Video Gamers Podcast - [TWIG] - Drama Drama Drama – Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan and Ace are diving into the latest gaming controversy surrounding Subnautica 2, breaking down the drama with Krafton and the talk of avoiding payouts. Is this just business as usual, or a major red flag for the industry and the future of video games? We unpack what’s happening, why the gaming community is fired up, and what it could mean moving forward. If you follow video games and the stories behind them, this is one gaming episode you don’t want to miss!   Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius, Jigglepuf, Phelps and NorwegianGreaser, and Dettmarp   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

Hello, fellow gamers, and welcome to the Video Gamers podcast. On today's episode, we've got a surprising twist to the Subnautica 2 drama. Minecraft Dungeons 2 gets announced, CD Project Red pulls out the Uno Reverse card and more. But before we get to all that, some introductions are in order. I am your host, Josh, and joining me, there will come a day when he plays a day when he plays a new game more than I do. But today is not that day. It's Ryan.

That day will come soon enough. I don't, I don't believe it. You don't believe that for us. How's your 10 minutes in, how's your 10 minutes in Crimson Desert so far, Ryan? Well, I got shanked and then whatever else happened, I'm not going to spoil anything for anyone, but, uh,

but yeah, I got a lot more time to get into that game for sure now. All right. And joining us, he's been playing Crimson Desert like it's a mansion robbing simulator, and he was definitely disappointed that his rat army didn't work out at all, so he's pretty sad right now. It's ace. Yeah, I've just kind of been robbing people, and I filled my inventory with rats.

And at the time, you can't put anything in the one chest you can access. You can just take things out of it. So I just had to release my entire inventory of rats into the time. town. Ace just causing the plague. Yeah. Just, you know, such an innocent move, Ace. The Black Death is just

Ace. Just I don't there. I do love, I had to pick on Ace on this one because like I'm deep in Crimson Desert. I've been playing it as much as I can. I've been following the main quest line for the most part with a little bit of side distractions, but it's like, let me see where this game kind of takes you.

And then I'm chatting with Ace. And I go, hey man, how's, how's the playtime going and Ace is kind of like, I don't, yeah, I don't know, man. And I'm like, well, what have he been doing? Like, what are you working on? You know? And he's like, just been robbing mansions. And I'm like, and? And he's like, that that's basically it. And I'm like, wait, number one, like, how much kleptomania do you have, Ace? I need it all. I want it. Is there that much stuff in the mansions to keep you going for that long? There's quite a bit in the mansions, including unique gear and weapons.

They had a katana, Josh. They had a two-handed katana with three elemental weapon slots. It was awesome. Bro. Come on, Josh. Isn't that, okay, now listen, we are a historically accurate podcast, and I do believe that a two-handed katana would be an Uchi-Gatana. I don't know.

It just says katana in the weapons slot. Okay, so listen. I didn't make the game. I do believe a longer two-handed katana is an Uchi katana. So, because with Frost Level 20. Wait, are the single-handed katana's like the one, the second ones they would have? So the shorter one would actually be known as a Wakazashi, Ryan. Okay.

And then you have your really, really small, almost dagger-like one. That would be a Tonto. Yeah. So. You're a Tonto. Yeah. People are like, what podcast did I tune into today? Welcome to the Katana podcast.

And I welcome it, everybody. We rarely make it past the intro without getting sidetracked just a little bit. It's, you know, it's kind of what we do around here. guys Wait, what did you call it? A two-handed katana is called an Odachi, bud. Odachi, yeah, that's what I just looked up too.

That's what I said. Now, Odachi Katana. Yeah, you said Uchi Katana, bud. I said Uchi Katana. Yeah, you said Uchi Katana. Uchi Katana is just a weapon that exists in the Souls franchise. Yeah, isn't everything based on that?

Odachi is just Japanese for a great sword. Uchi Katana is literally just a sword within Eldon Ring. It's a type of traditional Japanese sword there's primarily used by Samurai's at feudal Japan. Okay, so listen, everybody. We're historically accurate Eldon Ring lore podcasts. So wait, Uchikatana does not exist anywhere else but Eldon Ring?

No, no, I said it exists as a sword for Samarize only, and it exists in Eldon Ring, and that's it. It is a sword that Samarized used specifically. So the long one is, uh, two-hanyatatatatatat. That's an Odachi. Over 90 centimeters. Yep. 35.4 inches. Then the really long ones called the Moss and Rune.

