the Discord chief business officer, Juel Shoemaker. That dropped on Monday. A few tidbits I thought were interesting from the data side. Discord reaches 90 million DAU or daily users. More than 90% of them of

its users play games. Like if you ever had a gaming platform that wasn't actually gaming, it's this one. About half the campaigns from existing games go to reactivation. So I thought that was really interesting to know that if you if you need to win back some folks, it's a good platform for that. And then using the social SDK in your game can lead to retention. So they did a case study. They reported a 31% lift in day 28 retention for linked players if you link your Discord account. It's plus 1.5 more game days per month. So anyway, check that out if you're interested. I think Chris, you work with Jules right back from EA. Do you remember her?
I've heard really good things about her. Generally speaking, I heard Yeah. I also heard that the Unity CEO was not a fan evidently, but uh
Well, yeah. Uh, I mean,
well, he's not a big fan of anybody in marketing. So, [clears throat]
that's [laughter] that's that's kind of the wrap. It's kind of
he's an operator and he's brutal and he's ruthless. So, maybe that's not what the marketing vibe is.
Well, she's chief business officer. So,

there is ads under her team. There is Nitro. There's a bunch of different uh elements. So, anyway, um the the fun part when I did my LinkedIn post, Bing Gordon uh left a comment. So I I thought that was pretty cool
to have a little Bing Gordon show up.
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respond to player behavior. Say sananara to your old live ops stand and konichiwa to Sattorii from Heroid Labs. All right, let's get into our first topic. If you want to share your chart that you dropped in here, Mr. Philip Black and I wanted to ask you what would you like us to learn from this 2025
top 25art? I tried.
Oh, okay. This chart is basically trying to describe or show in numbers what I was saying last week is that 50% of the revenue in 2025 was driven by games in which you steal toys from children. Right? So in 22 years of being around this is the pinnacle of what game development is on Roblox. 50% [laughter] of the revenue is tortured videos from on children, right? grow a garden, steal a brain rot, blocks, fruit plants versus

brain rots. And it could be even greater because these are basically payouts and they're like 150 million plus and 90 million plus for steal a brain rot and grow a garden. So these are estimates clearly. So it could even be bigger than that. But I actually did confirm this with folks at Roblox is that this is kind of the revenue split because last year was such a record year in terms of growth was because of these absolutely horrific games or game mechanics. And before people reach out to me again, I know that the the gameplay on these games is not just stealing from kids. Okay, I know that. What I'm saying is that the monetization and the design of these games is not what Dave wanted from his big you big platform, right? And so that is why Dave is trying to move the algorithm away from that. And I also know that he moved the algorithm back. And so this quarter they are going toing

destroy it. The stock is going to be up 15 20%. And people are going to say you're an idiot Eric. I'm not. I'm saying that his long-term plan to push people away from these gains is what he's going to try to do. And that is a very very difficult thing to do because this is where all the money is coming from. 50% people and probably more in 2026 if I were to guess. So anyway, keep that in mind, you know, when we start to see revenue start to falter as he moves people to games like volleyball legends, right? [laughter] You know, it's like you are you going to really move these people to a game called Volleyball Legends? No, I don't think so. Like that is not smart. That is not smart.
Let me just give a quick credit for this chart. It's creator exchange.io. And then so Phil, I I I imagine you have some thoughts. I think what was interesting for me is a bunch of people on Slack reached out. They're like,

"Hey, there's a bunch of resources." Remember last week where we're struggling for resources? And it's funny, all of them start with row, you know, row dash, whatever, but almost none of them really have a view of revenue or a view of payouts. And so I I think that's where it's a little bit difficult to see. Adam, it was funny. You also were like, when are they going to have MCP and API access to these? It's like all these like little websites just don't give anybody anything.
There's just like a ton of these data websites getting started right now, which is really cool.
And they're clearly built by AI, which allows them to build it fast, which is great. But then they kind of avoid the APIs and MCPs where it's like that's how people want to consume your data now. Nobody actually wants to go to your website anymore. People just want to pay for the API or the MCP.
One one quick question there though, like this is 2025. When I look at the top five games on this list, I think three of the five have dropped by more than 90% in terms of CCU or DU. Like you're saying like,

hey, these are the games that are going to sell. But like my assumption here is like
Grow Garden is down significantly from its peak.
If we were to look at it for 2026, that picture looks very different.
No, 100%. But you know what's replaced? Wait, hold on.
Steal an egg.
Oh [ __ ] Okay.
Yeah. What's replacing? Hold on. What's replacing it is steal an egg, right? Which is the exact same mechanic,
you know?
Yeah. But but I'm still asking like how durable are these, right? Like are these all still just up and down and it's just going to be following the trends or are they going to have the same durability of the player base that we saw with steel brain?
That's a fair question, but it's looking like they are replaceable by this similar mechanic. You just slap on a different Stila blank with steel coming in.
Yeah.
So, where do we start with Eric's list of mistakes? I mean, he just sprayed so many claims it's hard to clean them all up. Um, and it's all runny and gooey and they all stream together. So, you've

said things, Eric, on tape like five out of the top like 10 games have these mechanics, and you claimed that I was being disingenuous by suggesting otherwise. And yet, you haven't been able to reproduce that claim here. You have two games that I think we could clearly trace to your steel mechanics. Steal an egg, steal a brain rot. Grow a garden has some element of this. Yes. So, I'm happy to grant it to you to be a very generous sparring partner, but other than that, that's three out of the 10. What else are you talking about here that is so
awful and dominates these?
I said 50% of the revenue.
Yes, you've now retreated to that claim. But previously,
that's not retreating. That's not retreating. This is
You said the individual titles and that does
No, I did not say that. I did not say that. This has always been a revenue thing, right? because 50% of the revenue is being generated by these [ __ ] games. You know,
as we know,
that's what I'm saying.
Steal a brain rot and grow a garden are

down significantly. To Adam's point, steal an egg, it is true, is up. You know, let's see if the total aggregate steel mechanic crust that is establishing itself around Roblox is stable. But that's what I would grant you is that perhaps a layer of Roblox's revenue is by this steel crust. But I don't think it's accurate to describe that as the entire 50%. It's not across 50% of the revenue. It has mozzarella. You don't admit to that. And here we go on the right side of the graph, Eric. These are the stable hits that Adam is talking about. Rivals, Adopt Me, Bloxs, Brook Haven. These are the things that are driving the platform that are important and more integral into Roblox's long run story.
Absolutely not. That's what they want.
Change in summer which is gone.
No fail. No. Wrong. Wrong. The stock was up dramatically primarily because of steal a brain rot and grow a garden.

