Asmongold TV - "Schedule 1 is a problem" | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

"Schedule 1 is a problem" Asmongold show for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. ------- ----------- Keywords: game reviews, online gaming, gaming takes, gaming reactions, video game analysis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I wanted to watch this. So Schedule 1, this game, in my opinion, has been one of the, one of, it's this year's Belatro, vampire survivors, or among us, right? Like, this is the new big indie game made by an individual or a very, very small group of people that has totally popped the fuck off. Power World was made by a pretty big group. I think that this is definitely on the Balatro Vampire Survivors because it's just really one guy as far as I know that put this together. Tyler, yeah, some guy on Twitter. Let's take a look at it.

Have you guys noticed how increasingly more common it's becoming for some of these indie games to come out of left field and just absolutely decimate? I'm talking player numbers and sales that are embarrassing AAA games. Games made by one guy beating teams of 1,000 devices. 10s of thousands if we're going to count Ubisoft in this conversation. Tens of thousands. Probably not for a long, but.

Schedule 1 is a game about friendship. It's about making connections. It's about starting from the bottom and working your way up. It's a game about drugs. It's a game about capitalism. Drugs, which makes it all the more ironic for how addicting the game is to play. But I'm seeing this game all over the place. It's on Twitter.

It's on Reddit. It's on YouTube. It's on Twitch. My buddy who just got his first gaming PC opens up Steve for the first time. And it's the first game. that he buys. Games like schedule... Fucking based. I don't know how many nights I've watched

Koso drive around the night. It's like a red van or some shit. Just doing that constantly. I... dude, I love this game. It is such a good game. One are becoming a problem. Red fan. Because these games are beating out games that are spending millions, hundreds of millions of dollars to make their games. They're doing it without any marketing. And worst of all, they're cutting out the middleman.

The publishers. You can't have that. Because once you start doing those kind of things, when you have that kind of freedom to create and you're reaching that kind of success, you're going to start to attract some unwanted attention. And that's exactly where Schedule 1 is today. So today what I want to do is I want to talk about the insane success

of Schedule 1, my experience playing it, and why an industry that's ran by investors can't let games like this exist. Schedule 1 released two weeks ago, and within days it had already climbed the Steam charts. As of recording this video, it is number one top seller on Steam. It is number four for concur. This video came out a little bit ago. Let's take a look at it right now.

How is it doing right now? Let's see, Steam top sellers. Number two. Beat out by RuneScape Dragon Wilds, which again, I think is a phenomenal game. Still number two. Current players, and it recently hit a peak of over 450,000 concurrent players. and now averaging 340,000 concurrent players per day. At the same time.

It's currently outperforming Path of Exile, which just released new content, edging out Monster Hunter Wilds after its first title update, and it's completely humiliating the quadruple spectacle that is Assassin's Creed Shadows. Schedule 1 is another entry in what is becoming an increasingly common trend. Indie developers releasing games with little to no marketing and watching them explode across the internet.

Inc. Undertale, Star Doe Valley, Vampire Survivors, Valheim, Power World, Bellatro, Games made by a single developer or a tiny team delivering exactly what players have been missing and absolutely dominating the charts. The game was developed by Tyler, an independent developer out of Sydney, Australia, working under the name. Just a guy. Timer's video game studio. I laugh every single time I read that. Tyler handled nearly every aspect of the game himself, designing the game, programming it, systems, and the art.

But he had some help with collaborators like Kay Sewell, who was the one that composed the game's catchy soundtrack. Seriously, I've been jamming that music in the back. It's so good. Like the music for this game hits in the same way that the rust music hits, where it's like when it happens. And writing now and Cody, too, who created some of the game's graffiti. Now, despite its niche, the game has resonated with an enormous audience. And I think part of that has to do with the genre.

Schedule 1 at its core is just a crafting sim. You start with nothing and you work your way up through progressively more complex crafting systems, increasing your wealth, unlocking more neighborhoods, and expanding your influence. It's a familiar loop or one. that I've definitely hooked myself on quite a lot with games like Theraria, Valheim, and shrouded or Minecraft, but Schedule I's twist is the plot.

You're essentially a small-time dealer growing your own product, refining it, selling it, and building out a crew to be able to help you scale out. I've personally sunk over 50 hours into the game now, and I've nearly unlocked everything short of the final neighborhood. Like, look at this shit, by the way.

Like, bro, he is cooking. Look at that. Six effects. Oh my God. Short of the final neighborhood. And I'm completely sold. I keep playing the game every chance that I get. I love games like his open-ended crafting sins.

