Pablo Torre Finds Out - "Play, Don't Pay": Meet the College-Football YouTuber Who Led a Gaming Revolt

Episode Date: July 21, 2026

James Bordeaux was a 23-year-old in Kentucky, playing EA Sports College Football 27 for a living. Then Electronic Arts — the $50-billion mega-developer backed by the Saudis and Jared Kushner's private-equity firm — tried to extract so-called "microtransactions" from inside his beloved video game. So the furious creator put his mouth where his money is: leading the type of organic, populist revolt that has become all too uncommon in American life. Bordeaux explains to Pablo how fans won a battle... but why consumers may never win the war.• Previously on PTFO: The "Pay-to-Play" Scheme That (Almost) Ruined Video Games, with Dan Soder Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. I don't care if I never work with them. Again, I feel lied to. I feel betrayed. And I don't believe in the direction the game is going in any longer. Right after this. Hello, hello, hello. What's up? This is something that lots of people, by the way, have demanded that I do. And so thank you for making time, man. How should I be addressing you as a human? Bordeaux is cool. I also go by James, but like everyone would just know me as Bordeaux. They hear James, they're going to be like, what? The other way I've been like thinking of you and referring to you on the show is as the leader of a revolt.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very serious conversation because college football 27 has already started on a very bad foot. If you've been on social media, you've been on YouTube, you would have heard about the hashtag CFB Play Don't. pay movement. Bordeaux started the movement. EA is bringing micro-transactions to single-player modes, and it is only going to get worse from this very moment, but I believe if we act now, there is still time to make change.

I just had to say my piece on something I disagreed with that I was blindsided with. And I'm glad that my voice was able to have some power with it. So James, for people who don't know anything about video games, let alone your channel, how do you describe what it is that you do?

I just play football games for fun. And I come up with different challenges, fun ways to make it interesting, see if you can take that small school all the way to a national championship that would never be there in real life. Hawaii is the most beautiful place in college football, but the hardest place to win a modern national championship. We will be taking over a football program located on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And how do you convince recruits at minimum to fly six hours just to get to your school? Maybe I put a school in Alaska. Just different fun ways to really play these games and get the best experiences out of them. The philosophy behind coming up with degrees of difficulty that you're self-imposing, that you're sort of inventing,

when did you realize, oh, that's my niche in video game streaming? Even though I was getting really good at these games, it made it more fun for me as well to really challenge myself, to only recruit one stars maybe and try to win a championship. and it just continued to spiral and snowball into more and more views, success, and it's kind of how I got here. It's been a really fun journey. The question of when you started getting into this,

because I think there are people who are still just sort of wrapping their minds around, okay, wait a minute. So he makes videos for YouTube in which he's playing football games. How did you get into that? Like, how old were you? How long ago was it when you first started trying to do any of this?

I would say I was about eight whenever I started just playing the football games in general. My dad's beating up on me. I stand no chance, but forces me to get better. I'm just having fun with the games. And probably around time I hit 16 or 17, I figured out how to get the old NCAA game modded and on my computer. I was used an NCAA football 14, and then there was a modding team called College Football Revamped. And they put out mods that would update the game to the most recent season. And that opened up a whole other can of worms because there wasn't college football games at the time.

I didn't have a PS3 ever. So I didn't get to play NCAA football 14 when it came out. And that just set me from enjoying the NFL and fantasy football and all that to really fall in love with college football far more. So you're 23 years old now? Yes, sir. And so the alternate life in which, you know, maybe. Maybe let's say your dad takes it a little easier on you and you don't end up being sort of radicalized by the prospect of, wait a minute, this is a job now. What's your alternate life? What are you doing instead of this?

So I was in college to be a statistician. I was on full scholarship. I always kind of imagined I was going to work in sports statistics. And what school was it? Northern Kentucky University. And I just decide to fire back up. a YouTube channel that I had with like 3,000 subs at the time. And over the summer, it just blew up immediately. So by the time I get back to school, I'm going into my second year, but I was like in my third year on credits. And I just start dropping classes. Are you playing as Northern Kentucky?

