Pablo Torre Finds Out - The "Pay-to-Play" Scheme That (Almost) Ruined Video Games, with Dan Soder

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

Virtual currency is a new cheat code. But when EA Sports tried to squeeze extra cash out of sports fans with so-called "microtransactions" inside its latest-college football title, gamers revolted... and won? Comedian Dan Soder, who's been playing video games with a future NFL coach since childhood, takes Pablo on a journey to the seventh circle of nerddom: What does this phenomenon say about private equity turning fun into an asset? How do we stop sacrificing community for convenience? And is shame still possible?• Subscribe to "Soder"Previously on PTFO:• Share & Madden & Tell with Katie Nolan and Dan Soder• We Smoked All the Athlete-Branded Weed We Could Find 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. Why are we isolating ourselves and hating ourselves so that Jeff Bezos can have another boat for his weird sex lizard wife to crawl around on? Right after this. Thanks for doing this. Yeah, dude. I mean, it's something that I do in my off time, so of course I want to talk about it.

I love video games. You are our video game correspondent, I realize. I'm not a big video game guy. I'm just a consistent video game guy. What does that mean? I'm not Barry Bonds. I'm Ted Williams. I've played video games since I was like six.

When did I get a Nintendo? It was, yeah, Christmas, 89, so I was like six. And I've just always consistently had a system. And I've just played my whole life. I've been a devout fan of college football since its inception by EA sports. Because Madden was first, NFL games were first, but when they did the first college football was NCAA Gamebreaker with Eddie George on the cover.

Mm-hmm. And it was like you would go to a blockbuster or something and find out they go, they have college football. And I remember exactly where it was. I was sleeping at my cousin Luke's house. We rented Gamebreaker on a Friday night when college football was the next day. So you're like, you know, it was like a tease.

You're like, oh, we'll play these games. We were like play games that were going to be the next day. Like if Florida was playing Tennessee, be like, I'll be Florida, you'll be Tennessee, we'll play, or we'll flip for it. It was great. But then EA came out with NCAA, which is now called college football. Right. And so this thing that's happened in college football, I want to be clear to everybody

who does not give a shit about video games. This is a story that I think is fascinating, even and perhaps especially for people who don't know what's happening in video games. And I am kind of, I would say I'm like a median, I'm a median voter when it comes to video games. I used to really be into it. But what I have now realized as I hear and attempt to understand what's going on right now, is that I have been alienated by what this is now. What's interesting about video games to me is that they are a thumbprint of our societal evolution.

And I think they show a lot of parts of our society good and bad. I think it's, you know, there's people that are adamantly against. and think if you play it, you're wasting your life. But there's people whose brains run hot, and it's just a nice thing to turn on and completely shut off all your thoughts about the outside world. It's great for escapism.

Oh, my favorite thing. And so when I say that I think of you when I see the headlines about the revolution happening. I'm going to tell you right now, I'm not a big Reddit guy, but I go to Reddit. It's a place I go if I need to look at, look up stuff specifically for video games. It's like an excellent source for video games.

And I just want to say how proud I am of the college football video game community on Reddit. Partly on Reddit, I know it was in other places. But what they did is there's these streamers that do very popular streams of college football. And typically they are the foremost and most effective marketers for the game. It behooves these companies to be nice to these streamers. You should treat the streamers right because they are basically your representation via human form, which we don't have anything anymore. And on their channels, in ways that are, I think, derived from a genuine passion,

it seems, by and large, they're broadcasting your product to people who might also want to buy and spend time on it. It's an evolution of both capitalism and the... the unboxing. Yes. The unboxing craze that happened when YouTube first came out was because people were watching people be happy opening. They were watching capitalism porn. Dude.

They were watching someone open. The way that a pizza boy would have sex with the lonely housewife was the way that the kid would unbox the video game and go like, I wanted this for Zola. We all feel, it makes us feel something. For those who are steep in the lore of the show, this is kind of the thesis behind, and why we have people like Katie Nolan.

Shout out, one of the best, one of the all-time grades. It's just a friend of the show. I'm obsessed desperately in love with. Just make it sound unhealthy. I would follow her to the end of the world. You go, it turns out that was her future husband. But we put journalism in folders because we're unboxing it. Yeah.

And you see the surprise and the horror, and you vicariously enjoy what feels like the eternal Groundhogs Day Christmas morning of what's in there? I used to go to GameStop, dude. I used to go to GameStop at midnight and like I can remember, I can tell you which Assassin's Creed I went and bought.

I'll tell you, like, in Queens, I used to walk to Steinway, which was like 12 blocks away from my apartment, and I would like really look forward, you would have conversations with guys in line about like getting the game. And then the moment of leaving with, Your copy.