That was insane. Define the pace yourself, experiment with systems, and you get to feel like your time that you're investing into the game directly translates to actual growth within that game. You can be methodical. You can squeeze every little bit of value

out of all of your resources, or you can brute force your way through, scaling up as fast as possible. Hell, you can even automate the entire process so the game basically just plays itself. It's up to you. Don't laugh at me for getting technical, but what I think makes this game really special

is how seamlessly it transitions between its two core gameplay loops, production, and social progression. The first loop, growing and crafting, is simple at first. Plant a seed, water it, harvest a flower, but over time, you start to get access to additives, fertilizers, environmental controls,

and scalable infrastructure, every plant that has unique traits, cost, potency, NPC demand. Look at that, bro. Like, I've never even, look at this, heavenly cocaine, Eight affixes, bro, this is nuts. This guy beat the fucking game.

That's the good shit? Yes. PC demand then comes in the mixing system where you can start to enhance products with different effects like making NPC shoot out lightning, walk around on clouds or turn them into aliens or zombies. It's ridiculous, but it serves a purpose to increase the product's price and its appeal to your customers.

I found myself lost here for hours experimenting with different mixtures and different orders of those mixtures and different effects that they could have and now I have an 8 buff recipe completely automated and it's listing the product for over $1,000. That feels good. Which then that brings me to the game's second loop, networking,

and as your operation grows, you start to target different... Bro, I feel like a fucking idiot. So I'm sitting here trying to sell dime bags for 200 bucks and they're telling me no and this guy's dropping 1,000s? This guy's... Bro, this guy's moving bricks?

And I'm trying to sell dime bags behind a dumpster. This is embarrassing, man. Like NPCs, based on their preferences, you start to build rapport, earn trust, unlock new customers, recruit new crew members. And eventually get access to new suppliers. They're going to boost your overall operation. It's a system that blends an emergent strategy with good old-fashioned trial and error, and it's surprisingly deep. Look, I'll be honest with you guys. I completely assumed that this game's popularity was mostly due to a shock value.

It's not every day that you see it. game about selling powder and flour to cartoon NPCs become a top seller. But the longer I played, the more I realized how satisfying all of its core systems really are. It's not just the subject matter. It's how involved you are in the process. And honestly, I think that's something that a lot of modern games have largely forgotten. In a lot of ways, the game actually reminds me of all the things that I really loved about Kingdom Come Deliverance, which is a crazy comparison to make when you think about it. When you're crafting a potion in that game, you're picking the herbs, you're grinding them manually. You're boiling them. You're maximizing your yield based on real input. You're smithing

swords with a hammer and tying it perfectly. You're controlling the temperature. You're properly sharpening weapons. This game makes you feel like you're doing that sort of work. Schedule 1, despite its goofy presentation, accomplishes something very similar here. You're adding ingredients, you're testing combinations, you're watching the effects, packaging your own product, and you're hitting the streets to make sales. The feedback loop is immediate and immersive, and it's not about watching a progress bar, it's about feeling like you're actually earning something by doing. I think that he brings up a really good point here.

It's that so here's an abstract comparison that I think is kind of similar to this. And if you take a step back and you think about it, apparently cake mix was possible to make with actually having the milk and eggs inside of the mix and have it, you know, like what we call it dehydrated. But people that made cake. cake mix found out that people actually like the process of putting in the milk and putting in the eggs themselves because it felt more like they were making a cake. And I think Schedule I and other games that approach it in that way are the same thing. And I think that's why things

like Kingdom Come deliverance too are successful. Schedule 1 is successful. And sometimes it's like the example of how, you know how like a bad developer adds friction, introducing time gates and a good developer introduces friction by creating complexity and systems. Well, that's basically what the difference here is. And it never loses its charm. The art style is crude in a deliberate way, full of absurd and surreal-looking NPCs, with exaggerated animations, you're hiding in dumpsters. The game's fastest vehicle is a golden skateboard and you're brewing concoctions that warp the laws of nature itself.

But underneath all of that madness is a tight, responsive and deeply satisfying gameplay loop. That's also a really good point he is bringing up is that the game plays well. This is a very important thing that many developers fail to realize, is that making sure the game plays well is really important. Thing one minute and you're planning your expansion strategy the next. I love that every system feeds into one another. Want to automate your production where you're going to need to build out, buy some infrastructure, and hire some employees.

Want to scale up quickly while you're going to need to build rep with your suppliers to be able to make more products. Want to maximize your profit? Well, you're going to need to mix with precision and cater to customer demand. Yet at the exact same time, you can ignore all of that if you want, but if you want to dive in, you're rewarded for it. That's what I do.

There's a surprising amount of freedom and how you approach everything. You can have your crew pushing your product while you're the one that's focusing on crafting. You can work solo and micromanage every step. You can run your empire in real time during the day and then focus on restocking and production at night. The game never really forces you into one particular play style,

but everything feels intuitive. enough that you always feel like you're making some sort of progress. I think with Schedule 1 proved, I felt that way about like, because I never really wanted to do meth. Like, I just felt like I wanted to go straight from weed to Coke, right? Because like, that's felt like more efficient to me. And it's like, yeah, games that give you the ability to like approach problems. Like, I think that the best video games are the games that tell you to get to the number

four, but they don't say that you have to use two plus two. And I think a great example of this obviously is Eldon Ring and Dark Souls. But there are many other games that approach it. it in the same direction. The best of my understanding, like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is kind of like this too.

