Valve's Daily Deals / Activision Blizzard & NetEase Reconcile / Apple's 27% Fee

[Music] welcome to the navi gaming podcast where it is our mission to explore the business and future of video games we bring together the industry's brightest Builders investors and thinkers to keep a pulse on current events dissect emerging Trends and games share Lessons Learned and have a great time this podcast is also part of novic growing ecosystem which ranges from free and premium research to Consulting and advice services for more information visit [Music] www.nic.edu higher ecpm on their iOS optout users and drives better results for advertisers this works by delivering their campaigns to more receptive and relevant audiences using first-party data and Behavioral analy Antics on an

app bya basis a simple two-step integration enables them to Drive Superior results for advertisers while increasing arpd for Publishers in a 100% privacy compliant way you can learn more about how nefta can boost your results at nefta doio now let's jump into the episode hello everyone welcome to another novic Roundtable I'm your host Devon Becker and with me of course I have wonderful hosts and uh you know a face that's a bit of a fresh face we've seen a couple times here Taylor and Maria how you guys doing today good um good yeah I I I wish I was a fresh face um moisturizing you're gonna have to grow a beard apparently yeah oh that might be difficult yeah little harder we don't have a ton of news today but we have you know still great topics there's some I I think some interesting news if nothing else uh like some things around stumble guys which of course we've you know talked about in the past which was uh a bit of an

interesting game in itself uh Val continued to iterate on its store thankfully unlike the other stores which we'll talk about later on not really iterating like they should be and Activision Blizzard with some good news for once uh and then Google with some bad news uh a bit of a fine for them so we'll get into the details of that why don't we just start with the the stumble gu story here on uh Xbox yeah so we've uh discussed stumble guys quot in previous episodes and so I won't go into the details of stumble guys but they are stumbling into Xbox and I thought that was really interesting because I feel it's we already know that the mobile market is mature but this for me is like the stamp of it is at this level of maturity because you have a game that started mobile first as a game that reached the platform beating the competitor fall guys took over their time on mobile because fall guys didn't go to to to that platform and now with stumble guys success in the acquisition of of scopely they've been doing an

amazing job with the game they put it into feature parity with fallu because fallu has like a creative mode where players can create their own levels and stumble guys has a workshop where you do exactly the same and now they're going to move into Xbox they also announced that they're moving into PlayStation but that date isn't announced yet um at least for now and so yeah like that's pretty amazing like this is a new threat for games that are on console um some guys are already on PC through Steam but this is like a new thread to console that be careful in protecting your Market on mobile and capturing the attention and the Loyalty of your players on that Global platform because if you don't well here's the example of stumble guides they will come for your existing Tam do you have any thoughts on that yeah it's a I think it's interesting because obviously stumble guys is a or uh stumble guys is a a copycat of of fall guys and you know the

the the initial big difference was they they were on different platforms and it was there was a a gap within the the mobile space for this this type of experience and some of guys obviously U pro success there and now but now they're going to be coming directly into the exact same Market as the you know the copycat platform or the one that they copied off of and I I I think another interesting aspect of this obviously is there's probably going to be a trend of more mobile games coming to console or or PC we just heard Cod mobile um which in itself was a old Cod um you know CoD game and it's now going to be coming to PC um as as as well um with the and and and it's it's it's it's an odd Trend because obviously the the the goal here for all Publishers and developers is to continue to um engage your user base with it you through any medium that that they're available and it's you know we I think we've already gone through through this

this this trend of um of of games basically being needing to be crossplatform um and I think we're going to continue to see this as everyone competes for um for the the eyes and attention of of their user base that they're going to continue to expand to other platforms and yeah it's you know it it it'll it'll be really interesting to watch this and see if if there actually is any user pull from from stumble guys to actually get their user base to come play these games on other platforms instead of playing the you know the original version of you know that game which was is Fall Guys and if they'll actually be able to to take any of that market share um and if people are going to be loyal to that brand or they're going to be loyal to the you know the best option on each of those platforms which I think is is going to be interesting to watch and I think we'll see a lot of um mobile developers continue to to maybe push the the limits a little bit of seeing if their game is accessible on other platforms because yeah at the end of the day it's you know we're all competing for the same same time for all these users and um I think

this is one of the more this is one of the more easy or I guess um obvious transitions they've already there's already a successful one on on PC and console why not put your your version on there as well and see if you can you can compete with um with that larger player being I guess being epic now I completely agree I definitely want to keep an eye on it and see what pans out um yeah it would be interesting to interesting to learn and I work in a mobile gaming studio and yeah I'm very curious to see if that is indeed possible and like what will happen because they even have like stumble guys fall guys if they're on a different platform they could somewhat get away with it but like what will happen now that they're on you know next to each other on Xbox and Playstation we'll have to see what happens it it it it'd be interesting to see if a company like Netflix would could maybe help with this transition they obviously already have the the mobile application they have they have their you know their Ott platform or their Ott application as well and if they could and and obviously

we all understand like Netflix is leaning heavily into games especially focused on mobile gaming and if they could kind of create that that that seamless experience of you know I I I have Netflix on my phone I have Netflix on my TV maybe we bring some some games to console in a sense but it's obviously just you know doing it through the Ott side of it but there I think there's some interesting opportunities for players outside of the the game developer space that'll be that'll be interesting to watch as well I'll be interested to see actually if if with them moving over Xbox they start looking at opportunities with the game pass to be part of that as well just to increase their user base even more because that might give them Edge even more overfall guys uh by getting in there just because people you know are looking for the new games to try out they they rotate through them even if they may not be interested in it they might play it but it also could open up the opportunity and this is something like more broadly when you're talking about pting to Xbox for cloud which then is technically all the platforms right you could play on a variety of different platforms there including PC without having to Port it to PC PC now uh with with the Xbox Live

app you still have to use uh a gam pad on PC unless you're doing it through like GeForce now but you know it's still like a way to bring that over to people that are on the PC side I know America's a little bit more console Centric though so that's probably not as likely to happen here in the US but it's interesting to see that that this is like the the last move over there because well I don't have the metrics for like the the Xbox side of things uh Steam and mobile are very different numbers of users when it comes to stumble guys uh guys as well like stubble guys does like astronomically better on mobile than it does on Steam and and has only been dwindling since 2022 in terms of player count like uh you know concurrent players so it's it's clearly not as like core of a game it it definitely leans towards mobile and so I do Wonder like is is there a console audience is console itself something that you could kind of consider sort of between mobile and PC when it comes to like that that sort of midcore to core audience that might still like casually play it which like I said in America you