That's the one, Seferal. A lot of our listeners are in England, so can you convert that to metric? We only use freedom units around here. We only use imperial units around here. Okay. Oh my gosh. What is happening already, man? I'll tell you what.

Let's get this show back on the rails. Guys, we have, I'm just going to, I'm going to say this. The listeners have stepped up. their game lately, dude. Like, in a way that is like, it's hard to fathom. We just had our best week ever for the podcast, like, ever. Yeah! Which is thrilling and exciting for us after doing this for five years now.

You know, we're continuing to grow, but we just kind of smashed our best week ever. Thank you to everybody that tuned into an episode and listened. And then you and I kind of just started laughing because we had a flood of new signups on Patreon for people to support the podcast. We are a listener supported podcast. We do not get funding from anybody. This show exists because of the support of the listeners out there. And man, we have some listeners to thank. So a huge shout out to all of these fine people that signed up for rare status to support this podcast. We have Matt Modi who's signed up for rare. We have Panthero who's signed up for rare. We have Edwin Kirsch who signed up for rare and we have Matthew Allen who also signed up for

rare all in the last week guys. It's also not counting some other people that up their pledge and sign back up and stuff like that. So my goodness, we are honestly humbled by the support, man. We're just a bunch of goofy dudes. Yeah. It means more than you guys know. Every time I see one of these come through. It just, it brings a crazy smile to my face and I, and I send it out and, um, we talk about it. It's, it's genuinely cool. The same thing with the reviews, all that stuff. This is, this is something we do for fun, obviously, and we do it because we love it. We're not, we don't pair of mortgages with this podcast, but, um, we do it because we love it and we love video games and we love the community we've built. So seeing this stuff come through and seeing it,

like getting these crazy weeks. It's such a cool thing to see come to fruition. And I love it. I love the work we've put in. And I love what we're reaping with those benefits. So, man, but it's all because of you guys. So thank you so much. Everybody is listening right now.

We appreciate it so much. Yeah, honestly. So thank you to everybody out there that supports this show. If you would like to support this podcast, you can do that over on Patreon. There's a link in the episode description. It takes you right there. It takes just a couple minutes to sign up. It's as little as five bucks.

month. You get access to a pretty darn good pre-show where we answer listener questions and all kinds of chaos and nonsense breaks out. We just had a huge fight over the price that you would pay for a taco. So if you want that kind of extra premium taco, premium taco. And listen, Ryan's answer will literally shock you on this one and I also learn that I'm cheap. So how much would you pay for a premium taco? The answers may shock you. Yeah. Ace is going full clickbait Yeah, full BuzzFeed, man. You won't believe what he said.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, hey, sometimes it works. So, yeah, so let's see if anybody signs up to get the taco story. You know, we'll see. But also, we give you a shout out on the show as well as, like, also with like cool Discord perks, a lot of other stuff. Basically just do it because it's awesome and we really appreciate it. And, you know, we need you to do that too.

So, all right, guys. let's talk some gaming news this this story man we got to start with this one subnotica two guys i i'm so amped for subnotica too i love subnotica it's one it's one of my favorite games um and then you know it hit the big time so the the studio the developers of subnotica known as unknown worlds got picked up and partially bought out by crafty you know, mega publisher who goes, ooh, we want some of that success and that money. Give me that money.

And then, I don't know, I feel like it was like three, four months ago. We got hit with a news story that basically said, whoa, the founders of unknown worlds got fired by crafting. And this caused a whole bunch of hubbub in the gaming world. And then we started to get little bits and pieces of news where Crafton was saying that the the founders of unknown worlds just stop caring about Subnotica 2.

The drama just spiraled out of control. I'm just going to give a quick summary on this for people that don't know because we're going to get into some stuff that we found out. So the initial Subnotica 2 drama centered on it's both legal and corporate battle between the publisher, Crafton, and the development. Unknown Worlds. Okay. So you got the basis there. In July, so it was July. Okay, that's how long ago it was. Craft and fired the founders and delayed the release of the Subnauticus 2's early access until 2026. They were accused of intentionally doing this to avoid paying a $250 million bonus to the studio for hitting certain goals.

And one of those goals was making a certain amount of money. And if they had released the game in early access in 2025, they would have made that money. and then Crapton would have had to pay them to $250 billion. Okay. The founders said, hey, everything was on track for the release of this game. There was nobody being lazy. We weren't just writing this game off or, you know, laughing our way to the bank. Crafton fired us because they didn't want to pay us the money. Then Crafton came back and started alleging like mismanagement and data theft.

