Video Gamers Podcast - Greed in Gaming - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan, and Ace are back with another This Week in Gaming as they break down the latest headlines making waves across the industry. We’re talking Steam Machine pricing, Bungie layoffs, and the biggest stories keeping the gaming community buzzing. We’ve got all the gaming news you need in one episode. If you love staying on top of video games, this is the place to be. Catch up on the latest in gaming and all the biggest discussions surrounding video games on the Video Gamers Podcast!   Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius, Jigglepuf, Phelps and NorwegianGreaser, Dettmarp and NightWizard63   Thanks to our Legendary Supporters: HypnoticPyro, PeopleWonder, Bobby S.   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/videogamerspod⁠ Join our Gaming Community: https://discord.gg/h2cHKAvSmu 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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Gameers podcast. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, please deposit $10. DLC and expansions for this podcast are available for the low rate of just five additional dollars. Pre-order now to receive exclusive skins. And remember, you can always purchase one of our exclusive bundles for just $40. It sounds like satire, but this is all common in the gaming industry. On today's episode, we're breaking down how greed has affected gaming.

where it leads and how do we make it stop. Before we get to the heart of this episode, let's hear from our sponsor. I'm kidding. I'm kidding, everybody. I am your host, Josh. And joining me, he remembers the good old days of physical releases,

AOL CDs that showed up in the mail, and free demo discs. It's Ryan. Not going to lie. One time I used an AOL demo disc to play Diablo 2 when I was working security just so I could have internet. That's how old school I am, baby.

It's true, man. Yeah, it's, uh, man, we've come a long way. We've come a long way. And joining us, he grew up in the age of remakes, remasters, DLCs, and is a huge fan of cosmetics, collectors editions, and pre-orders. It's age. I hate that I can't deny any of it because it's all behind me.

It's literally all sitting behind me. I can't deny any of that. It's true. It's true. It's true. And somehow it's getting worse. How is it getting worse from there? It's almost like people support some of these trends that we're not fans of.

Yeah, it's almost. I wonder who could be doing that right now. Collectors editions, figures. I don't know. Don't worry. I'll find out. It's a mystery. We're all trying to figure out.

who that guy is. We're all trying to figure out. Who spent $40 on skins and over. Well, welcome in everybody. Guys, this is, I mean, we got a lot of news to talk about. There's been a lot going on in the gaming world lately. You know, it's just all crazy. I feel like it's all just like crazy talk at this point. It's bad.

Yeah. It's not. good. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here, man. It's nuts. I mean, legitimately, like, we're going to be covering the steam machine. Okay. So we've got the actual release on the pricing on the steam machine. We're a little late to this, but we, you know, it's like we've got to cover that. We're going to be talking the, you know, some of the performance and how it compares to console since that's, you know, the PS5 and the Xbox Series X or the direct competitors to the steam machine. We've got the Xbox price hike that just happened. So we're going to be. talking about that. This is right after Asha just told everybody that gaming's become unaffordable. Yeah. You know, they're making it even more unaffordable. Oh, by the way. We've got PlayStation deleting more than 550 movies from people's PlayStation accounts that people purchased. We've got bungee laying off basically the entire Destiny 2 team. And Marathon ain't looking so hot either. So there's just a lot. So we're

calling this the greed and gaming episode. It is a twig episode. It's a this week in gaming, but it's just, you know, unfortunately, a lot of the news right now is the gaming industry and the, the shifts that we're seeing happen with the different companies, the major players. I mean, steam entering with the crazy price of the steam machine, what Xbox is doing, what PlayStation's got going on and the layoffs there. And so we're going to tackle it all, people, because this is information that you as gamers need to know um to kind of you know keep your keep your finger on the pulse of the industry and what this could mean for the future it's not all doom and gloom don't worry and you know these are just some adjustments that i think you know we we saw coming for a

long time but they're here now and we got to talk about them so all right boys what were you say no i was like to say you know we just got through all these like showcases and stuff where they showed off games and we said you know oh the gaming industry looks bad for the people in the but it looks great for the consumer. It no longer looks great for the consumer. That wasn't us. We didn't jinx that. We knocked on wood, people.

We knocked on wood. Yeah. So, all right, well, let's just jump in, boys. We got us. We're going to start with the steam machine. I know a ton of people were excited about this. I mean, we were excited about this. Oh, yeah.

So excited. You know, I mean, we're all PC gamers, but, you know, two of us have consoles. I'm not sandwich too. you know, one of us just truly believes in the master race. But to Steam Machine, this was going to bring PC gaming to the masses. This was going to let you be able to have access to PC games, the entire Steam library on your TV. You could play Steam games from your couch. We said for a long time that the ideal price range, but do you guys remember what we kind of said, hey, this seems like if they priced it at this point, this makes a lot of sense.

Do you remember what that was? I think it was like $750. I think, yeah, we were saying $750 to $800, something like that. $750 to $800 range, we thought was reasonable for what they were promising. 1,000%, right? And Steam actually came out, and I think they said, hey, we were targeting the $700 to $800 range. And then the hardware market, the floor fell out. Hardware became extremely expensive.

