Video Gamers Podcast - Bungie's Blunder, Switch 2 Smackdown and Gamers Gonna Gamer - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan and John are breaking down this week’s video game news you need to know about. Bungie makes a HUGE gaming blunder at the worst possible time, Nintendo can brick your Switch 2, and gamers take advantage of the Darth Vader AI in Fortnite. All that plus more! It’s another gaming packed episode from the Video Gamers Podcast! Thanks to our MYTHIC supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius and Phelps Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Community: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on X: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VideoGamersPod?sub_confirmation=1 Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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the tea on Nintendo and Bungie and word on the streets is things might get heated. But before the fireworks start, some introductions are in order. I am your host Josh, and joining me, you can find him trying to trick Darth Vader into saying, may the fart be with you, it's Ryan. That, I didn't even think about that, but I saw him the other day and I was pretty excited to mess around with Vader, so.

Yeah, we'll get to Vader here in a little bit and Joining us rock star might be saying Grand Theft Auto 6 will be the best thing the world's ever seen But he says the same thing every morning to his bathroom mirror That is not entirely inaccurate Wake up flex doing right today, man. Doing good, old man. Looks like I lost a little bit of water weight overnight. Oh, boy, guys.

This is... We got some drama. Not only do we have some drama, we got a lot of drama to talk about this week. Man, you know, some weeks we got all kinds of like awesome game trailers to talk about game reveals, you know, other stuff. This week, the gaming world has just decided we didn't have enough drama, guys. We you know what? We're going to be talking about theft of artwork and, you know, We're gonna be talking about theft of artwork and you know Bungie we're gonna be talking about Nintendo and the switch to and a crazy thing that they might be doing We're gonna talk about how gamers trick AI

And try to interact with Darth Vader We're even gonna talk about Like meeting your loved your your deceased loved ones in VR, man, like this is gonna be an interesting show if nothing else, man, cause these are some interesting kind of deep subjects, but hey man, this is what the gaming world is a buzz about. We kind of started talking about some of this

before recording, cause it's definitely, people have various opinions on a lot of these things too. So I'll tell you what, let's just get to it. Boys, Nintendo, we've been talking about Nintendo a lot lately, you know? We are, and hold on. I think the way you guys always go at it, I think there should be kind of like an announcement

and you guys can just face off and go at it however you wanna do it. But I will give you a little intro here for you guys are you guys can just face off and go at it You know however you want to do it, but I will give you a little intro here for you guys so in the red corner the Nintendo sympathizer who Specializes in using logic and reason to defend the almighty Nintendo. It's John I got it. I'm a I'm a fighting Scrapping Nintendo loving machine You got nothing on me Josh. I gotcha And in the blue corner he specializes in using excitement and being loud to prove his point and is an

anti-establishment fighter known as Joe get your hands out of my pockets Nintendo quit trying to rob me blind if I bought it it's mine that's it you're bricked oh okay so right let's get a little context on the nature of this argument here what are we arguing about so you know in all Nintendo's glory, they decide to just, you know, do something a little bit more crazy. Again, you know, have you guys ever, you know, heard of your friends, family, people that, you know, that like to just do a little bit of mods to systems, change things a little bit, you know, it's, it's your property, you bought it, you can do what you want with it right yep Not according to all glory to Nintendo they will now

Brick your system making it essentially a paperweight if you violate their terms of service and agreement which they recently altered oh My goodness, okay shall I open oh, please? So Oh my goodness. Okay, shall I open? No, please. So, first of all, this type of thing is not unheard of. If you buy and own a firearm and add a bump stock in most states, that is illegal. You get that removed. If you were to buy and own a vehicle and you put in an unsafe brake system, that would no longer be a legal situation.

With Nintendo, you are not just buying a Switch, you're not just buying a console, you are buying an ecosystem that Nintendo helps to supply. You may own that physical device, but when you begin to alter that physical device, you become a potential liability to the community that you're buying into. And there's the practical concern, the very practical concern that I will take any corporations side on this is that if you begin to mess with the hardware in a way that it is not intended for, you create

customer service liability which then costs them money. If you mod it incorrectly in some way you have messed with the fundamental software parameters of the device and then it becomes a very murky situation for them to try and hold up their warranty if you should complain, even if it is your fault or not. I want to jump in too already. Please. I'm like, ah!

First of all, boo! Boo! Boo! Boo! Boo! Boo! Corporate sympathizer, boo! Company man, ah! Okay. Allow me to address your first two points.

When you buy a bump stock, you are making a weapon more lethal than it is intended to be to a wider number of potential, in this case, people. This is why bump stocks are outlawed. When you modify your brakes, you are saying that you are making your vehicle unsafe towards other people. So there are safety concerns with these sorts of things. And those are both federal and state level issues. Yes. And those well, not a private entity. And those issues are there for the safety of the common people to protect them against these sorts of modifications causing damage and bodily harm to other people. If I buy a car and I want to put, you know, whatever leather seats in my car or modify it with a cold air filter, you know,

seats in my car or modify it with a cold air filter, you know, it put nitro boost on it, whatever. That's my car. I paid for it. I own it. It's mine. I can do whatever the heck I want to do to it. If I want to roll it with house paint to change the color of it, I can do that because it's mine.

