Asmongold TV - WTF is Bungie doing?? | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

WTF is Bungie doing?? Asmongold show for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. ------ ----------- Keywords: pc gaming, gaming takes, gaming hot takes, gaming content creator, mmo gaming, twitch streamer, twitch clips Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So things are not looking good. Let's just say that. Are they cooked? I think that there is a very good chance. There is a very high probability of them, in fact, being cooked. I don't know yet, but we'll find out. And what is this, Marathon? Well, keep this in mind.

So Marathon hasn't released or posted any sort of update at all about the game on their Twitter. take a look at this so almost every day they were posting updates about marathon on a regular basis updates about marathon updates about marathon

and they've gone radio silent ever since the announcement of this live stream every day uh oh the game got aborted I don't think that they can abort the game that's the thing. I think that they're locked in and they have to release it

but it's probably not going to go very well. That's kind of what I'm assuming. Let me go back. I'm trying to find a video. It's one of these here. What the fuck did it go? There we go. All right, let's take a look at it. They took a vacation for Labor Day? Surely that's what it was. Absolutely everything is going wrong for Marathon right now.

There is a lot we're going to learn in this video far more than just the art plagiarism stuff. But what if I told you? because we live in a world where it's very easy for people to just say, stupid devs, don't know nothing, don't care about the players. What if I told you that lots of developers inside Bungy had been advocating for Marathon to have substantial PVE elements, but that they were not listened to?

Maybe that is the biggest point of this video. It's what happens when an organization basically goes to shit. Now, I'm going to start with two quotes. The first one, morale is in free fall across all departments. The second quote, the vibes have never been worse. Morale is down and vibes have never been worse. Why is it that I immediately believe that?

The husk of a husk of a husk of a husk, yes exactly, right? There you go. Bought by Sony, it's over, I guess so. Those are what sources telling Paul Tassie say, the plagiarism at Bungee has basically left in the vibes of the studio. People are not happy. Now, this reporting follows, of course, in the wake of the truly unconsored. comfortable stream that saw leadership in the game, well, pilloried by the internet, as they tried to defend their response.

Do I still have the photo? Fuck, I don't think I do. Damn it, man. How did I, how did I lose it? Shit! Oh. We still have it. Jesus, man.

That's bad. That's real bad. And of course, to criticism of the game itself. But the sources do suggest that the problems of Marathon run far deeper than anyone. individual. Plans have been ruined. Feedback is actually worse than many people thought. And if I was a betting man, I think I would put my money in this game being delayed. There's another fun thing going on. Versal's V-0 and every no-code tool on Earth have empowered a whole generation of vibe coders.

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and I'm not even being cheesy. But dot dev is... I do feel like at this point, is Concord... Sorry, is... Jesus, that's bad. Is Marathon Concord 2.0? What do you guys think? As a role-playing game,

made by a gamer for fellow gamers, and it fits my weaknesses coming from C-sharp game development and like my educational background. Front end has always been kind of easy mode and intuitive, but wiring databases, doing off, all that stuff feels like

obscure wizardry. That's why I swear by boot. Dev. Lane and the team have baked the fun of an RPG. So quests, XP, a guild-style discord that is super active into a curriculum that's laser-focused on serious back-end chops. So I'm talking about things like action and understanding data structures, API, off-flows, algorithms, Docker, the whole works. You'll build and deploy a server client, Pokedex, remake asteroids in Pye game.

You'll even tackle job search preparation. Basically as much fun as vibe coding can be. It does skip a bunch of steps. that you really should take and boot. What if Concord was like Marathon? So no more tutorial hell, no more pricey, boot camp, hustle stuff, just a structured path that turns all that vibe coding energy. I don't think that it would be possible for Marathon to be worse than Concord.

As bad as Concord was, I think that at least they can guarantee that it will never be worse than Concord. But that doesn't mean it would be good. actually depend on. Big difference. And Boot keeps on adding features like, say, the searchable spellbook and constant new content drops. Like for an example, the massive TypeScript module. Pretty huge.

And there's a way, there's a hack to save even more money. If you go to boot. dot dev slash belly their news, code Belly their news gets you 25% off your first purchase. Marathon is redeemed. Concord is rip. And if you don't tell with it, don't worry, because there's a no risk 30-day money-back guarantee. Bungie was supposed to run a stream on May 9th with Marathon Game Director Joe Ziegler,

discussing the reaction to the closed alpha. It was then delayed until May 16th. And that delay, well, it really did cue things up in terms of the news cycle. It was very costly. You see, the plagiarism allegations and confirmations happened before that stream. And that meant it was an open question. Yeah, it's not. These were not allegations.

