Video Gamers Podcast - TWIG: Layoffs, Exclusives & Cowboy Champions – Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan, and Ace are back with another jam-packed TWIG (This Week In Gaming) episode covering some massive stories shaking up the gaming world. Bungie could be heading toward major layoffs, PlayStation is doubling down on single-player exclusives, and Red Dead Redemption 2 just rode its way into the top 3 best-selling video games of all time. We break down what all of this means for the future of gaming and whether these moves are good or bad for players everywhere. From industry drama to huge milestones, this episode is packed with all the gaming news this week. If you love staying up to date on the biggest stories in video games, this is one episode you don’t want to miss from the Video Gamers Podcast!   Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius, Jigglepuf, Phelps and NorwegianGreaser, Dettmarp and Night Wizard63   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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Wayfair, every style, every home. Hello, fellow gamers, and welcome to the Video Gamers podcast. The death of Destiny 2 may be coming, but where one game falls, others rise. War Horse Studios confirms it's making an open world middle earth game? Cheaters finally get their dues and War Dogs is quickly becoming every shooter fans highly anticipated game. We've got all that plus a whole lot more on this week in gaming. But first, some introductions are in order. I am your host Josh and joining me, we've already told him he can be the helicopter pilot

in war dogs because we don't want to depend on him actually killing anyone. It's Ryan. You know, I was actually excited to be the helicopter pilot and I don't really feel like I'm going to fly. Aren't we ace? Aren't we excited for Ryan to fly the helicopter? Yes, very excited for Ryan to fly the helicopter. Mr. No FBS up there shaking his head.

Get out of here. What are you talking about? Oh, man. I guess I should introduce him here. Yeah. And joining us, he's Thanos targeting the AAA industry. And one day when his quest is complete, nothing but indie studios will exist. And the gaming world will have balance once more.

It's ace. You cannot pin the death of bungee on me. People will run with that. Let me ask you something, Ace. Did you play marathon with Ryan and I? I watched the stream. Did you play Marathon? Because Ryan and I did our part.

We picked it up. We paid for it. We played it. We did. Where were you, Ace? Where were you? But you had to have played some destiny or something, right? Yeah.

No? Oh, no. Oh, man. Wow. So my intro stands, Ace. Oh, no. Thanos. Just wanting to wipe out all AAA studios.

Someone's absolutely going to run with that. It says it to Bungee. I don't even know who you are. You know how you make the, uh, the great number hurt for our patrons. Aces, Thanos would be pretty freaking sweet. Saving that.

Pretty freaking sweet. Saving that. Gosh, darn it. Oh, man. Well, listen, welcome in everybody to the video gamers podcast. We have a bunch of news to talk about this week, people.

And listen, we know the last two weeks. There really hasn't been a lot of gaming news, but you're going to get caught up on everything on today's episode because we got a lot to talk about. It has been a busy. week. So a couple real quick things for people out there. Just as a quick reminder and catch up for people. Lego Batman, Legacy of the Dark Night came out. That is out. It is currently sitting at a 96% rating on Steam. The three of us are playing it. That will be our deep dive for Monday's episode.

Is that? Yes. For Monday's episode? No. No, this is Twink. So not this. Wait. No, not Monday's episode. Dude, it's so weird because we re-recorded a head of time a few days and then I'm trying to do the quick calendar in my head while I'm talking. That's the issue thing. Apparently my brain don't brain that way where I can't mentally pull up a calendar and talk at the same time.

So it won't be Monday's episode. It'll be the following Monday's episode unless we all beat it really quick and decide to pivot, which we've been known to do. It does happen. Anyway, point being is that Lego Batman is out. Zero Parades for Dead Spies is also out, a game that we were very

interested in. That one, sitting at a 76%, but like we predicted that game did get review bombed because of some of the issues with the studio. Out the gate. Yeah, out the gate. So we called that one, but that came out. And then 007 first light is about to release in a few days. So excited, dude. Highly anticipated game that we are all looking forward to. And then I might be the only one of us that cares about this, but I know there's other people out there. Path of Exile 2, which has been in early access for, I feel like two years now, has the largest patch ever that is coming out.

It's called Return of the Ancient. It's changing a ton of stuff about the game. That comes out May 29th. I'm actually really excited about that because I've been craving this kind of game. I actually reinstalled Path of Exile 2, started a new character, started playing and went,

oh, I love this game. And then I went, wait, wait, wait, what am I doing? I'll just have to wait for this giant patch because it's really changing a lot of the gameplay. So there's your quick hit. for things that are coming out. And quick reminders for gaming news.

