Asmongold TV - AAA games are in trouble | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

AAA games are in trouble Asmongold show for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. ------------------------ ------------ Keywords: gaming community, gaming culture, streamer content, gaming opinions, gaming podcast, mmo gaming Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AAA is in trouble. Now this is a video a lot of people want me to watch. And a... load of people want me to watch. Thank God. Fuck them. Welcome back everyone. Today's video is a true bombshell for the games industry. This is one of those things that can have true impact. So let me explain. What just happened is the European Union just rewrote the rules on premium currency in games. Of course, that's the home of Ubisoft of CD projects. Sorry, it's a little bit too quiet. of remedy and so many other companies.

And make no mistake, the new rules that they have just laid out could change gaming utterly. Actually change the games that you play. So you know those bundles where you've got to buy more currency than the item that you want costs? Or perhaps the idea of- Oh, bro, yep, there it is. Jesus. Which game is this again? I'm trying to remember.

Oh, is this StarRail? Yeah. idea of limited time events, of no refunds and digital purchases, these are all being fought against by legislators. And when the EU takes action, it's a large enough block that it can reverberate around the world. It will, because the Europe is a very big audience. And so, like, if Europe makes laws for something, it will change the way the games are designed. And I think if other countries follow suit, that will again change the way the games are designed. Because games need to hit those mainstream Western markets because that's where the most money is.

And as evidence, how's that USB-C charger on the phone? Yeah, the country of Europe. Working out. There's a lot to talk about. Strap in. This one could actually, honestly, pretty fucking good. Only enough, you've got EU legislation to thank for the standardized phone charger situation. Yeah, I make a lot of memes about Europe having like silly speech rules, but they

really get it right with a lot of these consumer protection laws? Like it's the same as anything, right? Is you're going to have positives and negatives? They really nail it with consumer protections. The ability to play ROMs on their iPhone. But now we seem to have EU legislation to thank for premium currency being threatened. So here's what went on. In September 2024, the EU proposed the Digital Fairness Act that was targeting all the practices online that make using digital services miserable. And in particular, it called out dark patterns and video games as one of the targets.

Do you remember like in Diablo 4 when the game came out and every single console would default your button to automatically redeem your battle pass? And there wasn't even a confirmation screen? That's basically the gross manipulative techniques that trick and strong arm money out of people. Obviously, especially applying.

to people who are not yet adults. And this is fairly weighty because in the EU alone, games are obviously big business. Revenues have been going up in the EU. Online game spending in 2018 represented 74% of turnover coming from online revenue. It's 20% growth in five years.

That's nuts. 83% by 2022. That's all of those fun, dark patterns actually working and getting digital currency money out of people. Yeah, dark patterns. obviously work. That's why they use them. Those dark patterns target the most vulnerable people the most.

And there's no one more vulnerable in the eyes of the law than children. Children who spend an average of 31 euro a month on online games according to data from video games Europe. And this is another big component is that the majority of games that are advertised to children that have loop boxes in them are not 18 plus. Like, there are many, many games that use different types of, like, deceptive marketing like this. Their target audience is people who are underage. That's actually went down from 2023. I guess that's good.

Everyone's feeling a little bit of the economic pinch. But it's not stopped the EU from taking action to protect kids, basically, from predatory premium currency models. And in situations like this, there's often a great offender, right, that is held up as an Great offender. Yes, exactly. I think this is pretty good accuracy. And again, the big problem also is that, like, a lot of kids don't really understand the abstraction of, like, numbers and, like, different values. So, like, for example, like, you can understand, okay, I spend $100 and I get, you know, this many polls on average. Well, kids, it's harder for them to abstract that because they're literally not even high enough level to do that yet, right? Like, you have to be, like, level 12 or level. 15 and some of them are level 7. So they're just spending money and they're not thinking about it. example of something doing everything wrong. Yeah, three currency. You might wonder, is it an Activision game? Is it ultimate team from the EA football games? Maybe it was Roblox. No. No, today it's a game about horses. It's called Star Stable. You've probably never heard of it.