It was proven and they admitted it. It didn't happen. It was a wonderful. No, it did happen. And it probably shouldn't have. The stream opened with Ziegler and art director Joseph Cross. explaining that they had intended to show a lot more new stuff about Marathon. It seems that they had plans to highlight changes based on alpha feedback, but they, of course, in this stream,

showed absolutely no gameplay for the full hour. They couldn't. The plagiarized assets had been reviewed and stripped out of the game. And of course, the big worry is that more than... That's one of the reasons why I think they might have to delay it, is to go through every single asset and triple check that all of them are legitimate so they can avoid a lawsuit. And I think that they might have to do that. Which is going to be crazy. Cross open by reading from a statement, and this is what it basically said. This was plagiarism by one artist who worked on pre-production in 2020.

It was then placed on a decal sheet. That's how anti-reel's art got there, according to the company statement and what Joe said. Now, that decal sheet was then used in production. How do you have the same thing happen four times, though? Like, there's a lot of companies that use external artists. but it seems like it's only Bungee that gets accused regularly of art theft. So, I mean, very clearly, at least you could say that the process that you have for getting independent artists is not very good.

I would say it's not that great. According to them, it was not caught, but now the review process is being updated across Bungee to stop the problem from happening again. As for fixing the problem, steps in the last 24 hours, as of the stream included reaching... Bro. I swear to God. I just saw this.

I looked over at Twitter for a second. Marathon delay likely, as Sony has reportedly canceled all paid marketing plans for the game. Oh my God. Wow. Bungi's marathon is likely to belayed as a nude report claims Sony has now canceled all paid marketing plans. Oh, wow. Literally 15 minutes ago. out to anti-real, auditing all of the unnamed artist's previous work,

basically meaning that no new footage can be shown until that is done, then removing anything that is questioned resourced from any asset. He then went on to describe the hundreds of internal and external artists who have worked in this game over the last five years. He emphasized that external partners were not involved in this one, likely because of some early connections being drawn by the public. Crossland offered a personal public apology to anti-real to make this right. After all of that, then,

The stream moved on to dealing with the response to the alpha, and I'll get to that shortly, especially the stuff that is being said by Paul Tassie sources, because they are quite worrying. But overall, what... Well, that's the other thing is that the, like, this whole art problem and the art theft problem would not even matter if the game was really good. People would just chalk it up and they'd say, ah, mistakes happen, right? It was some random asshole. Okay, who cares?

But the problem is that the game is bad, and that's why everything else is a lot worse. That's why it really matters. Essentially reflects the same position that Bungee took with their first statement, right? There's a little bit more detail here, but nothing major, nothing new. And I'd say that until this audit is complete, we likely won't have any more info on this. The reactions, obviously, were not great. Now, we weren't at Nintendo stream chat levels of spamming things, but audiences consistently left absolutely brutal messages.

The only reason why that didn't happen is because the chat, was set to followers-only mode for one month. And even then, it was spammed with people adding a guy who his name was like, I am God of plagiarism or something like that. The hosts were clearly reading, you could see it in their faces. Messages, of course, demanding the game is cancelled. And of course, the memetic plagiarism will make the God riffings cross, especially just, well, facing calls of, you know, being fired.

Lots of people saying, Art Raiders, which is, of course, a little bit of a play on one of their major points of competition. The game called Arc Raiders, that, funnily enough, even though it also moved from being PVE-P, actually has had very positive buzz recently. Anyway, all of this might have been been worse by the format of the stream itself. You see, Bungie had previously... Just so we can get to the format of the stream. Just keep in mind, I have the list. No Norsegate, random audio going up and down. The off-screen guy's mic isn't even on.

ASMR breathing. Double audio, more double audio, triple audio. There's no indication of who's talking. There's an echo. Each volume for a different host as well. There's audio popping, more double audio, audio volume changing randomly. They were in a Discord call and they can't manage to get one of the guys inside of the Discord call. They're getting notifications during Discord.

It was the, I swear to God, a middle school could have done a better job. And there was one part of it where the two guys were there And because one guy couldn't figure out how to get into Discord call They had to ask the question to one guy And then the other guy had to baby bird the same question To the second guy So like he actually understands what's being discussed It was so bad

It was embarrassing It was sympathy out of just how low tech their streamwork That it was just people talking to the camera As the late Susan YouTube would say, it was less polish, more texture. That's generally what people want. It's just that here it absolutely did hit different. It still is a very humanizing way of doing a presentation like this. But in this case, while they had a far wider audience than they normally would,

the situation is altogether. It had nothing to do with it being humanizing. It was just badly done. Like the video for it was bad, the audio was bad, everything about it was bad. It was just a badly produced event. Like, it being humanized is good, but you can have a humanized event that doesn't have bad audio. Like, you don't need bad audio to make something humanizing. Much more serious. Expectations were higher.