And this just isn't, this isn't just Steam talking about this. I mean, this is what we're seeing with Xbox. We saw with the PlayStation price increase. I mean, this is across the industry as a whole. So this isn't like one company being like, oh, let's try to eke out some more money here. I mean, this is across the industry. I think that would have been the perfect price point in my opinion. And then they come out and they go, all right, guys, official announcement for the steam pricing.

Ryan, I don't even want to, I'm going to let you tell the people because I don't like giving bad news. So Ryan, what's, what's, do you have the info in front of you? what is what is the pricing i do i do have the info in front of me so um for the steam for the steam machine if you want the base 512 gig no controller no controller no controller who needs a controller when you're playing it just took up a keyboard with the bluetooth you know on the little USB thing there 1,000 and 49 dollars oh my gosh bay that's the so that's the That's the base. No controller.

Yeah, without a controller. Without a controller. Without a controller. With the controller. With the controller. You could plug the cube in. 1128. Like,

Golly. What? If you want a little more storage, hey, I got a lot of games. I got a lot of, I need a lot of storage, you know,

for all the indie masterpieces I have on Mesa's Shame. So I need two terabytes. I need two terabytes. I need two. two terabytes to hold all these rats in my indie games. I am going to pay $1,300, $1,349 with out of controller for the two terabyte model. 1428 with the controller.

I'm speechless. I'm basically speechless of how, like, toned this is. Yeah, I don't understand for, I mean, I don't know where exactly. how we want to start and where we want to go with this, but like for a machine that is not on par with a lot of the other devices that are

already being sold for a significantly less price, where do they get offsetting the price at this rate? You know, like it's crazy. You could buy a pre-built PC with better specs. And do whatever you want with it.

For slightly more or slightly less. And then you have swappable parts. can upgrade it. You can do whatever the heck you want with it. And you'll get what this is, but way better. Yeah. So why you don't even have to buy a controller if you buy a PC at that. That doesn't make sense anymore. It was supposed

to be the affordable option in the entry into like playing your team games. I don't want to build a PC. I don't want to deal with having to, um, buy a pre-built and like having to set everything up. I'll get this. This will be my console and I can play all my steam games.

And I can set it in my living room and we're good to go. And it's way more than it ever should have been. What purpose does this serve now? Like who is buying this? Well, people are buying. Oh, and they're, of course, people are buying because gamers are idiots. You keep doing this to us. You keep buying expensive things and they're going to keep pricing them at expensive prices. Here's the thing. Because, I mean, we have people in our community that said, hey, I'm buying a steam machine. I've been waiting for this and I'm willing to pay the price on this.

the I think part of the issue with this is nobody can control the hardware pricing right now. This isn't steam. This isn't steam being greedy. You know what I mean? This isn't them trying to just make, you know, a 50% profit margin or something like that. I agree that the price does not make any sense at all, right? Like, like honestly, that's, but we're all PC gamers, right? Like this is part of the issue is that we are comfortable with, you know, building a PC, you know, and doing, like, we're

comfortable in that environment. I get for a lot of people, they're not, right? And so it's like, I want something that I can plop on my TV stand. I can hook my controller up to. I can sit on my couch and I can play it. And if it gives me access to the Steam library, that's the selling point to me. I think that we understand that, hey, you know, for the equivalent price of the two terabyte model with the controller, so 1428, I actually watched a video where a guy broke down the individual components and built a PC to match the specs of the steam machine. And it came out to like $1,400 and I think $49 or something like that. Right.

So it's like here's the here's the issue though. When you build a PC, yes, it's intimidating for the first time. And yes, it's kind of like, well, I don't know what I'm doing. Building a PC nowadays is not that hard. It's not that bad. It's not that bad. It's really not as complicated as it used to be. and I think it's intimidating.

But here's the benefit when you build a PC. You can individually upgrade and replace components in a PC should something go bad. Like I just had to put a new power supply in my daughter's computer. And it was like a power supply is like 80 bucks. You know what I mean? And it's like, okay. Good to go. Yeah.

Like it was like this isn't a big deal. If you have a steam machine and the power supply goes out, guess what you're doing. You're bad. You ain't replacing the power supply on your own. You know what I mean? So it's like, it's one of those things where not that anybody asked for our opinion, but if you're thinking about dropping $1,450, build a PC people. Like unless you are just absolutely restricted by your space, which, hey, the steam machine's small

and you're paying for, as this sounds dumb, but you're paying for miniaturization, right? Like you're paying to have a small form factor. In my opinion, you are better off with a PC. Like they're not hard to build. get your setup. Once you're in the ecosystem, you're in the ecosystem and it just makes a lot more sense to me at that point. Yeah. Well, I don't like there's a part of me that almost feels bad for Steam. Like for Valve, you know what I mean? They're selling it cost. And the other part of me is like, you're kind of dumb for releasing it at this price point at the same time. I think you should have waited, honestly. I think you should have waited a little longer to the market calm down till maybe things got better. And then you could do it because they're selling at cost. They said they're not selling below cost. They're not selling a buff cost.