I own it. Now, if I break it in that process and I take my car to the dealership and I say, hey man, my car's not working right. And they open it up and they're like, dude, you modified this. This isn't covered under warranty. I'm going to go, oh yeah, you're right. Because your warranty specifically implies what's covered and isn't covered. So if I screw it up, that's my fault. But to say that I am purchasing something, but I am not purchasing the physical product

at that point. I am purchasing the rights to use this product, which is what Nintendo was saying. That is shady scummy. Now I feel like I'm at the used car lot with the guy that's slapping the hood going, this baby gets 50 miles to the gallon if you get out push. You know, like, what the heck is Nintendo doing, man? They are so anti-consumer at this point. Nintendo.

That is absolutely not. Oh, oh, they absolutely are. Categorically incorrect. No, no, because listen, here's the thing. You can't tell me that if I buy your product that I'm not allowed to modify your product at that point Where does it stop? Can I put a screen protector on there? Because that's modifying the product Josh

I I used to own a business with 120 people that did a hot 40 million dollars a year in revenue This is exactly what I'm talking about When we had customers who would for instance put a what they wanted to be a sound barrier around an HVAC unit that we put outside, they would do it with the best of intentions. But really what they were doing was they were restricting the air exchange and the unit, the compressor would die. That's their fault.

No, okay, it's their fault, but then they would say, well, you never told me this specific thing. Don't be an idiot. What? Hold on, but then they would say, well, you never told me this specific thing. Don't be an idiot. What? Hold on. But your company, we're talking about a world where irons have to put a safety disclaimer on the side of the box. So people don't iron their clothes while it's on their body. I do not.

People are dumb. Yes. They are. Common sense doesn't exist. Like Nintendo as a company, as a big company with a target on its back working in the entertainment industry, whatever you want to call it, has the right, the legal rights to protect its intelligence, its IP. The Switch ecosystem includes proprietary software, hardware, hardware services, these things, when people start to tamper

with them, circumvent built-in protections and often lead to pathways for cybersecurity problems. If nothing else, if we're not talking about physical security, we're talking about the security of people's information, the security of people's ability to play a game without having to worry about whether somebody's got like an auto aim mod or something in a multiplayer game. The system is designed to work in a particular way that Nintendo can monitor the safety of it. And any tampering with it outside of that creates liability.

And the most important thing here is that I won't say this for like, if we're talking about hardware mods, something like more or less harmless from a consumer standpoint of people like putting in their own joysticks or buttons that have a response you know response that is more ideal for them or whatever like my buddy CJ modifies arcade sticks it's like a hobby of his but the grand majority of

people who do this stuff do it to get like what do they call them they do it for like the mostulators and stuff. Most of the modding community is for emulators. I get why people hate them. Okay, which is theft. It's categorically theft. But, okay, so when, but when, like, you find out Mr. Smith has built like some... Wait, wait, Ryan, tag me out! Tag me out, buddy! Tick, boom!

You find out Mr. Smith has modified, like, the exterior of his HVAC unit that's gonna cause warranty issues or damage You don't go oh, no, he didn't and you go and pull his compressors and be like yeah now your system doesn't work anymore Sucker yeah, you know you let it it breaks and you say hey. I'm sorry you did this. It's not covered Right, but if that's just because it's not an option Right, but if that's just because it's not an option Nintendo is doing this so that there is a deterrent from people even trying sure it if I Trusting this cuz they're evil It is not I'm actually more on John's side than I thought I would be though, but a corporate responsibility

okay, if I trust me if I was installing people's HVAC systems and especially the guarantees that we put into our system We're giving people a two-year 100% money-back guarantee But if somebody like could just mess with it and that like and then blame it on us Like that would be a problem. I would I would have absolutely in a second Started installing technology that broke if a customer tampered with it. Like if there was some key that only allowed us to modify it and therefore maintain the integrity of our own warranty and guarantee,

you can bet your bouncy booty that I would have done that a hundred times out of a hundred. If this is truly because of liability issues and not Nintendo being a greedy corporate giant that has completely lost its way to gamers, then why aren't Nintendo or I mean, why aren't Xbox and PlayStation doing this? You don't see Xbox and PlayStation go, we're going to brick your system losers. If you try to modify it. That is a newer technology. Like for instance, the original Xbox

was basically a dummy computer in a shell. Do you guys remember that? The original Xbox. Yeah, the box, yeah. Okay. Had they the technology at that time to be able to brick wall somebody from modifying their hardware,

I guarantee they would have done it. Absolutely. The technology exists. Why aren't they doing it now? They're not doing it now though. Yeah. If it's truly liability, Microsoft, I don't know which company has a higher valuation, but I'm going to assume Microsoft is has a higher valuation than Nintendo.

You think this would be priority one for them if it's truly a liability issue for them to go, oh, my gosh, guys, we got to protect ourselves. This is absolutely 100 percent because they do not want people modding things. And I get that it is a deterrent for people, but for a company to say that if you mess with it, we are going to brick it. We are going to push the little red button that nukes this system to make it unusable is absolute overreach in my opinion. And it is taking advantage of the fact that the end user license agreement, the EULA, nobody reads these things, dude, nobody. How many games have you just clicked the,

yeah, let me into the game button so that you can play the freaking game? This is not Nintendo being like, man, we don't really wanna get sued. This is absolutely Nintendo going, we don't want you to be able to do this because it takes money out of our pocket. If we allow you to modify and turn it into an emulator, you can put 1000 games on this thing and now you're not buying our $60 overpriced game.