Is that what you're starting off with? I did do a series at one point where I just put the school in the game. I thought that was really cool. I went to college at Northern Kentucky University. and although I dropped out, I spent a couple years there. I'd enjoy going to some of the basketball games, but what we were missing was a football team, so I'm starting one. But by the time I'm dropping classes, I'm starting to make good money online.

I'm having to decide between, do I think I can be a gamer for work, or do I have to really focus on getting this degree? And I just couldn't do both. I was working so much it was impossible. What did your parents think? They were not too happy with me. They have always believed in me, but also they had their own vision. And it's a whole foreign world to them.

It's not what they grew up with. It's not what they would imagine. So now they're so happy with it. And even by the time I made the decision they understood, but there was definitely a push more to be like, what are you doing? Keep going to class. Don't drop those.

And now you have a channel with, I think, is it over 600,000 subs now on YouTube? We're about there. We're getting close. Incredible. And so at some point, EA Sports, the manufacturer of these games of college football and Madden and all these other things, they have this relationship with you as part of their creator network. And how does that come to be? When does that happen? This happens going into the launch of college football 25, the first game coming back. I get to go down to Orlando to play the

game early. This game that everybody's been waiting for for a decade, I've been playing these EA sport games modded, but I've been playing them. This is the coolest thing that could possibly happen. So once I heard about that, I'm like, oh yeah, let's see what happens. I had my concerns going in. I wasn't fully set on them putting out the best game possible because I'd seen what they'd done with Madden recently. But when I got down there, they addressed a lot of those. And I was like, okay, let's see where this goes. And that was kind of the start. I want people to understand that you yourself are kind of this prospect that got recruited. And even like the schools, right?

Like the whole idea of you're going to pick these like underdogs. And it's going to be really hard for you to win a title with them in the single player mode that you've been streaming. Some of these schools start literally recruiting you, right? Absolutely. I've talked with head coaches. I've gone on visits. I've gotten jerseys. I've got helmets behind me.

like, here is a North Dakota State championship ring. You're holding up a literal... From when they won the FCS championship. A literal FCS golden championship ring. It's just sitting right there. I'm like, oh, perfect example. So you got that because you won with North Dakota, and they were like, we want to make you officially a part of the program.

Yeah, I've played with North Dakota State in past games, and then they're coming to this one. They finally decide to move up to FBS. And so they're like, let's send them a package. Show them some love. Oh, my God. That was to entice you to continue to stay with the program. Yeah, to continue using them in future videos.

Just the moment at which EA releases the college football game after a period of dormancy that is imposed because, of course, legally, you know, the whole question of name, image, and likeness is caught up in the court systems, and this is a federal issue, and how are people going to be? going to rule on it. How is it ever going to be possible to play these games again, which had led you to, of course, playing a modded, aka basically an unofficially edited version of college football. It raises this question of like, is EA going to do right by the fans? The fans have been waiting for this. Are they going to deliver on it? And what you're telling me is that the introduction

you had to EA through the lens of, oh, my God, they're really doing it. it must have been so exciting in terms of now you're in contact with the direct manufacturer and for a kid who grew up playing this thing, like what can be better than that is to have a direct line to those folks? I'm just like, this is going to be awesome. There's only so much you can get to in the first game when they're trying to start the series up. So I understood that even where things were lacking needs to get there.

And so this third year was really supposed to be like that year. And it was starting to feel like it. and then all of a sudden it wasn't. The subject of the micro-transaction. I need you to explain what is a micro-transaction, as you see it? I see it as a way to buy something in a game.

You have to spend a little bit of extra money to get something. And how you build that into the game is very important because there's different ways you can go about it and trying to extract more money out of your consumer base. So historically, you could microtransact, meaning pay real American dollars for, you know, pieces of, basically like pieces of flair for a uniform like NBA 2K.

And that's been familiar. We talked about how in the last episode, there's a virtual do-rag you could buy an NBA 2K. That was actually more expensive than a real-life do-rag you could buy on Amazon, which says so much to me. But college football, the institution of the micro-transaction in which you spend real money to get virtual currency. So basically, as you have success in these modes, you gain experience, and that will allow you to level up your player or coach faster, and you're able to make him a lot better. What EA did in previous games was they allowed you to control this.

they allowed you to go at whatever speed that you wanted to make that experience however you wanted to feel it. In 27, they decided to remove all of the faster options and now they give you an option to pay them if you want to reach those levels faster. And they said nothing about it. Let's just see how expensive it could be to upgrade your player. I started as a two-star.

