[MUSIC]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to

another episode of Off the Console.

It's the hottest podcast.

It's all about gaming and

tech news and anything nerdy.

My name is Gartner, and I'm

joined today by my friends,

HiTech Low Life and James, aka The Brink.

How are you doing, my friends?

Doing fine. It's another week.

It's hot as hell this week, though.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's been crazy here.

How about with your games?

You know what?

A couple of days ago,

it was like in the 60s.

It got into the 40s at

night, so we're in 90s now.

We're doing pretty good weather wise, but

I fever like I'm in like a fever

dream state because of all the gaming

I've been playing last week.

But we'll get into that in a little bit.

Absolutely.

This week, we're going to be talking

about the Stop Killing Games initiative,

which might be dead.

We're going to talk about Xbox layoffs.

We're going to talk

about all kinds of stuff.

Mario Kart World, the Fedora 32-bit

drama, all of this and more today.

So before we get into it, though, we'd

like to start to show off with what we've

been playing or working on this week.

James, what have you

been playing this week?

Expedition 33. And I'm almost done.

I know I've been saying that for a while.

I get stuck on a game for a little bit

and especially this type of game where

I've put 70 hours into it now.

It's been a while since I've put this

much time into a game

and like in the last

week, probably 40.

So that's one of those things where you

just sit down and play for eight hours

and you kind of, I don't know, kind of

lose track of time and yourself.

So pretty good.

It's a fun game.

So much extra content than I was let on

to believe because a lot of people like,

oh, yeah, you can beat in this much time.

Like, well, there's a lot of content.

So yeah, it sounds like it's kind of a

big investment, even

playing it for over a

month at this point.

It doesn't have to be.

I just I'm a completionist.

Once I start playing a game, I will like

I put 200 hours into Witcher 3 just with

all the DLCs and everything, just because

I completed pretty much everything.

Um, yeah, they're not.

I see.

Yeah. Hi, Tech.

What are you up to?

So I started a new gacha game unrelated

to one of the topics

that we may or may not

be covered today, but I started a gacha

game with my bro called a theory and

restart.

And I know there are some misgivings

about gacha and the monetary systems and

whatnot.

I just want to say that

I'm immune to the FOMO.

So I have no issues with

playing as a free to player.

And I also I can also manipulate my gacha

luck a little bit so I can get the best

characters for free.

Nice.

Did they get you?

No, no, I'm not a hacker or anything.

I just I'm just born lucky.

Anyways, but aside from that, though,

I've been looking to

see what steam sale games

I want to get something that I might have

missed out on or maybe some hidden gems

that are like 80 to 90 percent off.

Have you found anything interesting?

I was thinking about getting.

Expedition 33, finally,

it's like 10 percent off.

Yeah, I mean, it's worth it at any price.

Yeah, if anyone has recommendations for

games we should pick

up in the summer sale,

let us know in the comments.

Yes, please.

We're on YouTube and we're also on the

Fedave so you can leave us a comment

anyway that you have.

Yes, and we're aiming to hit a thousand

subs by the end of this year on YouTube.

That's right. Yes.

I think we can blow past it, but it's

only with the support of the

audience so we can do that.

Cool. And I've been playing nothing.

I've been working very,

very hard the last week.

I haven't had any time for

games, which kind of sucks.

Yeah, but I just did a complete refresh

of my company's website.

So I've shown these guys earlier.

It's really, really neat.

If you want to show it

to the audience, you can.

Oh, yeah, let's do that real quick.

I yeah, you got to invest in some A.I.

Over like underlings.

That's that's how I freed up time to play

expedition because I'm

working on my project.

But oh, yeah, you know,

it's not it's not perfect.

Can we just like skip the A.I.

in our local computers and like have them

be humanoid robots that do like

like Star Wars? Yes, like

droids of Star Wars, like

to have a little bit of a personality.

I could agree with that.

Yeah, I could get down.

Yeah, like, you know, you know, because

like there's so much time

that we spend on like menial tasks and

shit, like washing the dishes and stuff.

I think we really need a robot needs.

That'd be sick. I'd be down robot maids.

Like a robot

babysitter for your kids, James.

Mm hmm. That's the TV.

Just throw a couple of Cheerios on the

floor, TV, and I can be

gone for a couple of days.

All right. There's

stories of people doing that.

Sorry. No, that that I

just worry like, you know,

actually, I'm not even going to go there.

Never much.

Yeah, this is my

website. I'm pretty proud of it.

I think it looks really nice.

Got some social proof on here.

And then there's like a fun portfolio

section where you can go

and see some of the work that I've done

for other companies and what have you.

Pretty neat. Looks really good.

It does look really good. Yes.

There's a contact form here.

You can, you know,

fill out the contact form.

That's a good way to like drop me news.

If any of you are like running an open

source project or anything like that,

you want me to cover it, you can drop me.

You can fill out the form on my website.

That's what I was trying to say.

I don't know why I was blanking on that.

Anyway, yeah.

So that's what I've been working on.

Fun, fun stuff.

I think it's time to get

into our first story, though.

We get the stop

killing games might be dead.

Hi, what is this all about?

So for those who don't know, the stop

killing games movement

is a very simple movement.

This like essentially, oh,

this is there's been more.

Anyways, so what I'm saying is that stop

killing games is a simple concept.

They want to introduce legislation to

I want to prevent games

from permanently dying out.

There are a lot of games out there that

are simply unplayable

because they rely on infrastructure.

So what so when I say, you

know, stop killing games,

they really mean implement plans to for

like end of service.

Like there are plenty of for every like

red fall or multiverses

that's playable offline nowadays.

There's like a million other live service

games that are literally unplayable now.

And while you may not

like these games, others do.

And this is a great effort

towards game preservation.

I I am a game preservation absolutionist.

I think all games should be preserved,

even the bad ones. Yeah.

I agree with that. Honestly,

we really need to have this.

And it doesn't we don't need to put like

a financial burden on the companies.

We just need to force them

like, hey, if you're going to

not support this

anymore, you need to either open

at least open up a weight so

that people can still play it.

Or release at least some of the software

so that someone else can

implement it to be more open source. Yes.

I think the the simplest thing is to just

have legislation in place

that says if you're going

to make an online only game,

you need to have a plan in

place from day zero on how

when you retire the game, when

you retire your own services,

that game can still be

played by people who bought it.

Yes. So, for example, the

the two games I mentioned

do have plans in place.

In fact, they've already

been implemented like Redfall

was a game Microsoft released.