But basically, games that put an objective in front of you, and then you have a set of goals that you can do in order to achieve that objective or not. Again, in this case, especially when it comes to these indie games,

is that the gap between indie and AAA has never been wider. I mean, I never take the time to analyze or even notice these kind of things if they even exist in AAA games. Their games are so bloated, overproduced,

obsessed with cutscenes and cinematic presentation often to the detriment of the actual Yeah, I mean, you can't pet the dog in this game. How could it be a good game? Spirious. Schedule 1 is the opposite, and I love games like this. So to the players, that's obvious enough. It's leads. People like playing video games. Imagine that. Focused, it's gameplay first, and it works because it never forgets what players are actually here for to play. Schedule 1 only costs $20. It delivers potentially hundreds of hours of content, strong systems, tons of replay value, and a surprising amount of multiplayer debt.

Didn't need a cinematic trailer. It didn't need a live action ad campaign. It didn't need pre-order. It didn't need a celebrity endorsements. It doesn't need a multi-million dollar campaign on Twitch, but it got one for free. I mean, think about all the guys. Like, I mean, I think X played it too, right? I'm not sure. Like, I mean, obviously, Koso playing it, Charlie playing it, me playing it. Lots of people played it, right? Everybody played this Emmy played it. Like you, if you make a good game,

people will play it. If you build it, they'll come. Or bonuses or influencer hype, it just needed to be good. Yeah. That was enough. This is going to sound ridiculous.

I'm trying to think of the best way to be able to explain it. The graffiti on the wall is oddly relatable. It's just funny. It's funny. And the reason why it's good is because it doesn't go through three or four levels of PR.

I think that's another problem. It's like if Ubisoft was going to do graffiti, what they would do is they would hire two graffiti experts, and then they would have a person who does graffiti professionally go into a studio and then paint graffiti, and then they would have people that did a bitmap of the graffiti, and then try to translate that into images, and then that would have to be filtered through a cultural,

consultants to make sure that it wasn't offensive in any way. And then finally, you'd be able to add it into the game, but there would only be four of the ways that you could do the graffiti, and three of them were on the store. Like, one of my friends could have made this game. And I think that has something to do with the game's popularity. Because the inside jokes, the naming of the different products that you can put into stuff, the naming of the product that comes out in the end,

I got the whole block hooked on Gorilla Smeg. It's like, fucking hilarious, dude. Yeah. And that's endearing. You want to see that. You see yourself in the game and you feel like you can relate to the person who made it.

I don't feel that way with a lot of games. And I haven't for a long time. Of course not, because they're made by weird freaks. You just look at them. An incredibly important connection to be able to make.

It's one of the intangibles of game design where you feel like your humor, imagination, your interests are shared by the people that made it. You feel vindicated in that. Like you have something in common.

And it's called being in touch with your audience. And I think just about anybody... It's called being fucking normal. You can say that this industry has been way out of touch with its audience for a long time. And I've played a lot of games since starting this channel. And at this point, I'm starting to feel like these game developers live in an alternate universe. They do. It's called blue sky. Nothing feels relatable to me.

Everything has to be a tangent to what's going on in the real world. Everything has to have a deeper message. Not everything needs to be like that. Just not necessary. $20. Another $20 game goes on to sell millions of copies making a solo developer a millionaire overnight. You know, when this game released

and immediately started to find some popularity, the developer went and put the game on sale. Who does that? Somebody that wants to make money. Somebody that knows what you need to do. Make a fun game. Make it fairly priced. People buy it.

Crazy concept I know. This isn't rocket science. How many times have I seen these developers that are basically trying to learn astrology to figure out what players want? Maybe if we read their horoscope. Then you have a... Yeah. It's so simple. It's so easy.

This is the same thing with streaming. Have you ever had like streaming? Like people try to explain how like how complex streaming is? Do you know who didn't think streaming was complex? Complex. Caso, Kai, jinxie, Chance,

X, train, Hassan, speed, you just do it. Get that shit out there. Boom, there it is. Winners win,

losers lose. Aiden, yep, Aiden. Game. That makes it where you can put horse glaze and chili powder into something to set somebody's hair on fire and give them a long face. Wait, I did that. Monkey Brain like, me like game,

me give money. Yeah. It's not that hard. It's really not that hard. But that scares these C-suite executives because they don't understand the popularity, the virality, the relatability of these games, because they can't reproduce it. They can't crack the code on this kind of thing. And because of that, their only answer

is to suppress it. It's actually kind of insane how often we're seeing some of these viral indie hits run, straight into some form of cold, corporate, or bureaucratic resistance. Whether it's from platform policies, rating boards, legal ambiguity, or flat out attention. You were the rating, remember how they try to make Bellatro? Bro, they try to make Bellatro an 18 plus game, but FIFA's for five-year-olds. So it's like, wait a minute.