I believe it. Like legitimately I believe that. You guys are fools. They're not selling a cost. You think they're selling to not make money? Have you priced out components? You think that they're not, they don't have it in with components? No, this is why they delayed it in the first place, man.

No, because they want to make money that they don't know. There's no, there's no company that is that large. They, they cleared like two or three billion last year. You think that they're going to, they're going to sell something. something that costs. No. CEO has a mega yacht. Yeah.

You guys are ridiculous. There's no way. Count a point, Ryan. Okay. Do you think they're dumb enough to release a console at a $1,400 price point if they had any other option? Yes. Because I know people will buy it and they are.

Everybody's buying it. No. I guarantee you. You guys are crazy. There's no way that they're not factoring in profit within all this. They cost them nothing. to sell these games through their system, through the Steam network. It's like a 90-

It's a 90-95% return, 100%. But that doesn't mean that they're not making money on all this stuff. Like, there's no way. They are not, they are not selling this at a net negative or a net equal. Like they are making money on this. I guarantee it. It's going to get scouts. They are, it ain't very much.

I guarantee you. And this is common. for consoles. A lot of consoles sell in a negative. This isn't new. No, that's not new. Like, PlayStation Xbox, like, most consoles sell at a negative. This, the, the, it's, it's like less than, um, the specs

are less than like a PS5 pro. Well, that's what I was going to get to with, uh, Josh, because Josh has all of the, like, info on this, but each direct competitors are, as we said, the PS5 and the Xbox series X. How does it stack up? Well, that's a good question, Ace, because, you know, if I'm paying $1,400 for a console, I better have the best console on the market, right?

Absolutely, you would think. Yeah, you would think, but that ain't the case. So, you know, there is, there is some good news. The performance wise for the Steam Machine is basically on par with the PS5, okay? And it's basically on par with the Xbox Series X. Now, because the architecture for the GPUs and the processors and all that are a little bit different and they're a little bit customized and all that, you're going to see a little bit of variability with performance.

On the whole, the steam machine outperforms the base PS5 in performance mode because you know that you have the option of performance or quality, right? So the base PS5 is what we're talking about. The steam machine at 1080P, which I'll be honest, I don't know how many people are playing at 1080P on their TVs in here because most TVs are 4K now.

I play in 4K now. Yeah. So this is where it gets a little dicey. But if you are playing a 1080P, the steam machine actually outperforms the PS5 by about 10 frames a second. So minimally. Minimally. Minimally. And again, it all sometimes depends on the game and, you know, that kind of thing.

But they're basically, they're pretty equal. All right. Okay. Then it gets even diceier when you move up to the 1440. 40p, all right? Because at that point, the PlayStation, the base PlayStation, starts to pull away. Okay.

So then it's like, okay, well, now playing at 1440P, the PlayStation starts to kind of perform a little bit better. We're talking a few frames per second here. And then at 4K, which is what most people are playing at, because most people go out and they have a 4K TV at this point, it actually lags behind by about 15 frames a second on average. Jeez. So being that most people are playing at 4K,

you're kind of getting not quite the base PS5 performance out of the $1,400 steam machine. Yikes. That's not good, guys. I mean, what's that? Not good. I mean, and it's even worse for the Series X.

The Series X falls somewhere kind of in between. And again, it kind of depends on if you're playing at 4K or 1080P and that kind of thing. So, um, I paid like $500 for my, PlayStation. Yeah, me too. Like what? Yeah. I waited.

I waited until they got them in stock and I bought one. Yeah. What are we doing? You know, like, it's ridiculous. I, I just, I don't know. I don't understand it. I, I am the biggest Valve and Steam supporter. I love them. I love what they've done for gaming. I love, uh, what they do for indie gaming. But, but, but man, this is, this seems just way. This is way tone deaf. Way too tone deaf. Yeah, it just seems way out of pocket. Like, I just, I don't understand it. Like, I don't, I mean, even if, okay, we got a bubble right now because all these data centers, all these AI centers, all that stuff is shooting prices through the roof. They made billions of dollars last year. They can't eat it for a little bit to provide a good, consistent price for their consumers.

and it'll come back down, their prices will come back down, and everything will settle in. I don't know. I don't understand. I mean, maybe that's why I'm not a millionaire or billionaire, but it seems crazy. You would think they would recoup the cost by what they sell on steam machines,

making it back in monies that, and money that they made from games bought on Steam. Absolutely. Well, I think that's, I mean, that's where the disconnect is for me. And I get that they're claiming,

now they're claiming that they're selling this at cost. I don't buy it. Market share, right? If you can get part of that market share, right this is how big businesses work right is it's like you get part of that market share you get more people into the steam ecosystem you're going to make a bunch of money because now you have people buying their games through steam that they weren't previously doing before so they i don't know

man this ain't it i like i said we you know most gamers love steam you know it's one of those things where it's just you know we they we like the platform we like what they do you know that kind of thing i feel kind of bad for them because i think that they had this i don't think they can sit on this for two years. So it's like you're in a rock and a hard place, right? Like you don't, you don't want to release it at this price point, but you can't just sit on it because you've invested billions of dollars into developing this thing and bringing it to the world. And so you can't just sit on it for two years because who knows what the heck the future is going to hold. You know, does the price of hardware go down? Sure. But then does inflation go up? Like maybe,

you know, it's just, it's not a situation I would want to be in. This ain't it. If you're on the fence on this one, just buy a PC people. That's really. the right answer. If you will, if you got the funds and you want to buy the steam machine for the convenience and all that, like I get it.