The physical copy. In your hand to someone that you were talking to in line at GameStop and being like, dude, have fun. And they're like, you have fun. And that was, and obviously things evolve and we're all online now. So now you pre-order it. But you still get the feeling of the pre-order

when it pops up on your screen and you go, oh, I get, and it gives you a countdown like six days. But now what we're getting to is the way in which what I grew up doing, which I think a lot of people may assume is still happening, is eroding or mutating or being corrupted into something else. And I want to establish that when I look through your appearances on the show, video games have come up consistently.

Yeah, probably. You played... Old podhead that loves video games. When you were playing... Crunchy rock music. I'm a hack. Playing Madden against Mike McDaniel, he grew up with... That was Tecmo Super Bowl, technically.

Techno Super Bowl, excuse me. Yeah. with the now offensive coordinator of Los Angeles Chargers. Yeah. Playing as Dion Sanders, he would. Yeah. He would play as the Atlanta Falcons, and he would switch to Dion and pick it almost every time.

Anybody that played Technosur Bowl, you remember Down B with the 49ers was one of those dangerous plays on Earth. Rice would do like a 10-and-in. John Taylor would run a streak. Roger Craig would run a streak out of the backfield, and then Brent Jones would sit, just kind of squat in the flats. So usually Rice is your first option, but you're looking Taylor downfield,

and he knew I was going Taylor every time. So he would drop Deon back, go one-on-one with John Taylor and just pick it. And it just made me, it still makes me mad. I do like the idea of, as always, future NFL coach taunting you. Yeah, Mike's a great shi-talker. And then what happened is he stopped playing video games, and video games evolved. So by the time it got to, like, you know, I remember, like Madden O-1 was a big one,

the PS2. When I got a PS2, my senior year in high school, Mad in 01 was like, everyone's coming over. We're putting names in a hat. You're drawing the team you get. I got the Vikings with Cole Pepper. The number of just like sleepover, play date, like multiplayer. Afternoon before you have to go to work in high school.

Bloodsport tournaments of video games. I mean, you know what? One of my all-time favorite moments with my friend, my buddy Mark, who I went to college with, was we would sit there and play All-Star baseball on PlayStation 2, but we'd just play Home Run Derby because all you had to do was pull the right joystick back

and fling it forward to home runs. But our fun part was calling the home runs. So we would be like, Miguel Tejara is fluent in three languages. He's fluent in English, Spanish, and Home Run! When you hit it. So we would just do like dumb calls. And that was like so fun.

And we just do that after class at the University of Arizona. You'd be like, you want to go play Home Run Derby? And you'd be like, yeah, absolutely. Of course. And then the episode we did with you where we invaded your home with Katie.

Yeah, that was awesome. Trying all the athlete weeds trains, which you have to play video games. I mean, of course. And we did. But that was the same moment at which the 2024 return of what is now known as

College Football 25 became the all-time best-selling American sports game in terms of dollar sales ever. Over like 500, It was, and you contributed to that. Oh, brother, I, it was, uh, it was a full circle moment for me. Shane Gillis used to open, uh, on the road with me back in like 2018, 2017 and 2018, and I would bring an Xbox 360 and we would play the defunct NCWA 2014, but we'd run a dynasty together.

So we would be like, you'd be like, I'd be OC and he'd be DC and then we would recruit. It was just a fun thing to do on the road. was hitting it in the game. I mean, if it's in the game. It is. All right. We praise Jesus in the game. Long way from Happy Valley.

Because you would, like, have it at the hotel, and then you bring it to the green room, and you'd be like, well, we're recruiting between shows. And then, you know, he became, like, the most famous comic in the world. Playing literal arenas. Yeah. And this video game came back, and they were like, hey, we want you to stream it. So he called me, and he was like, do you want to stream it? Do you want to stream the new college football?

And I changed the passing options. And that's where I screwed up. And he beat the hell out of me the second game. Look at your phone again. No. That was stupid. I f*** up. I f***ed up.

I f***ed up. You must feel like an idiot. Because you were up. You were doing so good at the beginning. You changed the passing option? I screwed up. But anyways, that game came back and it was like a full circle moment that Shane was like, hey, I'm going to... In fact, even this year, he was like, you want to...

He was like, you want to download? I pre-ordered it. And he's like, you want to download code? And I was like, for a week early. And I was like, yeah. So I've just been building my Kansas State dynasty. Shout out Wildcats. Why Kansas State?

My little cousin plays there now. Oh! Yeah, my little cousin's on the team. What position does he play? He plays tackle. He's a true freshman, Oliver Miller. Shout out Big Number 73. Oh, my God.

Oh, here he is. Yeah. That's my cousin, dude. I love him to death. And shout out his older brother, Graham, who never gets shine. But Graham rule. He's the older brother of a starting tackle in football. He's like, no one gives a shit about me.

And you're like, your brother is a fucking house. Your brother is 6'6-290. Woo! He's only getting bigger, baby. Number 73. Yeah, big 7-3, Colorado. Damn. Yeah, Englewood, Colorado.

