EA Lays Off 670, "Sunsetting" Unspecified Games

Yo, go be bad. It's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do
this for February twenty ninth to twenty twenty four. For the next hour or
so, let me help you sort through the world of gaming on Game Mess
Mornings Live with me Jeff Greb Today, the only constant in the video game
industry is that things always change. But first please join me and welcoming today's
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how are you doing. I'm cold. It's very cold, Jeff.
I don't like the cold. It was warm here and then it's cold,
and that's gonna be warm over the weekend too. I don't know what's going
on, aymarm man, it's I'm the exact opposite of eighty years falling outside.
I don't know what the hell's happening. Yeah, it's all happening.
It was well, not the exact opposite, like everything, except for it
was warm and then it got cold, and I was relieved because I prefer
the cold. So it was like, okay, we're going back to a
little bit of cold weather. Oh it was very Yeah, I'm definitely a
perfect about it. It's no, it's it's like shockingly cold though I was
not expecting that. It was like two degrees yesterday. Yeah, like Midwest
sucks. Yeah. So I got the kid off the bus, and that's
what we're doing the show late steps out of town, I guess. And
so I had to get Addie off the bus. I'm like, I don't
want to like stop the show in the middle and go like wakes. It's
like a hurts a little bit. Random could get here eleven thirty, could
get here eleven forty five. So I'm like, I'll just we'll just postpone
the show. So we're doing the show a little bit late today. If
you're watching live, if you're on feeds later, you probably won't even notice.
So why did I even bring it up? Who cares? It's hey,
games industry, more bad news and we're gonna get into all he here
in a little bit. But boy, it is a real bummer out there.
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Hello Hello YouTube. All right, we have a lot to get into,
so let's start the morning Mess with EA is laying off around six hundred and
seventy people sunsetting unspecified games. We got a little more specificity there. We'll
get into that as well. This comes from Georgiang at GameSpot. Electronic Arts
has announced that it will be laying off five percent of its staff, or
around six hundred and seventy people. Let's stop there. That is kind of
so far, because many of those employees are going that they're also gonna lay
off later, are in like the consultation period in other countries where they legally
have to do that, and so more will probably be coming after the end
of the fiscal year, so around April May more people will be joining the
six hundred and seventy. It probably will be closer to eight percent by the
time you're done. And this is on top of them laying off like six
percent of their staff last year. The company will also start sunsetting an unspecified
number of games and move away from developing certain licensed IP games. E explained
that it does not believe that some future license IP would be successful in our
changing industry. Shawn the whiplash man the absolute whiplash because it's like these companies
and let's be clear, I was hearing it out of EA. EA's the
company that was like, the reason we're investing in Star Wars and Marvel still,
it's because it's really expensive to make our own IP and it's really risky,
so we're going to go out there and license these IP. Months later
they're like, lash, shit doesn't work. It is it's rough out there,
Okay, six hundred and seventy people more losing their jobs. This joins
a growing number that is fast approaching ten thousand people laid out this year.
If it's not already there, it's not even March yet, Jeff, what
the fuck? It's yes, it's not it tomorrow will be March, so
yes, we're just two months into the year. Yeah, what the fuck?
It feels like If you are someone who is trying to get in this
industry to make games, I don't know what to tell you. If you're
someone who has been in this industry making games, I think we're gonna be
waiting to hear from a lot of these people like what it's actually like.
But all of them already mostly seem very discouraged. And we'll get into like
why this is happening, as we always do when we talk about these stories.
But what's your initial reaction? My initial reaction is this fucking sucks.
I saw this what come in last night? Was it that the news broke?
And I just the first thing I thought to myself, Jeff, was
we have to be running out of companies that can be making cuts at this
point, right, Like, surely this will slow down at some point,
But it feels like legitimately every or every other day, we hear more and
more of these layoff reports happening. It's always a staggering number of people.
I hate it. Yeah, it's I on yesterday's show, we talked about
the layoffs and I said, I've been hearing that more were coming, and
I didn't know who it was. I've heard now these these were the layoffs
that I was hearing murmurs about. It was coming out of EA. Uh,
and now what I what I do here is, Hey, the sources
that I've tapped for this sort of information haven't heard about anymore. And then
immediately after that, I got a different sources like, yeah, other companies
that maybe having some problems, So we'll see. It's uh, clearly we're
not through it. Clearly there will be more problems going forward. We just
talked about how you know they're going to get through the consultation period and probably
let more more people go here at EA. This has led a lot of
people to be like, what is happening in the industry? Is this a
crash? And and you know, I had a thread on Twitter this morning
trying and explain, like, let's let's be clear what's happening. This is
not a crash. A crash imply a industry wide recession. But the industry
is making less money than it was making before. People are spending less money
on this hobby than they have before, and all indicators suggest that is not
happening. If anything, people are spending more money. It's just mostly a
shift that these companies were either unprepared for or or like misappropriated funds when they
were trying to figure out like how to capitalize on a going forward and they
are looking for that quarterly growth. It's like such a frustrating, mundane,
boring and like casually evil answer. That's like all these people got laid off
because these companies are literally just worried about the very next quarter. They're not
worried about long term growth, not worried about keeping the people that make the
games happy. It is just this very next quarter that they're worried about.
Because previous to this they were getting growth. All these companies, we're getting
growth either by acquiring studios or using a lot of borrowing a lot of money
for very cheap to make a lot of big bets, and that enabled them
to get some growth. You're there and it's like, okay, we got
we're setting ourselves up for the future, and now all of that stuff has
been kind of taken off the table because capital is very expensive, borrowing money
is very expensive. We talk about that a lot. That's still true,
it's more true than ever. And these companies are looking around like, hey,
we are not seeing like organic growth from a ton of new people coming
into the spaces where we typically sell games, and so how do we get
growth. Well, we're gonna cut our costs and we're gonna have fewer people
that we're gonna pay and that's where the quote unquote growth is gonna come from.
And when investors see that, they're like, Yay, that's great,
that's what we like. Yeah. Yeah, And it's that it's that simple
and that frustrating, and so like it's not like, oh, the fewer
people are interested in games, that's just not happening. Everything else is working.
Yeah, and it's I mean, there are obviously market shifts. We
talked about Triple A gaming being unsustainable. That is differently still true, and
yet at the same time, many of these games do come along and sell
very very well. Uh. I don't necessarily know what to tell people like
to get like to be like, ohkay, hey, this is all sunshine
and rainbows. No, that's not what we're saying. It's just not some
market force coming down from on high and forcing these companies into this scenario.