We're not saying, you know, don't, but we're just saying, we personally think there's a better option out there. And it's just build a PC at that point because you're not going to see a difference

other than future ability to fix things and upgrade things individually and stuff like that. So, all right, we got to move on, boys. I mean, since we're talking about consoles,

let's just jump to the, the, You know what? One other thing. Let's just do this real quick, too, because while we're talking about price comparison, the steam machine compared to a PS5, right? I mean, if it's on par with the PS5, here's where it really hurts. PS5 with the controller, $650. Affordable, I would say. For the disc version. Affordable. Guys, the steam machine is twice as expensive. It's two times. Insane. Two times as expensive, man. And they're on par. They are on par with one. And listen, we get it. We're PC gamers. Like, yes, you want access to Steam and all of the amazing PC games.

And yes, you will absolutely save money on the steam sales and the, the, the things like that. So you'll save money on your games. And let's be honest, you don't have to play for PlayStation Plus or Game Pass. You know what I mean? So yes, you can play online with your friends for free. That is one of the benefits of, you know, being in the PC ecosystem. But man, two times as much. The PlayStation 5 Pro, which.

smokes the steam machine in performance, okay? Now, that's a lot of price here. That's $900 for the PS5 Pro, okay? You got to pay $80 a year for PlayStation Plus. So you're approaching that $1,000 mark, but for less than $400, you know what I mean? You're getting a way better machine performance-wise and all of that.

Plus, you're in the PlayStation ecosystem with their exclusives and that kind of thing. so it's like it just doesn't make sense Xbox Series X, 650 you know, it's like,

it just doesn't make any sense, guys. And these all come with controllers, by the way. These base costs all the come with controllers. Why would I need that? Why would I need a controller? Oh, man. All right.

Well, I'm just, I'm just so sad just because if it was that 800-ish dollar mark, like I would be like, I don't want to spend this much, but I will to be able to play all these steam games on my TV and sit on the couch. Yeah, exactly.

I'll do it. I'll do it. That's an affordable mark. But $12, $1,500, $1,500. That's insane for, I just built a new computer. Yeah, you've lost your eyes. And I'll just bring that out there. Like, it's, it's crazy.

Yeah. All right. We've got to take a quick break. And then we're going to come back. We're going to talk some Xbox. They just hit us with a pretty major price increase. with their hardware as well. We'll be right back to talk about that.

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This is just, I feel like somebody's just punching us, man. We're supposed to be happy, dude. Take that. Take that. Welcome back for the sin of greed. Today on video gamers podcast, we're talking about the seven deadly sins

and we're covering greed. Join us next week where we cover gluttony and little Caesars and Bojangles chicken. damn it he got me he's just like he's son of a god my

my door dash order is almost here dang it I totally put away two little Caesar's pizza not even like a day it goes oh we saw your photo of the boxes we saw it

oh man all right well listen the news ain't getting no better people we just talked about the new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma

she comes in there was a little bit of hesitation here people weren't sure she released this official statement. Number one, she lowered the price of game pass, which garnered some goodwill for gamers.

And then she released this statement. She said, look, we're just going to be brutally honest. We talked about this before. She said the way things were running before was not sustainable. We're going to have to make some really tough choices if we're getting this ship back on track. I appreciate the transparency. It's not good news, but I like it when people stop

with the PR speak and just give it to me straight. And she kind of just gave it to people straight. And then she comes out and she says, gaming has gotten unaffordable for the gamer. Cannot do that. And then they raised the price of the Xbox. You cannot do that. You make such a fool of yourself doing something like that.

Guys, here's the problem. Like, didn't PlayStation they raised their price? They went up 50 bucks, right? Yeah, most people went up $50. Switch went up like 50. PlayStation went up 50. Like, all of them. Xbox says, hold my beer, people.

Ryan, what I'm I don't like giving people bad news. You're my bad news guy. Why don't you just tell them the price differences, Ryan? Ryan didn't want to tell him because he's on mute. He doesn't want to talk about it. Oh, dang it. Oh, the mute counter continues. I put another one on the mute counter people.

Yeah, we're going to need, we need music. The mute counter grows off every time like the mute counter goes up for Ryan. Oh, okay. Well, now that my mute's off. the price raises are significant. I never know actually after the 360 I like lost track of all the different layers

because they don't have they have all the different types of Xboxes. I know it's crazy but with the Xbox series S 512 gig and went from 399 to 499. 100 dollars raise. What a joke. Okay.