I was curious what would happen. Our max overall is only 80 for the time being, but we could potentially spend $6,000. 500 points, just getting our player from a 55 to an 80 overall in a single player mode, that is like 50 bucks. Oh, no, I accidentally clicked it. I accidentally clicked it. I hate myself. So, in other words, you need to pay to level up as quickly as you used to be able to by virtue

of like the time and effort and the skill that you would put into this thing that was, of course, like, more than just at this point a game, but also a world and a community. and a thing that people really cared about. I want to add to this. It allows you to create your own experience inside these modes and fixes the mistakes that they might make on the development side. If they don't tune certain things properly,

it's really beneficial to be able to tune it how you want. And they've even said this. They've said that's why those sliders are there. And now they're kind of going back on it and hiding that option to stand behind their own own gameplay mechanics. What was your reaction to realizing that in year three, the all-important year, micro-transactions were now a part of your life?

I was not happy with it. I don't care if I never work with them. Again, I feel lied to. I feel betrayed. And I don't believe in the direction the game is going in any longer. You can hate me. I'd then been playing this game for almost a month. Off and on, of course, because there were different, like, periods where you're able to film.

but I had seen this game for a month prior to this at this point, and I never saw any of it. You see a lot of stuff in early access where it could be a bug, it might not be there, so on the road to glory side, you might wonder, oh, how do you not catch it? There were smithers, like little hints where you're like, that's where it could be, but you didn't know if it functioned that way. Dynasty side didn't even know there was settings. So it kind of just caught me all off guard when it was actually there and you're asking these devs every question about what is in the game.

They tell you every little detail about the new little things that they've put in. Nothing about this. Nobody on marketing briefs us. It was a whole 180 because no one ever made it sound like they were going in this direction. In fact, another creator said that one of the devs specifically told them there wasn't going to be micro-transactions. So a lot of us were just caught so off guard that this is how it actually came out. And, oh, it was really frustrating once you realize that they took sliders out too. They took sliders out to push you towards these micro-transactions that were there in the previous games.

I think that just really lit even more people on fire. As a business story, I do need to remind people that EA Sports was purchased famous amid all the success for a college football, they were purchased by a consortium that involves, and I will just read this out again, the Saudi private investment fund, a Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, inside of which is Jared Kushner,

this character from, of course, the world of politics. But I say that to say that what a microtransaction does is create new ways for the video game manufacturer to make money individually off of these transactions from all of these users in ways that they were not able to before.

And so in terms of the unpopularity of this that EA should have been aware of, you're saying that you suspect it was obviously unpopular and that it was obviously going to be a way to get money, to extract money from its fans, its customers, and that's why they were doing this so shadily. They were a bit silent on it. Like they put out these deep dives

that have everything new coming, to the game. And there was not really a mention. They put out these deep dives where I would expect they say, yeah, we're going to remove some of the sliders and features you all have gotten accustomed to. Why not talk about it? So that was where it really hit home for me is it's just there all of a sudden. And we have to either deal with this and we have to understand this is just year one. they're going to continue to try and extract more and more money if no one says anything. And from that point, I just didn't care. That's not the future I want to see with these games.

Well, part of why I'm so delighted to talk to you is that there is a world in which someone who has direct access to the manufacturer of their favorite thing, which can give them money and attention and distribution of all of these things that you have built your business on that you have got. gone all in on yourself, right? Leaving college to do it. There's a world in which that person goes along with this because that's the deal.

That's the implicit deal. And instead, what you do is you create effectively a hashtag and a movement. Over the next couple weeks, starting today, you will see hashtag CFB Play Don't Pay across all social medias. I will be putting this under every single post until they address the issue. You can't just see... How does hashtag CFB Play Don't Pay?

How does that first develop in your mind? We're actually sitting in a Discord call playing another EA game, a bunch of us creators, FIFA, and we're just talking about how awful this is. A couple of us have already put out tweets on it. We're very frustrated. And it kind of just all starts to click.

