Video Gamers Podcast - Xbox Studio Shutdowns, Back to Battlefield and Ragnarok is Coming - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

The Video Gamers Podcast is back with another incredible episode of This Week in Gaming. Xbox shocks the gaming world by shutting down multiple studios, EA hypes up the next Battlefield (oh, and tries once again to put ads in games), Ragnarok is coming and we can’t wait, plus more! All the video game news you need in another awesome episode from your favorite gaming podcast.  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Disratory, Ole Jake and JigglePuff Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Hello, fellow gaming fans. Welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. We are three dads who are lifelong gamer dads, and on Thursdays like today, we break down recent gaming news by giving some of our thoughts on the week's biggest stories. Please take a second to rate our show five stars, and if you like what we do here, which is lighthearted discussion on gaming, please consider supporting us on Patreon. Starts at just five bucks a month. There are all kinds of perks like bonus episodes, shout out on the show, all our content ad free in a day early, discord perks, all kinds of stuff.

You can check it out at MultiplayerSquad.com. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he doesn't have a PS5, but might be getting one of his favorite PS exclusives on PC, maybe even before the end of the year. It's Josh. Man, I cannot wait for this. Very similar to how I played the first one, where I borrowed a PlayStation and then it came to PC with a PC port. And then I really took my time with it and just enjoyed every aspect of the game. Needless to say, I can't wait. A little bit of deja vu.

And then joining Josh and me, he is just thankful that he runs his own business and doesn't have to fear being laid off by Microsoft. It's Ryan. Don't you put that evil on me. They may show up out of nowhere. You never know. Don't you put that evil on me, Ricky Bobby. Yeah.

Hey, though, if they want to come by my company, I'll happily sell. Sure. You can just start another one. Yep. The Michael Scott Paper Company, no shortage of opportunities. All right. So guys, we got to start out here with some sad news. I will say, this is not really a week of super happy, positive news. We have talked a lot about gaming layoffs over the last six or seven months. It's such a hard time right now out there for developers.

I read that a recent survey even showed that one-third of all gaming developers have been impacted by layoffs within the last year. I'm sure many of our listeners remember, I'm sure you guys remember, Microsoft acquired ZeniMax Media, which is the parent company of development teams like Bethesda, for $7.5 billion, not that long ago. And unfortunately, this week, news came down that a few of these acquired studios were being shut down. Arcane Austin, the people behind Prey and Redfall, is gone. Tango Gameworks, the team behind The evil within one and two and hi-fi rush gone alpha dog games the team behind mighty doom which is a mobile game i have shared my love of is gone matt booty the head of xbox game studios great name by the way yeah uh basically basically just

said the studios were spread too thin by closing some it can open up funds for their other projects with the rest of the company and they're going to scale down how many games they release we don't know yet how many people are going to lose their jobs over this but it's going to be a lot um this is the kind of news that we just hate to see right guys yeah it's you know our job is to cover the news for people. And sadly, what's going on in the gaming industry is unfortunately just continuing to make news. So it's not that we like sad stories or that we want to complain about Microsoft or something like that. It's just this is what's going on in the gaming world right now. And unfortunately, you know, we've been seeing it go on. I don't know what this shakeup is. A lot of people want

to blame it on post COVID, you know, and say, Hey, during COVID, you know, everybody was staying at home and playing video games. And so all these developers were working on things and then we kind of bloated hired too many people, you know? people. And I mean, I used to work for a mega corporation. And I mean, it is definitely true. They will overhire to meet what they think is going to be demand. And then if that demand isn't there, then they just go, oopsies. And then they lay off a bunch of people. Yeah.

I mean, legitimately, that, whether it's post-COVID or poor management or some sort of elite-level business strategy that our brains can't comprehend. I don't know. What I know is that this sucks for the developers. This sucks for the studios. Here's the thing. If I said, hey, guys, what happened with redfall right what you know what happened with redfall well it's don't ask me right yeah you know the game flopped terrible release you know just pour across the board i can i can fathom