Full stop
because that's what was driving mau da and revenue.
Agree with the
agree. They cannot replace that with games that monetize at a tenth of the level of these games and expect to see the same results. Right. And so now what we're seeing again is they're reverting back to the steel games because that's th those are the games that are making money and driving engagement. Right.
There are elements of what both of you are saying that are absolutely true. Phil, you're saying that there's a bulk of the games that sustain the business that are evergreen ongoing and they don't have those mechanics. Adopt Me, you know, blah blah blah block. Yeah. Yes. Correct. What Chris is saying is that when the Stila games came around, that was the explosive growth that really drove the stock price that they have been struggling to recover from. Also true. The question that both of us, all of us have is where is it going to go forward? because the algorithm tweaking that has been going on has not

been driving the growth that it used to in that right now they're having to tweak back to the Stila games because that is where they are seeing growth because it's a publicly held company which goes to the point last week which is should it go private so it can do those things that am I reflecting the conversation accurately Adam let me ask Adam
yeah do you guys are both in weirdly aggressive agreement
[laughter] [laughter]
I think we have earnings really soon. So,
Oh, and and they're going to crush it. They're going to crush it.
They are absolutely going to destroy.
They're going to crush it because they tweaked the algorithm back.
Yeah, because they tweaked it back to what they needed to do now. But David is now not living by his own morals and more and desire for this platform to be more than just stealing [ __ ] from kids, you know. And so, yeah, if he wants to live in that world, then that's fine.

And they can keep doing this and this this will be the platform. It will be defined by these like really super aggressive monetization games that are just horrible, you know? So, fine. I don't care. I'm just, you know, I got, you know, I'm just calling balls and strikes, right?
Let's move on. All right. AI. This is very easy to also tackle. So, Tim Sweeney says, "AI will bring about the golden age of gaming as epic retools for maximum AI acceleration. We covered on Real Fest this summer and they showed a lot of what they're doing to add in MCP integration to the Epic engine. He's going even further. He's not making friends with many gamers and devs who are anti- AI, but hey, this is what this is what FU money is for." So on October 17th, he posted an X tweet that said, "Games which once cost too much to earn back their budgets will soon become possible." He said 70% of his time writing Unreal Engine 1 went to routine typing that AI could now handle and 30% went to hard problems. So this post

followed an October 12th Bloomberg report that Epic delayed its Marvel and Star Wars shooter once planned for March of 27 with no new date. They're linking that to the fact that they were using AI on this. Bloomberg reported that the directors told the team to stop writing code by hand and start making art with full AI workflows using tools like Anthropics Claude. Elon Musk weighed in. They're friends. I I'm not sure if everyone knew that. He replied true to all of these topics and indie developer Kenny pushed back along with many others in the replies. Fan also criticized Epic's vibecoded launcher preview. Phil, I think first Tim takes on the app store fees was pretty successful doing that. Now he seems to be taking on the AI haters including and we'll get to it a little bit. Valve, he's going after Valve for their AI disclosures. My bet is typically on Mr. Sweeney. He seems to be able to pull this off. Like what do you think?
He is a martyr. He is a hero. I celebrate him. You know those Obama hope signs? I want one for Tim. He speaks

truth to power and he is exactly the voice we need in western gaming right now. and for him to take a stand that I think is also unpopular and he will get undoubtedly huge amounts of gamer [ __ ] for standing up and supporting AI and not only that pivoting Epic Games to a very strong stance of being pro AAI think is incredibly brave and I will remind everyone that as we continue to tune in this podcast every week and talk about the crisis in the west when it comes to AAA game development the answer is right in front of us. It has been staring us in the eye, right? And is made by the west itself, anthropic and open AI are western companies. And if you combine those tools with liberal arts, this is exactly what we've been talking about. This is how you mitigate the cost crisis and you're able to create more and more supply side content. This helps reduce risk. And instead, we've been held captive, I would argue, by like a new class of game creator. And so many of

our early remarkable and admirable figures in the game industry have been engineers. So if you're right now, if you're looking at the YouTube version, this is Ralph Bear. This is a German American engineer. He is the father of video games. He invented the video game home console. You've got John Carmarmac, right? Huge advancement in 3D technology. Doom, Quake, Gabe has a technical background at Microsoft, the founder of Valve, Notch, like all these people were engineers. And for whatever reason, I feel like we've been unable to raise these engineers through the VC ecosystem. And so, we're not pushing the AI technology in the way that games usually do. Normally, we push all forms of new technology, whether it be freaking web 3. We push web 3 harder than we've pushed AI. There's something fundamentally broken about that. And I think it's because the type of founder is no longer technical and they're no longer the people pushing the boundaries of this technology. And if you ask inside any even western company the

people who are adopting this are the engineers because they face no resistance right where are the engineers advocating for their like own jobs of like them destroying themselves. It's just not the case. Uh so I I congratulate Tim and Epic and I hope the west will will wake up to this.
I think it's also because like with with engineering and coding it's less player visible. Art, the sixth finger is really easy for people to note. Things like writing and audio is pretty easy for for people to know. With engineering, I think it's pretty easy for people not to really understand the differences between AI assisted code and real code. It's just gotten that good and it's been that effective. My sense here is like engineering is just off to the moon and I think art needs to get there and I think it's just a matter of time.
Agree. I pulled a little bit of data to kind of walk us through this. So Yos Vanin, he has this super super Yoast newsletter. So I'm going to show a couple of charts that he had in here. So

