Game Mess Mornings 07/20/23

Um, it's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do this for July twenty,
twenty twenty three. For the next hour or so, let me help
you sort through the world of gaming on Game Mess Mornings Live with me Jeff
Grub Today activisual Wizard Earnings provide a ton of news, and another live service
game is shutting down. But first please join me and welcoming today's co host
a Game Mess Mornings. It's Jane Choa. Everybody, Jan, how are
you doing? Ice cream is so yummy? Um, yeah, yummy.
I'm chopsticks here. Uh let me monetize yeehaw. Let me monetize other ethnicities.
Yeah, hell yeah, here we go. That's what I'm all about.
Hell yeah, of course, that's just that's the only ethical thing to
do. Uh yeah, Jan, How's how's it going over there? You
you keep it up? This week? I feel like, uh like,
man, it's already Thursday, the weakest flown by. And also I feel
like, man, I got so much I have to do. I made
a list of things I have to do last night, and then I was
like, oh no, the film and forties double feature, and then it's
just it's just hilarious. Trying to find a good starting point for the three
of you hooligans, figuring out what movie to watch, and then arguing should
we annet? And then you know what, I'm glad you annetted. I
think I do. At some point I yelled at them and say, we
got to have an intro, So there is like a real good intro point
at some point there is. Yeah, But yes, I bet that was
pretty fun to go through and be like, what are these? What you
said? He it's doing? Oh my god, because you had I think
either you or Dan had suggested a net and then ten minutes later you clinally
came to the conclusion, Yeah, we had a whole bunch of options.
We let chat actually vote and twenty twelve Battleship Almost one, Almost One got
very close and it was in the lead until the last second, and then
a net ahead and we had to watch a net instead. So here,
here's my here's my pitch. Maybe this is a film in forties. But
Nicky Grayson had tweeted about the show Psych. I thinks earlier this week I
did see that, and then I realize, you know what, I'm a
psycho. I love Psych, I love Sean and Gus Lasseter, h Juliet.
I love these whole this whole cavalcade of fun characters, and then all
of it is on Amazon Prime. Yeah, here's here are we on a
USA? Like characters are welcome assants because all of these shows are popping off
right now, yo yo psych burn Notice Monk, I've watched so I'm not
this is not a bit. I've watched so many tiktoks of suits, so
many suits tiktoks Jan It's it's like you're talking. I'm on Suit Talk and
it's like, man, these guys, these guys are wearing nice suits and
boy, but the thing they just said was really cool. These are cool
dudes. And then I'll like scroll but all right, I'm never gonna watch
that show. And another technic will come up and I'm like, fuck,
yeah, let's go. Uh so listen. I always like USA always felt
like a cheap, prestige TV, And now I'm like, maybe that's exactly
what I need. I don't need any of this, Like yah, it's
asked, bullshit, give me our characters are welcome in this house. I
was thinking that because I was thinking like, oh, maybe I'll finally watch
Better Call Saul or I'll rewatch Breaking Bad or some other eight is any Anny
show, amc amc amcy not Anny. I was about to say a and
w uh, well that's it's good repet. Yeah that's high drama right there.
And then I saw Nikki's tweet about psych and I was like, you
know what, they may be up to something here. Yep, they may
have they may have something that So I told me in Chad watch White Collar.
That is the one USA show I definitely watched list a couple. I
think I watched all the first season probably a little bit beyond that, and
that was Yeah, I think they're all similar to that. And if that's
the case, that's fine. Just like cool characters doing cool stuff. I'm
down. Can we do they drop that slogan? Can we adopt? And
yeah, I don't think I don't. While yeah, so like characters are
welcome at Giant Bomb, like yeah, I need I need that shirt.
I need that shirt above where characters are welcome. So you said this could
be a film in forties, are you like, do we watch the whole
series or we just kick an episode? We cannot watch the full series?
I was I was thinking maybe like, hey, one once a week,
maybe once a month. We just picked three episodes. Okay, I would
like that. That would be fun, That would be good. Yeah,
yeah, just one episode a day the rest of the year. Oh my
god, that's our lunch break. Is all right, let's getting this mess.
But before we do, let's explain what we do here most weekdays.
I, Jeff grab will help peace here, gaming life back together. That
includes breaking news and maybe even some of our own original reporting. For all
these topics, I'll get the input of a bona fide expert who will make
me look smart. If you were watching live on Twitch welcome. You can
always listen to the show later on podcast feeds by searching for Game Mess Mornings,
or find the RSS on GiantBomb dot com. You can also catch the
show later with chapters and timestamps on YouTube. Hello YouTube. Okay, we
have a lot to get into, so let's start the morning mess with Blizzard
games are coming to Steam starting in August with Overwatch two. This comes from
Tom the Machine Ivan at VGC. Blizzard Entertainment has announced plans to make a
selection of its PC games available on Steam. The first Blizzard title to launch
on Valve's digital marketplace will be the free to play, team based hero shooter
Overwatch two, which is available to wish list now ahead of its August tenth
release. Steam. Players will need to connect to a battle dot Net account
in order to play the game, as is the case on all platform which
Blizzards said enables features like cross play. It's our goal at Blizzard to listen
to players and try to exceed their expectations and everything we do, said Blizzard
president mikey Bara. While while Battle dot Net remains a priority for us now
and into the future, we've heard players want the choice of Steam first selection
of our games, starting with Overwatch two in August tenth. We're happy to
work with Valve to make that happen. Gamers and developers are both going to
benefit from Overwatch two coming to Steam, said Valve. Boss Game Newell.
Gamers will have another platform where they can play a beloved game that utilizes the
capabilities of Steam, and developers will benefit from the effects of having the talented
team at Blizzard helping us evolve our supportive features and functionality for Overwatch two.
That's that's another quote from me. Bar there this a little surprising, but
I think like looking at the reality of you know, specific launchers for games,
even battle neet. It is not that surprising, right Jan Yeah.
I think someone said it earlier on a game Miss this week that the war
for our bottom row on our desk desktops is maybe finally done, at least
for now. It's a season, at least for now. And I was
I was abouted up Steam yesterday and I was very very confused to see Overwatch
being advertised straight up on the front page or at least one of like the
pop up ads. I think this has always been inevitable. I think also
just access to games in general will do a game so much more favors.