Well, this is... the only time to push back. If we're three years down the line, there is no way that they remove it then. Yes. So I'm starting like, okay, I'm going to put out this video. What's a good hashtag we can come up with? My original hashtag horrendous. If I didn't have these other guys on my side, it was Bring Back Fast XP. Not as catchy. And it's like, Bring Back Fast XP is not going to get anybody movement at all. But hashtag CFB brings in the game and then play. Don't pay. Because it was still a fun game, but don't pay them for this extra crap that they're trying to put in there. And so one by one after my video comes out, everyone starts to put out there.

So it's not just a one-day thing. Micro transactions are a disease, and EA has brought them to Dynasty and Road to Glory in college football 27. EA's greed truly knows no bounds. People are already spending money on this, and it's ridiculous that it's no longer a free feature in the game. We had it last year. It's like how much do you need? Ultimate team doesn't pay enough. The sales of the game don't pay enough. You now need to squeeze the 1% of the player base for just a little bit extra and not. We got days of content coming. More people start to talk about it. The hashtag continues to get bigger every day. And EA, by the time that they finally

back down a little bit, they'd already put out two other responses. They're on their third response on a Friday, we start on a Tuesday. To respond once every day, there was a lot of pressure. It's when it caught my attention is like, wait a minute. Like here we have a fan movement, a movement by creators who are normally compromised in all these other analogous scenarios throughout American life, frankly, in business. And I'm like, these 20-somethings are causing a multi-billion dollar enterprise to have to answer to them. I mean, the first couple of statements, How would you explain first what their initial response was and then what you thought of it as they tried two times

to put a sort of stop to all of it? See, here's what I did after this whole thing. I went and I spent a few days out at Yosemite in San Francisco. I'm off of 72 hours of relaxation, being in the real world. Part of your response to all of this when this was sort of gaining steam and this was going viral was I need to touch grass. You literally needed to touch grass.

I need to just get away from this because I am furious and it was the best thing I could have done. So now I'm coming here Monday morning trying to refresh. I'm pretty sure their first response was they're not changing anything. Their second response was we'll change one thing with Dynasty. We'll give you one setting back that makes the XP gain a little bit faster, but not as fast as it had been. And then on the road to glory, your player career mode, they touch nothing. So twice already they've said to the players that want to play is their own player to have a career in Road to Glory offline, we're not going to let you customize your experience at all.

We're not going to give you the features that were there in the previous games, but you can still pay us money to upgrade faster. And the last thing I'd like to say about these statements was they continued to say that their vision throughout this is tied to how they built the game, that the micro-transactions are there to enhance the player experience. We don't want to give players a gameplay advantage with the sliders, but the micro-transactions are cool. And I think that was what caused people to get even more outraged,

was it's cool to have an advantage if you pay EA money, but you can't have the advantage on your own in your offline game. You have to pay the money to get it now. And it was just the wrong way to go about it. I mean, were you yourself surprised, by what apparently in the minds of all of these people on the internet, yourself, of course, helping lead the way, were you surprised by the level of greed

that this company seemed to be exhibiting? I'm not naive. I understand that each game has their own budget, their own revenues that come in, and so they probably have specific goals they need to continue to hit. And normally, these games lean on their ultimate. Ultimate Team mode, where you can pay for packs, you can pay for players. And the college base is a very offline community.

A lot of us don't touch Ultimate Team ever. We don't care to play that mode. And so I think they're looking for other ways to make revenue. And I think they implemented it in possibly the worst way they could. Whoever made that decision, if you just had a conversation with a few of us for 60 seconds, we could have told you immediately this is not going to. going to go over well. Right, right, right. I mean, the thing that I'm realizing is that when you say that in single player mode, the offline mode, which you do, that was what we were just describing,

that you fell in love with, and lots of the other creators do, I wasn't really connecting the dots on that is the mode that is most sort of viral and consistently popular for consumers. It's also the one that doesn't make them the most money. It's sort of like, you guys all fell in love with the game that is the dream. On some level, of the manufacturer. They love our game, but it's not the kind that we can extract money from in ways that are already normalized.

And so what you're saying is, they had to figure out a way to transition it. And by statement number three, it felt like there was optimism that your revolt, this whole, like, creator-led revolt in which you were, I can imagine that they're thinking, wait a minute,

like they are biting the hand that feeds them. And the hand in response is like, is backing off because what is the message now by statement number three, this is July 11th we're getting to now? Their message at that point was we're going to take out micro-transactions.