And then people kind of went, oh, man, maybe they actually deserve this. and then it kind of went to courts and we didn't hear anything for a little while. And now we've got some other boys. Now we've heard some things. My, how the turn tables. So we've got we've got some bullet points here

of different things to talk about with this drama. So Ace, I'm going to let you start first. Oh, boy. We'll start with the fact that it was discovered. Now this is, everything's in, you know, court cases.

So this is alleged. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. You know. Allegedly means we found this and we just can't know if we can admit it in the actual court case, but there's a lot of truth to this where Kraft and used Chat GPT, A's why don't you lead with this part?

Because this is bananas, dude. It is alleged that Crafton used Chat GPT to find out how to avoid paying that 250 million dollar bonus to the developers behind some nautica. No, number one, you can't mention AI and gaming in the same sense. No. The people will revolt. So we have a, we have a publisher using AI to figure out how to not pay the studio the $250 million that they're, that they're going to be owned here.

This is allegedly, allegedly. Allegedly. It sounds pretty true because anybody's used chat. GPT, guess what? It does keep a history of your interactions. That's not private. That's not. That goes into a database that they can track. It's not? Guys. Oh, no.

You best delete that conversation with your e-girlfriend, Ryan, quick. Yeah. I love you, chat GPT. I do not experience love. Guys, who uses chat GPT to come up with ways to avoid pay? paying a $250 million bonus. This is a publisher. They can afford a lawyer. This is a major.

Crafton is no small slouch of a publisher, man. They can afford someone to defend them and to like actually work through this. They can go through the scummy underbelly of things and figure this out, but no. This is like a like a comedic show. Like it's like so outlandish that it can't be real. It feels like a plot of a Muppets movie. Yeah. That's right.

It's the evil oil bear. and use chat GPT to find out how to destroy the Muppet Theater. That's exactly what it sounds like. Oh, my God. That is exactly what it sounds like. It's ridiculous. Like who? Come on.

It's not like it's for like a couple shekels, man. This is $250 million. So they're, they're in a position where they have a lot of money. And they're using chat GPT. Like, come on. You can afford. Come on.

You could afford. This was discovered that the CEO of Crafton used Chat GPT. Now they also, they also, how to bury a bawdy. Yeah, right. So they also created this, but this is, this is how deep this drama is getting. They created this secret task force that Crafton called Project X, whose mandate was the whole mandate of the secret task force was to either make a deal with the founders of Subnotica. or execute a takeover in some fashion.

And then the CEO went to chat GPT and asked it, how do I cancel this payout? And chat GPT actually advised it and said this would be very difficult to do to cancel this. And then they were like, nah, we'll figure out a way. You know how bad it has to be for chat GPT to tell you something's difficult? Because it only wants to tell you what you want to hear. Yeah. Like nine times out.

of 10. So you are really screwed if it said this would be very difficult. I ain't going to lie, bro. This might be hard for you to pull up. Yeah, I can go lie, bro. We might not win this one. That's how I can see it. You're probably stuck here. So then they're like, we'll just fire them and see what happens. And then we'll claim that they were incompetent, which is exactly what Krafton did. All right. So then we got some other snippets of information. So it came to light that, hey, you know what? Looks like Crafton's the bad guy here. You know, everything that was discovered in this lawsuit and what the founders of Unknown Worlds did, they kind of went, no, Kraftin, you're the big bully. You tried to get out of paying this bonus.

And the judge ruled that the CEO of Unknown Worlds, so the founders got reinstated as the CEO of Unknown Worlds. okay well this this gets a little awkward now because crafton named a different guy the CEO after they fired the initial ones and then a judge comes in and goes no no no you've got to reinstate them sorry to the new CEO but the old people are back the boys are back in town now it's like it's that weird it's the worst part is that's still their publisher they can't get rid of them i know like they're stuck with each other they're stuck with each other the new ceos like John Travolta, like that meme where he's just, you know, looking around. Oh, yeah, looking around.

He's like, where's my office? And then they're like, oh, no, no, no. Sorry. You don't get one. Work is very awkward to say the least now. And then the final little tidbit of this story is while all this was going on in this court case, the judge had already said you must reinstate the founders and the guy as CEO for unknown worlds. he you can't you you fired him illegally um and so you have to reinstate him now this guy's back

in charge but while this is happening crafton announced subnotica two's early access date which is not something a publisher does the studio does that's a studio job and crafton came out and announced it which is a huge no no now because now the newly reinstated original CEO goes excuse me, you can't do that. That's my job. So you were overstepping the bounds of what you're allowed to do before I came back.

