Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to Games Mornings with Me Jeff Grub,
your host from giant bomb dot com.
Speaker 2: Thank you for tuning in. In this episode, we're gonna be.
Speaker 1: Talking about the video game industry's message to all its
adoring fans, go to hell. It's gonna be a good
one because we have Lexiletti on the show, though, LEXI,
how are you doing?
Speaker 3: I don't think me being here is going to take
it over to being a good one this time.
Speaker 2: I'll try you our best. We have to do some try,
but I.
Speaker 3: Will say right before this happened, a quick bit of
breaking news that is good news. Apparently the kraft On
CEO stepped down and said that they will pay what
the court ordered them to pay, which, yeah, no shit, you've.
Speaker 2: Bet fucking better. Yeah, you're going to do that.
Speaker 3: Crazy headline from Bloomberg was like Krafton agrees to pay
two hundred million dollar bone.
Speaker 4: I'm like, they didn't agree to ship agree to do shit.
Speaker 1: They were compelled by the court of law. Did they
just fully put chat GPT in charge now? Is that
just the CEO going forward?
Speaker 3: I didn't see who's in charge now, but I think
it's a guy named Claude.
Speaker 2: Okay, fantastic, wonderful.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, welcome to the summer of gamers humiliation like
this is. It's going to be a parade of one
awful thing after another that this industry is going to
do to us. Yeah, I mean, look, go pirate video games.
That's my stance. Now, just go steal them, Go play
old games. Have you heard a four go hack of
three ds? Do something cool with your life instead of
trying to keep up with these idiots. This is Uh,
We're coming in with the bummer attitude. You If you're
not caught up, you'll find out why here pretty soon
as we get through the news. But look, I'm about
to go on on a little vacation just you know.
It's a family it's a road trip. We're going up
to the Chi. It's nothing fancy, but it's something I
look forward to. I cannot trust this industry to not
ship its pants while I'm gone. Lexi is my is
what I'm thinking right now. I think that next week
is gonna be even dumber. Who knows, we'll see it?
Speaker 4: Will it will?
Speaker 1: It certainly will because we know the Xbox cuts are coming,
So it's just gonna I'm gonna try to tune out
and come back and see what fires got got started
while I was gone. I do have a show tomorrow everybody,
So yeah, so I'll be out Friday and next week,
but there will be Game US Morning's next week. I
talked to Mike Minatti. I said, buddy, could you get
up early for me? And he was chipper about it.
He's excited. So thanks to m for for handling the
show next week.
Speaker 4: So you got your see being the grim Weaper death.
So he's excited for all the bottom.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I didn't think about leaving him with all
that ass. That's oh sorry, Bud. All right, let's you
know what, let's get through it. Welcome to the show, everybody,
Thank you for tuning in. Let's explain ourselves. We are
Giant Bomb and we're trying to make this thing happen
as independent games media, and the one way that you
can ensure that we make this happen is by going
to giant bomb dot com slash join, becoming a premium member,
and that will support independent games Media and ensure that
we can keep doing things the way we want, regardless
of what's like the tempest that is happening outside of
our gates, we can kind of keep it chill over
here and focus on what matters, which is playing some
cool games and hanging out and talking to each other
about them. We're going to maintain that as best we can,
and we are going to be able to do that
with your help. You guys have been coming through for
a long time now, and really I want to thank
everybody for doing exactly that and supporting us.
Speaker 2: We appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Gets you at free versions of our shows, gets you
premium exclusives, including the new This is the Run Sewer Shark,
which Mike Minatti will be playing through Sewer Shark from
beginning to end. That first episode is up now, it
is free if you want to check it out on YouTube.
I believe that's right, and then the new episodes going
forward of you know, these are test runs obviously that
he's doing right now. Obviously the final run will be
happening in any second, but tune.
Speaker 2: In for that on giant bomb dot com slash Joint.
Speaker 1: As far as this show goes most weekdays, I Jeff
Grub will help past your game.
Speaker 2: Oh go ahead? Would six three?
Speaker 4: Nana?
Speaker 2: Okay? So that's right?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: Left? No, I got it wrong already.
Speaker 3: Shit, Yeah, that game seems like it would be impossible
with you fuckers in the background.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're not helping. I was trying.
Speaker 1: I tried to help for five minutes and then I
got bored. So yeah, whose fault is that?
Speaker 3: Listen, grub you I don't blame because like it's ADHD,
it's whatever.
Speaker 4: Don actively sabotage.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah for sure, and like think and like coming
up with new ways to sabotage.
Speaker 3: And is going to create a soundboard with those audio
clips on them.
Speaker 2: Saying we did uh we did? Yes?
Speaker 1: That did he say that in that first episode, because
he does eventually say that we Balk recorded him. LEXI,
you were one right that he had that thought and
said it out loud and he said he's not going
to do it.
Speaker 2: But we'll see what happens on the next Balk Report.
Speaker 1: Please so much as far as this show goes most weekdays,
I Jeff Greb will help piece your gaming life back together.
That includes breaking news and maybe even some of our
own original reporting. For all these topics, I'll get the
input of a bona fide expert who will make me
look smart. If you were watching live on Twitch, welcome.
You can always listen to the show later on podcast
feeds by searching for game Mes Mornings, or find the rssfeed.
Speaker 2: On GiantBomb dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also catch the show later with chapters and
timestamps on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Hello YouTube.
Speaker 1: All right, we have a lot to get into, so
let's start the morning mess with Rhythm Heaving Groove reviews.
It has an eighty four on oprah Critic, with just
a handful of reviews somewhere between like fifteen and twenty.
I think I'm one of those reviews. I'll talk about
my opinions here in a second. Did get a ten
out of ten from Jordan Biordy at CG Magazine. Rhythm
Heaven Groove is not only incredibly fun, back to buy
an amazing soundtrack, but it's so unbelievably accessible practically everyone
can play. It got a seven point five out of
ten from Serial Killers, which is either a person or
a website I don't know. Rhythm Heaving Groove is not
an easy game to evaluate, as it is a collection
of rhythm based mini games with extremely simplistic gameplay. Nevertheless,
we could not completely resist the series's unique charm and
found ourselves coming back for more, for just one more.
Speaker 2: Round, I should say time and time again, and then I.
Speaker 1: Gave it four stars and I said rhythm Havn brings
the cute quirkiness the series is known for to the switch.
It's also packed with a lot of content and distractions.
It might be missing some of the charm that has
made previous games some of the best in the genre, though,
So yeah, that's kind of where I land on this thing.
The music is great when you're playing the mini games,
they are a ton of fun. I just think the
presentation is off occasionally. It looks sometimes cheap. I think
the menus look almost like I didn't say this in
the review because it's but it looks like unity placeholders sometimes.
Speaker 2: The main he was.
Speaker 3: Gonna ask there was that whole ear of Nintendo games
that were kind of like business retrieve fun, you know,
the Mario Party on the Wii games, all of the like,
like just a lot of the font texts were like
what a bank manager thinks is fun when they go
on business retrieve and like is it kind of like
that or is it just like doesn't look finished?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this isn't This is not gonna make sense to anybody,
But Yes, this is the Alexi Lawless of Rhythm Heaven games.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's unfair to Rhythm Heaven.
Speaker 1: Rhythm Heaven is like this game specifically, Groove just feels like, yes,
they they're some style was lost in the translation to
this one, not a ton, most of it's still there.