This was all made worse by tech issues. Audio desinking was a real problem. Discord questions from the public were only fed towards Ziegler, who was clearly the only one who was, like, planned to be there originally. This then left Joe Cross basically on-camera being relayed questions, like why anti-real isn't being hired. just to make use of the assets and comments doing things like asking why they stole anti-real style. So all of this is rough. It added to a deeply miserable environment, one where the most senior leadership in this game couldn't even show the game off. They couldn't really do anything in the way of show, don't tell, because it was just so lo-fi. And that's just the leadership, because where things

really get interesting is when we go and see what's happening in the rank and file. Paul Tassi sources have been quick to describe how things are going inside the studio, and man, it is not a pretty picture. They suggest the internal explanation for the plagiarism is exactly the same as the public one, so no new real information on that. But more important... Yeah, no, I fully believe their explanation. I think they're retarded. I think that's the problem. I think they're retarded, and this is what happens when you're retarded.

These are the issues. These are the problems that you run into. Importantly, both so. and Bungee legal are now investigating the whole situation. I don't even think that it's like malicious. Staff are deeply worried here. And that's because plagiarism is only one part of the conversation. I think what potentially more dangerous for them is all of this buzz about the plagiarism

means that every little detail is going to be picked up on. More sources will talk. And that's why we now have to talk about Marathon as a video game. I'm going to quote from Paul's reporting, everyone has the same concerns about what happens to Bungee as a studio if Marathon. BOMBS. What could that possibly be? I don't know, guys. What could happen to a studio if they invest five years or 10 years into a video game and it concords? I'm going to show you guys what happens. That's what happens. And everybody knows it. Yep. Welcome home. And the fact is that I feel bad

because I bet a lot of the people that are working as developers for the game and coders are probably good at their job. It's just sad that they're being managed by a bunch of morons. Which is something they absolutely cannot afford. Sticking with a report, Tassie's sources say that they're not aware of any plans to delay marathon past its September release date. That seems kind of insane, if you ask me. And it's perhaps because changes were already in place before the plagiarism controversy began.

So as the month of May started, Bunnjian. had, quote, pulled the plug on their planned marketing in order to counter the narrative that had came up in response. Basically, the plagiarism controversy has just simply increased the need to delay things, and they've already delayed and canned some of their marketing. As such, a single public beta in August could now become a, quote, roadmap of public tests, which would likely open up the game long term to global audiences rather than just the people in the US who have gotten to play it so far. Now, if we're to assume that May is being... written off to rebuild their marketing plan.

That means that Bungy and Sony have about three months to audit and replace any offending art assets. Meanwhile, of course, there's no way that you can go in three months and not only finish the game. Because keep in mind, like, the art problem is just simply a bonus problem. You still have the issue of, I don't know, the game. And so, like, if the game isn't ready and the game isn't started and it's not finished, and then you have to do the art problem on top of that,

there's no way they're going to finish it in time. It's impossible. Any reasonable person would know that. Also have to relaunch the game's reputation and get it in front of audiences because the initial reveal that happened this year did not go well. That means this is all shaping up to be quite disastrous.

And they're doing all of this ahead of a September release date that is across all major platforms. Doing all of this stuff simultaneously, if you ask me, seems, completely unfeasible. I mean, even if Marathon was universally hyped, that would still be an ambitious goal. Like with your team, locked in and motivated. But for Marathon right now, that feels honestly impossible to reach. The most revealing information from Tassie's sources might actually be about the creation of Marathon, not the release of Marathon. And it might even explain why the gameplay critiques from the Alpha aren't actually dealing with the most major complaints,

which are things like proximity chat, PVE, solo modes, and loads of other. If the game releases without proximity chat, you can assume that the game is going to be garbage. Any game that says that they're prioritizing player safety is probably a game that's going to be run and managed by retards. And you just can't, like, you can't have a game that's managed by retards and have it do well.

That's it. Not assume, no. This is the same thing I said. like if you see a video game that has a lot of ugly female or weird-looking androgynous characters, you should just assume that the game is garbage. Because fundamentally, nobody wants that and everybody knows it. So if you're putting it in the game, you're basically saying, we don't care what you want, we're going to make the game the way that we want,

and it's not going to go very well. That's it. Essentially, there's a very clear vision for this game, and it was sentenced. Stone a long time ago. Marathon was originally pitched by the good old boy higher-ups of Bungy leadership, and as far back as five years ago, devs were telling them that it would and wouldn't work and often were ignored. Many have said previously that it needed to have some sort of PVE component. And I think that last line will really ring true for a lot of you watching this video. It's pretty much being... And that's the way I feel about it too, is like, I don't want to

