OpTic Podcast - Turning Down $15 Million | The OpTic Podcast Ep. 233

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp - go to http://betterhelp.com/OPTIC to get 10% off your first month. Go to http://shopify.com/optic to sign up for your $1-per-month trial and start selling today. Go to http://butcherbox.com/optic to get $20 off your first box and free protein for a year OpTic Gaming Merch: https://shop.opticgaming.com/ Check out the OpTic SCUF collection and use code “OpTic” for a discount: https://scuf.co/OpTic Check out the OpTic Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/optic-podcast/id1542810047 https://open.spotify.com/show/25iPKftrl0akOZKqS0wHQG CDL Champs vs Esports World Cup | The OpTic Podcast Ep. 233 00:00 Intro 01:00 CS2 Case Openings 13:00 Crowdfunding Call of Duty 18:00 EWC Prize Pools & Champs 26:00 EWC Cod Team Shakeup 30:00 Ad Read 37:30 Team Changes in CDL 39:00 CDL Champs vs EWC 53:00 EWC Stage 58:00 $15m Streaming Deal 1:02:14 React/Unoriginal Content Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, yeah, we're coming to that lock, bro. It's going to be fun to watch. We got pool play. Got some amateur teams competing in there. I heard y'all are taking it serious this year and shit. We were taking a serious last year. Oh. Shut up.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Optic podcast, episode 232. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp, Shopify, and Butcher Box. We'll tell you a little bit more about them later on in the podcast. As usual, and as per used, to my left, I have Call of Duty World Champion, Mr. Seth Abner. We have two-time Call-Duty World Champion, Mr. Brandon Dashy. Mountain buckets. Mountain buckets. You don't know how happy I am that a gift that I've given you has been worn this much.

Yes. Oh, that's for me. Yeah, that's that Amelia on door. Damn. I gave that to him when we did the trivia, old school versus new school. Okay. Yeah, we did that. Oh, yeah, it was that day.

Yeah. So I'm happy to see where. We have a man, Hitch, and you have the man with five, soon to be six rings, Mr. Big Opti Cacier Welcome, boys Five rings Yeah, five Five

Yep, five Two Halo Two Halo Did the first Halo? Oh yeah The first Halo boys Got their rings Yeah

I got Yeah Two Halo Three Cod Hopefully a third Halo on this You're trying to be Brady That fucking Valor

What? Huh? They got that shit Bounds of Psycho Dato Bounds a psycho Bounds a psycho Yeah, yeah yeah

So, knock on wood. Bound psychotic. Ladies and gentlemen, as I was just saying, we have a couple of topics we want to discuss. I want to talk about this crazy C-as-go thing that's been going on. We, at the Scuff House, we had like an opportunity to start our own skin, our own skin thing. We're going to call it optic skin so that everybody knew like what they were buying,

who they were buying from, obviously because of the way things went down. But even back then, like we knew that this was a billion-dollar industry back then. It's $5 billion a year now, this fucking craziness. Any, I mean, you've been playing. Are you going to start opening cases? Oh, I've been, I've been, you know, ripping cases for sure. But I don't know. I feel like Nate has just got the plug, man.

Like, he's getting these, like, some of the most expensive cases in the game. And it's just, like, for free. All he's got to do is buy the keys. And, I mean, bro, I would sign that deal right now if the guy offered me. I would. I mean, there's no downside. No, there's no downside. There's no downside.

Hey, here's $60,000 of cases. You keep everything. Good luck. And have fun. Wait, so they just gave it to him for free? For free. For free. For free.

60. 600 had to have known, like there's some code behind there, right? That he knew that. Apparently this guy, Meglodon, right? Yep, Meglodon. Shout out Megalodon. You just sounds like you do it with the game. How do I meet Meglodon?

A very historic shock. The only guy who knows him is Arrow. The guy in the top right. He's the only guy who knows him. This guy's a great white. And he. The great one. He's apparently been playing CS forever and he's just bought everything all the time, keeps it in storage and the cases that he has from all those years ago.

I mean 2014, 2015, we're talking souvenir sticker packs. Like, dude, those souvenir sticker packs? It was the last thing that they opened. $20,000 a pop. Now literally. $20,000 for one capsule. $20,000 a pop? And you don't even know what's in it.

And the max? I'm sorry, go ahead, Bruce. No, no, no. The max thing they could win was $100,000. So I'm sitting there in my mind. Tim pulled the best thing. It was a Dignitas Hollow, which was worth $30,000. But I'm sitting there in my mind, like, who the fuck is buying these things and ripping them?

20 grand? Nobody. You can get $100, right? Yeah. But it's rare. Like, it's not guaranteed. It's one out of five. And then Tim got one of the best things, $30,000.

And then the rest of them got, like, a $1,000 sticker. 5K maybe. Did y'all watch the cobblestone part? Uh-uh. I tuned in, like, the very end. So it was a drag a one? Yeah. So, cobblestone cases are like these like

souvenir souvenir cases and the best thing you can get into them is a souvenir dragon lore And it's a, it's red And so when you, you know how like When you open a case and all the, you see all the shit go by? So like in souvenir cases there are like light light blues Like usually there's blues and

Are those better? No, light light blues are like even less common That's what it seems like So there's a shitty shit. And the guy I forgot who was, I think it was Oni Pickers said, I've opened 2,000 cobblestone cases in my life.

I've never even seen a red go by. And, and Nate was, you could tell Nate was like, what? Like, wait, what are we doing here then? Yeah. And they, so they all opened 40 cases. Not even a pink went by. Not even a, I don't even, I think maybe a one purple went by.

What's a dragon lore go for nowadays? 114. I don't know. They said, they said if, 13, 14. That's a sniper rifle dragon lord? Yeah, yeah. It's souvenir, the ones that in the cobblower. cases, those could go up to like

something ridiculous. They were saying that they were open the Kenny S one. They said if the Kenny S signature was on the scope. Of a Dragon Lour, it would have been 1.5 million. I mean, but what are the odds of that? You got to get a dragon lore and it has to have Kettys S on the scope. No, the odds would be astronomical. It's like one out of a hundred thousand

just even get, just to even see the dragon lore on the screen. Once you hit that, once you hit that, to be factory new on the scope is another one out of a fucking gazillion. Oh, yeah, no. You're searching for a needle and a haystack there. And the haystack is 15,000 a case. But the tables are hot. Each piece of hay is 15 grand.

But tables are scorching. It's an inferno. They were all, they were all like opening like 100 grand or, I don't know, maybe it was total, 100 grand worth of cases. And at one point, Oni Pixel goes, you know what's bad guys is, how much does an actual Dragon Lord go for. We could just buy it. We could just sell these cases and buy it. That's where my mind was like, so they're opening these sticker packs, you're spending 20 grand for the capsule, or you could just buy the $30,000 sticker and take the luck out of it, but I guess it's the,

it's the chase. It's the chase, as it always says, as a DGT. I mean, all these guys, I don't know if a Titan Hollow has ever been opened on stream. No, yeah, they're, they were, only was saying they're, they're somewhat common. He was like, there's a one in five chance. that it's a hollow and then there's only what? 14 stickers. So it's like one. I think he said it's like one in 60 something. What's up, champ?

I know there was stuff that they were chasing. What's up? Fucking. Early, momfuckers. He said, are we up early? Shats he said. It's a diner scene, bro. The bullshit.

Yeah, yeah. 100%. 10.39 a.m. He says we're early. But as you guys can see on the screen right now, biggest case opening counter strike. Final numbers, they turned $590,000 into $100,000.

The most expensive on. Fox was by Timmy. Karavice, 2014, Dignitas, hollow, as Seth just said, 26 grand. Biggest loss went to my brother, Nade, $9,300 worth of items from $95,000 received.

Overall total loss, 83.05% by any accounts, this is not, no Green Wall Street shit. You know what I'm saying? We're only up on Green Wall Street. 83% loss. Yeah, but to be fair, like, they all won because not a single dime

of their, that $590K was theirs. So other than the key of the day. Wait, how is it a loss, though? He had 93,000 worth. So he only lost two grand, technically? No. 93K worth of items from 95 in cases. Wait, so.

