Ubisoft's Ownership Lawsuit, No More Switch 2 News, and Doom Runs On Doom! | Games For Breakfast

Now we're also live on YouTube. You're ditch both of them now. Yeah. Now there's two of them. There's two of them. This is getting out of hand. We will not survive this. I No. Hey, that's some episode one humor for all of you out there. Good morning and welcome to the pre-show for games for breakfast. Um Oh boy. I'm just finishing up my Blue Sky post. Blue ski. Uh pre-show. Uh Janet and Brad, what should I what should be the one sentence I say about the Games for Breakfast post right now? Come meet our surprise third co-host. Will's migraine. Yeah. Yeah. Will is not feeling uh Well, he's he's gonna push on through, soldier. Uh Grass did get it in there first, I think. Let's see. Just the words Baja blast. It is very ta How about I combo it? How about I say it is

very tasty. We will not survive this. And that's will be what I what I write. Okay, great. Awesome. Yeah. Uh it is very tasty. We will not survive this. I could do if I want to go real hard and weird. It is very itchy tasty. We will not survive this. No, I'm not going to do it because it could be a whole different thing. We're good. Chat, why you come to me on this and you bring me hype? You bring me why you're hype already? Why do you do this? Hello there. [Music] Uh, I still have all the leftover birthday things from last birthday. Oh, that's right. We have to ask about this the thing.

Which thing? Uh, future Janet and current Janet and Brad. Um, we wanted to ask you about the the the last thing, right? We had a list of things and we wanted to ask them about the last thing. like what in like in theory without any specifics they would want as as a prize. Oh, I remember. Yeah, we'll do that in the show. Okay. I figured we could do it during the pre-show since Brad's busy hyping. Oh, we could do it during the pre-show. Yeah. I don't know. Palpatine, what do you think? Do we? Okay, good. Yeah. No, we're fine. Okay. So, um Brad and Janet, uh because this will apply to both of you. Uh and yes, that is foreshadowing. Um we couldn't afford fivehadowing, so you're getting foreshadowing instead. You'd be surprised how much it costs to get the hardware for five shadowing. I I don't know if it has to do with ray tracing or hates ray tracing. Yeah. I just I don't know. I'm not find a Raymond to lay down on. Anyway, to trace, right? Yeah, exactly. At least that's our

understanding. It's very expensive to have him lie there full time. Anyway, um so in the future nearish temporally um to this we will be uh perhaps doing something for which you will be rewarded. Um and it is the season for you to do nice things right around an arbitrary date when which commemorates a revolution around the sun of this planetary body. uh uh um where you get rewarded for your good deeds. And we were trying to think of what some nice rewards you would like to see for Oh, I don't know if we reach certain goals in that venture. Yeah. That's so like in the past we've done things like Baja Nelly's, right? Like that's a silly one. We're not doing that again, by the

way. That was a oneand done. We will never mix Baja Blast and Martinelli Sparkling Cider. Two great tastes that do not go great together. It's very tummy upset. Something about them mixes in a like we were holding it together when we did it last time. It's disgusting. Don't do it. Um, thanks Thunder. Thanks, buddy. Uh, uh, oh, and just, uh, so qu the desk, your test is complete. Yeah, received. That is that is a fast username change, by the way. Um uh so yeah, we've done we've done actual plays. We've done um uh Mario Kart matches. We've done just silly things you'd like either big or small. And you don't have to answer it right now. silly things that you'd like Will or I to actually do um for for a reward for uh you doing a good deed aka donating to a charity and Zermit. Yeah, we are. Hello.

This is the pre-show. Welcome. There will be a show assuming that the pre-show ever stops. assuming that hype stops over on Twitch again. How this works and I think we we will get the hype meter eventually moving over here. We're already at the level three over there. Um uh and I the show can't start and I can't have my coffee for another 2 minutes and 13 seconds or until if they happen to keep hyping even though we've warned about the dangers of hype. Uh we just can't move on until it's done. That's right. Mostly because it then we have to thank everyone and it's a big Yep. All right, let's start looking at some of these things. So, someone says, "Strap an action cam to Zoe for an hour." You'd be amazed how boring that would be, but sure. Uh, do a sick flip. Um, I would have to get sick first. And that I don't know if I could time that out as a reward. Um, uh, Balders's Gate 3 patch 8 run. I mean, I would do it if

people are interested in that. Yeah. Uh, French press coffee martinelli spritzer. Also not against it. Oh, I kind of like this one. An official Zoey DND build. Oh, cuz that we could get like we could get like an artist, right, to like do up the stat block and we could get you, me, and Jeff together to like run through the homebrew in like an hour and then we could like publish it as like as a thing with the other thing that we're thinking about because that actually makes a lot of sense. I'm gonna start a document here, a very official document. That's right. So, Zoe D and D block followed by uh Ballers Gate 3 patch 8. Uh followed by what else was there? There was something else. Uh uh Jane Austin LAR in Minecraft. I like

Darkwolves commission a physical hype train model. Oh boy, that's that's a lot. Also, I'm still waiting on my minis to show up here from the UK. Uh, and it makes me sad that it takes so long. Why do take so long to get here from the UK? French press spritzer. Um, we're getting notepads for the funny breakfast show on the funny cartoon bean channel. Should we be worried? Uh, I mean, no more than you should be worried consistently. The standard amount of worry. I don't think we can really. Haha, we're free from the hype train. It's over. Ah, we've defeated you once again, hype beast. Uh, that's a brand, right? Huh? Hype beast. Hypebeast is a brand. I If you say so. Um, yes. Apparently, if I The first thing on Google, it says Hypebeast driving

culture forward. So, that feels like a brand. Monster monster mixer. mix as many monsters as possible. Great. That's actually something easy for Will to do. Yeah. I know. And I have I could borrow my my roommates have um they work uh during the summer at a Renaissance festival. Um and so they they have one day they confiscated a giant glass stein and it's it's got to be more than a liter. And I could make so many flavors of Monster in there. Um eventually it will just taste like chemicals. Sure. But you know that's fine. I'll do that for for for charity. All right. So we got some good stuff. I think this is all good. Yeah. This is this blindfold backseat bario cart. Wait. Okay. So, you wear a blindfold and I have to drive for you or I have I have I have to tell you how to drive and it'll be relevant because we

won't be that far off hopefully from the release of the beach 2. We'll see. So, you won't know all the maps and it'll be worse. We'll we'll do like bob sled practice. It'll be it'll be good. Good. Good. Good. Yeah. Okay. Great. Um All right. I got to thank uh I got to thank a bunch of people. First off, I'm going to go to YouTube because it there's the one very specific one. Zerba, thank you so much for becoming a member over on YouTube. Welcome to the extra fans. Uh that means a lot. Thank you. A reminder, we are looking at as soon as YouTube lets us due to the number of members we have. Get more emotes in there for all of you. We're going to start putting them in uh as soon as we can. We have them all ready because they're all already over here on Twitch and they should just be compatible. So, we're just going to shove them in uh as soon as those memberships uh happen. Um should that be something that you want. Okay. Over here on the Twitch side, I got to thank Valadonna for bits. Sasquatch for 54 months. Kerrion forbiddes new guy for uh

55 months of prime. Secretos for 42 months. It is the answer. Bionic beardly for 49 months. Nova for 75 months. That's three quarters of a century of months. Stop it. Get some help. Crimson Coyote and Copper Chef for more bitties. Mechanism for 47 months, that's almost four years. Uh, Zip for five community gift subs. Mr. Bank for 31 months. Proxj for biddies. That's the end of the hype train. But we do have to thank Crafty J for the 59 months. Nice. With the message, haha, you thought the hype was done, but it was me. That's true. That is true. Well, I I am seeing some folks questioning uh the the the titling of the episode about the the lawsuits and things. Don't worry, Rad SG. We will get there. We will get there. We will get there. Uh will I have to say uh brava on on today's topics. Uh as everyone and we'll actually I won't even get into it. I'm just psyched to talk about it all and that it's not all switched to. Yeah,

I I am I am getting a little burned out like there's no new real information and all anyone's talking about is like tariffs, not tariffs is a thing. And I'm like listen, I I was really happy to do that last week. I got I got out of my system. I watched the John Oliver piece on tariffs, which has a piece on the Switch 2 this morning while I was trying to get ready. Um, so that's a thing. Um, it's rare we get the jump on Mr. Oliver. That that is that is true. Uh, so that's nice. Um, yeah. Uh the other the other one, by the way, is uh and I I did mention this to Matt, the other thing that a lot of places are doing that I have to wade through every time I want to like look and see what people are talking about is plenty of places will take a new game, particularly a new difficult game, and they will just put it in a clothes ringer and just ring out all of the content from it. They're like, "All right, here's an article on how you solve each individual puzzle in the blueprints." And you're like, "Huh? And they're like, "Yes, we

have four pages of articles on the blueprints because we want to SEO maximize. We're SEO maxing. That's how we do it. We do an article. Losers were SEO max, right?" Yeah, exactly. That's That's what it is. And I just don't I don't Yeah, I don't I don't know what to do with that, but uh that is that is always a struggle when there's new stuff. Um Yeah, totally. No, I get it. Well, everybody, thank you for joining us for this uh pre-show on Year of Someone's Lord, April 14th, 2025. That's the year and the time and the things and the stuff. Uh if you are new here, either on Twitch or on YouTube, please say hello. Uh we have all the chats intermingled so we can see them all. Um and yeah, as as illustrated in case you are brand new here, um you can Oh, like and here here we go. Like how about this? Uh Pavara just gifted one membership

to the bull. Oh, thanks. You can have basically if we're chatting, no no donation or anything is required. We as we talk, we'll pop up your stuff and we'll pop we'll talk about it. And yeah, it's it's a way that we get to sort of let everyone know uh what's going on in the other chat without you having to be in the other chat. And also so that uh Nebula who for whom we are recording this um momentarily not yet this won't be on Nebula but the next thing we do will be on Nebula um uh they get some context uh rather than having like all of chat on screen as like a continuous scroll. I do that when it's just me because chat is my co-pilot. Um right I also need a bumper sticker for the back of my gaming chair that says chat is my co-pilot. that that conveniently no one will ever see. But even No, they do cuz when I when I leave Oh, you spit it around. It like No, I don't even spit it around. Chair has a mind of its own. It just sort of like if I'm not sitting in it, it'll just sort of lazily spin. I got