he did a a post on AI slop basically and and so let's just talk a little bit about Steam AI disclosures because this is where you're seeing the most I'll say player push back on AI. I like to think of myself as in the middle and let's use it when it's great and like let's be scared of it when it does stupid [ __ ] So first is let's talk about how you have to disclose your game. If you use AI inside of your game and you put it on Valve's Steam platform, it focuses on playerf facing content. So, exactly what Adam you're you're saying is if it's coding, you don't have to disclose that, but it requires a disclosure if any generative AI output that ships in the build and is consumed by players or is used in store, pages, or marketing assets. This includes 2D, 3D art, sprites, textures, music, music, sound effect, voice acting, dialogue, narrative, and text localization. That kind of bummed me out that it says text localization because that's al also another really easy way to use AI that

is probably not intrusive. Exempt from the disclosure, back-end efficiency tools and developer workflows where AI output itself does not ship directly to players. This includes using coding assistance like GitHub copilots for boilerplate debugging, brainstorming research tools, generative internal concept reference where the final shipping assets are authored by humans. What Yos did is he pulled up all of the game releases on Steam each year by AI disclosure, right? To have that little bug on your store page um from 2023 to 2026. I'll just do 2024. It was about 10% of the games were AI disclosed out of all the games. And in year to date 26, I guess October, we're already up to like 34%. So the supply side, Phil, to your point, is dramatically increasing over the last couple of years. The next chart is like, okay, what what is going in to this? And you know, when you look at it, it 80% is art. Uh because that is the biggest thing. A distant second at

27% was audio. So like the 11 labs type audio work 21% text like letters and then tech was 14. I I didn't quite understand why tech was there like what consumerf facing tech or if people are just m mislabeling themselves or not.
I don't believe the 14% number for tech. I think it's significantly higher.
Well they don't have to disclose it. So that's where I think people are just [ __ ] up and they
and then players would never know, right? Because obviously the tech you just can't tell the difference versus art you kind of have to. you have to I I think this is a public service message if like you are checking that box because there is a significant impact on your revenue and your units sold if you have an AI disclosure on your game in the west and so when it when Yoast gets into that then it gets into like players are voting no on games with those disclosures now the here's the here why are they voting no is it because it's AI slop is it because they are anti- AI is

it because you know as we talk about AI democratizing the world you know the games aren't that good. We don't actually know the reason why they are saying no but you if you do vote and you do put AI disclosure on your game just know it has a chance to reduce your sales count right now. So I I think that you know Tim's point is that Steam and and Valve are I think he quote says like it's a political statement that you have this AI disclosure disclosure. I I do think it's unfair the way that they have the disc personally that the way that they have it right now because it is impacting people's ability to utilize technology and get a sales outcome. Adam thoughts?
Yeah, I I would just say the I read the article. I think he talked a little bit about the AI disclosure impact, but he also caveed it heavily, right? Because of just how lopsided sales are in Steam anyways, right? Like when you basically cut out the top games on Steam, then

your sales impact's going to be pretty difficult to discern, right? Like it's going to end up being like most of the titles that are AI disclosure here are going to be very small indie titles. So are you really comparing like for like between your two different groups?
Yeah, I think he took the top 90% when he did the AI disclosure impact on revenue. He took that upper slice, you know, kind of like what we talked about on Prompta games, which is, you know, with these great access to tools comes great AI slop and a lot of supply and a lot of things that don't matter. So, he did, what I thought was cool is he at least like looked at the cream, the cream that rose to the top to be like, hey, it is actually impacting those games as well.
What will get consumers on board is if you create an amazing game using AI, first of all, right? That's obvious, right? Second thing that's obvious is that once these AI tools are embedded within the major engine which basically is Unity and Unreal,

the cat's out of the bag or theing genies out of the bottle, right? It'sing over, right? So AI is game development at that point. So I don't even know why this debate even exists because that's happening, right? [laughter] Whether you want to or not, Unity is enabling it. And now obviously Epic is like [ __ ] you know, full boat. Let's do this, right? So, I don't know.
Well, my my sense here though is like the the backlash and where it's coming from, a lot of it comes from art and audio where there's an assumption that it really impacts people's jobs that it's based on basically replicating or stealing a bunch of artists and recording artists work in order to create the content. But when it comes to like tech and a little bit more text, it doesn't have that issue. So I think the way to address a lot of the backlash actually is what you're saying which is create a techbased experience that is really only possible because of AI and then you'll start to see people jump

onto this trend and say like wow this can create experiences that you can't create we haven't been able to create before by smaller teams that we want to cheer for instead of big AAA developers and then you'll start to see that sentiment change. The example that I'll give recently, which I've been pretty excited about, is there's a mod for Red Dead Redemption 2, a recreation of the Nemesis system from like Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War.
Oh, really?
Right. So, somebody actually created
patented just to point out.
Yeah, they they Yeah, they restricted
decompiling.
Sure. Right. But
at the end of the day, it's different enough from design, whatever. But it's a coded system which creates the like gang warfare of Red Dead Redemption with like full gangs with grunts that get promoted NPCs that fully remember what you've done to them. Obviously in the sandbox of Red Dead Redemption 2 and what you're already seeing is like top streamers that before were absolutely saying like yes AI is the worst. They're now like

holy [ __ ] this is like the coolest thing that I've ever played. You have to play this mod. And it's because it's a mod. It's a single dude who used AI assisted engineering to create something that nobody's played before and then they're like, "Okay, now it's fine."
Adam, your point is well taken, but why in the [ __ ] would you use an example of someone that you clearly went against the patent that Warner Brothers has? [laughter]
Oh, whatever. I don't know.
You know what I mean? Clear anymore. Well, well, I guess like if you see the mod, there's enough design change that
they'll probably be fine.
There will be more mods like that.
My understanding is they were like absolutely adamant about enforcing this patent. Like they wouldn't let anybody use anything like that.
Either way, there will be more mods like this. Maybe not based on the Nemesis system, but based on like really interesting, let's say sandbox generation in the background that people are going to start jumping on and then games will be generated better.