It is this doing them. They're doing this to themselves. They are making
these decisions and they should own them. It is the executives deciding, Hey,
we are prioritizing immediate growth because we're worried about what the stock price is
going to do next quarter. And that's it. And I don't know what
to do about that. Yeah, there's just I mean, it feels like
a lot of bad business decisions to me. Namely, you want more stuff
out the door, so what are you doing firing the people who make the
stuff? Yes, that's just Yeah, something I talked about with some sources
and they were like, yeah, we're all worried about this, though we
don't get it, like like cutting some of these license games at EA,
Like it's expensive to pay the license. That's one of the thicksy're trying to
avoid here, but have to like give a certain percentage to Disney five years
from now is better than having zero revenue coming in because you don't have a
game to put out. And that feels like the situation they're putting themselves in.
So I don't get it. Sean, Yeah, like if you're making
you know, the sorry I forget which one they would be making, but
like an Iron Man game or whatever, like everything's alrighty there, you know
what that's going to be. And so like they don't have to they don't
have to spend that time and money because time is money in game development.
They don't have to spend that on making the original IP. So there's always
trade offs and everything, Like they're always figuring this stuff out. It's just
things just don't add up. And why don't they add up? Because all
they're concerned about is, you know, looking better to the shareholders and everything,
like we have I see you have a quote here from Grade A dumb
ass CEO Andrew Wilson. Jeff has has he announced how he's being affected by
this at all. If he has, it would be he would be saying,
I am not affected by this at all. In fact, like yeah,
I wonder why that is. I mean, if this affects him,
it's it's only a positive, right if the stock price goes up, like
he gets paid usually in stock options, so it's a good thing for him.
He's encouraged me to do this. I mean, that's how it is
with all this shit, Like you see these layoffs and it's like I hate
to bring it up almost because it sound like a broken record at this point,
but it really is like the rich gang rich are off the backs of
the people at the bottom hard is trying their best to make the art that
they love. I mean, it's frustrating. We've been doing the show a
long time and from now and from the beginning, like you'd be like,
I always see comment say why is capitalism come up on every episode, and
it's like, because it defines everything that is happening in this industry. We
are working within the confines of that system, and it's going to inevitably lead
us to situations like this, and so we bring it up because it's it's
unavoidable. It's in everything, and that makes it Sometimes it's hard to see
it, which is why we talk about it, and it's and it's hard
to say anything else other than yeah, here we are yet again, because
this industry is it cannot live outside of that system, and it's like,
what alternatives are there? Sean, I mean, I'm like, hey,
I love the idea of more public funding for video games. I mean five
hundred million dollars games from the US government, but that's the thing. Maybe
that's the problem. Maybe ambition is too high for some of these things.
I see some teams flourishing right now, Jeff, And you know who those
teams are, Indies. Indies are doing fantastic right now because smaller team,
smaller scope, and they put out something that is smaller in general, and
that is the stuff that rises to the top on Steam nowadays and doing really
well. And you get all these gigantic companies trying to chase after that.
They spend so much money, so much time trying to recreate some success of
either a small game or a flash in the pan like a Fortnite you know,
these bottle blightning moments. You can't artificially create that. And them chase
and not wanting to take responsibility for their fuck ups is how we end up
in these situations. Yeah, I mean, I think like combining a realistic
ambition with robust funding from the public would be a really fun and fantastic alternative
in my opinion, not a full alternative. It doesn't replace the entire industry
obviously, at least it doesn't seem like it could. But like just starting
somewhere, like even like Canada has a pretty decent subsidy program for a lot
of games, which is why a lot of games get made in Canada.
And it's like, man, it seems like, you know, just about
as many games get made in Canada as the United States, and the population
difference, the you know, the size of the economy there. It's like,
that should not be the case. It should be like, oh,
America's making that minute much more because there's more people and all this stuff.
But it's like, no, Canada funds a lot of that stuff, and
a lot of it is triple A games, some of it, many of
them are the biggest games in the world. So clearly there is more we
could be doing in order to bypass the pitfalls of capitalists. And if this
stuff sounds scary to you, I just I don't care, honestly, like
we are diagnosing a real problem that we see before our very eyes. The
idea, the benefits of capitalism are supposed to be that people are encouraged to
take risks, People are encouraged to take on their own enterprises because that means
more options will be in the market and people have more stuff to choose from,
and then they could choose the very best one and that's and all the
money should flow in that direction, and that will encourage even more people to
take risks. And we can look on the ground and see that is not
happening for a certain subset of video gaming, mostly at the top. And
so the system is broken here, let's talk about it. Are there any
ways to sort of either deal with it or do we just like, you
know, we can just let it fail? I suppose, and that's fine
too. There are there's some reasons, the reasons to suggest that. But
people are getting hurt, and it's usually the people at the bottom, not
the people the top, And so there's more problems worth diagnosing and worth figuring
out what can we do about that? And yet we just act like it
is the course of nature taking its course. Oh, nothing to be done
about it. And it's very very frustrating that we are here constantly right now,
and when we when it feels like, man, if we just thought
about this a little bit more, we could be in better situations. I
don't expect better from EA and Microsoft and Sony and all these companies. I
really don't so, but I do think that there that doesn't mean there's nothing
to be done here. The other side of this with the licensed IP games.
The thing I've heard is that EA was very excited about not paying FIFA.
They're like, man, that rule, bet that that look for a
hundred million dollars saved is one hundred million dollars earned. And now they're like
looking around, like we should just do this all over the place. And
so that has them reconsidering all these things. Now. You know, we'll
talk about one of the games they canceled, but they do have actively in
development games you mentioned, like the the Iron Man. I think that's one
of them, Black Panther and that y's Iron Man and Black Panther, And
I think, yes, I started just losing track. Yes, it's all
kind of been a flog up there. Even though, like I said,
I did some of the reporting on that stuff, it's all fog. And
then there's the you know, other Star Wars games, and it's like,
man, are these studios concerned about EA losing interest in what they're doing it.
I mean, they might be contractually obligated, but you know, are
they not going to renew that contract if even if the game does well because
they want to avoid paying the licensing fee to these companies. Seems like that
might be the case, and it's got to be so frustrating for these teams
because they almost certainly have spent the last couple of years coming up with pitches
with that involve IP because that's what EA wanted to make, that's what they
wanted to hear and wanted to do because they thought that was the less risky
option, And now to have that suddenly change overnight and be like, all
right, now we want original ips. It's what We've completely deprecated that side
of our business and now you want to go back to it. How are
we even supposed to believe that this is going to last not change as well?
Right? Right? People are people are working within these companies are trying
to balance this all out because it feels like there's a lot of executives who
don't understand game development fundamentally. I'm not saying everyone's like that, but this
feels like there's a lot of them making these decisions and they just don't understand.