There are several mini games they have the cute, quirky
and style all happening at the same time, and those
ones are standouts for sure. I just think that they
they kind of have a house style now for each
of these looks, and it's got that like, you know,
sometimes it reminds me, I'm not saying it is, reminds
me of like AI art, where it's like, you know,
there's like this weird texture to this cat doll that
tries to give it some depth, but it's still very
flat looking. I'll just say it looks generic many times.
That is my biggest criticism here. And it's not always generic.
A lot of times it's very charming. And then when
you are playing one of these one of these mini
games that really does hit you kind of can't help
but just keep going until you can perfect it. And
the music is so good, the timing feels so right,
that you will kind of be in a situation where
like I can perfect these and I'm I'm look at me.
I don't have a ton of rhythm, and yet I'm
able to make it happen. Because that's what these games
do best, is they sort.
Speaker 2: Of I know.
Speaker 4: Those shoulders don't lie.
Speaker 1: These shoulders don't lie. They are the whitest thing around, right,
I'm looking everywhere. It's whiter than the screen I have
in front of them.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's very uh impressive that you're on a podcast
with someone from Ireland and you're the widest person here.
Speaker 2: Look, I'm trying to do something about it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to Traverse City and stand out in
the sun until I come back and I'm appropriate again.
I really enjoy this game. The number of levels is
right in that sweet spot where there's a ton here,
but it's not so overwhelming. That's like at a certain
point I just run out of steam. There are some
great distractions, including beat Spell, which is they showed this
off in one of the direct trailers or whatever. It
is kind of an RPG like thing, but you do
a rhythm based You have a diamond around your character,
and the diamond at each point has a circle that's
where the beat is lining up. And if you press
B at the top circle and then for the next
beat the right circle you press A, you're gonna do
a flame spell, and if you want to do a
healing spell, you do B down A, but the down
happens between the two beats. You kind of do a
half beat now, and that's a little bit different, and
you kind of feel like, Okay, I'm getting in the
flow of things. Then of course, there are more complicated spells,
and as you get done with fights, you can upgrade
these spells, and they're like short little runs. You kind
of do four fights in a row, and then you
start over on a different level and you kind of
have to upgrade everything again. That is super engaging actually
to go like to be in a fight and sort
of monitoring like the boss's damage level and how much
damage they're doing to you, your health, your HP and
trying to like, okay, I'm going to just sort of
default to doing an attack and I'll see you know,
like an RPG, it's it's gonna be elemental based. So
this one is a fire boss. I'm gonna use my
wave spell, which actually takes a little bit longer to
do than the fire spell, so it's like it's a
little bit more risk reward, but clearly I have to
use it because that's a fire boss. You'll be doing that,
and then that boss, because it's a boss, can do
a lot of damage. As soon as that happens, you
flip over from doing the wave spell to doing your
heel and kind of flipping back and forth between that
to the beat, trying to keep that all going without losing,
because once you mess up, it's a little bit hard
to get back on the beat and you kind of
feel like, oh my god, it's all falling apart. Trying
to recover from that is also very fun though, But
managing all of that in one go with these boss
battles is very fun. And it's not like some super
substantial thing LEXI this beat spell, but they dole it
out in a pretty smart way where they first open
it up after you complete like the first set of levels,
the first stage I think they call it a stage,
but like the first world. Then you go play that
and it's like, okay, go do the second world, and
then you can come back, and so it creates this
sort of nice back and forth of like, oh, I
get to play more of that game as a break
between going to the next levels or whatever.
Speaker 2: So it has nice.
Speaker 1: Pacing for this weird little rhythm game that that's weird,
but there's just so much stuff that you really can
distract yourself if you are losing steam on any of
the levels. And then yes, perfecting the stage does feel
as good as ever. I've only done it once, so yeah,
but it really did stand out. Any interest in a
game like this, LEXI.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 3: It's very hard to justify as someone that never had
ther them Heaven series growing up. I never owned DS
consoles when I was young, and it's very hard to
justify spending money on it.
Speaker 4: I might reach out to Pure about it, but it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm delighted that they are still making games like this,
and yeah it show is refreshing to see a video
game company make and release video games.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to be like and like not just that like this.
The worry that I always had with the Switch early on.
This is something I've probably talked about on this show,
but I talked about on some other shows in the past.
Speaker 2: And that Switch game, it's like, Hm, cool, cool, cool,
I like this.
Speaker 1: You Oh, they're bringing all the studios together from the
three DS side and the WEU side and they're kind
of mixing them all together and be like, no, you
guys just make switch games now, and like, oh, but wait,
I like these thirty forty dollars DS games and three
DS games that you guys were making in between all
the big ones that you were making for the WU
or even for the three DS, and are those going
to go away? And it's like they kind of did
a little bit, but they're fine any ways to keep
doing them like this at fifty dollars.
Speaker 2: And for me, I'm like, I will accept that as like.
Speaker 1: They want to charge more because they obviously they want
to charge more for everything. If that means we keep
getting these games that are they can't do for eighty
dollars and seventy dollars, I.
Speaker 2: Will accept it.
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty happy with the results so far. I mean,
I think they've had a good run of these. Yoshi
was pretty good. There's god, there's other games coming. So
oh Splittoon Raiders is going to be a fifty dollars game, right,
So yeah, I think they kind of figured that stuff
out and I welcome it.
Speaker 3: It's a single play a game glob that you play
with your friends.
Speaker 2: That you can play with your friends.
Speaker 1: All right, Nintendo Switch two models spotted in the wild
with updated screen. Let's get this news out of the way,
because it's kind of fun.
Speaker 4: All these today so good. This is like, this is
also good that improving the switch screen.
Speaker 2: We're on a roll here. Nothing can go wrong. I'm
gonna a.
Speaker 1: New Nintendo Switch two model has reportedly been spotted featuring
a redesigned LCD screen, as spotted by Nintendo Patent's Watch,
the updated model allegedly surfaced on a Chinese resale site
and featured a features a sharp LCD panel with significantly
redesigned inputs compared to the standard switch to model, suggesting
that it's not a minor revision. It's speculated that the
new screen could potentially address the ghosting issue that the
Launch model suffers from compared to its predecessor, or it
could simply be related to the revised Nintendo Switch to model,
recently confirmed to be coming to Europe to comply with
new regulations requiring that all consumer products with built in
batteries make them easily removable. Either way, it's definitely not
the switch to oh, let upgrade many users have been
hoping for and probably keep hoping for it, because I
doubt that's happening anytime soon since the console was first released. Yeah,
this is this is interesting just because it's like I
think people are like, oh, could this happen already? And
it's maybe a bit soon. But I also think Nintendo
would obviously be feeling the crunch to do anything they
can to have a revised model that reduces costs, and
you can sort of do two birds with one stone, right,
Let's see where it's like, Hey, put in a new screen.
Let's go make our deal with Sharp for the next
set of screens for the switch and to start putting
those in this one while we comply with regulations and
also get costs down.
Speaker 2: Like will this be?
Speaker 1: Will this be like the switch revision with the bigger
battery or the better battery? Wasn't bigger a better battery life?
I should say probably not, because that had a revised
chip like that was that used a smaller process so
it was more energy efficient. I don't know if that's
happening here, although I guess I wouldn't be insanely surprised
if that is the case.