It went to Creek. I forgive him for that, but whatever. But it's so... But this year... Another words... This year's special to me. This year's even more special. You were anticipating in ways that are, like, beyond...

even what I expected when you walked in here. So you were talking about playing Tecmo Super Bowl against Mike McDaniel. NCAA used to have all the things in this thing that I used to do in college. For those of you who were old enough and played PlayStation 2, you had memory cards.

Yes. That was how you saved everything were these just like tiny memory cards. When I was at the University of Arizona, NCAA was out, and I was in summer school because I'm not a good student. And I was at summer school

and one of the guys in my class last, we were talking about NCAA coming out. And he was like, oh, give me your memory card. I'll put all the names on it. And I was like, what do you mean? Because at the time, you weren't allowed to have likeness or names or anything because the athletes weren't getting paid. So I brought him my PlayStation 2 thing, and he came back with all the names.

One of the names on the roster at Yale, I think at like 62 overall. He was like a 58 overall. He was dog shit. Mike McDaniel at Yale. Wide receiver. Yeah. And like, I think that was like NCAA-03 or, oh four. So.

5-9-175. Yeah. Smokey Hill. Yeah, Smokey Hill High School. Go Buffs. That's why I'm disappointed Oliver, I went to Creek. But this year is the first year where someone's in the game. But now there's NIL, so Oliver's name is in the game.

I took a picture of it, sent it to him on Instagram. The second I got the download code, and he was like, I haven't even seen it. And I was like, yeah, here you go. They made you look like shit. It's like they made you look horrible. But the point being that all of this is what you bring to the Christmas morning. Yeah. Getting to play this.

I love this game. And the thing that happens when everybody who loves this game turns it on. And this is including the people who had been playing like the beta pre-release versions. Oh, yeah. These influencers that you're describing who are the marketers slash publicists of this empire. There's a big difference. Yeah, for the first time in this game's history, it was loaded with microtransactions. The first one that you saw was when you do the pre-order, they were like, hey, you know, you can spend 60 on the game, you can spend 90 on the deluxe, or you can do the MVP package.

So, $69.99 for standard. Standard. $99.99. And then the MVP bundle. $149.99. Crazy. but that is for Madden and college football. Because what happened when college football came out

was Madden took a beating. Because you realized how many people were playing Madden to scratch the itch that college football had left. Because college football is a different game. You're not doing contracts. You're not dealing with free agents. You're like recruiting kids. They're leaving.

There's the transfer portal. It's just a different vibe completely. So all the people that missed college football, because I was buying Madden. I bought Madden to see Mike McDaniel as the head coach of the Dolphins. That was the last time I bought Madden was his first year, I think his first or second year as the coach where I was like, I want to see what they make Mike look like.

But college football comes out and you're like, fuck Madden. I don't care about Madden. I just want to play college football. Yeah. A half billion dollars worth of people agreed in the first year. $500 million went to college football. You could see EA immediately go, shi-kitt because then there started being things on the

home screen of college football like, hey, Madden's 40% off. Like, hey, you can just buy Madden. We'll just give you Madden. They just started to be like, please take Madden. We made Madden, please use it. But this year they said, hey, we're going to do the MVP. We're going to do, it's 150 bucks. The thing that was f***ed up and the thing that everyone noticed, myself included,

was they went, when you do a dynasty in college football, there's a skill tree that you unlock, where you unlock these things that, like, help you get recruits or they help you start a rivalry game and, like, on fire. This one was like, hey, there's going to be two new skill tree, that you cannot touch unless you do the MVP bundle. And everyone was like,

so there's just the thing in the game you can't access unless you want to play, which is also the MVP bundle, I believe, is a subscription. So then people were going, well, if the subscription's up, am I going to be able to access it? Right.

And this is where we're running into a massive problem. Well, okay, so hold on. I want to establish that when you even say, because you're getting to, when we say that this is a thumbprint, for the way we live now, effectively. Yeah. You're mentioning words that we've heard in other contexts

in the effective degradation and fracking of media. Of owning media. Of what it even means to own something in media. You don't own anything anymore. But the term microtransaction, for those who have never played a video game, could you please explain what a microtransaction is? Basically, what a micro-transaction does is,

is if you have a player or something in the game, a character, and you want to make it better, you want to make it somehow better, they do this thing where they go, you know, for 1099 V-bucks or whatever they want to call it, it's money. A virtual currency. A virtual currency, which is just an in-between, because I'll tell you what, when you say yes, they sure as hell take you right to that screen where your credit card's on there.

That's American money that I'm spending when it is. but you buy like XP and then you progress faster. College football points is what the euphemism is for these virtual currency things. So, NCW or college football, you grind it out.

You play a game, you get XP for touchdown scores, how many good things you do. You earn it. You earn it. And then when you, and then the next week after you go, they give you these points that you go spend to make your coach better,

which makes your team better. And so basically what EA Sports is doing now is going, hey, fuck playing the game. You want to just give me money and we'll just like progress you? What if you could pay for the things you used to have to earn? Yes. Well, now that's also a big difference this year more than anything

is because there are people that are fine if you just want to progress fast. You might have four kids and you have a job and you just like can sit down and you have the $50 that you want to pay so that you can play in peace so you can turn off your brain. Fine. What they're doing is they're making some stuff only accessible via microtransaction. And they're going like, no, you can play all you want.