You can't just change, you know, on a whim. And why
I say that, it means like even like within a year or so,
it's pretty on a whim. For how long it takes to develop a video
game like I saw and you retweeted this the ore day. That's how I
saw it. But Herada was tweeting about you know, he's been tweeting so
much since Stacana comes out. We can't stop that, man, we can't
stop it from tweeting. But one of the interesting things he tweeted out was
how he, you know, as a high level producer at Bandy Namco,
how he is seeing more and more people get into executive positions who aren't like
him, who started as coders, as sound designers, et cetera, and
so they don't quite understand that like vision for projects and how it takes a
lot of time to build these things up. You can't just like chase the
new trend that's happening everywhere, like I mentioned earlier, with like indies and
everything like that, which, by the way, people point out indies are
struggling to find funding sometimes too. That's true. Yes, but also you
get stuff like you know, a Billattro where it's like you know, a
person, a couple of people. That's the type of happening all the time,
yes, exactly. Yeah, the ones that just like a small team
makes a small thing and it takes off and you can't. These executives are
just like, well, we need the success. Where's the success. Let's
chase the success. And you can't just immediately drop everything that you're doing,
like turned about and then go chase that. You need a longer term plan.
And it seems like to me at least, there's a lot of chasing
trends that's happening, and that's why we're ending up in these situations where you
had them going, okay, let's go with license IPE. Oh, the
license IP thing did work. We need a pivot, and then and then
they're looking at the costs and it's like, we didn't put out as big
games as we thought we would put Yeah, so where are we gonna make
cuts? And that's how we end up in this situation. Yeah, And
it's I think clearly there is a stagnation in the market that's happening in places
that is difficult for the industry to deal with. I think there is forecasting
looking forward about like hey, when we look, I mean mapis Catel put
out that chart of young people not buying as many consoles as gen Z or
gen X and the millennials did, and it's like, oh, man,
that's maybe a bad sign. If they are less willing to buy into these
ecosystems, that means the games that are primarily making their money through those ecosystems
might have less of a chance. And that's definitely all probably true, But
that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of money still going into the industry.
It is just going into different places. And it's like that that has
been true of video gaming from the very beginning when I started up top saying,
the one constant games is that it's always changing. It is constantly disrupting
itself and sometimes that is like very violent looking, and it's just it's exacerbated
by these companies that have to prioritize their profits, their quarterly growth and they
don't care about any of the other things that are happening here, and it
makes it all feel like it's coming tumbling down because they are the primary source
of these biggest video games, and we just it does feel like we are
at a point where we need to collectively move past looking to these companies for
our entertainment and should be like, like you said, the indie space and
a variety of other sources. Yeah, all all up the stack. Looking
at more like double A things, look at the smaller games that even trip
A studios are playing out, like just recognizing that a video game does not
need to look like the Last of Us. It does not need to look
like Years of War. Like gaming comes in all forms and like you can
just look a little harder and you'll find someone you like them might you might
not have expected. And the part of the problem here you mentioned like the
kids now wined to buy consoles as much nowadays and stuff, because that's where
they're at now. They're on their phones, they're on their tablets. Like
we've talked about how a lot of people don't realize how big mobile gaming is.
Actually stop and think about why mobile gaming would be popular. It's because
all these kids got their phones already. So why do they play Fortnite on
their phones? Why are they playing Call of Duty Mobile? Like you know,
Jan mentioned that his partner has a friend group where they talked about playing
Call of Duty. But they didn't mean on their xboxes and PlayStations. They
meant Call of Duty Mobile on their phones. Why are they doing it because
that's the system they got. And you know, I think us in the
hardcore gaming crowd are quick to despairg that, but no, that's just a
different way of playing. And like we can talk till to our lips turned
blue about like gotcha and how there's predatory stuff and earthing like that. But
just yeah, just the industry is shifting, is constantly changing, like you
said, and I think people just need everyone Everyone just needs to think about
things a little bit differently. And that's how again, situations like Heckxbox and
PlayStations, they're not playing out a ton of games right now, neither of
them are. You've been talking a lot about what PlayStation one now what fucking
I don't know, because like what are you gonna do with this console installed?
Bas it's still good, but take you like six years to put out
a freaking game. So like, I don't know, I'm not I don't
have the answers. I'm not claiming to have the answers, but doesn't mean
that I can't look at this and say, well, this isn't the answer,
like all of this right now. Yeah, and it's uh. I
think if we kind of move away from like okay, well you know this
isn't I wouldn't define this as a crash. So what is it. Clearly
things are collapsing in some parts of the market, and it's very if those
if that's where you go for gaming, uh that that you're you're going to
feel that very deeply. So I understand that. And when you look at
like a couple of years from now, like I think we all believe that
there will be fewer games from these companies, and that's that is going to
feel very noticeable in a time like coming. We're like really just coming out
of like, hey, there used to be an E three and now there
isn't. But when there was an E three, it was like big games
announced every summer that would come out that holiday, and it's like that was
just a couple of years ago. And now we're in a world where it's
like that feels like it was just a couple of years ago, but media
it was a little longer since that. Really, Yeah, no, I
see in the grand scheme of the industry, like it's still a couple of
years ago. You're right, it's a little bit longer than that. You
know, even like counting Summer Gamefest and all that stuff. It's like,
you know, there's a fewer companies participating in that but there's still some.
But it's like there was a time when it was just felt normal for big
games get announced, come out that holiday, and that was how it should
be and how it will always be. And now we're going to get like
a couple of years away from this, and we will be in a world
where these companies are even more afraid to make new games than they have been
already, which was very afraid, And that is going to feel that's going
to continue to feel to some people like, hey, something has crashed here
now. I mean for me, when people say crash, like I think
the nineteen eighty three game market crash, and it's just actual crash and it's
just nowhere near that. I mean, if you are losing interest in spending
money in video games, like that's gonna be today's pull question. We're like,
are you less interested in video games these days? Like? Is that
really happen? Are you spending more time on other hobbies? I My hunt
here is broadly no. I think most people who have been into gaming continue
to be in gaming, and they're spending about the same, if not more
money than they have been over the last several years. It's just it is
probably going into and this is the other side, This is a stagnation.
Maybe a lot of that money is going into the same games it's been going
into since like twenty seventeen, Fortnite, Call of Duty, a handful of
other things, and that's that's its own problem to solve, I think.
But to me, that goes back to we need alternative forms of funding rather
than just relying on the whims of publicly traded companies. Yeah, exactly,
all right. EA is shuddering Marcus Laedo's Ridgeline Games, with some moving to
Ripple Effect to continue work work on Battlefield. This comes from Cap Bailey at
IgM. EA is shuttering Ridgeline Games with Studio with the studio co founded by
former Halo developer Marcus Laedo that was tasked with developing the narrative campaign in the
next Battlefield. The closure follows words of Lato's departure earlier this week and coincides
with a broader restructuring announced earlier today that we'll see EA layoff some six hundred
and seventy employees ABD to shift away from future licensed ips. The work that
was begun on the Battlefield single player campaign will continue. I believe it's moving
over to Criterion instead. This is you know, as we get these layoffs,
this is another thing we've seen more often than not, they also include
one or two studio closures. That's not something we were seeing last year.