like saying hey you know what sorry arcane what is it aust, you know what? Sorry, Arcane. What is it? Austin, you know, we're going to shut you guys down. We lost a lot of money on this, even though I suspect that Redfall was a failure because of the publishers, not the developers, because they kind of pushed them into trying to make it like a live service game. You know, regardless of that, I can at least wrap my head around that. When you say we're shutting down Tango Gameworks, who made Hi-Fi Rush... Dude, friendly fire. What the heck, man? I don't get it. They acquired all these different studios. So the one that you would think would be totally safe would be Tango Gameworks. I mean, Hi-Fi Rush was such a

critical success. It sold a ton of copies, one of the most beloved games last year. I mean, and not only that, the Evil Within 1 and 2 are really solid games. I felt so bad seeing some of these tweets from the CEO showing a picture of all their awards that they've won. It just goes to show you can win a ton of awards. You can run a great studio. You can release great games. Doesn't necessarily mean you're going to survive and make it. It really is just a shame.

I can't believe out of all the studios they acquired. I mean, obviously Bethesda is going to be safe, but Tango Gameworks, I'm really sad to see go in this. Oh, for sure. I mean, it's a tough one you i was thinking about this the other day with uh like for sports comparatively you know you're a gm and you build this great team and and you're you're you're kind of heart and souls into it and then a new owner comes in and then just wants to clean house and okay well you're gone you know

all this work and so i feel for these devs that that's like their life and they they put everything they had into this and somebody buys your company out and they're kind of you're under the umbrella and then they just shut you down and unfinished projects that would just drive me nuts you've spent all this time on it you're working on it you're you're pouring your soul and then it's just pulled away from you it's just weird to me like and i don't know about you guys but remember the days when we just talked about if games were good or bad and that was like the world of gaming you know oh that one's good oh that one i feel like there's just so much more around this now so much more kind of just junk that we have to worry about instead of just do i like this game or do i not

well it's kind of funny that you say that ryan because i assume you guys saw that the gaming community is so supportive of tango gameworks that they have been reverse review bombing i love it their games so people are taking to steam they are giving the evil within one and two and hi-fi rush positive ratings and all the comments are about how it's just such a shame that the studios are being shut down i don't remember ever seeing a reverse review bombing like this but i love it i am here for it man let's make this a trend guys i mean legitimate power to the people yeah that's like my favorite thing ever because it's like a positive spin on things

instead of the, you know, I'm not a fan of review bombing stuff. And it's like, that kind of bugs me for the most part, except for Helldivers, that was warranted. You know, but yeah, I'm for, you know, voicing that kind of positive opinion too. Yeah, it's really weird. Ryan, you kind of brought up a good point.

Do we need to start looking at the gaming industry, like the sports industry? You know, like I'm a big football fan and you know, in football, you're either winning or you're out, you know what I mean? Head coaches change jobs all the time. Players have a lifespan in the NFL of like two, maybe three years, unless you're like an absolute superstar. And then they just fade away or they get traded or put on the practice squad or whatever. And it's weird because everybody's used to that. That's just the way it is. But is it like, but we're gamers and it's never been that way in the gaming industry. But is that just the way it is now? You know, is it's like, Hey, you made a great game. Congratulations. You're at the top of your

game. You get two to three years and you're traded and now you're on the practice squad and moved on to other projects i mean i hate to think of it that way but it's almost like that's the way it seems like things are now my my hope because i am an optimist my hope is that especially with tango game works you know and, even the people at Arcane, I don't think it's their fault that Redfall flopped like it did. My hope is that, you know, these are studios that are getting shut down. But I really hope that the talent at those studios is being acquired. Like I hope the devs and the artists and the, you know, all the people that are in, you know, involved in the process of actually making a

great game like Hi-Fi Rush or Dishonored for Arkane, I hope that they're picked up by people and their talents are realized and stuff. So I don't know, man. This just sucks all around for the people involved. As gamers, this sucks to see all this too. I hate that I have seen people railing on Xbox and kind of trying to turn this into a whole console war thing. Just stop it. That's not the point of any of this. If you think Sony is... I mean, we just went through it, right?