The one terabyte version went from 449 to 599. Oh my gosh. And then you got... Yeah. And then you got your Xbox series X, your 1 terabyte version digital, went from 599 to 749. You've lost your minds. 749.

That's a pretty gnarly price increase. And then your Xbox Series X, 1 terabyte regular that can take the discs that apparently nobody uses anymore. So I guess it doesn't really even matter. went from 649 to 799. Oh, and they completely sunset. They're 2 terabyte. Yeah.

They came out and said, we're not even making the 2 terabyte anymore. You don't need that much space. Games aren't that big anymore. They're totally optimized and you don't need that much space at all for sure. Yeah. You just need the one game.

What is wrong with these companies, man? That is an insane increase. That's not like, oh, we're raising. raising the price a little bit, but don't worry, we cut game pass to compensate. Where did we get to where things that are like years and years old, the price goes up that aren't like collectibles? Like this is a, this is a commodity that people use like regularly. It's still being produced.

People are using it. Yeah, prices go up like with the product and, uh, the hardware that goes into it. But when have in this gaming industry in this world have the things gone up? as we go through. Like normally it goes down. It's like, oh, now I can get one. Now I can get this PS4. Yeah, as it reaches like the end of its lifespan,

it goes down and you're like, oh, I could finally pick up by Wii U or something like that. Yeah, it's dropped like 200 bucks. Now I can get one. You know, and I can pick it up and get all those games I wanted to play. But now the prices are going up not by a little bit, not staying the same.

They're going up $150. That's absurd. That is absurd. And they want to raise the price of the games to do that too. So they want you to pay more and they pay more for the games. Yeah. They're killing us. Go pay 800.

800 for the system and they go pay $80 for every game. Like what? Well, don't forget your online subscription too, Ryan. You got to pay. Oh, you want to pay for Xbox. Whatever they call theirs. Is it just Game Pass? Dude.

Yeah, something like that. No, it's Xbox Live. Xbox Live. Are those separate? They don't come together anymore? Yeah, that's the separate. Yeah, the Game Pass is the subscription. Game Pass is to where you get.

I felt like they must have together at one point. Is what you need to be able to play online with friends. Gosh. Yeah, this is a, so if we're looking at the Xbox Series X, that is a 25% increase. It's insane. Like, that's a massive price hike, guys, massive. Like, I don't get it. I know that, like, I'll be honest, like, this new CEO, I think she actually knows her stuff, man.

Like, like, legitimately. And I know that it is not what people want to hear. and see. Here's my question. Is anybody that was not in the Xbox ecosystem going to now join the Xbox ecosystem at this price point?

Why would you? Why would you that to yourself? Why would you ever do that to yourself? I mean, I don't get it. I mean, I get that they have to make some of these tough situations. And I get, like I said, I can understand that they don't control

the hardware market. You know what I mean? And there is a shortage of hardware components right now and it sucks all around but like this don't seem like it's it man you know like that it just doesn't seem like

it's it to me I don't know what you do because I'm not a CEO of a major company but like this doesn't seem like it's it like legitimately I think my thing would be look we're not really hoping to sell a whole lot more of the series X if you have one

great and if you don't have one we don't really expect that you're going to buy one anytime soon. We don't care. I'm terrified to see the price of their next console. Oh, the Project Helix? Yeah, I'm terrified. Project Helix ain't happening for at least, I'm telling you, I'm calling it.

That has to have been delayed. That has to have been delayed at this point. $1,500. Guaranteed. It's, dude, it's going to be crazy. So, I mean, we just got done talking about the Steam Machine. This is one of the things where once you are in the ecosystem, at least your games are cheap.

At least the games are cheap. You do have some say over, like, library that you have access to at that point. You know, I mean, this, they're not all good games. Steam ain't Nintendo where you're paying $60 for a game that's four years old, at that point, you know, so, all right, we got to move on here.

This is, I mean, there's no good news. No, it's just, no, this is just a horrible episode. It needs to come out. It needs to come out. Yeah, so we're going to talk about before we switch gears off of the console, we're going to bring up PlayStation because, man, PlayStation, this ain't, this ain't a good look, man. This is not a good look.

And this brings up the whole, the whole debate and movement about digital ownership of certain things. Like Europe's got the Stop Killing Games movement that's going on where it's like, hey, if you buy a game, you should be able to own the game, not license the rights to play the game. Anytime you buy a game on Steam, by the way, this is very common. You are buying the rights to access the game. You are not buying the game itself anymore.

Unless you own the physical copy of a game. If you buy a game digitally, you are no longer the owner of that digital copy. You own the license. You are buying the rights to play the game. Yep. And people can take it away. Now, everybody goes, they're not going to take it away, guys. That's not.