You'll never be able to access this unless you give us money. And that is where it goes, oh, it's just, that's the ugly face of capitalism. I know this is probably not an adult-only show, but it reminds me of the time I got a lap dance and I saw the woman check her time. It really takes you out of it. When they look at the... She looked at her clock on her phone.

It was a Saturday night in Montreal. I was at a comedy festival. And these, like, agents took me out to a strip. This is, like, 15 years ago. I was when I was drinking. And we go out, and this beautiful woman gives me a lap dance, but it was just like the most capitalistic lap dance I've ever had where she like, it was on her iPhone with the timer,

the way I timed my set on stage, and I saw her check her time and I went, you know, I just got up, I was like, we're good. And she's like, no, no, no, no, I want to say it. And you're like, no, please let me leave. Please let me leave. Part of me is glad that she did that, if only to spare you from the sound of the alarm going off.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. It's at the end of a nickel back song. Beep, beep, beep. Look in my photograph. I go, oh, man, sorry, we got to go. Yeah, it just feels like when you see stuff like that, you go like, oh, you just want my money. This isn't a community.

This isn't a game. That's why I'm so proud of the Reddit community for college football. And I'm proud of the streamers. There was a couple major streamers. So what the streamers did, and they point out a couple of changes, by the way, that I also just want to detail. Because one of the other things they did, which had not happened before, apparently,

is that they introduced the XP slash virtual currency slash college football points thing into single player modes. So that's what, that's, if you were to say, like, what is the felony, like, what is the absolute crime they did, is that they brought it to single player, which felt weird because you're like,

I'm alone. I'm just, like, in my office playing this at 1.30 in the morning. Like, I don't, Why do I got to pay to progress faster? I'm going to play all the plays. I like the progression. The work is the fun. It's a game.

Right now, what I want to establish for people who are just listening who don't know anything about this topic at all, is that on the internet, the influencers, the streamers that you're referencing, particularly a guy named Bordeaux. Yeah, Bordeaux is a huge college football streamer. He does like, you know, he does like a program build, and people love it.

With Kentucky, that's his team. Okay, yeah, there's a couple people. One guy does Hawaii. one day goes Kentucky and it's fun. You pick a school that traditionally isn't good at college football. And they get to do the thing that real life doesn't give them, which is the satisfaction of winning a national championship. And by the way, I'm not joking when I say.

It's my favorite football game of all time. I lost in the playoffs to Tennessee. I'm sorry, Oliver, you were starting at right tackle. And it was fun. I got home from the airport yesterday. Katie and I hung out and watched some golf. And then I was like, I'm gonna, oh, I got the playoffs. And I went in and I lost.

And she like, we laugh about it. We make jokes where she's like, that's like. She'll act like a college football wife. That's all right, honey. I like Katie is Sandra Bullock in the Blindside version of your video game. See them? You block them. They're trying to tackle.

Yeah, that's what she really does. But it's, it was, it grossed me out. It grossed me out. And then you, and then so to see streamers who usually fall in the line. Who are there? Because if you give. us the product we love, we are typically, you'd assume, very compliant. We're going to help sell the thing you want us to sell.

Companies have forgotten that we want to buy stuff. You don't have to shove it down our throats. You don't have to trick us. You don't have to trap us. Make good stuff and we'll buy it. All these venture capitalist groups come in and buy it. And I'm not surprised this move is happening with EA Sports, because now that Jared Kushner and the Saudi collective.

Are you mentioning perhaps the fact that there's a headline on front office sports that reads literally Saudis comma, Silver Lake, comma, Jared Kushner take EA private in a $55 billion deal from September of 25? This is my advice to anyone that is kind of like me and kind of stupid walking through this world and right now going to themselves. Why is everything starting to suck a lot more? Private equity, venture capitalism. No one owns the product they sell anymore.

No one owns the product they buy anymore. No one is selling you anything. You're not going, Mr. Duncan isn't selling me this. No, you walk out of GameStop with a physical disc. Yeah. And now, I mean, we'll get to... Because there's a lot to bring up because Sony is moving away from the physical disc. Which is basically saying everything you thought you were buying and holding as a customer,

you actually are just subscribing. It can't just be CEOs and the guys at the top of the company is getting bigger and bigger bonuses and stuff running the way it's supposed to. Well, the question for EA Sports was, it turns out, we just made in that aforementioned headline over $500 million on the most successful video game

of all time in America. How can we make more? That's where it's broken. But the thing that has happened on this online community, on these subredits and on YouTube, is that there was effectively an organized revolution. There was, and this hasn't happened in quite some time. There was a hashtag. Hashtag CFB, play, don't pay.