That's right. But if this all does turn out, good. We'll have the horse. Shut it down. This is Star Stable online. It comes from a Swedish developer called Star Stable Entertainment and it is the game that may have just rewritten rules and monetization in the EU. So yeah, thanks Horsegirls. Now it turns out that Starstable just uses all of the premium currency tactics in the book, which makes it a pretty awesome example, right, especially because it is targeted at a younger audience. So in March 24, the Swedish Consumer Agency filed a complaint with the EU-wide Consumer Protection Cooperation Network. That's a mouthful. And that complaint alleged that Star Stable Entertainment were targeting children and using harmful commercial practices

that breached EU consumer regulations. This is the reality for anybody who's not completely intellectually dishonest. These video games absolutely target children. They absolutely advertise to children. And they utilize gambling mechanics and currency obfuscation to confuse children into spending their parents' money. This is their business model. Period.

Now, the findings corroborated much of those allegations. They found that the game made direct appeals to children in their rats, that they were using pressuring techniques like FOMO, which is particularly despicable when it's not, you know, on adults, and there was a lack of transparency on purchases and loads more things. I mean, here's an example of one that's particularly rough. They were responsible for influencers promoting the game to kids without any disclosure of the spending risk.

So in short, it's bloody well-baming. Starstable Entertainment now have a month to address complaints and propose solutions with their game, but what matters for our purposes today is the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network, we can just call the CPCN, they have laid out what they want. So I'll spell it out by an example. This is what should happen in the ideal world. You, do you, do-gamer, want to buy yourself a new horse. You see that your new horse costs 300 star coins.

The store tells you that's around five pounds, so it just lets you buy 300 coins exactly. Yes. You buy exactly what you need for the horse, rather than the current bundles that exist of... I don't think this is what they should do. I think that they should go a step farther. You should be able to buy anything for an amortized value that is the direct value of the currency in the store. and every instance of in-game currency being assigned to value needs to be accompanied by the USD value right next to it.

That's what needs to happen. Like, I'll give you an example. Buy yourself a new horse. You see that your new horse costs 300 stars? So like this right here. Like this right here should have in parentheses $3. theoretically, right? Obviously it's a different amount, but like it's something like this. Every single instance of this being shown on the screen needs to be accompanied with a direct

dollar value or local currency value conversion that is easy to understand and is an alternative purchasing method. It's literally that simple. that exist of 200 coins or 400 coins. And also, by the way, there is no reason not to have this. The only argumentation not to have this is just so they can confuse the player. There is no benefit to the consumer that the dollar amount or the local currency amount is not displayed. And I think that's a very, very important component is that, get rid of fake currencies.

I don't mind the fake currencies. The reason why I don't mind the fake currencies is because sometimes you can farm the fake currencies in game. So it's okay to have the fake currencies, but they have to be assigned to value at all purchase points. I thought about this a lot, and I think that that's the best way to approach it. Meaning that you always have to buy with some wastage,

which just ends up giving the company more money. So in short, no obfuscation bullshit, no weird tactics. Yes. And worst of all for these companies, this will have them bloody while shaking. You'd have to have a refund policy, both for the coins and the horse. And none of this would be pitched as a limited time event where you have got to get the thing right now. So that's an example. I think that companies should have to refund you for anything that you buy, but they should also be able to ban your account if they,

the if you refund. I think that's what's fair for both parties. Of how these policies should be in plot. If if you could do that and you could just refund infinitely, what people would do is, why? Let me explain. So what people would do is they would buy a like $100 pack and then they would do gotcha polls with it. And then if they don't get the item, they are going to refund the pack and then lose those items and then do the entire transaction over again. I think this is a very annoying process. It's just, it'll just be gameed. Keep everything cases exactly. And so I have no problem with them, I have no problem with them doing this, but I think it's fair for them to ban your account. I do. Maybe I'm crazy for saying that,

but I think it's totally fair for them to ban your account if you're buying things and then refunding them constantly. Because again, them as a, as a business have the right. to refuse service to people that are taking advantage of it. Seems fair. Yeah, yeah, sure. And each is indeed a massive win for consumers. But that would not matter if this amounted to nothing. You could look at all this and think, right. So some Swedish horse game has got a slap on the wrist.