It was meant to be a live service game.

They didn't do so well.

And critically speaking,

they didn't do so well either.

So but you know, and that entire studio

got laid off, too, I think.

But yes, so there is a

silver lining, though.

They did make the game offline playable

in case you actually like Redfall.

It's not a bad game.

It's just it needed

two more years of work.

That's what's so shocking is that it's

actually has a lot of original ideas

and artwork and all that

is just needed more time.

Another game that we also like to talk

about is the multiverses.

So remember how we were I was ranting

about how, oh, you

didn't bother the case.

You can't play all the care.

So it turns out I was wrong.

Turns out all the characters are unlocked

when you play offline.

So. Hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. So you can play the game if you

have in your library.

I think I think it's been delisted.

Can one of you guys check?

Yeah, multiverses has been delisted.

I don't know for certain

because I have the game.

I have the game in my library, so I can't

exactly check it myself, you know.

Multiverses is no longer available.

Yeah, I guess it has been.

Look, he's been delisted.

Yeah. So as I was saying,

it's certainly possible to make these

games playable offline.

I know like WOW would

probably be a different story

if, say, World of

Warcraft were to die off.

I don't know how possible it

would be to for someone to like

effectively make an

offline version of WOW,

given that a lot of the

activities are multiplayer, right?

Like there's well.

I part of. Yeah.

I was going to say, like,

it doesn't have to be that

if the company retires their services,

then the game has to be

made playable offline.

Like it could be that they're like, OK,

we're done supporting

the like official WOW servers.

So here's the server netcode and you guys

can do whatever you want with it.

Yeah, like private servers.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Private servers.

So just either open it up, they could

even still have it trademarked

or whatever they want, copyright,

whatever they want, but open it up

to where you could at least

launch your own private server.

And that's how they're going to have to

do World of Warcraft

when they finally

retire it, because that'd be.

That'd be a clusterfuck if they didn't.

So I think one thing that should that we

should consider here,

though, it's like if

let's say that you I don't

know how World of Warcraft works,

but I know that there are

a lot of games that have

characters that you can buy or DLC

cosmetics and stuff like that.

One of the things that should be

accounted for here is that you retain

that, you know, your purchases are still

honored after it goes open or whatever.

If that's like making everything

available to everyone,

or if it's like there's some way of

validating your purchases

after they close down their servers.

I think it would have to be the first

option because I don't think they're

like I'm sure making a validation server

would probably be a lot less like a lot

more cost effective than like

having a whole game server,

but at the same time, though,

I think if they're not actively selling

these microtransactions anymore

or running the game, then I see no harm

in making all of these cosmetics

and whatnot available to everyone.

You know, even if you piss off like the

whale that spent like

thousands of dollars in the game, right?

Like, fuck those guys.

Can you ask? Yeah.

I mean, sometimes they pay for the games

that you play, but yeah.

Yeah, sometimes they do.

Sometimes they do. But yeah, yeah.

But there has been some opposition.

And when I really say some opposition, I

really mean one content creator.

Yeah. Any any guesses as to

who the content creator is?

I think we all know the name.

It's pirate software.

Pirate software, a.k.a. Thor.

Supposedly his real name, too.

Yeah, Gardner said his real name.

The whole picture it is.

I want to look it up now.

All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Please.

That's I'm just smite the whole thing.

Dude, that's too badass of a name to be a

mere content creator, man.

Well, I would imagine that to be like the

name of like a body,

like a bodybuilder or some shit.

Come on, content creation.

Oh, so maybe it's not his real name.

OK. Yeah.

So you told me that

Thor isn't his name. Wow.

Sorry, I'm sorry to disappoint.

Star Wow. Which star? Yeah.

Yikes. So pirate software.

Does not like the movement and he can.

And I think his points can be really

boiled down to three things.

First is that we're essentially dumping

problems onto developers

like unjustly and not

providing like any real solutions.

And what are your thoughts on

that point, Gardner and James?

Well, I don't know.

Keep going with with his points, because

I think I have one point

that will sum up like answer

all of his problems with it.

I know he says it's too

broad and doesn't have solutions.

That's one thing. Sure.

It creates legal and technical burdens

that most indie studios can't afford.

And three is like main

point is that it creates

unrealistic

expectations for online games.

I'm sure there's more points to it.

But honestly, I can't

stand to watch him for like.

A minute. Another.

I'm not a fan.

He's not like fully wrong. It's just

you like when they make when they make

the laws, they can add exceptions

and for small business slash

indies, they really want to.

But on top of that,

being able to make sure your source code

is accessible for like, let's say,

always online games is

not a burdensome thing.

It is a financial problem.

More than anything, people don't want to

relinquish their IP and some other stuff.

And there I know what

companies are going to say.

They're going to be like, there's

proprietary stuff in there.

I'm sorry, but most of it is not

proprietary in the sense of like,

it's been done everywhere else.

So with these types of systems.

So basically, my takeaway

is if an industry cannot

make money ethically, then that industry

does not deserve to exist.

Point blank.

And so and I don't

believe that it is ethical

for a company to accept

payment and sell you a good

and then have turn around and turn off

the good after you've made a purchase.

That is that is 100 percent unethical.

And it should not be

allowed in any way, shape or form.

And so I think all of his points are moot

because they are their typical like

libertarian, anti-government.

Things that don't hold water when

actually scrutinized to any deep degree.

And so, you know, oh, it's

going to put burdens on Indies.

OK, put a little carve out in there for

Indies, but it's not even going to.

Right. Like it's just so foolish.

It makes me really upset. Sorry.

Like, OK. All right.

So let's. All right.

So I want to debunk each of his points.

The initiative is to

broaden, lax, clear solutions.

It's a it's a fucking loss.

It's a fucking law.

Yeah. So yeah, of course.

Like let's look at I think it was Denmark

or something that banned

microtransactions from

like valves games, right?

Valve had a company solution.

Where's the problem?

And no one's have no one

has an issue with that, right?

Of course, it's of the.

Yeah, it's up to the it's

always up to the developers

to come up with a solution to a problem.

And, you know, we're just bringing it up

to light and making making it

so that they have to

come with a solution.

It's not the burden isn't on us to come

up with a solution, right?

Or I guess in this case, Ross, right?

Yeah, at the end of the day, too, they

could also bake into this

like for indie studios, some type of

especially the use much better at this

at implementing services that

could help with Indies, too.

Like it's just like,

hey, here's a little kit.

Just throw that your some of your code

into there and you can.

Say you're done.