And who knows, maybe popping onto Steam, I don't know. I feel
like the crossover the ven diagram is very close of the folks that would have
already played Overwatch two and are big on Steam. But who knows, maybe
being on Steam will help garner and inject a whole new audience into the game.
Yeah, and Gabe Newell commenting on this makes me wonder if this was
a similar sort of deal as as what happened with Apex Legends. Like in
that case, I know that EA and and Stin Valve talked and it was
like basically was a mutual like request of Valve was asking, Hey, what
do we need to do to get apex Legends on Steam? And EA's like,
Hey, what do we need to do to get EA access EA play
excuse me onto steams the people can subscribe to that. And both sides were
like, hey, well, if you do one, then we'll do the
other. Like if you can get one on here, then we'll do the
other thing. So there was like a mutual agreement. I wonder if,
like Valve is like, hey, yeah, Overatch too, why hey put
that on Steam? Like that's the kind of thing that would do best on
Steam. And so yeah, I mean especially a game like Overwatch two that
is in such a rough patch right now that they're you know, definitely issues
with that game. We'll talk about some what they're doing with the Overwatch League
here in a second. This seems like a pretty good move. My question,
Jane is do you think like World of Warcraft ever ends up on Steam?
That seems wild to me? Oh man, well, I Final Fantasy
fourteen is technically on Steam. You still have to download squares weird PC launcher,
and I think that has been the main stopping point for me to fully
diving into fourteen. But I think it's I think, I think there's a
possibility. Yeah, I did. I did not think of a world where
World of Warcraft would be available on Steam, but I think after all of
the hullabaloo with Activision, Blizzard and Microsoft, I think it is distinctly possible.
I am now thinking of the poor, poor people playing Wow on a
Steam deck. That's terrifying. Yes it doesn't, uh yeah, but require
a lot of work put into getting those touch pads to have like those radial
menus for all the different commands you'd have to do, it's possible. But
yeah, yeah, a lot of people play like FF fourteen on a controller
primarily, so you could probably adapt it. Yeah. I mean I think
Final Fantasy fourteen was made with that stuff in mind. But I think at
this point you could figure it out for World war Craft after. I mean,
it wouldn't be easy, but they could figure something out there. Uh
and and I think they'd be pretty cool. But yeah, I mean,
we we know that. Uh. Microsoft revealed during the case that putting Call
of Duty into Battlenet was a big mistake. According to Microsoft, they said
like, hey, look at Activision numbers. That was a huge mistake.
And now we know we see Call of Duty is back on Steam since Modern
Warfare two. Uh. And it's like, oh, and you know that's
not the only example all Ubisoft going back and forth between Ubisoft Forward and then
now they're back and Steam with most of their games. Although that's not like
it doesn't seem like it's a full embracive Steam again. Every once in a
while it seems like there's a game that doesn't come to Steam. Maybe either
that's because of Epic deal or they do want to try Ubisoft Forward or whatever
the hell their their services called. Again, it's not for that's the name
of their their their showcase, but whatever they call their thing you play it's
It's so it's like we've seen this transition go back and forth where a bunch
of companies like, hey, we want to cut Valve out, we could
do this better on our own, and then they go and do it on
their own, and they don't sell nearly as many copies because most people just
go Again, the path of at least resistance is I play games on Steam.
I'll just buy games on Steam and if you're not on Steam, I'll
wait till you're there. Uh. And and a lot of these companies weren't
counting on that, and now they've seen that hard one one lesson and Valves
the entire time, Valve was just like, you'll be back. It's like,
okay, they were right, yep, that's that's pretty wild. But
Valve's I mean, we've heard Gabe Newells say like, we won't sign that
that call of duty deal with Microsoft because we don't believe in that sort of
thing. We believe in making of Steam so good that people want to bring
their stuff there. And of course that just means having the most people spending
the most money. But if they have that, then they can wield it.
And here we are where even Overwatch two now is coming to Steam.
It's it's pretty wild world. Yeah, a friendly monopoly, says MEDUSA lover
sixty nine. That's right, I mean, it's uh, they probably also
do give somewhat more favorable cuts to some of these companies. Oh yeah,
it's it's you know, it's probably not like eighty eight twelve like Epic Game
Store, right, but it's an eighty eight percent to the game developer twelve
percent to Epic, but they did announced like when when Epic was announcing all
that stuff, like way back when that if you sell over one hundred thousand
dollars worth of anything in the game, well then you get like a twenty
eighty split or something like that. So a lot of these companies were probably
like looking at it and be like, Okay, we're doing the math,
and with the amount of money that we could do on Steam, it probably
doesn't make sense for us to be back on there. Yeah. I also
imagine, and this is a very very very specific use case, but if
a Call of Duty player wanted or like an Overwatch two player that started on
console suddenly got a PC and then wanted to get over and start playing those
games on the PC, that may be too many hoops rhythm to jump through
rather than something that is more widely known than Steam of like I gotta download
what launcher, I have to make what account now, all right? Yeah.
I remember hearing stories about from developers in the early days of Unity and
Unity working on the web where it was like, Okay, so we can
get these games working on a browser, and isn't that going to make it
like just it's gonna open it up to everybody. But what happened is you
would click on this web page like and now we're going to install Unity into
your browser and do all this stuff, and it would come up with pop
ups excuse me, and those pop ups would be enough to discourage most people
from going through with it. They'd be like, Ah, this seems like
a headache. Is this a problem? Is it dangerous? I don't care
to learn, and so X, I'm just leaving this whatever, and that
barrier to entry, that small barrier to entry of clicking on a few dialogue
boxes and given in permission and learning about whether or not this was safe was
too much for most people. I mean, like, you know, there's
evidence beyond games of like the way our brains work, where like organ donors,
Like if you make that an opt in instead of an opt out,
most people be like, ah, I don't believe in that. I don't
want to do it. But if you make organ donating opt out where it's
already checked, people will be like, I'm just gonna let it go,
and they will change their opinion about their feelings about donating organs. They're like,
I've always been for that. There's like research about that where people's like
brains actually just accept what's already on the page and then they justify it.
They like work backwards to justify it. Like that's how fundamentally lazy we are.