know we tend to lean more towards consoles uh so that might even give a little bit more penetration here but some of that might I think depend on the social aspects as well right because uh if you're talking about the social like a very social kind of game potentially uh you know you have to deal with Xbox uh you know gamertags and that friend system and all that stuff too so it' be really interesting to see this this sort of crossplatform trend going both directions going over to Mobile going like everyone's kind of going every direction at once especially when you're talking about having trouble acquiring more users if you're Tapped Out on acquiring more users on the platform you're on like then you just go to another platform and now that like the engines you know are so like portable to an extent like you don't have to hire these weird you know there used to be so many contract companies that would just do that sort of thing that would do the pting I'm sure they still like I'm sure there's tons that still exist but like it's a little easier to handle when you can uh use the engine to to do a lot of that Lifting for you yeah and I think it'll be it'll be interesting to see over time maybe over the over like a good like fiveyear period if if if the trend ever shifts the opposite way of more console and PC games trying to move

into Mobile as well but obviously that I think is much harder to do than going from Mobile to to console and and PC but I mean I think think we're all aligned here that's this is all about acquiring more users and getting in front of more people and I think we're getting to that point now where our games you you you are going to struggle to succeed on just one platform most of the time um and obviously at the end of the day you know I think some guys kind of reach that may maybe potentially in their eyes reach that limit of this is this is our mobile penetration if we're going to get more users it's it's not coming through mobile it's not coming through increased UA spend or um you know any any other marketing opportunities it's actually we just need to get in front of people in different mediums yeah and obviously there's the potential too if people discover it on xox they might go hey oh I can also play this on mobile cool when I'm not at home or whatever on the go uh so you there's definitely opportunities to take advantage of like the different platforms for people at different times of days different places they're at things like that I don't imagine that's like something that hits everyone but it's it's certainly nice to be able to

go oh wait I could pull out my phone and play with my friends as long as the crossplays there right and that's that's always a question will this have crossplay for example with mobile Andor steam big question but speaking of steam steam itself looking for some more discoverability options uh around daily deals yeah so when I read about it I actually misunderstood what it was because that's how little I understand about how steam's marketing works and so I did a little bit of a deep dive to understand how there's a difference between the Partnerships you can do with valve to get promoted and then the what the algorithms do and I want to credit the game discover code newsletter because they're the ones who deconstructed the feature the FAQs are gated behind Dev login so I appreciate you um so the feature is in beta and it's called daily deal management and steam released a visibility video that explains how games are surfaced to players and I thought that was quite transparent of them so they have

algorithmic featuring which is personalized to each player and the algorithm is purely based on each players preferences and that includes the settings that they can that they can configure and then there's curated featuring which is shown to all players and so this includes the top takeover B Banner U right at the top of the homepage of the store but also special offers on that homepage um which includes the the daily deals and so when you're going to do curated featur ing it it's driven by valve's confidence that it's a game that's going to appeal to a lot of players because it is going to be shown to every single player on the platform so yeah the daily deals is a cative feature and um yeah they're earned they say that they're earned with player interest so it's not based purely on who you know at valve and I'm sure like as in any business it helps if you know the right people and you have a good relationship with them but that's culture that's steam's culture is how

they aim to position themselves against for example the app store or Google Play It's about the player interest and the games earning the curated featuring rather than being given so the daily deal management feature is surfacing the existing daily deals curated featuring to all devs it appears on the dashboard which means what they're trying to resolve is information asymmetry because for you to get these curated featurings you need to know that you can ask those questions which questions you can ask and who you can ask them to and so it was somewhat based on that relationship and the knowledge and having that internal knowledge that this is an opportunity you can try to capture but now um so they're just doing this for the daily deal they're not doing it for the weekly deal and the monthly deal I think they have other uh in the top Banner it's just a daily deal for now and essentially what happens is that if you get chosen based on your game's

performance you receive an email saying that you're eligible for a daily deal and then you go into your dashboard and the developer can set the promotion price they can set when they want the promotion to be shown it it is shown for um 24 hours within the time period of the promotion and is going to get surfaced so the players the developers in control of that configuration and so this just got me thinking that a information symmetry in the games industry is quite impactful um if we look at for example ad monetization uh Performance Marketing optimization getting featured on these different platforms and the stores it is a lot about who you know what's your relationship and knowing the exact questions to to ask and so you know props to evolve for beta testing this feature yeah I was curious if you have any thoughts on it yeah I think what's I

think what's interesting here is I think what most of us know that the Steam and valve themselves are generally a black box it's it's it's kind of you they've arguably the the most valuable private games company out there for you know pure gaming you know you can you can put your bite dance in there and these other companies but they're not just pure gaming businesses and steam is always been this interesting one of there's like there there's no real good alternative you know people like epic haven't been able to even like Chip Away into that that market share um but what I think is super valuable about this transparency now is that developers can plan around it this is you know if if if we know that the game is doing successful and then we're going to be able to get this like 30-day window to to do a daily deal you can also you know correlate that with your your um your live Ops schedule as well or your live service schedule and being able to actually say hey let's let's let's let's plan a daily deal around this limited time mode or this this new update that we're about to push for the

game and see if we can um you know kind of double double team this this user acquisition Channel Through the cheaper game and more content itself and I and I think in any in any games platform or or games company um transparency is always going to be better for the developers on the platform um it's it makes it makes it a little bit easier to plan going forward and I think this this will be extremely helpful I think the one thing I'm I'm still a little concerned about on the black box side is you know what what what is a successful how what do I need to Target to make sure I'm going to get this daily deal opportunity and it still seems like today it's a a tossup of like okay I'm just gonna you know I'm just going to continue to to Market my game I'm GNA continue to try to acquire users and and and attempt to get these um invisible metrics that hopefully make valve notice us and give us this opportunity but I think there's strategy around that you know you don't want people trying to gain the system you want people to actually just try to build a successful game and then and then we'll benefit it but I I I I do imagine there will be there will be some