All right, boys. Man, we got a slew of stories to talk about here. Let's get the bad news. Let's just get the bad news out of the way. Yep. Bungy. Things are not going so well for Bungy, boys. Destiny 2, it got officially announced that active development for Destiny 2 is halted.

There will be no way. more content created for Destiny 2. They did confirm that they will keep the game online for however long, you know, but let's be honest, without new content, you know, they're going to start losing players quickly, in my opinion. And then this comes on the heels of the fact that Bungie is also planning significant layoffs. Marathon did not do what they were hoping. or needing it to do.

I mean, we can just point an ace for this one. You know, I mean, Ace refused to buy marathon. I don't know. I'm sorry, extraction shooters suck. I can't help that. Oh, oh, them's fighting words. All the Ark Raiders fans coming. Right?

What Arc Raiders fans? No one playing that either. They're still there, man. They're still there. I know. Ryan, so. Get the steam numbers for me. I'm doing it.

I'm literally doing it this second. I knew, I can tell them right away. Ryan was like, I'm looking up concurrent player count right now. I'm going to read these two numbers from marathon and our craters. There's 70,000 in game right now. The 24 hour peak was almost 100,000. Okay. That's our craters?

Yeah. Okay, what about Marathon? Where are they at? Oh, that's probably not. Marathon's probably not nearly as good. It's not even, honestly. So here's the deal. One of us, and this is not to, this is,

Oh, no. There's 9,000. Oh, 9,000 in the peak was 11th. The peak was 11th. Although, to be fair, season 2 is about to start. Season 2 is about to start for Marathon. What does that have to do with anything? Oh, I'm not going to play.

That influx of people with season 2. I'm not defending. I mean, Marathon was great, honestly. Yeah, I thought it was, I thought it was a blast. It was fun. It was a ton of fun. It's not going well for Bungie. It's not going well. I will be, I will be surprised if Sony does not shut down bungee at this point.

I think what's going to happen is, I think what's going to happen is they're going to try to focus on marathon for a little bit and we're already hearing. Look, the extraction shooter part, it's not resonating with people or the people it did resonate with have played it like myself. I loved

it. I had nothing but positive things to say about marathon, but they're losing players quickly. And so what they're going to do is they're going to focus on the PVE side of things to see if they can drop players in. and then when that doesn't work, I unfortunately think that they will shut down Marathon

and I think that they will shut down Bungy and I think that's going to happen before the end of the year. They killed, I saw this and this wasn't mine, but it was on some of the stuff I was reading and watching about all of this and somebody said they killed destiny so Marathon could die. Yeah. So it could die or live.

Die. So it could die. Why would they kill Destiny so? Because it's going to die either way. You're saying so Sony can just be done with it. They killed Destiny so Marathon could die. Like it's going to, Marathon's going to die. It's not a sustainable game.

It is really good. We had fun, but it's not, it's not Tarkov. It's not our craters. It's not something that's got longevity. It was cool. And it was awesome, but it's just not what people like. And it was a swing and a miss. And after all they did with Destiny to really spoil their,

just beloved fan base and people that had been with it. I have 1,800 hours in Destiny 2. And I haven't played in years. Like, I haven't played in so long. So that shows how much I played in the beginning. And I played so much in Destiny 1 that, you know, I was like their biggest fan ever. And I left. You know, and I left.

And then they never brought me back, ever. There was nothing that ever brought me back. There's too many anti-gamer policies with Destiny 2, with like removing paid content. You know what I mean? Like people paid for this content and then you remove it later on, citing balance and the need for this and that and everything. I saw a list where somebody was like,

here's the content that they've literally taken away. And it was this like massive list of like stuff. And it was like you can't do that, man. And then with Bungee, we talk about, you know, marathon and everything. And it's like, dude, marathon is a really good video game. But you start looking at like, you know,

there's rumor that the projected development costs for marathon is like $250 million. And it's like, I'm not slandering the game at all because like I said, I put in well over 100 hours into marathon. And I think it's phenomenal. But marathon doesn't feel like a $250 million game to me. You know what I mean? So like then at this point, like what are we doing development wise?

Like what are we doing management wise? Like why did it take $250 million and seven years to develop marathon? Like there's just there's some like there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, issues and Sony is not going to put up with that. I mean, they've lost, you know, they've had two, I forget what they're called, but there's some financial statement where they release and they call it some term where it basically like this, this studio cost us like money. And I can't remember the exact term, but they've done this twice now with bungee where Sony has written off this like this loss, like this loss expenditure with bungee. And I, I just, I worry that this is the end. And,

And, you know, this is not something like, this is not a gloat, but I kind of predicted this in our hot takes episode at the start of the year where I said I think 2026 is going to be the end of Bungy. And I hate to see it, but I'm feeling much more confident with that take at this point. So yeah, it's just sad, man. Maybe they should have put some of that money into the budget for making Marathon actually look like a good game instead of whatever. I love Marathon's graphical style. I know that. I know a lot of people don't like it. but when you're playing the game, it really does actually fit.