So yeah, in any sort of extra obstacle that you put in front
of people is going to cost you money. And these companies have now seen
that. Even Epic has seen that despite giving away free games and all this
stuff, like spending all this money and they're not making a dent. Right,
that same value is why automatic sliding doors were created, Grub because businesses
were losing millions and millions of money because folks were just confused, is this
the push store? Exact right? I didn't want to be embarrassed exactly.
I pulled when I should have pushed. Now I'm embarrassed. I'm gonna go
home. Now, I'm just gonna go home, go to sleep. Yeah,
today's it's a wash. We'll try. We'll try again tomorrow. Everybody,
All right, let's move on here. Activision Blizzard cuts esports staff and
uncertain future over Overwatch league. Activision Blizzard has made a round of layoffs at
its esports division, while confirming that big changes maybe in store for the Overwatch
League. On Wednesday, the company reportedly cut around fifty employees in what appeared
to be a significant gutting and that's a quote of its esports division. One
of the affected team members told The Verge there was no warning. They said,
this was a complete shock to everyone, and none of us who were
laid off were offered any opportunity to switch roles or teams. A statement Brad
Crawford, Senior director of Global Communications of Activision Blizzard Esports claimed, and this
is the quote. Now, we remain committed to the future of esports,
and we regularly assess how our staffing aligns with our business goals to ensure we
can evolve with changing trends and best deliver for our teams. Blah blah blah.
Basically, they see what's what's Everyone else sees that there's just not a
ton of money in esports, and it's it's hard to turn it into this
big business. I think there is some money in esports, jan but it
does like it's gonna it's gonna take a lot longer than everyone I think so
said at first, and that's because the audience you're going for is younger.
They don't have a ton of disposable income, Like like the people who are
fans of traditional sports are they have a there's a wide age spectrum, and
you can win over younger fans while flee seeing older fans and be like,
you're gonna want to buy this and this and this, and you have the
money to spend on that. Esports just aren't quite there yet and it might
take like another decade for that sort of thing to kick in. In the
meantime, they have to these sports leagues need to show longevity and show like
if you are a long term committed fan that you're gonna get a lot out
of it. And that's like they're in that phase right now where it's like,
oh, it doesn't feel like they're gonna be able to pull that off.
But I don't know. Overwatch League was the big esports league. It's
like, we're gonna have city based teams and like franchise rights where you have
to spend twenty million dollars to start a franchise. In the Overwatch League,
this is gonna be it. And if that one can't really make it work,
I question what can. Yeah, I don't know, because I feel
like we're or at least I'm noticing esports coming and going in absolute waves.
And I think you nailed at GRAB where it's the investment in your time and
interest is going is hard because with all the stuff disappearing, Like I had
several friends that bought jerseys and repped teams from the Overwatch League and now like
those teams and the whole league is defunct. But like with stuff like StarCraft,
interest in StarCraft is going to eventually wane or like what what can keep
people interested? I feel like the FGC is like the closest I've seen people
stay interested in in like in esport. Yeah, I don't know, it's
just hard. I feel like as soon esports is hard. Also when you
start trying to monetize every aspect of it. I don't know. I don't
know, Grub maybe they just needed a halftime show. Yeah, maybe they
needed a halftime at the hyper Bowl. Have you seen have you seen a
neet? You've seen a net like the hyper Bowl I've seen. It's a
very important scene to me, Jane, when the baby when the baby puppet
flies in on drones at the hyper Bowl, That's that's cinema to me.
Uh yeah, continue here the way. Affs were made amid uncertainty over the
future of Overwatch League, with Activision announcing on Wednesday that franchise owners are set
to vote on whether to continue the competition in its current format. Here's the
quote again. During the second quarter, we emitted certain terms of our collaborative
arrangements with team entities participating in the Overwatch League. According to the amended terms,
following the conclusion of the current Overwatch League season, the teams will vote
on an updated operating agreement. If the teams do not vote to continue under
an updated operating agreement, a terminat should fee of six million dollars will be
payable to each participating team entity totally a total fee of approximately one hundred and
fourteen million dollars. While big changes may be a foot, and this is
no longer the quote, well, big fangers may be a foot, Overwatch
League Commissioner Sean Miller told the Verge, I want to be clear on one
thing, in particular, the Overwatch that Overwatch remains committed to a competitive ecosystem
in twenty twenty four beyond, and we're abuilding toward to revitalize global seeing that
prioritizes players and fans, and I don't know what to make of that.
Okay, you know what, Turboshan just broke my brain here in a good
way. And you know, going back to the whole conversation about like the
FGC feeling different as an esport, and I think Sean says it perfectly that
FGC is more of grassroots, right. I could see folks playing cash games
in a hotel at EVO at any point, or just like playing for the
pure sport of it. I feel like FGC is very similar to like basketball
and Summer Guard because I could just play a pickup game with some friends anytime,
no pressure. But with something like Overwatch, Doda League, Valeriant CS,
even TF two, it feels like you're forcing that into trying to legitimize
it as a sport, and like you're trying to make it a big spectacle
and you're kind of robbing the fun from it, yep, which is how
football seems. Yes, well, I mean spectacle for like no reason,
yes and yes, and robbing the fun is the biggest complaint about Overwatch is
that Activision, I'm sorry, Blizzard focused too much on the esports competitive scene.
They focused on their their Overwatch League, and they built the game around
that and that ended up hurting what was otherwise a pretty fun, casual online
multiplayer game. Uh. And in the grassroots element, it's just the absolutely
these are for something like Overwatch, and for a lot of esports that aren't
the fighting game community and a handful of other things. It is the marketing
departments at these companies saying this is a marketing expense, and we will because
this is a good way to get the word out about our game. If
people stay interested in the in the esports side of things, they'll stay interested
in playing it. And there's some truth to that, but that that makes
it a very different thing than when people are like, we are organizing to
play this because that's how much we care about it. And I think people
would create tournaments in the community for sure, and then they'd be like,
why don't we get support from the publisher. It's like there's that there's good,
good and bad with that. Once they come in there, they are
gonna look at ways to like make it make sense to their bottom line,
and with a dearth of any coming in from like ticket sales for events,
yes to shout out, take a drink everybody dearth. Uh, it's going
to be the kind of thing We're like, okay, well we it's going
to be a loss leader. We're going to sell more content in the game
later. And that means that the esports teams are gonna have to kind of
take a back seat a little bit and be treated a little bit worse than
than that they might otherwise be. And that's just that's how it goes.