So you can gamble with fake money in Bellatro and that's bad. But you can gamble with real money in FIFA and that's good. How the fuck did this happen? press or discredit them. There is a growing pattern here. A developer releases something fresh and unexpected. It takes off and suddenly they're in the crosshairs. Not because they did anything wrong,

but because they succeeded outside of the system. When you take a moment to look at the legal and bureaucratic minefield that these indie developers have to tiptoe around just to be able to release a game, it's genuinely surprising that we ever see anything original at all. The modern gaming landscape isn't built to encourage creativity. It's structured to protect existing power, intellectual property and investor interest.

In some ways, the system is designed to suffocate innovation unless it's coming from an approved source. I mean, Bellatro got slammed by ratings boards for supposedly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, great example. Great fucking example. Amazing example. And, yeah, exactly. So true.

Gambling just because it used poker hands in a scoring system despite no real gambling mechanics being in the game whatsoever. Powell World came under fire for copying Pokemon, even though the gameplay is wildly different because Nintendo's patent net is so wide that even breathing now seems like it's lawsuit worthy. I mean, while in litigation with pocket pair, Nintendo is still trying to file new patents

to retroactively catch them on. It's reaching a point where making a game that even feels familiar or is using visual shorthand that players understand and get you pulled from storefronts and buried in lawsuits. Now we have Schedule 1 going through the same mess originally reported on by Andrew Heighton of Insider Gaming in an article titled Schedule 1 being investigated for IP copyright infringement claims,

they write evidence on the investigation surface on a website, PAB Business, featuring a document entitled, Whoby Games essay 17, 2025, decision to commence investigation against the creators of Schedule 1 production for claims regarding the infringement of the issuer's IP and related to committing an act of unfair competition against it. Whoby Games essay has its own series of drug dealing games, drug dealer simulator 1 and Drug Dealer Simulator 2, while the name is more overt than its, goal, both titles have attracted thousands of players respectively.

The legal document mentions potential infringement of the issuer's intellectual property rights and activities that bear characteristics of unfair competition have been identified. This is so ridiculous. This is too similar to the Drug Dealer Simulator series. Proceedings began as soon as Schedule 1 released on March 24th and featured a comparative analysis of the IP, which includes Drug Dealer Simulator and Drug Dealer Simulator 2 and the Schedule 1. This is like getting mad at Farming Simulator when somebody else makes it a

their farming simulator because they're like, hey, they're both using tractors. I thought we did that. Oh, oh, they're trying to use track. I see what they're doing. Get the fuck out of here. The investigation is strongly looking into elements of the game's plot, mechanics, as well as UI user interface. It finishes by saying, the issuer will immediately inform about further actions related to the pursuit of claims regarding the infringement of the issuer's IP and the act of unfair competition in subsequent

current report. This apparently, by the way, seems like it's not going anywhere and it was primarily a misunderstanding. So for anybody who's worried about Schedule 1 having a dark and darker situation, it seems like that's not going to happen. And it was primarily sure it was. Well, regardless of whether the intention was bad or not, it's not going anywhere. I'd take a wild guess here and say the unfair competition they're referring to is the part drug dealer simulator one and two combined couldn't even crack 20,000 players. Well, Schedule 1 is one of the most talked about and played games on Steam right now. At least with Nintendo and Pal World, you could kind of see where that lawsuit was coming from.

The creature designs, the ball throwing mechanics. They were all surface level elements that were echoing Pokemon. Even with Tem Tem, they got out of the way of Nintendo by making sure they were using cards instead of balls. But this, this investigation against Schedule 1 feels completely out of pocket. It's not just a stretch. it's embarrassing that they're even trying. I've taken the time to check it out, and Schedule 1 doesn't really share

anything structurally significant with their games whatsoever. The crafting, the progression loops, the interface, the tone, it's all completely different. To be honest, Ubisoft has a stronger claim against them ripping off a far cry

that they do against Schedule 1. In their games, you start off as a low-level pusher working for somebody else than slowly build out your own operation. It leans way harder into weighing product, micromanaging dead drops, dodging rival gangs,

and faring shipments across different islands. It's less of a game and more of a chore simulator. Sure, they both. It's just, it's crazy how so many developers, games have become systems. And they've ceased to be games. And I think that when you have something like Blatro come out or vampire survivors or Schedule 1, it takes you back to the time when games were just simply that.