9300. 9300. No, but he. Oh. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, I didn't even. But all that, but that 95K was the Megalodon, right? Dude, I might have, I might have some fucking gangster-ass shit in my steam deck,

because I haven't opened all the boxes that I bought that one time. They're just sitting there. I have like the most expensive steam deck. Yeah. I bought it because when we went to Natchat's wedding, Tim and fucking Ninja were just fucking ripping cases the whole time. And I'm like, and Dennis.

Huh? And Dennis. And Dennis. It was like a fucking a vulture around a fresh kill, dude. Yeah. On that fucking steam deck, dude. They were just loving it. We were eating brunch.

Rip another one, Dennis. No, no. We were at the dinner. We were at the dinner. And they were fucking running shit. Just nonstop, just case, case. Dude, I don't know what it is about these, because the odds are literally so much worse in the casino,

and the casino's already a scam. So it's just like, I think it's just a chase of, like, getting a gaming, like, skin that's like. It's horrible. There's lore. If you're playing the game, though, it's, it's so much more, like, engaging because it's like, oh, I just got a knife. I'm going to throw this on, you know?

Yeah, yeah. If you're not playing the game, it's like. I don't even know if I've seen Nate play. Has Nate played? They started playing yesterday. Oh, okay. So I might hop in with them because I'm not going to like, in my mind, I'm not going to sit there and just open cases. Why?

For a full stream. Why? Because I'm just, that's just not like me. I don't know. Because you have the skill to. I'll open cases, but I won't sit there and spend what they've spent on cases. That's just, it's not. You don't have it?

It's not my hard wire. Dude, I'll tell you something. I know you do. Okay. So, he's like, he's like, well, you don't have it? And I'm like, no, he doesn't have it. No, I definitely have it. Damn, talk that shit.

No, I definitely have it. Hell, yeah. He's not bragging. He's speaking facts. Yeah, no, but my mind, like, I mean, we just spent 100 plus on our pool renno. We just got our doors installed yesterday. They look fucking fire. So we spent 44 on that.

44 on doors. So I got expenses, bro. I hear you, brother. I hear you, man. And that's just not going up the cases. The good thing is, it's just like you're 30. You know what I mean? You still got plenty of time to make all of that back.

Yeah, no, 100%. But I think I'm going to start playing with them and then opening a couple cases here and there. Just try to feel the rush that they felt. Listen, if you open up dreams. I hope I don't get like that. Don't go dreams and nightmares. Don't go dreams and nightmares.

What is that? Don't go dreams and nightmares? There's cases called dreams and nightmares. It's just straight nightmares. There's not a single dream that you could ever open up in that. Really? It's bad. Between George and I, we open like, probably 300 dreams of nightmares.

How many? How many? You got one? Probably go one. Yeah, that's my ratio. also out of, you're supposed to get a gold out of one out of every 400 cases. One. I got one out of 1,500.

I think 2K close, so somewhere in there. And then when I got it, I was like, oh my God. And then it's a rushed. Because you know why? Because the emerald's in this one. That's what everyone's chasing. Yeah, if you get a butterfly emerald, factory new, obviously, it's 25 grand. Oh, shit.

But the odds of that are very, let's just say you're not heading it. Yeah, I mean. Dude. But it's the rush. They can't give you the crazy eyes. Like that keep going down you're gonna see it but a butterfly lore I wouldn't even mind look at that butterfly gamma dapler Emeralds there's the price on it because I fucking love this I love it so which one's the fire one it's the top one or the bluffer right there

butterfly knife the gamma doppler that does look fire soon soon soon soon so it's expensive skin in the game well maybe that's a crambit blue gem or like a blue gem is like but that's just like depending on like the the pattern but that's just like you put one of those it's a guaranteed dude I had a carambit marble fade when I used to play. I wonder if I still have it. I don't think I do. It's probably like 2,500 now. Yeah? Yeah. Well, I don't think I have it anymore. I don't know what happened to it. I think someone lent it to me. This is what I pulled. Okay, keep going up Maddie. You might actually see it. Shadow Dagger like, the one on the far right. You see it. Shadow Dagger's this one. The Gamma Doppers. I saw, I'm like, oh my God, Paco. I was ripping these with Paco. And he's like, no way. I look at him like, oh my God. This is a

Gamadopler ones. Yeah. And not the... This is the biggest... The blue ones. Oh, yeah, for sure. You're like, finally! Imagine you got the blue ones?

150... 155 bucks? I mean, it's still crazy that you can sell this stuff. Oh, yeah. I... It's so fucking nuts. So nuts.

Dude. The game is so fun, too. I've never played Counterstrike before. Like, before... We started playing it. We're doing like a 100-hour series. We started playing it. Like, right before this, like,

wave hit. So obviously, that... That was pretty poor timing, but the game is so fun. Yeah. I fucking love the game. Oh, CounterStrike? Dude, I went through a dirty counter strike period back in. B-O-4, I think.

Yeah, it was between World War II offseason and B-O-4, I think. And I was playing until like 4 a.m. every night with like Goonjarlooney. Really? With five-stack. E-S-E-S-E-A. Yeah, I got to A-plus. A-plus is typical because I was ArtStuck B-M-M-M-A, and I thought those kids were the greatest players in the world. But we were, like, five-stacking.

So like every night we'd have five people like going hard as fuck. Yeah, we were going hard. Yeah, we all had smokes. I didn't know shit back then. I was just straight running kids. I was like, can somebody get the door? We got dirty with it. Oh, that sounds so fun though.

I mean, dude. Yes, yes is a lot of fun. Yeah, I mean, just all, everything about it is the, the everything about it, the culture behind it, the fact that they were so far ahead of their time that they have this thing going. Like, it infuriates me because we can have. the same thing we can have the literal same thing I was thinking that obviously now that look EWC is never going to be worth more than and I'm not talking about worth in terms of monetary value I'm talking about worth just in terms of its

legendary status you know we see is never going to be worth more than call duty champs unless unless we make it happen but I don't think that we should I don't think that obviously there has to be something different right there has to be something a different approach to EWC Now that the EWC is operating independently from the CDL, which is why you don't see a lot of teams using the same ones that they use in CDL, well, Matt, are you good? That's my brother-in-law.

All right, cool, thank you. He left, right? Okay. Like, dude, I need to get a hold of somebody at EWC so that we can crowd fund something some way. Hats, shirts, something. Let's see how high we can get this thing. If we put all of our efforts together and crowdfund this thing,

we can take it from 1.8 to what? What do you think we can do? A lot. A lot. Right? Like I think that, you know, Call of Duty as a community, we've been around since 2000 and, what, five working on this thing. Since Call of Duty 2 working on this thing, I think that everybody for so many years has been saying it's like,

yo, let's really this crowd fund, crowd fund, crowd fund. And for the longest time, Activision didn't want to do that for whatever reason. But now that they're operating the penalty, I don't see why we can't. What is this, Matt? Oh my God. Yeah, these are the largest price rules. The international, obviously, 40 money, money, money.

Million. 40 million dollars, I would be so turned on the stage. $40 million. Isn't there a champs like three mil each? It's insane. I mean, this, I think, no, this is their biggest tournament, the international. Yeah, the international is the biggest one. Yeah.

$40 million? Yeah. In one tournament? One tournament. What? A year. And look, look, a year. 2021, 2019, 2018,

2017, those are the top. Look, in 2017, it was 24. In 2018, 25, in 2019, 34. In 2021, 40. In 2020. Is that just crowdfunded? Is that way? Yeah. Yeah. It's like the Gota players probably love their game.

And they do it with the skins in game. Yeah, with the skins in game. Could you imagine if Call of Duty did that shit? It'll never happen. I know. So we have to do it outside of the game. And what do we have outside of the game that we can do? They will make it worth it.

Right? That'll pay for itself. And on top of that, any profit that goes above that goes that. And I wonder if at that point Activision would say, oh, hey, we see that you raised $3 million for this thing. We want half of that. When they didn't want to do it to begin with. Yeah, I mean, they're going to get their cut, obviously. Yeah.