You can steal 1000 games and put it on our, that is what you're saying. It's not the company's responsibility to police its users. A lot of those games are Nintendo I've not their responsibility though. This is the thing. It's not Nintendo's not there was it is their right It is their right to protect their IP. It is their they can do whatever it is a legal right Whatever your moral qualms about this are this is the beauty of a free economy Josh if you don't like it buy something else Well, I'm going to think about I am NOT buying a switch. That's fine. Yeah, I'm pretty sure those really sad With the with the legality of it I'm pretty sure from what I read also that in their terms of service now they put in there that they you can't sue them

Yeah, exactly. If that happens, you can't come back. So why do you think that what they're doing is a little but but I will say I do Can sue anybody. Well, yeah Regardless of what you sign. Um, I do I do see John's side a little bit more than I thought I would but I think it's the accumulation of Nintendo just over decades of You can tell they're always just sticking it to the consumer with with how they run everything and how their games are and so don't even you can't come on at least a little bit and here at least a little bit difference they're not stick it like you don't have no this would be one

thing if what we're talking about was like some totalitarian regime where you didn't have the option to do something. Dude, if you don't like the way Nintendo operates, go somewhere else. For sure. Nintendo is operating in the way that they feel is going to allow them to be able to produce and protect the best IP that they know how. Nobody knows everything, man. I mean, like, bro, I just had this debacle at fries, which a Kroger store today where they like they hit all of their batteries behind a behind a like you have to get an associate to get the batteries because it's a high shrink item but it took us 10 minutes to get somebody over there that's the most inefficient thing but dude companies

are just doing the best they can to be able to protect their assets. Nintendo's no different It is a company full of people they have Profit is not the meaning of life just like blood or meaning of business Just like blood isn't the meaning of life, but money is a requirement for business Just like blood is a requirement for life You know what else is Nintendo has to be able to prop protect their bottom line big companies go under all the time You know what else is a requirement for your customers to actually like you and your product, you know

And guess what when you start smacking your customers around and saying we're gonna brick your system Because we are policing what you do with this product that you paid for if that's the case I was gonna have a me rent the system. Let me rent it. I seem to remember a little video that we recorded about Donkey Kong being like the launch title for Switch 2 and how we were just flaming it. And I do remember a lot of Nintendo people

coming to the, there surely are Nintendo fans out there. Oh, there's fans on Nintendo, but yeah, exactly. But see, here's the problem is that a lot of people- Then you don't have to be one that a lot of people don't care. If I had a switch, I've never modded a switch in my life, dude. It's more it's more the I see I'm a man of principle, you know, and for me, this principle that Nintendo wants to keep their hands in my system that I bought and paid for and try to tell me what I can do with my property at that point.

I have a serious issue with now, if you're telling me that I can't buy it and that this is just a lease or a rental at that point, then that's fine. Let me pay 20 bucks a month for your Nintendo Switch. And at that point, you have every right in the world to say, hey, because you're not actually owning this and you're renting it from us, we get to have a say in what you do.

I can understand that principle. But when you say, hey, give me $450 for this console. Oh, okay. And by the way, after the transaction, because guess what? When I go to the store and I give them my $450, they don't make me sign something that says, Josh, do you understand that you can't do this, this, and this? And you understand that when you give us this money, that you are agreeing to this, you don't know this until you get home and you try to boot it up and now Nintendo says, Hey, welcome to the Nintendo Switch 2, by the way, accept this agreement. I've already given my freaking money to you. How are you going to spring this on me after the fact?

It's the principle Josh wants to be able to steal. If you want to break this Nintendo has made their money. You got my money. I can freaking take a dump on the Switch 2 if I want to. It's my Switch 2 at that point. You don't get to tell me what I can do with my property at that point. If I want to mod it and break it apart and then try to file a warranty claim and say Nintendo, your product sucks, it broke. Guess what? They're going to say, fine, send it to us.

And I'm going to send it to them and they're going to go, you took a dump on this, Josh. This isn't covered under warranty. And I'm going to go, oh yeah, you're right. I did. Okay, cool. My bad. Oh yeah. Yeah. Every single customer goes, oh yeah, you're right. That's not how it works. Josh, the cut, the customer will bully the, the, the company until they get what they want. That is how this works in, in actuality. But let's take your argument. Okay. Let's take your argument. When you buy a Nintendo Switch or any other console for that matter. Yes, you do own that hardware. You do not own the software. I understand that. Okay. So when you are modding, most of the time,

what you are doing is you're modifying the software and the operating platform, which you do not own. If we're talking about ownership, there's your argument right there. That's a fair point, John. I don't like it, but it's a fair point. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. It is big.

It is big. Listen, man, this is one of the- Ding ding ding ding ding. Yeah, this is one of those things where it actually, I was hoping John, I knew about the software issue and I really hope that John didn't bring this up, man. Come on, he's just like for that. It's like Windows dude, if I pirate Windows,

guess what they do? They say, hey, you have to have an activation key, and then I gotta get creative and find an activation key. Yeah, exactly. So I get that the software is their property and they have to maintain it, they have to update it. And if you change it, that can cause some issues. Here's the biggest problem for me.

Nintendo has just gotten greedy. And I know you hate that term, John, because it's like, hey, this is a company trying to make profits and things like that. Define greedy. Okay, so I'm gonna sell you an Amiiboy. What's the Amiiboy? You don't make $4 billion net revenue if. Define greedy. Okay, so I'm gonna sell you an amiiboie. What's the amiiboie? You don't make $4 billion net revenue if you're not greedy.