you. I got you. Can it feature a Zoey Bean? Yes, absolutely. Um uh does new to today's stream count? No. No. Uh um male asked uh any thoughts about Marathon? Oh, that's the wrong yo window. Thank you. Um yes, we are going to be talking about Marathon. I actually think it looks sick. Um I am more excited for it than I am for any other extraction shooter. And we'll talk about why. Um I wasn't even aware there was an ARG about it yet. So that's cool. I'll dig into that. There's like a whole thing. Um Uh, apparently my chair is possessed. I'm not sure how to tell you this. That's fine. Also, Richard with a late with a late breaking uh uh idea for a reward. Evil Universe versions. I like that. I like that. That's a good idea. Um, writing it down. All right. Well, I

guess we should start the show. Oh, wait. Will, did you run the intro? Not yet. I have to. No, but don't we have to load it into memory so it doesn't hiccup? Yes. So, so this is going to be the fake intro. It's still the pre-show. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Good morning, Matt. Ah, good morning, Will. Good morning to all of you. For me and the little man with an ice pick behind my right eye. Welcome to Games for Breakfast, the only internet talk show we talk about this week's gaming and tech news. But you know, the same will show that is the only time when your co-host has a migraine, you have a

migraine with them. We're going to run this at least for a while until the reflections get too uh wrong for me. Um, good morning. Hello. Welcome, Benvanu. Uh, we have a smorgish board of wonderful topics that Will has uh prepared for us this fine day. Will, other than your massive headache, how are you doing? Pretty good. Pretty good. Had a had a pretty decent weekend. Um, got to do a bunch of relaxing. Got to play some Repo. Matt, have you played Repo? I have not played Repo. Repo. Now, Repo, bearing of course no similarity to the genetic opera, though you are required to make jokes about every little glass vial being Zydrate. um is a sort of phenomenal combination of the cuteness of um Among Us, okay, with the chaos and idea of Lethal Company.

in that you are you are uh very cute robots uh who are scavenging um items of value out of abandoned and definitely very haunted places. Um and you are uh attempting to avoid or uh fight back against monsters that are um directly out of the mind of someone who needs more therapy than money can buy. Um, and it's a wonderful time mostly because uh you can shrink. Like the big the big shtick is you can shrink and your friends can pick you up and put you places so you can get stuff. But it's it's great fun and very good chaos. So I got to play a bunch of that with um with Alchemy and friends yesterday uh on her stream and that was that was a lovely time. It was great. Nice. I uh I got to continue. I still have not beaten Tree. Um, so I got actually some time this weekend to to click away at that. I did

finally beat my first furnace golem. Uh, which which was an incredible feat of of punching uh big feet to make thing topple to throw thing and thing. I was going to say, did you dunk it? Cuz you got a I Well, actually, the first one I did, I did two of them. The first one I did, I I did dunk it. The second one I did, if you're a faith strength build, you don't really need to dunk it. uh you can actually kind of nail it down enough quick uh to get it there. But it was good. Speaking of Elden Ring, I am uh I'm letting people know letting people know that um we're in the middle of South of Midnight right now, which will be playing after this, which is an amazing game. It's it's a beautiful amazing game. Um it's Ahmed Best's game directorial debut. Ahmed Best known as um the actor who played Jar Banks. Yeah. uh and has and from that is it called JS from that he is uh had this this whole arc with the Star Wars

franchise he uh created a character called Kellerin Beck who is a Jedi master in charge of teaching younglings and that's been like indoctrinated into Star Wars canon and he's in the Mandalorian and a bunch of other stuff but one of the things he's always wanted to do is direct a video game so he's directed South of Midnight a game about um healing inter intergenerational traditional trauma with traditional witchcraft in the deep south of the US in like invoking um the folklore of the area and it's really good. Yeah, it's next on my list after uh when Jamie and I finish um Split Fiction. I think that's when I'm going to be I played a bunch of that. Side note, again, shout out to Split Fiction as well. Uh Split Fiction slaps and every time I think I'm going to get sick of it, it just ups itself. It's crazy. It's so good. I I've been watching some playthroughs of it. It looks It looks very good. And the puzzles, it does look like you get like each person gets at least two playthroughs of it because the two sides are so very different. It's

not like, you know, red blue sort of sides. It's It's very different. It's mechanic. Yeah, it's also I I missed this. Hello to you, too. Hi. Oh, and and Belle caught uh the Invisa mug. That's which is right here which does have a game face on it. It's just you can barely see him available and I'll find Nebula stores now. Yeah. Um yeah, after after we finish with that and maybe a couple of other things may it'll either be blueprints or Elden Ring at some point. Uh I've never played Elden Ring. Uh I've never really played a Souls like to completion. I've played some Souls one and hated it. Uh, but I have I have grown as a gamer since then and we'll see if I can grumble my way through Elden R. And will with seamless co-op and this community. Yeah. I feel like every bit of the Dark Souls stuff that you don't dig or the Souls like stuff will will wash away like like like

something in a fine night rain. Yeah, that's right. Um that that's very true. So, we're going to be tackling that. Anyway, Matt, all that to say, we've had a very interesting weekend and we have have a lot to talk about. That's true. And if you have anything to talk about or want to tell us about your interesting weekends, you can do that over on Blue Sky, you could do that. Just say hi, say hello, see if you like these stories or you want to hear other things, that'd be great. You can also obviously comment in the chat right now. Or if you're watching this on uh the YouTube, you can type that in there, too. But uh Rocky, if you're over on Nebula, that is how you get a hold of us. When did they when did they change that? Oh my god, they changed a thing. All right. Anyway, well, let's actually we can go to our first story because, uh, it's a quick one and that's what we we're showing you right here. So, uh, last week the Minecraft movie, uh, definitely hit theaters and broke a bunch of records. We talked about it a little bit last night, but, uh, last night. Wow. Last week. But, uh, my other gig, the only podcast about

movies, yes, there is an asterisk in that name somewhere. Got to have the one and only Will be B. Credits on our show. uh and to talk about the Minecraft movie because it's great. So, pictured here is all three of us hiding from a creeper. Uh Shahir Dow is my co-host over there and we got to basically take three different people with three very different experiences with Minecraft the property, Minecraft the game, and then going to see Minecraft the movie or a Minecraft movie as it's called and went into an hour plus long deep dive of basically going through what we think worked, what we think didn't, the cultural relevance of it. Uh we we don't get too much into the upcoming stories of um uh rioting in theaters, which who knows how overblown or not overblown that is. Uh listen, I love people getting excited about movies. What I don't love is a bunch of theater workers having to clean up after your nonsense. So that uh because they are not paid enough for that. Um, but no, if you are interested in hearing some really,

really, really great conversations about the Minecraft movie that is available over on Nebula right now or uh in the RSS feed, just search the only podcast about movies elsewhere. Uh, you can find actually it'll be in the show notes as well, both versions there. Yeah. So, yeah. Uh, Will, it was so good having you on. It's so like I've I've played Minecraft, but I have not not like Will has played Minecraft. Uh, there is a difference there. and I don't think Shahir ever touched it once. So, it was a really good middle ground. Speaking of Minecraft and playing Minecraft, Shane was pitch over the summer at some point, probably in late June, we are going to be we we we have have uh a community Minecraft server. Um I am going to be restarting it over the summer. So, uh it will be modded. It will be very modded. It will be extremely modded. We are either playing Crafttori or Craft to Exile, both of which are like high-end, very long, very

deep packs. Um, so if those are things that interest you, it will be open to everyone who is in the Discord. So that means if you're a patron, a subscriber on Twitch, or a channel member on YouTube, uh we'll be able to get people in there. There will be like a concurrent limit, but if you are uh interested in those uh support us sometime in June, it'll be one of those those membership perks. There you go. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Cool. Uh Will it sweep the razies? I actually don't think so. Uh, here's a spoiler for my thoughts on it. I I I came up with this phrase or did I talk about it? Did I say this last week? I can't remember if I said this on this show or another thing I was talking to the show about, but the Minecraft movie is in my opinion like the equivalent for me like the best most absolute wonderful the top tier S tier McDonald's toy you've ever gotten. Yeah, I think that that's like a really good that's where I feel like it like it fits for me. The Inspector Gadget toys. Yes, the Inspe uh Okay, so back when kids of

a certain redacted age will know, right? Uh um you uh you got all of Gadget's different parts. So you got like his legs, they were different toys, and his torso was a different toy. And his arms were different toys, and his head and his hat were different toys. No, his head was part of his torso, but his hat was a different toy. And you had to get all the toys to put gadget together, but he had all the go- go gadget everything. Um, so a core memory. Yes. Um, yeah. Uh, I I also think it was I think so someone I saw um uh someone on Blue Sky said, "Why is Chicken Jockey funny?" And it I realized that one of the reasons that a lot of people aren't getting it is that some of the key moments in the movie are deeply embedded in like having played Minecraft and

having like an intuitive experience of Minecraft. Yeah. Like chicken jockeyies are the worst. Okay, so if you're not familiar with Minecraft, um a chicken jockey is a chicken with a zombie on it. A baby zombie. Baby zombies are already fast. Chicken jockeyies are a little faster and they're persistent. And if you don't have gear, you will die, right? It will kill you. And the reason that it's funny is it's shot in Freuda because many Minecraft players have experienced being somewhere and thinking that you're safe and then there's a chicken jockey and now you're definitely not. Right. And especially with uh Jason Mamoa's character, this isn't the trailer. This is no spoilers. uh the is in a in a wrestling ring like ready to fight what he's assuming is the toughest biggest thing and then it turns out to be a chicken jockey and then you know it's uh it it I think it plays for more so for Minecraft people. I just anticipate

because I I was not entirely familiar with it. I just figured it was like a rare mob that was tough which is kind of also true. Anyway, that all that to say, we had a lovely conversation about a Minecraft movie. Not the Minecraft movie, a Minecraft movie. That's right. Though it's the first a Minecraft movie. So, if there is another, will it be a Minecraft movie 2 or will it be a Minecraft movie again? Only time will tell because there's going to be a sequel because it made more money than God. I want it to be a Minecraft movie as well. May your Minecraft be with you. And you as well. Yeah, that's what I want. Yeah. Right. A another I like Mary's. I like Mary's. I'm a Gladius. Excellent. Um, these are all Oh, no. Don't curse us with that. Snacking. Don't Don't you dare curse us with Oh, that's so good. Be Minecraft movie. No, stop it. Coppers is great, too. There's

a lot of Wow, y'all are a Nether M. Oh, wow. These are all Oh, a lot. Yeah, a couple people said that, too. This is This is the real trick, by the way, to doing live content is um not another Minecraft movie is uh you just cultivate a really funny audience and then you don't have to be funny because your audience is funny for you. Yeah. Okay. Uh and Belle, I I a thousand% agree. Um having worked a movie theater, it just it's here. Now, I'll get away from the fun and go onto a soap box before we get back to some fun. Uh yeah, and with your spirit. Um amen. Uh no, like everyone having fun, you should always try to make sure that whatever fun you're having is not going to directionally take away from the fun or the or the make someone's life who is facilitating that fun demonstrabably worse without them being incredibly compensated and also signing on for the task. Right? People didn't sign on for