But like, it's like it's disgusting, in my opinion. But it is something that I want to talk about on a serious level. On a serious level, I'm not bullshitting here. Like, I want to put the optic might behind it. I want to put the green wall behind it. I want to put the call duty scene behind it. I'll talk to every single owner, majority of them, that are the ones I talk to. I want to put, I want to put them on notice, right?

Like, hey, Optic is doing this thing. You guys got to do your fucking part. And I will be the one keeping the checklist of who is and who isn't doing that shit. But there's been so much conversation about like recently in the COD scene. It's like how do we make our year better? And people are putting like EWC like a month before champs

and shit like that. But it's like also Wait, the online one was $4.6 million? For what? I think it was total for the year. Oh, right? That is not right. Yeah. It's total for the year, right? I don't remember. You won $4.6 million?

2020? No, you did not. He said, yeah. Yeah. It was 1.5. 300 K. 1.5. Okay.

3. Damn. Which is fat as fuck because they've been ninja. Yeah, they've been lowering the price bill every year. I don't know if anybody's noticed. They're not taking a word either. This is impressive, honestly. They're getting away with murder.

Well, they're getting away with what they can because they have a power over this thing, right? With this league, they didn't make things better. Right? With this league, they made things worse. Not only that they make things worse. perspective, taking it away from Twitch and sort of like making their best deal happen for themselves with YouTube, but also like they systematically little by little reduce the amount of majors, right?

Because they reduce the amount of majors and the amount of price pool. So dirty. And why is EWC, Matt, go see how much EWC price pools are for all other e-sports and then we check to the ones that are Call of Duty? Like why is Call-Duty only 1.8, right? Why not even match what we're doing? I want to know why Dota 3 mil

What is that Are you fire is a million dollar price pool Every game is literally 3 mil Yeah no every game is Except for the solar player games Two mil for League of Legends 700 for Starcraft 3 million for PubG Mobile

1.8 for Cod Dude we should be in the 3 to 5 range Well apparently it's because they don't want it to be bigger than champs Who? I think it was the league That's what I heard. That's an issue. It's because the league didn't want it to be bigger than champs. I don't think I don't think that's the reason. I thought that's what I heard. Hey, listen I don't really I don't think that's the reason. Okay. Dude, listen, brother, how don't we just raise everything? Tekken, Rocket League. Let's make champs 400. Crossfire? Wait, Crossfire. Crossfire is 2 mil. What's crossfire? Isn't Crossfire a free to play on like FPS? Yeah, it's huge like overspier.

I wonder if Crossfire puts money into... Dude, I think I played that shit in fucking middle school. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Crossfire is huge overseas. Who's an expert in this? Who do you think it's an expert in this that we can contact? Wait, but CS2 is only 1.2. Probably same shit, right? Probably the one to be bigger than their majors.

Yeah. Yeah, I think CS2 is the last tournament, right? Yeah. Ooh, I want to watch that shit. But people are saying... What's the biggest price pool for this thing? Like, that's not three mil. I think league.

Can you just see, like, how much that, like, pays? No, Lee was two. What are the 3 mil ones? Can you see how much it pays? The fuck. What is that? What game is that? How does the price pull?

Can you break down the splits? Yeah, wait. Yeah, what game is this? What? Yeah, go back. Club champions? MSC. MSC.

It says, there's letters in there. There's letters. Make that bigger, Matt. So we can read the fine print on MSC. Right there. Right there. Midseason. Mobile League.

Mobile Legends? Oh, mobile legends. Oh, my goodness. So Mobile Legends is 3 mil. Well, that makes sense. I want to know if like these these games are putting money towards the price pool also. Right? Honor of Kings is 3 million.

PubG is 3 million. PubG Mobile is 3 million. We are 1.3. Dota 2. 3 million. Oh, Dota 2. Yeah. Dude, Dota's just permaxed out.

Yeah, Perma maxed out. Is Dota just playing for like, they might not try this tournament, honestly, how much they were. Yeah, Seth. You should do it. They're like, wait, three mil. It's a small one for them. Seth, you're playing the wrong thing. You shouldn't be playing Lita.

Dude, I'm awful. At league? Yeah, I'm awful. Never a chance that I'd be competing in this. Never a chance. I've been like trolling like, could we kill Faker 2V1? And people are like, no. Not a chance.

We could have full items and he'd have no items and kill us, which I don't believe. I don't believe that. I'm not buying that. Yeah, I agree with that. That's like if like a pro CS player was. like, dude, I'll beat you with a Glock and you have full arm rakey. I'm like, let's see it first. Yeah, I'm, like, you're better than me.

That's not going to twist it, but let's see that first. I'm challing you immediately. Absolutely. Catch you off guard. All right, let's go back to the topics. I mean, look, I think that the importance of EWC at some point is going to mean something, but it's just going to mean something from a cultural. It's what we do once a year.

It's another opportunity for somebody to get a little bit of frosting on top of their cake. But, you know, the cake is the cake. period, right? Unless of course we win it, then of course it's very important. Yes. If we win it, it's on par with champs. But people were saying, what if we had EWC a month before champs? And it's like, dude, it's never going to work like that.

EWC is like a month-long festival. Seth, Seth, Seth. That's not the problem. Because we're down to four fucking majors from five. Just add another major right there. Yeah, no. Yeah. At another major, then EWC, then champs closer to the release of the game.

You're saying literally at the end. Push champs back. Make EWC like push champs to like. September. Yeah, like September. Dude, champs should be an XP. Champs should be a celebration of all things called the duty. James should be during Codnext.

Champs should be during Codnex. Hopefully we get to attend this time around. That'd be nice. That would be nice. Yeah, that'd be nice. Sorry. Sorry for putting up our Dukes. Okay.

But there's ways to do it. It feels like it's always felt that they go out of their way to just do shit so that they can say, we can do whatever you want and you cannot. Because the right thing to do here is not to, this is lovely. I love the fact that there's another event. I don't want less events. I want more events. I want there to be five majors, as there always has been, six with EWC and the crowning, defining tiebreaker in case teams, one season we split down the middle with Facer 100 thieves. 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 7th to split it.

This is not an issue. Think about this, right? Nobody, everybody wants it except for one entity that doesn't. And why do they want it? They don't have an answer for it. And they feel as though they don't owe the community an explanation as to why they don't do it. If they came out and said, it's like, hey, it fucks with the finances of this fucking bullshit. Or it fucks with, like, okay, the next year.

Like, there isn't a single chance in hell that they're not doing it. it just because they want to not do it. Everybody wants this to happen. Everybody's willing to work for this to happen. And they're just saying no. Yeah. While systematically reducing the amount of majors, think about it. Think about it.

Last year, we didn't really have four majors, right? We had one of the majors that was a land major where nobody showed up. That is not right. We had three majors, basically. Yeah, three majors. We had one of those this year do. Yeah. It's ridiculous.

It's not right. It's not right. Pretty. Yeah, but EWC's going to be fire. I'm pumped up. Yeah. Honda P. When do you guys leave?

Monday. Next Monday? Yeah. Like this Monday coming up. Damn. Yeah. So I guess the next Monday, yeah. So leagues this weekend and then Cod next weekend.

And then I think the weekend after that might be war zone. And then the weekend after that is CS. But it's just like. Can you watch this on Twitch? Yeah. I watched Apex on Sunday. So we're doing a watch, obviously doing a watch party. Do you're doing your watch party on Twitch?

Yeah. I love that. It's madder. Get some brecky going. Wait, it's not that early though, right? No, it's like somewhere between like seven to nine CSTs. That's mad early. But that's not that bad.

It's not that bad. It's not that bad. It's doable. I like reasons to be up early, except for flights. Oh, yeah. We're coming to that lock, bro. It's going to be fun to watch. We got pool play.

Got some amateur teams competing in there. I heard y'all are taking it serious this year. and shit. We were taking serious last year. Oh. Shut up. We were going hard last year. I know that people are saying that if a fucking pro player

didn't take that shit seriously, they're fucking stupid. And I don't know why listen, as as a person's in charge, I should be like, hey man, you better fucking take this shit fucking seriously. You know what I'm saying? We honestly should have won it.