Yeah, the community

can take over from there.

Yeah, they don't even have to do much.

And I'm not sure why even

bothered mentioning Indies,

because I don't I don't see most in these

making actual life service games.

Like, yeah, life services

are expensive to make and run.

Yeah. And not to and not to mention

people don't really have faith

in a life service game like being made by

a first time indie dev.

Like, you know, all those kickstarter

MMOs that used to exist.

Yeah. Like those are all

red flags for a reason.

Because yeah, they're really hard.

There's some games where I could see and

I can't think of any, but I could see

it being useful to have a

little caveat for Indies.

But yeah, it's definitely like it's so

small that it's not going

to affect almost anyone.

Yeah, like.

Like what's an indie life service game?

Because I'm having a hard

time coming up with the same

because a bunch of them I'm thinking of

are actually have offline modes

to where you can just

do your own servers.

It's only big companies that typically

try to make sure you don't so

you have to use their services.

The more I'm thinking about this more,

I'm like, this is actually very much

a systemic like issue with big companies

trying to just milky it

from all your money.

Yeah, let's not forget

who pirate software is.

He used to work for Blizzard.

Like and his dad did as well.

And I've heard him.

I used to watch his like VODS sometimes

and he would be like, you know, having

great affection for his old employer.

So I'm like, well, I I'm

taking his like smoke screen,

you know, pearl clutching bullshit

like for what it is.

And it's just a guy, an industry insider

who is deliberately misrepresenting what

this movement is and

what what it's about.

That's what it seems to me anyway.

Yes, not to mention he

does run a live service game.

I mean, a sort of live

service game rivals of aether to

it's kind of a live service game.

I believe it's playable offline.

But, you know, the online modes are, you

know, where it's at, to be honest,

for like fighting games and whatnot.

And also let's talk about the last one.

It could hurt the industry by setting

unrealistic

expectations for all online games.

What unrealistic expectations?

I think that's already the expectation.

You buy a 60 dollar video game.

I'm expecting to play it forever.

Like there's no expiration dates on these

like things, right? Like.

Yeah, and what he's saying there is

it's unrealistic for you to

expect to own the things you buy.

Which is bullshit.

It's a dangerous path

and at the bare minimum.

It's just it's not

much of an expectation.

We've already mentioned like it doesn't

honestly take that much,

especially for these big companies to

make sure that it is

at least opened enough to where you can

run your own private server.

Yeah, yes. I don't know.

I think so, especially if you put this,

you don't have to do

this retroactively yet.

You could just

retroactively have the law say, well,

if someone wants to reverse engineer a

system to make something

that's already released

work, they can do that legally.

And then from here on out, companies have

to have an exit strategy

or else they'll be fined

a certain amount because

what the user or what the buyer purchased

is not usable anymore.

I think is very

reasonable way to do this.

Yes. So last time I checked this was

which was like earlier this week,

the signature had like 50,000 signatures,

so it's gone up like 10 percent,

which is great news because

yeah, yeah, 500,000. Sorry.

But it's great news

because, well, basically,

there was concerns that stop killing

games basically lost all momentum,

which is unfortunate. But now big content

creators are covering it

and Ross has found himself

multiple powerful allies,

arguably more powerful than pirate

software who at the to we are

at the start of the week, he had pirate

software had the must viewed video game

video on stock killing games period,

followed by Asman Gold, who

who reacted to that video. So.

Yeah, what was his take on it? I'm

curious as Asman Gold.

I think he does. I'm not

entirely sure to be honest.

I didn't watch it. All I know is that all

I know the place these days

all I know is that pirate software got

all the attention, not necessarily

the not necessarily Ross, but, you know,

now we have much bigger content

creators like Moist critical covering

this and Muda Har from some more

again gamers, you know, gamers Nexus and

even Linus Tech Tips

covered in his own podcast, actually. Oh,

yeah, this is I have a feeling

they'll hit their signature

goal. I think interesting. Yeah.

It's hard to because if you go and try to

sign the petition, it's only for

like members of the

EU. Yeah. And I think UK.

Maybe. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I think the I think the UK has

his own separate stock killing games

like thing, but he's got a

lot of more powerful allies,

very powerful like in the YouTube space.

And I mean, it shows they got 10 more.

They they made it up 10

percent. It's amazing.

I've also, you know, I've also wanted to,

you know, I don't know

if I should be mentioning this on air,

but I did email him.

Ask if you want to join us for the

podcast and he might join us,

but he's fighting the

good fight right now.

Yeah, he's in the trenches.

So if you guys want to see

a curse farms join us here,

then you got to get subscribed because we

don't have a big enough audience

for him to join us yet. Yeah.

I mean, he's he's he isn't he isn't

joining us because we're not popular.

He's joining us because he's focusing on

getting as the word out.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it just helps.

It helps a lot. So and Ross,

I don't know if you're

watching this right now, dude.

I'm high tech low life on

the one that emailed you.

But keep up the good fight.

Yes. And yes, let's

get a let's get it like,

I don't know, United States

slash Canada version going.

Yeah, I'm totally game for that.

The question is, how

do we get that started?

I don't know. I'm not really

good at this type of stuff.

Maybe maybe we can get

there once they're funded.

Like once it's fully signed, maybe we can

look into it for us.

Yeah. But doing it, the EU is probably

the best way to do it

because the EU is very consumer forward.

They actually have a functioning

government over there.

That's true. We'd

have to wait three years

before we could

probably get something through.

Yeah. All right. But let's.

Yeah, let's move on.

We're going to talk about the Xbox

potential layoffs that are reportedly

going to happen here.

Hi, Tech. What is this about?

Reports suggest that we might be losing

up to two thousand people from Xbox,

which does include entire studios.

Like that's talks.

It does suck. And apparently the Xbox

unit has like 10,000 people in it.

So that could be anywhere

between 10 and 20 percent,

like George Broussard says now. Yeah.

What do you want to bet?

Half of the team

that's working on Windows

Xbox experience are going to be laid off.

I'll say that. Don't say that.

That's what Microsoft does, guys.

That's literally what they do.

Well, it's OK.

They had to lay off

the blue screen of death.

People will get to that later because,

you know, they can't support that color.

It's OK, dude.

I was going to install Bazzi on my ROG

Xbox Ally X anyways.

Yeah.

That being the Xbox Ally X

Series X version S version.

They just need to get better

at just name it simple, guys.

Keep it simple.

That's also not in Microsoft.

We have. I know.

Well, it's the KISS mental methodology.