Basically what it was was like, even if you pre-ordered the game, even if you have the game, do not do the micro-transactions, do not give them that extra money. which, by the way, I wasn't going to anyways. So what are the things we did, by the way? Because I was trying to understand this, like, what do people who work in video games think? We contacted a guy named Michael Brooke, who was an EA game designer from 1987 to 2001.

Okay. So that is a fertile period, but in the before era. It was, honestly, it was like he set them up to become the dynasty that they became in the 21st century. And when Michael Brooke told us among several things, he said he's very passionate about this question. question about in-game microtransactions. He said, quote, I believe that in-game microtransactions can be a wonderful way of adding features to the base game. Only gamers interested in those

features need pay for them when these additional features entail added development, testing, licensing costs as they often do. They're a way of extending gameplay value and have been a standard part of sports games for at least 60 years. However, if these microtransactions are improperly implemented. For instance, by removing or disabling features that were previously free or obviously have no relation to additional costs, gamers will see through the marketing gimmick and will express their wrath. In general, it is important for those implementing and setting pricing for microtransactions features to work with gamers and developers to tune the gameplay elements. You wouldn't have your marketing guys be the sole determinant on how fast players run in a game or how accurate they throw,

and you shouldn't have them be the primary determinant on how quickly a dynasty player progresses, end quote. And so the idea here that he's expressing with clarity is the marketing guys. Yeah. How do you get the money up guys? Yeah, they're controlling everything. I think they're controlling everything in every aspect of society right now.

And turning them into assets. Yeah. They're literally trying to turn everything into an asset. How do we charge with it? I'm in my 40s. I don't have a kid. All I do is work. I still play video games.

If you were to tell me for $3.99 that I could download every uniform from 1982 for the teams and they'd be available. Hell yeah, I'd give you that $3.99. I'd give you that $5.99. I'd go, that's so cool. I would definitely want to see that. Or if it's just the big 12 uniforms or something like that. Something that's like an add-on, like he said, that is clearly an add-on of value to the game.

That you can choose if you'd like. If you want or not, but it will not affect the basic game. I completely agree with that. I'm always down, like I said, for DLC packs. Right. Downloadable content, which is usually extras

that come with games that you play where you get more of a game if you want it. Right. So you pay again. It's just, in a lot of ways, it's like a second serving of food if you want it.

It's the super size of fries. You're going to get, fries, fine. 99 cents more, you get more fries and you go, great, you don't have to. It's not, you know what I mean, but you can if you want, that's what they should keep it at. Now, the thing that began happening, and I want to take us to 2K here for a second, because this became sort of like the ghost of Christmas future for all of these, I think, streamers. They saw the way in which NBA 2K, which was a competitor once upon a time to NBA Live and then became. I think it beat.

NBA live. Oh, Curb stomped it. Yeah, which is crazy because I was an NBA live guy. Me too. EA sports. That was EA. And then you played 2K the first time when you went. Well, do you remember NFL 2K?

Yeah. Because NFL 2K was a legit threat to Matt it. So when we say there used to be competitors and now there are fewer of them, this is what we mean. Like there used to be direct head-to-head competitors doing the same thing. And Madden got nervous and EA got nervous and they went and bought all the NFL rights. So 2K couldn't make an NFL game. You can't make the NFL game if you don't have the NFL.

And so that's what 2K did against EA, where they went, well, we're the best basketball game. We're going to go get the licensing. And at a certain point, 2K asked themselves the question that every corporation in America asks itself these days, which is, how can we make it? So for effectively, very little margin, we can exchange. a lot more profit. Yeah, and I think what they saw was the boom

of online competition of players reaching out, playing each other, the birth of streaming, the birth of like, you know, Pute Pie and doing all that stuff, really led way to these people going... Twitch. Yeah, Twitch was...

Entire platforms. Entire platform going, I want to watch these people play 2K. I want to watch them talk shit. I want to see them get good. And it's fun to watch. Guys go to 2K and they're talking shit and you watch a guy get mad. It's so fun.

They saw that and they went, what if we just make that and it like almost the heart of the game? The city? The city. It's called the city. That's what it is. And you basically walk around

with a created character, bump into other people. My player is the mode. The my player mode. And you can go online and play as your character against other characters. or with them, you can run, you know, 3V3 for, you know.

But this is, what it became is effectively like everyone who plays a sports video game gets to build their own like role-playing game, avatar. And when you make your avatar, what they found out was they could put shoes and shorts and shirts and hairstyles and tattoos and watches. And as these things, You used to unlock if you played the game.

Yeah, like bonuses, the little prizes. I would say at the heart of it, for anyone that plays video games, you saw this. They took, quote, unquote, unlockables and just made them micro transactions. Right. So they just went, oh, you can unlock this if you play this game long enough. F*** that, give me $10. You have to spend, it turns out, according to the user Jimmy For Real, this is on a Reddit post four years ago. You have to spend more to purchase a $1.000.