this theaters. And again, I do I blame the people doing the stuff in the theater, but also I blame theater chains for not staffing and not paying enough and not having enough people on hand to take care of things like this. Like, I'm still amazed in New York how few workers they have at the AMC's that I go to. It feels like they should at least double it both for convenience andor uh better working conditions and safety for all involved. like it just feels like that should be it, but they don't. So any people going into these theaters and making enough of a mess in like a ruckus is fine if you're going to if as long as it's not as long as they I would say like sort of like a cultural moment uh and that is sort of expect like people still cheer and clap for Nicole Kidman, right? Like that's fine, but like throwing stuff around and garbage on the flow like anything that's going to cause more than a small uh moment of disruption uh for anyone involved. I mean, they're either being paid to be there or paid to be there. Just, you

know, respect. Postco kind of kind of changed that a little bit. Yeah. Okay. Uh, all that having been said, let's go from shaking our old man canes at clouds about one thing to shaking our old man canes at clouds about another. So, we're going to keep this short because we spent a lot of time on this last week, but it Please see last week's episode uh for more. complete thoughts on the Switch 2. This is not about the Switch 2 itself. This is about the delay. So, we uh I believe last week we knew that pre-orders were going to be delayed. Um we now know that they will um rolling pre-orders in the United States will begin Mar 9th, other M month. Um and the release is still on track for the same day in June. Um, the pre-orders will now be more important because there is a smaller time window. But, uh, reminder, if you are a Nintendo Switch online person with at least 50 hours of

recorded play time on your Switch and the subscription's at least a year old, you get priority pre-ordering if you sign up on the Nintendo site and they'll send you an email and then you have 72 hours hours to pre-order. So, someone some people I think the first wave of that has actually gone out in the US from what I understand. Okay. Um I I did not see that, but I uh I could be wrong. I didn't get one. Uh but I did all the process. Let me let me look. Um but yeah, uh and and just sort of as we're saying here, because they still haven't like actually officially said whatever the release date, uh the pre-release date will be. Um because it seems as though no one really can understand what a switch 2 is and where it falls into these everchanging tariffs that no one seems to either understand what it's for, understand where you collect them, or understand what a piece of technology fits into like is this a computer, is it

a something else? No one really is able to answer those questions. And all of those things are needed if you're going to collect funds based around these products. Yeah. Um and then the other like the the Okay. Dating this episode. It's the 14th of April at 11:35 a.m. This is relevant because this is changing hourly. The switch to may or may not, and no one knows for sure, be included or excluded from all the tariffs. It's going to be May, right? Yeah. Uh, so that Yeah, I have seen that the Switch won't get any tariffs. I've seen that the Switch will get the full 145% because final assembly for the Switch is apparently in China this time. So, that's great. No one knows. But I've also heard that they're stalking them up from Taiwan or something like Vietnam.

Vietnam. Yeah, I've I've heard that they're they're going to have a bunch of Toad cosplayers, fly over from Japan with giant Toad hats full of Switch Twos, and then bribe the Koopa border guards with Toad coins. But like, who knows, right? It no no one knows. If anyone tells you that they 100% know for sure how this is going to land, they're probably about to try and sell you something. usually subscription access to their website. They had way too many wonder flowers and now they're just staring up at a at a a rainbow of information that changes on the minute. Yeah. Yeah. So, who knows? Uh but there was um something a little bit silly surrounding this as well. Um the game that is supposed to be the tour of the Switch 2, we talked about it. I forget like it's I don't even know the title of it, but it's was you figured it would be like the thing to show off all of the Switch's bells and whistles, right? Uh that would come packaged with the game turns out to be a $10 download because

it's a experience to get you to pay more money. Um a lot of push back on that because especially because the Wii famously came with Wii Sports, which was a phenomenal hit and one of the reasons why that system took off as it did. Well, uh, our old pal Reggie, pictured here, uh, from his guest spot years ago on Mega 64, um, basically took to social media lately and not like Reggie doesn't work for Nintendo anymore, but Reggie famously pushed to include Wii Sports with the Wii. And apparently the team at Nintendo was very, very, very against it. Um, now just for funsies, uh, Reggie has sort of just been posting about that story. Uh, there's a whole documentary on how he was pushing for this to happen and blah blah blah. Uh, and so he's posted twice. He's just like the story of the Wii Sports Pack in. And

he just put the the the YouTube video that that is about. Um, and then and then he did a followup that just says and the results and like just basically pointing from a place of no power and no influence, but also just as a quick reminder that maybe the software that's made to show off your fancy new hardware and make people feel good about their now everinccreasingly expensive purchase might be worthwhile to just sort of include in the package. Um, that seems like a no-brainer. Mhm. But that uh that's neither here nor there, I guess. Yep. Absolutely. Um, so we we we're going to stop talking about the Switch 2 unless we have confirmed from Nintendo information that is relevant and then we're only going to talk about that. There's a bunch of press events and stuff that we didn't get invited to because Nintendo knows that we don't need that. We'll we'll do our own press event with with Zoe and Monster and I

don't know, invite us to your press events and uh we don't need you unless you really want us there. Yeah, it'd be great. Thanks. Yeah, maybe next time. Confirmed. Yep, that's right. We'll get Zoe in a cat backpack. You can come, too. We'll put a webcam in the in the backpack. Uh P says, "What about confirmed information from the White House about tariffs?" Uh no, that no that doesn't count. Yeah, because it's gonna change again. Yep. Uh correct. Um it's going to especially when the uh not to get too all political up in here because everyone knows there are no politics of video games. Absolutely not. I won't stand for them. Um there I sit down. That's right. There are conflicting reports from within the administration about what will and will not be hit by which tariffs when. Like

literally people in the commerce department who are supposed to know about these things don't know what will and won't be exempt and what will and won't be tariffed at what rate. This is the most disorganized hackneed terrible sham of a job rolling out a uh uh piece of financial policy which is demonstrabably drastically affecting global markets to the extent that it must be on purpose. You could not be This is like getting all of the answers on a true false test wrong. You have to be doing it on purpose cuz you would get it right at least half the time if you were guessing. But if you got all of the answers wrong, you had to have been doing it on purpose. This is that this is real bad. So, we're going to see. But

I'm not taking anything from a White House uh on tariffs to be gospel about the Switch 2 until we get the Switch two. Um, it's we're in an interesting spot in human history when I will trust Nintendo over the White House on information. To be fair, to be fair, I can think of several spots in my lifetime where that's been true, but I've lived in interesting times and I'm tired of living in unreing times. We can trust in precedent. Like we can figure out like the chaos isn't going to stop in the government and uh Nintendo will never ever ever put anything on sale and keep trying to sell things for exorbitant amounts of money. We know this. We know this to be true. Yep. Anyway, we have some uh the actually I'm going to make an amendment to Will's comment about not talking about the Switch. We have some lovely comments from y'all in the community that we'll be talking about later which is talking about last week's episode which does talk about the Switch, too. But until then, it's gone from our minds. Thank you, Reggie, for your glowing red eyes of justice. All

right. And now for other blasts from the past, Matt, before there was Halo, before there was Destiny, there was Marathon. Yep. But not like this. The not like this. Uh, Bungie released the gameplay trailer and a bunch of information about the new marathon game. I want to play this with you. I think this is going to be great. Yeah, I think this is um, if you're not familiar yet with it, uh, it is a extraction looter made I it feels like for um, a group of people that might not normally be into extraction looters, if that makes sense. Yes. It has so much even just from the gameplay trailer. It has so much of what I love about Destiny's like momentto- moment physicality gunplay feel to it in

it that I'm already on board. Like again, many times on this show we've said, me mainly, but I will I think you'll agree the reason we don't play Destiny is because we fell off and it's really, really, really hard both monetarily and from a narrative perspective figuring out what you need to do when to actually onboard yourself to Destiny 2 again or to start. The actual gameplay of Destiny 2 continues to be great. Uh, other than I will say other than, and I'm hoping they improve on this here, Bungie's weird obsession with first person platforming. Get some help. Seek seek some therapy. Just talk to your children about first-person platforming before somebody else does. Don't. Okay, great. Anyway, um uh the um I I think that this is going to be very interesting. Uh, and and I agree 100% that the thing that sold me on the trailer was it's got Bungee gunplay.

That looks really good. It also fixes a problem which I've had with all of the other Extraction games, which is it's not dark and gritty. It's like It's like neon cyberpunk, right? Which like is great. I I think I'm tired of like really dark, grungy games. I This looks like somebody just dunked everything in like high viz paint and I'm all about it to be honest. It's a good mix. It It rides right up to the Fortnite edge that I'm comfortable with. Yeah. While still feeling like it might be made for someone uh with my proclivities. Yeah. Uh by the way, I I I I do want to point out Hell Divers kind of an extraction shooter. Kind of. mostly an like yes there are elements you don't lose your weapons you don't lose your equipment you you lose your um samples samples

which then help you unlock things sure so it has it has extraction looter shooter vibes to it but I would not call it I I actually really enjoy I think the reason why I played Hell Divers for as long as I did was because it wasn't that if I had to go back and get my guns and No. And there also actually I'm not too familiar with this, but like the way that Hell Divers 2 allows you to do your load out, but then call your stuff in. Mhm. It's almost like you're uh what's the opposite of extracting, will intracting. Intracting all of it's an intraction shooter. That's right. Um, uh, Bet ask, "Is Deep Rock Galactic an extraction shooter?" Yes, more than Hell Divers is. Um, there's also, by the way, a Deep Rock Galactic Rogike coming out. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. Anyway, so, uh, back to Marathon. Um, the they

released a whole bunch of information. It looks really good. It looks really bright. They have a cool world. It's classed. Yeah, people are also, like AMP says here, uh, they like the original Marathon trilogy. nervous nervous about this new marathon. Um yeah, I'm curious how it all will feel like it ties together because it does look very different. Yeah. Yeah. Um and then related to that in celebration of this, speaking of Yeah. Uh so the original the original marathon games I believe um one two and I forget what the third one is called. Um, guess what gamers? They're all free on Steam. They're just free. You can just go get them. I haven't played these in ages. I just was reminded of this this morning and you can just go grab them. And I I put them on my account and I will play through these again because it's really really cool to sort of revisit and see where we came from.