If you read through the message, it's just some of the most, it's corporate speak, it makes you want to throw up. They say how they're trying to enhance the user experience and they miss the mark. They miss the mark by trying to just screw over the consumer.

But they did back down to micro-transactions and they said they're going to make future statements where they address everything else. So in my mind, if they're going to back down on micro-transactions, they're also probably going to back down on limiting the user experience that everybody plays these games for, where they can do whatever they want. They're going to put the sliders back in that they took out, and that was where I was at when they put out that statement. I was thrilled. I'll read, by the way, the statement in front of us again. This is the one with the big red text at the top. Happy Collegeville, 127 launch week, and then in tiny text,

They thank you for your continued passion, an incredible response. And they say, we love the game in this sport. The line that you cited was, however, your feedback on Road to Glorian Dynasty is that we've missed the mark with the introduction of paid progression options. And then they go on to say that they're going to remove all paid progression options from said modes. They're moving fast to respond to your feedback in game. So stay tuned for follow-up communications next week. And at this point, I will say, you kind of spike the football. Like, this is a huge moment in the history.

and I'm not overstating this. In the history of collective action in the era in which we live on the internet, this is a win amid a desert of people who are thirsting for wins. It's nice in the moment to be like,

yeah, we took a little bit of a win, but if they're being stubborn on adding back the features they removed that were in previous games, and they're still saying that they're going to bring back all of this in 28 potentially, they're going to have to really hit the mark, and I don't trust them to.

That's the truth. They're just, there's no way they're going to do it right. Well, now we're into your follow-up video. This takes us to last week, you know, it's July 15th. And your video is now, you know, it's pretty blunt. EA lied. EA thinks that you're stupid, and I think they're lying to the community about listening to our feedback.

It just blows my mind the way they have responded. We have a new response. we have a new update on what could be coming to the game. And I feel like they just don't care at all. It was basically a big FU to the community for speaking out. Of course. It was very clear on what we were asking for. And then they just conveniently are like, yeah, but those sliders,

we can't put those things back in the game that were in the last two because we designed this whole game around our experience that we want you to have. To play one specific way, the only way to bypass it would have been to buy, microtransactions. Then you can upgrade your things faster. Then it's cool to progress faster in our game modes. But now that they're not there, it's like they're being a petty kid. No, we're upset that you were pushing back, so now we're not going to give you your toys back. The college football-specific community is more offline than anyone else. They would play a 10-year-old game that is modded 10 years after it released and be fully happy with it. And now, I would play a 10-year-old game. I mean,

that we can mod on PC this year, there might be no incentive to get to new games, especially if you're going to destroy those offline game modes. Don't ruin the actual core game mode thinking that people are going to pay to beat up on the computer. That's just the most brain-dead thing I've ever heard. You get off work, you enjoy your experience, and you pay to beat the computer? What are we doing? They are creating places that you have to give them more money to do the stuff that you used to do by virtue of paying the $70 for the game. What is the reaction from EA to you directly? Have they tried to reach out and sort of, you're smiling as I asked this question? Uh-huh. Well, to keep it as simple as possible,

they have never punished creators for speaking out. All of my buddies, all of the other guys in the space they have, I'm very confident they'll be working with them in the future. There was probably a path forward early on where I could have continued to work with them, and it would have all been fine, and I could have spoke my voice a little bit, we're good. I didn't believe in that path. I don't believe in the direction the games are going. And with every statement they put out, I felt more and more justified in that decision because they just continued to basically double down and say we don't care.

and I don't want to be tied into anything if they continue to make things worse. Those guys are still going to be able to be vocal, but you probably hinder yourself a little bit because you still have that partnership. So I'll be able to speak my full mind if they mess up, and I'm hoping that they don't. I really hope that they learn from this. It's just how often do big companies do that these days. You're now saying something that makes me wonder if you're concerned at all about

whether this will affect your business. This is your job, right? It will. I will take a hit, obviously, because now I won't have the early videos with them. I won't be paid to go out to something like the cover shoot and make content around it. All of my work with them was always like paid for a deliverable. So that one specific piece of content, sponsored. Like any other sponsor, you read off whatever's required with them. There was nothing really required. It was just say it's sponsored. But then all, all other media I put out throughout the year. It's my video. They have no way of controlling what I say. I get to speak my mind on anything. So I am losing out on a decent bit not working with them,