So all right. Well, there's your bad news for the week. I hate to see it, but, you know, it is what it is at this point. You've got to treat gamers a certain way, and you've got to keep development costs down. And when you can't do that, very little good is going to come up that. Well, here's something that is good, unless you're a freaking dirty, rotten cheater. And that is Valerance, everybody's favorite. favorite hero shooter sweaty game.

Valerant, there was a news report that the anti-cheat software, which Riot developed this, what is, I can't remember the name of their anti-cheat. Vanguard. Vanguard, that's it. Yep. So Riot has this anti-cheet, Vanguard. It's a kernel-level anti-cheet, which is its own drama and stuff like that. It's intense.

But apparently there was this news story that came out that said that it's bricking people's computers. and cheaters were having their PCs bricked by Valeran's anti-cheat and started bringing this up to Valeran or to riot and they said and responded enjoy your $6,000 paperweight people which I freaking love to see

because it's like most of the time they'd be like no no no we there's no way that your hardware could be affected by our and they just went enjoy your $6,000 paperweight you losers cheater Well, then there was an update to the story that said Valerate or Riot came out and said, listen, listen, we're not breaking people's PCs, okay? However, there are apparently hacking hardware that you can buy. So think like an external hard drive type thing. I'm not a hacker, so I don't know. So if this sounds ignorant, you know, this is why. You're telling on yourself. Basically, you can buy some external hardware thing that runs your hack so that it doesn't. get detected by the anti-cheats.

And what it's doing is it's detecting that and it's preventing that hardware from interacting. And so your computer will not run while you have that hacking hardware installed. And so Valerant came out and said, yes, it is bricking the hacking hardware. But if you just remove your hacks and you're hacking hardware, then your computer is just fine. What is it? Kronos, Kronos, then? No, that's a, that's something different thing. That's a different thing.

That's a different thing. Yeah, that's like a built-in mouse thing, I think. See, I don't know. None of us are cheaters. I don't know how any of this stuff works. But here's what I'm going to tell you. I'd rather just be bad. Dude, listen, if you are a cheater, if you are the kind of person where you go out and you look up how to hack in a game.

And I don't care what game it is. Shame on you. Shame on you. And, you know, we don't take very many hard stances on this podcast, you know, because we go, hey, everybody should be able to enjoy video games, right? For sure. But if you're a freaking cheater, shame on you, dude. You are ruining games for other people.

I don't care. I don't care how bad you are at a video game. Be bad. It's okay to be bad. You know what I mean? Like, that's fine. That's fine. Games have matchmaking for a reason.

And you'll get matched with other bad people. And then guess what? You won't feel bad because it'll just be the way that you should be playing the game. If you're a freaking cheater, you are the lowest scum on the face of the planet. And if you were offended by that, then you're probably the cheater. but you are ruining games for other people. People that play video games for enjoyment and to relax, you are ruining that.

Guys, we just, listen, we just had a Rust server. We were having a blast, dude. We had freaking like 12, 14 people in an official Rust server playing, having a grand old time. I didn't get to play as much as I wanted to, but I got to hop in quite a few times. Do you know what happened?

Do you know why that that's not going down anymore? Because Cheaters and Rust, hacked, killed all of us, blew up all our bases. There was nothing we could do. nothing we could do against somebody that was hacking in that game. And so we all just went, well, screw this. I guess we're done. What's the fun in that?

That's what I want to know. Like, how can that be? I guess it's just the satisfaction of ruining everyone else's fun. I guess that's all it is. I'm not good enough to stand toe to toe with you, so I'll make you feel inferior because now you think I am good. Shame on you. I agree.

And I'm talking to you, Walter Middy and Russ for ruining everything, basically. Hey, not calling them out with a username. Yeah, you know, I'm sure. If you find them, dox them, don't do anything. I'm not saying anything at all, but, like, you know, find out who he is. Let me know. So, anyway, I love this. I love that, I love that Riot basically said, screw you guys.

We're not apologizing for this. They should break their computers. That's what I think. I think that if you, I should overheat them and it just melts the phone. If you, if you accept their, you know, 4,000-page, you know, customer agreement, part of it is if you do this, like, we're going to break your computer, you know? I don't know. I would be all for it. To be honest, get rid of cheaters, dude.