Last year we'd be like, we're laying off five to eight six percent people
like in that range. Now this year it's like, well, we're also
laying Yeah, we're laying off five to eight percent of our workforce and also
we're closing down entire studios. This was a team that, like you did,
It started relatively recently, and it just feels like one of those things
where these companies so like, hey, we are we're growing. This where
the growth is going to come from, and now we don't think we're growing,
so immediately pull the ripcord and get a whole studio out of here.
It's frustrating, Yeah, definitely. It just ties into everything we're just talking
about there. There's a lot of frustration going on. I guess, well,
on the bright side, it looks like Battlefield's potential return. Mike continue,
Yeah, because twenty forty two. God, I hate their numbering scheme.
That game sucked. I'm a Battlefield guy. I've been playing them since
nineteen foard two back in my crappy old PC back in the day, and
yeah, that game sucks. So I mean, I'm sorry, Jeff,
I'm just trying to find a diamond in the rough Sewmer you're in all this
negative news. So yeah, I mean, I'm curious about Battlefield Future all
the time, where it's like, it felt like twenty forty two was a
misstep out of the gate for me, because I'm like, you aren't.
This is your first Battlefield game that you were releasing into a world that now
does have several massive free to play shooters that you need to compete with,
and you're going to be a seventy dollars game. How is that going to
work for you? It's like, I don't know. Even if you were
a great game, I think that people would have struggled to get over that
hump. Obviously, if it's like like a game that people cannot ignore,
people will pay the money, they will show up for it. That does
happen. But it's like, man, you just do set yourself at a
disadvantage if you're not a free to play shooter in this in this day and
age, and even then people will be crick because, Jeff, we've heard
people say, oh, Halo Infinite is absolute dog shit, and you know,
we're like, well, why do you think that the Batt'll pass is
bad? I'm what the fuck are you talking about that? Yes? Well
yeah, yeah, if that's the problem that games are dealing with these days,
yeah, be coming in as a seventy dollars multiplayer only game. That
was that was where you started your brons right there, Buddy Lado said he's
taking time away from me games, which is like, seems to be another
thing here. That a theme we will get into here in a second with
another news story where multiple major game creators are kind of talking in similar ways.
The game that was canceled though, that one of the games that we
know was canceled is EA Respawns Star Wars first person Shooter, the thing that
was just in the news a couple of weeks ago. I think you might
be able to put two and two together there about maybe why that was in
the news a couple of weeks ago. Maybe someone at that studio was trying
to get excitement out there so that EA wouldn't cancel it. This is Andy
Robinson oft VGC Electronic Arts is canceled an in development Star Wars first person shooter
at Respawn announced in twenty twenty two. The first person shooter game was being
held by former Lucas Arts veteran and Medal of Honor co creator Peter Hirshman,
who previously worked on the original Battlefront games, The Force Unleashed and more.
In a statement published on Wednesday alongside the announcement of nearly seven hundred company wide
layoffs, EA Entertainment President Lauren Meill, Melee said that after a review,
it had decided Respond should focus on the on the Jedi and Apex Legends series
instead. Response unique ability to connect with players and create exceptional game experiences is
unrivaled in entertainment. As we've looked at response portfolio over the last few months,
what's clear is is the games our players are most excited about. Our
Jedi and Responds rich library of owned brands. It's because we you fucking haven't
let us see the game. I bet we'll be very excited about it.
Then what are you talking about? This sucks? They like, listen,
this sucks. I think I'm in the part of the grief grieving period where
I've accepted titan Fall three isn't going to happen. I haven't. I can't
believe you took away from me. Jeff done, most of you haven't.
I get it. Uh man, I saw some cool shit about that game.
Uh it is. I was like, what made it easier? Is
okay? Maybe they could take some of that energy into this project, right,
and we could see some of that stuff manifested here. Like even like
that last round of rumors, you know, tom over Insider Gaming was a
report about it again that like got me thinking about it again. It's like,
hey, they were talking about making stuff that felt like Haites in titan
Fall three. I hope that comes over here where they're trying to make this
high octane shooter in Star Wars where you maybe play as a Mandalorian or something
like that. But they're chess haack good. But they're good at and it
all makes sense. So like, let's get that going. And it's not
like that was the road they were going down. And you know, there
are little titbits here and there from people who worked on the game and they're
just they're really bummed. They really liked this game. They were really excited
for people to see it. They like, that's the thing I keep hearing.
And it's like they believed in what they were making because they were playing
it and they thought it was very good. It's like, why are we
in a world where the people making the game, especially at a studio like
Respawn that knows how to make a fucking game, why aren't they getting the
chance to see this through. I know it's two years out. I know
it's a lot of money. I know you got to give a lot of
money to Disney. At the end, you still get some money. I
don't know. I don't get it, but I don't get it, truck.
But also like I don't know, sounds not coming together to me because
yeah, Jedi, yeah, Apex like throwing them a bone, like you
know what they got the goods? Yeah. Yeah. Like at a certain
point you need to do things like this. You need to let the company
have a passion project and let them just put out, you know, something
that feels cool and even that, I don't think that's what this game really
even is. It's like a Star Wars game that like is going to you
talk about like the giffable moments in games and like how you need to sell
a game on that on social media and on TikTok and shorts and stuff like
that. This game is that, and it's Star Wars. People will have
been like, what's that clone trooper doing? Yo, Like that is the
kind of thing that would have been popping off on the internet. So just
so much of this doesn't add up to me. Yeah, there is still
that I can't and I can't remember the name of the director of titan Fall
one offhand, but he's still, at least as far as I'm aware,
has his skunk Works team that is working on another passion project, and he's
been kicking around for quite some time. I have no idea like where that
is on the process, Like you know that that who knows, one day
that game could get canceled. It back that game was in early development,
even though it's been in development for years. They spend a lot of time
on the prototyping phase at response. That's how that happens. But last I
heard, that's still happening. So hopefully that they can keep one of their
passion projects at the very least. But it did sound like a lot of
very excellent creative energy was going into the Star Wars first person shooter and it's
insane that they are not seeing this one through. It's like, man ea,
you like you have canceled all those other Star Wars games, you figured
it out with respawn, Let them go do their thing, and it's like
nope, even that gets pulled out from underneath underneath them, and you know,
it really is about they look at how much more money it's going to
cost them complete that game, and they're worried about the profit margins. That's
it really is. That's all this. Yeah, we did the story on
Game this Morning is a few months ago, maybe last year sometime. We're
like talked about like what a company looks for when they green light a game,
and it's about EEA these companies, it's about fifteen percent. Obviously,
the ideal is to have infinite profit margin for a game that just makes money
forever and ever and ever. But generally when they're looking at a game like
a single player first person shooter in the Star Wars genre, they want a
profit margin of about fifteen percent, and that becomes harder and harder to come
by because of all the cuts that come from licensing a game. But so
what you started it, let respond make it it's the stinks. Yeah,
definitely. All right, let's take a quick break. When we get back
a few more headlines, we'll talk about all that right after this. All
right, we're back and Star Wars n's in the Old Republic remake dev Saber
Interactive, although I would know them as the mud Runner dev escapes them break
in a five hundred million dollar deal. This is from Wesley Yanpool at ign
by way of Jason Schreier over at Bloomberg. Star Wars Nights of the Old
Republic remake developers Saber Interactive has reportedly left embattled a parent company, Embracer,
in a five hundred million dollar deal to become a privately owned company. Bloomberg
reports the troubled Star Wars Nights of the Old Republic remake is still in the
works, although question marks remain over whether it will ever come actually come out.