I mean, I know they say they can do that, but nobody's actually doing that. And then PlayStation said, hold my beer, people. We're going to do that. And they removed 550 movies that they had. sold through the PlayStation network, okay, PlayStation accounts that purchased these movies through PlayStation,

these movies got removed from people's accounts with a very short and contrite statement. I saw the screenshot of it that basically was sent out to people that own these movies and said, as of this date, you will no longer have access to this movie. Sorry.

And that was it. Pound sand. Well, I mean, I mean, At least I'll get my money back, though, because I can't access the movie, but I bought it. So then since I can't access the movie, I'll get my money back from PlayStation Network, right? No, Ryan, you still got the license. You just don't got the movie anymore. What?

That's a good one. What do you mean? No, I paid for the movie. Like, what are you talking about? No, Ryan. You paid for the rights to watch the movie. Oh. And you use those rights when you watched the movie.

So, you know. That's where I'm mistaken. Yeah. Guys, what are we doing? What are we doing? This is disastrous. This is awful. And it sets a very bad precedent that I'm not a fan of.

Well, and we... Every time you buy a game on Steam Ace, you agree. I know. They changed that recently, by the way. That was like a few years ago. They changed that to you are buying a license and not you are buying a game. And I hate it. It is my one like qualm about being a PC gamer is there's not fiscal media.

You are stuck with what you got. And there's nothing you can do. There's nothing they have transitioned to you. Ryan? Into this. You do what all of us do, and that is you hope and pray that this never comes to life. And then you go, Steam would have to do that. They wouldn't charge me $1,400 for a system.

What do you? Imagine that. They charge you $1,400 for the Steam machine, and then they one day just removed the software. Oh, the Steam software's shown. Somehow, some way, this has actually come close to happening before, on this, where PlayStation, I'm trying to think who they, who, I'm trying to think where it happened,

where in the past, they were going to lose their licensing for somebody and then they worked it out, right? After that, but it was like a scare. Oh, it was Discovery. So the Discovery Channel. Oh, yeah, yeah. So they had a scare with the Discovery Channel

where they actually released a statement that said, hey, your titles that you purchased via, you know, Discovery Channel owned IPs would no longer be available. People lost their minds and then they worked it out with Discovery to keep the stuff. Oh, oh, by the way, but they only worked it out for 30 months and that actually ended this month, by the way. So the discovery people are are screwed too for anybody that purchased discovery content through the PlayStation store. Here's my question, because this is something that I have personally, like, not really done. I used to like way back in the day.

But like there's this big thing about this movement where a lot of people pirate games and movies, right? Like, you know, they say, hey, I'm going to sail the seven Cs and pick this game up on the seas, right? And everybody knows that this is a thing you can do. It's very, very common. I personally have been against it because it's like, hey, these developers work really hard to give us this content and I want to pay them for their work and reward them for the

hard work and things like that. You know, we try to be on the up and up on this podcast. but here's my question. If we don't ever truly own a game anymore, does it mean that pirating them is that is bad? It's not theft. But that was the argument, right? Ace is that it's like, hey, that's theft.

You're stealing somebody's hard work. These developers worked really hard. And if you pirate this game, then you're stealing from them. No, if purchasing isn't owning, then pirating isn't theft. I think you're right, dude. Like, legitimately, I think you're right. Hold on. Counterpoint. Counterpoint, just because I'm a contrarian sometimes.

So does that mean then when you go to, like, a museum, you pay to enter the museum and you're licensed to see this stuff? You understand, though, that's a one-day ticket in the fine print. There's nothing on your purchase of a game that says, on this date, you will run out of access to this game. But what if something happens halfway through the day, and they kick you out of the museum. They usually give you a ticket to come back later.

Most people want a refund at that point. And you also get a refund. Because they go, hey, I didn't get to enjoy what I signed up for. Dang it. Physical experiences. You guys crushed it. That was so good. All right, good counterpoint.

I'm with you guys. I was just trying to be contrarian. But no, absolutely. Absolutely. This is ridiculous. I have never supported pirating games. But I will say if this is the course that like, that like legitimately they're taking.

at this point where you're telling me I don't own the game, even though I gave you like retail price for this game. Yeah. And you're telling me that you can take it away at any time. If I don't own it, then maybe I just find a way to access it. Maybe I find a way to own it. You know, like, I mean, that's bad.

It sounds bad, but it's like this is what the industry is telling people. It is. I don't blame a single person anymore for pirating for how expensive gaming has got. like genuinely I don't at this point but this especially this especially is a reason to be like I don't judge you anymore I get it we don't own things anymore apparently

it's so tough man you will because you want to do what's right obviously and you want to reward the people to make the game you do but then when you can't show your appreciation but when you continuously get um just shafted by these developers and these these large companies that that screw you over um you know what do you do