but I also know that my community's rocked with me long before EA. They supported me long before these games came back. They were watching me play the old games, and they'll continue to be there for me. So I feel like it's only right that I use my voice for what I believe in and not whatever they decide to go in the direction of. One of my friends likes to joke, I'm launching like my 20-36 Kentucky governor campaign or whatever. I'm like, dude, I don't think I could ever get into that. This is just one specific thing I am very passionate on. I didn't intend for it to go the way that it did. I was hoping that they'd hear us out, but I didn't realize how many people were going to rally behind. I kind of had the expectation. I told my thumbnail guy, this is going to hit like a

thousand views and be dead. I can't put up a video this short on my main channel. No one's going to care. Partnership burned. That's that. But at least I got to speak my peace. And instead it turned into this whole movement. And I'm just so proud of the community for how they all use their voices and rallied behind.

Oh, man. I mean, that's the thing about all of this is that this is not coded, this issue that you're describing and have been fighting. It's not coded politically, left or right in any particular way. This is not a Republican or Democrat thing. This is not something that has at all attention from Washington, D.C., or at the very least not nearly enough, I would say. And so it feels like this organic petri dish that emerged on YouTube, on Reddit,

on that Discord channel where you started this. And it just feels like an actual version of what politics should probably look more like, which is people realizing that if, we organize our community against this giant corporation that has every advantage and has all of the money in the world, it seems, maybe we can actually do something. Maybe we can make them worry. There's a concept that I'm curious if you've heard of it before. And the concept is in shitification. I have. I have. So we sort of attribute this to Corey Doctoro, who wrote about this and has spoken about it at length incredibly eloquently. But it's just the basic

idea that once a company or a manufacturer, a video game maker in this case, has you, once they've gotten your buy-in, as a customer, what ends up happening is often they start making the product worse because they're not worried about retaining your loyalty anymore. They're too big, they're too popular, they're not worried about losing you to the point where they begin to paywall and construct obstacles in front of things that you used to get for free or were better when you didn't have to pay for them. And now suddenly, surprise, it's worse and more expensive. I've seen it my whole life. Like, I was so excited for the world when I was younger. And then you become an adult. And then you see how things have progressively gotten worse. Houses have become more

expensive. And you're just like, what is happening? How is everything getting worse all at once? Why is everything getting so much more expensive? If I was not blessed doing something like this as a job, I don't know where I would be. What is then the future of the thing you know the best, which is video games? And does the community that you are helping to lead, do you think they have a say in it at this rate? I think they do. I really do believe that if EA had any little bit of common sense up there on how do we continue to maintain this strong, small, but very strong and loud community base, that's what the college

football community is, whether it's video games or just the sport they love. How do we continue to put out games that they're going to want to get? I really do believe they need to listen because people like, I'll still play the game, but they are going to have a very hard battle to face anytime they try to slip stuff in like this, when even their own creators that still decide to work with them are going to speak out against it. If they're doing this in year one, kind of goes back to inshittification that you're talking about, what is this going to look like three to five years down the line when they continue

to add more ways to get you to spend money in the offline modes? where does that put the game? Because three to five years from now, it's not going to be recognizable to where it was once at. And so that was what really set in is, yeah, I can never work with them again if this is what they're doing.

No shot. Yeah, yeah. It does occur to me at the end here that the life you've chosen for yourself with all of these developments in it, you are now actually putting self-imposed degree of difficulty, on your life in a way that, say, a guy who dropped out of Northern Kentucky to do the same

in a video game might appreciate. Yeah, I guess that is it. I'm trying to give myself a little bit more of a challenge. Can I still wrap in a bunch of viewers on a game that I'm no longer working with directly? And I believe I will because they all stood by me before any of this came by. And I'm just EA. I know there are people from EA that have seen this. that are going to be watching this,

listen to the community. Just listen. We want what's best for the game. There are better ways to do what you're doing. Just do that. Yeah, James, I hope your former professors are proud of you. I hope so too. This has been Pablo Torre finds out,

a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.