play PVP in a game and have to do PVP all the time, because it's just... really hard. And I think also every really popular game, like there are PVE and bullshit modes in those games. Like even Fortnite, for example, has like a PVE type mode in it. And so like if you want to make a big game for a mass audience, you have to add in some form of PVEE or something that players can do besides that. I'll be right back. Give me a second. Sorry about that. Let's continue. Yes, the game needed a PVE mode. Of course it needs a PVE mode. Every one of these games needs some version of that if you want to hit a large mainstream audience. It's common sense. Thing people have been saying, it's nice to know that at least internally in the studio, a lot of

people seem to have agreed. Now, overall, this is a story we have heard many times before at many different studios. Sometimes a singular vision is about delivering you a Kojima-style experience. Sometimes it's not. And in this story, we know that Marathon's former game director, Christopher Barrett, left Bungee in the middle of 2023 after more than 20 years of the company. Now, this came after a HR investigation that accused him of inappropriate behavior. He does maintain his innocence, and he sued Bungee for the payout that he was owed for his stocks. But there are certainly some things that he said that do, let's just say, not really look like a professional speech. Now, his tenure alone likely would have placed him in that good old boy group that is being

talked about. I mean, I'm going to say that's really bad. Like, if you have to replace the main, guy that's in charge of the game for four years, like two years before the game comes out, that's awful. Like, that kind of is what happened with BFA, and I think with Shadowlands with Wow. Like, think about how many things were fucked up with those expansions because of the whole sexual assault scandal. I think this is exactly what happened. I see, and I suppose the sources within the company that he's been able to reach.

And it would go a long way to explaining the game framework and direction that the team have been left to work on in these past two years, which of course is well beyond the game's initially planned launch. Yeah, Marathon is really late. Remember, this game was green knit under very, very different financial circumstances. There's a popular belief, right, that Marathon is part of PlayStation's live service push. But the thing is, Bungee was acquired in 2022. Marathon... That must suck if your PlayStation. You just keep releasing flops over and over, and they just can't get it right. And they have... it right for hell divers and then they made it wrong.

Everything was great with helldivers and then they decided, no, we're going to make you use a PSN account and then they killed their reputation again. It's shocking. Did it even happen? And 2019 is also when Bungie broke up their publishing arrangement with Activision for Destiny and they were finally way more independent. Now, we know from Activision leadership that Bungi was consistently having to lean on Activision's support studios, High Moon, and Vicarious Visions, to deliver expansions and content.

Basically, it didn't make Activision enough money. Bungee's stuff was eating into their resources. Then, for Bungee out on their own, they presumably decided to invest in another revenue stream while they could afford it, and that, of course, would be Marathon. Now, this was before Destiny 2's commercial high point with the Witch Queen expansion. When Barrett's departure was reported, IGN also claimed that staff expected, quote, senior company leadership to leave in droves when the 2026 stock vestments clear from the PlayStation acquisition.

Somebody at Sony's having a really bad time. I mean, yeah. Like, can you imagine being the guys at Sony that have made these calls? Basically the thing. A lot of them seems are just playing for time until they can escape with a shitload of money. And that's the same leadership who dismissed exactly. executive pay cuts by saying that bungee weren't to quote them that type of company because you know fuck solidarity with your workers you don't so wait a minute i never even knew this but employees in one department recalled a post layoffs q and a session where a department head was asked if leadership taking salary cuts to prevent uh layoffs had been considered only to respond that bungee was not that type of company yeah i believe that I mean morality to make a game, I guess.

Bungy and Sony then put aside $1.3 billion for staff retention back in 2022, with two-thirds of that expected to be paid out within the first two years. They also said layoffs were a lever they'd never use again. Surely they'll never lay people off again, guys. Surely that would never happen. That still, of course, does leave hundreds of millions of dollars to vest for an ever-dwindling number of staff. Now, we know that the rank and file of Bungy care about this game.

And it seems reasonable to extend that grace to people like Ziegler and Cross as well, right, as the public faces of it. But I think the real question... I'm sure that they care about the game. I'm sure that the people that made Concord cared about Concord. Just because you care about something doesn't make it good. It doesn't mean that everything that you do in service of that thing is a good idea. Question is, do leadership, you know, the highest tier of leadership at Bungi care about Marathon? Do they even care about the continued existence of Bungi?

outside of having to only meet their obligations towards... I'm going to be real. If you know that you have a golden parachute that's set to go in 2026, I bet a lot of them are counting down the days. And they don't really give a fuck. It's not that big of a deal anymore. This is like, you remember back in high school? It's like your last fucking three weeks of senior year.

You're like, you know, you're calling. the teachers by their first names. You're wearing your hat in school. You show up 10 minutes late. You're like, what's up? You know, like, that's, it's, yeah, bro, like, you're done with this shit. Yeah, you don't give a fuck.