If it bricks your PC and you're willing to risk it, then it breaks your PC. There's no gamer out there that is like, oh, just let people cheat. It's fine. No. The only people that defend cheats are the ones that are cheating, dude. And like I said, it all goes back to it's okay to be bad at video games, dude. And you want to cheat your single player games? Go ahead.

No one's going to say that. Yeah, that's fine. Go ahead. Go cheat yourself out of your experience. I got zero issues with that. GTA L1, L2, R1R2, left down, right up, you know, and you just go. Who cares? That's your save file.

That's your problem. That's your experience you're ruining. When you're messing with everyone else's experiences, which a lot of these are paid games. What's crazy is the amount of streamers that cheat. They get away with it. Because people want to watch pro-level players or people that are really good. But then I'm cheating to be good. And then you're not.

And the amount of people to get busted, I see these reels all the time. Yeah. And then they still have total. they said big old group in following and they get all their sponsors and nothing happens. It's crazy. Shame. Shame. Yeah.

It is a shame. For shame. I cannot stand cheaters in video games, man. It is a, it's one of the worst things ever. Like, you're just, you're the scum of the earth, honestly. Well, we can tell you don't cheat. I know. Well, that's my point.

That's my point. You know what I mean? If I want to be good at a game, then I will just practice the game and then I'll become mediocre at best, but I'm okay with that. You know? I'm not trying to ruin other people's fun. So, all right, let's move on. All right.

This is, this is actually bad news too, guys. I lied. There's more bad news. PlayStation, freaking PlayStation has confirmed that their single player games will be PlayStation exclusives. Boom.

They have said, you know, and they basically went with their two recent releases, so they said Seros, which I'm very bummed about, and Ghost of Yote, will not be coming to PC. They will not be releasing future single player games to other platforms.

They will be PlayStation exclusives only. I get Saros. Saros just came out. It's a PlayStation exclusive. Why not Ghost of Yote? You already put Ghost of Sushima on PC. I don't get this at all. People are already kind of expecting Ghost of Yote because you did God of War and then you

did God of War Ragnarok. You have to do Ghosts of Shih. Do you guys ever wonder? wonder why like Burger King doesn't sell the Big Mac? Like, why doesn't McDonald's let Burger King sell the Ryan? Shut up, Brian. I want a blood more remade. You know, it's such a stand for exclusively. No,

it's ridiculous. Like, I cannot believe, no, buy the system if you want to play the games. If they have good games, buy the system. No, the Demon Souls remake should be on PC. It should not be trapped on the PlayStation. You want it on PC because you only have a PC. Have a PlayStation. I have a PlayStation. I just don't want to get up and go sit there and play it over there. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. I'm with you, Ace. Tell him.

Ace. Yeah, I know, you know what? Just for that, I refuse to buy a PlayStation. You already refused to play PlayStation. I don't say that. I've tried for like four years. It was taking a stand. It was cheaper. It was cheaper like three years ago for you to buy a PlayStation and now it's like super. Yeah, that's fair too. I think the biggest, the biggest bummer from all this is now we know Astrobots never coming to PC. This is, this, this is just sucky, dude. And I can't help but feel like this is in retaliation to like Xbox where Xbox, you know, the, the, the, new CEO, Asia,

something like that. I can't remember her name. She came in, she was going to shake things up, PlayStation freaked out. They said, well, well, we're not going to do exclusive.

We're going to be exclusives and blah, blah, and I almost feel like this is like a retaliation kind of thing. So I hope that this changes in the future, but as of now, PlayStation has come forth

and said we will not be putting our single player titles on other platforms. So would you... And the crazy part about that is Xbox has come out and said, we're still going to do this with, is it Fable and E-Day?

I think the two big upcoming games. And then I think it goes back to... But Xbox is Microsoft. So it's not... I mean, those are together. They're still... But they're going to be on PlayStation. Oh, the games are going to be...

Yeah, they're still going to go to PlayStation. Right. E-Day and I think... I'm not sure if it's one or each, but I'm just going to say... Halo's still going to PlayStation. Yeah, the Halo's on PlayStation now. That would feel so weird playing Halo on PlayStation. The new Halo's coming to PlayStation, man.