And just a reminder, when I heard of that game was done,
it was by way of like Sony. It's like Sony is pretty much done
with that game. And then I heard quickly after saying that that there are
people at Saber who are still working on the project. What all of this
means for that, I think I'm with Jason, who knows if it ever
actually comes out, but apparently someone is still working on the game over there.
In November, Embracer CEO Lars Winger first refused to answer a question about
the Koto remake. Blah blah blah. This is part of a major restructuring
net Embracer, which is this is why the industry is right. You've ever
been in a car with a driver that's like never that never coasts, They
never like let off the gas. They only go it's either gas or break.
That's that's what the industry is doing as like as a whole. And
it's like, this is the most guilty company where Embracers like acquire, acquire,
acquire, sell, sell, sell, and there was no period where
it was just like, let's see what happens with all this stuff we acquired.
It's nuts. They're also going to try to sell Gearbox. They are
almost certainly going to find someone to sell Gearbox too. But I hey,
Saber and Interactive is a talented studio with a lot of very like like,
they're very engineer focused, they're very good at ports. They did that impossible
port of Wicher to the switch, so they have the Child The Crisis remastered
on Switch, which was that was nutty. Yes, getting like Smogie working
on the switch and everything, which is like rate tracing the light like that
was wild. It's it's it's wild, and it's a it's a studio worth
like preserving. And I'm glad that they are able to get out of the
Saber Earth, get out of this Embracer hole. I don't necessarily know what
it means for them now to be privately owned in terms of, Okay,
do they are they going to find someone else to buy them, or are
they going to be in major debt now that they're privately owned. There's some
question marks surrounding that, but at the very least, I think they are
better off now than they were being under Embracer, Right, Yeah, I
mean Embracer is just crumbling, like which who could have seen this happening?
Jeff, who could have seen? But they were just lay up all these
studios and we're like only every single person that ever read a new story about
Embracer, Yes, yeah, we're like, what what are they doing over
there? And as it turns out, they didn't know what they were doing
over there. They had no plan. They just thought, well, magically,
you know, the money's gonna come in, right, We're just gonna
buy all these companies, these companies and make money. We'll make the money.
And then they had no plan for like managing them and everything like that,
and what happens Old Plank goes belly up. M h shocker. It's
uh yeah, it is like one of the least surprising things that ended up
in this situation. We begged for large Winger first to tell us what he
was thinking all along, never ever really said turned out because there was no
plan here we are. I hope Saber is able to keep going. They
literally have a game, literally have a game coming out this next month with
bud Runder Expeditions, and I hope that they get a chance to just support
that game. That that those games have a huge community, they could sell
very well. I hope there about skin Ass, Like yeah, joking aside,
I know you know you're a second them, but how do they actually
do? They do? They do very well. They're like one of those
games that's like, oh, they do like a decent amount of concurrence on
Steam all the time, and there's like a huge community creation space on YouTube.
One of those truck simulator, things like your truck where it's like they
secretly have a lot of people. Yes, absolutely, that's exactly the case
with with this franchise. So I hope that they're able to like reap some
of that reward because it seems like expeditions could be very good. At least
I hope it is all right. Insomniac calls this week's layoffs a solemn and
unprecedented moment for the studio. This is from Tom Ivan f VGC. Insomniac
Games has released a public statement in response to layoffs at the studio announced this
week by parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment. PlayStation set on Tuesday that it plans
to layoff nine hundred employees worldwide, or about eight percent of its workforce.
The move will include include staff cuts at Spider Man Studio, Insomniac and Last
of US developer Notody Dog in the United States. PlayStation's London studio meanwhile being
shut down. Like several other teams across SIE and PlayStation studios, Insomniac Games
was impacted by yesterday's layoffs. The company set in a message published to Twitter,
there are no sufficient words to express our feelings about it. This is
a solemn and unprecedented, unprecedented moment for our studio. We are focusing our
energy on helping everyone affected through this challenging time. For those who are hiring,
there are great people seeking new roles who made important contributions to Insomniac's history.
Were extremely grateful for them and they will be missed. Ah, this
is uh, you know, on on the heels of Spider Man to selling
a huge number of copies out of the gate, being one of the best
selling games of last year, and even they couldn't avoid this. We know
that they are also the studio that has a number of massive games in the
works, including you know, a expand alone and Venom Spider Man three,
which they're planning to be over three hundred million dollars in terms of budget.
Obviously, I think part of this is addressing that we'll just have fewer people's
fewer people make that massive game, as if that's how that works. They're
making the X Men games. There will be multiple X Men games, and
these are all this a lot of the Insomniac leaks. This is a studio
that is you know, a keystone for the PlayStation strategy, and yet they're
like, hey, yeah, but we need you to do more with less.
And I get when people see that, like, how does this not
feel like something is crashing down here? Right? Yeah? Like when a
studio as as we see them ableez, which I think we're not wrong in
those assets us as Insomniac, who has been propped up so much as kind
of the reason to own a PS five is the Insomniac games, you know,
the Spider Man's, the ratching clanks that they're playing out and stuff like
that. The fact that even they could be affected by something like this is
just a sign of again, to sound like a broken record everything we've been
talking about this episode, just this system being off and something being wrong here
and maybe poor judgment calls being made on all of this. Yeah, it's
And you know, I've seen some tweets from people who work in Insomniac who
have like been back in the office since that this happened, and they're like,
oh, now, it's it's like hitting me, like looking around,
how many people are gone, how many key people that were important to this
studio are gone. And we talk about the brain drain of people who are
carrying knowledge around leaving the industry. Well, a lot of the beer are
being laid off, But you gotta imagine if you're still you know, if
you're getting that survivorship guilt, like that's got to feel terrible as well.