You know you're graduating. That's done. PlayStation, so they don't get fired, and so that in 2026, their options vest, and they become extremely wealthy. And, uh, you know, no longer, let's just say,

tied to Bungy for their own financial success and security. Yeah, they're getting senior with their payouts. That's what it is. Certainly, it doesn't feel like they care about the long haul. And remember, this situation has got so bad that PlayStation have taken leadership to task in recent years for overspending and missing deliveries. But not... Honestly, what PlayStation should do, if I was them, I would say you're not getting your payout unless this game is good. Unless you deliver on making this game good and it's a commercial,

success. No more payout. They can't. There's got to be a way they can. There's got to be a way they have to do that. Why isn't this already the case? No, contractually obligated. No, contractually obligated is based off of them operating under the fiduciary responsibility of the shareholders. And if they can prove in court that they were not doing that because they didn't put the necessary efforts into ensuring the success and the quality of merit. They could, dude, they could take over the phone. Yes, bro, they have to do it. And by the way, this would be the biggest thing that they could do. This would be a massive Sony W. That all of the executives at Bungy release a flop game and they lose their golden parachute completely and that's it. That would be fucking beautiful.

I'm sorry, guys. I think it would be. So Bunchy fails in a clean house. Yes, exactly. Right? Because, and also it sets the stage for any other company that's working under Sony. And they say, if it can happen to Bungy, it can happen to you. Get your shit together. I think that's a good thing. Kernelie. Not like some PlayStation exact saying in an email, you guys are really, really dragging.

No, they said this in a public earning statement. So for the leadership of a business unit to be called out in the quarterly report, like talk, that is, Absolutely shocking. It is not a normal thing. So all of that's been going to shit. There have been rounds and rounds of layoffs, and what might shock you is, those layoffs likely could have been way worse. I say that because the wider PlayStation group have actually been salvaging incubation projects done at Bungy and support teams that otherwise likely would have been laid off. Marathon's launch has been in the middle of all of this. It feels an awful lot like leadership protecting themselves and setting staff up to take the fall here. Because realistically, as long as they're

able to stay. Yeah, the realistic outcome of this happening is that marathon comes out. It's a negative commercial success. It is not a Concord, but it's a veil guard. Actually, I think it will be worse than Veilgard. I do. I think it will be actually worse than Veilgard. And all of the, like, mid-level staff get sacked, developers get fired, the executives get their, they, they their exit packages for multiple millions of dollars. They all retire to be consultant so they can ruin other video game companies. And then all the developers who all they were supposed to do is program how to use a sniper rifle, they lose their job. That's probably what's going to happen.

Yep. Somebody says such a right-winger remark. I've got really bad news for you about a lot of the CEOs and the executive people in America. I've got really bad news. You're not gonna like this. Until their stuff vests, they will be just fine. And while I'm usually the type to give the benefit of the doubt, and that is something I'll extend to Ziegler and Joe Cross.

I mean, it's obvious that Joe Cross hasn't just yanked all of Antireal's work. You just have to look at what Joe Cross himself has made as an artist, like say 13 years ago, I'll extend the benefit of the doubt to those guys. But to the top leadership, To the people who are actually making the impactful calls here at Bungee, no, no longer can I give them the benefit of the doubt. It has been nothing but just fuck up. After fuck up, after fuck up. They're cooked, ma'am.

And even their wins, even the wins that that team have been able to get under extremely challenging circumstances, well, those have been rewarded with layoffs. It's a bad. Well, here's the thing is that here's how you know they're cooked. And they know that they're cooked. There was an indie-aid version of the game that was coming out, and I and a lot of other streamers were told about it, and I could have joined it. I refrained from joining it because I thought that it was going to be NDA.

They took the NDA off because of how bad it was and how bad the reception was. I have never seen that happen. Because it was like a basically like, okay, we need to do something in order to get people excited about our game and get people talking about our game. Shit, you missed out on that one? I didn't really.

Why do that? I think that they did that because the narrative for the game was so bad that they thought that if they put the gameplay out to the public, that the public would then maintain interest with the game and be excited about it again. I don't see this ending well. I think Marathon has absolutely got to be delusely.

delayed, it just does not seem like they're going to be able to get the ball rolling. A lot of the point, too, is it's not like the feedback from the alpha has been particularly stellar. It seems that even with... Everything about it, people said was bad. The plagiarism stuff going on, this game would still, still be facing a hell of a lot of struggle. So, it's actually so fucking funny, because during this video, more news came. out about Marathon. I swear to God.

Let me link you guys the video and then we're going to look at it. Yep. Somebody said in chat, some babies deserve to be aborted. I think that Marathon might be one of those abortions. Yep. I, uh, Sony just pulled all marketing. That's right, gentlemen. So what's next for Marathon?

Um, what's next for Marathon? Oh, man. I don't know, guys. It's a real mystery. I'm not sure what's going to happen. Where's the game going to go? It's not even dead on arrival. Yes, bro, the game might actually get aborted.