We just lost the phase and then single LEM so that's the only thing I would change about the sermon is to make a double LEM in bracket play but if a single LEM B-O-7 yeah yeah just think about it if you bring that logo to the podium be the first it'd be the first time since 27 2019 or 20 18 yeah we're 2018 2018 since 2018 since optic gaming has held the fucking trophy we've held in call of duty we've held them up obviously in Halo. We've held them up obviously in the CDL, but not under that OG. Yeah, that'd be so fire. Why the Ravens here, by the way. Yeah, Ravens aren't going.

You might want to remove that. That's tough. What do you guys think about that? That's fucked up. Yeah, we got to talk about that. Is that not, I feel like somebody capping. Somebody cab. I don't know if it's Brian St. I don't know if it's EWC. So the rule was you could only make one change, right? What player change? One player change. No, but they were saying they never even got invited to the tournament.

Oh, shit. Which is like. That's different. That's a different. I feel like that's kind of cap because I think everybody, you're just auto-invited if you're in the league. Yeah. How do you not get invited? You've been invited last year.

Yeah, what did you do? You didn't do anything. That's the issue. Something's weird there. Somebody's not opening something. I'm confused. I'm confused because the coovers are right there as Vancouver surge, right? And I guess the main thing was that no CDL team can use their logo in this thing.

And then we have the Carolina Royal Raven. Okay, well, that's obviously the guerrillas mates. This doesn't make sense to me, Matt. This doesn't make sense to me. I don't know because originally I thought that you couldn't compete as for us, Optic, Texas, not that we wanted to. But I don't know. Yeah, and then the...

Well, this was last, is this last year or this year? I think this is this year because it says face-clad title defender. It's kind of pretty hard. Defender. Do you believe it's true, Dashey, that they didn't make a change because they won EWC? Last year phase? Yeah.

What do you think? You think there's a change happening there? I don't really know. That's the thing with teams like, because the way I look at it is like, who are they going to get? Yeah, right?

Well, that's what Cell, I said this before, but Cell said at Codnext, we were all eating. And I jokingly said to him, I was like, yo, when you get to Dallas? Just shooting the shit with him. This guy stays doing that shit.

Yeah. What do you mean? Just throwing out feelers. I'm fucking with him. Yeah, he doesn't know you like that. Do you hang out with him? Did you throw a jersey? No, exactly.

So how the fuck? He wasn't talking. I was bringing him into conversation. Yeah, he wasn't talking, just join optic. It's really spiced us up. Fucking hell. Dude, he's not talking, joined our fucking team. And he laughed and said, no, seriously, I thought they were dropping me.

But they were one EWC. Are you allowed to say that? Yeah, I've said a quarter. All right, right. I don't know. I haven't talked since. No, it is. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. So yeah, or, or nay. And who would they drive? Trio cannot split up, in my opinion. I don't know. I think it might be, I mean, it obviously depends. I do think this tournament actually, it does play a part, but I don't know. That champs just for them, like the standard that they set themselves to back-to-back top six.

They might just. Because every pro player is just like, you know what I'm saying? Like, they're playing for that tournament. Obviously, the other tournaments are definitely nice to have. But yeah, it could definitely fuck with them to, like, maybe make a change that they could regret in the future. We'll see. I don't know. That team's split out.

I am not curious. That team splits up. The league gets crazy. Yeah, they start moving for us. The league gets insane. But, like, who would, that's the thing. I don't know. Let's say if the tree were to split,

like, who is the one that stays? Who is the one that leaves? Who stays with each other? Do the terrors split up? Because that's weird. Yeah, the tear splitting would be very strange. That's going to be so weird. Haven't they been to the trio the whole time?

I don't know if it was just Abe and. Well, Abe came into the league first and was winning first. And then Sell came in and then Semp came in, or vice versa. Sim came at the end of B04. Cell came in during B.04. Abe was playing in World War II. But they were like,

Abe and Simp were like the duo since the very first event. Yeah, which was Champs at B04. No, it was a... Or was a tournament before that. Yeah, yeah. It was one tournament before champs.

Workplace stress is now one of the top causes of declining mental health with 61% of the global workforce experiencing higher than normal levels of stress. Especially during the summer it seems like. I mean, outside, you look outside, it's nice, it's beautiful, the sun is

shining, there's people running around, most likely in swimsuits, drinking water, drinking sweet tea, having a great time and you're stuck inside, just type in and working on stuff. I mean, it just, you have an overall sense of like, I could be doing something else. And I, maybe I'm speaking from experience here, but the stress rises in the summer, at least it does from me. There are ways to reduce stress, obviously, like sitting in the sun, uh, exercising. I always say that drinking a lot of water, you know, the cliche things. Um, but also there are other solutions as well, such as therapy. A holiday is great, but it isn't a long term solution to stress. Don't forget that therapy can help you navigate whatever challenges the work day or any day might bring.

We've talked about better help many, many times. The one thing that I like most about better help is that There's different ways to talk to a therapist that best suits you. If you like face-to-face contact, there's like a FaceTime feature. If you like just typing, there's a type feature as well. Or if you like somewhere in the middle, you can just call somebody on the phone and talk to them. Whatever, whatever suits you the best, which I think is a great, great thing to have. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform. having served over 5 million people globally.

And it works with an app rating of 4.9 out of 5 on over 1.7 million client reviews. I don't even know how that's possible. 4.9 out of 5 on 1.7 million reviews. It's also convenient. You can join a session at the click of a button, and you can also switch therapists at any time to find the therapist that best suits. you. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Our listeners get 10% off their first month

at BetterHelp.com slash optic. That's betterhelp.com slash optic. Now I know everybody that watches the Optic podcast is little businessman or women, entrepreneurs trying to get their bag up, trying to sell their, sell their product or their service. And really, make it in this world. I know that's what a bunch a bunch of people people tweet me that all the time. Well, it's time to talk about Shopify. When we're talking commerce or e-commerce, we got to be talking Shopify. It should be two conjoined things at all times, business, commerce, Shopify. They go hand in hand, especially in the community that I'm surrounded by. All my boys use Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world with 10% and 10% of all e-commerce in the United States.

From household names like Mattel and Gem Shark to brands that are just getting started. Get started with your own design studio. Hundreds of ready to use templates. Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brands style. You can get the word out like you've got a full-fledged marketing team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world-class expertise in everything from managing your inventory to international shipping to processing and returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, then you're ready for Shopify.

Turn your big business idea into cha-ching money. Do you put that in there? Can you put it in here twice? Can you put it in here three times actually? You can turn it into chiching with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash optic. Go to shopify.com slash optic. Shopify.com slash optic.

I know what you guys are thinking. Where can I get some meat? Where can I get it delivered right to me? Because I want some and I want it now. I'm tired of going to the grocery store, finding out which one looks the best, which one's going to cook the best, and you want it delivered straight to you. Well, it's time to talk about Butcher Box. When dinner time hits and your fridge is full of question marks, butcher box has your back. Skip the last minute supermarket sweep or impromptu chopped challenge with whatever's left over in the fridge.

Butcher Box delivers better meat right when you need it. no mystery meat, no sketchy sourcing, just better options at your fingertips. This is good, ready to be cooked, meat delivered right to you. You don't want to go to the grocery store because I know you well. If you're watching our podcast, something's already wrong with you in the head and you don't want to go do it all yourself. So butcher box is the way to go, I'm telling you.

This script says, does your freezer look like a crime scene of forgotten leftovers? whoever wrote this is really good at writing scripts because that's what my freezer looks like. It looks insane. There's stuff in there that I bought years ago that I still, I don't even know. Can stuff go out of date in the freezer? Matt, do you know? Can it go out of date? I just throw stuff in there and I just hope that it.

All right, well, yes, mine does. Mine did until I found Butcherbox. Butcher box delivers top quality responsibly sourced proteins right to your door. Butcher box delivers better meat and seafood straight to your door, including 100% grass-fed beef, free-range, organic chicken, pork-raised, crate-free, and wild-caught seafood. All Butcherbox proteins are sourced from partners who meet strict animal welfare and sustainability standards. That means no antibiotics, no added hormones ever. So let me explain exactly what it happens.

A box comes to your doorstep, and it's one of a, it's a box. that you chose from their store. The beef, pork, and chicken box is the one that I prefer. It shows up. And guess what's in it? This is all what's in the box. Two pounds of ground beef.