Yeah. Uh, thanks. Oh man, nobody remembers the original extraction shooter, Descent. I I remember I was that I guess you did collect things. Yeah. H. And also, by the way, the other big thing about Marathon that looks really good is that they do it does look like they have a solid way to um keep you from being stuck uh in the I don't have any gear because it died too many times state with like sponsorships and like other things. So, it does look like they they've compensated for what in my opinion is one of the biggest potential weaknesses of extraction shooters. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and I don't believe anyone from the original Marathon team is working on this currently. Sounds right. But listen, it's it's not like this is the other thing. Marathon and and and its sequels are great. It's also a series that has not been really talked about much re in recent times. So, um, yeah.

Yeah. Uh, Belle, I don't know if it's Steam TV compatible or you probably need a PC is my guess, but yeah. Anyway, I guess I am very excited about um Oh, interesting. Uh male, that's a good thing. Uh the devs are actually answering every gameplay question. Yeah, cool. Yeah, that that that is a big deal. Um, also, uh, related, um, there are there is a, uh, we're not going to spend too much time on this because the people who are causing this don't deserve much time to be spent on them. There are a segment of gamers who are large upset. There's spaghette. It is upset. Uh, because the leads of this are two ladies. I mention it only because it is the other thing that keeps coming up about Marathon. Uh, and to those

people, then don't play it. You know what? We're gonna go have fun with our cool looking weird cyberpunk looter shooter, extraction shooter video game with like all kinds of improvements to the genre made by a studio that does has done historically excellent gunplay. And you can cope and see, sit in the corner and face the wall if you're upset about that. Yeah, I'm Yeah, hope mold. Sit in the corner, face the wall. Right. Okay. Um, uh, next up, speaking of games, uh, that are really awesome and excellent and keep on giving, Balders Kate 3's patch uh, eight launches tomorrow. There are 12 new subasses, meaning that you have an excuse to play the game through again or can to start the game telling yourself that you're going to play through it again and then bail like midway through 12 other characters. Yeah, midway through the first act or

something. Um, yeah, there is a new subclass for every class. Uh, and you can play all of them. There are also a photo mode and a bunch of other stuff. It's been in beta for a while, but it is officially coming out tomorrow. So, please do look forward to that. If you're a Balders Gate 3 fan, you uh have another playthrough in your midst. Death Domain, my Death Domain clerks, where you at? Uh I'm very excited about that. I'm excited for Path of Giants. Uh Drunken Master looks cool. Swarmkeeper Rangers, always a favorite. Uh oh, and Shadow Magic Sorcerers will be very, very fun. Uh yeah. Oh, is it Star Druid is the new druid? Circle of Stars. Yep. Yeah, Circle of Stars druids are always interesting. If you're not familiar with with D and D stuff in particular, a lot of these things are uh might sound like gibberish to you. However, uh these will change the the play style of these classes quite a bit. And it's very very cool that we're getting this. What? Two year. How old is Bald? When did Baldersgate

actually release? 04. This game of the year 04. That's right. because last year it was as I get confused because it was um in early access forever. I just didn't play it. Uh some people are surprised it took so long for Hex Blade. No, Hex Blade's stupidly broken. That's why. Like DND is not balanced, nor should it be. But there there is some expectation that there's some amount of balance in this game. Yeah. Theoretically, practically there isn't. But like I've seen enough people who are doing solo honor mode playthroughs that like I don't believe in balance anymore. Um well speaking of balance, uh Dark says, "I wish I'd get rid of the level 12 uh cap to be honest, but that's just me." At first I agreed. I really did agree at that. The issue is what the challenge that this game is building and and this the adventure that you're on does just only go to that. If we could break it, if we could get to level 20, Yeah. we

get all these cool abilities, but then they'd have to change the the structure of the difficulty of the game and the missions. Like I know at the end, I don't want to spoil for Balders's Gate 3 and the ending gets pretty big. Um, but you're not punching God there. Like that's where you're level 20. Not a JRPG yet, right? Cuz cuz like by the way, it's at least seven Final Fantasy expansions away from that, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. Because remember remember we we've we've discussed this when I've been talking about new games. Um any game with any style of combat in any genre is a JRPG if you kill God with a power friendship. If you kill God with a power friendship, it's a JRPG. That's what defines the genre. Nothing else. Just killing God with a power friendship. You can have a turnbased JRPG. You can have a first-person shooter JRPG. JRPG is any game where you kill God with a power friendship. Fight me. Um,

anyway, I'm very I I I know this is the last true harrah outside of mods for Balders's Gate 3. Yeah. And I'm really thankful that Larian is doing this and keeping it going. It feels really nice. It it's it's really nice to have a game set in this world have characters and moments that have sort of resonated long and far beyond the like I feel like if you showed a picture of a Starian or Carlac to even people that don't really get into this genre or play these games, they're like, "Oh yeah, I know them." Or Shadow Heart like or Lzelle. Like it feels like there's they just have sort of transcended the medium and uh it's really nice to see. Yep. Okay, speaking of games giving you free stuff, the Epic Game Store has a mobile store now and they're they are currently following the path of if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Um they have done user

acquisition on um desktop by giving away free games every week for a gajillion years. They're doing the same thing on mobile essentially. Um this is another opportunity for you to take money from Epic. Uh I if you are at all interested in the idea of Epic's mobile store, I encourage you to check it out and then take their money. Um because they're giving you it's free money. They just like if you're really worried about privacy concerns, put it on an Android emulator on your computer and then just take their money. Just it's free stuff. Just take their money. Like it's not This is like Bezos bucks. Okay. Where my primer is at? If you're on Twitch and you have Twitch Prime, you should be using Prime every month to give creators money that you don't have to spend from big companies. So there is So your principle is sound. I do want to make one very very very minor tweak. Sure. Your the keynote there that you said was

if you're a Prime member because if you if you're a member of Amazon Prime, you get one free Twitch sub everything and you get to just do it. You get to give it to whoever you want. Uh and that is Bezos bucks. take you literally money that didn't exist before or being pulled out of one place and giving it to the content creators that you like. The only difference that I just want to make very clear with the Epic Store and and there's the reason why Epic does this is user acquisition, right? I It's funny because Prime I don't think they're doing uh Twitch Prime subs for user acquisitions. It just kind of falls into that ubiquitous like, "Oh, we own this thing, too." And like, "Oh, here's another little thing you get." No one No one's signing up for Prime because you get a free membership to a Twitch channel of your choice, right? Whereas Epic is really trying to get you into their ecosystem with all these free games. So, you know, you still sign up, you still use your email, it's still a new thing with someone who will have your data. It's just something to think about. I personally believe the value proposition of getting all the free

games and having and if you can have the wherewithal of like not buying things you don't want over there. Um I do think I agree with Will completely, but it is a sign up and that is their end goal. If something is free, you are the product yada yada y but it's just something to say whenever we're like yeah this is cool. I just always want to be like reminder as to why this cool thing exists. Yeah, we are all the product now. And listen, if we're the product and I get a bunch of free games, for me personally, I'm I'm okay with that, but mileage may vary. Yeah. Uh, okay, cool. Great. Awesome. Excellent. Let's Oh, Grass said they got Prime for that many years ago. Also included the ad free mode back then. Interesting. I stand corrected. Yeah. Um, it's not much more expensive than a sub every month as long as you use it every month. Yeah. or at least wasn't way back when. I don't know how much it is now. I I haven't paid attention in a long time.

Uh okay, cool. Great. Matt, you you may now celebrate as Astrobot cleaned up at the BAFTAs. Bastrobot. Baot. The BAFTAs. Uh the I'm not going to try and unpack that acronym because my brain is cuckooked. Yeah, don't worry about it. Uh, cleaned up with five wins for animation, audio achievement, which I completely agree with. Um, best game, uh, family game, and game design. Yeah, I love that this happened. Uh, I still I again, we've talked about this before. I won't go over this in great detail. Astrobot is not only a great game, you know, in and of its own rights, it also had to transcend corporate chillery. That's right. And I think it really does. Like it is a giant PlayStation commercial and you don't care cuz it's

so good. Yeah. Um, and I I do really really really like that is being seen uh for the quality that is going behind what is essentially uh IP play. Uh it's it's so it's so it's so good. Other other notable winners at the BAFTAs, by the way, uh were debut game Elatro, artistic achievement, Nava, um and there was uh evolving game Vampire Survivors, which I really appreciate. Yep. Uh game beyond entertainment, Tales of Karo Zhao. Um and multiplayer uh and music to Hell Divers 2. Um those are sort of the the really big ones. Um the I like the Baptist for this. I think I feel like this is this is much more honest. I don't know about honest. It's

just not as an award show is still it's still marketing, right? It's it's less um sold for advertising, I guess, would be the way that I put it, right? Like it feels like this is less trailer happy and more like, "Hey, we're here to tell you about some games that we think are neat and please support our industry than, hey, here's a bunch of trailers and we're going to slam all of the technical awards into like, you know, super fast rapid fire things between trailers with no time for acceptance speeches for some of the most influential like choices that were made this year in gaming." Yeah. Yeah. Uh there is one last dark thing that I did want to bring up and actually Thega brings it up. As Jacob Geller pointed out, most of the studios that uh featured in Astrobot are closed. So it is not a commercialism memorial. Uh yeah, like the many of the things that are now these uh characters, IPs, etc. that we know and love that are featured here, uh they don't exist anymore. So

it's also that's a that's a a lovely thing and a terrible thing. It's not lovely that they don't exist anymore. It's lovely that we get to still see them uh in the memorial sense and it is terrible because uh the industry rolls on as it does, right? Also uh my my lighter note from the BAFTAs was as always local funk doesn't go places to accept awards because he values his anonymity and good for him. So Jimbo the Clown showed up to accept the Bolatra award and god the actor they've got playing the actor they've got playing Jimbo the clown is like committed like full committed wasn't he also the voice of the marathon trailer I think he might have been um so uh yeah Benar yeah Benar um just phenomenal just that that is now the bit right is great. Um also uh at

the same time this week I did see uh just a minor aside from local funk that he's uh planning on making a new game and it's going to be un like in his own description unplayable trash. And I can't wait. I can't wait. I can't wait. One of the best indie one of the best indie devs currently working is go is intentionally making a game that he says is going to be unplayable trash. He's accidentally going to hit gold again. or I'm going to play it and label it unplayable trash and be happy about it. What a what a testament to how good your game is where your your follow-up game you're like don't play it's going to be awful and it will still sell probably a million copies and you're being very honest about it. Yeah, you're like 100% honest that it's unplayable trash. Amazing. Yeah. Um Yeah. Anyway, I like the Baptist. I'm glad Astrobot won a bunch. Yeah. Uh, speaking of indie games and indie darlings, blueprints. Talk to me, Will, about blueprints. Okay. There