Yep. Yep. And so now there's some possible legality about the damages that this could have caused to the game and the future of the game because Crafton jumped gun and announced the early access release. Also putting

the newly restored CEO in a predicament because what do you do? Do you go? do you go, guys, this was not ready for early access. This was my decision to make. If you take it back, gamers are going to be mad at you. The gamers who aren't paying attention to any of this,

mad. Yeah. Very mad because they're like, oh, boy, we're getting some Nautica in May. Or you just go ahead with the early access release, but then it looks kind of like you let the publisher kind of win in this situation. There's no winning here. This story's crazy, dude. crazy. I'm kind of, I'll be honest, I love, I love that the developers were in the right on this one.

And for a while, they had to fight, dude, because it really did for a while, Crafton was presenting a lot of, like, evidence that was saying, no, no, no, these guys were legit just slacking off. They made all their money on Subnotica. But it was a I generated. They're going to get a $250 million bonus. And so they just don't care, which, you know, I can see happening. Yeah. But, yeah. So there you go, people. Video game news, drama. Silver lining Subnotica 2 and May Yeah Early Access

I'm not playing I know I figured you might avoid this one I'm proud of you I'm proud of you for waiting I broke down I play I bought Slay the Spire Early Access which I'm enjoying the heck out of But I am going to wait

For Subnotica 2's full release And I know that means I'm probably waiting Two more years for it but I'm going to do it boys Because that's one of my favorite games I think that's for the best All right We'll do this one real quick. This is a short story, but it's

an announcement that I know a lot of people out there will appreciate and enjoy. Minecraft Dungeons 2 was announced. This is, you know, this is happening. This is the,

I was not the biggest fan of Minecraft Dungeons. I remember that. You're not. Fun, kind of-ish game. We don't really know, guys, if you got a Steam page for Minecraft Dungeons too,

there are two. screen shots. And they're pulled straight out of this little trailer that shows no gameplay whatsoever. It's just... Looks like Minecraft. Minecraft Dungeons too, boys. So if we had more news, we'd give it to you, but it's happening. The arcade cabinets for the first game are cool.

That's all I remember. Yeah. Yeah. Plan release date 2026. Oh, boy. I mean, guys, honestly, you could make this game in like a weekend. So it's got to release in 2026. 26.

Oh wait. Oh, should I not have said that? You're going to hear about that one. God, okay. Anybody that's played Minecraft Dungeon, look, it's a fun game. I'm not slamming the game. You're not wrong. I'm just saying you're going to hear about it.

I'm definitely going to hear about it. And listen, we wouldn't announce it if we didn't think people out there would be glad for this news. So we're happy for you. And also, we're going to take a break. We'll be right back. One plus one equals more of the greatest stories. Hulu on Disney Plus. Stories about survivors.

The most dangerous planet. Family, retribution. Murder. Prophecy. Beer and propane. Why we do it? Blake panca. The ultimate soldier.

Chicago, I'm all right. The best of the best stories now with even more from Hulu. Amazing. Have it all with 3-1 Disney Plus. All right. We dodged that. I didn't make anybody mad with the Minecraft Dungeons 2 thing, right? Right?

Okay, well let's move on to something else. Guys, in a world of like, psych, nope, just kidding, guys, between the Subnotica 2 news. I think it was literally just last week we talked about CD Project Red coming out and saying, hey, there's not going to be any future cyberpunk 2077 content.

And oh yeah, those rumors of a Witcher 3 DLC, well, those rumors are false too. And then CD Project Red comes out and goes, By the way, we are confirming that we will have, that we will be announcing a project. They're calling it a project. So not necessarily a game, which is lending a lot of people to think this might be a DLC. But they confirm that they will be announcing a project from them that will ship in 2026. That's interesting.

So this isn't we're working on it. This is, this will release in 2026. All right. You guys got any guesses what it might be? It's not going to be the Witcher 4. No, can't. No way. Not going to be cyberpunk 2077 content.

I don't care what it is. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in too. I know. I don't care. Right?