They already said it. I think that it, uh... would you would you rather them have the exclusivity and then keep creating really good exclusive games or or then offer it to everybody and then the games are not as good

I'd rather them at least port the old games over that aren't you know getting played anymore like infamous second son okay so what if they ported it I don't want to go dust off my PS4 to go play infamous second son what if they ported it and then added like a $10 port fee like if you're going to do it I don't care I'll pay for that I mean then then then

that's fine. Because that's a lot on, on them as a company. Yeah. To do that and develop that and create all that. I mean, I am not a coder, but like what you have to do. I would pay a lot to have infamous second son on my PC. Then that, then that makes sense. But in a legitimate way. Do not hack it on my PC. That is not an invite. The right way to do it is how they've been doing it. Release God of War. Have it be exclusive for a year and then port it. You know, everybody that was going to play it has played it at that point and bought it on release and and bought it six months after the fact or whatever, and then you release it on PC,

and then you get that wave of PC people. That is the way to do it. I don't know why they want to change it. It upsets me, but I'm against exclusivity anyway. It upsets you because you don't have a PlayStation. If Final Fantasy can release a video game podcast, why don't you have a PlayStation?

I'm not buying a $700 PlayStation when it's six years into the cycle at this. You know what it was three years ago? It was $400. That's fine. That's fine. You got to ask me three years ago. You know, you're talking about this. He didn't ask you three years ago.

I bet he did it. Maybe three years ago. I absolutely did. I bet you did. You borrowed my PlayStation three years ago. Anyway, guys, we got to take a break. Look at the time. We got to take a break, fellas.

So we got to pay the bills so maybe I cannot buy a PlayStation still. We'll be right back to this break. At Desjardin Insurance, we know that when you own a nail salon, everything needs to be perfect from tip to toe. That's why our agents go the extra. to understand your business and provide tailored solutions for all its unique needs.

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I mean, it's fair. It's fair, but I don't have to like it either, fellas. He's got to switch too, Ryan. He's too good for us. Yeah, I know, right? For my wife, man. That's what he keeps saying, by the way. He gives saying, he's like, it's not mine.

It's not my guys. I swear, it's my wife. I have not played that Switch 2 for one iota of a... You haven't touched it at all? Guys, I swear I'm not playing Donkey Kong Bonanza in bed. I swear. I'm not. I don't have Donkey Kong Bonanza.

He's like, take that barrel. Yeah, stupid barrel of bananas and stupid Donkey Kong and, yeah. All right, you know what I do love guys? I love Lord of the Rings. And I love a really good studio called War Horse. studios that makes banger games like Kingdom Come Deliverance too. They do indeed. And guys,

guys, they came out and they confirmed. This is confirmed by War Horse Studios that they are working on another Kingdom Come game, whether that's a full Kingdom Come 3 or an offshooter whatever we don't know.

And they confirmed that they are working on an open world middle earth game. I am so in on this, boys. That's the match made in heaven. Dude, take Kingdom Come and the

quality of that game and then give me freaking Lord of the Rings, middle earth type stuff, dude. I am geeking out over this right now. Now, that's the only details we got. We don't know nothing about gameplay. We don't know anything else. We don't know anything else. Well, we may know

a couple. We're not going to spend a lot of time on it. Guys at War Horse, so maybe we can find some stuff out. Maybe we can get some info. Yeah, we need to reach out to Andres and see what's going on there. Dude, I am so, like, I, I am just like you, Josh, and I'm sure you as well, Ace, like, I am such a big Lord of the Rings fan, Hobbit fan, like, that world, and there hasn't, like, the old school, the old school Lord of the Rings games were so freaking good, you know, running around, you know, and the thought of having a just amazing, beautiful,

world in middle earth open to to whatever we want to do is is tantalizing at the least. The quality of Warhorst studios built into that,

dude is amazing. The depth, the depth, the graphics, I'm telling you. Oh my gosh, dude. Oh,

hopefully it's not in like eight years. Like hopefully it's sooner. It's probably going to be, it's probably going to be a few years. Yeah, I would guess 2029 at the earliest probably. Oh, dude, if we're lucky.

Yeah, if we're lucky. But they've come out, they've confirmed it. Like I said, I can't wait. I'm sure we'll get some teaser trailer in another year or something. We'll geek out about it. But yeah, I love this pairing so much. But that's all we really know. So be excited.

That's the only information we have. But I'm here for this. Absolutely. So aggravated. Here you go, buddy. Here you go. It's your favorite thing. No, it's not.

And it's dumb. And we talked about this already. we talked about this already, but listen, so a highly anticipated game for all of us, Fate Keeper, this is the unbelievably looking, good looking game that's equivalent to like Skyrim, it's an action RPG, we've seen trailers for it, we've seen gameplay for it. This was really at the top of like my hype list with what we saw on this.

All of a sudden we get the announcement that Fate Keeper is coming June, June 2nd. And I'm like, oh my gosh, what? Like, yes, this is what we always talk about. Like, we're getting this amazing game and it's just going to drop on us. No! It's dropping in early access. Why? The monkey's paw curls.