And so it's just, it's, it's, oh man. Don't pirate your indie games. Your indie devs aren't going anywhere. I mean, that's, that's very true. This is true. They're not, they're not going anywhere. Like, legitimately. I think there's a world where it's like, you know,

you reward the people that are actually doing good and we stop rewarding the people that are coming up with these BS type policies and stuff like that, man. Until the people stand up like nothing's going to happen, though. Everybody's just going to keep taking it until they don't. Like, and we get this with. with politics and you know they promised the world and and then all these things happen and

you don't get what you think you're going to get and it's just it's over and over the same thing so I don't know it's the snake eating its own tail my friend yeah and and then we all all of us just suffer yep so but it's okay unless it happens to you right like it's one of those things where until it happens to me

then it's like oh did you guys hear that story where like a whole bunch of people lost access to their movies and then it's like oh yeah I heard about that. I think it did happen to me. I just haven't gotten the email. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. All right, we got to move on. Last story here. And this will conclude the bad news

episode. The greed continues. Bungee is this greed or is this just mismanagement? I don't know on this one. I legitimately, unfortunately feel like this is just straight mismanagement on this one. But Bungee

is laying off basically the entire Destiny 2 team, which is 29,000. people. We've been seeing this on social media this week. I have seen dozens and dozens and dozens of posts on X where it is, hey, I was let go from Bungee today. I was on the Destiny 2 team. If anybody knows of a job lead, please let me know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, this is not affecting the marathon team yet, or if it is, it's very, very minimal so far. But Marathon ain't doing so hot people. This is not the savior of Bunyton.

And Ryan, you put some information in here because you love these player accounts, but what is the information that you had in here? So as of this morning when I was looking, I was just trying to look up some of it now. But as of this morning, where is my numbers here? I had that there was, where did it go? I'm going to save Ryan. You had 11,000 people this morning playing marathon and you had 85,000 people playing Destiny. It's obviously substantially more. So what?

I just, I mean, they backed the wrong goose, man. Like what? I don't understand. No, I disagree with this one because they killed that goose. They killed Destiny 2. For sure. No, they killed it. They greed killed Destiny 2.

We're calling this the Greed episode. And greed is what killed Destiny 2 when you started removing paid content. This is what we just got to talking about. Yeah. People paid for content. And you put it away. And then you came out and you said, we're taking the content away that you paid for. And people lost their minds.

And they went, well, freaking screw you, Destiny 2. You know what I mean? And they left. And then guess what? When your people leave, they're not buying, they're not doing your micro transactions and they're not buying your expansions. And then you ran off your customer base. And then the game fails because it's not making enough profit anymore because you let greed dictate

your decisions. And this is the result. old, man. It was such a good game. I, I, uh, I have 1,800 hours in Destiny 1, probably 8 or 900 in Destiny 2. And it was so good. And they, they killed this game. And, and they went to go develop something else when they had just the golden goose sitting right in front of them. They had something that was crisp and clean and one of the best shooters I've ever played to go to try to like do an extraction shooter like what like and we loved marathon Josh you and I and we played with Matt and like it was a fun game it was cool it was an enjoyable time but but destiny

was something different it was a generational all-time game it was something that I I would rate every Tuesday I would rate all three characters I would play throughout the week there was nothing that stopped me from playing this game and that's the only game I would play and for them to take that from someone who at the time I was like more of a casual gamer and I played a lot but I wasn't like a hardcore hardcore gamer guy and so there was a lot of us that way

and that's why they made so much dang money and for them to get rid of that to try to do something else and to try to tap into another market just for like hey we can make more money and then it doesn't work out and they're like oh well let's scrap everything and they just ditch it all I don't know

I'm at a loss for words I don't understand it. Me and my buddies are all, all the group that I used to raid with are all just like kind of, man, that sucks. Like we haven't played Destiny in a while, but we're just kind of lost. It's sad.

It's really sad. Yeah, it's all so sad, man. And I'm just so tired of seeing these layoffs. I'm so tired of it. It's like every day. It's a company laying off hundreds and hundreds of their developers, of their marketing, of all these people who've worked on these games,

for possibly at the beginning at the cycle of these games. Yeah. It's like, there's still almost 90,000 people playing, and they're like, nah. You could be putting more resources.

They didn't have that player count. They didn't have that player count until they announced that Destiny 2 was stopping development. It was still pretty good, though. We should play Destiny again. It was still pretty good. Okay, but once you saw that player count go back up,

I would have started throwing resources back into Destiny 2 so that you could stay afloat. Because here's the thing. Here's the thing. it's almost the circle of life in a way where you know we you have these indie games that are making huge splashes dude haides uh silk song uh expedition 33 you know i mean most recently mecha chameleon what's that's that up to like 10 million copies or something crazy like that so it's like you have these indie games that make this huge splash and then that studio becomes big i mean at one point ubi soft was a small developer you know what i mean like truly right and so and then they become big right and then they become big right and then And they get so big and bloated that they forget how to actually make games. And then they start this trend of like, let's just soak out all of the profit that we can. You know, we're seeing this with, you know, Ubisoft.

We saw with Blizzard. Blizzard almost killed Overwatch, dude. Oh, they came close. Oh, they came close. It was an absolute disaster, dude. And it's only through the saving grace of Marvel rivals coming out that Overwatch, and they, they corrected course. But at least they corrected course. And gamers are, Overwatch is a lot of fun.

so gamers are a little bit more willing to forgive in that case. You know what I mean? But like we're seeing it with Nintendo. You know what I mean? Where it's profit and greed over everything else. And it will. It will come back to bite them at some point. Dude, every giant falls at some point.