So are we getting a Witcher 3 DLC now after they came out and said, no, you're not getting that? Is this what this is going to be? I mean, they've only thought. Maybe they release it on April Fool's Day. That's a joke, but it's real. but then it's not a joke, Ryan, if it's real. Yeah, it's not a joke. That's the joke.

That's the joke, I guess. But if it's real, it's not a joke then. But that's the joke that if it's real, it's not a joke. I feel like I'm stuck at a time loop. So, okay, so, and then we did get a little bit of a snippet because everybody's wondering is this Witcher 3 DLC. And so we got this little snippet that it is expected to be a narrative tie-in that bridges the Witcher 3 and the upcoming. coming Witcher 4. The location's a bit unclear at the moment,

but early rumors pointed to Zerakania. It's been a long time since I played Witcher 3. But now the more likely setting appears to be the kingdom of Kovir and Povus. So it sounds like we're getting a Witcher 3 DLC boys? Nah, it's going to be a VR walking sims spin-off. No, don't you say that. Just to fill in the gaps. we already got Gwent

Gwent came and went right like the the standalone game Gwent was awesome for a while they stopped supporting that could this be some kind of

other type game like rogue like type game I could see them from like God of War where it's just here's some bonus that's kind of where my brain went is that it would be something like the Valhalla DLC

something small something small yeah what if they made it like Witcher dungeons and then it was just like kind of like, you know, you're just running around with your buddies killing monsters. It's the Witcher, but it's Diablo style.

Yeah, I'm in, dude. Say less. Yeah, I know. That sounds really good. That sounds really good. I was trying to slam Minecraft Dungeons, but it's backfired. The sickest thing that we will get. Like, that sounds so good.

What do you mean? All right. So, yeah, there you go, guys. We'll see. We're getting it this year, and this very much excites me, dude. CD Project Reds, one of those studios. They're kind of like Larian. like you said it Ryan

anything they put out I'm instantly going to be excited for me put it in my veins give me yeah it might be time to reinstall Witcher 3

and then have to relearn the the weird combat in that game wait what sort am I using what is the one thing about Witcher 3 that hasn't aged very well

is its combat I do not like the combat in the Witcher 3 yeah that's pretty common take so the rest of it's worthwhile though so all right guys and then man we got a couple

we got to talk about this one Starfield, because we talked about this last week, too. Starfield today, we got some big news coming. Or Bethesda for Starfield. Buckle up, everybody. Buckle up. And then, yeah, and then people just fell asleep and went, okay. So they had this big kind of demonstration, this announcement, you know,

where they had the corporate muckety-mucks sitting down and going like, guys, look how impressive we're making Starfield after like two years later. I'm just going to bullet point this because they, there was a lot of long-winded conversation, and they did show video. By the way, Todd Howard and all this, Josh was saying everyone was sitting down. No, Todd Howard. Todd Howard was standing up. Oh, was he?

Oh, you couldn't see him on candy. So, yeah. I was making a short joke. Oh, I got it. I got it. I know. I got it, too. All right, so here's the bullet points.

These are the improvements that are coming to Starfield. Interplanetary travel between systems. This was the big complaint from a lot of people is how you go make a space game. And then I don't get to just. fly around in space and it was loading screens to go down to the planets and people are like, dude, really? Like this is really? And, you know, it didn't go over very well. So at the time, they defended that decision with, you know, all kinds of PR speak about why it wasn't necessary in the game. And it really didn't add that much, guys. And who wants to physically fly down to

a planet when you can just load down into a planet? And now here we are with the very thing that people we're asking for a little while later. And now they're hyping it up, of course, is the next greatest feature for your games that it should have been in the first place. Look what we did for you. I know, right? We knew this was going to be great.

We told you from the very, no, you didn't. We told you it should have been in there. We've been working on it, guys. You can uninstall the mods now that let you do it anyway. Yeah. Yeah, right? Oh, man.

All right. So then point two, there is going to be a lot more variation and points of interest in the game, anybody that landed on a planet and had to run for a little while to find that little outpost or that little base or that little cave system, they've said,

hey, we kind of admit that those weren't the most interesting things in the world, and when you did find one, it was basically just a repeat of the one that you found two landings ago, you know, same cave and everything. So now there's going to be a lot more variation of what you find there.

So that seems like a good change. Outpost improvements. I never built an outpost in this game. I know they went for this whole base building and economy and you can have all these outposts mining minerals and all this stuff, but that was just not a single thing that was necessary for anything in the game, and I never touched once. Right, you played more than any of us.