will be no blueprint spoilers because I haven't played blueprints. Yeah. So, that goes for you, Brad and Janet. No. No. No. And Rocky, if you blue sky us. No. Okay. Blueprints is a new indie game. It's actually made by the same person people who make the magic site mythic spoilers. Really weird. Um, it is a old school style puzzle game. You need a notepad to solve some of these puzzles. Some of these puzzles are beyond jank. Some of these puzzles don't work if your computer isn't set to a time in the US in a language that is in uh like the the uh Roman alphabet. If you're not in that, like some puzzles don't work. It's a it's janky, but the puzzles are apparently lovely and the experience is apparently very unique. And my advice, and this is the advice I will be following when I play it,

hopefully in the nearish future, is don't look up anything about this game, and I don't This is the only thing you should know. Yeah, that's correct. The game is blueprints, and it's intended to sound like blueprints. That's correct. That's it. Right. Don't Don't spend uh time looking up reviews. Don't fall into the um uh into the stuff. It is 78% positive after almost 1,400 views on Steam and is currently 10% off. It's $27 until April 20th. Yeah. Uh so there's a lot of places you can play it for air quotes free. Um and then it will be fairly Yeah. Game Pass NPS Plus. Yeah. Um, it but it is one I I I appreciate and I want to bring this up because I appreciate the indie space for this phenomena, right? Because in the AAA space, right, you'd get marathon

style advertisements and there's a secret twist. You need a notepad, notepad. Notepad this Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, right? Like it's not that, right? Um, brought it. I I know. I know. All right, Matt, do we're going to do some ads. Oh, man. Okay, you go first. Okay. Ready? Yep. By the way, if you're not, this is your first time here, we for cuz Twitch, we can't control uh the ads come on or off. So, when you're subbed over there, you get us selling you fake things that you can't buy instead of real things that you can buy. It's better, trust me. Okay, here we go. Will, uh, what what can you sell our audience today? Hi there, everyone. Well, from Extra Credits here to sell you a world where you ignore advertising just like it. It's very difficult. It's almost impossible to be like deprogrammed from advertising cuz it's like ubiquitous, right? It's all around you. It's on the bus on the train. It's on every

billboard. It's in your home. It's in your eyeballs. They beep it directly into your brain while you sleep. Imagine a world without that. Imagine a world where you simply hear about a cool game, know nothing about it, and then get this, play the game, enjoy the media without being saturated or exposed to it constantly ahead of time. Just do the thing, not the advertising or the thing. Wow. I I you know, well, I really appreciate uh what you just said, and now it's time for me to sell you something that you can't buy, right? Hey, Matt from Extra Credits here. Listen, you just heard Will give you an incredible pitch about not buying things, advertising to you to not be advertised to. But what if instead you just changed the way that you were advertised to via a thing that Will previously was very excited about based on his monster truck voice? Of course, I am talking about notebooks. What if I could sell you a notebook with all of the spoilers to all of the games that

you want and then you just flip to that page? Ready? I'm gonna ruin Blueprints's ending to you here. Uh let uh routine gone there and see. Oh, but you're gonna have to pay for it to actually get that. Just get a notebook. Seems good to me. Three out of 10. Not my best. Um hi Matt from Extra Credits here. Selling you ranking your own fake ads. Did you just do a fake ad that was kind of butt? Well, you can always give yourself a rank to try again. Listen, it's hard out here trying to sell you things that don't exist. We have to make them up constantly. Will just took an amorphous concept and actually did what I would consider a 7 out of 10 ad where I had to think on my feet quickly and grab whatever prop was in front of me. Next time, I'll probably just end up trying to sell you this second handsomest Matt trophy with a pigeon on it because that's all I can do when I'm trying to think of these things that quick. This is even a five out of 10

because it's self-referential. It's pretty [Music] baseline blueprints. Yeah. Uh and we're back from ads. All right. Cool. Great. Awesome. Um the Yeah. So, so this is sort of the next in a series of indie games that I think are much like Outer Wilds, much like um trying to think of the last one. Undertale, Cave Story, Delta Rune. um a lot of these other games where just don't just engage with the core media right Nava Journey Flower right some of the gallery games don't we are privileged I would say to have a part of gaming that is just itself right we don't it it doesn't it's not over prodduced it's not over marketed it is just itself and Blueprints is the latest in that line

and I would I would suggest that it's worth your time. Oh yeah. Yeah. Torn. Boom. Yeah. We got uh we got Tunic, we got Oberden. All also good. Yeah. I I played Tunic. Um uh the uh my favorite part about Tunic was that their entire system for handing out codes ahead of time was a Google sheet. Like literally, you put your name in a Google form and they were like, "Are you going to make content about it? Like, do you promise not to break embargo? Great. Here's a copy of Tunic. Go play it. Uh, yeah. Majestic. Also, I have seen this phrase uh CirX be kicking around for blueprints. Uh, I love it. I I don't normally dislike new things like that, but that's so fun. Yep. Okay. Uh now on to our main story which is oh a story that okay so we've mentioned this before and I know we've mentioned

it before but we didn't give it a lot of time and I think personally it's the biggest story that's happening this week in gaming and it's getting super overshadowed because of tariffs and the Switch 2 and everything else. The and I did want to take just a brief moment before we begin to talk about this problem. The one of the big problems in gaming specifically is because it's a niche market and that niche market is a luxury good, right? Gaming is a luxury good. No one needs gaming to survive in these strictly um physical sense. It is sometimes very easy to have all the air sucked out of the room by a couple of really big stories if they seem like existential threats to gaming. And I would agree that the tariffs could be, right? For all the reasons we talked about last week and the reasons we talked about at the beginning of the show, we don't need to go further in tonight. But well, ALS and also just so we're clear, it's interesting we're seeing this in the gaming space. Obviously, one story sucking the air out. So, a more important in our opinion story is not being here because that's literally what's happening with every other piece of news outside of gaming. Also, kind of

due to tariffs. It's very, very strange. Regardless, kind of like they're doing that on purpose, but we won't get too deep into that. No, we'll get too deep into that. Okay. Um, so, uh, next up we're gonna talk about the crew lawsuit. So, who, before we start, who here in in Rocky, uh, you can message me on Blue Sky, on Janet, on YouTube, and on Brad on Twitch, who knows what we're talking about when we talk about the Crew lawsuit? I don't want to say anything yet. I want to see some comments trickle in real quick because I want to know in general if people understand what this is. Okay, I'm seeing about half I know me I think. Nothing months ago. Nope. No clue. Yes. No idea. So I'd say 70% of this thing I just did the bad math in my brain. 70% of the live people watching

right now don't know what we're talking about. Yeah. Will, would you like to give a um a recap breakdown of this before we go into the new stuff? Indeed, I shall. So, The Crew is a racing video game or was a racing video game published by Ubisoft. Um it started in 2014ish and the servers shut down in early 2024. Um, following the shutdown, two players of The Crew sued Ubisoft as uh they had physical copies of the game The Crew and were now unable to play in any way because it's an always it was an always online game after the servers were shut down. Right. Um, this lawsuit got batted back and forth kind of like Zoe with a ball of yarn. Um, and uh, the main

complaint is that the that Ubisoft violated a California law regarding honesty and advertising. That was the original the OG the OG filing. The OG filing. The reason we're bringing it up this week is it's been refiled with some new complaints and uh some new developments. Let's let's real brief talk about this real quick. Ubie um Ubisoft's counterargument to to the to the complaints uh essentially, and I'm being a little simplistic here, but not overly so, boils down to you don't own any of your video games, any of them. If there's language on the box that says that you uh that that you know um that it might shut down, you don't own any of your games, uh you are just purchasing a temporary license to them. Uh and that you you don't own them at all. Uh and that they are allowed to shut them down

whenever they want with like 90 days notice if they want to. And that that's for the consumer just kind of a tough break. The refiling is kind of a huge deal in my opinion. It's really what takes this from being like a a what is more or less already a settled question. Right when this when this California law went into effect about truth and advertising Steam updated reminding you that you're not actually purchasing any of the games you own on Steam. You're purchasing temporary licenses which are revokable and non-transferable and all of the other stuff. But the way that this is going to get argued, yeah, it might be 30 days. Um, the way that this is going to get argued is going to matter a lot. Um, how's that for a summary? My brain is a little No, that's great. You did a great job. Um, yeah, it's just interesting that uh that was sort of

Ubisoft's basically argument to it. They said that it says clearly on the package that this is a thing and uh that you truly don't own your stuff. Now, there is let's back up for a bit before we get to the new section of what's going on with the story for a little bit of context. We do live in a uh a world where software licensing is a thing. In fact, uh, a clearer place, at least in my world of this is either a streaming service where you have access to all of the content, but you don't own the content, you can move that into even game pass or PlayStation Plus, etc. That kind of thing as well. um or if you are in uh digital creative fields, the Adobe suite, you used to buy the new versions of Adobe and you owned those versions. Now, whether or not you like it or not or think it's better or worse, I think

there's pros and cons. You do not own Adobe and you have license to use that software, right? Um but and now that games have gone truly uh the the digital space has basically blown up and brick and mortar slowly dying yada yada yada physical media we've talked about it to death here. Um, it feels like in the game space companies wanted to jump to the natural place of uh of either understanding or they don't care about understanding faster than the actual community who engages with their product is willing to go. Um, that might be an oversimplification. I like my like many of you I think want to like own the thing. We talked about this last week with the Switch cartridges, right? Like the Switch 2. I'm not terribly interested in the licensing key for a game because uh that still requires the server to be up to run and that's a

point of that's a point of reliance outside of me buying the game and me preserving my Switch 2 and the cartridge and it working. That's a third party that also has to be functioning for the value proposition to go through. Again, that's my specific value prop. There's tons of media, games, movies, books, um, music that I also do get through licensing. Yep. But I think that as consumers of video games, we have, much like the way we think about pricing, much like in the way we think about a lot of these things, it always feels like I own this game. This is a game I bought. It is mine. and the ULAS and the way that companies have been treating these things, even the best of companies like Steam and uh you know, other digital storefronts, deep in their in the in the guts of those user

agreements, no one's really owning anything, right? Um, but when you're still going to a store and buying a thing, especially in states or or countries or regions that have laws to protect against this sort of thing, if things are not stated clearly throughout of what you are doing, that becomes a problem. Ubisoft has said in this particular case that the crew did say the 30-day thing, basically the online components would only run for up to 30, you know, 30 days notice, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And that's why they came back and wanted to basically throw this suit or this this lawsuit out. Now, I will tag Will in for the update on on the goings on currently. Okay, so the reef file on March 18th and this is from the Polygon article which is linked down in the comments for if you're not live. Um, uh, includes two major changes and I think they're both very relevant and I think Ubisoft is very likely to settle out of

court because they don't want either of these to get an actual judgment in a court by the way. That's that's what's likely going to happen. And now with the 10-centent acquisition, they do have money to burn. So, correct. So, okay, thing one, in [Music] um California, it is illegal for a gift card to expire. Okay, that is that is the law in California where this lawsuit is taking place. And a reminder that while it seems weird that um California law is dictating a bunch of this, it's important to remember the size of California's economy and the number fifth largest economy, isn't it? Something like that. It's it's a unbelievably massive economy and that um California law because of the size of its economy often drives lots of functional nationwide US law because we're sort of a hodgepodge of many

countries in a we don't get along shirt. Great. Awesome. Um, so the plaintiffs are arguing that because the crew had um iname uh credits that were sold separately, that those are the same as a gift card. and that because those credits were a value that was sold as a gift card legally in California, they can't expire. So, that's a very interesting legal argument and I don't think Ubisoft wants that proved in a court of law at all ever under any circumstances because dear god that would be horrendous for the gaming industry for all of the places that are like, "Oh yeah, you bought stuff for this premium game and we're taking the servers down. Goodbye forever." Right? Imagine how much Epic would have to cough up to refund everyone who still had remaining uh um