No, it's more than that. This seems to have backbone. So here's the big important thing. Here it is. These solutions are the backbone of what the European Consumer Organization calls key principles for trustworthy gaming environment. See, this is the beginning of regulation here. This is something that's long overdue.

These could cause huge problems for anyone who is using premium currency. When I say this could shake the foundations of the game industry economy, I absolutely mean it. So these, which I'm going to spell out for you, are the minimum requirements for purchasing and using virtual currencies in the EU. And what's neat is the philosophy behind them. So the CPCN considers these premium currencies as an equivalent to the real money that is used to purchase them. They are. They are. Just undeniably they are. Like you don't just get to change it into something else and then say, oh, it's not real money. If you're spending real money to buy something in order to buy something else, because that's the only way to do it, this is functioning as real money. It's dishonest to say otherwise.

That for them means that they are just as worthy of legal scrutiny. So you can see how that is in a way a mindset shift that paves the way for actually treating these as they are. So just think about the last game that you played that had a premium currency in it. Whatever that game is, I want you to keep it in mind. And with that in your mind, I'm now going to go through the various different practices that this targets. So prices for premium currency packs that are. a little more than the available product. So you've got to buy extra coins, extra gems, whatever it may be.

Obfuscation of how much currency is worth by all... I don't think that you need a rule for this. I think that you just need to have the option for the individual to purchase the amount of currency that they need exactly or purchase the item exactly for the converted value of that currency. I think that's all you need to do. because like having it to where like you have different price points for things I feel like this would get very confusing

especially with like big stores with a bunch of different items you should just allow people to purchase the items directly for what the currency conversion rate would be it's so simple pairing currency or other items or multiple currency options as an example I think World of Warcraft may actually fall for that they all do this

because it includes traders tender in one of the new mountbun Another one, a complete lack of a refund option for making currency purchases or even for in-game items. So there would have to be a refund policy. That's something none of us are used to in these games. Also, FOMO practices to encourage buying. Those are going to be looked at, so some of those may no longer be allowed. And all of... I don't think that FOMO is something that games should be disallowed legally from doing.

I think that's over... I think that's too much governmental oversight. I don't like FOMO in a lot of games, but I think that like there's very much, so whenever I look at like consumer laws, what I think about is, are both parties entering into something with a full understanding of what they're buying? And is the thing that they're buying, is it being misrepresented or misunderstood intentionally? And I think FOMO having a limited time offer, this is something that's as old as time. And so if you abstract the idea of limited time offers or fomo and fomo is bad, I think that you paint with such a broad brush, the painting effectively becomes irrelevant. So what I think is more important to do is to make sure that when a person is buying something, they have complete understanding of what they're spending their money on.

And that's the most important thing. And they're not encouraged to or tricked into buying something that they don't actually need. FOMO is abusing people with mental problems. No need to limit availability of virtual items. Fuck FOMO ban that shit. Sure, you can say something like that, but you think about like fuck FOMO ban it. So would every banner for Genshin Impact

have to be up all of the time constantly? Would every promotional item have to be up all of the time constantly? Well, at what point do you draw the line? I think that really there is a certain amount, like whenever you talk about consumer protections and everything, there is also a certain amount of consumer responsibility that has to exist. And so I think, again, it goes back to what I said initially, where it's about the, it's not about doing something that gamers don't like.

It's about doing something that's fundamentally misleading. And it is mislead, like, extra currencies exist for the explicit purpose of obfuscating the amount of money that you're spending and getting you to spend more money in a way that is not consensual. FOMO is just them encouraging you to purchase something. That's a totally different dynamic. Because in one dynamic, the consumer and the buyer, or sorry, the consumer and the seller enter into an agreement with full understanding of this agreement. And with the extra currencies, they do not enter into that agreement with the same degree of understanding. Hopefully you guys can see what the difference there is.