Again, with Helldivers and stuff. So stop the console war stuff. But I mean, this is just sad, man. And I don't understand the business war stuff. But I mean, this is just sad, man. And I don't understand the business behind it. Yeah. I mean, it probably means we're not going to get a Hi-Fi Rush sequel. We probably won't get a new Dishonored game moving forward because even though Arcane Lion worked on it, so did Arcane Austin. It really is just a shame. Let's go ahead and move on to our next story. So it was not that long ago it's only been a

couple weeks when we talked about the announcement of a new prince of persia game called the rogue prince of persia it's a 2d roguelike and it was initially slated to enter early access on may 14th well another popular roguelike by the name of hades 2 had a surprise early access release on may 6th so evil empire which is the development studio behind the rogue prince of persia they issued a tweet that was shockingly honest and open dude i loved this by the way i loved this i i can't believe that we're we're about to herald a studio for delaying their game, but they basically just essentially said, hey, Hades 2 is too big for us to compete with. We want to play Hades 2. We know you guys are playing Hades 2.

We're just going to delay our game at the last minute, and we're going to push it back to May 27th. And I can't believe that everyone kind of like universally is celebrating this tweet. Is that how low the bar now is for publishers and developers that we're just saying, thank you for just being honest, even though it's like upsetting news? Yes. I mean, look, again, I'm going to use hell divers because, you know, everybody, you know, we're all fighting for democracy. But the CEO of Arrowhead Studios, a guy by the name of Pilstett, that's his Twitter handle. I think that's his last name. Eric might be his first name. Sorry. But he's just brutally honest with people. He owns up when they make a mistake. If somebody suggests something to him, he'll actually respond. He'll be like, dude, that's a great suggestion. Let me take that to the team. I think we have gotten to a place as gamers, thankfully, where we value honesty at this point. And I have to give Evil Empire their due because this is the first time that I have seen somebody say, we don't want to release when that other game releases. They're way bigger than us. We don't need to split the gaming population between these games.

How many times have we said on this show, right? Dude, you released your game when? You released your game up against Baldur's Gate 3? What are you thinking? Just delay your game. But Baldur's Gate 3? Like, what are you thinking? Like, just delay your game? But, like, here's somebody that actually went, yeah, this probably makes a lot of sense that we don't want to go up against Hades 2, guys. Let's give it a couple weeks. You know, the fever will die down a little bit.

People will be ready to try the next thing. And then we'll release. Like, common sense should win out. Yeah, well, common sense, unfortunately unfortunately isn't that common most of the time nowadays but yeah it's it's uh it's like refreshing i guess the word i would use is so much in in i mean even in society but with internet and social media and all that stuff it's just everything's rose-colored glasses everybody kind of paints this facade of what everything is but when people just come out and just tell you the truth whether

you like it or not and are straightforward hey this other game is pretty sweet let's let's push it a week or two and and uh kind of kind of balance this out for them and us and then everybody's happy so i think it's it's neat um it sucks for the people that were really hyped and anticipating this game but i mean for an extra week or two to get more sales which generates more revenue for the for the game itself and could potentially launch for more you know i i think it's just wise you know it was a good decision i did love a tweet that they issued later i don't know if you guys saw it or not but they said if silk song shadow drops in the next two weeks we're burning this whole thing down which i thought was

so funny and that's like such a like uh like i think all gamers can understand the frustration with having to delay and it's like i know we all wantong, but just for the sake of Evil Empire, I just want them to have a nice release. Yeah. All right. Well, that being said, we got to take a break for some ads, and then we'll be right back. Okay, we are back. We got a news story this week of a leak, which i would say is probably a little bit more substantial than a rumor it seems like we know what the next playstation port to pc will be it seems like

tell me the name god of war great game beloved game all three of us absolutely love it we've all played it on ps5 it seems like later this month it's going to be the announcement now we know ghost of tsushima just released on pc god of war ragnarok will come next probably going to be sooner than later given previous timelines we might get this before the end of the year uh we played on ps5 do you guys think you're going to pick up a pc port or do you feel like you've played enough on PlayStation? What are you guys thinking? I know, I know somebody who is, yeah, I, I've said this before. I will absolutely be picking

up the PC port on this one. I played the God of war 2018 on a friend's PlayStation four. Uh, I had to kind of just blow through the game because he really was anxious to have his PlayStation back. It's fine. And then when it released on PC, I took my time. I played the game exactly the way that I wanted to play it. I did almost every optional side mission and boss and really just lived in that world. And I loved every second of it. It's my favorite game of all time. Ragnarok didn't quite have to rush through it as much, but again, we were covering it for the show. I had borrowed Ryan's PlayStation 5 at that point, was trying to just make it through the campaign, maybe a little bit of looking around here and