Speaker 2: Again, that would be a real good way for them.
Speaker 1: To reduce costs because they could get more chips per
way for stuff like that. But yeah, I guess, I
guess maybe an improved screen. That sounds good to me,
although I'm not someone who's noticed the ghosting yet.
Speaker 4: It is funny that will like ooh and improve screen from.
Speaker 3: Shop Yeah gat, any that's how bad the screen was
that were like who sharp woo sharp?
Speaker 1: And then I know the Nintendo has worked with sharp
on screens since like the game and Watch, which is crazy.
It's like, yeah, but where they still do all right
screens is on handhelds or that form factor.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Nintendo have done these minor divisions early on
in console generations before they did it for the Switch one,
if you remember, was cracked within a week and was
very easy to polish, to the point that if you
were a games reviewer, they wouldn't send you a code
if you owned a Launch switch model. You would have
to own a more late series Switch model or Switch
O led or whatever, which sure wasn't a pain in
the ass.
Speaker 2: And okay, so if you.
Speaker 1: Give it to the wrong people, they're going to tell
you how many cat shines are in a game, and
then it's just it's bad and you're.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, so and trust these reviewers.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm not surprised that they doing this because
I don't know. I've gotten to the point with the
switch to screen where for three D games I can
generally ignore it. But when I play two D stuff
that the ghosting is on, the smelling is pretty off sometimes,
and it's something that I do notice, but I know
lots of people don't. If it's something that brings down
that price, that's fucking great, Like now, like anything to
bring down that price, and if it happens to be better,
that would be lovely.
Speaker 1: Exactly if we, like we get a little bit more
out of that for people buying Switch two is going
forward like this is not the kind of thing where
I think, oh, I'm gonna replace my switch to or
anything LEXI like that would be kind of crazy, because
I do expect more revisions, more substantial revisions to becoming
not that far off. Like you know, we could be
in a situation where in a year two years, we're
going to be seeing a switch to model and maybe
like a switch to light that could really get the
cost down potentially, I guess, and if those comings again
at that point, I probably will upgrade. But I'm still
pretty happy with the switch to I let me see.
Speaker 2: The screen in person.
Speaker 1: I guess maybe if it's substantially better, like very noticeably better,
without like the side by side comparison, maybe that would
move me.
Speaker 2: But I'm not expecting that.
Speaker 3: The big problem with a Liiche console this generation is that,
like the switch one, Liiche got way cheaper because they
took out a lot of the expensive stuff, a lot
of the expensive eye ore cameras and you know, the
joy con functionality and stuff like that. That's not the
stuff that's expensive anymore. Like that stuff, I don't know,
fucking pennies. It's the stuff that has to go in
it anyway that's still fucking that's now expensive. So actually
bringing prices down for a switch light is going to
be a real challenge.
Speaker 1: Yep, I think you're right, Uh I do. I do
wonder how they're like thinking about that stuff, because you know,
they have probably had plans to do all kinds of
different revisions along the way on the on the road map,
and I always got the sense that they were going
to plan a light alongside twenty twenty seven to get
close to that Pokemon game. But yeah, it's probably not
gonna happen that soon. No way, All right, let's get
to this next one. Let's let's get into it. Physical
disc production ending in January twenty twenty eight for new
games releasing on PlayStation consoles.
Speaker 2: I will repeat it for people who are.
Speaker 1: Like, wait, what physical disc production ending in January twenty
twenty January twenty twenty eight for new games, All new
games releasing on PlayStation consoles.
Speaker 3: Let's be fair before we get into this. How is
the Sony Corporation meant to manufacture blue lay discs?
Speaker 2: I just they really have to.
Speaker 1: They probably have to go through some byzantine network and
like talk to some people in back alleys, like who
even handles that Blu Ray consortium. It's impossible to know.
From Sid Schumann at PlayStation Dot blog. As consumer preferences
in the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from
physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all
new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontent you'd
starting January twenty twenty eight, following the state new games
will be available on PlayStation store and at retailers in
digital formats only. This transition has no impact on games
that already released or will be releasing prior to January
twenty twenty eight in disc format. This is a natural
direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends.
It's the general preferences for digital media significantly outpaceds physical discs.
This transition will enable us to align more closely with
how most of our community prefers to access and play
games today. I don't give a fuck about you aligning
with that. What are you saying?
Speaker 2: Why is what? Oh great, they're aligned with trends, LEXI.
Speaker 3: That was the problem with the games industry. We went
aligned with trends enough.
Speaker 1: To throw such a huge party about it, LEXI, what
come on to show some decorum.
Speaker 2: Don't be so excited about this. I don't look. We know,
like we were on a sort of a timer here,
like we knew.
Speaker 3: Not Piscitella was out that kind of saying like disked
podnucks were on borrowed time. But I think that the
thing that I think Sean on Blue Sky mentioned, and
it's a very salient point, is that like this isn't
about getting rid of the secondhand market necessarily, like that's
a bonus for them. That's certainly a bonus for them.
It's about having the only marksh in a place where
you can buy these stuff. Like PlayStation is a closed ecosystem.
If you own a PlayStation, you can't buy games on
any other storefront unless you buy physical games, unless you
go out and you shop around between Best Buy and
Target and CeX and all these different retailers across the world,
and you compare prices, and they push prices down PlayStation.
If everything is digital and everything is only on their storefront,
they set the price. These are companies that are looking
over at how the RAM companies are doing business, and
I'm going, why aren't we acting like this be making
so much more money if we just became monopolies and
we did that because fucking no one's gonna regulate us,
because apparently there's bigger problems.
Speaker 4: In the world right now.
Speaker 3: I think that also, this coming literally days after all
those Studio Channel movies were taken out of PlayStation users libraries,
Like that's less of a red flag and more of
a smoking gun of this is the kind of economy
and ecosystem that these companies want to build like it's
not only this is them saying you don't own anything anymore.
Everything is at will. You pay money to rent a
thing from us until we take it away, and we
can take it away at will. That's the model that
they're going for here, Like you're no longer buying a license.
You're buying you know, a timer and a timer that
you can't see and they will take it away. And
we know they'll take it away because of the next
story that they posted on the Place blog today and
so like, yeah, if you want to own your shit,
the only way to do it now is it's either
piracy or it's to play old consoles that do have
physical like media, and that fucking sucks. This is what
happens when you don't have competition in the video game
console space, like Nintendo off doing their own thing, and
that's great, and we like Nintendo games, but they are
not competing directly with Sony. Xbox were the force that
were competing directly with Sony, and when there isn't another
company there to push these other companies in line with
you know, consumer good will and to keep fighting for
consumer good will, to try to best each other this
is what you gets. And right now you have an
Xbox that is clearly check the fuck out and does
not give a shit about consumer good will, And so
Sony's going to like, well, if they don't have to,
why the fuck should we really like eighty percent of
the marksh So, yeah, like this whole fucking thing is
I said it on Blue Sky a few months ago,
and it's more true today than it was then. Of
the games industry feels like a house powers you where
all the music got turned off.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and now people are just looking around and what
do you do next?
Speaker 1: It's kind of it's almost worse than that, right, It's
like it's a house party where it's like you went
to the bathroom and you came back and the only
people there are now the parents who owned the house,
and it's like it's like, oh, okay, this has bad
vibes and sucks, and their interests are not aligned with mine,
and all.