These practices are now something that the EU can hold against developers and publishers. Even more so if the parental controls of sad game are not up to scratch. So it's less a case of me saying, can you think of any game that falls into those categories? And it's more me saying, can you think of a game that doesn't fall into those criteria? There it is. It's fairly humongous, which might indeed be the point here. We know this is something the EU have been thinking about in other. circumstances than just Starstable. As an example, in September 2024, the European Consumer

Organization published a report on popular online games. And in that report, they targeted Diablo 4, EA Sports XC 24, Minecraft, Fortnite, and a bunch of others. And it was all about how the virtual currencies work. They were not thrilled on what they found in those games, right? Yeah. Because many of them, well, they did the same things that, you know, Starstable did that we do not like. That straight up means we can say that electronic arts and Blizzard Entertainment are being directly targeted by this body. They are. These practices are universal. Absolutely. So it's no wonder that the B-EUC will be holding workshops to help European companies implement these new principles. Because it seems they may actually have to implement them.

Everything that they previously thought was acceptable pretty much now isn't. And that, here's the shocking thing. that's just that's not my commentary that is what the industry response has been so we know they are shaking in their boots this is another thing bodies aren't thrilled about

this is another thing like I I kind of feel this way is that I don't think that you should be able to say that this is a bonus because there's not like a bonus implies an anchoring point and the anchoring point doesn't exist

because the only price point that exists is inside of the context of this bonus. So it's like basically putting something out there for normal price but then telling the consumer that it's on sale. Which is again like and hopefully you guys can see kind of like

how there's like a philosophy behind this with me. This is again this is doing something that is misleading. You are intentionally misleading the customer which I think is effectively fraud. And a big shout out to one of our Belgrade games members at Neo NeuNepulosa for directing us to this stuff.

So the European Game Developers Federation and the Video Games Europe, two groups, basically, they've published a joint statement that expresses their disappointment with the findings. Let's read their statement. Quote, we are disappointed by the lack of engagement from the CPC network in creating these principles, which introduce new legal theories and misguided interpretations of EU consumer law that will create confusion and disruption for European customers. Sidebar. Oh no, we're going to be disrupted by by sort of annoying predatory stuff going away. What an awful.

Yeah, this is awful. Wow. So wait a minute. The consumers are going to be confused because we're removing the confusing elements of the game. Uh- Corruption. Back to the statement. It will also present a challenge to the industry's future growth and could even deprive millions of consumers access to their favorite games. Now that last bit is... No, it won't.

If your game is not financially viable without you taking advantage of and misleading customers, then you don't have a financially viable product. It's that simple. If the way for you to do business is unethical and breaks laws, then you can't afford to do business.

It's that simple. Interesting thing. So understandably, right, these groups representing the most powerful players in the industry, did quite like things the way that they were. It changes dangerous, especially to the bottom line and especially change like this. But in a way, they're not inherently wrong. It is true that audiences do actually understand premium currencies by and large right now. I think that audiences understand premium currencies, but children don't.

and these games were advertised towards children. And if every single audience understood premium currencies, you wouldn't see as much obfuscation and how many, because like if there is, so think about this logically, right? If audiences understood premium currencies to a degree that it was not an effective tool of obfuscation, the companies would no longer have any premium currencies

because the extra effort in designing and programming values for them wouldn't be worth it because they wouldn't make any extra money. So by the fact that they're continuing to use premium currencies, that defines the reality that premium currencies are effective in getting people to cause and spend more money. It's just, it's an obvious lie. It's an obvious lie and you can instantly think about this by using just the slightest amount of logic.

Currencies, these companies were following, you know, their best legal guidance, and now that guidance has changed. I guess just like how so many phones had like a bespoke charging cable until the rules just changed in the middle of the game. So now they've got to get used to these new rules and what'll sting is the impact on their bottom line. They're not wrong about the potential impacts of all of this. Now big companies like Ubisoft can probably absorb the costs of any legal challenges or damage from rebuilding their premium currency systems. They'll probably span the whole lot to try and figure out ways around these principles. As for, There's always going to be a cat and mouse game, but that's the reason why regulations and, uh, like, things like this have to be agile. They may not find that so easy.