Two New York strip steaks. Four top sirloin steaks. A pound of pork tenderloin and three pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. It's all the meat you need. You don't even have to call me anymore. Right now, Butcher Box is offering our listeners $20 off their first box and free protein for a year.

Go to butcherbox.com slash optic to get this limited time offer and free shipping to you always. That's butcherbox.com slash optic. Don't forget to use our link so that they know we sent you. And then sell was joined their team like the following year, but they haven't like. Oh yeah. That's got to be like imagine from Sims people. Like he hasn't played with anybody else that like another subdu. That wasn't a busy.

I mean, he had to. Fuck. He hasn't had a real. That's a pretty good subduro. Just kick your career off with. Yeah, yeah. Got a bee's. It's not always greener on the other side.

No, it's not. It's a big risk. Big, big risk. It's a pretty big risk. My question is. I mean, it is. My question is. Let's go down the line, okay.

Simp, I don't think he's going anywhere. I think he's just like a heart stuck on that. I don't think he even wants to leave. I don't think any of them wants to leave except for the third, right? It would be, in my opinion, it would be dross in this thing. Why, yeah, that's kind of what I think. Who do you get for tries? Who do you get for Sallium?

I feel like you just keep rotating that fourth out. That's what I would say. It's not us. You're on your third one, let's go. It's not us, bro. No, it's definitely not us. But, okay, let's just pretend that it's Droz. Droz goes to Cloud 9 or where, or Toronto, right?

They go, movie start, movie star, cool it. They try to, who do they get? Beans? No, like, Sib. Sib? I don't fucking know. I'm trying to think of shooting. Why do you say it like that?

No, I... Listen, I was hearing of some rumors. I'm not going to leak on the podcast. You know what I mean? But... Well, tell us... It's going to be an interesting... On a scale of 1 to 10,

like, how crazy is it going to shake things up? I think this option is going to be pretty crazy. Really? Yeah. Exactly. Not for us. What about these boys next door? Are these guys next door?

Yeah, no, they're sticking. They're sticking. They're sticking. Those guys are good I do think UWC matters though for sure A little bit I think so too I think if Faze wins again

I mean it might happen again It's like the little band-aid Your ship's leaking but boom And it's not wrong And it's not wrong And it's not wrong But then another crack shows next year Yeah yeah yeah

And then one more over here Now you're going down Holy shit bro Battle ships I mean Yeah I think EWC definitely plays a part though. If they come out and they win this, which hopefully they don't. We want the boys to go back to back. But if they do come out and win it, I think it's like a Band-Aid fix again and they

stick again. Same as last year. Same thing with thieves, I think. I think of thieves and Faze are very similar in that, but because you got to think about it. You went three out of five tournaments. You know, which is a pretty fairly big tournament. You know what? Okay, but what? Drosk goes back to 100 thieves. We got to stop this shit with EWC's like, EWC is a big tourney, bro. It's not as big as champs. It's like, it's like smaller than champs, bigger than a major. Yeah, of course. It's 150 grand. a person. I'm going to tell you the problem with EWC and why people are actively trying to discount it because people are culturally trying to maintain the fact that nothing is more important

than the thing that has been the most important since the beginning of fucking call of due, well, let's call it since the beginning of XP, right? That is the only thing. That is the only blemish. That is the only thing that EWC cares about their tournament, about their World Series that much, they should make it a point to do it before Call of Duty champs. Because then people are going to fucking take it. That's true. That series. That is the only blemish on this thing, that it happens before the most important, after

the most important tournament of our culture. I also think there is a, you know, whether it's true or not, for a fan, for a fan of Call of Duty to see like they've put all this time and effort into dedicating watching Call of Duty for It's league system, you know, the three leagues that we've had, and like the prestige of winning a major and the prestige of winning champs. And then somebody comes in and it seems like they're just like throwing money. And they're just like, and we're going to do it all the way out here. And it's like you don't have like a connection to it. It's not it's not like you can't.

There's no way you can even go to it. I'm sure you can. But like regular, you know, Americans or people from Europe aren't just going to like go to this event. Yeah. So it's just kind of like it's so like out there. And obviously it's very nice for the players and we're happy for the teams. But it's so different from everything else that we've been watching in Cod for the past 15 years. I think that's why people have a tendency to be like, oh, it's just, the Saudi's throwing a lot of money.

And, you know, so like it can't be that much more prestigious than everything we've done. But in the reality, I'd much rather this than fucking play at a belong arena again. Yeah, no bullshit. Yeah. They just got to do kind of like what league does. Like isn't the, isn't the tournament? MSI just finished and then this weekend's EWC for league. So they went from MSI and Vancouver that ended Sunday, flew out to Saudi Monday,

and then they probably start, I think, Thursday. Dude. But isn't that the second biggest tourney though? MSI? Yeah. So they should just have that like kind of just like Worlds or league. They have worlds at the end, which is I have chance at the end. QVC, like, I think somewhere in the middle would be kind of fire, bro.

Like, after major two, you know what I mean? The mid-season bang out. So it's like a little mid-season champs who's looking like, you know what I'm saying? The other problem, though, that I see with this whole thing is that the Carolina Roll Ravens are never going to throw a fucking event. Cloud 9 is never going to throw an event. Los Angeles is never going to throw an event. A hundred thieves is never going to throw any events. They have made.

Yeah, Matt. Faze? Heretics. Faze? I don't know. Well, I don't know what. Well, I don't know what's up. Okay.

The only thing that I, that I, that I, I don't know. I don't know what, for my boy, Paul. But look, if you look at, if you look at G2, which is what, Cloud 9, how come there's G2 and Cloud 9? No, G2's Rocker. Minnesota. Oh, Rocker. Okay. They're never going to throw an event ever again.

They haven't, okay. Covers? The Covers aren't never going to throw an event. So, like, that's the other thing, which is why we always. ask can we throw two right can we throw two events please and I don't want to throw wait which one's Toronto Ultra I can't remember

Movie Star movie star Coy I didn't even know this a work Movie Star movie star Coy yeah shit okay I never heard of that What jerseys do those what does that even look like I don't know Just gonna be fire

Movie Star I mean yeah They play cloud nine I mean it's gonna be a lot of light blue on the stage That is They're not gonna play Ravens though they won't play Ravens They were supposed to be in our group Yes so now you have what two amateur teams That's what I thought I was like for sure that we're just gonna know

We're getting C9 apparently Does that work? Fuck's that What's that? What's going on there? Wait so who So who plays for C9 then? Sib crab Okay okay fine but the two amateur teams

Orchid P7 War and omit Amateur teams Amm teams So who's getting replaced with Who's replacing Royal Ravens? Another AM team? I mean, yeah.

Wait, so that means that there's five AM teams? Like, how, like, I don't know. I don't understand. Like, which group has two of the AM teams then? Let's see the groups, Matt, if you can't please? We see, like, I know that. I know, like, somebody tweeted out, like, the updated groups, but I don't know. There was one crazy pool, and I think it was Cloud Nine's pool.

It was like thieves, Cloud Nine and somebody else. Yeah, there was like two groups, I think. I think there was, like, Phase and Heretics and Falcons. Yeah, there was a pretty hard pool. I think it was Cloud Nine. right yeah go to uh where's riley when you need them where do you go to find uh the the groups

just type in google fucking ewc breaking point has all that shit i think i don't know man i am i am mind boggled by this whole situation because i know that how do we get here man uh greed uh i know the ewc wants this thing to to be successful not just for their i know that they know

that call of duty is is is big enough. Could be 10 times bigger if there was some leniency from the devs. But I don't know. Back to Twitch. Step number one, man.

Back to Twitch. And you know what the fucked up thing is? It's like, we'll co-stream. Okay, we're back on Twitch, but we'll call stream to YouTube. Centralize. Let's not get crazy here. We're starting to talk crazy here.