Speaker 3: The parents' lawyers and all of them investors, and like
all of the young kids are gone because they can't
afford to fucking be near the house anymore. And you're like, well,
I guess I'm we're gonna have to take out a
fucking loan to spend time in this house.
Speaker 2: It's yes.
Speaker 1: Uh, people are pointing out a bunch of extra stuff
in the chat, like, for example, they stop selling digital
codes at retailers for games in twenty nineteen, like a.
Speaker 2: Long time ago.
Speaker 1: So it's not like you can go to your game
game stop and like be like, okay, just give me
a digital code for X or Y, Like that will
come down to the publishers putting those codes in boxes.
That's your best chance to get that. So yeah, and
then like we knew retail was sort of like diminishing,
like GameStop was something that people were not visiting as much,
but there was still competition for pricing and that did
mostly actually come from the secondhand market. That's why like
that sort of became synonymous with the market as a whole,
because that's where a lot of people who are our
price conscience were finding themselves. So man, backwards compatibility on
the place, you know what, let's get to the next
story that we can bring it in PlayStation six almost
guaranteed for twenty twenty eight after digital Only News Analysts
says this is from Andy Robinson at VGC Wednesday's News
that PlayStation will discontinue all physical game disc productions starting
in January twenty twenty eight, almost certainly guarantees that PlayStation
six won't launch before that date. That's according to Mpeer
analyst Peers harding Roles, who believes that confirmation of PlayStation's
all digital future telegraphs quite a lot of information about
Sony's next generation console, which was previously expected to arrive
in late twenty twenty seven. First, we believe this almost
certainly guarantees that the PlayStation six won't arrive until twenty
twenty eight at the earliest, he said, and Pierre's current
expectation is that the console will launch at the end
of twenty twenty eight. Secondly, according to harding Roles, PlayStation
six will now at a minimum not include a of
a physical disk drive, which obviously Sony will be looking
for all the ways it can reduce the cost of
its next gen console, and this is an easy win.
Speaker 2: He added.
Speaker 1: It's possible that an add on disk drive could be
made available to play older PS four and PS five
games on disc LEXI do you think that's true?
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm going to in this way, it doesn't feel true.
Speaker 3: It if they are not out there saying you will
still be able to buy or play all those PlayStation
five discs. I own three copies of Mind's Eye for
the PS five. What am I meant to do now?
Speaker 2: I'm two?
Speaker 4: Now if I want to play it on a PS six,
And yeah, I think that.
Speaker 3: If they're not out there saying like you'll still be
able to play your full library, they're not saying that.
And that's what you say when you want people to
You want to reassure people they can still play their
full library.
Speaker 1: And like, even if you haven't announced the PS six,
right you say, and don't worry. In the future, we
will provide solutions to those of you with massive game
disc collections that's nowhere to be found in here. They
have no reference to people though. They just say this
doesn't effect games that have already come out, which, yeah, no, ship,
what do you mean?
Speaker 2: Of course?
Speaker 3: I can still play a PS two if I want to.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm with you where It's like I was
like yesterday's show maybe or on the BombCast yesterday, I
was talking about like, yeah, you know, the next gen
consoles won't launch with disk drives, but they'll have disk
drives to sell one hundred and fifty dollars collectors editions.
Speaker 2: You know the way this works, or you know what
the way it worked. I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with these days exactly with how this
all goes down. But the way it used to work
was you'd make a game, you would go to the
Nintendo's and the PlayStations and be like, okay, can we
get some copies printed?
Speaker 2: And then they were like, yeah, yeah, you kind of
pay us a.
Speaker 1: Little bit of money, we'll do the printing for you,
or that's part of the licensing fee to be on
our platform, and we control the discs and stuff like that.
So if PlayStation's not doing it and they're saying all
all new games like, well not like to me, that
says there's not even going to be a solution for
the boutique printers to get their discs on these consoles, mean,
and why would Sony like bother with making a drive
If that's the.
Speaker 3: Case, they're clearly not communicating with those boutique printers, because
I've seen no less then like three of them put
out statements being like we're going to fucking fight for something,
but we don't know what we're even going to be
fighting for yet because we we don't know like what
the extent of this is. I think, I think, right,
I'll find one of the quotes there. But yes, these companies,
I am a basial omitsion run. They seem like they
have been taken lost and cult are also out there
saying that we aim to do everything on a power
to preserve video. We aim so the best of our
ability and will continue to do so as long as
we can, and like no sense of communication and no
sense of like if there's any way forward for these
companies that are built around this boutique industry to still exist.
So yeah, it's fucking nuts, the like just cutthroatness of
this industry.
Speaker 4: The last few weeks, it feels.
Speaker 3: Exceptionally like the last fifteen or so years were people
positioning themselves in pro consumer ways and now they've all realized.
Speaker 4: They've looked over on.
Speaker 1: Stage being like man disks rule fuck xpots and it's
been like a little over ten years and here we are.
Speaker 3: And over the last six eighteen months they've kind of
looked over at AI companies and seeing how they've brute
forced the market, and you don't actually need people to
like your product. You don't need people to like you,
You don't need people to use your product. You just
need to create a circular flow of investment and money
that you can keep on feeding to yourself. And you
can cut out all the paws that were limiting you.
You can cut out all the paws that had expectations
and demands and you know, personal opinions, and you can
just find ways to make people have to give you money.
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate case shape economy, right, that's where we're
headed with the case shape of like in the K
shape economy is like, hey, you feel like you don't
have as much money and the economy is really bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true for you.
Speaker 1: Uh, but then why do you look at the stock
market and it's up, Well, like there's for the top
ten percent, top fifteen percent, it's going the other direction.
Things are getting better all that money. You know, the
economy is not growing, but they the rich, keep getting
more money. You have less money. Gee, I wonder where
their money's coming from. So it's a situation where every
sort of business has to reorientate themselves toward that the
top of the K and be like we the money
has to come from the people who already have money,
and that then you get into these circular investments stress schemes.
Speaker 2: Uh and yeah, and.
Speaker 1: They're the ones that aren't a part of it yet
are jealous and are trying to find out ways to
get get into that party without you know, any concern
about when.
Speaker 2: The balloons will pop or anything like that. Okay, so
here's here are a couple of things.
Speaker 1: PlayStation five pro is already a PlayStation six, and if
you have that PS five, there's not going to be
a much reason to get a PlayStations because the games
are not going to look that much better, They're not
going to be that much different. And they're like, no
way they're gonna cut off the PS five prematurely with
like it's gonna be a long cross gin period, so
like people aren't are already gonna be like why am
I getting the PS six And to give them, like
to give the physical people who are in that early
adopter like like a big part of that a reason
to skip out on it just seems like a little bit.
So now the way they can counter that is and
it seems like this is the direction they're going. PS
six could maybe at this point be a handheld first
and foremost, where it's like it's a you know, a
portable version of PS five or something like that, and
they call it a PS six and it has you know,
it has a portable you know potential or whatever. In
O case, it was never gonna have.
Speaker 2: A disk drive.