games. They're games. Like, that's it. There doesn't need to be like some, because I feel like a lot of games nowadays, it's almost like they need the certain irrelevant time wasting mechanisms in them. And it's exhausting to see. It's crazy. Movie games is a publicly traded company. The board could not in good faith fight for the possibility of infringement. Well, they had to do an investigation probably, but that was it. They're not going to go anywhere with it. Nothing's going to have. similar themes, but if having drugs as your premise is going to be the trigger for legal action, by that logic, are they going to go after breaking bad next? After news of the investigation broke, media outlets jumped the gun and ran with headlines saying that Schedule 1 was facing an active lawsuit. The internet did what it does best. Players flooded drugular simulator one and two with negative reviews, dragging the game into a storm that they weren't ready for. In response to this,

the developers posted a statement on Steam clarifying the situation. To paraphrase a little bit, they're saying that there is no lawsuit, that they're not trying to shut down Schedule and the investigation was only launched after repeated comparisons between the two games raised concerns. Since Movie Games SA is a publicly traded company, they claim that they are legally obligated to investigate potential infringement and disclose it through proper stock market channels. I hate to say it, but I think they're right. I do. I actually accept that reasoning. The media then picked it up from there and the story spiraled out of control. they also then clarified saying that the developer of drug dealer simulator, bite runners,

isn't involved at all. It's strictly a publisher-level decision. The post then closes with them insisting that there is no bad blood and that they even sent Schedule I's developer best wishes before the game blew up. But whether it's legal obligation or damage control, it's clear that this isn't the kind of attention that they were expecting. Well, they didn't want it. And I think that honestly, you like as somebody who's like I have like a degree of knowledge of stuff like this this kind of stuff is always really stupid it's always really stupid it's always like the publisher is trying to push for something that the developer doesn't want there's some sort of distribution problem like there's uh you know like one random person at the company that's

causing problems like with a valid for an example like it it It's usually a lot more complicated than you'd guess. IP loss sucks. Yeah, it does in some cases. It does. Things get really weird for me because there was a second response. And this time it was from the actual developers at Bightrunners, where I think the first response was actually written by their publisher.

And it's kind of a plot twist. In a statement that they posted on Twitter, Rofal, the CEO and developer of the Drug Dealer Simulator series, basically said, we had no idea that this was happening. According to him, the development team wasn't informed of the investigation at all, and they only found out when the story blew up online. I hate to say it, but they could be lying,

but I'm willing to believe them. That they were just as blindsided as everyone else. No, and this just comes from me seeing and watching the dichotomy between publisher and developer relationships. No, like, I know it sounds stupid, but please believe me, that stupid is usually the, that's the operating.

principle that they work under. In light of the recent movie games... How can you say it's right? I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying it's probably accurate. I'm saying that their telling of this is accurate. It's believable. Schedule 1 legal investigation controversy, I would like to state that we,

bite runners, the development studio behind drug dealer simulator series, do not have any ill intentions towards neither Schedule 1, TVGS, or the game community. Actions taken by our publisher, movie games essay, are a part of an internal policy and business interest, which we have no influence over. Everything that I understand about video game publishing tells me that they're telling the truth. I'm sorry, it does.

Not informed of their plans and were also surprised by this course of action. We are currently in talks with movie games on this matter. For now, we do not want to publicly neither condone nor approve of the action. before these talks have come to any conclusions. I think basically this dude is saying, we don't know if it's good or bad for us yet, so we need to wait. No, they can't because if they have a non-disparagement,

you can't disparage your publisher. Like, that's the reason why. So they can't come out against them and say, like, I guarantee you that the guy's making drug dealer simulator, actually, I don't guarantee you, I have a high probability. The guy's making drug dealer simulator are like, fuck, this game's a lot better.

than ours, shit, this sucks, right? But they're not trying to shut the game down by, by suing them. Fuck that. And also developers usually, like, you think about like a development studio, right? And like, let's just think about this logically, right? Is that a development studio is like one of these little boxes. A publisher is like this, right? So all these development studios are working under the publisher. So where do you think the legal department is? Do you think it's in the little box or the big box? Come on.

It's in the big box. Like, what are we talking about it? It's so obvious that this happened. Developers just do what they're told. Developers make games. They make games. They don't file lawsuits. Like, they're not doing this.

They don't have the resources, the time, why only skisks? Schedule 1 then? Why no other drug dealer simulators that are closer in systematic design, but less profitable? Well, it's very simple. The publisher saw this and they decided because of their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders that they had to conduct an investigation in order to find out if this was a violation of their IP because that's what they're required to do as a publicly traded company and there's also the possibility that they just got butt hurt about it and they did it anyway. But regardless of the reason, I think that it's unfair for us to go after the actual developers of the drug dealer simulator and say, you're the ones who did this. And I'm again, I know that I might be

fighting against the current here because a lot of people want to hate. But what I'm trying to do is I'm just trying to be as fair as I can be based off of what I understand about publishing and development studios and how that relationship exists. That's true. Yeah, that's all I'm trying to do. And I don't think it's fair that they're getting that hate yet. Figure it out. We would like to ask everyone on both DDS and Schedule I community to be patient and not

spread on. They can't shit on the publisher either. Like legally, they can't do that. Necessary negativity or misinformation. We congratulate the success of schedule. If I, if I had to bet, I bet. I bet the publisher is mad at them for even saying this. I bet they had to push and fight to even be able to say this.