The fundamental reality is corporations own these sports and uh, and that is you
know, no one actually owns basketball. They own the National Basketball Association.
Yes, but you can take a ball, go outside play basketball and don't
you don't have to pay anybody anything. And that is a very different thing
than this corporatized version of sports that esports are and that's gonna always be a
problem until something gets figured out there. You know. I feel like we
even saw this when we went to DreamHack. It is a completely different vibe
when you watching a competitive game like uh, like a MOBI like like Overwatch
or whatever, versus people playing a fighting game like the fighting game, crowd
went wild, like an absolutely wild over any and everything. And I love
that feeling. I felt so bad for em and Bailey that had to conduct
a serious interview with a Gun of War cast, but next door you could
not contain their excitement. Meanwhile, you know you're looking at folks playing a
MOBI and like everyone is taking this way too seriously. Yep, it's it
is. It's a hard scene to to like pin down like exactly like Rocket
League feels like one that is kind of like writing the line of both exactly
right, and it's and you could see the community is very passionate about it
and they would probably find a way to continue some sort of competitive scene no
matter what. And the developer that was behind it for a long time,
you know, now it's epic, but for a long time it was it
was just this small studio and they Psionics, I think it's Psionics, and
they they didn't have like some massive esports budget, but they worked with other
esports enterities to kind of make it make sense. And I think that that
is one, like you said, Ryan's of the line, and there's gonna
be a lot of stuff like that, but that it's just I think bottom
line here is there's just not as much money in esports as these companies thought,
and they are now recognizing that and they are gonna pull back on their
investment and make it like a diet version of what they've been doing. So
we're gonna get diet Overwatch League here pretty soon. And I believe then when
they say it's not going to go away completely, but I bet it's going
to feel like it goes away completely compared to what it was. Yeah,
alright, Call of Duty makes a huge amount of money on mobile. Here's
how much. This comes from Eddie mccoucha at game Spot. The Call of
Duty series is soaring right now, as Activision has announced that the series has
climbed to around ninety million million monthly players, while Modern Warfare two we Zones
and Slash war Zones micro transactions are putting up big numbers. Not only that,
but Activision revealed how much money Called Duty Mobile has earned so far,
and it's a lot. This information came out of activision blizzards latest earnings briefing
cold Duty Mobile saw engagement and netbookings remains stable year over year. Activision said
lifetime spending on the games since it launched in October twenty nineteen recently surpassed three
billion dollars. Yeah, that's almost almost a billion dollars per year. It's
probably a little bit lower than that, but that is basically, if you
are one of the biggest mobile games in the world, you make about a
billion dollars a year in revenue. And that's right where this is at.
How do we do that? How do we do that? I think we
a giant bomb go. You just find me laying in a ditch with the
aar and then you throw a poke ball at me and catch me. I
think right, were right in this down count kick you go to like a
fridge and you either get back lar or like damn exactly. That's right.
That is a massive number, but it's only about half of white Pokemon Go
has earned during its lifetime. Pokemon go'spennce. It's twenty sixteen, though,
so for what it's worth, Pokemon Go was on the market for several years.
They're there, you go. According to Censor Tower, called Duty Mobile
earned one point five billion by February twenty twenty two. I figure it has
now officially doubled in the time since. As for the console series, a
new game is coming this fall for PC and console and blah blah blah.
But yeah, this is this is them like maximizing the return on call of
duty, and this is why they take all their studios and like, all
right, we're going to make more call of duty stuff, and they already
have called Duty Mobile and they're like, we're making other call of duty mobile
things as well, and we're called it's just all call of duty in every
direction. And it's because it really does just make that much money. So
I think I complain personally a lot about Hey, Activision, Blizzard doesn't seem
to believe in all these other franchises. Tony Hawk's pro Skater one plus two
is the best selling Tony Hawk game, and you get a sequel to that.
What are we doing here when they just put it in black and white
numbers like that? I mean, I get it, like if I had
if I was running a business and I had one product that made more money
than everything else, of course you double down on that product. But I
think that's why again, why I go like, oh, Microsoft acquiring them,
having different incentives, having a reason to make a lot of different games
because it supports game Pass, Like, okay, that that's good. But
even if Microsoft, like when the deal goes through, they're not going to
suddenly give up on the investment in Call of Duty. It's still going to
be all Call of Duty all the time for the most part, right,
Yeah, of course. But I feel like when you were a company as
big as Activision Blizzard, you can do both, right, Like, why
can't you do both? That's how I feel. Yeah, it doesn't make
any sense to me, especially when you and Hey grub, I don't know
how money works, of course, you know, like I chose to we
chose to be in games media. Do you think we know how money works.
I live in San Francisco. I'm I'm a sweet summer child. When
it comes to finances, I am so cavalier with them. Anyway, we
don't need to get into that. But when you when I see that a
company is taking in three billion dollars from a mobile game. Not to disparage
the validity of a mobile game, but I feel like that gives you enough
funds to also support another studio that can make you additional amounts of money.
Because it wasn't Tony Hawk pro Skater one plus two the best selling Tony Hawk
game. It is, Yes, it is the best selling Tony Hawk game.
A franchise like notorious for selling a ton and like and like defining Activision
as this company. It's like, we're gonna do one of these every year,
and oh my god, everyone, it's selling better than the last one.
It's selling better than last one, selling bet our last one. It's
it's no longer selling better than last one. It's no longer selling better than
last one, but it's it's okay. And now you have brought back this
series and it's higher than ever and and we're just not going to follow that
up. And something is broken there. If you could be making all this
money from one franchise and you have successful versions of other franchises, but you
can't do more of those because you've got to feed this other beast, you
gotta there's there's something wrong. It's got to be it's got to be figured
out. Now. Again, I get like the need to prioritize, but
if if you can't also like diversify at the same time, then I don't
know. I feel like you gotta figure something out there. Like the Boom
is I'm sorry, no no, no, I was gonna move on,
so please go ahead. Like we've seen the Boom in several mobile games where
they will control the cultural zeitgeist and like Pokemon Go still doing well financially,
yes, but it's on it's it's declining in popularity. And yes, Call
of Duty Mobile is raking in three billion dollars now, but like as you
said, interest and Call of Duties eventually going to wayne, So those umbers
are going to go down, and what are they gonna do afterwards? Because
they put all their eggs in this basket. It's like your children, you
might like, I'm not speaking about your children, crub in general. Children,
you might like one more so you're gonna give one more chicken nuggets.