Keep it simple, stupid. Just come on.

Yeah. At least they didn't

make a like Xbox Series X Pro.

Imagine how much worse

something would be there.

Don't give them ideas. Pro Max.

Oh, go the apple round.

So the Xbox, the Xbox unit has about

10,000 people in it.

That's like 20, up to 20 percent of the

Xbox unit being laid off.

That's a lot. That is a lot.

So many people.

Now, does the Xbox unit

include studios like Activision

or publishers like Activision or are they

kind of independent?

It's got to be independent.

Yeah. Right.

I'm sure Activision and Zendimax are

independent, so to speak.

So I bet you there's probably more than

that in those companies.

That's what I was thinking. Yeah.

Yeah. But I can imagine like studios like

Oblivion being counted

in the Xbox division.

Yeah.

Oblivion like Obsidian.

Sorry. Does that say Oblivion?

Yeah. Obsidian

separately from Bethesda, right?

Yeah. Wasn't part of the Bethesda.

Yeah, they're not. They're not part of

the Zendimax. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think Ninja Theory

2 was another one, too.

They released a hell of

divers. I mean, how blade.

Yeah. Well, yeah.

I mean, I don't know

what to say about this.

I just feel really bad for the people who

are going to be losing their jobs.

This is a tough time

to be losing your job,

especially if you're

in the gaming industry.

Yeah, it is rough and

it's really hard because.

A part of me kind of resents

live action or a live service

for this kind of because it

attracts so many gamers when

and it consolidates a lot of this

money into the big and into

really big pockets when indies

and some smaller really good company

game studios could

really use utilize, you know.

Now the cells.

I mean, I feel like live services are

like the tobacco industry

where it's like they're

completely unregulated.

You know, for a long time, they were

completely unregulated

and they have done nothing

but just refine and pollute

and destroy the gaming industry, like to

make things their products,

to make things more addictive.

And and that's what

most live services are now.

It's like they're hiring psychologists to

make the game even more addictive

and to make their loot

crates or whatever they have

be more appealing and

extract more money from whales.

And it's like, dude, we can't

let that continue, you know.

No, like Expedition 33 is addicting it

up, like and it ends, which is nice.

Yeah, that's the thing.

Like there's plenty of like we can do

games that don't last forever,

but not everyone wins into that.

And I get that I just like that.

Like life services, especially these days

are very off putting for me.

Like I don't want to touch them because I

don't want to set there

and just play it all day.

I know that like I've

done that with Counter Strike

and it gets annoying, and I definitely

don't want to do that

where I have to keep on paying like

that's Hearthstone is a great example.

I love Hearthstone.

I paid into it somewhat.

But once I realized I would never catch

up to where I want to be

with the decks I want to

build, it killed the fun for me.

They killed it for me.

Hmm.

Obviously not for everyone, because, you

know, I don't know how much

Hearthstone makes now, but they were

making billions every like they were

making about a billion every year.

They're in their heyday.

So I mean, that's crazy.

That's crazy.

There's no way those developers were

getting paid well enough

for that, you know, it just trickles up.

I hate it.

Yeah, I really want.

Just the game industry is a very it's

it's a very both artistic and very

it's just that's very different realm.

And I'd like to see it

treated less like a business.

But unfortunately, in order to make

games, you need to make money.

So interesting.

Brandenburg says this is the fourth big

layoff at Xbox in the last 18 months.

Yeah, they had three major cuts last year

and the closure of several subsidiaries.

So I mean, this is this is just kind of

the state of like Xbox right now.

They're there. It seems

like they're closing up shop.

I think the rebranding really heavily.

And so I could see them continuing to go

this route and then maybe

those are still rehiring the South.

Big companies do it anyways when they're

like, well, instead of trying to find

you new jobs, we're just going to lay you

off with the severance and then

we're going and then it looks good on the

books, even though they technically

lose more money and then they'll hire

some of these people back.

I wouldn't be shocked. But it is not like

if you're thinking about

going into the gaming industry, just know

that be prepared to be, you know,

potentially laid off all the time.

And it's very stressful

and it does affect the games.

Yeah. So now. So yeah, it seems like

Microsoft is starting to realize

that maybe the games industry is a little

too volatile and a little less

profitable than imagined.

I mean, a lot of people really go into

the games industry thinking on a profit

like like, oh, if we just do this and

that, we'll be profitable.

Right. But obviously that's almost I

wouldn't say almost.

It's not really the case usually.

But yeah, it's

profitable. It really is profitable.

You just got to be good at it. Yeah.

Like any other thing.

You just got to be good.

Well, what I'm saying is you can't go

into the games industry with a profit

like mine. You have to be

really willing to make games and.

Yeah, it's just these execs, they don't

understand like honest like.

It's very rare to find CEOs of companies

that actually play their games like

this. Bobby Cottice still work at EA.

I mean, Activision.

No, well, I don't think so.

All right. Well, I doubt

he ever played a video.

Well, actually, no, that's not true.

He founded Activision

and they found that we did.

Did you not? I thought you did. No.

No, no, no.

Activision was founded by the guy that

did show this pizza.

Oh, shit. Well, what's his name?

I'm looking it up now.

Anyway, anyways.

Microsoft, I am I am concerned, though,

because what happens when Microsoft

leaves the game industry?

Because I don't think we've had it.

I don't think they're going to leave, but

more of the conflict industry.

Here's the thing.

I Microsoft is is like they don't want to

be running Windows anymore.

They don't want to be doing like consumer

facing products anymore

because there's way more money in the

business to business, like in this

software stuff,

there's way more money in it.

And Xbox is exclusively consumer facing.

So it's like they I I'm looking at the

writing on the wall and I'm saying

like Microsoft never been like the number

one in the console market.

Right. They've always been like number

two or number three.

And it's like so they're

not making a ton of money,

not what they could be for less

investment in other industries.

And I just I just don't see how Microsoft

is going to continue doing this

when they could be making more money

selling Office 365

and teams to, you know,

to companies that

want that kind of stuff.

I mean, that's why these big companies

are so big, like they have multi

revenue streams. And so

they either need a break off, like we

talked about, I think, a week or two ago

and just like, OK, Xbox is his own entity

now and let it be profit,

like try to go for its

profit and not worry about other

departments. But, you know, you got to

have like, especially with these big

companies, you got to have multifaceted

like products and stuff like that.

I shouldn't say multifaceted, but you

have to have multiple products.

Are we still thinking that Microsoft is

going to leave the console market?