And there's a good chance that it was don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. Where they didn't even ask about this and they just put it out there and the publisher got furious afterwards. One to TVGS and would like every gamer to enjoy and support any game they choose. That's what I'm guessing. focus as the dev team is improving the DDSIP, which also includes learning on the schedule one massive success and its and our community feedback on it. All we ask for now is your understanding. The tone here couldn't be any more different from the original Steam Post where the publisher had framed the investigation as a necessary legal procedure. The developer comes off is almost

embarrassed by the entire thing. Then they go out of their way to distance themselves from the publisher's action saying that they don't condone or approve of anything. Yet? What does that even mean? That is the best thing that they can say to distance themselves into a problem without violating the agreement of their contract. That's what they're doing. And it's a super boring. This is not a content decision, guys. This is super boring.

Waiting for internal talks, I'm just going to go with my gut here and say they didn't expect the backlash to be this bad. there is no chance. There is no way that you are going to convince me that your publisher without any communication suddenly launched a legal investigation on your behalf using your game as a basis without you knowing anything about it. I think that both things can be true. I think that they knew that the investigation was happening,

but they didn't have the ability to say no. Not how legal prep works. To even begin an investigation like this, you need access to build files, source assets, system documentation, something from the development team to be able to make the comparisons necessary for a legitimate IP case. So either you were involved and now you're walking it back or your publisher went rogue and dragged you into a legal case without any warning and snuck into your office and stole the files. Neither one of those. I think that you probably had to provide the source code and there's a good chance the publisher might own the IP.

That's what I think it could be. Yeah, that's what I think it probably could be. They were forced, yeah, or they were compelled to do it. Look very good. And even if for whatever reason Bight Runners wasn't involved in this decision, I'm sorry, this is what comes to the territory when you sign up with a publisher. Tyler didn't. He developed in Publust Schedule 1 himself.

Every decision he makes, every success or controversy, it's all on him. But once you hand over the reins to a publisher, you are also signing up for all of their baggage, the legal department, the investor meetings, the risk management, the corporate damage control. You don't get to opt out when it gets uncomfortable. And the claim that the investigation was already in motion before the game took off. Total bullshit. The investigation was formally initiated on April 3rd.

Schedule 1 launched on March 24th, and by the 30th, it had already hit over 400,000 concurrent players. This wasn't some long-planned legal strategy. Otherwise, why would you guys have sent them a congratulations email? It was a knee-jerk response to getting- Well, I can tell you why. It's because the development team did that, but the publishing team didn't. That's what I think happened. So the publishing team was actively against this,

while the development team, Game can recognize game. I think that's what happened. Blown out of the water. I don't know about you guys, but from where I'm sitting, this looks like a textbook case of a publisher and more likely their board of directors and shareholders,

panicking over the fact that the game that they back didn't deliver while a solo developer just ate their lunch in broad daylight. So now they're trying to claw back some relevant, in revenue through legal pressure instead of actually trying to make games that people want to play. It's all retaliatory. It's all bitter. And it reeks of a system

that sees creativity is not something to nurture, it's something to control. Now, I actually post... He's completely right. This in a response on Twitter to the Bightrunner CEO's letter to the players. But I basically said, yeah, this must suck to be completely powerless in this situation, but this is exactly what you signed up for. And honestly, the more that I think about it,

this probably explains why so many of these self-published indie games, are blowing up, while these smaller studios tied to these tiny publishers are scraping by. Creative freedom, no bureaucracy, no boardroom full of guys and suits that are second-guessing your every move, just a developer and an idea. And honestly, that's probably the conversation that we really need to be having here, because this isn't just about one game or one legal spat. There needs to be a bigger push towards independence in video game development. Too many of these publishers aren't interested in creating anything. They don't build worlds. They don't design mechanics. they don't tell stories.

What they do is manage. And in that management, they influence the industry more than they contribute to it. Not only that, but they do it in a way that's parasitic, which is what the problem is. Like publishers do a lot of things

that are really useful and helpful for developers. Like, for example, managing media, doing localization, handling distribution, etc. So, like, it's not like, it's not like publishers don't do anything. It's just that, some of them take advantage of these developers in ways that are in my opinion completely unethical.