The other one still needs chicken nuggets. That's right, That's exactly right.
That's a good point. Yeah, it's they are like this earnings report was
pretty good for Activision Blizzard, better than I think people would have expected from
a year, year and a half ago. It's like, where are they
going to be in not in eighteen months and it's like, well, you
know, they're they're doing pretty good because Call of Duty is is succeeding,
But that puts them in a risky position where if there is a hiccup with
Call of Duty, if they do miss a year like that, they were
going to miss this year. They're not going to miss this year. Now
they're gonna have Modern Warfare three as a fallow up to Modern Warfare two.
Very weird, but that's what they're doing. If they missed a year,
though, it's like, well, Activision Blizzard Stock is just gonna fucking take
us such a huge beating, and you gotta get back to right now.
And now it's like a panic time and everyone like, now you really got
to everyone working on call of duty and they're already doing that. So you
see, they are in a corner. Despite being very successful, despite making
a ton of money from call of duty, they are backed up into a
corner. But you know, a little bit by their own making, a
little bit by the Hey, this is just how capitalism works. And if
they like they do mess up, if they put out a bad call of
duty that really, you know, gets people upset and they don't buy it
nearly as much of it. This is a company that could in an instant
be worth significantly less and take a huge hit and Bobby Cottock's out and all
this stuff, and look that sounds not too bad, but that's not what
they want. So yeah, you know, they do on the other hand
have Blizzard, and in the meantime, Diablo four has been wildly successful so
far. This is from Darren Bonthew's at game Spot. In the short time
since its release, Diablo four has been a major earner for Activision Blizzard,
as the company revealed that the game has been one of its fastest selling titles
of all time. Overall, the game helped a help set a record quarter
for Blizzard with over one billion dollars in net bookings. According to Activision Bizzard
and it's second quarter to twenty three financial results, Diabolo four has sold through
more units than any other Blizzard game at an equivalent stage of release, and
player retention was particularly strong, with over ten million people playing the game in
June alone. Over seven hundred million hours of activity have been logged last month
and Europe alone, Diablo four is twenty twenty three second fastest selling games so
far, and it's beaten only by Hogwart's Legacy. According to Games Industry dot
Is, PC was unsurprisingly the most popular platform. A devilish sixty six percent
of players chose to play on PC, and PlayStation five attracted twenty one percent
of Europe's Diablo four player base. Yeah, it's again not too surprising,
but hey, Diablo is back. They made a good one of those and
everyone showed up, and now that the fan base is actually bigger than ever
for Diablo four overall, So they do have other things happening. It's just
it's Blizzard and that required them to take that the Volition team and get them
come over here and work on Diablo and and all this was or Vicarious Visions,
excuse me, Vicarious Visions take them and have them come work on a
Diablo and they had to you know, cannibalize some of their other efforts to
keep you know, feeding this beast. And it's just like that is the
story over there, and it's for now. It's working. These games are
succeeding, but there have been misteps like that world that Warcraft three reforged,
and they were on a series of like missteps like that, and it's like,
well, they pulled out but you know, out of that nose dive.
But had they not done that that that this would be really bad.
But okay, nope, they figured it out. But it's like it feels
like, okay, now, what's what's next? Do you do? You
have the capacity to build something new to build a new franchise that can keep
going or is it going to be keep going back to these same wells until
they eventually you know, the return on investment there is less and less and
less. Again, they're kind of worked into a corner, but they are
making a lot of money for now. Yes, yeah, they're they're worked
into a corner. But I mean, hey, you can only like get
pushed into a corner so much. We eventually, I don't know, grub.
I feel like whenever I hear about Activision Blizzard releasing a new game,
I think of like they're like walking on a tight rope of like, yeah,
you're doing good so far, but like, I don't know, man,
I've seen people slack line in the park and I've seen some people fall
on their face yep. Yeah, and it's you know people mentioned in twitch
chet Vilani here. I heard Blizzard a real bad talent retention problem. I
wonder if they fixed it, and I don't think they have. And what
they did is they just like they brought in these other teams to like fill
in the gaps, like you know, as like just these these human beings
just throw them at the problem. And while they're doing that, I'm sure
they keep losing people and they're not able to bring in new people enough at
the same time. So yeah, they might be in a situation where,
yeah, the things have gone well with Call of Duty and and Diablo right
now, but in the process of getting to this point, they have left
themselves maybe more vulnerable next time around, because they don't have as many studios,
for one, and they don't have many studios working on different kinds of
games, and and the studios that they have brought into work on these things
are from people who are leaving. I mean, because Activision Bizzard did the
mandatory coming to the office, a lot of studios have done the exact opposite
and say, hey, you can work from anywhere, and that is going
to be very attractive, and that's going to draw people away from Activision Blizzard.
And that's just one thing among many. Obviously, there was a toxic
work environment and people might not be confident that they address that. So yeah,
like Activision Bizzard in an okay position right now, but there is questions
about what's next. Yeah, I could see folks, you know, aspiring
game developers, folks working in that space being drawn Torque specifically for the Blizzard
side and not really being wanting to stay around for like the Shenanigans they've heard
from the activision side, and I know that they function as one company,
but you know, yeah, culturally and like specifically like the games that they
would like to work on. All right. Diablo four's first season is off
to a rocky start before it even begins. This is from Ali Welsh,
a Polygon Diable four's first season, Season of the Malignant, begins Thursday at
one pm Eastern. This should have been an exciting moment for fans of the
game, but instead the community finds itself in an open revolt over the hugely
unpopular changes in Tuesday's preseason update, Patch one point one. The patch is
short, unbuffs and long, very very long on nerves players. Defense and
damage have been reduced, and leveling progress has been significantly slowed, especially in
later levels and on higher world tiers. Even the Sorcerer class, which players
agree is the most underpowered in the game and has a serious build diversity problem,
was nerved instead of buffed. Both Diablo four and Diablo Subreds are overwhelmed
with complaints about the patch. Now I want to say that just sounds like
a Blizzard game to me at a certain point where oh, the players are
complaining on the sunbred in the forum, So okay, well, now we
got a real Blizzard game on our hands. A lot of people do seem
to have some legitimate complaints, and it's it is pretty loud, and and
and Blizzard has already begun rolling back some of these things. Keep reading here.