Let's not. Let's see about that. You wouldn't, co-stream? Don't you coaststream? stream already? Yeah, but we'll see. Fine. We shall see. Long story short is that there are simple steps that we can do that affects... A long way away, a lot of time. You know what? I just don't even know how it affects them. And if they just took the moment to say, you know what, guys, as partners in this thing, we're going to be transparent with you. We're going to tell you why we cannot,

but you can't tell anybody else. Then I'd be like, okay, cool. And I come in here and I'd be like, guys, we know why. It makes sense to me, why we're not doing it. So please believe. that if we could tell you, we would tell you, but we can't. But that's not the case. And I will hope that you guys would believe that. If I said, I'm like, oh, it makes sense that you would, you know. But man, it is infuriating. All right, Matt, forget the thing since you didn't look it up.

How was your Inter-M Miami night? Hitch and I had a bet. Yeah, when was that? The 12th? Yeah, it was Saturday. Yeah, how was that? It was good. It was rainy.

The meet and greet, when we pulled up, When we walked up, we saw 15 people in line and we're like, oh, shit. Rain got them. Rain, because it was raining. Yeah. Yeah, but then we were there the full hour. It was supposed to be an hour. We did like an hour and 15 minutes because people just kept on coming.

Yeah, a lot of people showed up at the day. Yeah, yeah. It could have been done better, I think. I think there was, even from our part, I think that we could have done a better job. Did you want to meet any players? No. No, no, no, no. Yeah, there was not a lot of, it wasn't as like, it wasn't like, it wasn't like as in

as like the Rangers Knights and the Mavs nights but yeah we probably wouldn't do it again unless of course there was some changes um did you all have nice seats no and we have to pay for our own seats yeah yeah it's happening but we got to see we got to see we got to see messy score yeah messie i mean that's fire but i mean OG times enter Miami they hook you up with seats no no no we got to get the seats at least yeah you got very very least yeah at least yeah at least you got at least I mean the jerseys are fire though the jerseys are fire for sure flew out there

that's crazy maybe a little dab up a messy that'd be cool that's what I said what if there isn't any available even a tap up a fifth bump majority album it's fair but they should have some aside maybe so after we got some insurance after Hitch and I were done

climbing all the way out to our seats I look at them and I'm like how was his big high second the last row second the last row we're up there you guys to watch the game on stream ace that's a high up you has to watch the game on streamies that's a high up you has I had my phone on Zoom the whole time.

But I look over a hitch and I'm like, I'm like, yo, all right, this was happening. We're leaving a half time. Okay. Or? Or their first goal. First goal. And they got close like within the first like 60 seconds.

Yeah, it was like really close. The first 60 seconds they scored? They missed an open goal. Open goal. And then he's like, ah, gosh. I know exactly how he is at games. He's like, you're like, you're. ready to go yeah like dude it's the third inning he's like yeah but i'm looking at the clock i'm

it's already 8 30 i got to be in bed by 9 messie got found right outside the box and i was like well this is it and he's like i'm already called the uber and sure enough he hit the shot i'm fucking insane what a magician that guy is dude it's insane dude is he just max oro like you see yeah there's the groups here we're back to the groups thank you guys we're back in here wait what what what what you say what tbd because we were supposed to have ravens For Cloud 9. Yeah. To be determined, that other AM team.

How does that make sense? Like the other AM team is just removed? And then Group D has two AM teams? Wait, let me read it. We're the world champs. How do we have the hardest bragging? Group D is two AM teams. You guys have one AM team that is not decided yet.

Okay, but we do have an AM team coming. But we only have one. Group B has... Because Group D had Falcons instead of P7, E-Sports. Got it. I mean, yeah. Now our group is hard. Group C is like kind of hard too.

The hardest is obviously Group D. Heritage Six phase. It was Group D. Oh, wait, not anymore, right? Yeah, they had Falcons there. I mean, Omit's probably the best damn team there, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so. That's MacMelt's Reese. That's like a basically another pro team. Yeah. MacRees. I don't know the other two. I can't like that. Is it MacMelt's?

Is Byron on that team? Prolute? Prolet? It might be. I can't remember. I actually don't know. But I do know MacMelt's and Reese. vivid.

Or another the fourth. He's probably him. He's probably him. He's probably disgusted. I'm with solely girl 714 that envy should should take one of those one of those AM spots.

It's like this whole thing, man, I look to my left, I look to my right. I don't see anybody that was there from the beginning. You know what I mean? I don't look to my right

and I see Strow. I don't look to my left. I don't see fucking Jason Lait. I don't see nobody. that I know. None of us are there. Damn.

We're not the only ones. That to me is like the biggest fucking fuck you to any community that has ever fucking existed in the history of e-sports. You know? A decade and a half of us putting the shit together. And then all of a sudden they're like, oh shit, this is big enough. All right, everybody gets the fuck out. Hacks, fucking stro.

You all of you. Get the fuck out of here. We got billionaires. be an AC or fire D could be good I mean all the groups are All the groups are pretty good Even B I mean gentlemates you never know

I mean you really never know Because like these teams that did make champs You don't know what they've been cooking up for the past two months Yeah right They could come out and just get slammed But they could come out and randomly just They're probably going to come out and get slam But yeah that's very

You never know Not a bad bad take So what is it? Is it groups Thursday and Friday? Yeah And Saturday starts bracket Yeah Saturday starts winners round one and then

play twice on Sunday, I assume. Okay, so Thursday, Friday groups. Because we were playing just semis because there's no winners or losers. You just played semis, lost the phase, and then they played again later that day. So it's like three matches on Sunday. So it's both semis and final Sunday.

That's going to be fired. It's like four quarter final matches on Saturday and then three matches on Sunday. Hell yeah. I'm obviously not forgetting about an age shot. Obviously, I see my boy next to me and this thing too. Yeah. But I had to go out of my way to bring him in because originally they didn't want to be a part of it.

I stuck my neck out and I fucking try to, and not try it. I actually convinced him to join the league. So yeah, I don't know. I'm excited for it. I miss competitive call of duty. How long do we have to wait until after this? After this, it's August, September, end of October is usually release. So, yeah, like two and a half months.

Well, end of October was released last year. It's been November. Like early November and October, one of the two. Can I as hex quarters sponsor a TST tournament and then you do all the work? Yes. What? Absolutely, you can. And that would be cool?

Like people will let that happen? Yeah, yeah. All right. It's going to be a long off season, man. Me and Seth are putting up some cash for a tournament. Oh, Seth? Oh, Seth. All right.

Elmo Twitter got hacked. We're not going to look at that. It was anti-Semitic and obviously they were calling for... I didn't even know Elmo had a Twitter. I didn't even know how to Twitter either. Yeah. I wonder who follows Elmo. And I wonder if they're like...

If when Elmo tweets, people are like, big fan. Yeah, 100% you got to read it in his voice. It's Elmo. I don't want to see that. Yeah, I don't want to see that either. I mean, yeah, if it's insane. Matt, can we see the preview to the EWC stage, please? Oh, it's nuts.

It's fire. It is nuts. Can I ask something? Wow. What is so attractive about this to you guys? The screens. The screens above? We have that.

We have that. The screens on the stage and the backdrop. It just looks very professional. It reminds me of like an E-League. This reminds me of American fucking Idol. This just looks like a stage. Yeah, this is a proper. I just feel like Dashie's going to walk out there and maybe turn the lights.

I'm just going to hear like, they're like, bro, bro, bro, bro. Bruce. We love it here in the Riyadh. Dude, that's fucking... Dude, I love the Arabs, really. I bet, dude. The showarma there, by the way, goes crazy. Does it?

Any first time pros going there? Get the chicken showarma on the catering. No, you got to go to the place we went to. What was that place called, bro? Cabana. What was it? Yeah, remember? Dude, it's literally at the end.

It's at the end. You know that big, big fountain? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, all the way at the end? It's on the right side. Do you? The mall kind of? Like, the canes one or a mall?

Cains? Because there's like a canes and like the mall? Of course you know where the cane's at, which you're big ass. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, it's so far. They have a Waggou steak wrap. No, it's a Shisha Lounge. Yeah, it's a Shisha Lounge.

Ooh. I'm down. You get the Huka, then you get this Wagu steak wrap that's out of this world. Wow. I'm down. Because me and, uh, we had a little circle last year because at our hotel, there's like a Shisha Lounge and then it was me, Ernie, think Damon was there. At the hotel?