The goal isn't to support creativity. It's to control outcomes. They want to shape trend, shape player. Oh, yeah, Haiti on Tower against the side. I am on the side of the developers of the drug dealer simulator. I'm on the side of Tyler. I am against the side of the publisher that filed this lawsuit in their name. That's my take on it. That's what I think happened. shape spending habits. And when they fund something, that comes with strings attached, strings that always pull in the direction

of risk aversion or maximizing profits. Sure, publishers offer funding and infrastructure. They offer visibility, marketing pipelines, access to networks, but it comes at the cost of freedom, a voice, of innovation. How many times have we heard stories about developers that were pressured into

adding in micro transactions that they didn't want to put into their game? Or how many times have we heard about games that were forced to pivot towards live service, even when that didn't fit their vision. These decisions rarely come from the development team themselves. Dragon Age the Veil Guard. Very obviously, if you've played the game,

there's like, I think probably six people that have played the game in chat right now. You would know that I think the chances of that being a live service game was very high. And I think that they had to pivot away from that very early because of that. And so, like, now they had to pivot away from live service, and the game still had a lot of those vestiges in it. And I think that's what made the gameplay so one-dimensional.

They come from people upstairs. People staring at spreadsheets, not playtest, people who see creativity as a variable that needs to be managed, not a driving force. From my perspective, in many ways, publishers have become the industrialist of this medium. They're more concerned with scalability and litigation than actually making games themselves.

They commodify everything about the creative process. They strip out the rough edge, the weird idea is the risk and replace them with something that fits into their monetization model of the moment. And then they sit back wondering why none of these games are resonating, why they're failing to meet their sales targets. It's not the players that are the problem. It's not the developers that are the problem. It's the layer that's in between the suits that are trying to systemize everything

that's not meant to be a system in the first place. And the more games that we see... Not everything can fit inside of a quarterly earnings report. And I think that's why studios, especially Eastern Studios, are outperforming Western studios, especially American ones. It's because those studios don't have the same operational constraints, and they can take a more longitudinal approach to creating a product, and that allows them to create stronger and better artistic products

that perform better in the market. One, they're succeeding without them. So many examples. More obvious that becomes. You know, I think a lot of these publishers and executives that are running these companies are the biggest barrier to creativity and success for the vast majority. of these developers. They don't outright build anything themselves.

They just go out of their way to try to control it or squash it if it threatens their margins in any way. And that sucks. Not just for us, the players, but also for the people that are making these games. I mean, like, patent laws in general, in the video game ecosystem, just don't make any sense whatsoever.

I think that a better way of looking at it is that do patent laws work in the best interest of most of the people? I think that with video games, they absolutely do not. And I think that to a degree, they need to be nerfed. I think that's basically it. They need to nerve patent laws in one way or another. Probably in multiple ways.

All these layers of red tape for something that just shouldn't be there in the first place, even if a developer isn't trying to copy something, they're just going to ignore it or tried not to be anything like it, just out of the implicit threat that comes from legal. action. They just stay away from it. That's why we sit back and wonder why we haven't seen a game like this again or that or whatever it might be.

I think he actually brings up a really good point here and I've never considered it this way is that the amount of litigation that some of these companies incur, like for example, pocket pair with Powell World or now Tyler with Schedule 1, or also local thunk with Bellantro and the rating debacle, it creates a chilling effect for. for other developers to try to break into the space because they're worried about being made an example of or being a target for one of these big companies with a lot of money.

I think this is a really good point. In theory, publishers are supposed to be there to be able to make things easier for developers. They're supposed to be able to take care of all the noise and then developers just focus on doing what they do best, making video games and that's about it. But the minute that you start handing over all of that power, all of a sudden you find out

that you don't really get to make a whole lot of decisions, on your own anymore. Yeah. That's what's happened to some of these people. When you get in bed with these guys, this is the end result of that. They go out and attack your competition. How does that feel? I can't imagine that feels very good.

These guys are creatives. They want to make games. They want other people to be inspired by their work and make games of their own. And now you have to sit back and watch what happens. I'm sorry, man, but you're not innocent in that. I think that a lot of developers feel like they have to take on publishers because if they don't, then they won't be able to distribute their product. And oftentimes, I think that a lot of them don't really understand the complexities of it.

And they don't understand the implications. Like oftentimes, again, another thing is that publishers understand the, like, it's kind of like how record labels take advantage of artists. Artists are not really businessmen, right? In a lot of cases. And, you know, not by definition in the same way that a record label by definition is a business. And so I think that that's really where the problem happens. is that you have people who are on very unequal footing that are agreeing and deciding on things

and those agreements have an outcome that's on it. It's bad for everybody, basically. You mentioned it a lot of you played Bellatra as a card game. I've watched other people play Bellotra a lot. I've played it myself temporarily. I'm not really a big, is it weird for me to say that I like watching it more than I like playing it? And you know, we feel the effects of it too, without a doubt.