The amiiboie, right? Where the, you know, the little figurines that it's like, hey, we're gonna sell these for $40. You can tap it on your Switch and a little character pops up on the screen and throws confetti at you. And I get, if I'm a fool and I pay $40 for one of these things

to watch confetti pop up on the screen, that's fine. That's my money. I can do what I want with it. But the thing is Nintendo has moved from this, let's make games for gamers that are awesome and iconic and all this to let's see how we can soak as much money as humanly possible out of people, restrict the access to they have to their own machines

at that point. It's like taking away the game cartridges. There's no such thing as a game loaded on the cartridge. Now you have to buy the little game key still comes as a cartridge, but there's no actual game info on that cartridge. Why is that? Because they don't want resale market because they make more money when people have to buy these keys. At that point, every decision they make is, is the quest for the almighty

dollar for them. It has zero to do every company. That's now I disagree. Yeah, no, no, Josh. By that same logic, you'd be like, okay, well, Xbox has an unfair advantage because they're going into cloud and they've been doing such a good job of like making everything available. They're putting all these games on game. They shouldn't do that. They're just tasting the dollar. They should just die. Then why are they premier games on game pass day one at this point? They could easily say, dude, because it's smart. It's smart. Because gamers, if you want to talk, I wouldn't buy game pass. If I couldn't play these games, if I don't get the good games day one, I'm not paying for game pass at that point. If you're giving me crap games, guess what? I'm not going to

pay for that Yeah, but what all you're saying is that their particular value statement matches what you value and Nintendo's is different and that's oh You don't have to value what Nintendo. I don't value what Nintendo do obviously You are a person who wants there to be no consoles. No console exclusivity is what you say. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, that's fair.

Many, many, many times. It's all about consoles. Well, right, right, but that is counterintuitive to business. If you commoditize gaming, that's socialism, basically. But then why are they... Okay, so with no console exclusives, why are they moving away from console exclusives? If that's the case, like you're seeing PlayStation, especially Xbox, releasing things simultaneously at this point.

The days of exclusives are going away because these companies are realizing that they can make a lot more money selling these products to a wider variety or like a wider market of people than only the people that have a PS5 or only the people that have an Xbox. This is a market variance guys. So number one, I want to address a point here. There's a couple of reasons that Nintendo is looking to phase away, just like everybody is looking to phase away from like everybody is looking to phase away

from physical product is that when you create physical product there is cost of goods involved and now you have to manage inventory you have to manage return cycles it is costly and oftentimes unnecessary people don't buy physical media as much as they used to anymore but if you're selling physical media you have to produce it you have physical media, you have to produce it, you have to package it, you have to ship it, you have to manage it with the people that you're shipping it to. And then you have to track whether or not that physical item is selling, you have to manage store presence, there's a whole like, complication that comes with it,

and people are just moving away from it. It's, it is just the way the economy is working. So the fact that they are like going behind now game keys and that kind of thing, I think that is the status quo. So they streamlined it and charged more. Yeah, exactly. So wouldn't it be easier to just pay? Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm done. I'm done. Hold on. We've gone like 25 minutes. Make your final point, John. And then we gotta move on. My final point is that this is cyclical, okay? When, for instance, Blockbuster went under, Hollywood video went under, physical movies started to go under. You started to see this surge in online distribution,

mostly through Netflix. And we go, oh man there there goes the end of like Studio exclusivity like all your Disney stuff is there your paramount stuff is there? You know all the all the other studios. They're all showing stuff on Netflix and then People started saying well like we lose a lot of money by just giving everything to Netflix We should have our own thing. And then now you have all of these different online services. It is the worst. It is the worst.

But that is how people make money. Right. That is that that is the wonderful thing about capitalism is that it is a free market and things live and die based on the dollars that they create. So if you don't like Nintendo, the best thing you can do is don't buy a Nintendo product. The market will sort itself out. But there's a lot of people right now that like Nintendo. But here's the thing too.

They're doing anything fundamentally wrong. Here's the thing too. Josh, final point. Vote with your wallet. And that's exactly what I'm gonna do. I don't even mod things, dude. I have zero intention of modding a Switch 2 at all. This is just simply, guess what?

Vote with my wallet. I don't like the business practices. I don't think they care about the gamer. I will not buy a Switch to based on those principles. It's kind of like Ubisoft. I'm not buying an Ubisoft game because I don't like the way Ubisoft operates at this point, you know? And so you're right.

It is a choice. And for all the people out there that are excited about the Switch to it could care less. I honestly, it doesn't really make a difference to me. I'm not planning on modding it. It's just the move towards this is what we care about. We don't care about gamers. We don't care.

By what measure are you saying they don't? Because every practice that they are implementing is is something that is like, we don't care what the customer thinks. We only care what we think. Nintendo only cares about Nintendo, which is why they're putting all those practices in place. There's nothing behind that. That's your opinion. I mean, that's what this whole show is about, Josh. Right. But like you could very easily say the same about any company trying to make money. There are a lot of very goodwill companies out there that absolutely will do whatever they need to do. I don't want to like product placement.