Speaker 3: That sounded like a great idea a year and a
half ago. But now you look over at the cost
of like a Lenovo Legion Go or any of these things.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these these these PC hontelds new ones, which are
basically what you'd want, you know, They are not like
exceptionally overpowered. They are kind of like what was promised
with the Steam deck of this is where we'll get
to with second and third generation. So these products you
look over at them and you're like, these are not
affordable to consumers. These are not affordable to enthusiasts. These
are affordable to rich people. Uh, and that's kind of ish.
And so yeah, like I suddenly that multiple skew PlayStation
alartment also multiple SKUs sounds like way more difficult nowadays
because suddenly they will be trying to get different types
of v RAM and RAM and like they will be
trying to get different components for these different.
Speaker 4: Skews, and we know from the Steam Machine that.
Speaker 3: Even agreeing like on one thing like that put they're
putting one stick of de of ram, one stick of
ram into each Steam Machine.
Speaker 4: You shouldn't be doing that. You shouldn't be doing that
with your yeah, yeah, And so like.
Speaker 3: This feels like the extra skews because right now we're
here and kind of blooms is that it will be too,
will be a handheld at a you know, desk or
you know, actual console. We all deal console, and that
seems like it's going to cause them a whole lot
of headaches in the current market where swashing any kind
of components for any kind of hardware is extremely difficult.
Speaker 1: Later today, after the show, we're going to be doing
a stream with Abby Russell where we sit down and
talk about like emulation handhelds and stuff, and we'll make
the focus of that sort of how can we still
enjoy this hobby after all this stuff?
Speaker 2: Everybody so one of these.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the yes, exactly what we're talking about that
we're going to kind of do a bring in my
top three emulation handhelds and we'll talk to abby about it,
answer her questions and chat.
Speaker 2: Bring your questions please.
Speaker 3: And I can play Dirt three at sixty FBS on
the go anytime I want.
Speaker 4: Life is so good.
Speaker 2: Which is what I'm gonna be doing now on my vacation.
I've decided. Hell yeah, I'm gonna get Dirt three on
my foor.
Speaker 3: Okay, might be a little bit difficult to source a
steam code on that one.
Speaker 2: Glub Oh, okay, I'll figure it out. Don't worry. I'll
get it going.
Speaker 1: All right, let's see here from uh, let's see you
know what.
Speaker 2: Let's take a break.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, let's take a break and then we'll come
back and talk about more Sony news about them doing stuff.
Speaker 2: They're doing it all at once again. Well they can
get away with it. It feels like we'll get into
all that after these messages.
Speaker 1: If you want to skip out on these ads, you
can do that giant bomb dot com slash join you
can get the ad free versions of the Show's there.
Speaker 2: We will be right back, all right.
Speaker 1: It's Games Mornings, Lexiletti, Jeff grub LEXI, what's up?
Speaker 3: Before we get back into the bad news, I feel
like I should choo us all up, please, Yer Cruz Alvarez,
friend of the sis Pure person is currently on maternity
leave and or paternal leave which I can't remember, and
parental Creed believe very cute picture with his baby just
went up wrapped in a Super Mario three D World
mainline Mario you know yeah Blankish Dan has replied, get
me on the phone with Ish cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Dan versus children. It's a battle as old as time.
It's just it's always epic, all right. Sony is closing
the PlayStation Store on PS three and Vida. If that
sounds familiar, this has happened before. From Chris Scullian at VGC,
Sony has announced that it will be closing the PlayStation
Store for PlayStation three and Vida after nearly two decades
of supporting the PS three console generation. We wanted to
let you know we will be closing the PlayStation store
on PS three as well as the PS Veta. The
company said, to ease the transition, players will still be
able to download previously purchase content after the closing.
Speaker 2: Date for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1: Definitely putting a period at the end of that sentence
where it's like, well, okay, I mean, I mean there
is a time where this won't be the case, which,
of course, of course that's the situation. According to Sony,
the PS three store will first close in Mexico, Honduras,
and Nicaragua in August twenty twenty six, followed by additional
Latin America and Middle Eastern Middle Eastern countries in late
twenty twenty six. The PS three and Vita stores in
all other countries will then close in July twenty twenty seven.
They originally tried to do this, if you people remember
way back in twenty twenty one, five years ago now
and then everyone kind of freaked out, was like this
feels too soon, and PlayStation backed off and I'll say
five years. It was a longer stay of execution than
I was expecting at that time. And I think at
this point Sony could be like, look, you guys said
you were going to freak out. Do you want to
see the numbers of how many PlayStation three games you
guys are buying? Here are both of them?
Speaker 3: Like, do you want to know what you have to
do to buy a game on the PS three nowadays?
Speaker 2: Yes? Actually, I bet, I bet it is a pin
in the.
Speaker 3: Ass, because I did this a few years ago, I
built up a bit of a PS three library because
I was like, I love my PS three. I never
played that many online games because I or you know,
did you hold it games because I didn't have access
to a credit card when I was younger, and so
I was like, I'm going to get some of the
like important PlayStation three download titles or whatever. If you
want to buy a new game on the PlayStation three,
first you have to log into your PS four or
PS five. You have to delete any credit cards that
you have tied to that account, because if you try
to buy a game on the PS three store with
a credit card, it errs out and it says it
can't it just won't do that. Then you have to
go to an in person store and buy an voucher
and put that money onto your PSN account. Also on
your PS four PS five, then you can log into
the PS three store or Vita store and peruse their
selection of games on the world's slowest storefront.
Speaker 2: Can't take delivery network from the Flintstones.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, And you can purchase things that way, and
if you re add your credit card to your account,
you have to do that all over again.
Speaker 2: Cool man. The consoles just work, is what I always say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that that's them just not carrying right. They just
didn't care to fix any of that, so yeah, people
had to find ways around. I think that they are
gonna just like to use that situation that they obviously
created to be like, people aren't really buying these games anymore.
We gave you a lot of extra time. We're gonna
shut these things down. And it does seem quieter this time.
I guess I haven't looked around too much. I bet
the people are still having a bit of a backlash.
Speaker 2: To this news.
Speaker 1: But this is the eventual fate of all of these stores.
I mean, it's the eventual fate of everything.
Speaker 2: Everything. Nothing lasts forever, duh.
Speaker 1: But it does feel weird to be like, man, when
you buy these games in that moment, it does feel
like I have this, It's eternal, this thing is now mine,
and that feeling has always been a lie, and it
never feels more true than when a store like this
closes down. Now, PS four the whole thing, you know,
and Phil Spencer said this about like the whole thing
with the strength of the PS PlayStation brand now at
this point is people got PS four's in the droves
in DROs because it seemed like the right system to
get it was one hundred dollars cheaper, and it just
Xbox felt like it was.
Speaker 2: Poisoned in that moment.
Speaker 1: After Xbox One and then immediately following that, people began
building up their digital libraries on the PlayStation. Obviously some
of that happened on PS three, but mostly happened on
PS four, and it sort of cemented people in that moment. Uh,
the PS four store because of that, you would think
should be running for way longer. Am I missing something there?
Should we expect that to close down soon as well?
Speaker 2: Lexi?
Speaker 4: Or what I mean?
Speaker 3: It's fundamentally a thing where they've said that their future
consoles are going to be built on the same architecture, right, And.
Speaker 2: That's that's right.
Speaker 1: That's so it's like the PS five store is the
PS four store essentially, Yeah.
Speaker 3: In a lot of ways. And so that's like the
one saving grace that you have is that. And now
a lot of this stuff is built into the main
the current systems as much as it is the old systems.