Did you do any of that? I did it a little bit. I built a couple big bases and did some ship improvements and some other things like that. But it was never something I felt compelled to do. Or like this is going to help or I want to do this. Because it wasn't necessary. No, it wasn't at all. You can have all these systems.

But if they're not necessary for the game, then like, why? I don't know. I don't know. That's not my thing, though, either. So I know there's people that probably had a blast hitting. I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't bad.

I just never did it. Now your outposts can interlink and they can share storage with each other. And there's just some quality of life improvements there. So then number four is there's this new thing that they're calling X tech. It's a resource for higher end improvements. for your guns and your gear. This is for people that really want the end game content and just min-maxing their builds and stuff like that.

So you have this new resource that's going to allow you to to kind of improve your high-end gear and customize it kind of the way you want. And then finally, I love this word, guys. We have a more compelling new game plus. Now, we're not going to spoil what New Game Plus means in this case because this game actually does have a fairly interesting take on New Game Plus. but man if there is ever PR speak from a developer that calls it more compelling

don't you want more compelling new game plus guys come back play our game please please we're going to buy all our dLC to play our game again and buy some armor and stuff is this just a big free update or is this a dLC you have to buy it is a free update well that's a because they would get lynched if they try to charge people for this So it's like, yes, they're not that dumb. This is true. You never know. They'd be like HD version extra 99 cents or something like that.

I don't know. Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me. So listen, you know, it's, I don't like being negative towards a game. But Starfield is the kind of game that makes me a little bit negative towards it because it was a disappointment. They overhyped it. It felt old. And now, I mean, when did Starfield actually release? I swear it's been two years, guys.

It wasn't that bad. You guys are way too hard on this game. But for a Bethesda game, this is why we don't have Elder Scroll 6, Ryan. But we don't have Elder Scroll 6 because of this. I know I've been waiting for a long time. Hey, they said they just started. They finally started working on it. Elder Scrolls came out in 2011, guys.

This game came out in 2011. 20, 23, by the way. Okay, so three years ago. Two and a half years. And it's like these are all things that should have been in the base game. To me, it's a little bit, it's too little too late. I won't play Starfield again. Like, I don't know what it would take for them to, like, add something to where I'm like,

I am totally going to play Starfield. I was going to say, what would it take to make you like, oh, I need to go back and check out Starfield? Massive story expansion the same length as the game. Dogfighting, multiplayer dog fighting. Do you want to be a super starborn? You know, ooh. Oh, what if you become a starboard? That's going to be the, that's going to be the, that's going to be the deal.

Let's these super, super starborn. Super duper star born born. Oh, super duper. Dang it, man. I just bought the Super Starborn edition. That's pretty pathetic, man. You don't got the Super duper star born. I get extra born with my star.

Duh. My brain is melting. I'm actively losing brain cells. This is how the corporate meetings go. That's what happens when you listen to this podcast, man. So, all right. And then one story. And boy, this one, this one, I don't know.

gamers did not like this one so much. DLSS-S-5.0 was announced. And then we got a lot of examples of how DLSS-5.0 can make your games look. Now, just about anybody out there with a PC, and I think this is making its way to consoles, too, this is the upscaling resolution where you get more frames using AI generation to generate these frames so that you get higher FPS in your games without any notice. diminishing quality for most people. So pretty prevalent technology that it's in a lot of graphics cards now.

A lot of games use DLSS to squeak out better frames per second for you. There's a lot of people that don't like it because they're like, oh, well, it doesn't, it's not visually accurate. And it's like, dude, if you can't tell, you can't tell kind of thing. But the whole point is, is that you've probably been using DLSS in some form or fashion if you play video games. Okay. So let's just get that.

out of the way. Now, DLSS 5.0. Here's the problem, guys. They gave us some examples of DLSS 5.0 on, DLSS 5.0 off. And the examples weren't so great. The most egregious one was probably Grace. Grace is pretty bad. Any of the ones from the obligeal. Livian remake were pretty bad. Ryan, how would you even describe what this does and why people probably don't like this? I'm assuming you saw the video on this. I did. Personally, I think it's the greatest thing ever because of the internet.

Oh, because they just take things and it's become a meme like paradise. Like everything, because I sent my buddy a picture earlier today, one of my good old destiny buddy. and he goes, oh, that's DLSS-S-5 was off, or DLSS-5 was off, or something like that, you know? So it's just, it's gone into everything. And so basically, to my understanding, it auto-generates like the different stuff throughout, you know, the image. So it shifts like the look. And it, in it, a lot, some things, it makes it, some things it makes it look better and it looks good. But a lot of it looks crazy.