there, but I want to just dive into this game and I want to play it at my pace. I want to soak it in. I want to savor it. I will absolutely be picking this up and i want to play it at my pace i want to soak it in i want to savor it i will absolutely be picking this up and playing it nice yeah i think i probably will too just just to get uh another good playthrough and then play it on the pc kind of see how the port transfers over but a good thing too is uh then josh will be able to check out valhalla uh which has been pretty pretty stinking awesome i haven't got all the way through that yet but it was it was a lot of fun but it's just it's cool to see these ports transfer over and like the last one come out so seamlessly and

do well so i'm hoping this one does the same but it's definitely exciting and it was relatively cheap the the god of war port was 50 i believe at release on steam so for those who are patient and don't have a playstation and wait you get a really nice port and it's a little bit cheaper too so it really seems like it's a win-win for a lot of people the company that's doing the pc port is it the same one that did the original god of war considering it hasn't even been officially announced i i don't think we know for sure please The same one that did the original God of War? Considering it hasn't even been officially announced, I don't think we know for sure.

Please let it be Jetpack Interactive. That's who did the God of War 2018 PC port. We've said this before. It's the most flawless PC port I have ever seen in my entire life. A very good port, but I will say that they had some of the funniest button mapping if you played on mouse and keyboard i remember activating your spartan rage it was something like control shift middle mouse button clicking it in it was like such a weird combo that made

me laugh so hard i was like okay i get it it's supposed to be played on controller but like whoever thought of these button mappings on on keyboard uh i i don't know what they were thinking did you uh did you guys see any of the uh all the kind of playstation console fanboys crying about it there a bunch of people online were saying how uh you know there's no no more exclusives anymore and why is everything going to PC? It's been that way for a few years. I feel like everyone should be used to that. We got Spider-Man, The Last of Us, Uncharted. Exactly.

Yeah, it's all on PC. You get the two-year head start if you have the console, and then everyone else gets it a couple years later. You can't block everyone for all time. I think that's totally fair oh yeah yeah all right and then our final story of the week is a little bit of an ea two for one so first here i i thought this was so funny when battlefield 2042 released it was so bad and so hated by everyone that when we did our deep dive, I said on the show, this might be the

beginning of the end of Battlefield. I even kind of wondered out loud, is after Battlefield 5 released so poorly, Battlefield 2042 was in such bad shape. I said, I wonder if they're going to start scaling back because people clearly don't love Battlefield like they used to. I think they're going to start pulling back and this might be the beginning of the end. Well, I was 100% wrong on that one because we read this week that EA is consolidating several of their teams, including DICE, EA Motive, Criterion, and others to form their largest team ever to create the next battlefield, which of course,

unsurprisingly will be a live service game. Do you guys see this potentially ushering in a new golden era for battlefield or, or is this not the answer? Battlefield's back, baby. It's back, baby. After,

I mean, battlefield 2042, you can only go up. This is true. You know, when you're at the... Are you sure about that? Are you sure about that? I'm sure about that.

I mean, okay, listen. Here's a line from an article, and if this doesn't get you hyped, I don't know what does, guys, okay? Oh, here we go. But, I mean, this is from a gaming website and it says ea is rallying its extensive team resources for its next battlefield project promising a game that stretches the boundaries of live service experiences ea ceo andrew wilson after testing the upcoming game expressed enthusiastic approval of its progress and potential aren't you guys hyped

come on man yeah i'm ready yeah approval what does it even mean what does it even mean to stretch the boundary of life service gaming like i don't even know what product placement in there paul they're gonna have skins they're gonna have loot boxes they're gonna have battle passes inside their loot boxes they're gonna have operator packages where the operators explode into loot boxes and then maybe you get lucky and win a battle pass that you get to pay for after that oh man this story just made me laugh. I don't know that the answer is throwing more cooks in the kitchen. Like, when I heard this, this to me sounded like, I feel like they're going about this the wrong way.