Fortnite V-Bucks, right? Or Fortnite credits if Fortnite ever went down, right? They would have to keep money in escrow in case they needed to shut it down. Wild, right? Beyond wild. So that's that's Yeah. Yeah. And and the secondary thing here is uh there was a thing for the activation code of the game in if you bought the thing that lets you activate it, right? uh that that does not expire until 2099, which would imply they're arguing that it would remain playable during this time and long thereafter per the amended complaint. Correct. Uh this comes to us from a couple different places, IGN, I believe, and Polygon. They'll we'll link in the show notes. Correct. Um so both of these are kind of are are very interesting legal arguments. I am of course not a lawyer, though sometimes I play one on the internet. Um, and none of this is deeply steeped in in legal

advice. But my intuition is that a defeat of Ubisoft in this place would be um pretty catastrophic for Ubisoft specifically and potentially pretty changing for the industry as a whole, especially because the lawyers here are very happy to take time and do this, right? They they are open trying to open this up as a class action lawsuit, which would mean that the lawyers are very down to take a chunk of whatever the class action uh victory is rather than take it specifically from the clients that started the lawsuit, which means that the lawyers are willing to work much longer. One of the ways that Ubisoft could theoretically defeat this from a legal strategy perspective is they have enough money to have their lawyers work forever. Yeah. And just not care, right? And the lawyers for individuals or for small groups of people um generally run out of funding. And so it's sort of like a a siege if

you will, right? Where the smaller party just gets um starved of resources and and that's how that ends. Um because something something American legal system something something uh money insert screaming here. Great. Awesome. Excellent. Um this that might not be the case here. Um so yeah. Yeah. I I I agree that I do not believe that this will actually go to any sort of trial. I think uh it will either be dragged forever and uh hoping that it it the whoever is is running the class action sort of runs out of funds or um that they just settle it sort of out of court because you don't want this. Corporations who rent you software don't want this precedent especially in in

venues that have more restrictive and better protection laws for consumers, right? Uh so yeah I do think that this it's interesting because this is the kind of and again it's small now but these are the kind of things that can set precedent right so I when when we're like oh the thing that is not being talked about it's not I don't think it's not being talked about because like there's a plot to not talk about it. I think it's just us. It's a small feeling story that both Will and I believe will have larger ramifications in this space that is being sort of um cast aside due to all of the other hype that's going on for other things. I mean, I feel like every time we get a tariff story, right, the entire news cycle gets flashbanged, right? Because there's and which is I think part of the purpose, right? But we are there's constantly a rush and a scramble to figure out which countries are being affected to what degree and where the Switch is being manufactured and what Nintendo is likely to do and

and all of that. Right? So, uh, I I I kind of want to undo that and say, you know, this is this is a thing that matters. And I think that we should I want to redraw attention to this because I do think that this court case and the idea that you don't own your video games or maybe you do or maybe you don't own the game, but you do have some legal standing for credit, right, and that game companies need to be more transparent about shutdown dates or expiration dates, right? that they um uh you know need to need to have some amount of money to pay back credit that is on your account when the game shuts down. Like that's all that is all a really interesting court case which could have broad-reaching implications if it goes to trial. But I agree that it's probably not going to go to trial. And it's funny uh I I do agree with this. I I believe companies start putting guarantees of a certain amount of time to access things or buy their own stories or service being up for each game. It's funny. Either that or just be brutally honest about it.

Yeah. Like I like Okay, this is this is where I kind of go I I get the weird sort of brain feedback loop. Well, Flixelsticks is going to release Flixel Sticks with friends, and it's going to be an always online game where you and your friends can play Flixel Sticks uh until the sun burns out or the servers go down. Okay. So, when I'm selling this as a $90 Switch 2 exclusive, um Sure. It would not behoove the narrative of me selling it for $90 to include information that is uh that would basically say, "Oh, by the way, this could go away at any moment." But what if they just sort of did? Like I get that it would cause sales to plummet,

but you're like, "Well, okay, well, if sales are gonna if you're worried about sales plummeting because you're being honest about your product, design, it's either a it's either a poorly designed product or a grift. Like the goal of of call me oldfashioned, but the idea of trading goods uh and services for legal tender should be uh somewhat equitable." And I know many tenants of capitalism would argue with that, but that's kind of why we want to engage in any sort of system of currency. So I I know I'm speaking crazy here, but what if you just were more honest about it and didn't try to price gouge? I I I I I I know that's wacky, but like and look to be clear, I we're I'm being very facitious and doing a lot of globalizing here in this description that I just talked about in

u the very real Fixel Fixel Sticks with Friends game that will be dropping on the Switch for $90. Please buy it. Um Flixel Sticks, what a weird meme from forever ago. Um, there are games that do this. Yes, there are games that are honest and and with their with their value proposition and their pricing. We've talked about a few of them on the show already today. And there are Yeah. And even in terms of online games, right, there are many, right, that are in it for the long haul, but have been honest that someday they will stop working. I'm reasonably confident at this point. Blizzard has said at some point WoW will stop existing. probably when Blizzard stops existing. But yeah, also Jacob brings this up too. This is another way around it. Yes. Right. Like so so for instance, this would be Yeah. Sorry, Will. Go. This was one of the goals I think originally of the of the original suit

was to get uh companies to need to cave on the idea that they release some kind of server package when the game goes down uh so that the community can take it up. There's been one very successful example of this. It's with City of Heroes. If you want to play City of Heroes and like it doesn't hold up that great, but like if you have nostalgia for City of Heroes, you can go download the game for free and play on a fan server that's officially recognized as a an authoritative place to play City of Heroes. That's a thing that exists that you can do, right? um and other other um groups of gamers who are very passionate about specific games want that to happen, right? They either want some kind of peer-to-peer, they want what um Islands of Insight did, which was to uh change the game fundamentally so that it no longer required server access and was purely single player. That was a whole thing that Islands of Insight did when it stopped being a puzzle MMO and just released as like a puzzle game. Um

right. And so, yes, that is a thing that many people want. Here's the problem. That is more difficult and more complicated both technically and legally than I think a lot of the arguments that are calling for it give credence to. And I I'm not saying that it's like super complicated, difficult. I am saying it is a more complicated untested piece of law and um tech than I I think a lot of people want to give credit to. Right? I'm not saying like it it's impossible. I am saying that it does require some amount of setup work both in the game when you start it like in the game when you start building it and in the legal way that you build your server architecture. Yeah. And and and to be uh both fair and balanced, um I believe Ubisoft for the Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest has announced that there will be singleplayer modes for those games if

they are offline uh when they go offline or if they already have. Um but not for the original crew. And again, there's a lot of different reasons that could be happening. Could be from a legal perspective, could be just from a keeping it alive perspective. We don't know. Um, I just think I I don't know. I I will be curious how long this suit continues on before it is basically settled out of court. Um, because the longer it goes on, the more even a chance that something like it comes up. But again, I don't know. This is the this is the flip side of it. I don't know if like has the ship already sailed of public opinion about this because I think if you asked I mean let this is not a a a type of game

that I engage with but let's look at Madden right essentially for the last 20 years you just bought the if you're a Madden player you just buy the new Madden Right. Back before the online stuff, I believe it was probably more likely considered that you own Madden, right? Like you own the game and you get the new roster and you get the whatever. And now with technology moving along the lines where you could like it's it's basically outside of some changes and some things and again, sorry if I'm oversimplifying, but like you're paying for the new roster. It is essentially if you're like a subscription service you pay annually. Yeah. Um Oh yeah. What do you got? It gets more complicated uh even with DLC for games for physical games like Madden. That's sort of the other um in between, right? So you have a physical game Madden which you have some

intuition that you own. You have a disc, the disc plays the game. Let's even say that there aren't any updates, right? the disc play. And we talked about this a bit last week and we'll talk about this a little bit more in the comments. Um you because uh this comes up with game key, right? You have the disc, the disc plays the game, you also have DLC. It's entirely possible that you own the game but have a license for the DLC, which is also weird, right? There is a middle ground here between the extreme where like you own the whole thing outright and have right of first sale and all of the resale stuff and all of that and you don't actually own anything. It's all just right. And then it gets even weirder for versions of the game where the DLC's on the disc. That gets right. You could see how this gets really weird really fast with all the gradation in between those two extremes. Yeah. And and I guess it all comes down to what

the majority of consumers consider is the value proposition. Mhm. I don't think most people that engage with most digital media at this point, outside of maybe being disappointed when a movie they're looking for isn't on a streaming service. Like like I I would argue and I think companies are making this this decision based on statistics that they have. Most people do probably don't care that it is more of a subscription thing because access is a greater is a greater draw than permanence, right? And and I think that we are likely very we're very vulnerable both us personally and us as a community to the idea that we must be part of a larger movement because we com like the the gaming community like the the very analytical community that we have that

cares a lot about game design and game preservation and the history of games and playing games into the future cares a lot about this and cares about it loudly that other people must do the same. And I think that Matt's very right that I think the majority of people don't care, right? That we are in the small, very loud minority. If the majority of people cared, companies wouldn't be doing this because companies in our current system exist to make money. And they think they're going to make more money by doing this. If they thought they'd make less money by doing this, they wouldn't do it. Now, that's not to say like they're all correct. that's just what they're betting on. So, going back to this and again, like I I want to make it very clear. I don't think that every game you pay for should be playable in perpetuity forever. That doesn't make sense based on a lot of different things. Um, I just really want honesty about what we are