Why wouldn't you maybe start looking around for something that is more sturdy and start
leaving the industry after feeling this way, after putting out a game that conquered
the world, you should not like you're like, wait, we did our
part. We made a game that's incredible and sold. Why are we now
feeling like we're getting punished? Which how how else do you read this other
than a punishment? I don't know exactly. Yeah, just man, it's
frustrating because and we know how expensive like the Spider Man ip is and everything
like that, and so maybe the games just yeah, aren't making the money
that they're looking for and or something like that. But I mean, the
people who are affected by this are not the ones ultimately making the shots and
all this. So the fact that they're the ones who are again slapped in
the face and I was like, hey, congrats, you did a great
job. Hit kick rocks, you know, hit the bricks like yep,
it feels messed up. Five oh five Games is closing offices in Germany,
Spain, and frances is from Tom Henderson Insider Gaming. Just to clarify,
this is referring to the actual physical offices. A new report has revealed that
five or five Games will be closing its offices in Germany, Spain, and
France. The news comes as part of the company's ongoing restructuring process that started
last year. The report, which comes courtesy of Game Reactor, states that
although several offices are closing, it's believed that the number of affected employees is
around ten. So there are infected employees. Obviously, people who are like
they pay to maintain these these offices, they're not going to they probably weren't
going to keep them up a board. But it seems like they're keeping most
of the staff that make the games. Not that that is somehow it makes
it better that ten people are losing their jobs. This is something we're seeing
a little bit more frequently as well. Some companies like thinking about, hey,
weeps pay a lot in real estate costs, you know, whether it's
renting or however they acquire these these actual physical locations. More and more studios
are going remote, although we heard like rock stars like demanding people go back
into the office this week, things like that. They would of course they
would, right, But it's like, still many studios are you know that
new David Vondahar studio, the guy that was at Trail Care a very long
time, he started up a studio in Los Angeles, And then very quickly
in the next sentence, they're like, and this is going to be a
remote based studio, And it's like, of course it is, because they're
not going to pay Los Angeles game developer fees for a brand new studio across
the board. And so when you start thinking in that way, you start
thinking, hey, these studio and offices are maybe not necessarily worth it,
so this will probably keep happening as well. This does like you know,
it's just like a bad sign for the games industry. It's like, not
necessarily, but this does speak to like the sort of downward spile spiral that
can happen. It's like, well, you know, real estate commercial real
estate experiences is a crash, and does that like seep over into other spaces.
It's like, yeah, that's not the video gaming industry's responsibility. But
they're like there are exterior market forces that can still have drastic effects on gaming
going forward, and this might be an early leading indicator that we're heading in
that way. We'll see. Yeah, and hey, maybe I'm a bit
biased here, but I think some companies can do some pretty cool stuff working
primarily from home. You might be onto something there. I agree. Remedy
securre as it's connected universe by taking control of Control. This comes from Darren
BoNT Us at Game Spot. Remedy Entertainment has officially announced that it has acquired
the full rights to the Control franchise from five to ZHO five Games. The
new new deal will give Remedy the full rights to control its upcoming sequel and
the multiplayer spin off, code named Condor, with all the publishing, distribution,
marketing and other rights licensed to five oh five Games reverting back to the
developer. As part of Remedy's long term strategy to have more ownership over our
business and the IPS we have created, we have gotten back all the rights
for Control and the indevelopment Condor in Control two. Remedy said, this is
cool. I think they paid about seventeen million dollars. I believe it's what
the number was a deal is valued at eighteen point four million dollars. I
think they're saying this, Ay, this is very cool. It seems like
this is remedy saying, hey, we have we believe in what we've made,
and we are fully investing in the future of it. Alan Wick two
did okay by some measures. Maybe people were expecting to do a little bit
better. It was luck to Epic. I'm sure they had some effect.
I think as far as Redi's concerned, that was our fastest selling game,
and they're like, I bet our next game is going to sell even faster,
So why wouldn't we go all in and bet on ourselves. I think
this is a good sign of like, hey, there are spaces in the
industry where people are still able to bet on themselves and maybe see that through
and hopefully we can get more of that, right. Yeah. And I'm
always a big fan of developers taking their ip back from a publisher where necessary,
or just otherwise having full ownership over the creations that they make, because
then, like you know, the headline says here, it just allows them
to have better control over the things that they want to do, especially with
the remedy of connecting one game to another and having this whole you know,
the cinema universe type thing going on. It's all it's fun, it's very
fun, and so this allows them to do that easier and then also layer
down the line, you know, do releases or modifications or whatever better.
Hey, that's a good thing, right, yes, absolutely, speak of
headlines, Jeff, What the hell is going on with like the overlay?
Is that? Did you change that yet? I do? Does something happen
in new studies to just kids are no experience of social pressures away in game?
Yeah? I did not. I'm not updating that, so I can
just turn that off. Let's just do that. Okay, Yeah, let's
do that. Sorry about that. Everybody that's got to be confusing. Uh
Jan is out today, so I guesse you're wondering why everything's broken, that's
why. Yeah, all right, let's see here. Neil Druckman doesn't think
he has many large games left in him. This is from Alex Hopley,
a Game reactor. It seems like the Last of Us is game director and
Neil Druckman is finding himself in a funding himself a bit long in the tooth.
Talking recently on the Logically Speaking podcast with artists Logic, Druckman revealed that
he might not take might not have a lot of games left in him.
In the video, he says at around the forty nine minute mark, I
don't see myself doing this forever at this scale. It's a lot, and
it takes a lot out of you. It's very stressful to manage that many
people in multiple studios worldwide. I could see myself transitioning to something that's more
low key, that still allows me to have a creative outlet. But I've
started thinking about how many more of these games I have in me, and
it's not that many. Corey Barlog on Twitter said big same for him as
well, the God of War director. Of course, they feel this way.
Human beings were not meant to manage massive teams across multiple continents, many
people whose faces you don't always see. Now, you know, we're talking
about remote being good, Like, That's not what I'm saying there. I'm
saying like, you can only keep so many people in your head at one
time, and when you have a team of fifteen hundred people, that begins
to feel so you feel so removed from that. It's got to be hard
not to disassociate in some ways. I bet that that stress is real,
and to have that stress stretching over five to six years, and now looking
ahead at the promise of maybe that's going to start stretching to six to seven
years, Really, how many more times can you promise yourself you're going to
be able to do that? Like you have, You're really gonna commit yourself
to doing that three more times? So I'm gonna start a new trilogy that's
gonna be the next twenty five years of your life. That's crazy. No,
No, I would. I don't blame these creators for feeling this way.
Bye Neil. Anyway, Corey though, come on, Corey, Corey
I care about. Corey is clearly an actual director that I really respect here
and it was sad to see him go. But yeah, they'll get fucked
yeah for for real, Like I be real, Jeff, if if he's
in part of the reason why Naughty Dogs where they're at right now? Later,
dude, yeah right, I mean, I don't know, maybe it
is. It's hard to be for me. It's like we can't just play
at the joking around sort of like like because it was always like destined to
like start to get to the space of like, oh, we can make
these games so big, and then you look around you like, oh my
god, we are now in this situation. We can't look back. I
don't know. It kind of feels like something would be hard to control.