Yeah. But I I guess this is the other problem with AI is that they're basically you're just decompiling existing systems and and recreating.
In this case, this was not decompiling Shadow of War and using it in Red Dead Redemption 2, right? This was somebody generating code that okay created whatever. Yeah,
that's a lot. So, but you look you can actually put I would imagine you could basically describe the systems that were in Shadow of Mordor and say, "Hey, replicate this and create this system in the new new game, you know, like that's probably what they did, right? This was not Tabularasa and this guy came up with this idea on his own."
But but that's that's fine. We've already resolved the copyright stuff. It's a very low bar for them to have creative enrichment. So you can say use the RD use the neminus system as a starting point and it would be true if that there was no changes whatsoever then that would be copyright violation but it doesn't take much in the chat window to add creative enrichment to

that prompt and that's what they would show. Now you could still argue that there's something there. I just don't think it would survive. Like the copyright stuff is closed. Like I hate to break it to you artists listening to this but like it's over you know. I just don't know what to tell you. Like it's it's tough.
It's it's done.
Cease.
Sorry. I'm I'm with you. I'm just suggesting that maybe a better example.
I would love to find another example. I'm just saying this week I saw it and it was
I think to Adam's point is as the mods or the decompilings get better and better and as we stop having six fingers, players are going to stop being able to notice when it is because AI used to equal slop, right? when it came out, it was like, "Oh, this doesn't look real. This doesn't look right. There's something not wrong about it." So, there's there's the people that are like, "This is not made by humans." And there's nothing we can ever do about those people that feel that way. But then there's like players in the middle who are like, "This doesn't feel right. This doesn't have quality." Once that quality, and we're really close to solving the quality bar. We're really close to no more six fingers. I don't

know if people are going to know anymore except for these disclosures which then make people you know Tim's view is that's a political vote. I I don't know if I agree with that. But should things be marked as this was used with AI art or not? I don't know. I don't know.
Just remind everyone that there's a lot of human slop, you know, and I wouldn't [laughter] I wouldn't I wouldn't hold AI slop on a particular pedestal, right? You have to judge things at the margin. And human beings certainly have a lot of that, too. It's just never been able to elevate like it has with the ease that it is now. Okay, let's move on. So, for fun, let's play who's the top mobile game maker of 2026. So, pocket gamer.pizz has um a little top 50 chart out. These lists are always a little bit cheeky. Um so, I just thought it was fun to check in on mobile. Phil always yells at me and says, "Jen, let's talk to mobile." factors to make the top 50 list for pocket gamer. This list is is

important because it is not just revenue although they do list revenue first. Quality of new game releases, innovation, business expansion, growth, live ops success and other factors. Guesses on anyone? And so if you are watching the screen, you are seeing the sensor tower list, not necessarily the pocket gamer list, but what do you guys think would be number one survival? First of all, their contributions to Forex have continued to like accelerate this year. Like it's not just Kingshot, which we've been talking about. They launched two other ones. I do just wonder if the Forex category has reached equilibrium and it looks like it's contracting, but they're the most interesting company in the world right now in gaming in my opinion
that and what they're doing on the casual side.
For me, it is 10 cent above and beyond. I mean, when we spoke to Riot CFO, you know, Crest, we did that interview. Three of the games that are the top games in China are Riot Games. Valerant, Wild Rift, and Team Fight Tactics. Those are 10-centent games. Then you get Honor of Kings. Then you get Supercell. If you

roll up Supercell underneath them as a publisher, I just don't know how Tencent isn't like far and away always the best. And Delta Force, right? Delta Force is now crushing it, especially in China. So, that was my like obvious vote for me. Crest,
we're looking at the top 10 revenue right now, by the way. Yeah, because because Phil was not playing our game, but for the audio listeners, I can't see it. Like, who would who would you have guessed?
I would have guessed. Yeah, you're right. I'm with you. 10-centent makes the most sense, right? They're the biggest biggest baddest.
Yeah.
And they Yeah. And they seem to have consolidated all these, although Supercell is listed separately on the Pocket Gamer list.
Yeah. On this one, they listed them separately. So, let me I'll do the countdown from Pocket Gamers list. Grand Games. Number 10, Supercell. Hungry Studio. Number seven, Voodoo. All of us question this one.
Voodoo, come on. [laughter] Let's get real.
Number six is Take Two Interactive. So that's basically Zingga with Rollic and those guys. Uh, number five is Dream,

but number four is 10 cent. Number three is Century. Phil, there's yours. Number two, Micro Fund, Gossip Harbor. Number one, we did not plan this. Sorry, Adam. is Scopi with Monopoly Ghost, Humble Guy, Star Trek Fleet Command, Marvel Strike Force. I was like, as much as I do love our Scopley friends, um I pulled up the top revenue worldwide, which is why we were looking at this one to which Tencent uh is number one, followed by Century. And so the the third little chart that I did, I had Senior Claude help me compare the two. And when you compare the two, you know what's really interesting is that six publishers are in both top 10s. Dream is the only one in with the same rank. Microphone has the biggest drop in the shared group. It's second on the pocket gamer list, number seventh on on sensor tower. Four publishers are only in the pocket gamer list. Voodoo, which I guess they had to pick an Admon or an IAA game company and