The PS three to PS four store, Yes, you had
like some crossby games, but you aren't able to Yeah,
you're not natively able to run PS three applications on
your PS four PS five Remember when that was a
rumor back at like before the PS five came out,
when the big rumor was like, yeah, you'll be able
to play PS three games on't it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yep, what a different world, man, God, Yeah, right, put
a PS three disc into your PS six What will happen?
Speaker 2: Will explode?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the kind of thing where, look, this
is the situation we find ourselves in. We don't have
to accept it. But what does that look like? I mean,
it can look like yelling at these companies to try
to get them to change their mind. What it really
looks like is taking matters into your own hands and
being part of communities that are preserving these things on
their own and living the life of saying, oh, I
did buy this thing.
Speaker 2: It is mine.
Speaker 1: I don't care what you say the lawyer at this
corporation about licenses or whatever.
Speaker 2: I bought it. It's mine.
Speaker 1: Ethically, I'm in the clear, and I'm going to do
what I need to do to make sure that I
have access to this game for the rest of my
life and onto my children's lives, and passing it on
to them this is mine now, and that comes down
to community preservation. It comes down to emulation and all
of the various ways that people have found to do this,
and it is why those scenes are thriving.
Speaker 3: The one thing that I forgot to say is, you know,
like for the last news story and this one, this
also comes at a time where storage space on systems
is now worth actual monetary value in a way, like
I had a really fucked up fart the other day,
which is how much storage space will GGA f six
be worth?
Speaker 2: Yes, in like in like sense, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's not going to be sense scrub because that game
is going to be over two hundred and fifty gigabytes.
And if you look for two hundred and fifty or
you know whatever gigabyte drive on Amazon right now, those
are about one hundred dollars for one hundred dollars. Yeah, yeah,
it's good. It's going to take up one hundred dollars
worth of space. Also worth remembering that most ps fives,
even the ones that are listed as one terabyte, ship
with six hundred gigabytes of usable space or six hundred
and fifty bytes of usable space, So.
Speaker 1: That's also right, it's crazy because they say Terribyte, but
they were never one terribyte, right, there were it was
like eight twenty five, and then it was.
Speaker 4: Eight twenty five, and then there was the system system.
Ohs and yeah, yeah, crazy.
Speaker 1: All right, let's let's move on here. Hideo Kojima's Xbox
exclusive horror game reportedly safe from Microsoft's cuts. As a reminder,
over the last week and kind of going into next week,
there's all kinds of rumors cuts and oncoming cuts and
job and jobs being lost and studios being closed.
Speaker 3: I'll say, while we were here, might not even be
as far as next week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's I mean, clearly stuff's already happening,
right the Io Interactive talking about losing their contract for
Project Fantasy. That's happened already, and that directly affects jobs.
Now that those aren't Microsoft jobs. Those are jobs created
by Microsoft money. And now that's that's pulled. Always an
undertold story is part of this, as like, as these
studios get get closed, those studios have contracts with contractors,
and that's contracted companies and private contractors juels, and all
those jobs go away as well, or that money for
those freelancers goes away.
Speaker 3: I can I can see that being a big push
to get the worst of this done before the fourth
of July, when this is probably going to be other
news stories that will be picked up by mainstream media
around that time.
Speaker 1: For July third is a day off for a lot
of people, right, but they don't have I mean it's Friday, yeah, yeah,
July second. They could just take out the trash tomorrow
and yeah, you're right, yes, all right, so yeah, the
Arcane Studios double find all these in the news. People
are wandering like, where where's the where's the line? Because
Arcane and Blade that feels like that should be on
above the line.
Speaker 2: That's a big project.
Speaker 1: They keep saying that they're focused on their heavy hitters,
but it's like, sounds like that one might be in trouble, insanely,
So where is the line? Well, does it include o
D from Kojuma? Sounds like it doesn't. Reportedly, it is
safe from the expected huge cuts at Microsoft's gaming division.
That's according to IgM, which claims the project will survive
Xbox's planned business reset, which has so far already seen
it drop a planned fantasy RPG game from Hitman Studio
Io Interactive, leading to potential layoffs at that studio. Ode
remains in development at Kojuma Productions and will still be
published by Xbox Game Studios.
Speaker 2: According to sources.
Speaker 1: In a statement published on Tuesday, Xbox said it was
taking a fresh look at where we invest or. We're
focusing on our highest priorities. We're not reducing our overall
investment in games. The hell you aren't. What are you
talking about me when I'm lying, yeah, I mean, it's
the idea here that it's like, we'll take this money
we're saving from these studios and put it into Halo,
because you're not gonna put all that let mean.
Speaker 2: Well, it doesn't work that way.
Speaker 3: They'll put it into AI factory slash data centers that
they will put to work on making stuff for kids.
Speaker 1: It'll say Xbox and it'll say King on the side
and that'll count or whatever. That that that that is
their company line right now. We are not reducing our
overall investment in games. So they continue just like to
speak out of both sides of their mouth. They continue
to do this thing of like let's put the best
foot forward. And I'm sure chet, I'm sure co Pilot
made it sound, you know, palatable to them. When I
could go out there and say this and that'll satisfy
people because technically and so we don't.
Speaker 2: I don't want to hear it, not.
Speaker 3: To not to pick a fight or anything. But if
you missed it, go lead that Entertainment Weekly profile of
Asha Shama from the week of Summer Games Fest and listen.
I know we all got to make money, but if
you're gonna write something like that, and you've written for
video game websites in the past, on your byline, had
you call.
Speaker 4: Yourself a geek reporter, I.
Speaker 1: Mean even like like the sort of most cynical take
on that of like, well, you know, you've got to
stand the good graces of micro No, you don't.
Speaker 2: They're not gonna be here. You're going to outlast them.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be here longer than Microsoft and Xbox like
doing this stuff, so you need to maintain some integrity
some like.
Speaker 2: It was like when.
Speaker 3: Someone asked me if I was worried about upsetting perl
Abyss by being negative about Crimson Desert, I was like,
guys that released one video game in six years.
Speaker 2: Don't it's going to be a problem at their next game?
Like whatever, Yeah, he.
Speaker 4: Published and did their own PR. I'll be fine, uh huh.
Speaker 1: And the PR was weird about it, so like yeah, uh,
you couldn't predict whether or not they were going to
be happy with you, even if you did give them
a decent score, So it doesn't matter. US bill requiring
paid games to be playable after they shut down has
failed to pass a Senate vote, so I couldn't news.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: This is from Chris Scullion at VGC, A US bill
designed to stop paid games from being terminated and being
made unplayable in the future has failed to pass a
Senate vote. The Protect Our Games Act, which was proposed
by California assembly Men Chris Ward, was put to a
vote at the California California State Assembly last month, where
won a vote of forty three to sixteen. The next
step was to pass the bill to the state Senate,
where it was debated and voted on again. Had this
vote passed, a final version of the bill would have
then been created with House and Senate members before being
submitted for final approval. However, as noted on the Reddit
page of Stop Killing Games, a consumer movement seeking to
preserve video games after they've been taken offline to prevent
them becoming unplayable, as.
Speaker 2: Was the case with the crew.