Yeah. Right down in the lobby, there's like a little Shisha Lounge. We're just there. And it's hot as fuck outside too. Oh my God. That is. Dude, it's a fucking desert outside. It's literally 12 a.m.

and it's like 100 degrees still. I'm just sweating. Dang. We got out of the airport. We were like, whoa. The dry heat. It was like, what, midnight? We were like, whoa.

So bad. Just hits you like, just feel yourself pruning, dude. It looks like the sun's closer. It might be. Maybe closer to Earth. I mean, holy shit. Is there science behind that? Yeah, listen, I do appreciate a lot

the fact that we have this this oh my god 109 110 and 5 p.m. bro and I think we're going during the peak of summer that's what it'd be lovely to go to Riyadh you know what I mean

in March in March yeah it'd be it'd be lovely bro I'm telling you right now you excited to go back I mean yeah to compete yeah but like that flight is yeah it's vicious yeah it's vicious like if I could teleport there for sure yeah people are like you guys go and I was like

meh I mean, that's a long travel day, bro. Dude, I don't know if I could do it again. You don't know if I could go ever again. Really? I don't know. I mean, it was literally, I remember us timing it. Remember, we timed it from getting in the Uber in Riyadh.

It was 24 hours, like, on the dot. 24 hours, 16 minutes and a couple of seconds as I walked up of my driveway. Yeah. So it was a full day of just on the move, traveling, bad sleep. I mean, it's a rough travel day. I commend Peterman for coming with. Yeah. Because he just went over to have fucking meetings.

And he maybe had three. Wow. Me and Seth at least had, you know, had work to do. We're hanging out with fucking Puckett, who is the worst call-of-duty analyst, not because of his abilities or inabilities to be a great host. He just doesn't know ball. He's a Halo kid. What do you expect?

What? Why do he get so many shots? Because he never picks optics, so fuck him. With love, with love. with love, like utmost love, utmost love. He was my Sherpa in the hosting gig, even though, like, we got sort of sabotaged with the prompts.

Yeah, we got Sabbath. Yeah, so before we move on to the next topic, which is Tim got offered $15 million, literally I have zero beef with my man, uh, pocket, okay? Now, Maven. Oh, fuck, that dude. No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

Another, another dude who I have a good relationship with. Tim the Tabman was offered 15 for two years to stream on Mixer Did you ever get an offer for Mixer? No, it was too late Like after I had retired It was already like the deals had dried up But during those times No, I was still competing

You didn't stream that much Yeah, I was still competing Oh, because that's right And you wouldn't have been allowed to anyway, right? Yeah Well, not on weekends, but yeah Think about that 15 mail for two years

You wasn't going to be He allowed, he forgoed opportunities. I'm gone. Unreal. Tim and Reels to Nage had that a mixer offered him 15 million for two years. That's seven and a half a year for those who don't know math simply. And you can come back to Twitch after? Yep.

And those deals got cut short. In months. Remember Ninja's deal got Nige and Shroud? Their deals got cut short and they got full paid out. Wait, they got paid out from that? And they just go back to Twitch. Right. Imagine this, imagine this.

Imagine this. I'm like, yo, I'm going to give you. you $60 million to leave Twitch and YouTube and you're only going to stream here exclusively 40 hours a week on mixer. Okay, but you have to do the full year. No problem. Okay? Yeah, no problem.

And then Ninja says smartly. So it's like, all right. And everybody says smartly. So I was like, all right, but you have to guarantee that money. They ain't going to be no like bullshit. Like if it if it's not something that I did, it's an MG guaranteed, right? Yeah. And then they sell to Facebook.

Yeah. They shut it down. because they didn't pick up as many fans or they didn't pick up as many users D-A-U's daily active users and they're like we got to cut it we're gonna move that hey listen

the offer's still the same but we're going to Facebook everybody's like wait whoa whoa that's not the deal it is like no it kind of is because it's still mixer but it's owned by that no no it's not the same deal and the contract says it's not the same deal therefore you have to pay us out and get let's get the fuck out of here Let's get the fuck out

Six months in In then back to Twitter Like You know Those guys actually Like I can't believe I can't believe Ninja and shroud

Went back to Twitch That fast I would have taken a year No you can't You would have taken some time I would have taken some time You would have retired Dude that

Because rumors Was his was 15 million There's were rumored What? 80, 200 I saw 80 and 200 No 30 and 60 No you're thinking

That steak shit You're thinking of the kick stuff. I'm thinking about bread. That's what I'm thinking about. Yeah. You know, I'm sure Tim sort of maybe regrets it, but in his position, obviously, there's really nothing that you can regret. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure he's like, ah, damn.

Have you seen that clip? The clip is fucking hilarious. It is hilarious. Come on, man. You want to break records? Let's break it right now. Who cares? It's already over.

I already have. That's been Nade's go to. I don't know if you guys realized the little beard stroke. Yeah, everyone has. on the tick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He loves it. Look, he still has his hand placement.

Yeah, he's already ready to go back. No, but it was, it was like, I like it. For me personally, I had such a huge community on Twitch that it wasn't enough for me to like leave all my subs

and everything I built over there. All right, Disney Channel, we know that. They don't think they're a bad guy. Everybody knows that, Tim, you have been, you've been 15 million. Oh my God. Oh, hey, Chad, I was letting you know

You got two birds from me And I would have seen me again Cancer the 90 months So, brother, it's gone It's fucking gone I'd be off you, Tim I actually love Navy So unfiltered

Oh, so unfiltered You guys wouldn't have seen me again, please I'd have been streaming to my like 40 viewers What I would have been playing like, I don't know With some bullshit about Smile on my face, just I'd be like, dude, one HP I'm like chat, you guys saw that?

Nobody's talking I'll I'll clip it It's good I'll clip it I got it No problem Can we please

For a second Take a moment Not to relish But to See what this means YouTube being more strict On monetizing Non-Ooriginal

Content Oh no What does that mean Like watch Like watch parties Like if I No no Watch parties are good

Because you're offering Commentary Is it like reacts like shit? No No I think it has Don't worry Don't worry

Don't worry It has a lot to do with AI. It has to do a lot with AI, but also like, it's the same thing that I was to. AI is getting crazy by them. Yeah. Already. Bro, I saw. We talk about it every podcast and I swear every week it gets crazier.

It's more and more. I just see clips, I'm like, bro. Look, it's evolving and obviously like I'm behind it 100% and should not enslave me. But the rest of humanity, sure. I'm a good liaison, I think. It's getting crazy. I can't imagine a couple years down the line, but what is this? Cracking down an original content with a major thing.

There's no way, there's no, YouTube makes too much money off of, like, reaction. Like, you got to think how many reactions channels. You're, you're like, you're like laughing on purpose. You know what I'm saying? Like, you're not, you're like, you're like laughing. I'm thinking of like, but I'm thinking, there's a, there's a, thinking about cut clips. You're thinking about, like, all these people that just are, they're just ripping other people's content. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Ripping is, it's always, that's always been dumb. Yeah. If you're not adding anything to it. No. Well, listen, like I said, I don't care. Right? I don't like when people like grab our contents and clip and reuploit like I don't give a shit really

what I care about and I shouldn't because I'm just my I don't know why I it bothers me so much when they go out and says like dude my channel's fucking doing so great this month we got three mill and it's none of your fucking content yeah you know what I'm saying like they're fucking bragging about their stats and like motherfucker it's not your content yeah it's stupid that's that's the only thing that bothers me at the whole situation but good fucking good I agree because if you're putting that much effort into doing that they might as well just put your face on it and really fucking know what it feels like

to be exposed to all the criticism. Yeah. Yes. So yeah, I think it's good. I want to know what, had a good run. I want to know how this shakes out, though. Because it's not going to be React channel. React channels you're offering commentary.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah, there's a React channel for every thing. Side of YouTube. Yeah, for every... I saw Zini yesterday fucking live watching shots he live watching something but then right after he started watching like fuck that's delicious and I'm like

wait a minute I can just sit here and watch my favorite what do you mean you could that's what you should do love that show that's what every streamer that's not like a freak at a game should do well because playing games is just I'm a freak at a game though

yeah gaming is in like a weird yeah gaming's in a weird state like the actual performer yeah that it's And that is... It's in a weird scene. Saw it after. No. In terms of, like, creating content, it's like, you know, it's like, why would you sit

there and watch someone play the game when you can sit there and watch someone talk about the game while you're still watching the game? It's like... It's like the watch party. Like, watching, like, why would you watch the mainstream when you could still do that? But you get, like, the extra... A lot of people want their entertainment on their second monitor to not be exactly what they're doing.