Viva France, I don't know. Hungry Studio, which is block something. What are they? Block blast color block jam. I always forget which one.
Block blast. Yes,
block blast. Um, which that was a whole other video. One day we'll talk about the how they are going after ad revenue with players. Supercell and grand games are the four publishers that are only in pocket gamer list. And then four are only in sensor tower. Microsoft, which is Candy, Minecraft, Playicks, Moon Active, and Funfly, which is I think that one's last war survival, that 4X game, and then Microsoft had the biggest gap. So, anything interesting that you guys see as we check in on our mobile friends,
Turkey, Turkey, baby, Turkey,
Turkey, Turkey, and China. That's all that matters now. It's all that matters in mobile. French, who gives a [ __ ] Uh, Hungry Studio, Riffraff, Supercell irrelevant these days. Take 2 Turkey, Dream Games, Turkey, 10-centent China, Sentry Games China, Microphone China,

Scopely, uh, very confused. And also yours Gen I do not believe had Pokémon Go in it. I think that's still diced out into NATCA, but a two game uh, company and they need to figure out how they're going to grow those two games or add a third one. And I don't think they've done either of that yet. They are down 18% year-over-year scopely according again don't have web store revenue but according to sensor tower they're down 18% year-over-year which is why vehehemly disagree agree but vehematly disagree with with the with the take
the pocket game. Yeah.
Yeah.
There you go. So that goes from mobile. Now we're going to go to as HD as you can get with Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4. Eiffel Tower, iconic. Tower of London, historic. [music] The Two Towers, simply epic. But none of them tell you anything about mobile app intelligence, downloads, [music] revenue, active users, and my personal favorite, weekly cohorted retention. Get the real story, get the real data, get sensor tower today.

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mountains of complex data into clear actionable intelligence that separates winning campaigns from budget- draining experiments. And I know that many of the top game companies leverage Apps Flyier [music] and are a key partner in their success. Appslier, where your app's potential meets performance. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4. Phil Shooter Monthly. Captain, what's going on? It is time for the annual Call of Duty release. That's right, you heard it right. It is October and let's check back in and everyone's favorite new Microsoft franchise. The story going into this is remember they have the rotating sub labels which has really become the modern warfare label first started by Vincent company who would go on to do Respawn Entertainment and they also have the Black Ops franchise which has been Treyarchs and has been kind of a more I don't know they've both been wildly successful and they both have different eras as you know where Black Ops is more kind of cold warry and a

little more arcadey and the Modern Warfare series is a little bit more serious again modern warfare these are also the genres and are the excuse me the errors that also sell the highest consistently. So you can see why they just go between them. And so the early results are in and it looks like Modern Warfare 4 is doing exactly what it needed to do, which is perform well above Black Ops 7. And it looks like it's achieved that its results right now if you're looking at the early releases. And again, it's hard to line up some of the Steam data, which we're pulling from Video Game Insights because remember they have the Call of Duty HQ, which means we can't easily separate each of the SKs, and we also get War Zone sometimes mixed in there. And so it's hard to get a like for-like analysis, but early signs point to Modern Warfare 4 being above Modern Warfare 3 and certainly above Black Ops 7. So hats off to them. I would say like what what do we care about in this franchise? Well, first of all, the franchise is not on PS4 and Xbox One. I'd like to call that out. It is also on Switch. So brace yourselves. Those numbers are not reported here. I it would be off the

axis to look at those numbers. The gameplay itself has become more serious. So, they have this thing called Ballistic Authority, which removes hip, fire, bloom, if you're familiar with how FPS's work. Normally, when you would fire from the hip, so you're not aiming down sights, you might have a random splatter inside the crosshair reticle. But when you fire in Modern Warfare 4, that is a consistent spray pattern. So, there's a little bit less RNG. They're toning down all of the movement stuff that Black Ops 7 has. Remember omni movement? This lets you slide in any direction, even one that you're not facing. They're going back on some of the transversal mechanics or at least they're making it a little bit easier. You also have prestige going back where they're going to offer two different prestige options. They have classic prestige which is the prestige we all know and love which is that you reset everything. But they've also started to change prestige if people have been playing more recent Call of Duties where you might be able to actually keep every unlock. And so they're letting players choose this time. And I would say the only thing that I think is really interesting from a gameplay perspective that you know is something that we should talk about is they have these

things called apex attachments. So one of the things that I don't think Call of Duty has solved is their quote endgame or really a lot of firstperson shooters have kind of like that endgame horizontal progression. And this Apex attachment is specific to the gun and it's only unlocked after you max out the gun level for that particular gun. And it's not just like adding stats. It actually changes what the gun does. So like for instance, I might add like a targeting optic and an air burst launcher and that might help you like flush people out of cover. There's just a lot of things that I think are interesting here with their Apex attachment system that we'll see whether or not survives in the franchise. The other one I will call out is they have this thing called a gunnery adviser. So if you know Call of Duty, half of the monetization model is them just pre-elling you attachments that you would normally earn during gun progression. You essentially kind of pre- earn them and then when you level up the gun, you get them normally through progression. The blueprint just lets you accelerate that. They're offering basically clippy for Microsoft to help you design a gun. And so you're

going to have a little gun buddy here to help you figure out what attachments you want to put in your gun. And I'm very interested to see if this will undermine the blueprint system. I actually look at the blueprint system as a UX shortcut. And I think there's a real threat here that they could undermine this half-hazardly. And just the one last thing that I think we'll I'll call out here is Killblock, which is a Call of Duty map that they're trying to have with this slab design where they're going to try to reconfigure the map into different Lego pieces, which I think is an interesting way to kind of milk maps for higher productivity of content by creating new configurations that are slight enough that you want to master each of them. Let's see if it works. But I think that's another interesting idea from this franchise. Adam, Eric, Jen, I don't know if you've been playing DMZ by DMZ, by the way. No DMZ take yet. We'll wait for shooter monthly for that. But DMZ is back, by the way. Looks like they've received the feedback from the prior version.
Yeah. My quick take is that look, it has an 86 Metacritic, which actually is quite good for Call of Duty versus 66 last year, which was horrific.
Yeah. And part of it's because the