companies that pop up that that are trying to help out developers in this space and you know they they may understand steam's internal algorithms that that they're using to choose which games they want to offer these daily deals to but I think there's just going to be a lot of value in in the dev cycle and being able to time this with when am I going to be able to get a daily deal opportunity because as soon as I get that that that invite from from valve we're going to start playing around it and I think that's going to be beneficial to both developers and valve itself definely and is what you saying I somewhat understand the Black Box because as soon as you exactly detail the metrics then you know then you have the rules of what metrics you have to to game uh to to get noticed and um something I found quite quite interesting is that in that video of the visibility they didn't say what counts but they did say what actually does not count and there's this these rumors that the amount of wish lists you have and the store Page visits matter and so they

clarified that those elements don't don't play a role and so yeah at least they say what doesn't matter and trying to squash some rumors of how you know some games might be trying to game the the algorithms that's interesting because the I feel like when when I whenever I talk to game developers it's there's so much value in that early community that you create and you know that that that's where everyone goes for it's you know we we want to get as many wish lists as possible we want we want people to be on our store looking at updates uh waiting for this game to come out and and when you're when you're in the early stages of building a game that's the only metric you have uh and and so I am I would say I'm a little surprised I think I saw Devon make a face as well of this like I'm surprised it doesn't matter because it should be valuable uh to valve if if there are extremely successful um Early Access games but I guess the I guess the way they would look at this is you don't need the daily deal you're going to be successful based off of the wish list I'm seeing and the store traction we're seeing that we actually as a company that takes you know 30% of your Revenue we don't want

you to do a daily deal we want you to launch this full price because we're seeing that success there and then we'll allow you to potentially be able to revamp that um the user acquisition Channel if if it seems to you know maybe if you're starting to uh you know pull back on sales and the game still game still doing well we'll try to help you bump that number back up and see if we can get some more traction there and you know maybe get these long tails of users yeah if those two metrics don't matter what does that even leave outside of like like uh reviews and maybe discussion activity there's not a ton of activities around a game because it's a store at the end of the day so like that's I mean maybe maybe as you're pointing out Taylor it has to do with games that are say highly well-rated but not getting the traction they should for example uh or or games that could be well rated but don't even have enough ratings yet and maybe need a little bit of extra boost like so it might be an opportunity like that but I did notice one thing about that at least that was mentioned in the article that that was kind of a odd was that they're asking

the uh the the people that they're inviting to provide their best price they've ever offered or better so they're not letting you do like less than like you can't do like you know if you had some crazy sale you either got to do that or better and you can't go backwards at all this invitation now they may adjust that this is kind of the invite only phase they may change that over time but I thought that was kind of interesting that they're they are looking for deeper discounts in a way so it's definitely not necessarily that they're like looking to try and Juice up the ones that are the higher purchase prices unless you're just offering a bigger discount on something that's a big purchase price but I mean for all we know it could be games that have tons of DLC where they know there's like tons of upsell potential down the road stuff like that there's there's a lot of possibilities as you said kind of a black box but thought it was kind of interesting that they're asking for that deep of cuts feels like a Walmart kind of move uh so it surprises me in in a system where like the price Cuts while they do drive a lot of interest already kind of undermine a little bit of some of the way things work on Steam when it comes to the way people wait for things um and then the the other problem I see with with this is if you're talking about daily deals right now the daily

deals are very poorly surfaced they're like stuck in the middle of midweek deals there's like when I went and checked earlier there was like one on the front thing and I had to scroll a couple times in the in the midst of the midweek deals to see the second one in there and they just and if you go to like see all you can't tell when they're in there so it seem like they're very very poorly surfaced at the moment and so there's no habit forming at the M for going and checking for daily deals right like there's a weekly Habit to to the most like at the most when you're going in like you're other than being notified by email for example when things go on sale uh that you've wish listed which if you're anything like me and have so many things wish listed you just get like an email that says like this and like 14 other games are on sale I like well that's that I'm not gonna open that email like I get it stuff I wish listed is on sale I'll manually check it when there's a steam sale at that point and I'm sure there's a lot of people out there like that so that even doesn't necessarily drive a lot of activity to it now there might be people who just religiously refresh steam every day uh but I can't imagine that's the norm because it's not like a daily refresh kind of store uh at least from my

perception of it I could be totally off based on that but I I haven't seen anything on there that generally outside of like the sales themselves where they're doing like event based stuff and driving daily activity like come in and get your Trading Card things every day that sort of thing um so maybe this is part of that as well maybe they are looking to move towards driving more daily interest refreshes people like itching for something to buy on a daily basis looking for good deals trying to snipe stuff like the way like Amazon does their like Lightning Deals kind of things to get people to to have a little bit of fomo uh so it might just be part of that but I I do got to say like well valve is a bit more of a black box they also seem to care a lot more about discoverability and promoting developers in Games Far Far More Than many of the other platforms now I I can't speak for Microsoft they they can be pretty Pro developer so I'm talking bit more like mobile definitely seem seems to be pretty anti-d developer at times um and so it's a little uh I guess refreshing at this point you know to continue to see valve try and push things that help uh discovery even if it's you know kind of a weird invite only thing like they

have shown transparency occasionally around the labs for example like the the lab experiments that they do they'll occasionally show the results of that talk a bit about that kind of stuff in interviews um so they're they're not like transparent transparent because they're not a public company but they will definitely occasionally go back and like do a little bit of retrospective behind the scenes kind of stuff like I was even looking something up earlier around the um the whole thing that happened with skyro mods and they're being pulled off because they're actually sort of being put back for sale through some other loop I won't get into uh and I was just looking at when that happened and like they were Val was pretty transparent about you know why they took them off why they were trying to do that experiment uh why maybe it didn't work why it was a mismatch so I thought that kind of transparency maybe after the fact may not be always common but they are at least uh you know forthcoming when they feel like it's uh in the best interest of people to know without feeling like they're kind of a manipulative company they still feel closer to benevolent which is funny to see like Tim Sweeney trying to kind of play that same angle uh when it's like you guys are competitors but you're both kind of like better about supporting developers than a lot of the others so for the price cut I

believe that's already how daily deals are it's not something new uh so it's carried over from that and I understand from the perspective if we go to the justification of the curated featuring it's something you're going to show to all players you want to be sure that it is a deal and so I understand it from from that point and in the visibility um video they also said that ratings don't matter it matters if you're like 40% or lower but anything higher than that it's it doesn't count in metric left at this point well you have Revenue you have concurrent players and total player account um and then they also mentioned H now I forgot I forgot what what it was we were discussing it um oh the wish listing like the game discover newsletters is really good they actually did a breakdown and you can somewhat predict the the success of when your game goes uh for sale based on the wish