But regardless, yeah, fuck them. I bet a lot of creators,
though, are feeling this way, even people not named Neil Druckman. Where
it is it's just the thing, and you mentioned this earlier. Everyone saw
just, you know, not feeling amazing about gaming in general. So I'm
sure like anybody in any position, but especially those at the top who do
legitimately have a decent mob pressure put on them, are probably like, man,
I don't know how much more of this I want to do. I
get it, like, I totally get it, and so you know what,
sure get out if you're not feeling it. Yep, I mean once
again speaks to the unsustainability that we reference constantly. Uh user Debs responded they
didn't say much legally they feel like they can't say much, but Steven Tatillo
points out that via their discord, YUZU is telling its concerned community quote,
we do not know anything other than what's in the public filing, and we
are not able to discuss the matter at this time. Oh so they do
know about shut the fuck up Friday, They can't practice that. They took
up a little to learn about it. But here we are. Yeah,
if anything, the biggest lesson to come out of this is going to be
you are not safe in your little discord like you are, Like you're the
lawyers are there, they are in the building. Yeah. I mostly put
this here to give you a chance because I know you follow this stuff a
little bit. But uh, when I look at like what's happening here,
my hunch is this is not going to actually go to court. But Nintendo
is prepared to go to court if they need to. And they feel like
while they have struggled to have these fights work against emulators in the past,
they think that they might have something with the current way that the DMCA works
and functions that most judges will immediately glom onto like, Yeah, that does
seem like it is skirting up enough that we could say that this is violating
the DMCA's you know, the rules about encryption. I don't know what do
you think? Uh, well, well, first of all, the big
problem here with you uzuo is that like if people don't know what we're referencing.
They said too much in several different places, including in their discord,
like yes, they kind of got cocky. Maybe I've seen certain messages flowing
around and stuff like that where I'm like, yo, you can't say that
this is a public discord. This isn't even if it was locked down,
like someone would find this. We all get the like the wink in the
nod that people do when they're like, and you can't use you can't use
pirate ROMs. You got to use your backups, like can you buy like
a device, and it says something like that, like analog pocket Like they're
always like, hey, no, you got to use some real cartridges with
this, and then they eventually put out something but it's like you can.
You have to use your backups to to use this special firmware that's going to
enable you to use pirated stuff. But they do the wink in the nod,
and nowhere in their official materials does it suggest that you should be using
pirated stuff. And then if it does, it says, don't do that.
And there's a reason. It's specifically to avoid this situation that you who
finds itself in Yeah, but then you can't say in whispers. Actually,
actually here's where you get the goods. You can't do anything remotely like that.
I mean this from other emulators where they're like, man, we're just
don't ask where the bio says, We're not gonna tell you. You have
Google, go fucking bill literally tell you like you use your search and to
figure out exactly because they don't want to touch this and this thing. This
thing was always risky because emula. First of all, emulators are good everyone
listeners. I wanted to ask them about them selling video games that use emulators
exactly when they use emulators is good stuff. When someone else uses an emulator,
it's a piece of software that lots of people use illegallympired and fuck off
Nintendo. But the thing about emulators are, first of all, this is
preservation, like video games are preserved through your own free copies of PC games
and emulation of console games. The problem with this is that they have an
emulator that can play commercially ready like available games. You can go into a
store, you can buy a switch game, and then that can be played
on u Zoo. Here's the thing though, let's be real with ourselves.
Most people aren't doing that. Absolutely, most people are pirating software using on
Uzu. Listen, that's on them, that's not on the emulator people.
But what that means is that that's how most people are going to use your
emulator. You can't say a single goddamn word about that. You just had
to be like, this is an educational thing. This is a preservation thing.
You know, someday in the future, our software will be very helpful
for you playing these games after your hardware breaks down. You're legally acquired software
to shut the hell up otherwise. And that's how retro emulators get away with
and why Nintendo won't go after just like a random Super Nintendo emulator. Why
because they're not specifically in the business of selling you an individual game that you
might go on a rom site and acquire and guess what, you can't.
You can't buy that in any way, shape or or legally without just giving
money to someone else. So they know that, so they don't care.
It's only when it's like they have a smoking gun, they have the gotcha
where they be like, oh no, you're messed up, We're gonna shut
it down, right now or in a case like this where your software is
does let's again, let's be real, it is being used to circumvent uh
just pop the system just buying your freaking games. And the fact that like
Nintendo was able to get like they called a telemetry data data. I didn't
look into like what exactly what this was, but they're like no, usually
just straight upset. Their most the most played game was Tears of the Kingdom.
It's like, so they don't keep a track of it, and they
know how it's being used, and they're kind of touting that, and you
know, they even talk about on like Twitter. I follow her a Twitter
account. They say way too much on Twitter, dude. Yeah, I
mean this is a case of they really did not abide shut the fook up
Friday, and they are paying. They're going to pay for it. And
you know that this does not mean that they are one hundred percent guaranteed guilty
of something. This will have to be heard out and the judge will have
to determine what side of the line this falls onto, but very easily it
could fall onto. This is a violation of DMCA, even if it is
just like you know, I said this yesterday like, oh, we have
a freedom of speech. We're just telling people that. They're like, you
could argue, you could try to argue that the DMCA is those could be
like, well, that's not what we're talking about here. You are if
you are facilitating people to violate the copyright, Uh, you're gonna get smacked
down a little bit. So yeah, we'll see they probably just pull USU
off of like their website and just like make it go on, get existing
torrents going forward and stuff like that, and they just stops for now.
Right, there's a little bit more friction between people and getting stuff running,
and that's to know'll be like, okay, we'll accept that. If only
there are another Swish emulator around you shut the funk over. UH. Sega
appoints ex Disney executive as head of trans media. It's from Dean Takashi over
at games Beat. Sega announced it has appointed Justin Scarpone, former executive at
Disney and Scope Lee, as head of its trans media efforts. He will
be executive vice president and head of Global trans Media Group, effective April first,
twenty twenty four. The establish establishment of a global Transmedia Group will allow
the company to advance its trans media strategy across its wide portfolio of intellectual property
such as Persona, Like a Dragon, Angry Birds, and more in the
company in the coming years. The company said, uh, yeah, listen,
I get the yous had some success with Sonic the year. There's a
lot of thirst in Hollywood for video game IP to take chances on with new
movies. So getting someone to facilitate that and make sure that SEG gets the
best deal with all those things is good. SEK is definitely a company that
feels like it is up and down a lot, you know, definitely hearing
that it's it's still having a lot of struggles coming off of last year that
could manifest us maybe more layoffs we'll see, hopefully not. They just had
some good games with Persona and Like a Dragon that's sold very well. Maybe
that's stemy some of that, but them finding other ways to make the revenue
from from IP that like Sonic. You know, the good thing with Sonic
is hey that the last Sonic game didn't do very well for whatever reason.