single player is also amazing. And you talked about the multiplayer stuff, which is cool, but the single player is actually really really good if if you played any of it. I played I watched my son play a little bit. I played a little bit. Obviously, the game seems to be doing well from your stats, but I imagine it's easily up from last year because last year was a terrible, right? The problem is that GTA is going to take the wind out of its sales in a few weeks. And so there is some risk that the momentum is going to get completely fortunate, but I imagine it's got to be up 20 30% at least from last year if I were to guess like high level um on a revenue basis and that's good for Call of Duty. It's just too bad that this the quality of the game was so bad last year. um made it really tough and and the battlefield competition was was huge last year too. uh they don't have any competition this year with the exception obviously GTA
but why is the comp battle black ops 7 of the call of duty structure right typically it's Infinity Ward comes out with the best version then Treyarch

comes out with a pretty good pretty close version and then there's the off year
like comparing Modern Warfare 4 to Modern Warfare 3 which was the off year like in Black Ops 7 which was an off here. Like it just feels weird to me versus comparing it to Modern Warfare 2. The weird thing with this graph, Phil, is like I'm looking at Steam CCU. Maybe I'm just looking at it differently, but I'm looking at like a CCU spike of nearly 500K for Modern Warfare 2. And like to me, usually Infinity Ward sets the pace for the next two years, right? Like they get the big spike, the big re-engagement beat that that sets up Treyarch to succeed next year. that sets up the off year to be still good, at least financially. So, for me, I I'm actually more worried about performance than I think you guys are here. In terms of like the game itself, the game is amazing, right? Like I I played through the campaign. Um I would

say that like the set pieces in it are incredible. They actually seem to have taken like every Keano Reeves movie and made it a bunch of set pieces in this thing. Like you literally play as John Wick in like Mission 2 and then you're like Matrix the second movie in one of the next ones. Like they just need to bring Keanu as the protagonist moving forward. [laughter] I feel like that is really the missing piece for you. You know what's really funny about that? That was like the first comment my son made. He's like, "Why don't they make a John Wick game? What the why doesn't they make a John Wick game?" because he was playing this game and like it was like just reminding him of it was anyway.
But no, like the campaign definitely back to form. The GTA 6 is a really tough comp year. It was clear like from the buildup. The GTM just wasn't getting the same type of traction this year as it should have for an Infinity Ward game. But I'll say like in terms of the mechanics, shooting, and movement just feels incredible. Feels great to come back to this. I will just say Infinity Ward in terms of feedback, recoil, and audio feedback is absolutely next level.

better than I felt in Modern Warfare 1 and Modern Warfare 2. Um, and I'll just say like it the craft of these guys is just keeps pushing up notch overnotch. No one else can keep up with these guys. The thing I'm worried about is really just performance. It's like I think this game should be setting that pace for what Treyarch and the next game is going to be. And I think they would have needed a higher spike on this. And we'll see how the sales data comes in over the next few weeks. But I just don't think Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops 7 being those two games is not what their expectations should be set by. And that's even just taking out Game Pass and Xbox as a platform. Let's just ignore that given those issues. Like the Steam and PlayStation performance does not look like it's on track for anything I would say beyond Black Ops 6 and below Modern Warfare 2, which I would say is the bound for this.
Okay. Well, let me chime in with a few marketing points and then my first point

is actually a class point. Um, you know, Vinceella passed away last year and the team put in a tribute to him in the game because obviously he was Infinity Ward. So, I thought that was a very, very classy move. On the marketing side, uh, what I thought they did really well, just two points. One was they really doubled down on the pre-order unlock and it allowed you to unlock the single player campaign a week early. And so what this does is it gives social media organics a chance for people to start talking about the game and showing it without everyone bitching and complaining about multiplayer issues or cheating or any of that other stuff. So I thought that was really smart and well done. The second thing is they upped their partnerships from like typical dude like monster, you know, crush this beer can or this can energy can against my head to a partnership with Aston Martin. Uh, and so they went a little bit more on the luxury side. And so this is Call of Duty Dreadnot, which is like one of the vehicles in there. So I

thought that was an interesting evolution in the partnerships from very typical bro stuff to a little bit more like higherend stuff. So two cool things.
You think this is a good idea? Like they're literally putting [laughter] they're literally putting an item into the game from Aston Martin. Like, don't you think this distracts from the like, normally you tone down cosmetics and this type of stuff at launch to maintain
the sanctity of the IP and narrative, especially for Modern Warfare, which is a serious take rather than the more Mountain Dew Black Ops 7?
It's realistic. What What's wrong with that?
It's just Okay. All right. I'm not getting in this one. All right. I I just don't think that their go to market actually was that strong this year, but I think a lot of it was dragged down by last year. Um, and the second they probably got their budget cut dramatically.
They were left for dead last year. Like they said, and people were saying that the Call of Duty franchise is over, right? So that's why I'm using the comp from last year is because
I mean, people thought it was over,

right? And clearly it's not over. I mean, this game is like the highest quality. But then let's think like what what is the real expectations set by this game and how do they make sure that they're set up for the next few years? My sense is that this isn't hitting those expectations, but they have definitely dug themselves out of that big ass sentiment hole that they had from Black Ops 7.
What would it mean for them to set it up for the next couple years though? What would that what would you expect out of this atom?
So typically from a Call of Duty yearby-year perspective, right? Like let's go back to Modern Warfare 1 in 2019. You have Modern Warfare, then you have Black Ops, and then you had Call of Duty Vanguard. It went Modern Warfare, Black Ops, Vanguard. It just And then as soon as Infinity Ward came up, then you get this big big resurgence. So that's usually when I'm comping Infinity Ward games, I'm comping to Infinity Ward beats. I'm not comping to Treyarch and I'm not comping to Sledgehammer.
I think that's all well heard. But what