2K virtual du rag $5 than you would on a real life do you're very funny that's very funny that if you just want to go get a wave cap in a bodega it's like $2.99.

15,000 VC is what that costs. Exactly, which you're like, I don't know what that is. What is that? I'm not an economist. I'm not an online economist. But that's, but that's the question of like, wait a minute, we could build an entire

marketplace in which people are enthusiastically going to pay more than they would for the real physical objects and we don't have to manufacture or any of it? Yeah. What a deal! By the way, 2K,

whoever's working there is just like hungrier and hungrier for more micro-transactions because they completely ruined the WWE franchise. Okay, so... So what happened to your favorite...

Now, real... Your childhood, Dan. Come with me to a lower level of nerd. To the seventh circle of nerdum. I'm a huge wrestling fan. I love WW2K. It's just a fun thing to do it. The thing that made WW2K the best wrestling game,

and honestly, there were others that tried to compete. It wasn't the gameplay. The gameplay is fine. It's fun. It's very fun. It was the creator wrestler suite. So basically, you could create any wrestler that's ever existed to put them in the game. But the thing was,

is they made the creation suite so good that these guys online were making better models than in the game. Where you go, whoa, that looks more like Roddy Piper than Roddy Piper. And you go, that's great. And there was this community center where you could just type in a wrestler's name

and then you'd see all the ones that were created and you could go through them. From that, you could follow the creator of that guy to see who else they created. And it created this community. But what it was was, and it was for a long time cross-platform. So Xbox users were bumping into PlayStation users,

who are bumping into PC users, who are bumping into Switch users. And they're all making creator wrestlers and trading them. And it's this community where basically are like, hey, this guy, there are guys who make, who you know every year they're famous. And like, I follow a couple online.

And they go like, hey, the new WWE's out, here's who I've made so far. And you look at him, you go, that rendering is awesome. This guy's so good. 2K went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You guys are having too much free fun. So they created this thing, which was called the island,

based off Roman Raines' character and the island of relevancy. And so two years ago, they put in the island, which was an online marketplace. So you want the Stone Cold Steve Austin shirt with the skull on it? Go to the island and spend your VC points, and then you can unlock it. You want Cody Rhodes' boots, from WrestleMania, go to the island and wrestle.

But then what it did was, it stopped cross-platform sharing. So it basically cratered the creator wrestler movement. So now no one can, now if your PlayStation, you can only see the ones the guys on PlayStation make. So now these creators, these guys who were doing really good, and honestly, some of them were starting to turn careers out of it. Streaming, making it look good. These guys go, listen, I got to make this on Xbox,

and I got to go make it on PlayStation. I got to make it on PC. And it just fucked everything up. And you saw it was for that. And where it got worse was this year, they were taking unlockable things that you would just unlock in the game and putting them on the island for money.

When has making an exclusive island ever backfire? Never. I don't even think inviting the wealthy to an island for a thing that most decent humans would find disgusting. it's never backfired. And in fact, they've never covered that up. What's crazy is 2K is like drunk with power.

And this year, I didn't buy, this is the first year I didn't buy WWE 2K. I'm done with it. I don't need it. I don't want it. I don't want it. Because what happened is they put it out again. And now, so it used to be a thing,

and WWE 2K fans will tell you, if you're an older guy and you don't want to grind out the game and play like the thing where you do it, They would do a micro-transaction where they go, we have a thing called the season pass, pay 20 bucks, and you get every DLC we drop. It'll automatically download and you get it. But 20 bucks, you get all of them. Or five bucks per one, and they usually drop like five or six.

So it would make sense. I go, give me 20 bucks. You also unlock all the venues, all the belts, all the secret things that you have to unlock. Now, 2K goes, give us money for a DLC, and you pay them. And they go, great, now you've got to grind it out in the game. So now it's the worst of both worlds. I'm paying you money. And I have to go do this match that I don't want to do

or I have to do a thing that literally has me angry at the game. I don't want to do that. I like to imagine you as the guy who is like master of, frankly, the voices. Two voices, really, for being honest. I'm working on Roddy Piper. Well, wait, so what are the two? Matureman and Andre the Giant. Those are probably the two, those are the only two wrestling voices I can really do.

What is, what is sad Andre the Giant think about? I don't want this. This is too much money. But it is. It's, it, listen, man, it's what I was telling you, we want to buy it. Don't fuck us over. And that's all they're doing. They're like, it's, it feels, I'll use that word.

it feels predatory. I would tell you right now, we are at a stage in society where most capitalism is predatory. Where we are in the U.S. economy has made all of these companies seem particularly unworthy and frankly desensitized to what it is when customers might gather and organize and cause something.

Well, then the thing that really outrages me, and probably a lot of people, the thing that really pisses me off, is the faux concern, which is what we talked about with EA, what they released, the statement. After the revolution, on the internet, there was a statement. They put out a statement on Sunday. That was kind of like, yeah, you guys are pissed. That was the energy.