Remember how you know every remember how

everything is an Xbox?

Are we still thinking that Microsoft is

not make Xbox anymore?

I think that's the case.

I think they're going to

go to a very branded like

their brand instead of building consoles.

I definitely believe

that. That's what I would.

Well, we'll see what the handheld, the

Xbox handheld, how it does,

I think will partially determine this.

But they're also working with Meta to

make an X, you know, an Xbox Meta

headset. Right. Like that

was like a year ago, I think.

The Questbox.

So what I'm concerned about, though,

is what happens when Microsoft leaves the

dedicated console market?

Because the last time we had two

competitors in a console market

was Nintendo and Sega

all those years ago.

And then certainly joined the market.

And then things haven't

been the same since then.

There's always been three people.

Heck, one Sega left.

Guess what? The company joined the fray

after Sega, like right after Sega left.

Microsoft.

So there's always been at

least three per generation.

See, what I would like

to see is Perifractic's

Commodore come in with a new console.

I don't know if you've heard about that.

No, I haven't.

So do you know the

YouTube or Perifractic?

I'm afraid not now.

Well, so a YouTuber just

bought Commodore like the brand.

Well, and yeah, and he's teasing some

really interesting stuff.

He hasn't announced anything like

concrete yet in terms of

like the hardware product.

But I would really like to

see an Amiga games console

that's running like modern stuff.

I would love to see something like that.

So that would be so weird.

Yeah, what would a modern Amiga be?

Just like a regular

gaming PC at this point?

Well, I mean, like it wouldn't use X86.

That's for damn sure.

It would use something else

and be exotic and be cool.

And it's exotic.

Well, I mean, exotic

meaning like, you know,

maybe RISC-V or something, it wouldn't

use like it's like an arm or CPU,

I don't think, or X86.

That's a that's a little

too out there for me, Gardner,

but I'll be cautious.

I'll I'll be cautiously optimistic.

For you.

I'm just curious as to

how much it'll cost us.

That kind of brings us to our next story.

Sony is facing lawsuits in the EU.

Is that right? Or is it?

It's it's a it's a lawsuit in

whatever country this is.

The Netherlands. The Netherlands.

Yeah. Here, let me share my screen.

There we go. Yes, please.

So it's a consumer group that's they're

essentially saying that

consumers pay on average

47 percent more for digital

games than physical games.

And that Sony is also pushing towards a

digital only feature, of course.

And they're saying that

Sony's large market share and,

monopoly on digital sales

amounts to a quote, Sony tax.

So I am curious what they mean by

monopoly, though, because

are they talking about how Sony is the

only one that sells like PlayStation

digital copies like you can't just go on,

you can't go on like

Humble Bundle and buy a PS5 key.

Is that what they're talking about?

They could be referring to that or they

could be referring to the fact that

in order to get your games on the Sony,

like the PlayStation Store,

you have to go through

Sony and they take a huge cut.

Oh, so what you're saying

is steam on PlayStation five.

That would be sick. I

think that will be sick.

I think more people would enjoy.

I think more people do that than like

steam on Xbox for sure. Yeah.

Well, there's more play

stations than there are Xbox.

Yeah, that's what they have to start

submitting play PlayStation.

Um, builds to steam then.

Would that be how that works?

Because you wouldn't be able

to just play like a steam game

right on the PlayStation, I mean,

technically, but. Well.

Yeah, how I would want to see

it happen is we just do that.

We just run steam, we just run steam

games on a PlayStation.

Performance be damned.

Well, yeah, you have to work for Orbis.

Yeah, it has to be.

Yeah, you'd have to do it through Proton

because operating system. Yeah. Yeah.

But I mean, the hardware is it's

basically PC hardware.

So like it should be

very capable to. Right. Yes.

Yeah, if optimized and all that, that

would be I would be curious.

I think they'll just have a.

I don't know if they'll open up the

steam, but definitely

would like to see some

rules come into play on.

Some of this. Hey, so here's something

interesting, though.

There was also a lawsuit in the UK in

regards to Sony's claims over 30%

three percent cuts, so those are the only

one facing lawsuits over their 30% cut.

Yeah.

I mean, this the Sony

is excluding competition

and it's exploiting

consumers and game developers.

So I mean,

I don't I don't necessarily

disagree with that. I mean,

you know, the idea that you're you're you

have an exclusive store,

you have exclusive control over the

software that is allowed to be,

you know, launched and

played on your console.

That makes you a.

By definition, like a

vertical monopoly, right? Like.

Like kind of how it's kind of the same idea as like, you know,

same idea is like Walmart, right?

Like Walmart has they control everything.

They control every tier of

like product sales like they.

It's not just like the how the

merchandise looks on the shelf.

It's also the

distribution and the warehousing.

So and it's kind of the same idea with

Sony, I would think.

Yes, I would. I think so, too, man. It's.

The big question is,

how are they going to

like what's going to happen?

Are they going to actually

try to make changes to it

or are they just going to find them like

a few hundred million dollars?

Because that's like chump change that's

only probably. Yeah.

I don't know.

I'd love to see where this goes, so we

should follow up on it for sure.

Agreed. Now, I'm not

saying I like Epic or anything.

But Tim Sweeney, if you're watching this,

I think I know who your next target is.

They're not directly

competing, though, with Sony.

That's the problem.

Well, maybe they should be.

Maybe they should try getting the Epic

Game Store store on PlayStation.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I mean, that would be

like a Tim Sweeney thing to do

is support like Sony, like PlayStation OS

before you support Linux.

I can see that.

Well, yeah, what a weird vendetta he has.

But I don't know if we covered that.

Did we like fully that like

now you can on iOS devices?

You can

now like navigate the user to

a separate page to charge them

instead of have to use the iOS storage.

I think that that whole

thing went through. So.

Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Hi, Tech. You just had a little spasm.

Yeah, no, it's my it's my avatar.

Sometimes it does that like sometimes it

makes it look like I'm lazy.

I am I am I right. I when I don't.

Yeah, I wasn't sure if you were just

going like that or not.

Yeah, that would.

Yeah, something else.

It's kind of unwieldy sometimes.

Yeah. Have you seen some?

If you look at some of the like really

detailed ones, they're crazy.

And they're also

equally crazy expensive, too.

Like, oh, yeah, I've seen people spend

five thousand dollars

on like their V2 model.

Wow. Is that like a 3D model or is it

like a sprite based?

So there's an engine called Live2D, which

well, this is sprite based.