buying andor renting when we are buying andor renting it, which I think is one of the benefits of the game key, right? If it's a game key, if this is a game key cartridge, right? It has all of the problems of digital download buying ownership to a license thing, but it's transparent about it. It says this is a game key. You're going to need to download the game and have this game key inserted when you play the game. But the g the game isn't on this disc. That's transparent. They are being honest about it. Yeah. Right. That so like whatever the other problems are, the honesty is an asset. There has anyone actually seen because I think what would assuage me from a lot of the problem with the game key idea is like is Nintendo and I I guarantee you they're not doing this guarantee, but I would love like a fully like fully accessible from our servers for 10 years. Do you know what I like they're not going to do it because anything could happen and then they're screwed. I think they're also selling the myth that

it might live forever and it it in in humanes theory it could live forever. Please, there's a lot of asterisks floating around. The context is is dripping them all over the place. But but knowing Nintendo, heck, knowing companies that supply digital goods, servers do just stop. Nintendo just takes down the stores when no one's using the store. Like Oh, okay. This might be a little too I have a halfbaked idea that's probably bad. What if instead of saying this is going to be available until the year 2037 or this is going to be available until forever, right? What if it says like this is guaranteed to be on our servers active until a set number of people like haven't accessed the servers in a period of whatever days. Do you know what I mean? Like giving them an

offramp. And again, I don't I think there's lots of bad with that idea. It was just something that came to me and no one would like if that was in the fine print because that would give a company an off-ramp to be safe. Yeah. Yeah. The the f I agree. I agree very much with Timothy. That's the Final Fantasy 14 house. Woo, not that one. This one. You uh that's the Final Fantasy 14 housing model. That's you can you can have it as long as you're using it. And if you stop using it, it goes away, right? Um again, not perfect either. And I look and I want to go back. I know we said we've been talking about switch, but the key card things, there's a lot of good in that. Even though I have problems with ele, it doesn't have to be all good or all bad, right? And I think that I think that is drifting a little bit, right? Because one of the problems here is that The Crew was an online only game from the beginning, right? The Crew was a multiplayer I should not open my eyes. Um, sorry buddy. Online uh it was a multiplayer online game from the

beginning. Um, and that was a big part of that was a big part of its its draw and its appeal. I think the other part that's worth mentioning in the lawsuit is that the problem that the original plaintiffs are mentioning is that the um uh the single player portion went away as well. All right. There was a single player portion, but that also demanded online stuff, so you couldn't play the single player portion, right? So like this is a split issue, but The Crew was different than a game, well kind of like a game key, an always online game, right? that necessitated being online by its design. Um so yeah um anyway it will be interesting to see where this goes. Um thank you all for engaging with a story with us that is not on the top of the pile I feel like this week and that's something that it's funny the thumbnail for this will probably be some element of of this thing and we will and I were even talking about this. Uh that also

does kind of mean that it might not be the most popular thing because it's not doing whatever the algorithm is looking for. But like I don't know this is the kind of stuff that like I truly believe and I think Will does as well will be important in the next 1015 years of this medium that we engage with and uh I don't know I just think little things like this deserve to be paid attention to as well and so thank you for uh engaging with us on this topic. Yeah absolutely. Uh, well, can you take us home to our nice dessert story? I can. Matt, you've heard of the test for uh uh any kind of device, which is can it run Doom? Of course. Doom runs on everything. I've seen Doom on a smart fridge. I've seen Doom on a pregnancy test. I've seen Doom on everything. Doom runs on crabs. They figured out how many crabs it would take to form logic gates to run Doom. But Matt, ask yourself this. H what if you had Doom that ran Doom? I am dangerously close to trying to save

up some money to get this stupid thing. I This is a new edition that limited Run is doom is dooming. Uh called the Doom and Doom 2 will it run edition. Uh we'll have links in the show notes. It's it's so meta. It's perfect. Uh for the mere cost of I believe $666. That's correct. Uh you get all of these things that are sort of small and pixelated right here, but not one element of this package plays Doom, but two elements of the package play Doom. First of all, the box the game comes in plays Doom. Cool. Great. Then there's a handheld version that uh there's one of the demons on the left there. That is also a thing that plays Doom. That's correct. Uh, you also get it for whatever system you might actually play Doom on. Uh, by the way, excuse me. That's both original Doom and the rebooted Doom. It's this is like one of

the Wait, the rebooted Doom. I thought I thought this this is just OD. This is Doom and Doom 2, but it also has um what's it called? It has the um uh uh Sigil or uh and Sigil 2. Okay. I thought this also had uh I thought I saw in the marketing that this also had a copy of the 2006 Doom, but that could be I don't see that anywhere. Okay, I hallucinated it. It's okay. But either way, this is dope. It also has the Legacy of Rust, which is a new episode collaborated on by ID Software and Night Drive Studios with Machine Games and a bunch of new deathm match maps featuring 25 packs. I think altogether on the page it says there's 187 mission maps and 43 deathmatch maps in Doom and Doom 2. If you are of a boomer, uh a boomer shooter generation, uh which really is honestly millennials, uh this is pretty neat. It's too expensive. It's it's a it's the

definition of a luxury item, but in a day of Hey, are you worried if you're going to if you own your game? Well, you you definitely know you own it if the box you're playing it on plays the game. Yeah, absolutely. Which I I love. I think this is great. Uh I love I Doom and Doom 2 are are are games that I just go back and visit constantly. And uh there's there's a mod I keep meaning to try out on stream that turns it into a rog light. Turns Doom into a rog light. Uh which I think would be very very fun. Um I don't know. Anyway, this was just a fun little thing that will found and I kind of fell in love with. Um, Doom is a part of my gaming childhood and I'm glad to see it is still doing weird wacky stuff. There's also in this package, I just want to point out there's a couple things I don't care about like trading cards and actually the cassette tapes of the soundtrack are pretty neat, but there's a um uh Kodak Demon uh basically floater like magnetic floater. It's the thing on the right of the image that

like just would float and hover. I I don't know. I thought that was pretty neat. All right. Uh, which brings us now to the end of the show where we do some questions, some comments, some questions that you all had on last week's episode. Thank you so much, uh, for for leading those. Uh, first up, uh, Simon or Simeon Snow says, uh, would love to hear more of your TTRPG tastes. I'm more in that space than video game one these days. Um, Matt, you're up first. Uh, okay. So, uh, let's see. Outside of D and D, I used to play Pathfinder a I used to play vampire a lot. Vampire uh my crew uh was thinking about getting back into just as a sort of change even though we just got out of Raven Loft which is strange just for a different uh mechanic. Also, Lancer I've been playing over with the Dwarf & Forge uh folks over there. That game is phenomenal. It is also uh a bit complex. I was debating trying to introduce my home crew to Lancer, but like they need to do a decent amount of homework, which is fine if you want to

do it. It's just not something that's like easy pick up and play. I just for an RPG fest I just played there's a game that was kickstarted called Die um that uh I'm not sure how ubiquitous it is but basically it has a couple comics and a couple other things but you you roleplay players that are ro playing a tabletop RPG that get sucked into the RPG. Um and I played a modified version with my buddy Nate. It was very very fun. Um, and actually something that I got um a Kickstarter I I just got the Kickstarter for a couple maybe remember a couple months ago. This might key out. I apologize. Oh yeah, it does. Let's see if I can rotate it. No. Well, it's called Jukebox and it is a karaoke musical tabletop role playing game and I've been reading up on it. I'm very I have not played it yet, but I'm very much looking forward to it. And I I I'm starting to like more and more of these like high quality zenesque kind of things. There's another one um that I really enjoyed called Save the Music, Damn the Man, where you play basically like an Empire Records uh you would play

the day in the life of a dying record store and you have to try to save it. Um yeah, so that's kind of where I'm at right now. I don't know, Will. What about you? Uh I have the Final Fantasy 14 RPG sitting on my bed. Uh that's been sort of my pick apart reading. It's a very interesting take on how to do um both how to do combat and the action system and how to mirror the feeling of an MMO in a tabletop space. Both of which I think are really interesting. I don't know that I'd recommend playing it, but if you're into RPG design is probably worth picking apart. Um, I am uh al likewise and for the same reason, a big fan of Blades in the Dark and Burning Wheel, both of which are very interesting takes on dice pool systems and non-combat ways to resolve conflict in different fashions. Um, that is like a whole arc of RPGs that I really like is um you could fight these people and choose not to. Uh, my number one recommendation for weird games that you

should know about and probably never play is Dogs in the Vineyard. Um, Dogs in the Vineyard is you are religious cops in a place that's legally not Utah. Um, and it is a game about conflict escalation. Uh, which I think is is uh remains just really great. Um, and so uh those are probably my top pitches. And also, if you're in the D and D space, but you want something a little bit different than D and D, you've probably seen kicking around. Uh, the reason I bring this up is because their Kickstarter for their second one is live right now. Uh, Humblewood, which I've actually been really enjoying very much. So, I've been doing some one-offs on one shots in in their world, which is sort of the anthropomorphic animals there. Humblewood Beyond the Canopy Kickstarter is going on right now. So, if you if that sort of feels like up your alley, uh, please go check that out because they are doing some good work over there. Um, yeah. All right. Uh, next up we have uh a couple of comments on the Switch 2 and tariffs and all that. Uh, Mitch, we're switching back. M Mitch McNair says, "I'm personally a huge

gamer. I have multiple systems and try to buy a game a month, even if it's a smaller one. I never get consoles when they come out, though. It's just too expensive for jumping on early. I've never happened to have enough money laying around to buy the shiny new thing. So, instead, I save up for it over a few years and get it later. It's still new and fun for me, even if it's late, and there are a lot more game options available. So, the Switch 2 is exciting, and I'm looking forward to it. But the pricing controversy and other issues won't affect me for years to come and who knows what'll happen by then. I think this is a really reasonable like like straightforward take from Mitch that like yes it is really cool to jump on the new shiny thing. Hey chat, how big's your backlog? That's the thing, man. Like like like Yeah, it's really cool to get the new shiny thing and that's great. Here's here's the only the only reason like it's being part of the whatever the current discourse is like like case in point this is not the same thing but I like jumped on to enter the dungeon way later than when it was like truly

popular right uh everyone had already done it and by the time I jumped into it I wanted like a community but it was kind of small by that point so like if you're looking for like the shiniest new thing has value in that like community thing but other than that truly or or if you have a just a group that you talk about or engage with games with for yourself There is no reason that you need to jump on the new shiny thing. There is so much old shiny thing at this point to engage in that is far cheaper. Um we we do I think that does get lost a lot and I'm glad Mitch brought this up because I think now is a time where we and rightfully so the price of games and a bunch of things are being brought into question and what what is the value prop and what is too expensive etc. It has never been cheaper or easier to play video games than it is right now. And that's not saying the newest, shiniest, whatever, Switch, portable, whatever. It's you can get access to a thing that will play Bellatro and

uh at at a at a cheaper cost than I think ever before or something along those lines, right? Like there's just there's so much out there by sheer volume that if you do limit your stuff to stuff that's like 3 or 4 years old, you can find some exquisite deals on Steam or elsewhere. And a reminder, right, I'm I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to plug our own channel. If you see a game and you think it's a game I might play, let me take the risk for you. Oh yeah. Right. There are tax write off, baby. Right. I I'm going to I'm going to play it cuz it's content and tax write off, right? Like for instance, if you're not convinced that uh South of Midnight is an amazing game, come to the stream after this and allow me to persuade you. Right? If you're not convinced that you're totally in to play to buy and play Clear Obscure Expedition 33, come to those streams when that gets released uh next week. Next week, next Tuesday. Next Tuesday. No, next