Like they came out. Whoa. Like the storekeeper came out to the front. Oh. I love it when they post, I love it when any statement is, a JPEG and all the text because there needs to be a lot of it is so tiny Yeah

So Because that isn't the first draft No You think that was the first draft that they cooked up That went through seven layers at EA Happy College Football 27 launch week Big text, red font And then it goes

And then it turns through a whisper Happy College football Hey we really fucking back there I'm really sorry about that My text thank you for your kid Did you bash? You guys are like really super pissed Are you guys really that pissed?

I talked to a couple streamers, and they're really fucking mad. And effectively, they're saying, we're going to undo this. Dot, dot, dot, dot. For now. Tomorrow morning, we will remove all paid progression options from Road to Glory and Online Dynasty.

An unfortunate side effect of removing paid progression is that players have college point balances in their wallets that will not be able to apply the balance Road to Glory or Dynasty. So jump in between now and then apply your points, exclamation point. And then it gets to the, like, and this is like the,

the post-credits scene. You've got to watch the post-credit. If Marvel's taught us everything, it's don't leave until after the credits. Our goal for live service plans and CFB-28 and beyond will be to deliver valuable features and content with greater transparency and communication.

Basically, I'm going to go wash my junk in the sink, and then next year I'm throwing it right back in you. That's what they're doing. They are... This is not going to improve. It's not over. This is not going to... regress, this isn't going to change.

They are literally going to wait for us to get so lost in our 24-hour news cycle that next July, they launch college football 28, and to start the game, you need to pay $10 every time. You know what it feels like? To stick the key in the ignition. It feels like, I don't know if you've ever had friends with horrible drinking problems that have received multiple DUIs, but this feels like when those people have to blow in the breathalyzer to start their car.

car. That's what they want out of video games. They just go like, yeah, here you go. You want to play the game? Give me 20 bucks right now. So this is where we are, though, is that I used to grow up subscribing to a game pro. Shout out game pro. Dude, I bought a game shark. Yeah, I had a game shark on my 64. Yep, yep. Dual wielding golden eye. How did you not with two AKs? Good luck. Good luck not getting through the dam on that one, just untouched. Just sitting in a bathroom as odd job, double-barreled. Yeah, dude. Just looking up, because you always had to look up because they made them so short.

Yeah, dude. But the point being that, like, I am not some sort of paragon of video game morality. I loved cheat codes. Yeah. There are no cheat codes anymore. No, there aren't. And that really sucks. Because they became this.

Yeah. It became, oh, you don't have to type in. a code like I remember learning the ammo code on Grand Theft Auto for us and then you play it for a while and then you go this kind of makes the game on fun I'm gonna go back to when I was saved and I had to go find ammo but it's fun to learn that and that's like a life lesson you learn and and the idea is that they saw what people sort of hungered for and they wanted okay well if we could charge you for that Cool. But the thing that is happening next, because you mentioned Grand Theft Auto, is that GTA6,

the most anticipated video game in the history of Earth. Easily. I mean, this thing has been built up for over, I mean, for years. And they've announced it's coming out in 2026. It's been 13 years launching November 19th, 2026. And yes, I guarantee we will do an episode when that comes out because I love committing terrorist acts in the virtual world. It's going to be crazy. But there, it will not exist as a physical disc.

Which is a sign that they go, we're not selling you this. You're borrowing this. That's all you're doing. And I don't know if you ever borrowed video games back in the day. Oh, Blockbuster, yeah, all the time. But there was this feeling of insecurity when you did it, where you go, but I got to play it so much because I've got to return it or my friend needs it back. And then you'd go, like, and then when you owned it, you go, I own this. I can, like, sink into this game.

And I can even resell it later if I want to. I can make my money back. So during COVID, people were reselling NCAA 2014 for, like, 260 bucks a disc. Oh, man. Because people wanted to play the game so bad, and this was before college football came back, that people were, like, online,

you could find people selling it for a crazy amount of money. So now, where we are, the state of the video game union is, you don't actually buy video games, you rent them, you pay for them via subscription services, as everywhere in media wants to sell you subscriptions because that's how they get more money from you. Sure. Sometimes you'll forget. Am I still subscribed to that, to Hulu?

Oh, man, I just got one that made me so mad that came up where I was like, how am I still subscribed to that? It was like, which one was it? Exactly. There's one of the streamers where I went, I just have to shut off my whole credit card. But we don't even know. We lose track. And so you'll be subscribing individually to a dozen.

upon dozens potentially of video games. Has this podcast episode been in an elaborate rocket mortgage ad? Here we go. On rocket mortgage, I'll show you all the subscriptions I have. I go, Papa, you got me. I thought we were talking about microtransactions. The fact that the multiplayer mode, which is where the VC economy first sort of metastasized

and the thing that took over everything else, the fact that when you show up online as your avatar, dressed however you have been able to afford. Sure. You end up meeting people for whom the distinguishing characteristic is, you spent all of this money. Yeah. That's what this is all signaling.