But essentially, Live2D can

be used to make 2D like up

as long as you like do the layers and

stuff, from what I understand

and rig the bones and whatnot.

It you can effectively make 2D

animations from what

would be still images.

It's a whole it's a whole process.

I don't fully understand

myself, to be honest. But.

Yeah, yeah.

So you basically need two people.

You need a artist and you

need a what they call a rigger,

which is like a puppeteer, essentially.

Yeah, it's an interesting one. Yeah. But.

I thought it would be fun if

James and I also had a

V2 remodel for an episode.

I don't know how would that

be expensive or something.

I feel like we talked about that a few

months ago. And yeah, well,

I still go with I still go

with the one I was talking about.

Well, they do have like, I think they do

have like generic ones you can use.

You wouldn't have a unique design or

anything, but you can do.

You can be a generic ones.

I'm game. Awesome.

We'll discuss we can discuss this in a

future episode. Agree.

Let's do it.

Cool. So let's talk about this one here.

What's going on with the

Ready or Not development here?

They're getting censored, apparently.

So Ready or Not is a

SWAT simulator of sorts, and

it's pretty disturbing,

like some of the stuff,

some of the cases you see are pretty

disturbing, including one like.

So so each case is like

it's a separate thing,

but some cases lead in other

cases and there are some like

truly like controversial, like truly like

awful things you see.

And they're they're turning down some of

the gore and some of the nudity

and some of the imagery and revolving

children, I should say.

And there wasn't any good.

There wasn't any there wasn't any actual

like imagery of that kind,

but just implications of it happening

because you're busting a ring of sorts.

Yeah. Wow.

So there is some controversy.

Well, namely one to two reasons, first

and foremost, is that.

They they're trying to

prepare for a concert release.

And, you know, they the

games are on PC for a while.

So in theory, they could maintain two

different versions, but

one, they say that it needs it needs to

be the same for cross play purposes.

And two, maintaining two different

versions of a game

just isn't super feasible.

And it's supposedly not

just like a texture change to.

So they list some of the stuff down here

that if you go down and scroll down,

you can see some of

the stuff they changed.

That's that's fun.

Yeah.

Nudity, explicit

representation of violence.

Console content change conclusion.

So one one case has a busting a streamer,

and that begins a whole like myth arc of

you trying to bust a CP ring in the game.

It's crazy. It's crazy shit, man.

Some people aren't some people aren't

thrilled about the censorship due to,

you know, you know, just, you know,

censorship being censorship bad.

You know, I'm saying, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

But at the same time, though.

Some of it is kind of

egregious, like the violence.

Yeah, it's it's hard one.

I like bringing it up to the point where it's not that hard.

I like regulations for certain things,

but yeah, like they've been trying to

regulate violence and

video games for a while.

And if it was up to certain lawmakers, we

wouldn't have grand theft auto period.

But there are some limits.

Like the children thing

definitely is a limit.

But if it's just

described, I don't know, you know,

ban books at that point because books do

talk about some of that stuff.

Yeah, I mean, I'm reluctant to call it

censorship because for a few reasons.

First of all, they this is like because

of like age rating stuff,

which is private, like it's

not done by the government,

at least not the the

whatever it's called.

I'm trying to point out the.

It's our B.

It's our B. Yeah.

Yeah.

Let's see if it is the yes, or B or not.

Well, they mentioned the S.R.B.

PEGI USK.

Yeah.

OK, so those are, I

believe, government agencies.

But it also sounds like they were doing

this for the first party like publishers

or not publishers, first party partners,

meaning Xbox and

PlayStation and Nintendo.

So I don't know.

I don't know.

And they're doing it voluntarily, right?

Like this isn't like them being like

we're being forced to do this.

So I don't know if they if they really

wanted it, they could

just have a separate

version on when on the PC and just put a

couple of flags in there for when they're

building. Like, don't get me wrong, it's

not fun to support two different builds,

but they could do it.

But it sounds like they just

they're fine simplifying it.

And they're also saying that because it's

not just a simple texture change,

it's how they're having issues with cross

play since this game is supposed to be

multiplayer and even.

Yeah, because it's a

SWAT simulator, basically.

Yeah. I hear the game is

actually really good, though.

Yeah, I've seen some stuff on it, but.

I don't know, man.

I had never been in content creators

doesn't go well together.

Yeah, OK. OK.

All right.

If one of us gets swatted during during

this podcast, should we

keep it in the episode?

No, yes, maybe if it but

it's not going to happen.

Yeah, it probably isn't going to happen.

It's kind of like how Linus Tech Tip says

if he dies on camera, he expects them to

monetize it.

Yeah, you know what?

I can respect it.

I can respect it, too.

Yeah, if it's if it's why it's one thing,

if it's ice,

definitely keep it in the video.

Well, you get

deported and where's Gardner?

He's deported.

Yeah, hey, man, it's it's footage, man.

And.

Now, it's like it's a crazy,

it's a crazy situation overall.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Uh, Nintendo.

They updated Maricart World and they

removed like a feature that people liked.

What's up with this?

So it's not a feature.

It's more of a workaround

because people really don't.

I so my cart has a bunch of tracks that

are basically just intermissions between

different tracks to write.

OK, so the big feature

is the new open world.

And while the actual free

roaming feature kind of sucks,

there are multiple quote unquote tracks

that involve you driving from

one course to another as well.

And people really

don't like those courses.

And so basically what people would do is

they would just select random select.

And yeah, so you get you get a choice

between you get a choice

here and you get to choose.

And generally speaking, these choices

tend to be the intermission courses,

whereas random select will not choose any

of these three that are listed here.

Where and random select gives you a good

chance of getting the

traditional three lab courses.

But now random select will also include

the choice ones as well.

Meaning you have a good meeting that

Nintendo just remove the only way to like

consistently pick three lab courses, even

if it is a random course.

And people really don't like it.

I know it's a I know it's a stupid thing

to complain about, but it's stupid.

But when you're you're building software,

that game is in games or software, you

list you try to listen to your users on

especially stuff like this.

If it's a fundamental change.

OK, but come on, just let them skip it.

Yeah. Yeah.

So Nintendo really wants you to play

those intermission courses.

It just sounds like a control issue.

It's Nintendo. What do you expect?

Yeah, I want to see some.

So this was this was like

highlighted in a recent era post.

I want to see what I want to see what the

comments say, though.

But if you see if you see here, these are

all courses, the

courses that people voted on.

And as you can see here, most and

sometimes everyone would pick random

because they really don't like the

intermission courses.