Like, if I'm playing Val, I don't want to be watching someone play. Val at the same time. I'd rather watch a YouTube video or something else. And so like when these phase guys are going out and they're just doing whatever the fuck they're doing, just having that on and being like, what are they up to now? Like that's, I think that's more enticing than

if I'm playing Val and I also have my boy or my friend on playing Val and you can't listen to it. Yeah. Because you're playing the game. Yeah, you're still locked in. I don't know. That's just how I see it. But I feel like it's been like a long like, I feel like it's

been kind of shifting towards that for a while now, but I wonder if there's ever a point where gaming just becomes like, not obsolete. I mean, obviously there's always going to be people that want to watch games, but, I mean, it's been slowly like starting to shift over to that IRL, react, like, all that shit. This is different times, man. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's different times. Different meta. I mean, you experienced it, right? When you guys were streaming scrimps and everybody was watching and then you're like, obviously you wouldn't. Yeah, obviously you weren't talking about your literal teammates that were watching. You were talking some other people that was like,

who the fuck? You should, you talk too much shit about us. And that's what I'm saying. I'm like, you'd talk too much shit about us to be, you know, what the fuck you're doing.

Basically said in the other, like, remember the other podcast, but I'm just saying, like Ben Jena Seem's saying I should be dropped and then two days later he's watch party me with a coffee,

thinks he's like, he thinks it's all dandy. You know what it's not. It's not bad. I'm the one ripping. So it's like, and he not sub and nothing. He's not even type in the chat.

Seth, what the Jonah? Takalua used to say. Fuck you, Ben. Who the fuck is Jonah Takalua? Fuck you, miss. Oh my god, fuck you miss? Yeah, you remember now?

Yes, now I remember. The graffiti writer, dictation, but it's a dick. Yeah. Fentation. Fuck you, bang. I gotta watch those again. I haven't seen that in so long. Ranga, why do you call him a Ranga?

Got red hair. He's like an orangutan. But from the viewers perspective, it doesn't even make sense to watch like, like yeah like let's say if it was my POV or like somebody else that has a webcam like they can hear the comms like they could just hear like different perspectives and they could just like it's like it's like two for one you get to watch their stream it's like oh let's also keep up with the game you know what I mean yeah instead of just like basically ear in silence except for gunshots it's like it's pretty insane yeah now 100% the ex and it's hell what we're gonna say

the last one okay yeah the what the fuck at one hour oh no wait we're at an hour already no no I'm joking, I'm joking. Are we at an hour? We might be. Yeah, we are in a hour? What the fuck? I know. Flies when it's having.

When you're having fun. Fly's been timing by. Fly's been timing by. Dude, what about the last one? 3.4 million viewers for a, for the League of Legends T1 versus Gen G game. Oh, it was so far too. 3.4. Oh my God.

Who won? Gen G. One. I heard Faker broke. Dude, Faker game one. came out or a diffed him. I was like, oh my God, he's about to take over. And the game two, Gen G won a gritty.

Dude, it was so fun to watch because now that I play, I was like, I saw like someone would all 10 or someone would, I could literally tell when they scammed that I'm like, that's a scam. Yeah, that's actually so far because like, whenever I watch League, I don't know what's happening. All I hear is the couch, it's like, faker. Yeah.

I'm like, okay, faker probably just did some crazy shit. Like you get caught out and die. Now you're in a 5V4 and a 5V4 and you're down in gold and this. you're not winning that fight and then you see them transition to Drake and they just have full river control you're like they can't even like look at these guys and then it just slowly snowballs bro

MSI Legal Legends is this weekend I'm watch partying for sure Really? Not all of it but I'll probably tune in like Saturday Sunday when it starts again I might tune in just to see you fucking smile So wait how good is Faker like still? Is he still like that? Because I remember people talking about that like six years ago

I mean they were just in the final He's still definitely nasty You know what I heard too? But this Chovey guy who apparently is like... He's next up. Yeah, he's like the mid that was playing against Faker. And they've beat him 23 times in a row. G.

He runs T1 except for Worlds. Except worlds? That's why it's kind of like the aura is like... Because for like every other time, like last year was the same shit, Gen G was running T1, at least that's what Ken was saying to me. And then they played each other at Worlds and then just Faker just aura this. They were just always like... He's like inevitable at Worlds.

Yeah. That's why he's just to go. So there's international. which is like world MSI like international tournaments so gen g i believe the graphics said they were one and one against t1 at international tournaments now they're two and one but in like their domestic LCK games they were like 23 and oh against t1 what oh shit it's insane though which is why i think they're like dude like the team that's just it's just champs like in the world they're just tweak yeah you see faker on the stage you're like holy shit we're about to play faker It looks different. I'm about to play faker for the cup. Yeah,

it's like, yeah, but like, you beat him 23 times. But then game one, Faker, like, just put on a master class

and I was like, holy shit, faker's about to do this shit. And then, I think it went, game, two, Gen G, game three,

T1, maybe. 3.4 million people watch that? Dude. I was one of them, bro. Wait, do you watch the snippets

for like the previews of like, the, for example, like last year, like, a world's, they're going to have like, it was Gen G and T1, and then it was just like a trailer for six minutes

and it was so fucking good, bro. Yeah, Faker dropped the one-liner at the end before he said, we're back. Wait, wait, did you never saw those? Oh my God. Those are gems, bro. These are literally the best videos ever. The Champ Sunday for the last event.

I was literally watching that in the morning. I was just getting so much. Dude, it's so fire. Shit was so good. And they're speaking in their whatever. I don't even know what they're saying. Yeah. It's like an anime.

It's just fucking subtitles, but it goes so. Dang. But yeah, this was. So fire to watch. Now that I know what's going on a little bit. And they played my favorite champ game four, Trundle. I was like, hell yeah, I get to see a literal professional play Trundle at MSI, throwing up pillars and shit.

So fire. So fun to watch, man. Hell yeah. And it was just hype. Like, you could just tell it was. Yeah, that's like basically like a baby champs. But then again, it's not, just get ready for Worlds, T1, that world. They just come different.

When is worlds? November. November? I think. I don't know. I don't know. You have a gnat around you. Careful, because they are flesh-eating gnats.

Did you know that they're about to drop millions of flies from the sky on all of our Texas skies? They've all been neutered through radiation. Huh? He's tweaking about the gnat. I said, you're good, dude. No, there's a flesh-eating gnat, and they landed on my van yesterday. Start eating you? Yeah.

Wait, what? No, finish that, finish that. You haven't heard about this? Drop flies that have been neutered from radiation and then he just stopped talking. Yeah, to come down and eat the flesh-eating gnats. There are flesh-eating gnats currently in our air here in Texas, Frisco, Plano, and all that shit. Here we go. What even is that?

Yeah, see, now we're getting into the gritty topics. Yeah, yeah. We'll end it right after this. Now we're starting to get dirty. The government plans to drop a horde of flies over Texas border here, so. Why? By dropping the sterile, fully developed flies, the USDA plans to prevent flesh-eating maggots. Maggates.

From reaching. That's what Blake used to call me in high school. No, there was something else, but it sounds like that. Breed millions of sterilized flies and drop them over Texas-Mexican border to protect the more than $100, wait, the $100 billion, cattle and beef industry from- I want to see the fucking drop. Yeah. It's like they're up in a helicopter and you see it.

The door is slowly open and just a bunch of flies. They're all dropping all of a sudden. They open up their shoots and shit. Find the maggots. They're all just, dude, that is insane. Anyway. I would hate to live over that drop. Anyway, that has been the news brought to you by Optic News in this Optic Podcast.

We do appreciate you. And appreciate, of course, better help shop find Butcherbox. We'll see you guys next week. Watch out for the flies. Paggot. Peace and the maggots.