So let me see if I can pull this up and find it right here. And so are they making any updates about it right now? Let's see. Has there been any post at all about it? Not yet. Not by the official account. But there has just been news. And this happened literally.

fucking 20 minutes ago. I went in to take a piss and I checked my phone and I saw this. Marathon delay likely as Sony is reportedly canceled all paid marketing plans for the game. Breaking fucking news. And by breaking, I'm referring to the fucking bank. Oh, no. And so anyway, Bungi's marathon is likely to be delayed as the new report claims Sony has now canceled all marketing paid plans. Bunchy's upcoming shoot a marathon just can't seem to catch a break.

It started as the highly anticipated closed alpha test, hit a roadblock after roadblock. No, the problem was not that. The problem was that the test was awful. So this is the chain of events. So Marathon comes out and they do a private test with like Tarkov players. All of the Tarkov players say it's garbage. Then they're going to do an indie aid test. but the footage that they put out looked really bad and people didn't like it.

They took off the NDA and now everybody that played it hated it then too. So there has been not a single point of positive reception of Marathon other than the first original trailer. And the first trailer for Marathon was awesome. It was great. But everything after that, especially the gameplay, that was the problem. Why does it seem like there are so many video game misses these days? So why are there a lot of video game misses? The reason why is because they're hiring the wrong people to make games.

That's number one. And number two, they have, the companies are so big that they're not able to operate and respond to market wants fast enough. So they can't adapt to market. I unironically do think that adding in a bunch of people that are not part of like, you know, the endemic base video game culture and like trying to like add in diversity quotas and stuff like this this will inadvertently create a worse product and I think that logically you cannot come to any conclusion other than that but I think that's like problem number seven and like there's six other problems above that too right and inadvertently yeah and that's it as in every other

field yeah exactly and so anyway um bungee's marathon needs to break in the top five NPD sales to be considered to success. It's claimed. The top five NPD. What is NPD? Narcissistic personality disorder, new product development. Okay, so probably the first and the second one here. Yeah, it needs to be a bestseller. And so, yeah, there you go, new product development. So it needs to be top five in the market for video games this year. Now, what is the probability of it being in the top five of video games this year? zero that's it that's the number zero

we all know this I don't think it's only going to I don't even think it's going to break the top 10 I would be surprised if it breaks the top 20 unless they like overload this with micro transactions I think it's going to be fucked

we had too many bangers this year yeah exactly like it won't break top 50 it'll probably be in the top 50 I think so and so it's in free fall as well on top of that another report claim to mixed reaction from the closed alpha, a bungee pushback its marketing and the pre-order plans? Wait, can you pre-order

Marathon or not? Sony reportedly cancels all paid marketing for Marathon. Here it is. Now a new report claims that Sony has canceled all paid marketing plans for Marathon. This information comes from Colin Morridority who shares news in the latest paywalled episode of Sacred Symbols podcast.

They reportedly came from someone familiar with the marketing efforts of the overseas market, and is considered a fairly unusual move with a game of this high of a profile. Man. You cannot pre-order from Steam? Let me look it up. So if I go to the store on Steam and I'm going to see it for myself. Okay.

Planned release date. It is on your wish list. They have not even added in pre-orders. Guys, I think it's done. Wish list it? I don't think I will. And with everything going on, the art plagiarism controversy, mixed negative feedback from the closed alpha, and now no paid marketing plans from Sony, it's hard not to see a delay on the horizon. Pushing forward with the plan marketing from September 23 could honestly make things even worse for Bungi and Marathon.

I think that if they try to push this game out, it will be worse. I don't think that an abortion is necessary, but I think that this game will need at least a one-year delay so they can recalibrate it and make it good. I don't think they have to, by the way, this is all their fault. Of course it's their fault. Who else's fault would it be? Like, I mean, I wonder, oh, is it Sony's fault? Or is it Bungee's fault? Bungee who has repeatedly fucked up Destiny.

They've had 50 million problems with Destiny. Every time that I hear about Destiny, it's bad. I mean, come on, guys. At a certain point, you've got to look and see who's actually at fault here. It's clearly them. So, yeah, you can check the Steam Wishlist rank. Okay, let me see that. Steam wish list ranking.

So we're looking for... What are we looking for? Marathon. Y'all were right. And I was wrong. I said it would be in the top 50. It's actually not even in the top 50. So let's see the games that it's losing to.

Okay? It's losing to a game called Sand. It's losing to Half Sword. It's losing to Borderlands. four. Half sword is great. Yeah, I know, but it's a very small game. That's the point, right? It's a tiny game and it's it's beating marathon a multi-billion dollar company game. That is insane. Let me see if there's any data about this at all. So it's actually totally flatlined. The amount of interest that people have had for the game has totally gone down. Oh my God.