They will, yeah, exactly. I want fakekeeper as soon as possible. It's like early access. Guys, this is so stupid. It's so stupid. Fakekeeper, what are you doing? Why? not your beta testers. You already said this isn't so you can beta test. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Just because you say it doesn't make it like not true, you know, but it's like, this is not the kind of game that you release an early access, man. Like, I don't want to sit here and wine forever. Every game shouldn't be early access. I'm excited for this. This is one, like, honestly, I might actually check out the early access for this one because I just want to like see what the game is about. No.

Take a stand, Josh. I know, but see, I don't want to take a stance. But Ryan, it's got a big rat. You're supporting them. You're supporting them by doing that. Shut up. What I tell you guys about being logical and stuff, man. But Ryan, he's got a big talking rat.

I know. Oh, there we go. I know. And the graphics look really good and the fighting looks really good. And I love the style of the head. All right. You guys give them money so they can finish the game. Have fun.

Yeah, exactly. That's the plan. I will say this. Here's part of the problem I have, right? is that I don't think there's going to be a lot of content with this initially. I think the game looks incredible. I am very, very excited about it. So here's the thing.

So according to the devs, the game's going to remain in early access for around 18 months. So a year and a half. Oh, my gosh. A year and a half. The early access version won't feature all the story content, the progression mechanics, and the supporting game systems.

What's you can include then? It just has any progression? Guys, this is where they need me. It's free, right? Instead, it will show the graphical fidelity, which we can see in the trailers, and that's what got me excited in the first place. So I don't need early access to go,

wow, your game looks great. Okay? So instead, it will show the graphical fidelity and the core gameplay elements for the first few hours of the game. Does this sound like even an early access to you guys? No. It sounds like we're looking at Unreal Engine

five for the first time. It's like, oh, look, look, or an open beta weekend or something. You know what I mean? Like, guys, this is not the way to do it. It's so aggravated. It sounds like it's a walking sim. It's, like, the price hasn't even been announced yet, has it? Like, I'm looking right now. I bet it's $70. It says it's not officially announced, but I bet it's like $60 or $70. Do we want to take bets on what we think the early access price will be? I'm going to say, I think the early access price is probably going to be 40 or 50 bucks. I'm going to say 60. All right. So we'll-affirms 60, 59-99.

60 for early access, Ace? Yeah. Why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they? Over my dead body. Dude, I can tell you right now, if this game comes out in early access and it's more than $45, I will take an old man, grouchy old Josh stance and I will be like, screw this game.

So then you won't get it? And then I'll never pick it up. When it releases, Ryan, I'm not crazy, but I won't buy the early access. You won't help them to finish the game? Don't worry, Josh. We still got alkaest coming in early access. I just want to say that. I don't know that.

I'm just making that. I'm so happy that I got Josh to hate early access. It's not you, like, right, I will give you credit because you preaching it definitely rubbed off a little bit, but it's the fact that freaking every game in the world wants to release an early access. That's what I've been saying. You know what I mean? And like, dude, stop it, devs.

Stop it. Yeah. Let people, if you want beta testers, have a sign up. You know, I sign up for all kinds of closed betas, dude. We're a gaming podcast. I want the deeds. I want that. I sign up for this crap.

And this is why I get a ton of spam emails and stuff, because I'm sure they're selling my email address to people. You know what I mean? But it's like, that's what you do. But you don't come out in early access with barely a game that's got a few hours of gameplay and then try to say that it's early access still. It's just, it aggravates me. And I'm not happy with fake keeper for this one.

so. But also, but also I still buy it. So, all right. Dang it. It gets me fired up because it's like, I get excited for this.

And then it's like, no. Sike people. We just, we just psyched you out. You thought you were getting fakekeeper and you should. You should get mad, you're getting a shell of it.

Not enough people get mad. And that's why they keep doing it. Yeah, before we move on for a bit, story games do not need to be entering early access. These games with stories and like RPGs with like, elements of progression. You do not put that in early excess.

That is for survival games. What happened to a demo? What happened to a demo? Yes. Exactly. Demo. Exactly, Ryan. Because that's what this sounds like.

No progression, no story, no elements. It's graphical fidelity and core gameplay. Give me an RPG with nothing. That's a demo. I'm sure glad I got to experience that graphical fidelity. Oh, boy, that sure was a pretty game. It is a pretty game. But I can tell that from the trailers.

I don't need to give you money ahead of time for this. All right. All right. Let's talk about a game. So just real quick, this is another news thing. This is kind of cool, but kudos to them. But Red Dead Redemption 2 has become the third highest selling game of all time. Congrats to RDR2.