Arizona Iced Tea. Yes Arizona Iced Tea like athletic greens. Like this is a very expensive supplement thing where one day like I got like they they will absolutely customer service takes precedence over anything else. The company I work for, dude if anybody has a problem with anything at all, we love our customer base so much that I will absolutely at the cost of profit and money, make sure that those people are happy no matter what, dude. Even if it means class action lawsuits, have you been a part of one? Well, I won't name it. Yeah, no, we got to team. Yeah, we got, it was a website issue. It was dumb

It was predatory at somebody know exactly what they were doing. Yeah, right Yeah, and and that that that type of class-action lawsuit. I know exactly what you're talking about It's because your your website wasn't ADA compliant or something along those lines. Yeah, okay. That's a that's a well-known predatory practice from from doctors or whatever. Yeah Nintendo most big corporations have been You know part of many of those and so there is a tipping point when you become an International publicly traded company where you have to start to protect not only your shareholders, but the assaults of the shareholders It's all about the cost goes sweet again Costco all about the shareholders. Exactly. Yeah, there it is. There it is, man. It's all about

their share. Costco's sweet. And again, Costco's sweet. All about the shareholders, not about the customers, dude. So, alright, let's move on. Alright, we're gonna, we're gonna score this, uh, let's see here. 99 to 98. Oh. Uh, and you can submit to the Nintendo Super Score

Pass for 999 to get the results of who got what? All right, just kidding not trying to start anything else up, let's go Everybody's like I was just watching I wish I had popcorn. Oh man For people I love arguing and I know John loves to ours are half hour I don't know if I look down over 30 minutes in and I'm like we just got started man Well, guess what people you're getting a longer episode today Cuz we got more to cover. We got more to cover right right after this break Guys let's talk about a company that maybe doesn't know what they're doing, and that's

one called Bungie right now. Dude, we're trying to go tour the studio this summer. What are you doing? We love the people at Bungie. Maybe not the corporate Bungie that is just not in a good place right now, dude guys, I Mean, this is do we know do we know what this so that the long and short of it is that that? Bungie ended up using art that belonged to somebody else Yep in their new game marathon a lot of the art that yeah, did we determine?

whether or not that was intentional that because I think that person who did that who was responsible for it is no longer there or like that that was allegedly allegedly this is so here's the thing like John if you were a really big company okay and like one of your employees maybe like went to somebody's house and like stole a bunch of their stuff out of their house, you would probably fire that employee and be like, Oh, they don't represent us. You know, like, yeah, we're going to fire. Yeah. So that's kind of what's going on is bungee is saying this artist that we paid to do art stole all these assets. We didn't know about it. People, they just took all these assets and now we used them in the game. We don't know where they came from. We didn't know about it people. They just took all these assets and now we

used them in the game. We don't know where they came from. We didn't know. They're like one for one too. It's like they came from an artist guys that used to work for us. Oh God. Uh, yeah. So what, what would you suggest they do? I think they compensate the heck out of the artists who got their work stolen and then say, Hey, do you mind if we use your art in our game? We're really sorry about this, but we'll pay you. We'll pay you a lot of money for this. Cause guess what? Most artists don't make a whole lot of money. So it probably wouldn't take as much as you would think. What's that? Well, I was going to say, I doubt that. Cause now, now this person is certainly lawyered up at this point

and the lawyers are probably pushing it. Shumping out the baby. Maybe. I don't know. I, I w I would be willing to bet that bungee probably had some sort of, you know, rational response like, Hey, Hey man, this is a big mess up. I'm sorry. Here's a settlement of a couple hundred K or whatever. Bungee. So bungee did come out and apologize. I it's funny because I saw the initial tweet from this person that said, Hey,

bungee stole my artwork. And this is before the poop hit the fan, like legitimately. And I went, wow, really? Like somebody's claiming they stole their art. And then lo and behold, two days later, Bungie's responding, going like, uh, yeah, this is bad guys. We didn't know about this and there's no denying it whatsoever. So they did. They did say, Hey, we are very sorry. It looks like one of our artists stole this other artists work

and we've been using it in our game. This is a really bad look for us. They are going into damage control, which is what any corporation would do. I mean, I don't think anybody begrudges Bungie trying to make amends on this. Here's the problem. Bungie is just not in a good place with, and we, again, this kind of goes back to companies and their clientele, man. Like, you know, Bungie took a lot of, a lot of flack with

Destiny players for selling expansion content and then pulling it back. Do they have the right to do that? Is there a reason behind that? I'm sure there is, but this does not garner you goodwill with the people that you generally want to sell your product to. Ryan is instantly nodding because he's like, I was there, dude. I was affected by this, you know? And so you, you protect your reputation at all costs with, with people, you know? And right now Bungie's reputation is in the crapper, dude. Not only from what they did with Destiny

and the walking back of content that they sold to people and then pulled away from those people, there was a lot of people that said, hey, listen, Marathon, not doing it for me. Is it an okay game? Yeah, it's fine. I don't think anybody said the game is garbage, but what people have said is

it's just not that impressive to me, you know Why do they make this extraction shooter and then you put a very bad PR? Issue on the table along with everything else It is bad time. It is it is the worst timing well for someone who I mean I've amount of destiny and destiny to that I played and then like Falling off just because I just got so sick of what bungee was doing, you know, and I, and I loved them. I was a huge fan and I'd spent thousands of hours playing their, their IP. Like when I heard this, I'm like, man, freaking bungee, you know, and I do, I feel for him because obviously somebody dropped the ball there where one of their underlings did this and they didn't vet it right or check it right and you know things like that happen totally get it and it sucks but I hope for them that they can figure out a way to manage

this and mitigate this issue like effectively because I do I don't want anyone to fail or not succeed and I just think with marathon it just keeps stacking up after Destiny, now Marathon, and then it was already getting lukewarm reviews, and then the sweats aren't going to like it because it's not realistic and tactical enough. And then the casuals aren't going to really buy it as much because they don't like extraction shooters, you know? So I mean, it's going to be interesting to see how it all plays out after all this and then what lawsuits ensue.