Like a lot of these things look way different, way, uh, kind of wacky out of tune. And this isn't something that they control, right? Like it, it just kind of, it auto-populates kind of the reaction to what it thinks it should look like. So, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely changed the, the visuals of a lot of these games to something that's, that it's not supposed to be. It looks like a crappy Snapchat filter. Yeah, it's like a weird Like you know the like that all the

You know all the With the snapchats were It was just blurry everybody's face Yeah It just made them fuzzy And they had the yeah The beauty filter when it And then they would do a Yoda

And he just looked all green and fuzzy Like that's what it's like It's changing these things So not the same stuff Like some things that makes it look good But man this technology is a It's a little bit off It's a long ways

Because it's not there yet AI upskirts AI image generation, you're never going to be guaranteed to get the same thing every single time. Absolutely. Every single time you do this, especially if you're one of those eagle-eyed people who notice when something changes on your screen like that or whenever you turn the camera around and that changed, you're going to notice things are not quite right. Like, wait.

That's going to catch you off guard. I'm not going to notice because I can't see anything. So I just can't see that well to notice these kind of things. but people will point them out to you're like, oh, yeah, I guess so. So the problem is, I think the majority of the internet had a big issue with this because some of it just looked really bad. Like with Grace in particular, because she is a fairly realistic looking character anyway, when this filter kind of went on, it almost made her look like an actual real human, but not quite. So that is very much triggered what people call the uncanny valley where it's like somebody looks human, but there's not some. something quite right about them and our brains kind of revolt and they say, hey, we don't like that.

Something's not right. And then that was the issue with grace. I will say that there were a couple examples where I went, okay, this actually looks pretty cool. When the character was more of a cartoony or stylized character and then the DLSS 5.0 kind of did its thing, I kind of went, their face has more highlights. It's more streamlined. Like I can see why some people would like this. In certain situations, but then it was just god awful in other examples. So it was very all over the place on this one. Of course, the internet,

they didn't like it because, you know, again, a lot of gamers don't like AI. And what they viewed this to be in the main complaint with AI is that you are changing the artist's work and thus we don't like it. And it's hard to make an argument against that when it is the developers that designed these characters and then you can put this filter on it,

which is not made by the developers. you know, this is part of the software that goes into your graphics card. And then it changes the way that the characters look. And so there's that kind of, you know, thought process there. Some of it looked really cool. Some of it looked really bad. The ultimate takeaway on DLSS 5.0 is that it is completely optional. You can turn it off.

If you don't like it, you can turn it on if you want to mess around with it. But, you know, that's up to you as the user and the gamer to decide what you want to do with it. you control the buttons you press it was just I just I love the internet because like they jumped on this so quick and I just saw nothing but DLSS memes for like it was just pouring out I'm going to give shout out to listener John for the funniest comment of the week by the way because we just had our marathon episode we had our good buddy Matt who played marathon with us and John commented and said is Is this the DLSS 5.0 version of Ace? And it just made me laugh so hard because I was like, okay, that's pretty funny. So kudos John. Funniest comment of the week on Spotify.

We do read all the comments, people. Every single one that you leave, we read. And that one made us chuckle. Yeah, Ryan's trying to show. Ryan's trying to show us a little blur. Yeah, it's just a giant white blur. Yeah. So, yeah, so there you go.

So listen, leave us a comment. on this episode, let us know what you think about some of this news. What you're hoping for from CD Project Red sounds like Witcher DLC to me, but we'll see. And then, yeah, let us know what you think if you're excited for Minecraft Dungeons too. Or if we're completely wrong about Starfield and you are very excited to go back to it with some of these changes. We'd love to hear that just because we're not excited. Doesn't mean we're not excited for people that are excited for this news. There's a reason we put it on the show for people, you know, even if it doesn't,

interest us particularly. So, all right, listen, that's going to do it for this episode, everybody. If you aren't following the podcast, make sure you click that follow button, that plus button so you get our episodes the day that they release. We release three episodes each and every week. Come join our community. We are 13K plus gamers. I'm sorry, 1.3K plus gamers.

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We're going to try to figure this out. Yeah, I like it. So, all right, that's going to do it for this one, everybody. Until next time, happy gaming. See ya. Peace out.