Streamer Asthman Gould summed up the situation in the opening minutes of a video
discussing the update, where he said, number one, everything is worse.
Number two, everything is harder. Number three everything you were doing now you
have to work harder to do it again. Number four, leveling is slower.
I mean, he goes on and on. There were early signs that
Blizzard had gone into damage control mode with a live stream addressing the changes announced
for Friday. We have been hearing feedback from players regarding some of the changes
in one point one point zero Community developer director Adam Fletcher said late Tuesday,
we are going to have a camp fire chat later this week on Friday to
talk more about it. Some of the changes are already being reversed. One
of the most controversial changes in the patch, not detailed in the patch notes,
but quickly spotted by players, was the introduction of minimum level requirements for
the third and fourth world tiers, which are effectively difficulty levels. This might
have been intended to block practice of higher level characters being able to group up
with low level players and boost them through levels at a tremendous speed by carrying
them into the higher world tiers. And my question for that is, why
would you want to stop that? That is part of these kinds of games.
You just got to embrace that stuff. Uh. I mean, I
get where some of these developers come from. We built an experience, we
want you to do it, but players get to define. Like when you
have a game like this, it feels like, especially an all my multiplayer
game, that the community gets to define kind of what their experience is a
lot of times, right, yes, one hundred percent, Like eventually a
game will leave the initial intent of the developer right because the community will one
hundred percent make the game what they want to make the game. This,
This is this is what I was talking about grab where it feels like they're
walking on a tight rope of like I don't understand you, why are you
doing this? Like, why are you jumping on this type grow up right
now? When you could just keep walking forward. Gablo was in a good
position, and I mean, this is not the end of the world.
They're gonna got to figure this out. The game's gonna be fine. But
yeah, this is kind of like, oh, you stepped in a little
bit of doo doo. You didn't have to do that, Like you could
have just walked around it, And uh, I kind of I don't get
the overcorrection so much that a lot of these developers do. Sometimes I'm very
thankful that I never fell into World of Warcraft or like Diablo super hardcore,
because this feels like an abusive relationship. Grow Yes, it didn't. It
definitely does, like you're you're You're suddenly gonna send me a full text list
of people I can't talk to and I can't take these fun pictures with people,
and then like, okay, yeah, I'll just you know, okay,
cool, Yeah, I won't do any of that anymore and we'll be
happy. That's fine. Fine, do do on a type rope. I
guess it is hard to walk around it, all right. Microsoft and Activision
urge FTC to drop its legal challenge before the August hearing from James Batchelick Games
Industry dop IS. Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have filed a request to the Federal
Trade Commission urging the body to withdraw plans for administrative hearing next month. The
hearing was first scheduled after the FTC issued a legal challenge against Microsoft's proposed acquisition
of Activision Blizzard back in December. While it does not have the power to
block the merger, the hearing could lead to the case being elevated to other
US courts. However, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard argue in their filing that the
US courts have already demonstrated that they do not believe the acquisition to be anti
competitive, following the FTC's failure to secure a preliminary injunction from the District Court
and the Ninth Circuits denial of its appeal against the decision. There's more to
this. This is to surprising. These companies don't want to deal with this.
The FTC does seem to want to put as much pressure on as possible,
so I think it's very unlikely that they're going to win this or convince
the FTC especially, and I don't have the story here and I don't have
all the details, but the FTC and Joe Biden just announced a new set
of rules about mergers in the United States, and reading through those rules,
it feels like they were written specifically to stop this deal. So I,
you know, I haven't looked into too much. I don't know how like
Joe Biden has declared all these new rules for mergers in the United States.
How legally binding that is? I mean, I know he's the president,
but he's not Congress, but he's also, you know, the chief enforcer
of regulation, So I like, who knows what that could mean for this
deal? This might apply to future stuff, or it might apply to this
administrative hearing next month. So I'll just say it does seem like the FTC
is still very serious about getting in the way as much as much as possible
for this deal. So we'll see what happens. But I don't expect the
FTC to stand down. What do you think. I don't expect them to
stand down either. Who do you think Joe Biden mains an overwatch? Oh
he's deffinitent. What's the big shield guy? Yes? Ryan Hard He's definitely
a Rheinhart. He sees himself as a Rheinhart one. I was thinking that.
Or Soldier seventy six. Oh yeah, that's true. Soldier seventy six.
He wears an American flag outfit. Yeah, I could see it,
definitely. Okay, Hampton the Hampster. Okay, yeah, that's pretty good
too. That's uh, that's Hunter Biden's character. Please everybody please. A
new King Kong game has been leaked by Amazon. This comes from Tom the
Machine Ivan at VGC. Amazon has seemingly leaked a new King Kong game ahead
of its official announcement. Titled Skull Island, Rise of Kong. The third
person action adventure game is headed to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation Systems, Xbox Systems,
according to a product listing on Amazon's Spanish website. The listings, which
were spotted by Kamatsu, also carried what is presumably a placeholder release date of
December thirty one, twenty twenty four. Here's how the page describes it.
Embark on a third person action adventure to avenge the death of your parents at
the hands of the Ultimate Alpha Predator, gall conquer waves, a primal beast,
and defeat your your arch enemy's minions to become the rightful King of Skull
Island. Excuse me, there's more to it, but this is a game
from game Mill. Oh there it is. So you look at you've seen
a trailer. What is that? I can't tell it was it was a
trailer. Uh. This is from game Mill, which is a publisher that
does a lot of these kinds of low tier license games. So I wouldn't
expect too much from this. Uh. They have done like I think one
of their better games is Nickelodeon All Stars Battle Royale or whatever it's called.
They did that, but also that game felt cheap in ways where they didn't
have voice acting and all that stuff. So yeah, I don't know.