you said about like setting up the franchise for the future, like what what did you expect this to carry water for other than just like it's another year, this one's going to sell a lot?
This gets more into like the state of Xbox. What does Xbox need Call of Duty to do to be successful, right? What does Call of Duty need to do this year to make sure they avoid a major studio shakeup and put more of that franchise at risk versus stay the course and continue to have that triple studio or triple release model, making sure they can hit quality every single year? That's more what I'm questioning is like, does this game set up the next few years for that quality? Because this one felt like they had more time to bake. Infinity Ward had time more than Black Ops 7 did. Like we were talking last year, Black Ops 7 felt like it was basically pulled together in the last few months
because it was, wasn't it?
Right. So, the next couple games are going to be on that rush schedule. So,

can they still maintain that quality?
Should this have been a new IP? Like, what I'm hearing you say is that they are the leaders. Like, they are carrying the flag. They're like, "We're the ones who have the highest quality bar. We set the next peak and then we expect the next few years to decline because of the quality of these guys. Was modern warfare for with this theme by the way which I think isn't the theme like South Korea versus North Korea like a very specific localization.
I know we don't call that Jen.
Okay. Well, I just just try to break it down quickly politics here in games. Jen,
but that's the theme of the game. Like was that the right theme? They nailed it on quality. They nailed it on rebuilding the sentiment. I'm questioning right now based on the data that I'm seeing that they're hitting it on the numbers.
Could it have been theme? Could it have been they should have done a new kind of sub theme
or you don't know?
I don't think so. I think it's probably to do with the go to market though. like

in order to get the numbers back after you've dug a hole like they had with Black Ops 7, what do you need in terms of the product package to make sure people come back and are excited?
More and Martin. Duh. [laughter]
I don't think the Aston Martin did it. Uh, and uh, the theme itself like I thought there was positive but like it didn't knock it out of the park for sure. So there was something about that go to market and around like grassroots organic interest in this game that didn't appear this year. And so in order for them to hit back and go back to that same sort of Infinity Ward spike that they've had in previous years, there was definitely something missing.
It would be a fascinating research study to talk to players. Was it a I'm I'm saving my money, you know, in a challenging economic environment. Uh do you save your money for um GTA? Are people just not into gaming right now? I I don't know. I don't know.
There is a ton of external reasons why

this game always had a harder time this year with GTA 6 and with Black Ops 7, right? But those are
and Xbox [ __ ] Like, did you see the September numbers?
But usually forecasts don't care about external circumstances. Usually expectations can't be lowered in order to make sure that the business is running well and studios continue forward.
Shouldn't they though?
You let's go talk to to Chararma about lowering expectations on Call of Duty. Yeah.
Yeah. [laughter] All right. Well, speaking of that,
speaking of Xbox,
take us through the multiple news items.
Yeah, I I'm going to do do this as fast as possible, but the last one is actually the most troublesome. So, we'll go through this. Um so the first one that came out was a group of private equity firms reportedly exploring a buying out of Xbox's gaming division for 100 to $150 billion. Uh this was reported by the information and they

also said that it was all exploratory so it's not really didn't lead to like actual negotiations but two points here. One is that obviously there is are people out there looking potentially for doing this. there is demand for this as I've said many times on the podcast and I talked to some of the bankers and this is true. The second thing is that this actually could be a is it the stocking horse? Is that the right way saying it? But anyway, a way of getting the information out there so that people that are interested will start building coalitions of the willing to actually do a a legitimate bid. So this is a banker ploy to get interest and demand for this potential type of transaction. So that could be what's going on with these type of leaks. The second thing is that Microsoft themselves are offering 60,000 employees exit packages potentially opt in right that's insane right that is AC that is like almost I think 25% of their employees they are offering the ability

for them to leave except bonuses unprecedented unprecedented they did this before but it was like such a smaller scale and this includes everyone from Xbox but also from finance human resources, co-pilot, even core AI, Windows devices, across the board, these this option exists. So, they are really
all Microsoft, right?
Yeah. All of Microsoft. They're trying to call the herd, clearly. Obviously, allocate more money towards AI, I I suppose. Third story was Netflix was reportingly offered Microsoft $500 million for seven-year rights to the Xbox IP for film making, film, and TV. Obviously, Xbox evidently countered for another $800 million for $800 million incremental $300 million and Netflix would do withdo its offer. Now, you know how I feel about these sorts of things. Um, this is not a bad idea in order to license it and get it off their plate so that they can focus on what's matters is making IPs that matter. And so I, you know, again, this also could be another

quote unquote stalking horse because I don't know what the expression is in order to get more demand and more interest from other parties potentially, but Netflix seems to have the biggest coffers for this sort of thing. So I don't know if they're going to get this. So now they're just basically going to do it all a cart, which also makes sense too for games. But again, if their IP is not valuable like Halo and now Gears of War, I don't know what the they're selling, right? But anyway, whatever.
They're selling Blizzard and Minecraft. Yeah. Okay. Fine. Yeah. Those are still valuable. The biggest news of the week was really this Helen Chang leaving, right? And I don't know her. I don't know anything about her, but she was at the company for 21 years and she was uh leading Minecraft before she was moved to this new role three months ago as COO, right? And basically all her responsibilities are evidently going to be moved to another Xbox leader until they figure out what to do with this role. And then Microsoft really gave no explanation. It was like a two sentence thing from Miss Chararma evidently. So

this is the most vexing because it's really not a good look because she put this woman in place like 3 months ago, right? And she had the ability to fire her if that's what she wanted to do. It's unclear as why she wouldn't, but anyway. So it's pretty clear that she was either pushed out or she was quit, right? and maybe she saw what was happening and she left in outrage which I actually heard some confirmation on that fact.
Well, you're take us through the timeline because that that was really an interesting part of the story of like how how over 3 months does somebody go from being in the newly created COO of Xbox which by the way when we talked about it on the podcast we said was a great idea. It's like oh actually for the first time somebody like having oversight of all the things. So go through the timeline.
Right. So in July she became CEO. She was placed by Chararma in this role. Right. Um and then at the same time I think Mojang and King were carved out and reported directly to Chararma. But