But where things will be dramatic is the group's final warning, because it's the most threatening one. It's the idea that players in the EU may just be locked out of video games. Uh, that say with... They're going to lock the European Union out of video games? Who the fuck believes that? They can't do that. Are you kidding me? Absolutely not. Bye-bye summons. Well, what I'm saying is that these companies, like the European Union is like, I bet in a lot of these cases a massive chunk of the pie, they can't afford to just abandon that market. That totally changes all of their financials. And also, by the way, if abandoning that market is more advantageous than, you know, making equitable microtransaction systems, that is the strongest argument I can see for why those

equitable microtransaction systems need to be added. If you can literally abandon the EU because now you have to play fair, maybe there's a big problem with the way that you were playing. A game like Overwatch, right? They would simply choose to geo-restrict access to the game rather then change their monetization model or to just continue the game as normal and risk EU lawsuits. It could just be they look at the EU and think, you know what, we make enough from the states and other countries, we really don't need them. That being said, the EU population is kind of huge. Overall GDP is obviously. And also the EU is one of the highest GDP areas in the world with the highest amount of like disposable income. So like for example, there are a lot of

South American people that spend a lot of time playing these like free to play games. But they don't spend a lot of money because, you know, unfortunately a lot of the countries they live in just don't have that much money in them. But Europe, China and America and Korea and a handful of other ones, that's where the money is. That's where you really get the players that are spending $100 a month, right? So like you can't just trade like you can't go from like 400 million Europeans to 400 million South Americans and maintain the same profit margins. Saudi Arabia. Yeah, exactly.

Like I wonder, I wonder. Okay. So let's think about Dubai and let's think about Zimbabwe. I wonder who is going to have more GDP per capita that's going to be able to spend on these. games. Ah, geez, dude. Ah, man. Ooh, what could it be? And so think about that with

everything. It's common. It's common fucking sense. A very, very flawed metric. As an example, right? Just Googling this year in 2020, the EU's nominal GDP was about 17.9 trillion That's gigantic. Global nominal GDP, which is

quite a lot of money and a hell of a lot of that GDP, globally, will be in other countries like, say, For context, I could be a little bit outdated with this. America's GDP is between 20 and 25 trillion, I believe, and China's GDP is between, I think, 13 and 17 trillion GDP. So the European Union is gigantic. You know, where a lot of these companies will not be able to go in and directly monetize. That could actually mean that they will feel the need to change.

And in a way, there are two wolves inside me who are fighting, right? I suppose one of them is the pragmatic wolf. The other one is the almost like the last vestiges of some sort of libertarian idealism that says, let the market decide if the gamers. I have no problem with letting the market decide, but the whole issue with a free market is that a free market implies

that everybody is entering into it with equal consent and equal knowledge and equal understanding. The big problem is that a lot of, of these companies exist inside of the context of marketing to children and marketing to demographics that are not able to do that by the nature of the category they are mainly children. So like I think that the free market idea, the like whole libertarian concept of that immediately falls apart.

Because like again, and the reason why is that like I used to be a libertarian. I wouldn't really say that I am now, but there's a lot of values that they have that I also agree with. But there's like the entire idea of like the consent and the non-aggression principle. This is something that is primary and a, like this is the highest regard and the most important thing. So if you're violating or not respecting consent, that is something that overrules any sort of free market ideology. the bad practices the gamers shall not partake in them and the market will solve the problem and i wish that was true libertarian as code word for homosexual is that true guys but uh i feel there's almost a faux idealism in so much of that because the psychological hooks the psychological triggers

they do actually work we're in a world where you can very easily make i think some sound enough uh you know philosophical arguments very Well, this is just, it's just stupid. Like the entire idea that these tricks don't work is the same thing. It's like, oh, marketing doesn't work. Listen, guys, I've run marketing campaigns. I've seen the back end and I've been on the front end. Marketing campaigns work extremely well.

Regulation and all of that. And I totally got that. I'm fairly sympathetic towards that in many cases. But the thing is... They wouldn't keep doing it if it wasn't working. We've also got to be pragmatic. part of that is being a bit humble about the human condition. And the fact of the matter is, these practices are not popular. People do not like them. No, nobody likes this.