You can't afford this. Yeah. But you can go broke trying. And that is, you know, when we did the episode with Katie at our apartment, we were playing Rocket League. You can do quick chat when you're playing people on. Rocket League and one of the things they used to say when someone was flying around with the car was they'd be like, they would write in the chat, you buy credits. It was like a diss. It was like,

you buy credits. You didn't work your way up. You bought that. And by the way, some of the buys credits? Yeah. And you go, yeah, I did. I barely, I mean, I don't play Rocket League anymore, but when I did play it, I'd be like, oh, yeah, I want that Wolverine skin. I'll spend VC, 5,000 VCs or whatever. But it wasn't, I wasn't beholden to it. I wasn't like, oh, if I want to play the game I have to do this, or if I want to play the game better, I have to do this. But the thing that seems to be returning, as comments like that occur and revolutions on the internet like this happen, is something like, and again, it's the rarest commodity now, but this statement in its tiny font sort of implies it, maybe shame is possible.

I think it's a really big part of society that is like a flavoring, that you just can't overdo it, and I also think you can't shame people for being themselves, but what you sure as hell can do is shame people for greed. And that is something that we don't do. As an alcoholic, I've been shamed for it. As someone with an addictive personality, wealth is an addiction. There are people running our country right now that are addicted to wealth. They want all the wealth. And what that does is it sucks up all the resources for people at the other end that don't have any resources. that don't have any wealth. I'm not talking about communism.

I'm just talking about loosening the chokehold that five nerds have on our entire civilization. It's like... It's just five dorks that couldn't get in high school and they're just taken down the whole fucking planet. And it's like, I... It's like, dude, I want to act... I want to be an active member of a capitalist society.

If I have a good weekend and I want to put... new boots on Roddy, Roddy Piper, let me put new boots on my baby if I want to go buy them. But have them where I can, it's a DLC. It's something that's not, that you're not, you don't have a gun to my head. And I also collectively would say

we need to wrestle with the idea of sacrificing convenience for community. It's just a thing that I think we need to do. It sucks that you're out of socks. I know you don't want to get in the car and go to Target or Walmart or whatever shoe stores by you and buy the new socks.

I feel like you're now giving a coaching pep talk to Kansas State. To Oliver. Well, I don't tell Oliver anything. That guy's diet's right. I've been looking at his preseason workout. We're talking to IRL. Oliver's doing great. But yeah, man, I just, I feel like, man, humans rule.

It's so fun being friends with humans and hanging out with them. and why are we isolating ourselves and hating ourselves so that Jeff Bezos can have another boat for his weird sex lizard wife to crawl around on? You know what I mean? How about just pay the people that work in the fulfillment centers a good wage? Walmart, pay your employees well,

and then they shop at Walmart, and then the money comes back to you. It's almost like if you treated people well, it would come back to you. Right. Let's just do that idea. Stop. And EA, I promise you,

that if next year there's micro-transactions, we're good. We're good. I can play this game or until you tell me I can't, I will lease this game from you. And I'll play college football 26 until the wheels fall off. The word I think of, the word that I think is the throughline in the motivational speech that I think America needs to hear.

And also, the thing that EA and all these other companies need to worry about is in the end competition. The value of having to compete and earn what it is that you think you deserve. And I will argue to a capitalist, someone that might disagree with a lot of points that I'm making, isn't it the best part is a free market? Isn't the whole point that this is a free market? And that if someone isn't doing something right, someone can respond and do it better, and then the customers go there. So there might be a computer, you know, a video game, game developer that has an idea for a wrestling game. That's, the gameplay is more fun and the creative character suite is big and you can make

all these characters and we don't worry about it. It's all free. It's all fun. And then all of a sudden they make that and it gets a push online. Well, now 2K is going to be like, there's another wrestling game. How do we squash them? Right. Instead of going like, how do we make ours better?

How do we compete? How do we? The competition is how America got great. It's what makes America great is competition, is true competition. And also, part of that is losing. Part of losing is like, to me personally, when you lose, it's so motivating. There's not a more motivating thing than getting beat at something and going like, I want to get better at that.

I want to get better at it so I can win at it. What isn't American is getting beat at something and then going, well, then I don't want to. Well, then I don't want to. It's like, well, that's loser. That's how you're a loser. is if you lose and you give up. If you lose, go win. Just go compete.

But I hope to God someone starts competing with these companies. Dan Soder, thank you for taking me on a journey through, frankly, your childhood. Yeah, I'm sorry, I really just dumped on you there a lot. But it sucks because I think it's such a fun thing. It's such video games are supposed to be like a dessert. And you're like making it feel like homework. or you're making it feel grimy and gross. It's just like, just come on, man.

Let's just have fun. I just traveled all day. I just want to play with Kansas State. I just want to beat Tennessee, which I will. I'll get my revenge on Tennessee in the playoffs. And go Wildcats. I'm all about the cats. This has been Pablo Torre finds out.

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