So I don't know. We'll see. I saw an article, I think it was from Forbes, that basically said, hey, you know, Guy talked to a bunch of bungee insiders, people that he knew, and again, so take this with a grain of salt, because it's, you know, a guy writing an article

that says, hey, I talked to people that work at bungee. Anonymous sources. Yeah, and you know, what he was saying is- Major leaker. Yeah, major leaker, you know, is, basically said, listen, the response to Marathon when people got the play test was underwhelming. Then you have this issue with, you know, why did they make this game in this genre?

The underwhelming response is tough. I mean, if you're a studio that's been working on a game for five years and you're a major, major studio, and the people kind of come out and go, yeah, dude, your game's just kind of mid got a cool art style, but that's about it. Oh wait, you ripped off the art style from, from somebody else. Like, you know, it's not even their art. Yeah.

You know, and it's not even your art. And then, and then it's like, dude, it's just, people are saying the morale is at an all time low. People are worried because if marathon fails, it's the end of bungee. And I don't, I'll be honest, I don't see how that doesn't happen. If Marathon releases and it fails, bungee is done, dude. Like we, we see the death of a juggernaut in the industry at that point. I mean, there are a lot of people that are saying Sony owns bungee and if bungee, if Marathon fails, Sony is just going to absorb and disband bungee and you know, look at how quick they're pulling and disband Bungie and, you know.

Look at how quick they're pulling cords on everything nowadays. Like, how many studios or layoffs do you see every month, you know? Well, look at Concord. Concord came out, I mean, at one of the most notorious epic failures of a game ever. Sony pulled it off the shelves in two weeks, dude. Two weeks. You think they're gonna take that chance with Marathon? Like, I think they're going to. So this is what people are saying. Dude, if you really want to try to make this game something, you need to delay it.

Marathon is due to release in four months, guys. Four months. Can they turn it around into something that number one gamers are going to love, that gamers are going to support because if they, hey, this is stolen assets and a shady company that has a history of pulling content back where they're not in a good place. They're not in the goodwill of gamers right now. You know, this is, this could be the death knell for them, man.

And you couple a terrible PR issue on top of all of the other concerns. It's just a bad place for bungee, dude. And I honestly like, I feel for them like like I know there's a lot of people we met we met with them they I mean they're really cool people and I just have so much nostalgic love yeah for the Bungie of the past this is really bad timing it's really really bad timing I don't know what their finances is so I couldn't say it. Like Ubisoft, I think is in trouble. Bungie, I don't know. I don't know if there's just enough weight in the Bungie brand name still to be able to justify keeping it alive. I don't know

what else they have in the pipeline. I will say that this is something economically that's always been very, I've been very curious about in the gaming industry is that it seems that you would be able to tell whether a game or not was like a good product, a good solvent financial decision much earlier than a couple of months pre-release. You know, like I, it just seems like such an interesting thing to me. I, I say this like about like game of Thrones a lot, you know, like I, I loved that show. It was on the air for 10 years. I went spent invested 10 years of my life into that show only for

that last episode to hit. I was there right until the last episode. And then I felt cheated out of 10 years of my life. And you're doing it again with last of us. If we're gonna. Well, I've got a comment. But with the Game of Thrones, I'm like, it just seems like if you had like one or two, like really avid fans on in the decision making council, whatever you want to call it

to say like guys, this isn't going to fly. The people that you are catering this to aren't going to like this. Like we have to stop or pivot hard. This is the ego, man. This is the, this is the major, major issue that we have been talking about for years now with the triple A studios. When you get these suits involved in game development, it is not good dude because it becomes profit over product at that point. And that is not good dude. Gamers are smart. I mean, we are a smart bunch of people. We are a highly opinionated bunch of people and we can see it, dude. We can absolutely feel the passion. Look at expedition 33 dude. I was going to bring that up. That just oozes more development passion than that game, you know, and then

you cut and then you cross reference that to skull and bones, which Ubisoft released and called a quadruple a title, but it was made by suits, man. There's nothing. There's no passion. There's no nothing in that game. And guess what game is going to be remembered in which game costs some company millions of dollars to be a gigantic flop at that point. When you get the corporate suits involved, that's when things go south. Because again, it's all they're focusing on at that point.

You know? So, all right. All right, let's move on, focusing on at that point. You know? So. Yeah. All right. All right, let's move on guys. So we- Are you sure? Are you sure you guys aren't done?

Yeah, all right. So we got, we got- Three hour episode inbound. All right. Let's just decide this right on the air, okay? We like, we can talk about the crazy Korean VR firm that lets you meet your deceased loved ones in VR, or we can talk about the crazy Korean VR firm that lets you meet your deceased loved ones in VR or We can talk about gamers taking advantage of Darth Vader's AI in fortnight. Oh

Those are both so good Things seems quick. I'm actually really intrigued with this VR question, but this is a trio I'll let you guys I think the VR question, but this is a trio. I'll let you guys decide. I think the VR question is interesting. So I'll tell you what, let's cover the VR thing real quick and then we'll just give our brief thoughts on Vader. How about that? Cause we have to, okay. So, because again, this falls on the heels of Expedition 33

for people that have beaten the game and played it. So no spoilers coming, but it just, it kind of, it is fitting to what's going on in the gaming world. So there was an article that a Korean VR firm created this experience where you can go into VR and interact with your deceased loved ones. And the example that they gave in this case is a mother and her 10 year old daughter

who died from an illness suddenly. And they actually have video of this where you see the mom in a VR headset and then you see the daughter kind of walk out, you know, from behind something and start talking to the mom in the daughter's voice. She looks exactly like the daughter. I, dude, I'm gonna be honest, man.