Instead of saying, okay, we've had a couple failures. By the way, what's the last Battlefield you guys even liked? I think for me it was Battlefield 4. 4 was the bomb. I did not like Battlefield 1 at all. I'm not saying I loved 4, but it was the last Battlefield that I thought was satisfactory. Yeah. Oh, I loved 4. I thought

4 was great. Yeah, 4 was fantastic. I mean, you guys never played 2. Yeah. I haven't played every Battlefield. What are you talking about? Yeah, we've played all of them. Nothing compares to Battlefield 2. Oh, we never played 2. Like, gosh, we weren't up to his standards i i always have a soft spot for 1942 i just i mean you i i probably played

5 000 hours because that's what you can do with a battlefield game man yeah even just the demo i've said it on the show before i had the demo which was only i think it was called coral sea and like i just played it which was only, I think it was called Coral Sea. And I just played it over and over and over because it was just so fun and so big for the time. So yeah, so Battlefield's been in bad shape for a while. Call of Duty just keeps releasing the same game. I feel like I don't know what to do with this. I have been so out on both of these franchises for a while. But just throwing more people and more money, I'm not inclined to think that that's going to solve the problem i think you

have to kind of go back to the roots well that's what they said about 2042 paul we're going back to our roots it was a love letter letter to the love letter oh wait you mean actually go i don't want your love yeah so i'm i'm not confident you know what i'm such a sucker for battlefield though man i'm gonna i'm gonna get excited they're gonna show me great trailers you know they're gonna say hey we we learned our lesson this was made by gamers for gamers you know yeah again again i'm gonna go oh guys remember the glory days of battlefield and then yeah i don't i don't want to be hurt again yeah that would that would not be good they're gonna and they're gonna try to

do try to be cool and hip like um like hell divers but they're just they're just gonna do it battlefield way yeah i mean i'm not claiming to have all the answers for this one but battlefield's been in rough shape i really do hope they figured out i i know we are all rooting for them we're not hoping it fails we want a great battlefield uh obviously the operator system and i know that they got rid of it and supposedly it's in much better shape. But man, Battlefield, they really struggle with release as well. These games are never in good shape. All right, and then while we're on the subject of EA,

second part of this story. Now this is, I'm not surprised by this, but I still find it mind boggling. So Josh, you already mentioned his name, CEO Andrew Wilson. He said on an earnings call that in-game dynamic ads have an opportunity to be a quote, meaningful driver of growth for the company and that they have teams at the company

right now looking at how to thoughtfully implement dynamic ad insertions into their games. We're going through this again with EA? like this is a broken record we already did this just a couple years ago with ufc4 people got so mad oh yeah yeah it was all the ads for the boys on on amazon prime they've done this with in-game billboards with the need for speed i mean we've already we've already done this and and and gamers don't like it there's always a lot of backlash i guess ea is trying to weigh like how much backlash are we going to get versus how much revenue and is it worth it but how do you guys feel about the idea of paying full price for games and seeing dynamic ad insertions i it's it's like uh it almost leaves you speechless for a second because

it's hard enough to to shell out 70 for a lot of these games that aren't even finished that take all of these day one patches have all of these bugs and issues and now they're just gonna you know some subdue us with ads through the whole thing it's arby's we got the meat when you hit pause you're gonna get stuff like that how are you gonna like i i just watched uh i was scrolling through on like youtube and stuff and i saw a clip that was really funny where it was like a dude just playing skyrim at like three in the morning and it like you know imposed him in the world and it's got the music in the background and you just get lost in these games how are you supposed to do that when you're

just inundated with just ads you know you can't escape that's why we go and play these games how are you supposed to do that when you're just inundated with just ads you know you can't escape that's why we go and play these games you try to separate yourself from the world and get into this other world and and just check out and now you know like you said i'm gonna have arby's or check out this movie coming out or or stop no one else pizzas the hut yeah exactly uh it's just it's it's gone to a level to where they're telling us we're not even going to own the games. Get ready, get used to not owning your games. Now you're going to have ads in the games. It's when is enough going to be enough?

And, you know, in line with all the other stuff we're seeing where, you know, the reverse review bombing and then the review bombing with Sony stuff. I'd like to see that gamers are taking a stand and trying to figure out a way to make their voice heard. I just don't know what's going to be enough to where these people find it because they keep trying. They're going to keep doing this until eventually they can get it through. We have to unite everybody and we have to make a stand.