We still get some great games, but at the exact same time I mean I've had a really weird feeling that things have just kind of felt samey for a really long time very samey very safe in a lot of cases and I think that comes from the fact that if any game tries to make a game like Pokemon

you might get sued they're going to get scared away or they're going to get sued into oblivion so many mechanics I mean look at the way that Nintendo has litigated and patented just about everything sodi's been doing the same thing look at WB

games in the Nemesis system. Something that would revolutionize RPGs and will never see it. Until 2026 or something like that or 27. There's such a poison to this industry. It's insane. And you look around and notice almost every single one of these breakout hits have always been self-published. And in some case...

An example that goes against this is Dave the Diver because it was published by Nexon. but I think in a general case this is true. This is where these developers did go and go through a publisher. The only reason they did that was to be able to protect their identity. There needs to be more options for that.

That needs to be nurtured and taken care of. There needs to be more developers that are making games themselves, publishing games themselves, and there needs to be an easier way for these guys to get onto platforms without the need of a publisher. There is an easy way.

The easy way is content creators. You have to get your game. If you make a, a good game. Content creators will discover it and promote it and it will make it successful. I think that a lot of games nowadays that pop off like that pop off because of content creators. And I've tried to spend more time myself looking at indie games and we had that show Pixel pitch. We'll probably bring that back at some point too where we invest into indie games and promote them ourselves. But I think that the most important thing is to break up the corporate

hegemony that they have over video games and make the accessibility for distributing a game to a wide audience possible for a smaller developer. There's already ways for them that you don't even need publishers any. Sure, for like legal and patent and stuff like that, hire a lawyer, man. Why are you handing away all of your profit, all of your control to a bunch of people that don't want to have anything to do with the creative process whatsoever? It just doesn't make any sense. They do it for money, by the way.

Like, I know this intimately, is that a lot of the big reasons why people take on publishers is because the publisher helps them fund the project to completion. You can promote your games online with no problem. Belotcher had next to no marketing whatsoever.

Schedule one had next to no marketing whatsoever. Fowalheim had no marketing whatsoever. There's so many more examples that I could give of games that never had an ad or a commercial or anything like that. They were just on Steam. People played it. People liked it. Spread by word of mouth.

Wow. Fair price. Good game. People go buy it. What? What? What? That's what you need to happen. We need more of it. And I want that to be a big focus. I think Steam is definitely Steam is the leader in that.

Steam's definitely the one that's been pushing and helping a lot of these indie developers be able to find their legs in the industry. And I appreciate that. that. I think everybody does. There's a lot of games that we would have never... Without Steam, I don't think that we would have had the success of any of these new indie games. He's completely right. Steam definitely leveled the playing field. Had, if it wasn't for Steam. So, thank God for Gavin.

Yeah. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the video. If you guys did enjoy the video, like the video, subscribe to the channel. This is a great video. I was glad I watched this. Share the video to your friends share it on social media watch me on Twitch I'm joining the Discord come hang out stay cool, stay righteous, stay safe I'll catch you in the next one

I think the only point of difference that I have with him is that I'm a little bit more forgiving with developers for taking deals with publishers because I understand a lot of the struggles that developers have because I've had to deal with them when like you know

like publishing games right Like I get it a lot more. And it's not an example where like I think I'm right and he's wrong. It's more of just like an emphasis where like to me I can emphasize with it more because I've seen more of it. But I think that, you know, like both things are true, really. How ever since it wrong? It would be a different platform. These platforms are the reason why we don't own our games.

So you think that basically, okay, well, you know what? I think that if you want to apply that to like GOG, right? Good old games, I would say the same thing. And like other games like that you can be on as well. I think that's totally fine. I think Steam does a really great job and it's probably the biggest progenitor for this because it's the biggest developer. But I do think in general it's pretty common with almost everything.

Yeah, sure. You have a business view of working with publishers saves a ton of time on bureaucracy? Yeah. Yeah, it does. it saves a ton of time on bureaucracy and it's kind of like I mean in a way in Schedule 1 right where it's like you can do all

the stuff yourself but you can hire other people and give them a bunch of money and then you can manufacture and put out your product even faster because your vision is what your goal is and not necessarily the minutia of you know facilitating that vision so

I totally understand where both groups are coming from but I really think that the the publisher for a drug dealer simulator. I think that they put schedule one in a terrible position by doing this and I think that they're fucking retarded

for doing it. It's such a bad mistake. A lot of people are developers and not marketers. Yeah, exactly, right? Games need publishers, the games that achieve mainstream without it are the exception. Yeah, and I think that's also true too.

Is that really possible? You can get famous on your own? Well, yeah, no, it is. but what I'm saying is that like a lot of these things come with their own set of struggles and complexities that exist independently. And that was my point that I was trying to make.