Yeah. And I kind of

don't either, to be honest.

I haven't played that, so I don't know.

Look, people are saying they're glad they

decided to wait on picking up a switch to

and they apparently ruined online play.

Yeah.

What they legitimately low key

completely ruined online now.

So Nintendo has never done a good online

experience ever, have they?

I can't think of one they've done online

that wasn't like Pokemon.

Well, no, Pokemon

wasn't developed by Nintendo.

So now, yeah.

No, I don't think they have.

Yeah, I mean, the only my only experience

with Nintendo online is Mario Kart Wii.

And that was awful.

Like it was just full of people cheating.

To be fair, though, with the Wii was like

the one of the most popular games in the world.

The most hacked systems ever.

Of course. Yeah. Yeah.

But still, it was ridiculous.

I don't know, maybe just

don't play online games.

Well, maybe just don't play.

So you can play this offline and you

still get the option to select courses

like manually instead of randomly

selecting courses, too.

It's just an online only thing, which is

some bullshit for some reason.

Like, yeah, I understand.

This is going to make me

sound like an absolute boomer.

But I understand playing a game online

with like your friends.

But as far as I understand it, Nintendo

online doesn't really

let you do that, right?

Like you're basically

pitted against just strangers.

I think you can party up with your

friends, but I think you can.

But but you are mostly playing

constraints, I think.

Yeah, I just don't understand that.

I don't get it. I'd rather play games

against the CPU or my friends who are

sitting on the sofa next to me.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of and

it may make me a boomer, too.

But I think it's just a millennial thing

is I don't like to sit

down and play online.

These types, especially these types of

games, these are couch games.

You play them with people

in person or just against AI.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm kind of the same way, too, though I'm

a little more lenient because I do a lot

of fighting games online.

Of course, it's a bit of a different

story than playing with 23

other players in my card.

It's a little more intimate because I get

to I get to personally destroy them and I

get to let them know that.

But playing fighting games offline is

always a better experience.

If you're in if you're not someone that's

into fighting games or maybe you want to

learn fighting games,

then there's always

something called locals.

You could go to your fighting community

local area, play some games there.

Heck, you can even go there and try out

some new games because I'm sure someone's

probably going to bring

like one of the newer games if it if a

new one ever releases.

The only thing you need to do is maybe

bring a controller of sorts.

And it's a good it's a good way to learn

fighting games and play

with people in your community.

It's better in person, too, because then

you can see them cry.

Is that really what it is, high tech?

You can just see your opponent cry.

Yes. And also, no matter how good the

netcode gets, playing offline is just

always going to be better,

especially for execution

heavy games like fighting games.

You know where you need

frame perfect reactions almost.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Playing playing man, I've I've played

fighting games in my day

and I just can't imagine like playing a

fighting game and losing

because of like rollback, you know, or

something like, oh, my God,

that would make me so mad.

I was thinking that happened to me.

I've seen that happen.

The netcode has gotten a

lot better in recent years.

But offline play is still the way to go.

Personally speaking, that's why

tournaments are generally offline.

That's why you have to travel to Las

Vegas to get to the biggest fighting game

tournament of the year.

Right.

James could do that.

I could do that. James could do that.

He could be the next EVO champion.

He had to face against all the Japanese

gods like Tokido or Daigo

or Western or Western

demons like Justin Wong.

I couldn't my wrist get tired enough

playing just expedition.

That's where that's where

fight six come into play.

Honestly, I still.

Yeah, maybe.

I'm too old.

That's like you have to be 15 years old,

I guess nowadays to do.

All the Japanese gods are like in their

50s now or 40s now or 30s now.

They're still kicking ass.

I mean, melee's best players are like.

They they tend to be older, but there are

now younger players coming up.

And playing. Interesting.

I'm just thinking of, I guess, I guess is

what I which is what I usually play.

Online. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.

So. How about this story?

Steam is dealing with a bunch of

potentially stolen games

that are flooding it from itch.io.

What's going on here?

So for those who don't know, it's a

website where you can publish your games

and also other stuff, too.

It's probably not great.

It's probably not a great description.

Gardner can probably give a better

description since he

has an itch.io website.

Yeah, I mean, it is

is a platform for Andy.

Indie games to be published.

Yes, it's yeah, it's very

simple to get your game on there.

You just make an account and then upload

it, you know, upload your bill.

But it's also like it's full of games and

they also do lots of

what are they called game jams, right?

Like you can host a game jam on there.

And so you get tons and tons of

submissions from people.

And so there's a lot of

content and it's ready to be stolen.

Yes. So the thing with itch.io is that

they generally speaking,

like not a lot of big, big Indies or even

really big use itch.io.

Even though you get I believe you get 100

percent of the profits, correct?

Or do you or is it like not 100 percent?

I don't believe it takes a cut.

I think the only thing is the payment

processor takes a cut.

But how does it make

money to keep the website up?

You donate to them.

Oh. Let me let me log in.

I'll just make sure I

could be wrong about that.

But yeah, itch.io is full of small

developers that they're making games

as a hobby and maybe

they're selling them for like.

Five bucks a pop, or maybe they're not

even selling it all.

There's plenty of games out there that

aren't being sold at all.

And people can just apparently download

them and upload them to Steam.

And then they make a shitload of they

make way more money on Steam

because seems a much

bigger store. Yeah. Well, maybe.

Not not often.

Well, you're going to get more eyeballs

and you're going to have more people

willing to pay for

something on Steam. Yes.

So that's really the thing, like most of

these games that are being stolen,

I would imagine, are the free games that

are available to download

for for for no cost to the thieves.

And they turn around and sell them on.

Sorry, there's a train going by.

They turn around and sell them on on

Steam for a significant

markup over zero dollars.

You know, yes.

And the truth is that

some of these are not real.

Some of these have been

removed from Steam as recently

like hard cop to wasn't

an example they mentioned.

That's actually still on Steam and it's

not removed just yet.

So I don't know, man.

It looks like the creator of

hard cop two isn't active on it.

I owe anymore.

So I guess he hasn't

taken the opportunity to.

Take the game down.

It's also free, if I'm

mistaken, like on each I.

You can you can download it and play for

free or donate however much.

But on Steam, it's two bucks.

So not only does Steam

have a bunch of crap,

it's because, let's be honest, not all

it's games are made equally.

And most of them are kind

of not great, in my opinion.

But they're flooding the steam.

The thing with itch is that it is

extremely indie, right?