Speaker 1: The bill lost the vote at the state Senate after
four Democrats voted yes, three Republicans voted no, and the
rest abstained, which just seems like you shouldn't. Why fucking
vote on these things? Those extensions matter, a campaign volunteer
wrote on Reddit and a committee of committee vote, excuse me.
An abstention is not neutral. It has the same practical
effect as a no. Because the bill only advances if
it gets a majority of yes votes. Not enough yes's
means the bill stops here for this session. That is
the law US. The volunteer also claimed that the campaign
had attempted to pass the bill without any funding or lobbying, stating,
this was our first attempt in our first year in
the United States, with a US budget of zero dollars,
no paid staff in California, no war chest, no in
person lobbying operation. The timeline was so compressed that we
could not get funding in place fast enough to put
people in the building. They do say later on in
the story that's going to change the plan going forward
is let's up our lobbying, which is required. I pointed
this out on last of them, The Ten Dogs last night.
Lexi It's it was a YouTube video say about taxes
and stuff, and it had a research study that they
found of like how policy breaks down in the United
States and like what gets past and what doesn't based
on popularity. And it's like, if something is one hundred
percent popular and everyone wants it, it does happen. But
if you as soon as you get to like ninety
percent of people wanting it, if you then just look
at what the top one percent wants, well, if they
want it, it passes. If they don't want it, it
passes maybe fifty one percent of the time.
Speaker 2: Maybe if ninety five percent of the red.
Speaker 1: If everyone else wants it and they don't, fifty one
percent of the time it passes, which doesn't compared to
one hundred percent of the time. If rich people want something,
whether it's popular or not, one percent of the time
they get it.
Speaker 2: Like that is what that study showed.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, we don't live in a democracy, so
it's like you gotta get them.
Speaker 2: You have to lobby to be fair.
Speaker 4: Web, you are describing democracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right right?
Speaker 1: With democracy money speech as the Supreme Court keeps reminding
us over and over again, which means that money is
how we vote.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: It is funny that like America loves to be like
with a Homer democracy. I started as bitch, yeah, and
then you look at like the actual democratic system that
you have in place, with like the Supreme Course and
every other Democrat exactly and every other democracy that came after,
and all of them just being like, yeah, it seems
like it could be abused.
Speaker 4: Let's not do that.
Speaker 3: Let's let's not settle country up in such a way
that nine people can decide basically everything.
Speaker 1: We didn't for that for senators for like the first
like several decades of this country, they were selected by
state representatives. So it's like like it was always meant
to protect the property like that from the beginning. That's
how this stuff was. It was We've always been in oligarchy.
That's the secret, all right. So that's what that video
is About's about oligarchy. It's from a guy used to
be Mormon. I can't remember his name. He does great
sort of motion graphics videos and stuff like that. You
can probably find if you just search oligarchy on YouTube.
The funny thing happened at this thing before we move on.
At the when they were debating this in the Senate
in California, there was a conversation about private servers and
the ESA lobbyist said that private servers are illegal, that
you private service or video games are illegal, like the
ones for Minecraft.
Speaker 2: And that's not true. That's flat out, flat out not true.
Speaker 1: And the person that was sort of like trying to
argue against them was like, what are we talking about?
Like no, And so the essay did put out an
update and so you know.
Speaker 2: Correction, no double down.
Speaker 1: The essays provided VGC with a statement addressing the above
claim private servers infringe on the intellectual property rights of
game publishers. Publishers reserve the right to exercise their rights
against them. The provision in California AB. Nineteen twenty one
that proposed these services as a legitimate alternative to keep
games running raises concerns about a publisher's ability ability to
enforce their IP rights. Okay, two different things if you
want to talk about, like the private servers that like
keep going, keep games going, that sort of were built
by the community, but there are a lot of private
servers that aren't that and obviously there's a great area
in between where where some of these things could be happening.
But just to flat out claim that they are illegal. Uh,
and that is gonna be the essay's position because they
want them to be. It sounds like crazy, all right, Uh,
we'll see it once. Like they go into round two
of these things. Lex See, they're gonna keep trying in California.
They say that they're interested in trying at the federal
level in the United States.
Speaker 2: This is something that will take years.
Speaker 1: Like if it feels hopeless in this moment, sure, but
I think I continue to say at the very least,
these conversations need to keep happening so that companies get
spooked and maybe they start just doing these things themselves,
the whole self regulation thing, which is not great but
sometimes the best we can hope for.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: I also just remembered something. Remember that Sony introduced dynamic
regional pricing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the base pricing, Yeah, huh oh boy. And that's
easy to do when you're not competing with retailers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a fat points of comparison, Yeah, intro hmm ha hmmm.
Speaker 1: Man, it just finds ways to keep getting worse, all right,
rocks for people are wondering exactly what that is that
they have prices where it's like you can go into
the store and if you're logged in, you might see
one price, if you're logged out, you might see another.
Speaker 2: And of course the way it worked right now.
Speaker 1: Was I think people who were logging in were seeing
discounts targeted at them.
Speaker 2: But just like Nintendo with.
Speaker 1: The hey, we're going to have a different price for
physical and digital, and that means the physical the digital
version is going to be cheaper than the physical.
Speaker 2: It's like yeah, but also now.
Speaker 1: The digital or the physical can be more expensive than
a seventy dollars digital game.
Speaker 2: That's how you get back to eighty dollars.
Speaker 1: The price for a targeted dynamic pricing thing could also
go up, and they could charge you more if they
know a game is in more demand. Finally, rock Star
accused of ignoring pay inequity, mandating crunch, and weaponizing bonuses.
This is from Chris Kurt at Game Developer. This is
a read worth keeping up with, especially as Grand Theft
Auto news keeps pumping out. This keeps up with that
crew of people who were fired allegedly for trying to
form a union at Rockstar.
Speaker 2: Rockstar claims claims.
Speaker 1: They alleged that they were fired for sharing privileged information
that they did not have permission to share their evidence
for that. In my opinion, based on what we've seen
so far and some great reporting from people make games,
that seems like a lie. That's just what it seems
like to me. So following up on all of that,
the people who are part of that of trying to
grow that union, who were fired in the union itself
are coming up with a laundry list of other reasons
that Rockstar was a troublesome place to work, including pay,
inequity between gender, as well as weaponizing bonuses.
Speaker 2: This idea of like most of the pay of.
Speaker 1: What you should expect comes from these bonuses, where that
means that you kind of have to be a good
little pet to the person who decides what your bonus
is and you are afraid to speak out against them,
and that sounds awful to me. That sounds terrible, you know,
you know, it kind of sounds a little bit like
how Valve works as well.
Speaker 2: I think Valve is primarily bonus based, where.
Speaker 1: It's like that's how people decide what project they're going
to work on, can it get me the biggest bonus?
Speaker 2: And it's like, yeah, you.
Speaker 1: Don't really think about how that could be really toxic,
but of course it could be. They have a bunch
of other stuff, obviously mandating crunch where they have a
thing in the contract when you go to work at
Rockstar a Lexi where it's like, hey, here's a checkbox
you can check. We'll put it here, make it easy
for you to waive your rights against like the laws
here in the country where we work. That's say you
can't as an employer ask an employee to work more
than ten extra hours a week. It's like, go ahead
and wave that now as you're signing up here, and
we'll just go ahead and get you on that crunch.
Speaker 4: All this ste well we're at it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we're at it.