I think it's because you know, it's not very exciting. It wasn't great.
Frontiers did okay, right super exactly, yes, exactly, and and
so when a game like comes that and sort of is just like this this
nothingness fart that comes out and people ignore it. Well, listen, Sonic
is bigger than the video games now and they are able to capitalize on that,
and that's that's where they kind of want to get with some of these
other IP as well. And really, ideally you're in a situation where it's
like, well, every Persona game is selling better than the last Persona game,
and now there's a ton of cool Persona media that people can engage with
and get even more excited about it, and that gets in binding even more
games. That's the ideal scenario. But even having a fallback where it's like
maybe the games aren't doing as well, I'm not saying Persona, it's you
know, some other game. Well, there's still power to the IP and
we can make money from it in other ways. This seems like a good
safety net that all of these companies are looking to have, and I think
for Sega it makes some sense. Yeah, I think they have the ips
to go for it, and as discussed here, there's obvious ways to do
this. Just make more Persona anime, make you know, like a dragon
drama or whatever, make an Angry Birds kids show or whatever, you know,
like there's easy ways to do this. So I think I think ultimately,
like you know, people bristle at the term trans media and stuff like
that, like, oh oh no, what's sort of like crappy Netflix thing?
Are we gonna get now? But I think I think this could be
good, Like it's a portfolio back up. Well, I want to know,
Jeff, is I think Scarpone is Italian? I'm gonna say Scarponi's Italian?
Yes, okay, And we could tell you you never know, right,
it's impossible to know. It's definitely impossible. Ask our friend Dan record.
All right, that does it for the News. I got a pull
question. I'm gonna get to that here in a second. But before I
do that, Sean, tell people where they could find you on the internet
what you have going on, and we'll get to all the giant bomb stuff
as well. Sure. Yeah, you can find me on Twitter dot com
as a Turbo Shawn Underscore and find me as just Turbo Shawn Sahawn everywhere else.
And of course I'm doing stuff here today. I'm filling in for chancing.
If you if you're watching a Giant Bomb show, or listening to it
later. Hey, Hi, I did that, so I hope you'll like
it. Jeff, Jeff, I know today was a bit of a bummer,
so I got something for you, and please I welcome it. Everybody
listening to this, watching this right now, watching listening later, do me
a fair okay, open up a new window or new tab. Don't,
don't close the stream. We'll know, we'll know. Yes, I will
open up a new window or a new tab. Okay, go to Google
dot com and type in chocobo c h o coo bo. I expect this
to be completely reasonable. All I've done it. You should see a little
bun at the bottom. Oh I do uh give that a few clicks?
Maybe give it a lot a whoa, Okay go, let's just do this
on the stream. Okay, Okay, there we go. Let the people
see. Let the people see what's going on. Yeah, it is a
it is file fancy said of rebirth launch day. Everyone, so square,
Nick's cooked up a little something, you know. They some of these Google
doodles are pretty cute. I like this, So of course, all right,
there's the button. There's the button. Everybody, I'm gonna kick it
yeah, click that. There they come. Holy crap, sobody choke abouts.
I did just introduce my my kid. She was playing twos in the
Kingdom and I'm like, hey, go go go cut that chicken, go
hit that chicken with the sword, and she was like no, So I
did it, and then I got attacked and she was just losing her mind.
It was the best thing she had ever seen. She's like, that's
why you don't tack the chicken. Yeah, And I'm like, well,
lesson learned. But I'm like, this happens in every Zelda game. And
she's like, all right, I got to look into that. So pretty
cool. All right, let's see here we are the pole question, the
aforementioned pole question, Have you used Uzu to play commercial games? Asked this
yesterday here on game Miss Mornings. Ten percent say yes, forty one percent
say no. You're probably wondering, hey, where's the other forty nine percent
they said, what are you a cop? What are you a cop?
Shut the fuck up? Uh? Hey? One intendough just straight up like
very honest people, or just don't give a hell go and do that.
Yeah, one in ten people are in that discord. Yeah, one in
ten people are gonna get used to in trouble with Nintendo and the law.
Uh yeah, hey, I use you. Is definitely the kind of thing
where it's like a lot of people, a lot more people are using it
than maybe you realize, and yet it's still not like everywhere. It's not
like clearly because twenty million people still bought Tears of the Kingdom. So right,
yeah, all right, new poll question. What did I say I
was gonna ask? Oh, yes, that's right. In general, are
you losing interest in video games? No, I'm still I still enjoy gaming
as much as effort. Or yes, I'm spending more time and money on
other hobbies. So the negative there, it says that you do still care
about video games, just like I want to just gauge us, like obviously,
I think people listening to the show are going to mostly be like,
hey, no, I'm still into games. Just like search your soul a
little bit. Let's talk about this. Let's see if anyone's like looking around,
like, hey, I'm primarily primarily a PlayStation player, and they said
they weren't gonna have any games in the franchises I love for the next fiscal
year. But yeah, it'll be that's that Final Fantasy games coming out,
so I bet you still have something to look forward to. So looking for
all their hobbies. The Pokemon trading card game is better than ever. Got
not allowed to use this platform for your evilness? All right, what do
we have happening on a giant bomb? I'm probably gonna try to play some
RZE. I got to move this around, so it's like a little bit
less time before now in Voicemail dump Truck, but I have enough time to
get in there and play some of it. Maybe won't finish it like I
thought I might, but we'll see. I'll make that happen. I'm gonna
go upstairs, feed the kid, and then we'll check on that. Other
than that, Voicemail Dump Truck will happen later do They were going to have
Ben Hanson and Haley from min Max are going to be coming on the show.
It's going to be a good time tomorrow. Upf will happen. I
am going to start Final Fantasy seven Rebirth, not from the very beginning,
but from where the demo, from where the demo ends, because everyone can
play the demo. Oh listen, if you think I should play from the
very beginning, I will have you played that section yet? No, well
you need to play it. Well, I was going to do it.
I was going to do it tonight, and then I started on because this
is what Mike. No, no, no, no, we got to
see a reaction to certain things. Okay, fantastic, All right, great,
then I will play it from the very beginning. So look after that
anything else, Oh no, no BCR this week, mostly because Jan's out,
but also I'll spend a little bit extra time playing that final Fantasy seven
content tomorrow. So you have exactly right, so everyone can get a good
look at that maybe during your work day. All right, you're right.
Never listen to Mike. Mike. Mike's so sure of like when he has
an ideas like this is what the chat wants and it's like, ah,
maybe not. Mike's always right. Shit, He's right there, damn it.
Sean, thank you so much for spitting today talking with me about video
games. I really appreciate it. Man, anytime, Jeff always pleasure,
Come on, Thank you all for listening. You're the best audience in gaming.
We'll get through all of this together. Everybody. Until next time,
have a good one, take care of yourself and goodbye.