Rockstar. You know how to make some of the best video games ever made. So congratulations. Do you guys know what number two is? is it is it i know i know gta is up there with like 200 it's gta 5 it's gta 5 rock star yeah 200 30 million has the second and third highest games of all one is tetris right wow one is minecraft one is micrash okay tetris is weird because tetris they they lump all the tetruses together oh okay and then it's like so they that's

why tetris is weird it throws it off but if you're talking an actual so minecraft gta and then Reddiff. Bro, they have two and three. Yeah. That's crazy. And they're probably going to have number four with when GTA 6 comes out. Oh, for sure. Oh, yeah.

I could definitely see it. All right. So there you go. All right. We got to talk war dogs, guys, before we get out of here. Dude, this game looks incredible. I mean, this is a realistic, well, semi-mil sim type shooter. where it looks amazing.

And the whole point behind war dogs is that the economy matters in war dogs. So if you think about like Counter Strike for people that are familiar with Counter Strike, right? Like in between each round, you have to buy the guns and the equipment that you want. And as you get kills and things like that,

you earn money. And then that kind of becomes its own game within a game kind of thing, right? So this is one of those games where, I mean, what did they have? Like a nine minute demo? or not demo, but like a nine minute trailer for this that we got to see where they talk about all these aspects.

What did you guys think about? I like, well, first of all, I want to say I'm not flying for you guys at all. Because, no, because one, one, I'm a very good pilot, but contrary to what the people that played Russ with us think. Because that, I had never flown a plane in Russ, and I did not know what was going. Yeah, I blew up a few.

but I do think it's super neat like all the abilities and like you can tell I love these dev videos where they show how they create these games in the research they do and when I can tell a company is really putting in the work like that gives me good expectations for the game

like you can tell they're they're checking the penetration through different materials so like between wood and metal and all this stuff like they're looking at all that they're looking at the way the game will flow. Like if you drop off the teammates, you know, you get a

percentage of their kills like as credit to you because you brought them there and you dropped them off. So like I love all the ebb and flow of this and like all the work it looks like they put in. I'm super duper excited for this one. It's not my type of game, but I can acknowledge

that it's a very high quality game. It looks good, yeah. Just like looking at it. Oh my gosh. then they kind of talked about how different calibers will make different like gunshots going by your head they show the frigging artillery coming down next to you. Yeah. Yep.

So here's what gets me excited is this looks like the battlefield game that we've all kind of been hoping for for a really long time because they're calling it all out warfare, right? It's called like war dogs and they keep referencing the all out warfare. There is a hundred people in a match. I think they said three teams. if I remember right.

So I think there's three different teams. It's like 100 people in a match. And it is all out warfare. All free for all. These objectives. And as you do things in the game, whether it's killing other players or reviving players or dropping off supplies or transporting people or whatever it is, right?

Like whatever you decide your job is, you earn money by successfully doing that. And then you earn money by going into the hot zones, which is like where there's a lot of people fighting because it's a lot more dangerous. So if you do things in these hot zones, you earn more money. And then you can spend that money to get better weapons and unlocks and vehicles and things like this. Some of the gameplay that they have shown off looks freaking incredible, dude.

It looks like everything we want Battlefield to be in like 2026. It's not out yet. We haven't personally got our hands on it. But if you watch some of these trailers, it looks incredible. The CEO of Deep World Studios, they're making beautiful light, which is a game that we talked about long ago. we have mad respect for the CEO, ERIS is his username. I saw a post that he made on X where he was, you know, he was saying like he got his hands

on war dogs and he was like, guys, I have not had an experience like this in a really long time. And this guy is not like super easy to please. Like he's like a straight shooter kind of thing. And he made this big post and he was like, there's something very special about this game. And I'm super impressed with where it's at. And that like just really ups it for me. because it's like, I kind of know this guy's game takes and stuff like that. And so War Dogs is something that you should absolutely look into if you like these kind of games.

I think we're just got to force Ace to play this with us, Ryan. Guess what it has guys. Do we just have to force him at this? Guess what it has. Destructible environments. Yeah, yeah, it does have destructible environment. But it's, it looks great, people. Just like I said, look at the trailer.

We could talk about War Dogs forever. But this is one to absolutely be excited for and hyped for. And it looks like they're doing everything. Right. Looks killer. Ace, you have to play no matter what. Yeah,

I figured I was getting dragged into a battlefield. Not like Marathon where you didn't play that with us, you know, but this one you're going to have to play, Ace, because you get, if you want to drag a liability into a war for war zone. We've said it's fine. Here's what I like. So I'll reference Aris again. He said, look, the whole way he got into, he played this was he was a helicopter

pilot. And he said the only thing he did was he transported soldiers. from base to the hot zones and drop them off. And he said, you know what? If I crashed, everybody lost money and it was my fault. Or they didn't lose their money, but he lost his money kind of thing. But he said if I successfully got them there and dropped them off safely, then I earned a lot of money.