It might be 10 years from now. It might be 20 years from now. But it's going to happen when this is the course that they are taking. You know what I mean? And then somebody else will rise up. Plain and simple. It's the circle of gaming life. It will happen.

And it's going to continue to happen over the next. century or so. Yeah. But what did what did Blizzard do though? They went and they dialed back. They're like, okay, that didn't work. And then they're like, let's reset and go back to this. And now it's good.

Like, it's good again. Well, they reset because they saw that people were hungry when Marvel rivals came out and took over the world. Blizzard went, oh, wait a minute. There's still a market for this. Like, oh, we can't just let this go. Of course there is. They want people, people want a good game.

You think there's not a good, like if destiny wasn't good? Like six months ago, I had pulled. it up in there the average player count was over 30,000. Like that's not amazing, but that's not horrible. It's not enough to sustain it. It's not enough to sustain it with something like that. But that's because that's only six

months ago. That's because of the steady decline over and over and over again of them not putting the effort in to make this game what it could be. I left Destiny years ago because of what they did with Destiny 2. Like it was awesome and then it just had a steep decline.

So I just, it's, I don't know, man, when you have. But the decision, this, that's my point. The decisions of the company are what caused the decline. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.

I agree. Absolutely. Yeah. They, they created this and they made their own bed and now they got to sleep in it. And now the interesting thing is like, what are they going to do? Because obviously destiny is, destiny is getting shut down. Marathon's not going to be sustainable. There's 8,000 people on.

They're trying to pivot marathon into a PVE content. They're trying to, bro, that ain't going to happen. They're trying to do that with Arc Raiders too. Like, it's not going to, it's not going to. Only the sweats are going to be there. And then, you know, you can do some PVE if you want. But like, it's not going to happen. So, so that's going to be gone.

So what are they going to do now? Like, they're going to try for the next thing. That's honestly the circle. I just read a huge article on Arc Raiders that talked about why Ark Raiders is failing and why they're not doing anything about it. And the answer to summarize a very well written article was basically, we're going to just move on. We've made our money. And we're going to hope that the.

next thing we do hits again. Instead of trying to keep the player count, you know what I mean, and keep the cycle going, they're literally just willing to throw it to the side and then try to replicate that success on the next thing. And they'll sell you another one. That's how a lot of these companies work, you know? And it's like you, if you hit, you hit big. And if you whiff, well, you lose out.

It's like a, it's like a circus like bringing in the next show. Yeah. And then like they're good until they're not. And then you just kick them to the side. bring in another one. And then you find a new act that interest people. Find a new act that people come and you don't show up to. It's crazy, but it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the circle right now, man, you know, um, I mean, all right people. Well, listen, we don't like just talking about bad unfortunate news in the industry. I mean, that's really not our vibe, but we are part of our job is to

keep everybody up to date on everything and what's going on in the industry and all that. Um, we'd like to just group it, get it out of the way. Uh, so we could, uh, so we can, can, you know, move on to fun games that we're playing and silly topics and stuff like that. But that's where we're at. You are now caught up on all of the craziness going on in the industry right now with these price increases and pricing points for the steam machine and all this stuff. I'll be honest. If you own a console, thank goodness you own a console.

If you are looking to buy a console, now is probably not the right time to do that. Unless you want to base PS5 with controller. Yeah. Like that's honestly your best option at this point. That is your best option. So yeah, that's where we're at. But like I said, hopefully, you know, where there's money to be made, people step up. So maybe the hardware market will start to see new companies starting to create new hardware or something like that.

It's just going to be painful for a little bit until that happens. But, you know, I'm faithful that we will see better times ahead of us in gaming as far as that goes. And honestly, as most gamers, give me fun games to play. And I'm pretty happy with life in general, man. You know? And so that's hopefully where at least we get to stay as gamers for the most part. So, um, all right. That's going to do it for this episode. We're going to go play some games and laugh together and, uh, just have a good time because that's what we like doing. Uh, remember to hit that follow button, hit that plus button, uh, you know, it helps the algorithm. it helps other gamers find the show.

If you haven't left us a review on Apple Podcasts, take a minute to do that. It's one of the best ways that you can help us out, you know, and again, help other gamers know that this is a good podcast. And come join our community. We have the best gaming community on the planet. We can talk about stuff like this. We have people helping people build computers and looking and walking them through how to build it.

Yep. And things like that. If you want to chat games, need recommendations or just hang out and play games with us. We just had a Mecca Chameleon night. we had 20 plus people all night long playing mecha chameleon and had an absolute blast. If that's the kind of thing that you think sounds fun, then we want you to be a part of that community. There's a link in the episode description. It'll take you right to our Discord server.

That's going to do it for this episode, everybody. Until next time, happy gaming. See ya. Peace out. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if, like what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old.

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