Thursday. Next Tuesday, something else. Next Thursday. And let me convince you of that. Right. There are ways to experience games without paying for games directly, right? And then if you like the game, go buy it, right? And that's that that is another option. Uh uh as we jump to the next topic, one quick thing back about tabletop RPG stuff. Uh I did see a comment somewhere um that is a story that I wish we did talk about uh about uh Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins leaving Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe we talk about that next week. I I most of what I saw was uh knee-jerk reaction uh stories to it. I didn't hear a lot of like deeper analysis. Um and I didn't I think it'd be worthwhile I think it'd be worthwhile diving into that um a little bit with more time. Um yeah. Uh okay, cool. Uh next up from Tac Blueberry, imagine a cartoony kitchen being more reasonable with the discussion of tariffs than political podcast or AAA news industries. Thanks, Jack.

You don't have to imagine it, right? Uh, and I think that that's that is one of the things that we are constantly striving for is particularly right now um and particularly my request to say more which we'll get to in a second. That's our goal, right? Is to is to have this sort of more in uh more informal, more like take the time to talk about it discussion, right? Because I think a lot of people the anti- headline if you will. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I I like being anti- headline. Um anti- headline often doesn't get you more views or anything, but it is an important part of an ecosystem about talking about literally anything, right? We we are uh we're SEO mining instead of SEO maxing. We're like un we're are we smurfing? Are we We're SEO smurfing. That's what it is. Yeah. Right. Um our numbers aren't low. We're SEO smurfing. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're getting so above our weight class.

Uh, please share us with your friends. We need more people to watch our show. No, but that is one of the points. Uh, and and and this the reason why Tag Blueber's comment, I asked Will to put it in the show notes because it was so funny and it did make me very much smile. So, thank you so much. Uh, but Will has been asking folks to say more and many of you in the comments uh did and so I really appreciate this. This actually comes from a Nebula viewer I believe over on Rocky. Yeah. who messaged us on blue sketch. Do you want me to read this or do you want to do it? Okay, I can do it. Um, so this is from Shiro Tkumi. Uh, and by the way, many of you said a lot and we read all of it. I just we can't read all of it here and then respond to it. But Shirou had a very well-ritten um thoughtout response uh on a bunch of these topics. So, we wanted to read that one and we'll we'll talk a little bit about it. Uh, hello Rocky member here. Regarding in increases in prices to games, I both understand why this is probably being done and I understand the complaints people have to it. No one wants to spend more money on things, especially when income levels aren't rising to match the

inflation. However, here in Canada, the price of AAA games have been $80 for several years now. I dare say perhaps even a decade. Dear lord, my bones. And it's not unheard of to see AAA titles for more than that, though it is uncommon. So, while I get the pain, I also think the reaction to increase prices needs to chill a little bit. You can't afford the price increases. Trust me, I get it. I encourage you to find games used or purchase any of the exist excellent indie titles available basically everywhere. That said, the Canadian prices for these titles is not listed anywhere yet for some reason. We know that the Switch 2 will be 629 alone and $6.99 with Mario Kart, but the individual games themselves have no price. We can only speculate so far. Price increase in the US does not guarantee a price increase in other regions. However, the lack of pricing doesn't bode well for the price to say the same. I'm not sure what my point is. I guess things are expensive but more expensive outside the US. Try to keep that in mind when building your perspective of the cost of things. Gamers, thank you, Sher. That's a very good point, right? is that um things from the we often do this as a US- centered discussion because we're both in the states. Um but it is important to know the animated United

States, right? Yeah, that's right. Um uh Brain Brain Brain wants to start in on 50 nifty United States, but that's not No. Okay, backing up. Um I do think it's important to realize that and and the Canadian dollar is not that weird off of the American dollar. It is a bit, but it's not that far off. Um, it is really worth noting that Americans are now experiencing some amount of the pain that Australia, Canada, Dear God, Brazil, where my Brazilians at, you all are troopers. Games are hideously, unbelievably, unaffordably expensive in Brazil. Um, for a whole bunch of reasons. uh and um the um that whole phenomena is a thing that we often don't take into account. But also, I think the point that we're not going to be able to change price increases except by not buying games.

So, cool your heels, play an indie game, play a game you already own, play a used game, whatever, until prices like match is a reasonable one, right? Because a lot of I think I think this is the the thing that I'm getting is a lot of people are very upset and that's okay. I'm not saying you can't be upset. I'm saying that the reaction to being upset being blowing up Nintendo Treehouse's uh YouTube comments with dropped the price instead of being like, "Okay, I can't afford that. All right, I'm gonna do something else with my time, money, energy, effort." Seems a little weird to me, right? it. Look, I I understand the treehouse thing. I understand because because again, I go back to companies only make decisions because they think it'll make the most money. They made this pricing, you know, tariffs notwithstanding. They made this pricing because they believe even though it is going to be expensive for many people that they will still make more money doing it this way than less money. That's why they're doing it. And it's

understandable for people that are being left out in the cold to be frustrated with that. And it's understandable to have like there's no real venue for those people to have and I'm not saying that the treehouse like meme or just uh you know spamming lower the price it's not going to do anything. Um there's no real recourse for those kind of people because the only recourse truly would be for no for for the people in the demographic that don't care that the Switch 2 costs more money and its games to not buy the Switch 2. Um, it's I don't know. I I I want to lean back on the sort of like back catalog stuff, too. Like I there's so many great games and I feel like the hype cycle makes us lose sort of track of that oftent times. Um, I don't know. I wish there was a more effective way. I also hate

Yeah, I I don't know if you saw the thing and I think the Xbox folks did this first and then Nintendo jumped on the train. Someone at Nintendo was like, "Oh, well, if the Switch 2 is too expensive, there's always a Switch One." And it's funny that both works and absolutely does not work, right? You know, it's super tonedeaf. It's true, but you shouldn't say it. Yeah. And I don't I'm trying to think of the best way kind of around it. Like I don't know. We We'll be t This isn't the last time we're going to be talking about this stuff. It turns out it's complicated. Um I just I I really appreciate the the longer takes on this sort of stuff because again, right, outside of a headline of switch to crazy, exorbitant, like there's a lot to unpack as to where the frustration actually resides and comes from and and how people are dealing with it. Yeah, absolutely. I I

also want to take this opportunity to thank uh OWD2960 and uh Shinoru 14 for also taking time to say more. Both had very excellent salient points in the comments from last week's show. You can go look at them, read them, respond to them um there. Thank you so much. And and as always, I do want to say that our comment section is a place to take time to say more, right? We do read text walls. Um, I I spent I enjoy spending time reading more detailed takes and I people are starting to engage with each other in good faith in the comments section of a YouTube video. My hat smurfing baby, right? Yeah. Like just do that, right? Take the time, say more. And if you're a member, a patron, a subscriber, join the Discord. We do have that thread going about uh pricing in the game industry and there's been some chatter. Uh I'll probably kick that at some point this week. Um, and uh, it's always a good place and time to say more there. Yeah. No, thank you. And if you have any specifically on this video, if you've made it to this part of the end of the video, first of all, thank you so much

for staying with us for almost 2 hours. Second, please write us a comment about what you think about the stories in this video. Also, if there's a new story you think we missed, let us know. You can also message us obviously on Blue Sky. I have one more um request for that. I just got distracted. I had one more request before we were we were finishing uh the show for something. What was it? It'll come to me. Maybe it will. Oh, I got it. I got it back. I should have known because Jamie walked in and it was actually about guests. So, we do this show, right? We do this show uh just the two of us and we can make it if we try, but sometimes I think we're we've gotten this co-streaming thing down enough where we're ready to start doing things we used to do on on Games for Breakfast, which is bring in guests. So, if there's any guests that in in the gaming space or other spaces that you would be interested in us having on this show, let us know on Blue Sky or in the comments. Um, and uh, I think we're

going to try to start doing that in the coming weeks and or months because it is always fun to get another perspective on here as well. Um, I think we had talked to Dr. Aaron McDonald uh, a while ago about doing it, but that was forever ago. I'd love to get her on here, a couple other folks. Yeah. So, if you have anyone you think would add to the conversation, it would be awesome for you to let us know that as well. Yep. All right. I think that all that remains then is for Matt to do our traditional sign off, the same one we do every time. Uh and and and close us out together as we, you know, a family of SEO Smurfs. That's right. So, uh, the reason we do this is to build community and make sure that everyone is on the same page knowing that not only the show is ended, but we can go forth into the week together as one wonderful family that just knows that the week is going to be good and we're going to play a bunch of games and and even though we're apart, we're all together in this weird little existence called life. Here we go. Are you ready to join me in the same ending

we do every time? [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] Jamie is staring at me through my computer monitors like like I'm a psychopath. Jamie, that was the Doom sound. The music. Oh, now I see. Now you get it. Now it all makes sense. Silly me. Silly. Yeah. I mean, really, shame on you. I mean, it's not that far off from Master of Puppets AM. Yeah, it's also true. Thank you everyone for joining us today. Uh we're going to let uh Janet go here. Janet, friends over on YouTube, if you want to come over and hang out while I play South Midnight, uh it's an excellent game. We're on chapter

4. Um we'll be playing that for a couple of hours here. So, please do hop on over. Otherwise, uh we will see all of you Thursday for design club. Jeff and I are doing a game ride along. Uh we'll be deciding what game it is tomorrow. So, you can leave comments in last week's design club if you want to see us play a specific game. So, nice. Uh, everybody say bye, Janet.