Are you Are you a congstand jan, I don't know grub Grub, I
am a Kaiju guy. I love me. You're in Godzilla. I was
gonna say guide you, but that doesn't that's not good. I can't say
that I love all of that. I'm one of the rare folks that loved
cong versus Godzilla because of seeing a big monkey h Superman punch Godzilla. Yes,
absolutely, and uh oh man. I was initially hyped because they're like,
yeah, yeah, let's get King Kong. Let's get King Kong back
in like the cultural zeite guards, let's make it happen again. Uh.
But I just looked at that trailer that lex Lexi linked, and then I
saw a game loft, and then I was filled with so much disappointment,
probably the same level of disappointment you were filled when you talked about the Invincible
game. That is also that is probably a very good way to put it.
I don't feel good about that Invincible game. Let me see if I
can bring up this Peggy eighteen here. It's not good. Yeah, I
can get it. Everybody just a second, uh I, you know,
we we are still in that that's that space where oh yeah, like license
games are kind of taking over the most license games probably are still going to
be like this, uh, where cheap cash ends like that is still gonna
be like what, There's just not as many high quality publishers that have enough
money to pay for the license and then still make a good game Like that
was always the problem. Like even the companies that didn't have that money didn't
want to make that investment. Now they do, and that's nice. That's
a change, and that's cool. Uh, you know Star Wars Jedi Survivor.
I'm that's the thing. I'm gonna go back to next. I can't
wait. But most of these ips are going to get acquired by game mill
like publishers that are gonna either put out mobile versions of these games like we
got with Invincible or this which looks fucking rough. Oh my god, that
looks real bad game. What kind of game is this? Yeah? I
mean that's it's a third person action adventure game where you avenge your parents and
it says waves of enemies, So I think it's like a wave based like
you're just gonna your King Kong and then waves of enemies are gonna come at
you and you're gonna take them on, and you might maybe go through the
level and there's another wave of enemies. But I think it's probably just a
brawler basically, Thank thank, thank the Lord. I'm not on Blake Club
because then, like just just sharing the information that I like King Kong and
Godzilla, this is this is Oh no, oh no, do you ever
if you ever step in your curse, your curse, we know what you
do. You can't get out the door. Do you know what to do
all right, let me up. Oh hold on, I okay, yeah,
I had a thought, but then it escaped me thinking about having to
jump into a Godzilla costume. That's that's how it goes, you know what.
Okay, I remember, I remember what it's going to bring up.
I just want to give a special shout shout outs to like people like John
Drake in his position of like making good Disney games, yeah, good licensed
products and everything, because I feel like we're diving back in grub into very
very bad license games, especially with like the Marvel games and Star Wars games
on phones that look exactly the same. They're just different reskins of each other.
But folks like John Drake, maybe John Drake specifically, it's like,
now we're gonna make good stuff. We're gonna make great, great, great
games. We're gonna specifically seek out folks that will make that have good ideas
and can really execute on them well. Because even the like, you know
me, I love Disney Dreamline Valley. I didn't mean to say it in
that voice. I liked it. Like the the four player mobile game or
not mobile game, the four player co op platform, a game we checked
out at SGF Disney illusion. Oh, God does the fantasy I can't remember
now, Jesus, but yes, I know what you mean it illusion is
in it right, and it does the illusion is that sounds right? Yes?
It that is a good game. The racing game you and Mitch checked
out looked very promising. Illusion Island there we go, yes, and like,
hey, like this, I am all for good license games, and
I mean, hey, we also have the whole Kingdom Heart series and those
are good games. Her guests here, Jan, I'm not gonna I'm not
gonna stand against you. I'm not gonna stand on lay if of your perversions.
Uh. There's also a new Armored Course six trailer out. Let's look
at five seconds of that real quick. Together, everybody there you go this,
this looks pretty good. Look at that art. God, what a
good looking game. All right, let's let's get back into the news.
Just a couple more stories here. Resident Evil four is now top to five
million units sold. Oh you know, actually, let me dumb mail?
How back real quick, Jan, Gundham Evolution is shutting down in November.
Is on at Game Reactor. If you're a Gundam fan, Bandai Napco has
some bad news for you. As noted in a blog post, Gundham Evolution
will be officially shutting down in November, as the developers come to the conclusion
that it is no longer possible for us to provide a service that satisfies our
players. Man that sounds rough, specifically Bandai Napco notes that gun Day Evolution
Gundham Evolution will be shutting down on November twenty nine, twenty twenty three,
and with this in mind, there will be a change in how the game
is offered. Up until then. We're told that updates will continue alongside the
launch of the game's sixth season on August twenty three, you'll bring a new
unit in two more maps, and it's seventh and final season on October twenty
fifth, bringing one less unit in map, but that from July twenty six
all Evo coins and ecpod limited sales will be stopped, and updates to ec
pods, cap pods, and ticket pods will be stopped to two stopped as
well. Hey, Jan, when I'm diagnosing what goes wrong with a game
like this, fucking currencies like that, I think there's your problem right there.
That's just it's too much. I get you. You're free to play
game, and this is like best practices for your dark patterns and all that,
but I don't want to hear about your EC coins and your EC pod
limited sales. Get the fuck out of here with that stuff. Gundam Evolution
was the Overwatch one, right, the one that just looked exactly like Overwatch
that always seems like a cool thing. Yeah, yeah, I and you
know that's exactly how we felt about it. It seemed like a cool thing
exactly played at once. This is a cool thing. It's just I didn't
I don't know what it is. Maybe it's me, but I just didn't
want to keep check and get out. I don't know if it's I just
don't know how you can continue supporting a game like this because it just seems
difficult after the initial boom. Yeah right, unless, like them audience,
there's just a bunch of freaks. They probably they are, but they're they're
like, I get my freak on by painting a little model. I don't.
I don't need this video game, especially when that's like an ongoing hobby.
The Gundam fans have a million other ongoing hobbies. They don't need another
one, So why not take a game like this and just put a price
on it, take all the micro transactions out, and sell it to people.
I mean, I get That's like the ceiling is lower there. I
get it, and you want the ceiling to be infinitely high. But let's
just be fucking realistic and say, hey, you spent so much on the
game, set a price, and try to sell so many copies that you
make more than that, and then you made a profit profit and we can
all move on to the next thing. It's it's that has to be an
option on the table too, instead of just oh, this was just another
shitty live service game that didn't work out. I don't know. I don't
get it. Like there has to be like a portion of that player audience
there that is genuinely super duper bummed out. Like folks friend groups whoever got
really really into Gundam Evolution finally had a good Gundam game. I don't know
if there are other good Gundam games, but they had something and now it's
gone, and I feel bad for those folks. I do as well.