And then he was going into the fact that when he's taking these things, these people, that he can also bring ammo. And if he brings ammo with him in his helicopter, he can drop that off. And then the soldiers buy the ammo from him when he shows up. And then that creates economy. So this whole like mixing this economy into this war thing, it just sounds really, really cool to me.

And then he tries to peacefully fly away and get shot down out of the sky. Maybe. Maybe, but if you drop the people off, you made a bunch of money from doing that. So this is the kind of game where I think you're going to be able to play it kind of how you want to play it. So ACE, you can be that medic that's just running around, resing everybody and making a fortune by doing that

and then not having to like necessarily just be a murderous fool. I can usually find a role I fit in these kind of games. I have like a delivery flux pricing. Oh, it's, you know, it's fly. It's a high. Prices have gone up. Sorry, guys. I'm sorry.

The prices of artillery have gone up. I can't give them to you. The stickers wrong. They even referenced that. They said like an RPG is like three grand to buy. Yeah, yeah. But then they were like, but if you shoot down a helicopter, you might make 10 grand. Yeah.

So it creates this like, do I waste this rocket on this crazy I hope I hit this helicopter? Or do you really try to plan out this decision and then go. I'm going for it kind of thing. So I like that. I think if it's got gambling, say less. Ryan's already in. Oh, yeah, for sure. So all right.

And then real quick, because this news just broke, we don't really have a whole lot to talk about. Unreal Engine 6 got revealed at the Rocket League championship series in Paris. They came out with this announcement. They said Unreal Engine 6, Rocket League was the very first game that they announced it would be included in or developed for or poor, I don't know what you. port it to Unreal Engine 6? I don't know. I don't know. But Unreal Engine 6 is coming.

It is coming to Rocket League first. It looks amazing. PlayStation 4s are going up everywhere. There you go. I will absolutely be back in Rocket League. I was going to say, are you coming back, buddy? That was enough to bring him back. So here's the crazy part. Does it feel like Unreal

Engine 5 just released to you guys? Like two years ago. It's not like... It feels like it was two years ago, right? Yeah, it's not that old. Right? I mean, they're still working out the kinks. Everybody talks about how Unreal Engine 5 is stuttering in performance issues.

Yeah, people still hate it. Right? Unreal Engine 5 came out in 2022, Ace. So it was announced in 2020. It came out in 2022. So it's been four years now. So they haven't worked out the kinks in all this time? Nope.

Not in four years. We'll just make a new one. Oh, forget it. So then that got me thinking. This one's a watch. That got me thinking because I feel like it was really fast, right? I'm like, you, Ace. I'm like, dude, that just came out like a couple years ago.

So I looked up. Here's the history of Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine 1 to Unreal Engine 2 was three years. Okay, 1998 to 2001. Unreal Engine 2 to Unreal Engine 3 was five years. That was 01 to 06. Okay. Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4 was eight years.

Eight years? 06 to 2014, so it took eight years. And then Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 also took eight years. So that was 2014 to 2022. So you're telling me the barely four years. I guess it came out in April. April of 2022 is when Unreal Engine 5 officially released. So it's been four years and a month.

They have. And now we're getting Unreal Engine 6 all of a sudden? Like, it just seems weird. have their development time on an engine. I don't know. All I know is, all I know is Rogging League. Rocket League looks freaking sweet as anything.

It looks so good. It looks so good. It does. I got to give it. We'll see. Give it its due. It looks great. Yeah.

So we'll see. So there you go, people. That's all we know. There's been no tech demos. There's been nothing else. This news literally just broke earlier today. My small child and Josh will love it.

Yeah. So I got better graphics, guys. Aren't you excited? Josh is going to be running around with little like eight-year-olds. Yeah, get wrecked, noob. I feel like Josh is like when he show monkeys magic at the zoo. He's just like, oh. Yeah.

Yeah, you can make Rocket League look like Forza now? Like, what the heck? It does look like Forza. Yeah, it looks good. It does. It does look like Forza. Oh, I can't wait to play. I can't wait to play Rocket League again when, only when it's Unreal Engine Six.

When it's real pretty. All right. Well, listen, there is your news for the week. you are officially caught up on all things gaming for the week now. Listen, if you love the podcast, if you like that we keep you up to date on all these news stories, what's going on in the industry, and we talk about things like gamers do, consider supporting this podcast. We are listener-supported show. We only exist because of the support of everybody out there like you that's listening right now. And so, you know, a huge thank you to everybody that does support this show.

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