listing and the conversions and then you can analyze Benchmark games to understand and Benchmark the conversions closer to you and so I was very interesting deep diving into steam like kudos to anyone who's a specialist on that platform because it seems to have its own magic because I'm just used to like mobile platform magic and it's interesting to see Steam has its own magic dust as well um I wanted to talk just touch on AI I don't can I Devon yeah yeah definitely like it's still on the same topic of uh steam here so yeah I I didn't really see this news circulating but um Steam and valve allow AI again so they were pretty open they said they needed a little bit of time to understand the the legalities and now they've updated their develop developer terms and conditions and in the content survey you have to fill out when you're submitting to steam you have to disclaim how AI was used to generate content including code when you are developing

the game and then if it also utilizes AI when it's running you have to describe like what guard rails you have to ensure it's not creating illegal or infringement content um and then as part of those disclosures when they're analyzing the submission they're going to check I suppose like as as much as they can the veracity of um of those disclaimers yeah like that's really good news fine um yeah thank you steam yeah yeah it's it's interesting because there's there was two like main comments I think that that that valve came out with on that one was obviously as a global platform we need to make sure the legality of what you're doing is is in line with you know the regulatory bodies and what what they're expecting and I think we've talked about this on a previous episode as well of you the biggest concern with AI is is usually copyright infringement it's you know and then obviously when you get into certain Market markets there there's issues around you know how those those governments you know expect games

to provide content and what that content is but seems also made a comment of you know we want we want to be the platform with the most games possible and I think that is you know if you weren't talk about a value of AI I mean it's probably just yeah it's quicker quicker to Market we can we can build things faster we can get things more things to Market and specifically around games but but the issue you run into there is this this quality compression of yes we can is is the is the the hope here that we're going to have more games or that we're going to have more good games and I think that's that that's one of the concerns that the the these stores will get flooded with content if if AI tools ever get to that level and obviously then that that requires a longer um verification process and uh you know steam obviously having to essentially manually go through every one of these games to make sure that that one that you know they're not they're not just ripoff to other games or that there's not IP concerns or that there's you know we're not going to have regulatory concerns and other other jurisdictions but I think it is it is

interesting that they they did reopen this up because I think there's there's been a lack of clarity around like how much AI am I allowed to use where this doesn't actually even matter and you know I think at first you know seems obviously had their concerns with blockchain games before I think AI is obviously that next that that that next cycle and with every new technology there's there's new concerns that come up and I don't think a lot of these these platforms want to be the promoter of these uh of the problems with in these spaces and I think at at a certain point you get to the the side of I'd rather just not have anything with AI or not have anything with blockchain just because I don't want to have to even take that risk uh but but know I think this is this is good because I think it's it does lean into their their mentality of we we want to have we want to be the place where you can play every game you can access every single game and we want to have as much content as possible so AI is a beneficiary of that or or or benefit to that that plan but we'll we'll see how long this last CU all it's going to take is one true

dmca Tak down that is is not just a small player but maybe some like Disney that is concerned that yeah they have their characters being being used in these games without without their um it's team but williot fine I guess yeah yeah and it's it's it's uh so that I think it is good I think it's good to at least try these things just like I I I do think steam should allow for blockchain games and I think the the benefit to Consumers is having aat that you can trust and that's like that's that's what's important to me but I think a lot of these platforms don't want to be the one who trust or liability falls on to in the long run and AI is that new I think scary term that platforms are like i' I'd rather I'd rather not be the the promoter of this I I'll wait a little bit longer um and so we'll we we'll see where that goes and we'll see what concerns come up but it is it is interesting the the very quick turnaround from Steam on this yeah where where's blockchain games

valve come come and let us on just take the Epic approach throw the disclaimer on there and call it a day right like that seemed to be the way to go I mean it does seem it's about protecting legal liability which I mean that's like the same approach that Google basically took with uh with allowing nfts on the games which was like Hey this if you do it this way it's basically gambling so you need to be gambling registered licens and all that if you do that you're cool if if not just don't do that and you're fine and that was basically I mean there's still like don't touch cryptocurrency but as long as it's just nft kind of stuff they're still fine with it so I think this was a case too where like Val was just hitting the brakes rather than saying no forever and like even even to be fair on the web 3 stuff they did try and do cryptocurrency stuff for a while and they said hey this is this is not working at all for us right now this stuff's too unstable it's too new we love pioneering new stuff you know they helped Pioneer some of the big VR stuff and everything else and you know steam deck as it is but they they had to be like this is not ready for us right right now like we can come back to this later but we don't see in the foreseeable future where this is going

to work so we're just going to turn it off and not allow it but blocking AI seems a lot more problematic than blocking nft and cryptocurrency because it's a lot less obvious right so there's two places you can be talking about it you can be talking about it in the live game in which case like things are being produced by players essentially through AI systems or in the development pipeline if you're talking about the development pipeline there's already been games in the like the finals admitted they were using AI some of stuff and you know they're one of they one of the bigger ones admitting it but I'm sure there was tons and that's the thing is it's very difficult to police this if you're talking about either in the pipeline or in the game it's not that hard to disguise it in certain ways and the thing is you could say it's procedural you could be like oh it's not AI this is procedurally generated you know what I mean like it's it's there's definitely ways you could get around it and so I don't think valve wants to spend a whole bunch of resources chasing that and so it's more like they just set up the legal protection now and say hey like you agree to this you say you're you're playing by the rules and if not like we could just probably kick you off like we're not going to deal with the legal hassle of this so you better like you know dot your eyes and cross your te's like before you do this so you

don't get in trouble too but we're making sure we're protected and I think that's the fair stance but that could obviously go too far like where where you just don't allow things or you start to get a little too crazy but I would like to see them lean towards what Google's doing with nfts for example as a way to kind of get towards it and there are a number now of of web 3 games that have you know put uh non web3 versions on Steam like I was just looking at Phantom galaxies earlier like it's always fun to read the reviews of these nft games are always super positive from Steam users uh so I'm I'm honestly not sure even why like if I was a web 3 developer right now I I wouldn't want to put my game on Steam just because it's a huge amount of negative PR from the reviews alone it doesn't really help you I think but it's still something I think we'd all like to have and in the meantime like I don't usually see a lot of reviews period on Epic so I think it's probably safer there it's kind of like how uh if you put your game out in like um Early Access there's no reviews um and so that kind of helps like in in certaint platforms like um uh on Google Play for example so there are certain ways you can kind of like take advantage of that but I do uh I do