All right, Resume Before has now topped more than five million copies sold.
It's from Ben they on at game reactor. Capcom Is revealed that resume Before
has topped he had another impressive milestone. The Survival Horror remake has now surpassed
five million sold copies marker, something that it hopes to expand on further with
the release of the upcoming Resible four VR mode, thus tapping into the PSVR
two player base. To add to this, capcom Is revealed that Resuvals series
as a whole, it's now reached one hundred forty two million copies sold.
Yeah, it's it's pretty good. I think I was expecting resumel for to
sell a little bit faster than this. I think that's pretty good. But
but I think probably what happened is most people are like, I already played
that game. I don't need to play it again. Sorry, I saw
my door, I saw Mike and Chatt and I just want to really hurt
him. Now. I was like, no, I thought most people like
I played that and it's one of my favorite games of all time, and
now it looks better than ever I want to play it. And so it
was gonna like rush to ten million copies sold. I guess that was obviously
that was way too much. But five million copies sold for this game,
that's pretty good. Anything that is going to get over five million copies is
just, no caveats, a huge success. It just is five million copies
sold is that threshold. Everything above that is like, Wow, that's that's
even more great. That's awesome. But if you make a game that costs
as much as it costs to make Resume four and then you sell five million
copies, you have unequivocally succeeded. So yeah, and I don't know,
this game probably does get to like ten million after sales and holiday sales later
this year and all that stuff, But I don't know, what do you
think? Yeah, you know, I have a couple of friends that I
thought would hop on this because they loved Resident Evil four. But I think
there is a little bit of that fatigue and maybe like lack of understanding with
some of the gaming audience of like, well, I've played that before,
Like I don't need to check it out again because it's since it is a
single player experience for some people that you know, the assumption there is like
that's the same thing, it just looks prettier. YEP. I think I
think that does happen a little bit yeah, it's uh. I think in
my head it was like, well, no, Resume four remake will be
the fastest best selling resual game. And I think Resuble two remake did very
well, but that was like, that was such a significant remake. It
was like a completely new game, and it was like hitting an audience that
probably mostly had never played that game before. I think Resumee four has been
rereleased so many times most people have played it. But again, I feel
like we're couching in terms of like, oh, it has failed in a
clear it just has not. It is a success, like but like,
yeah, five million units is still amazing. It's amazing. Resid Evil four
remake is still an amazing game. Absolutely. All right. We have the
poll from yesterday. We're asked, are you getting Pickman four this week?
Seventeen percent said yes, uh, sixty nine percent said no, and fourteen
percent said I don't have a switch. Uh. And then that sounds about
right for Pickman about you know one you know, one in four one in
five are going to pick that up. Use if it was that case,
they would sell Hunt the tens of millions. So but yeah, that for
for our audience, that seems about right uh, Jan, where are you
at with pickman? I don't want to disappoint your grub. It's no,
it's okay. Most people aren't into it, so I'm I'm I completely accept
that. Like I think most people like look at it and don't understand where
the fund might be. And I completely sympathize with that. I yes,
I think even someone who plays it and understands where the fun is. When
I see a new one get announced, I look at it and be like,
why do I like that so much? Because it's like, yeah,
so I completely get it for sure. I think for me it's like I
didn't have a game cube. And then even looking at screenshots and videos growing
up of that game, like the backgrounds looked a little too muddy and gray.
No, I know what you mean. Yep. I think I think
they're looking pretty good with the once they got to HD with yeah three and
now now this, but those I know what you mean, Like the backgrounds
were trying to look photo realistic and didn't quite get there. Yes, that's
right, folks. I'm a Sega fanboy. Deep, That's that's right.
I went from my love of Sonic to carry you carry you would punch the
ship out of the pick many. He would just he would step on it,
not even realize he did it. And if you told him, you
wouldn't care. He'd be really nice, though, he'd be really nice to
a pick man. He just put him in his pocket. All right,
We're gonna put up a new poll here in a second. In the meantime,
though, what do we have happening on Giant Bomb? There is there's
a travelog where Dan went to Belgium with Jake Decker. That's up, now
you show I'll watch that. Uh. We did a couple of quick looks,
right, we got a quick look at double Dragon much other Dragon viewfinder
viewfinder, Yes, that's up. Uh. And then yesterday we had a
new episode of Four Sorts Fiesta where we all made each other very mad and
supportant to watch that. And then today Blake Club is back. I of
course I'm taking the day off. Bat Grub is coming in instead. I'm
gonna let him come down. I can't be in the same room as that
guy, but he'll he'll be here playing through Batman Dark tomorrow, a game
I keep forgetting the name of because it's just a terrible It's a terrible,
terrible name in cuffing season, Baby, so gonna be we're gonna continue the
cuff count. I will get that set up actually, so we can have
an on screen cuff counter back cuff counter. So look up that that's gonna
be happening immediately. Oh no, you could probably set up a short cut
and obs to just like you hit a thing and then it's an incriminal.
Then I could probably do that. I might might. I think for today,
I'm gonna just set it up in stream elements and let one of those
guys just handle it. But uh, we'll figure it out. Also,
shouts out to Lucy and Tam that are out down at San Diego Comic Cone
right now. If you're heading to the show, make sure to say hi
to them, but keep your distance because Tam does not accept hugs. Also,
I think they have a new episode of audiologs dropping with what's his Face?
Sam Lake? Oh? Really fantastic. Yeah, that's very cool.
I'm gonna check that out all right, you Poul, Have you avoided Blizzard
games because they have not been on Steam? Yes or no? Simple easy
answer it on YouTube dot com slash at Giant Bomb. There's a community tab
there you can you can vote there. Uh yeah, yeah, you can
put that in there as well as one of the options to going yeah.
Oh too late, h no, no problem, All right, Jan,
I think we're good now. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today
and talking about video games. Man, you know, I appreciate it.
I appreciate you Grub, and thank you all for watching. You're the best
audience in gaming. Until next time, have a good one, take care
of yourself, and goodbye. M