People's behavior does continue. That's another very good point. Nobody likes this. And these obviously are bad. And as people who enjoy video games, we see that as these types of practices derive more and more revenue, they then become what the companies focus on. And that is worse, for the actual video games. It is. It definitely lowers the quality of the product. While I think that a company has the autonomy to decide to make a worse quality product, it's undeniable that stores become a metaphor of the tail wagging the dog,

where whenever the store is put into the game, it becomes the primary decision-making factor of how the game is designed after that. because everything is built around making sure that people go back to the store. Because I suppose in a way, how much of game industry revenue comes essentially from psychological manipulation and these various business strategies? At least 10%, because the moment that you couldn't use psychological manipulation and the practice of doing so was put at risk in China, 10 cent lost 10% of its value overnight and they had to rescind it because it was so cataclysmic for the electronics industry.

And I think it's more than that. In a way that's not like really tied to the experience of a game that you purchase. I'd say 40% of that increase and increase and increase. And it's no wonder that as that is increased, and the rest of us have become less and less satisfied with games. So in a way, if this does hurt the revenue of a bunch of companies and unfortunately leads to a bunch of job losses because these types of practices. If your job exists inside of the context of taking advantage of people

and manipulating them out of their money in a way that they didn't consent to, you don't deserve to have a job. Are no longer viable. Too bad. Good riddance. Absolutely. Let the companies fail. Let those jobs go down.

How we run there should be a dialogue between the private and public sectors. And in a case like this, I think it's an example of the public sector, right? the people essentially saying, we actually do not like this practice. We don't want this to be the rules of the game. We want the rules of the game to change, to be more robust. Also, like, we really need to get ahead of the curve on this

with automobiles. Because as everything becomes computer in automobiles, you're seeing certain subscription services that are withheld from cars. And I find this to be, like, an incredibly dangerous precedent to set. And I'm,

very, very concerned about this. Yeah. BMW heated seats. The market will, once it adapts to that, find a solution. And if the new rule set is a better rule set, then that should be a net good. But of course, none of this will matter if there's no enforcement. That's right. Enforcement, because one country making a digital consumer policy often will find difficulty

in enforcing it because you're just one little guy, Mr. Belgium, right? That's why, even though Belgium is banned... Yeah, Belgium and the Netherlands both have rules against this? loopboxes, so many games simply just ignore that and still operate in the country. Like in World of Warcraft and the new raid, one of the bosses is basically a slot machine boss. We always have the joke that for the person in our team that's in Belgium, that boss just can't drop any loot. I don't know, there's an EU firewall or a Belgian firewall. Yeah.

That's a joke, but you get the point. As much as... Except it's not a joke when you're talking about Bellatro, because this gets rated 18 plus. Meanwhile, you have FIFA that's advertised to three-year-olds and it has gotcha and Gambes. in it. But because Blatra uses cards and not actual gambling, but because they call it a different name, and somehow

it's okay. Many people of Canada went, oh, Belgium, take them down. It hasn't really mattered because it's just Belgium, just one little guy. It's a bit different here, though. That's why the European Union is so strong, it's because of collective bargaining.

I would assume that that's probably one of the big reasons why the European Union exists is for the best interests of all those countries to be able to collectively bargain for things that are in their best interest. Of course. You is, you know, 26 other countries. And also Belgium. In 2023, it was worth 25.7 billion euro in game revenues. That's a lot of revenues.

And we know that their legislators are willing to take on the likes of Apple and Google when their rulings are being defied. They have done that. But more than that, the companies inside the EU are, you know, part of a big global. global network and that does mean that whenever USB cables become standardized in the EU, they then become standardized everywhere because of manufacturing limitations. I'm sure Apple would have loved to have continued just selling people lightning adapters in the states, but ultimately they seemed to have saw the way the wind was blowing and made the big change to USBC. No one wanted to have, of course, a whole factory just making EU only phones.

and again, thinking about the impact that we've had and the whole ecosystem of manufacturing partners, blah, blah, blah. Well, whenever you have a manufacturing line for anything, you have a combination of fixed costs versus variable cost. And a factory that's only producing something that you can only sell to a small amount of people, that fixed cost will create a situation where you won't be able to make that money back at a ratio

that exceeds the amortation, at the amortation and the devaluation of the products used to manufacture the products. So like, for example, like the machines, the stamps, the printers, the assembly line, all of that. So if you create a small enough target audience, you effectively destroy the economics of certain types of products. No, no. And by the way, guys, everybody understands this. I know you might not understand it in an economic concept, but I guarantee you you've played video games. Like we played Schedule 1. Schedule 1 operates under the same premise as well. This is a very easy to understand premise.