Like these are people who are just

getting started with making games

or this is maybe their third game and

they're they're not

like trying to make money.

They're trying to learn

in a lot of instances.

So I don't know.

And here's the thing.

This is you can name your own price here.

So hypothetically, I

could say zero dollars.

Oh, wait, what the heck just happened?

If I click no, thanks.

Just take me to the downloads.

I can then go download this game. Right.

And now there's and so someone did this

under the name Me on Steam.

And now they're like selling these games.

What are they selling it

for on Steam? Do we know?

Two bucks, two bucks.

It's robbery, dude. Like, yeah, it.

It makes me mad. It makes me very upset.

Are there I mean, there's copyright laws.

What are the I mean, one way or another,

they could probably get

them taken down, right?

Yeah, my understanding is that the

developer who made hard cop two

is no longer publishing

games and not engaging on itch.

So unless someone complains about it on

his behalf, it sounds like

nothing's going to happen with this.

Here's what steam can do.

Steam could honestly kind of fix this by

working with it to just have an AP

like as long as there's an

API, they could just check.

Like there's a couple of artifacts that

they could probably like from the builds

that they could probably check when

submission, when people submit things

to make sure that it's not copied over.

They could they could fix this probably.

Honestly, I'm thinking I'm thinking about

how you could write up a script to check.

Well, the question then becomes how do

you like, well, by what

measure are we doing this?

Like check sums? How do we make how do we

ensure that they can't just flip a bit?

In the code and then publish it and wow,

it's a totally new game.

Well, first off, there are a couple more

than just doing a check sum.

Like, yeah, you're you're correct.

And you could do a check sum on the whole

thing, but that wouldn't work very well.

Yeah, but there are usually things you

could check for like assets and all that.

Now they could get around it, but then

they're going to have

to do a lot more work.

The harder you make it for them, the less

likely they're going to flip these.

Yeah, that's what I'm

kind of talking about.

I mean, the title alone and I mean, they

ripped off so much stuff you could.

There's a lot of points of of like

checkpoints that you could check on this.

Between the itch IO version and this just

to honestly also to prevent just.

A ton of games that were not meant to be

on Steam, be put on

Steam for pay that are paid.

So, you know, this reminds me of a

situation that happened last year.

So there was a game called Tiny called

Wild Card that was on Steam.

It was it was there was a Steam page.

There's them and everything.

If you look it up, Gardner, well, I'll

show you what I'll show

you what I'm talking about.

Wildcard.

Yeah, Wildcard.

It's the second one.

That one.

So this is a game, but

here's the crazy part.

This was also stolen from another from a

developer on the show as well.

And the game is called Dire Decks.

Look that up.

On it.

Yeah, on it.

I just had it.

What is it called?

Dire Decks.

Dire, the I.R.E.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's available

for free here, which is.

So obviously Wild Card isn't out.

But there's a good

chance that you probably.

Actually, that's that's quite fun.

Yeah, this looks really cool.

But this is the kind of

stuff you'll find on it, right?

You're not going to find stuff like this.

On Steam, or at least

you're not going to.

Yeah, I don't know.

Sorry, I'm playing this game now.

Oh, you're playing this?

I thought it was a demo.

No, no, I'm playing right now, dude.

Nice.

Yeah, so it's a it's a Rolex deck, but I

covered this a while back.

Of course, Terry, what's his

face, never released the game.

Terry Brash, I think his name was.

That's unfortunate

because that's pretty cool.

No, but the the actual

game itself is on H.I.O.

And you can play it.

Yeah, like this is I'm

fully playing right now.

Yeah, this is like a fully realized game.

This is the rest of the podcast.

This is just can you

guys hear the sound effects?

Yeah, yeah.

Like it's just like it feels really good to play.

Like it feels really good to play.

Dude, you heard a you

heard a here, folks.

God now gave this game is a.

Oh, oh, oh my God.

Oh, no, you're going to die.

No.

Dude, this is great.

Anyway, sorry.

I'm done.

Oh, he did.

Yeah, that's really, really fun.

Check it out.

It's available on their page.

I'll put a link in the show notes and

we'll add it to this.

Do it.

That's really cool.

You made to level three.

Yeah.

Okay, that's in the show notes now.

So you'll find a link in

the show notes for that.

Cool.

What are we talking about?

I'm sorry.

We were talking about stolen games.

Yeah.

So that was on Steam.

Someone stole that.

There's a steam page.

It's not released yet.

There's a quote unquote demo.

And it looks like they

did more than just steal it.

It looks like they made slight changes,

but the game basically

visually looks the same.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Definitely looks like the same game.

My problem too with this is that they

used the name and

everything, but they did.

It looks like they modified it a little.

Well, they didn't use they

changed the name of the game.

It's not the actual game.

Oh, this is called Wildcard.

Okay.

Then I was.

I paid attention to the name.

Interesting.

Yeah, it's a hard one because if they're

not going to release a

game for this to make it easy,

because this would be really fun.

Like it's a little bit of a gray area for

me, but I definitely.

They used way too

many of the graph assets.

Like it's one thing to be

made a game inspired by this.

I'm sure that's probably happened more

than a few times, but well,

it looks like some of it's new.

Like is that little

collecting thing at the bottom left?

That's not in there, is it?

I didn't see it in the other game.

So yeah, it's there.

Do you see that orb?

That's your exp orb.

I don't know if it looks I don't know if

it's the same exact animation, but like.

Well, let's find out.

Oh, yeah, that is right there.

It is right there.

I just didn't see it being.

There's an excuse for

Gardner to keep playing the game.

This is this is

quintessentially my kind of game, like.

But I don't get sucked down in there.

OK, they added some new stuff, but still.

Yeah, I mean, it's quite literally.

Stolen, but with like with some extra

stuff, it's not the same person.

Unfortunately, yeah.

Oh, man, to just I don't.

And the worst part is like

the people who make the game

might not even know that it's been

stolen, you know, or put on steam.

And so it's like, how are they supposed

to defend their their stuff against that?

No, no, they know it was a big it was a

big news story last year.

Right. But I'm saying

like the ones who like who

all these guys right now, you know.

Yeah, I wish we knew.

How to count. There's

just so much of it that.

Yeah. Like, have you ever heard of

Google Trends or Google notifications or

something like that?

Google Alerts, Google Alerts, you can

like put in certain things

like dudelings, arcade sportsball.

And then any time that phrase appears

when Google is crawling your stuff,

you'll get notified.

Like you can put your own name in

and then you'll get notified

if someone's mentioning you.