applaud Val for turning this around just like when epic turned around that whole adult only thing in like a week or two uh it's good that the both these platforms are like being logical and reasonable uh because game developers are already having hard enough time as it is right now and uh and while not everyone's a big fan of AI like people like the finals were showing like hey this is a tool to leverage that could help us you know multiply our efforts because games are really expensive to develop right now we can afford a huge team to de do all this and people are enjoying the result no one's like mad and there was just a recent agreement you know on like I don't think we ever mentioned it on here uh within the last week or two around uh voice actors and AI to find like a good compromise where they could be like yeah you could use AI voice stuff but it has to like follow these rules and payment terms and stuff like that so like I think we're making progress to the point where this might not even be rejected as hard as web 3 stuff was it it might just find a good sort of Middle Ground assuming the tools can even keep up and not end up just mediocre and ditched anyways but I think uh stuff like the finals was good proof of that so this good I think overall I

also think Decades of fantasy and like sci-fi and AI H has helped build a culture of acceptance of AI because if we compare the anyway I I won't go into it I won't go into it um yeah I'll stop here well speaking of these other developers and uh I mean I guess good news here from from developers that normally we we I think tend to bash a little bit uh Activision Blizzard with with a little bit of a makeup here oh yeah I wanted to bring this up because when we discussed the when we discussed the breakup on this podcast um we reached the conclusion that once the acquisition from Microsoft was finalized they would make up again with net e because Microsoft has a relationship with n e is the publisher of the China edition of Minecraft and as much as the you know the financial statements mentioned that I was fine it didn't make really any difference friend uh it did make a difference you know mainland China is a

massive market and so from um I think they said it's going to take around six months because they have to build up the domestic teams and then you know test the servers and do all the processes so maybe in six months time the portfolio Diablo Immortal always stay alive but the portfolio of World of Warcraft OverWatch uh the Starcraft series and so on we'll we'll go back to to being playable and so this is a positive turn for both companies but also for the players because they've invested so much time and money playing these franchises that they love and then completely out of their control because the two companies didn't reach an agreement and you know Bobby kotek is no longer the CEO of Activision Blizzard who was rumored to be a key player in this lack of uh agreement so yeah really really good that the players now can enjoy their games again so a good outcome yeah think it's uh it's it it it's obviously one of those things you always have to

pay attention to because these are these are massive massive games companies that are being you know secluded from the largest G me market if if they don't have these specific Partners you know Activision has also partnered with tensent um for Call of Duty mobile as like their local publisher for for mland China and yeah I I think you all are right on this that like at you know even with hindsight of like there there was no way this this this deal was going to stay um in in in that position of negotiations and you know not being able to find an agreement this is beneficial to both groups I think Microsoft throughout this um or even Activision throughout this acquisition process has been very clear that the the goal is to get these games in front of the most people possible and it's they they they actually seem to be taking a less like a less of a control from this from that perspective of no we'll we'll partner with anybody we we want we want this on every platform out there we want this accessible to every sort of of um end user that that wants to play this game

and so I think and it is good it's because I think you're so right about this that there's there's always this concerned as a gamer that at any time not the fact that we've gone fully digital is that these games can be shut down and I lose everything I've ever worked for I there's no I don't have that physical copy anymore that I can I can hop back into my game if the if the publisher chooses not to and I think we're even seeing this with um what I think it was um oh shoot I'm forgt there there another game that just they just released their the second version they're like no Skins are going to transfer over from oh Smite I think it was Smite uh oh yeah yeah yeah they like yeah nothing from Smite one is going to be transferable over to Smite two and it's it's tough as a gamer like I put so many hours into this and now I got to start from scratch all that money I spent is is is for nothing now I mean I can still play the game but obviously I'm going to move to the next one um and yeah and this and this just falls into this this same category that you know when you when you see net e and and Activision not working together anymore the first thing you think about is man how many gamers spent money on this that

are just going to just lose access because these two large groups can't come to an agreement um and now I'm not going to be able to play this game or use any of the things that i' I've purchased so I think it's good for everybody it's obviously really good for Microsoft really good for Activision this is you know access to the the the the largest market that that you're going to find in the world and so I mean well I don't think there's ever going to be really a time where there's no agreement it'll be when it comes to Mainland China if there's not an agreement it's probably more so that they don't want that game played in their you know on in their country at all it's not really you know the these groups it's beneficial to netes and Microsoft and Activision this this had to this had to happen and I I know I do know they were discussing um these agreements with other groups as well they they were always gonna find somebody whether or not it was going to be nety again or not and this reminded me was it there's the spicy take from the UB a Ubisoft exact because they announced the Ubisoft Plus premium subscription service or something like that and the exec said players have to get comfortable not

owning their games yeah I feels like a very controversial statement yeah that's that's that's one of those things that I think is going to be really it forever it's going to be something that we all we all think about I mean not only are we in the games industry but we are also all Gamers ourselves and we all probably spend money on games that it's tough to hear somebody say Hey you know you don't actually own this you're you're renting it this is from everything from the game itself to the Skins you're purchasing you don't own anything you have to be comfortable with that and that's that's just not how I think a lot of us grew up playing you know we you owned it it was it was yours when you purchased it it was it was your game and everything you have cannot be taken away from from that developer and now we're in this we're we're in this like weird weird cycle of like hoping games work out everyone everyone's playing them in the earliest stages and then out of nowhere the developer shuts the game down and you're like oh wow I I I I bought this game and I I spent all this money and you just you just took it from me and so yeah it's I don't know if that was the uh the best thing for anybody at Ubisoft to be saying um maybe keep that behind closed doors uh but I don't know

how I don't know what kind of reaction they were expecting to get from that well I mean the good news is there they're not that not everyone is taking that mentality uh just as it de side like uh and seesoft just allowed a city of Heroes to to like exist as a as like the the sort of Port people did where they like forked off the source code AS City of Heroes home homecoming so you can now play this old MMO completely free like the whole game servers are like free everything's free even like the the stuff that was normally paid in like is playable in there and so like that's an example of them just being like hey like it's more valuable the Goodwill I mean who knows maybe they're trying to plan a sequel and keep people people interested they might have an alternative motive but it's still like uh there is ways to do it to say like hey if you guys are going to put in all the effort cool go for it then like still maintains good Goodwill we don't have to do anything um and it might just be like a license agreement where it's like you know we can y this in any time or we can like we control this IP still so don't mess around with it but there