Euro Truck and Joyers. Yeah, I know. It even went up. Well, no, this is when the game, this is probably when all the marketing and everything for it happened. And so when did the demo come out? So it's basically all of the pre-orders and all of the wish listing. It has four viewers right now.

And wow, that's amazing. That's impressive. I've never seen a flatline for an upcoming game on Steam. Let me see. So let's look at five games and we're going to see how the popularity of these games goes. and how, like, if it flatlines or not. So Eldon Ring chart as well. Okay, so it's going up.

You can see, obviously, as the game is getting closer to release, it's going up. You can see this is for Hollow Night's Silk Song. It just keeps going up in general. You can see that right there. And then you can look at Dune Awakening. You can see more and more people like, wow, look at that. That's crazy. It's going up a lot for Dune Awakening.

And then you've got right here, obviously, this is for Mecca Break. This is probably after each of the different demos, but you can see it going up more and more and more. And then you can see Borderlands too, obviously kind of probably falling off a little bit, but even doing better than Marathon is. You can look at Arc Raiders. Boop. Boop. That's a lot. You guys see that?

Holy shit. Gat damn! That's vertical. Yes, exactly. And then you look at Marathon. That's a boop. That's not a boop or a pop. That's a flip and a flop. That's bad, bro. It's going up by, like, they're getting dozens of new wish lists a day. Oh, man. Wow. Limped it. Yeah, did it drop? Yeah, it sure did. And so let's look at Mafia, Old Country, little nightmares. Let's see some more of these here.

So Metal Gear Solid going up steadily, obviously. You've got what's this one here? This is for Mafia Old Country. Going up really fast, especially probably after they announced that $50 price tag, right? And then you've got over here little nightmares going up doing great. Oh my God. This is actually sad. Let's look at Tides of Annihilation.

You guys remember this game, right? This is the, if you can believe it, it's another chance. Chinese game with a hot female protagonist that looks basically like another copy of Eldon Ring and a mixture between Elden Ring and Final Fantasy 16. I'm going to play the fuck out of this. Also, kind of flatlining, but they haven't brought out any new announcements, so it kind of makes sense. So Eldon Wifu, yes. Also, not a great one, to be fair, not great. Let's look at Chrono Odyssey. Gentlemen, that's it.

well deserve? Check Stellar Blade? Yeah, sure. That's a good idea. Let me check Stellar Blade. Uh, we're a stellar blade. There it is. Wow.

Wow. What a surprise. Well, there you go, guys. And, yeah, if you look at Google, Google search, you might show you the same picture. Yeah, I think so. Uh, complete gooner victory. And, uh, yeah, will Trump make games great again? I don't think so, guys.

We are now able to cancel games for other reasons than DEI. Well, I think that this game, by the way, I do think that Marathon is a victim of DEI design. I do. And I'm going to say it. And I might sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I'm going to say it. The reason why I think Marathon is a victim of DEI design, there's two separate reasons why. The first reason why I think it's a victim of it is because of the fact they don't have proximity voice chat. That's number one.

That's probably the biggest indicator. Every other game has proximity voice chat. If you don't have that, it's because you're afraid of people saying mean words, which means that you have people that are designing the game that are pussies. That's number one. Number two, the characters are not attractive and they look androgynous and weird. They look like a scuffed version of Marilyn Manson or like the girl from Die Antward, right? Like, that's it.

That's basically the two main carriages that they have for the story. That doesn't work, okay? If you can't immediately fucking tell what the gender of the character is, garbage. Yolanda's hot show? Yeah, I didn't say she wasn't. All I'm saying is that that's the type of design

that they're going for, right? Yeah, I didn't say that. Of course not. You couldn't immediately tell a metaphor? Okay. Okay, you need to understand something. All right, this is a big problem. Fim boys are okay.

everybody is fine with Femboys Dion from Final Fantasy 16 probably half of the characters from Final Fantasy to be fair Femboys are basically okay because it's basically guys that generally are a lot younger they're like maybe like late teens

early 20s and you know something like that right Fem boys are not a big deal but the difference between that is that A lot of people perceive And God, I'm trying to figure out how to make this Okay, how can I make this not sound gay? Give me a minute.

This is going to be hard. A lot of people like Femboys, okay? There are way more people that like Femboys than people that like a out-of-shape, androgynous scuffed Marilyn Manson. Okay? I'm just being honest. Unironically true?

That's right. And the reason why is that, again, this is going to sound gay, but we're just going to say it. A lot of femme boys are attractive men. They are. They are attractive men that may have more feminine features, but they are still attractive. At the end of the day. These other characters are not. So if you ever see a game that has ugly characters or no proximity voice chat, probably a woke game.