I watched this video at work today and I literally started getting choked up because as a parent, I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child, number one, but then to see your child represented in VR and hear their voice and have that ability to interact with them, I don't know. There's a part of me that's like, dude, there are people that would give anything for, I don't like there's a part of me that's like, dude, I,

there are people that would give anything for this experience. But then there's a part of me that goes, this is not a good way to deal with this man. Like grief is a, is a weird thing. And, and you know, again, in expedition 33, it kind of touches on grief. We're not going to get into spoilers, but I mean, that is a major underlying tone in the game with the gommage and everything else. People that have beaten the game. You understand what we're talking about. If you haven't, go play Expedition 33. So the question is, is like, what do you think about this, man? There's a part of me that kind of recoils and goes, oh, you shouldn't do that. But then there's a part of it. It's like, oh, my goodness, dude, like this mom got something that maybe she desperately needed from this experience too.

I certainly don't think this is any weirder than open casket funerals when you're covering over a corpse. I am frankly all for this stuff, man. I am probably in the 10% of the population that is like, hook me up, put me in the 10% of the population that is like, hook me up, put me in the matrix, like chip me, do all that stuff, take all this stupid weak flesh off of me.

Like I'm so acutely aware of my mortality that like I, anything I can do to escape it, I'm in favor for. I think that there's this, this kind of thing helps us get closer to some sort of biological immortality where we're able to maintain our consciousness past our normal lifespan. And I'm 100% for it. Ryan, what do you think about this, man? How does this hit for you? Okay. So for me, as someone, you know, and, um, this is not a shade at anyone who, who doesn't have children, but when you have a kid, it's, it's something where you, you truly learn what love is. And you understand, like I loved my wife more than I can ever imagine. And the second we had our son, like I would push her in front of a bus if it meant saving my,

my son's life, you know, like it's, yeah. Oh yeah. No, she, she would do the same like I would push her in front of a bus if it meant saving my son's life. You know, like it's. We are recording this. Yeah. Oh yeah. No, she, she would do the same and I would, I would expect, I would be mad if she didn't. Like that's the way you feel about a child.

And knowing me and how much, like I, I see friends here and there and I'll go golfing with buddies and stuff like that. But my son is my best friend in the world and my daughter, I love her to death. And we hang out and we have a great relationship. If either one of my kids died and I had to see them in VR, I would never leave. Yeah.

Because that's, that's, that's what it would be. And I just, I could never ever, ever do that because there's no way you could pull me away from being back with the most important thing that will ever be in my life so I'm even more for this now right because most children irritate the crap out of me and then let people kill their dead kids. Oh boy, I'm glad I'm the editor on this episode. That takes care of all the parents and all the kids, and then me and all my 40-year-old teenager friends can just live our Peter Pan lives forever.

This is awesome. It bears the question that if you could live in the Matrix, would you? And Ryan, you basically said, if it meant seeing like, you know, my family member that I don't have anymore, I absolutely would. I mean. No, no, I would never leave,

which is why I would never do it. Right. Okay, so you're saying you would do the day drive. So I would never ever do that. Cause it's not real, man. At the end of the day, it's not real. My thinking is not having to face this situation, thankfully, is my initial gut reaction is I wouldn't do it. I don't know that it's healthy to be able to do that. And then again, the grief

process is unique to each person that goes through grief. I think how people deal with it is different. I would be not a good person to handle that. I think I would be very self-destructive, to be honest with you. You know? Oh, I'd disappear, dude. I'd be in the forest for like months. Yeah, I mean, you know, people know themselves,

and so it's kind of like the, how would you deal with that? How you deal with it might be different than how I deal with it, and who's to say the right way, right, but I think that it would be unhealthy for me to revisit that situation and try to get over it in that case, to say, hey, I need to move on with my life because I'm with you, Ryan.

I think that if you got that, you know, endorphin rush of like seeing your child again and that interaction and stuff, I think you just put yourself in a very dangerous position to be like, I'm not leaving, you know? Well, so this is an interesting philosophical question because I think if you were to go into this VR scenario and the AI is like unconvincing, you know, whatever it is that the the experience doesn't feel authentic, then I feel like there's not really any harm or addictive endangerment.

You get in there and go like, that was weird and emotionally unpleasant and so I'm not gonna do it anymore. Or you get in there and you go, wow that was so immersive, it was like being with my child or my wife or whoever it is again, I can't bear to be without them. I want to spend all my time in the matrix with them. Then at what point do you go like that is any less authentic a relationship than with a real tangible human. Like reality is perspective. And if your reality- You get to the truth.

If you're perspective. Right, that's the matrix because it's like, you've been living in this life that you thought was real and then somebody comes along and says, this is not real. There is a real world out there. Do you wanna see it? You know, and I think for me, my absolutely, I would take the red pill

and be like, I want to know what the actual real world is. If you're telling me that what I am experiencing is not real, even though it's all I've ever known, they're like, I don't know what it is in my brain, but I'm gonna be like, I wanna see what's real. Like plain and simple. Even if that means the end of this, I wanna know what the actual truth is, what the, what reality is.

It may not be pleasant. And I mean, in the matrix, it's really not pleasant, but there's just something in me that is like, I would need to know. Maybe it's curiosity. I don't know, but yeah, I would want to know what the actual real world entails at that point. I will say that this, this experience looked pretty good. I mean, the, it was the girl's voice. It was AI driven. So the mom didn't program.