Even though it might seem complex. It does kind of make sense. We can see those software examples where it's not really the same thing. It's not like you can just go and get an emulator for your iPhone in America, but can in the EU. So the question then is, will developers want to... to risk losing a large slice of that EU-derived money? Or will they simply have to ship a cut-down and less exploitative version of their in-game monetization to European countries?

If so, it puts them in a fun little dilemma where the American gamer may get a transparently worse deal than, say, the European gamer. No, because as soon as American audiences see that Europe does this, America will also like players in America and consumers in America will ask for the same thing. And I think this is like for comparison, this is one thing that if you look at like RFK and like I don't want to get like super political about this, right? But a lot of the things that like he's advocating for for like why the fuck is it that in America there's like 50 ingredients for something. But you know, for corn flakes, but in, you know, Belgium or I don't know, England, there's seven. that's a really good fucking question.

And so like there's like, and this is an ongoing conversation that is happening at this very moment. So like we joke around about Europe having like you guys have like weird speech laws, right? But you guys really nail it with these consumer protection laws. And like, hey, I think we should steal them. Like we should 100%. Like Europe is by far and away way way better on consumer protections. And then you can say well, compare. your store to mine. My one is a bit more respectful.

It doesn't have as much FOMO, doesn't have as many tricksy bundles and things that basically feel like a scam. And that'll be a bad look. That's the dilemma that these companies face. And in a way, it's all thanks to a game about horses. So, here of the day, Horse Girls, I guess that's a thing. Fuck them.

Okay, tell you what, though, if you want another story, another big, grand, juicy story, check out this one. It also hits the EU, but it also hits corporate melodrama, which is honestly some of my favorite. Oh boy. I probably, another Ubisoft dead video.

I like the sound of that. We'll watch that tomorrow. And, ooh, yeah, I probably have to look at that. And so anyway, I don't like consumer productions

if the consumer is too dumb that deserve to lose just my opinion. I know it's not popular. I think that you make a great point that consumers should be a consumer being stupid is one thing, but a consumer being lied to is something else. And so anyway, and I want to go

ahead and let me see if I can find like your message and let's explore this thinking. So like if a company charges you $100, for example, and then they give you $50 worth of the product, do you think that you should have any recourse for that? Like you spent $100, you expected to get $100 worth this stuff. You're actually only getting 50. By the way, massive W. Bellior video, huge fucking supporter. I love this guy. Obviously, I've watched this videos for, I think, what is it, fucking 10 years now since Wow. So make sure to give the video a like. I love his new videos. I think he covers a lot of topics I totally fucking agree with, right? And so, yeah, yeah, make sure to give it a like, give him a sub and everything. Yeah, I completely fucking agree with

what he's saying here. So let me read what it fair. Yeah, exactly, right? And so like consumer protections, like this is the problem is that consumer protections, everybody agrees with consumer protections. Like, for example, if you buy a phone and then the phone blows up, somebody has to be accountable for that, right? Like everything, like, again, people that don't like regulation that are complaining about it on the internet are like people that are fish complaining about water. Your keyboard is regulated. Your mouse is regulated. The monitor that you're looking at is regulated the PC that you're using is regulated the internet itself is regulated the is ISP that is giving you internet is regulated everything about this is regulated

like down like the cord that that you have the internet go through is regulated so yeah two-year warranty by law yeah exactly right and so everything is yeah you're sitting in a chair that's regulated. Everything is. And so to be against this is, I think, very, very short-sighted. I think this is absolutely a good thing. And I'm really happy to see the EU taking some accountability for it. I'm very happy to see it. And hopefully we can do the same thing. We can follow their lead. And I'm glad to see the Europe doing it as fast as possible.