And I think that's the reason why I believe Marathon is a woke game. And I think it's probably one of the reasons why it's going to be bad. Because people that design games that way care more about the game reinforcing their worldview than the game actually making money or being successful. That's a reach. Guys. Guys.

Guys, I've made so many reaches recently. And I feel like I've got a really fucking good track record of making crazy predictions and then somehow being right. I do. I think that I've really been cooking recently. Do you remember when I said about that Twitch thing, about them losing ad revenue because there was going to be some crazy attack

that was going to happen? And everybody said I was nuts. And then it happened within like six months just like I said it would. And then Alex, next Alex Jones. No, it's not even that. I'm saying that, and remember of out, we can't win them all, all right?

You can't win them all. But we try to win at least most of them, right? Damn. And I think in a majority of times I do. The majority of times things come out and I do all right. Now, do we get it right every single time? We do not get it right every single time. But we get it right, I think, most of the time.

And I feel Roach Dadaamas, shut the fuck up. But anyway, you can see these games and these things popping off. And Marathon isn't even on the releases or it's not even on trending. people aren't even excited for it it's not even in the top 50 wishlisted games the entire popularity for it has totally trailed off and yeah

I guess Marathons basically fucking dead you didn't predict 2024 game of the year yeah I did it's just that the game awards was wrong they just made the wrong decision I was right everybody else was wrong I think we were trying to say as the characters need to be relatable in some form

in marathon characters fail in that aspect no I'm not saying that I'm saying that if you add a female character into the game, if the character isn't fuckable, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. Let me just say that flat out, flat out playing English straight up very directly. Video games, especially shooter games, are made for men. Men are interested in women for one thing, especially young guys. They want to be able to fuck the characters. And so that's why every gotcha game, how many gotcha games release ugly female characters? Zero. How many of the very popular cosplay characters that women cosplay are

ugly, zero. Every single example of this that I can make proves the exact same point. Look at Marvel rivals. Nobody wants to look at an ugly bitch. And so if you make a character and that character is not attractive, there is no reason for people to want to be that character. And if you're playing that role, why would somebody want to play an ugly character in game if in a lot of cases they end up playing that in real life? That's the reason why. How does your point compare to femboys? Are you saying that men want to fuck femboys? I think that a lot of men

want to be seen as attractive towards women. So they're okay playing as a femboy because they know that women like guys that look that way. Bro what? Guys? Here's the problem that a lot of people have. Is that everybody else is living in a fantasy world and I'm the only person that lives in reality.

It's true. No, it is. And the reason why everybody's getting shocked, oh my God, how are he saying this? What's he saying? I'm saying this because nobody else will. Nobody else says this shit because they're afraid to. They're like, oh, it might sound gay or weird. Everybody knows that, oh, that I'm weird. Everybody doesn't know that I'm gay. But so that's the difference. But my point is that no one said you're wrong. Yeah. Everybody says I'm weird or whatever, but like, that's it. They don't know that. Are you a femme boy? No, I'm not a femme boy. I mean, maybe I could have been a femme boy. I was like, I don't know, like 19 or something. Sure, I had long hair and I was a skinny guy.

Definitely could have been a femboy. But that was a long time ago. I was 19, 3,000 years ago. Yeah, okay, guys, it was a long, long time ago. And so a sketch 2.0 No, the thing is that If I was gay Or I was bisexual

I would just say it I would, I would just say I don't give a fuck I don't think it's a bad thing at all Yeah, you did No, I would like I would just say it I like Because to me like I'm so confident in my sexuality A guy can touch my dick

And it doesn't even bother me That's how confident that I am in my sexuality I could see suck a dick, it wouldn't be gay. That's how not gay I am. You take your garbage out. Does that make you a garbage man? You cook food. Does that make you a chef? You drive your friend around. Are you an Uber driver? It doesn't mean you have to be a, you have to suck a dick. You don't have to be gay. That's it. And so anyway, let me go back to my main point. My main point is that you have to play and have characters that are visually appealing and attractive. And modern American

Western video game design philosophy is to make characters look realistic. Now, everybody knows that attractive women don't exist, and because of that, all of them have to be fat and ugly. And also the men have to look weird. They don't necessarily look like women, but they don't necessarily look like men either. That's a pretty big indicator. What is this?

What's this image? Guys. Guys, guys, guys, this is... Bro, who did this? Stop. You can't, you can't do this. Like, this is, you make an excellent shift manager. There's gonna be like news like six months from now.

Uh, yeah, it was reported that a McDonald's in California was found to be serving whoppers. When customers ordered Big Macs in a McDonald's, uh, shift manager, Jonathan Cross I gave a statement and he said, I don't know how this keeps happening.

How does it keep happening? I don't know it says, yes, oh my God, look at the mic. Yeah, I guess so, right?

But there it is, boys. And, wow, Mr. Cross has been found stealing the secret formula. And,

uh, wow.