The mom didn't know what was going to happen. The saddest thing was at the end of this experience, the little girl lays in bed and the mom's like, like kind of like trying to like Pat her and like tell her good night. And then the little girl turns into like a little like butterfly made of light and just flies away. And I was like, oh my heart. That's beautiful. That's beautiful though, man.

It was tough, man. All right, well on a different note guys, let's talk about how gamers have been taking advantage of Darth Vader in Fortnite. This is why I love that. Nice transition, bro. The hardest of pivots. What other podcasts are you gonna listen to

where you get to hear a heartfelt VR deceased person story followed up by gamers making Vader say inappropriate words? Hey, hi, dude. The best podcast. Think about what Anakin would have done for his kids, man. He was gonna take over the whole galaxy. Yeah, that's true. We just lost every single Patriots.

Oh my goodness. What is going on with these guys? This is unhinged. So guys. Speaking of unhinged, Vader's dropping some crazy stuff right now. I'll be honest. I had a buddy at work come up to

me today and asked me if I had heard about this Darth Vader AI thing. And I was like, we're actually talking about it tonight, dude. Look, you have to credit the ingenuity of gamers. If we could only use this power for good, that would be great, but we don't.

We use it for the most inappropriate things. We're all children. The mythic quest, they talk about TTP, time to, if you've seen the show, you know what it is. But it's basically like, if you give gamers a creative tool, how long before they start drawing things that are inappropriate in the game? Um, I mean, this is what gamers do, man.

I don't understand why we all just know that this is what happens. So. Vader is in Fortnite. Apparently you have to like, you know, fight everybody else off to try to get to talk to Vader. He takes you away. I haven't played Fortnite, so if this is wrong, please don't roast me on social media guys, but you know, fight everybody else off to try to get to talk to Vader. He takes you away. I haven't played Fortnite, so if this is wrong, please don't roast me on social media guys. But you know, um,

you have to fight Vader. And then if you duel him, apparently, then you get to kind of talk to him and he trains you or something like that. And this is where you get to interact with Vader and it is an AI language model type thing. Most of these come with protections. Gamers have figured out how of these come with protections. Gamers have figured out how to get around those protections. I have seen many a hilarious clip right now of gamers getting paid or to say some very inappropriate things.

I mean, like on the one hand, you kind of go like, why? But then on the other hand, you kind of go like, yeah, you know, like you appreciate the ingenuity on this. I will say one of the funniest clips I saw was Vader actually accusing a guy of cheating where he like, you can hear the voice over. And I guess he kind of like the voice follows you through the rest of the match that you're in. And it's like Vader starts saying like, that was an amazing shot. Like some would say you're strong in the forest. Others would say you're using technological, uh, achievements to, to obtain such power, you know, like basically saying the guy was cheating. Yeah.

I think this is great, dude. Like this is how you implement AI in a fun way in a video game, in my opinion. If you thought old call of duty chats were bad, you man. You know, we actually, I was playing, uh, believe it or not. I, I whipped out the backbone and I was playing Fortnite on the couch, on my phone next to my son, cause he wanted to play a couple of matches, which is awesome by the way, but anyways, um, he was, there was, there was two people left and he was playing duos. I had died.

It was him and one other guy. and then he shoots Vader on accident so then Vader comes charging at him the other guy comes charging at him and then Vader ends up killing him but he's like talking during the whole time and I'm like holy crap and right after is when I saw this stuff and I was so bummed that we couldn't try to mess with them and I didn't see this stuff before because it was cool you could see him and he's talking and he fights you and stuff. So, but, uh, you know, leave it up to gamers to, to figure out a way to just be, you know, 13 years old, uh, and, and just mess with these things.

No, it's wild. Like that's it's the truth, but you know what? Also don't grow up, man. Just cause you get old, doesn't mean you got to act all stodgy and, and, and uptight and grown up like. That's going to be John is Peter Pan world. You'll never, you'll never, never land. Oh man. Yeah. Peter Pan world full of middle-aged.

Yeah. Oh man. Right? Goodness guys. Well, this was a fun episode, man. Are you sure? Are you sure you're done? Let's hope so. Are you guys done? We're done. We went way long on this one. People are like, man. Are you sure? Are you sure you're done? Let's hope so. Are you guys done? We're done. We went way long on this one. People are like, man, these twigs have really gotten...

How they can grow. Listen, thank you for hanging out with us. You know what? Let us know what you think about Nintendo and Bungie and dead people in VR and all that. Join our community. Let's talk about it. This is some of what we love about doing this show is just hearing the other people's opinions. You know, we, our community is awesome. We love hearing differing opinions.

I mean, there's a reason that John and I were like, we're going to fight and we're going to fight today, man, because guess what? The best thing is, is that I think if we would have like had a lottery where we chose the other, I bet we would. Oh yeah. Exactly. I would have like had a lottery where we chose the other. Oh, I could argue. I bet we would. Oh, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, they had a cool size. I would have been like, Nintendo!

Can't totally argue the other side. But come join our community. Listen, there's a link in the episode description. All you got to do is click that, and you're going to be in the best gaming community on the planet. And you know, if you appreciate this podcast and you're having a good time with us, think about supporting the podcast as well. There is a link in the episode description where you can support this show.

It's as little as five bucks a month. It really does go a very long way in helping us keep this content flowing and keeping the show independent. And one of, I mean, honestly, let's, you know, off the hinges, you know, gaming podcasts out there as well. So, yeah. Yeah. So thank yeah. Yeah. So thank you everybody for hanging out with us.

That's going to do it for this episode. And so next time, happy gaming. See you to the Lou buckaroo.