I mean, honestly, that's the only solution. The reason that EA is trying this again is because they understand how many billions and billions of dollars they can make from being able to put ads in games. Here's the thing. If I am paying $70 for a game and you put ads in it, I'm going to hate you very quickly. If you want to give me a free to play game and put ads in it, okay, fine. I'm not begrudging somebody for making money. We have never been against people making money from their hard work. The problem is that you don't soak me for $70 and then try to put ads in a game that I paid for. So that's a big no-no. EA is going to keep trying this. It's too valuable for them. And they will eventually wear gamers down to a certain degree.

The only way that we are going to absolutely stop this trend is if we refuse to buy the games that EA is doing this in, you know? We've seen this stuff being tested all across the world, like a completely un-gaming, but like Mercedes for a while had heated seats in their cars where you had to pay the higher premium to be able to unlock the heated seats. Like that's bananas, but people got really ticked and Mercedes came out and said, ah, we tried it. It didn't work. Sorry about that. And if we give in, that dam is going to burst, man. And then everything we see is going to have ads in it. So, you know, we don't crusade about very many things, but like you can't support this kind of stuff. Again, if it's a free to play game and they want to give it to us and

then make money off of ad revenue, fine. I'm okay with that. Don't charge me and then put ads in a game. Well, and ads sometimes can work in certain kinds of games, generally more casual or mobile games. to be immersive and now people are throwing company taglines at you or they're wearing a shirt you know like a good neighbor state farm is there or whatever it might be like that's gonna pull you out of the game right like imagine running around like skyrim and some nbc just tries to sell you insurance you know go go drink sprite yeah yeah like i mean that's what i'm picturing like that's ea would do that if they can get away with it. So it's like, all right. I guess it also kind of depends which games are we saying.

If it's mobile and they're free games, obviously, I don't care about that nearly as much. But I don't want to be playing Need for Speed and looking at actual ads on billboards on the road. Like, come on. We've got to move faster. See, that's weird because I'm actually okay with that kind of ad because in racing, like most racetracks are just coded in ads anyway. So it's like my brain is kind of already used to that in the sense that it's like, if I'm driving in a car and I pass a Taco Bell billboard, like I'm kind of, I guess my brain's just trained for that, you know? But it's like, if you're stopping the game and inserting an ad, or you're trying to have Jake from State Farm come walking up to me in Skyrim or something like that, now we've got an issue in that regard because it does not compute in my brain that way.

But I do think there are some games where we're just so used to seeing that, like sports games, you know, like Madden. I can understand like, you know, a field having advertisements, you know, going around the edge of the football field or something like that. I don't know. I'm still not supporting it, but I'm saying there are ways that I think they could do it where we're kind of already used to something like that. But then again, the ad companies aren't going to want to just blend into the background either if they're paying all this money yeah right that's not what ea is thinking no they're thinking full 60 second unskippable ad breaks i guarantee it because that's where the big money is that's why it's on peacock that's why it's on amazon prime that's why everyone is putting these

ads into their services now it's it's the unskippable ads that make them halfway halfway through a boss it's like i would rage watch this ad for another healing flask you're gonna get this it would be unfathomable i i know you say you like certain ones that could fit and stuff but for me it's well and that's and again i'm not condoning this you know what i'm saying i'm just saying like i think there are ways that it could be unobtrusive so to speak but again if it starts there that's where they're going to start it they're going to try to desensitize people to it right like this is this is how it works you know is it's like we'll put it in this game we'll try it in that one we'll take it away we'll we'll put one little one in there until people stop complaining about it and then we'll do a few more without them. And then we'll try a 30 second ad break, you know, and they'll slowly ease up to it to just desensitize everybody

to it. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly I think what's going to happen. So I think we'll just have to keep our eye on EA might have to hold them a little bit accountable here and there if needed, you know, we'll, we'll see if, if, if the choice,

yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Like what's coming next. Are they going to offer us multiple tiers? Like you can buy this game for $80 and now it's ad free, or you can buy it for 70 with limited ads. Like Paul,

how about if I told you that in an upcoming star wars game that if you paid 70 more i'll give you an extra mission that you get to do you get more content if you're willing to pay more yeah along with ads right oh my goodness all right well you know this was an interesting week for news I prefer to break down game trailers and cool announcements. At least the God of War Ragnarok news is kind of exciting. You know, rest this week, a little bit of a downer, but at least it was fun to talk about. So I think that wraps everything up here for this week in gaming. As a reminder, please consider supporting our pod on Patreon.

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