is ways to still like because I've noticed pretty much every game still like that that doesn't get huge takedowns still tries to maintain like you could still play plenty of Ultima online servers uh I'm sure if if blizzard wasn't uh so you know smacking the hammer down there'd be a lot more like you know there used to be all the vanilla servers and stuff before they brought back classic things like that so you know there is opportunity to allow the community to take it but then ubisoft's probably just like well we're not really that kind of company we don't really make those kind of games like we're a Content turning out company and that would be good for us and we're trying to like monetize our back catalog so it's better if we say you don't own it so it does make sense coming from them with like their position right now but it just is kind of a foot and mouth sort of thing to put out there yeah it's the kind of thing that you think or you discuss internally but you don't say with such clear wording externally but I I do see where Ubisoft is coming from sometimes I wonder if we have have these feelings because that's how we grew up

and our consumer profile is different from the consumer profile of these newer Generations where you do like rent stuff you don't like you rent Furniture you rent your clothes it's all sub you have all these subscriptions and so I do believe that there is a shift of what ownership truly means and consumerism and so maybe we care but maybe the next generation of consumers will be more happy having a subscription and playing all these games and like for them it doesn't really matter the ownership yeah I mean there's there there's always a trade-off and like I think the trade-off that I think we we we're all seeing as we grew up is is accessibility to more content I mean I used to have to go to GameStop to get a new game there was no I wasn't just able to scroll through libraries and pick and choose the games I wanted to play um so so I definitely have the benefit now of going digital as being a accessibility benefit but now there's always a concern of oh well now I don't actually own this I I'm I'm not I I don't have the ability to play this

forever indefinitely there I I hope I can but but I do think yeah company I think you said n seesoft de did this yeah like that's how you build brand loyalty though so that it'll be interesting to watch both sides of it of you know does does this work out long term for n seesoft because people are like oh I'm willing to trust them they're GNA keep my game alive but on the flip side of it yeah I do want tons of content I can I can be able to play and we'll see if we just get to this mentality of it's more of a consumption based mentality instead of an ownership based mentality and just I'm just going to play it until I can't anymore and move on to the the next one of 20,000 games that I that I have access to today surprisingly it's probably not sanctioned but like Star Wars Galaxies for example still playable as well like there's people running home Rook servers for it and stuff pretty well known and I'm like I'm surprised knowing Disney the way they like to shut stuff out or even like before Disney owned it Star Wars generally was not something you messed with if you were modding or trying to do stuff unofficially so I'm not sure like how they're getting away with it right now it might be like Ah that's fine we'll leave it alone or

whoever owned like Star Wars Galaxy specifically I might have left it alone but you know it is nice to see that there are people like willing to preserve it even when you know Ubisoft doesn't think you own it but I I don't know I mean there's is a complicated subject right like and it's definitely something that like especially you know right now we're surrounded by Retro Game stuff everywhere and it's like does that just not exist in the future you know like it's it's a big question but like there was one last thing I wanted to touch on the blizzard thing just briefly before we move on to the next which is around uh Diablo 4 for example was not published in China I understanding at all because this this Rift had happened before they had anyone new so this now OPP opens up the opportunity for Diablo 4 to finally launch in China but in light of those new uh proposed restrictions around gaming this is where it starts to get a little dicey right because those start to dip more into the types of monetization and things that especially Diablo Immortal was was tapping into but also diao 4 and so it's like yeah all these older games that were just kind of Premium you know off the shelf games like that they didn't

violate any of this proposed stuff around like daily login rewards and things like that but the newer games start to dip into that and it's like okay well this starts to be something where it's like maybe nety is gonna help them navigate that but also I feel like nety has seen the writing we've talked about this in I think a previous episode where nety is kind of now looking at like maybe we should start publishing a little bit more outside China because we're hugely dependent on the the mainland audience and that might not be as lucrative as it used to be if this stuff starts coming down on like our business models and so they're now going to have hopefully a better relationship now with a western publisher that could then help because now that Western publisher is under Microsoft it's an even bigger force to be able to help them publish outside of China so like it seems like a beneficial relationship for both of them now to consider that but it actually might benefit China the least depending on if they drop the hammer down pretty hard so really interested to see where this goes over the next couple months because those were proposed regulations they haven't been enforced but likely some of that probably will so we'll see but speaking of uh you know forcing for the government in this case

Google getting slapped in the wallet uh this time not necessarily from epic but still pretty hard yeah yeah this is obviously we've all known about this ongoing you know case between epic and Google and epic and and apple and it it seems like it's somewhat come to a at least a temporary end uh I think we were all expecting a little bit more clarity or some more extreme uh changes but yes Google was Google was charged uh or find $700 million um they obviously have admitted no wrongdoing but that is generally due to their their practices within their store and overcharging either developers or consumers um and and at at the core of this I mean this the the other the the flip side of this was you know apple and epic did somewhat have a you know an agreement I don't think we was anywhere near the level what we were expecting but Apple's now going to start allowing for more clarity around like side load games and being able to direct players to different um different payment

ecosystems specifically on the web now the issue of this is nothing really changed they're they're still charging 27% um on any of these fees they are going to continue to give users all the warnings in the world to keep them within their own ecosystem but and so and so it you know obviously I think apple and epic both appealed to the Supreme Court on this they were both denied and I know epic is now going to reappear at the district court level um as well and continue this process which you know I love epic and Tim Sween are fighting for us but man this is I do not think this is going the the way they were hoping for um Apple does have some interesting um interesting Arguments for them not being a monopoly which which which is funny that Google is on the flip side of this of like they are a monopoly due to the fact that they're only providing the software and obviously paying a lot of these oems to not only Leverage Android but also promote the Google Play Store and you know we'll pay you as an oem a fee if

you if you promote us and you make us your exclusive partner but then Apple has for some reason been protected from this because they provide the hardware and software so there's there's some reason that's not seen as much of a monopoly but what I what I think here is this is something that we've been we've been discussing a lot um internally here at Convoy and I think even a little externally as well which is is this the beginning of the of of like a web Renaissance for for mobile and the the issue here is is that consumers do trust Apple that is that is and apple knows this you you don't question Apple pay when you pay for something you know that your the security has been you know vetted you you're you're not concerned about who you're interacting with and when you start allowing for side loading or Progressive web apps and allowing payments outside of it consumer is not only going to have trust issues but they have a user uh a uiux issue as well I was just like hey I I don't want to have to go to another web page log into that