you have to understand before Chang was in charge of of Minecraft. And then October 8th Sharma announced new leaders of the XP division which was Walters someone that reported to Chang and Mojang. this new Angelene Angelito Smith came in to be in charge of Roblox basically. So in essence it took away the two key things that she enjoyed or that she was she was part of and gave it to other outsiders basically and both of those reporting to Chararma. So basically Chang's name was not even in any of the announcement even though she ran through Minecraft for years and Walters reported to her in um 2025. And so in October 19th Angel Leo Smith starts and then October 23rd Chang leaves. So feels to me that Chang got screwed and left. That's [laughter] what it feels like to me, right? She just got like completely sidelined, right? and

and all these other leaders started taking over like the pieces of the business that were kind of her wheelhouse. But what doesn't make sense is why she wouldn't leave to begin with, right? And what I heard though um last week was that what was happening was that since she started the COO role, she started to see what Sharma's goals were and ambitions were and and how she was getting rid of a lot of the game makers and perhaps licensing and moving some of these games to other teams that had no experience or no ability to actually make the games. She did not like the process and what was happening with this the studios and with with the game teams and I think she probably just objected to the whole thing and was like look I'm out like this sucks. Um I don't Sharma doesn't know what she's doing type thing and she justing bounced you know because that's the only explanation really that makes sense to me and that was something that someone articulated to me. So yeah it does not bode well for the long-term health Xbox. Now, on the other hand, you

could make it saying that Chang is old school and old OG and she's she's not changing with the times and she didn't was not on board with Chararma's vision. If you're Chris Heatherly and you're holding water for Chararma, you know, like she can do no wrong, right? And so, she knows everything about game development because she's been there for a year, right? You can make that argument too, I suppose, but it just just does not look it's not a good look right now for Xbox. So,
not even a year. Uh, the point I wanted to to talk a little bit about was this Netflix point because remember they said that part of their strategy was to make these games and franchises into entertainment franchises. And so I just think that them passing on, you know, $500 million, which was like the initial bid, and asking for 800 over seven years, like that's fantastic. That hits your goal. That gets you revenue. that does everything you want on a fantastic platform that's going to deliver it for you. And you know, the the Xbox

Entertainment series that that I wanted to watch that I think they should still do is called Xbox Succession. That's the one that's really Can you imagine all the office politics like if cameras had been falling around like those discussions that we were just talking about? Like that would be the best possible TV anyway. That's the best TV.
More arrested development in my opinion but better.
Oh my god. any combination.
Phil Spencer's Michael Phil Spencer's Michael Bluth.
Matt Booty Matt Booty's just like there's always money in the banana stand.
Solid as a rock. Solid as a rock. [laughter]
So, but but the irony is what you know was was actually kind of going into the Netflix deal weren't Halo. It wasn't like Xbox. You know, as much as I love Gears of War, it was the things that they bought. It was Minecraft. I think they said Diablo. So, the Blizzard IP and then everyone's favorite Candy Crush video game or game show with Mario Lopez. Right. Right, Phil. That's your favorite.
Rest in peace.

So, I don't know. They should have taken that deal. Just take the money and run on that and put that in your bank account and go.
Yeah. I don't know.
All right. Let's end on a little just really quick, Phil, if you can play this Tik Tok. A little GTA 6 hype. So, starting October 15th, uh Miami has undergone a complete takeover. So, the word on the street is that uh Rockstar paid $4 million to the city to have the rights to basically reskin the city. So, there's like a Goodyear vice city blimp. like the uh rail stations have uh you know the branding when you go to any of the stadiums like so all of the ingame like uh food stands are are taking over the city. So what's really well done about this is you know and from a marketing standpoint yes spending4 million to take over a city is is crazy. No one's ever going to do that but the social buzz going on is amazing. So, it

kind of almost goes back to that severance topic that Chris, you and I talked about a long time ago is if you can do something IRL and have it be so interesting and compelling that social followers show up to Miami to film it, to put it on social, that's where it starts to get organic traffic and it starts to be interesting. So, if there's one thing to take away from it, it would be it would be that. But most people can't go and take over the uh I think the Miami Heat the BBA team. I think they're reskinning all of their uniforms in the stadium are going to be Vice City and they're throwing like a big basketball game like the night before uh GTA launches, which feels like a moment to show up. That would be cool.
Wouldn't it be incredible to be the head of marketing for GTA 6?
Oh my god.
Can you I just I best job in the world.
There's no way to lose money faster. You can have the most fun.
Pool parties.
What was it? NFL stadium.
They got Justice to make a track.
Justice probably didn't even have like nobody paid money for that. They're just

like, "Yeah, sure. Why not make them make a track
the leverage that they have to go out into the world to anybody and just say, "Yeah, I think you should pay us to do that." Anyone can do whatever they want because they're GTA. Oh, yeah. I need to find that person and just sit down with them and bask in their glory of amazingness. If anyone knows the head of marketing, I would love to do a podcast once they're once they're done. All right, Adam, lovely to see you again, sir. Any any parting thoughts?
No. Good to see you. I'm going to be I guess dead to the world for the next few weeks as Orcina WoW forever GTA 6 comes. So, I guess I'll see you in 2027.
No, we [laughter] Let's plan to see you in late November, December. Hold the slot for us.
Yeah, we'll do in December post GTA 6. what everybody's feeling about the game. Yeah, I'm excited.
Play that. Let's have your thoughts and then, you know, we usually do our year-end awards season anyway. So, we'll we'll tag you back in. All right,

everybody. We will see you again next week.
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