Speaker 1: All this stuff sounds like, Yeah, that sounds right for
the Rockstar we've known for forever. And even if there
have been improvements to the crunch over time, I don't
think anyone's like and now that is a joyful place
to work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything that you hear coming out of LOCKSA first,
you hear very little specifically, which is a telltale sign.
And second, when you do hear things, it's usually like, yeah,
that's exactly what you'd expect. Even when the company was
getting its act together, it was getting its act together
in order to not have another Jason shryover Porsche. Yes,
not getting its acting Yeah, yeah, not getting its act
together because it wanted to support its employees and be
a better place to work and be you know, more
equishable for everyone. So yeah, like none of this is surprising,
but I hope they keep dragging them across the calls,
and I hope that this gets picked up by local media,
especially local British media, because that's the thing that will
actually impact all of this. Is like, it's one thing
for us to come about it are in the games
industry in different countries. But if local British media picks
up on it and it becomes an issue of these
workers are being abused in their workplace, then then it
is an actual problem for this correcting.
Speaker 1: Because like Rockstar pr in relations people, Hi, uh they'll
watch this and uh they'll they'll they won't love it,
but you're right, the leadership at at Rockstar and take
to begin to feel heat when it is that local
media you're right, and that that that yes, that's true.
All right, So let's that's the that's the news, that's
the headlines, that's how it's going right now. Again an
industry and crisis. This is just this is where we're at.
That doesn't mean we all have to despair everybody. We'll
try to keep finding some fun stuff to focus on
while we keep also keeping keeping up with and dealing
with this news as it comes out. I do think
that we're gonna have some hard decisions as like groups
of gamers, where it's like, man, do we need to
keep chase seen what's next? Is the PS six something
we should be concerning ourselves that greatly with, And it's
going to be hard not to because we're just so
used to that. But game it's just gonna have to
be something different going forward for the next five years
at least.
Speaker 2: All right, let's let's.
Speaker 1: Get out of these headlines. We have the poll question
from earlier this week. Are you excited for Splatoon Raiders?
When this poll went up, we had not not seen
that Nintendo direct yet. Now we have thirty percent responded
saying yes, seventy percent said no, I'm I'm pretty into it,
but also as a sort of reminding myself, it's like,
oh this does we don't matter here. Kit Ellis pointed
out that the sort of peak concurrent viewers for the
YouTube stream of that Splatoon Raiders direct in the United
States hit something like fifty thousand viewers, Yes, something like
fifty thousand viewers, whereas the Japanese stream had two hundred
and fifty thousand viewers simultaneously. That game is just so
big and spanned the rest of the world doesn't matter,
And I bet they're excited about it.
Speaker 3: I mean, the idea of we made a splus shoon
what has monthster hunter style multiplayer hunts and raisin ish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like they know what they're doing. Targeted. Yes, yeah, it.
Speaker 3: Sounds like they will laser focused on one specific market
right there, and God bless them.
Speaker 4: That sounds fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yep, we gotta love the splooners absolutely, all right, new
pole question here in a second Before we do that, though,
LEXI tell people where they can find you on the internet,
what you have going on and all of that good stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can find me on Blue Sky at lexlod
dot xyz. I am currently doing some reviews for game
of guides on some stuff I can't talk about. I
have a preview going up next week, which is one
of those July embargos, but I'm I'm excited to actually
talk about that. I will be at Gamesclm this year,
booked my first Games Calm appointments, so hopefully I'll see
some folks out there and make some cool stuff happened
at thatsh And yeah, go support startmanu dot co dot uk.
It's a website for people trying to break into games media.
I think now more than ever is a really important
time to have people reporting on this space rigorously and
ethically and thoughtfully and writing about these things and supporting
new voices in that space. So if you can't support us,
do over on Patreon dot com slash start menu.
Speaker 1: Excellent stuff, excellent as always, just having you on here
talking about games with you and everything. I appreciate that
new pole question. Let's see here I haven't written down
and I went away from.
Speaker 3: Also small thing before I forget trans writes. As always,
shout out to the US folks. It's bad everywhere, but
yesterday was particularly bad for US folks. So sending love YEP.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court protecting us from the greatest of threats, that
one girl who wanted to play sports with her friends.
Speaker 2: Yep, great stuff.
Speaker 1: All right, let's see here, yes, newpool question. Do you
still buy video games on physical discs?
Speaker 2: Yes? Or no?
Speaker 1: Just let's still talk about this. We'll talk about it tomorrow.
Get the results, see how people are feeling about it.
We'll have a Game Mess Mornings here on Giant Bomb
tomorrow two in the week. That does mean that that
will be when we do the Bomb twelve everybody, So
go ahead and get over to giant bomb dot com.
Scroll down, find the vote here button, submit your game
for the Bomb twelve. We'll wrap up the week, go
into the holiday weekend. I'll be on vacation, but Games
Mornings will return on Monday.
Speaker 2: Mike Minatti will be in this seat. I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: How Mornings has returned, Well, it.
Speaker 2: Has returned absolutely.
Speaker 1: But with all that out of the way, let's see
what else is happening on Giant Bomb. In about thirty minutes,
we're gonna be sitting down with Abby Russell and we're
gonna be talking about handheld emulation devices, Chinese handhelds.
Speaker 2: Everybody, it's the future. They're also getting expensive, so what
the hell.
Speaker 1: But I've got I've got three kind of in different
tears that we're going to talk about, and Dan's bringing
some Uh, we're bringing our Sean, who can kind of
speak to the technical aspects better than anybody. Letting Sean, well,
let's letting him out. It's just strong. But we're gonna
sort of like Leasha.
Speaker 2: And then walk around the exactly. Yeah, yeah, dah, I
let it get some sunshine. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Uh, So tune in for that. I'm looking forward to it.
It's just gonna be a hangout. We're gonna be talking
about these things, showing up kind of just show and tell.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And then it's Wednesday, so there is a blight club
and Dan's done and Mike went before him, so obviously
it's my turn. No Jacob Geller with a super blight
Jumper Griffin's story as we're calling a jumper gellers story.
Speaker 2: Uh, that will be happening.
Speaker 4: I am so so excited for this.
Speaker 1: We're gonna try to see if you can beat the
whole thing today because it's under four hours.
Speaker 2: But no promises, no promises.
Speaker 1: It will just be an extra long blow which is
great timing on that because I really could use every
minute I could to get ready for my trip, but whatever,
this is more important. So when I come back from
my vacation, I'll have to deal with Blake Club at
that point.
Speaker 2: Wonderful.
Speaker 1: It has been since August since I played a real
Blake Club game, and even that was Trespasser, Lexi, which
I kind of like.
Speaker 4: It has almost been a year.
Speaker 2: It's almost been a year, which is crazy. All right,
my time's come. I get it. This is going to
be bad. I'm worried.
Speaker 1: I got to go get CDI up and running or
something great. Uh, all right, let's see with all that
out of the way, LEXI, thank you so much for
hanging out with me today and talking about video games.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's always so nice to revel in the in
the lovely news and you know, talk about how chippa
we are and you know this is this is why
people think that we're depressed.
Speaker 1: Thank you all for watching and listening despite the obvious
depression on your screen.
Speaker 2: We'll catch you next time. Until then, have a good one,
take care of yourself. Good Bye, Boding Bom do bo
bo