account go find the assets that I was looking to buy make sure it's connected to my my mobile application people just want to pay for things and consumers don't think about it and the and the big issue here is is that with apple not really changing fees as much as people were expecting developers don't have the ability to actually incentivize any of their users to actually move to the web the the the the thought here was if if we got to a point where Apple was like okay we're only going to take 10% if you go to the web well then developers can offer a 50% decrease in cost and still make a a 5% margin on going to the web users have a benefit developers have a benefit Apple still gets up you know their cut as well but with it being very similar to the old fees there's there's no there's no incentive to a developer to actually push you to the web you know with 27% plus your transaction fees or or your uh you your credit card fees and your processing fees like you're you're at the same number and what I what what developers care about the end of the day is user experience we we want users to purchase as quick as possible you you

don't actually want people to think it through or say ah this is too much for me to to go through it as to spend this money but the the the the good news that I think came out of this all was there are problems there there there are concerns from the regulatory perspective that Google and apple do have are either practicing in you know unethical behaviors or R Monopoly and we're slowly moving forward it's it's it's not over but yes Google has finally got their first you or got one of their ma a major find to actually um I would say set in stone they were doing stuff wrong and Apple's officially making some moves now to try to be more developer and user friendly I just I just think it's all kind of kind of a facade to be honest it just oh yeah we we're giving up something here but at the end of the day you're not really giving up anything nothing's going to change you're gonna people I think I think I actually even saw some stats on this of when Google released or updated their their terms to allow for thirdparty web stores it was something like 5% of of users in dollars

ended up going to those web stores which is still 5% but Google was also still taking a fee on on those transactions but there's there's so much value in trusting these platforms um and no one wants to have an account in every for every single publisher and developer they they interact with so it's it's it's interesting to see where we after all after what two plus years now this is this is where we're at um it'll definitely continue but I I don't think we're I don't think anybody's really happy with where we are it seems like almost a waste of time but hopefully it does push push Regulators to continue to look into this yeah I I appreciate epic taking on this battle um my understanding of why Google did get the fine and now has like a fiveyear timeline where they have to implement some changes like the experience for side loading was because they there was proof that they had paid these big publishers to not have their own store and so that was anti-competitive move um

whilst with apple that that wasn't the case and I was actually the product manager leading um a mobile game to have a web shop and before I did that leg work I heard oh you know you have a web shop and you'll get players there and then you have a better savings on the cup but actually when you put things together about you won't probably have to integrate with a processing payment system and you want them to be Merchant a record unless you're a bigger company and so they're going to be taking a fee and then you have the the fee of the credit cards and then depending on where the transaction happens the country the type of payment that the payment provider that they're using you could easily get like an 8% fee on top of the fee you're paying this this payment partner and then you have to have your web shop and have a team to improve the ux and the UI and the integration and maintenance and have the liveops tools that you need to do the promotions there

and unless you're a bigger company if we're talking about like you're optimizing your Revenue at that point when we're talking about going to different platforms and you're trying to acquire users and you're trying to increase the average revenue that you get for your existing paying users that all makes sense but if we're talking about you know this is going to completely change how studios are going to monetize their their users yeah I I disagree like yeah it's great to have a new way to optimize a game but it's not revolutionary when you put all the costs together and then you also have like the user experience of scams you know people are going to send you links that are not true like it's not the actual web shop of the game and then you have the customer support cost like all of these costs are adding up and so it's not an obvious decision in my opinion for a title to decide to have a web shop it is a decision that has to be carefully weighed with the pros and cons I think

it's pretty obvious though if they're going to ask for 27% for example they could do things to facilitate that safety when going out like there's outside of putting a scare screen they could definitely do something about that like you know we have things like https domain certificates we have ways of like trying to validate that stuff you know if that's hardcoded in the app for example like you're not going to end up somewhere else they control the only browser you're allowed to even use and you have to go through that and they actually purposely made it so that it's a terrible experience you get basically kicked out of your your session you have to go find whatever you were going to buy again they basically made it near impossible to use and so it's like it's obvious like they could earn that 27% pretty easily so it's pretty clear that they're not interested in earning their cut and that's that's the bad faith part that you know I I'm not sure about Google but on the Apple side epic's definitely going back to the court and being like this is come on like this is not a remedy like they're clearly just laughing at us at this point and like and the question is you know whether the Court's g i I don't think a Court's not

g to see unless they just land in the wrong Court you know where the judge is just like you know closing his eyes or looking the other way kind of thing I can't imagine you wouldn't see that be like well yeah that's clearly a bad bad faith argument because it's not that oh you know Apple's providing all these services and stuff that 30% it's like that's why you pay the fee to be a developer like you're already giving them money for that like and Google gets charging far less for that even and still manages to somehow make it work and they're having to pay people people to install their OS as opposed to Apple where they're making the money off the hardware the OS the everything on it like their own apps like so it just the argument I think is just clearly invalid uh you know blatantly but it's situation where Apple's also goingon to have to deal with this uh EU uh their the digital markets act that's they're gonna have to start to do something about that soon and I have a feeling they're gonna do the same thing right they're just going to do this sort of fake solution uh and it's up to The Regulators to actually call them out on that and if they don't then it's like then we can't really win at that point and it just becomes like well then we're going to have to end around we're going to have to push people to the web uh more

natively and not even just through the stores because clearly they're not going to play ball un until they absolutely positively have to and it's I mean from a business perspective sure but at this point I feel like Apple's doing a really good job of making the case for why people should start considering not releasing on iOS at some point as a game development like maybe for other apps might be okay but like considering they're getting to the point where they're pushing to charge you to advertise your own thing on top of the other UA you're doing on top of the 30% on top of the development costs it gets to the point where it's like you know it's untenable as a business I think to run on iOS unless you're getting a lot now obviously you get more paying users sometimes or like a higher spend sometimes and that's the only thing that really I think makes it a hard sell now other countries though certain countries like definitely are going to do better on Google Play So this this could shift over time right like it's just an e economics problem right now that continues to cement the Monopoly more more than it is necessarily just a technological one yeah and I I think one of the issues

that that that I that I notice here was like the Regulatory and like government bodies they were never prescriptive it was never you need to do this it was always we just need you to change and so Apple's like all right we'll change we we changed yeah our fee is 3% lower now you can go to the web if you want to do that and like and I think I think you said right about Apple's just laughing they're like this is so easy to this is so easy to get around like they you're you're not going to take away Market chare from us like we'll we'll change but if you're not going to tell us exactly what to do we're going to do the bare minimum and at the end of the day all you said was we have to do something and we did something and we're smart enough to know this is not going to impact our bottom line in in any way but this is why I really do think there's a massive opportunity here um you know Maria you talking about building a web shop somebody's going to potentially have the opportunity here to build that trust in a in a web shop and be the aggregator and curator of of content where everyone everyone's comfortable with there's a you know it's pay through company X and everyone everyone trusts it it's not pay through this developers

portal every single time it's hey no you use our platform we have a sideloaded application that has access to all this we've made it super easy for you to use we're going to be the merch of record we're going to be that trust layer for all your users we're going to take on that liability and I think there is a a serious opportunity there if somebody can can really really fix the problems that developers are going to run into with trying to get trying to monetize their users and so still super excited about the web I think people are going to continue to build for it and the thing is I only think the the benefits are going to to continue to shift towards developers and consumers Apple can't go backwards now you can't now reincrease fees or take away side loading like that's that to me is going to obviously you know ra raise some eyebrows and and so you know it's a good start I I'll be interested to see where where it goes and see how much developer and user pool can can continue to push apple as well to May maybe even support this a little bit more but yeah it's uh it is it is kind of funny they they just

they were like yeah here all right we we did something and people and Regulators like all right well I guess that's all we asked you to do was something so I don't really know what you know I don't I don't know if we'll ever get to the point where somebody says you have to charge this or you can only charge this but we we I I think it'll have to start becoming prescriptive if we ever want a real solution here yeah but the moment that governments start making these types of prescriptions that that opens a new of how yeah I'm going around and S like how prescriptive they can Define these Solutions and limit the product development and yeah restrict The Innovation potentially at some point and so I don't know I'm quite cynic on this I there's I'd say we're nowhere near and it's a very long time span until the App Store is no longer beneficial as a platform to publishing because it does have a massive user base they do spend High um higher than generally Google Play users and you know as long as the

LTV cost of acquisition is positive and is growing then yeah I don't know I'm synic I think you know legal governments have a lot to regulate in the world and in countries and I don't expect decisions like this to take you know the priority and precedence in being resolved and so it developing games publishing and monetizing is about knowing the lay of the land and playing within those rules and maximizing the opportunity within those rules like with web and hopefully a competitor comes to improve that uh ux um and the trust building the trust with players but yeah that's how I face it it's like those are the rules and you have to learn how to perform the best within those rules and I'll hope that they will change because it could be 10 years until really significant change happens I think the best example of a regular actually doing something prescriptive and getting results was uh I think it was Brazil uh

correctly if I'm wrong I'm pretty sure it was South America somewhere if not Brazil um but where Apple started you know excluding the power adapter basically being like ah you have enough of those we don't you know for environmental reasons right which they love to use those kind of smoke screens like privacy but uh it was the EU the EU they I think they didn't both actually because it was like first I think in there but yeah I think EU adopted it as well where basically it was like no you've got to put that adapter back in there you can't you can't just be like you offend for yourself like it's a necessary part of this device functioning and so that was that was a small small win uh we need more ones like that where it's like the obvious thing like no you just need to do this and then figure out your business around that because it's not going to like tear your business down um so I mean even if they were to say like hey 27% is too high you can only do 10% and you know you can't do these things on that where it's like just knocking down the the sort of bad faith stuff you know maybe there's a middle ground but I don't know the upside is at least Google uh has

more potential if we're talking about going the website because you can load whatever web browser at least that Apple like that that Google allows in the store which could then open up more opportunities for more sort of like emulative capabilities to allow more like game likee functionality and extend the browser beyond what say Chrome does whereas on iOS you're stuck with Safari and you can't do anything to extend or do anything with it really except for slightly reskin it and I think that's that's important obviously like on desktop for example it's still pretty much controlled mostly by you know web kit which is like Chrome and Safari but on mobile you know there's a good variety of browsers uh available on there I mean they all they're not all great but I think that that offers an opportunity at least to sort of like work that direction I don't know if it's really tenable because like you still need a certain amount of access to the hardware Google's got to kind of like allow that without rooting your device and and all that but like there's possibility I I'm I'm not necessarily A Google fan but they're certainly like

closer to the right side of things right now I think for game developers best interest outside of like you know just other problems that they have we'll see though this is going to be a messy 2024 fight I I imagine this is GNA bleed into 2025 as well but I think we're starting to see the first cracks for opportunity which is good I think for game developers that are stuck in the current mobile situation and you know there's a lot of lot of things working against it right now we' seen that where to the point where you know they're not releasing new games so it's uh it's definitely tough and I hope this actually like helps and doesn't continue to like create a hostile environment obviously we don't have a third mobile ecosystem here in the US um you know out in China they have other ones but they also have a government that is able to regulate top down if they want to so it's very different playing field out there but we'll see how things go uh I imagine this will be as I've said with some of the other new stories far from the last time we bring this up but it is good to see some prog ress some some uh money fines some new legal regulation at least pushing things hopefully epic will make some progress in their bad faith

argument to The District Court when they go back because they were just to be clear I don't know if you mentioned it to but this is because they were denied the appeal um so both apple and epic were denied the appeal which means epic who had lost most of the case can't go back but it also means Apple can't appeal the one part they lost which was the anti- steering if you're looking for the terminology of what we're talking about just in case you're Googling it or anything like that I just don't think we mentioned the specific term but anyways uh we'll we'll definitely get back to that but uh yeah a lot of interesting stuff to start the year off with already and I imagine we'll see plenty more but I want to thinkk of course everyone for tuning in panelists for showing up here for a lot of cool topics as usual and we will be here week after week with good news and bad news hopefully more on the good side as we're trying to get into this year as uh maybe we'll move past at least the layoffs uh at some point but uh thanks everyone for for tuning in and uh we'll see you all next week if you enjoyed today's episode episode whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a fstar review

and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us a note at podcast nov. or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what navic has to offer make sure to check out our website www.nic.edu and advis Services again that is www.nic.edu [Music]