The Fight Against Game Shutdowns w/ ⁨Accursed_Farms aka Ross⁩ | OTC Ep 37

Welcome back to Off the Console, the hottest new podcast that's all about gaming, tech news, and anything nerdy.

This week, we're covering the biggest news, including we have a special guest, Ross, with us, and we're gonna be covering the movement Stop Killing Games and various other things,

including the Death of Anthem, which is another game that's dying off.

PewDiePie is de-Googling and various other topics, but the big one today is

stop killing games, which I think most gamers would love to see happen.

uh I'm joined with me, my co-hosts Gardner and Hi Tech Lowlife.

like I mentioned, we have our special guest Ross.

And so.

what channel he's from.

uh Yes, sorry.

Cursed Farms yet.

Yes.

And so uh first off, before we get into anything, what you've been doing or playing?

what I've been playing is the question?

I've been pretty much spending almost all free time on the Stop Killing Games campaign, but last month at one point I was playing games, so...

The last ones I was playing which I haven't finished were uh Steel Rising, which is kind of a Dark Souls clone, but has...

options to make it easier.

It's like robots during the French Revolution, essentially.

And one game I've wanted to play a long time, finally I'm getting to, is Forza Horizon 1, except emulated through Xenia.

Nice, I love Xenia, it's awesome.

Yeah, I'm pretty floored by it.

Nice.

Gardner, what have you been up to?

I've been working on a super secret project that I can't really talk about So I'm not going to but I've also been playing uh Domekeeper again.

I got back into it I don't know if you guys have played domekeeper, but you it's like dig dug meets like a tower defense and it's like but with like some resource gathering and uh

Rogue like mechanics.

It's so addictive Yeah

It's really good.

I picked it up this week, Gardner, based on your recommendation.

ah So that, I don't, yeah.

I've been playing that too.

It's crazy,

Yeah, it's one of the most played games in my library now because I've picked it up recently and man It's actually I have a CRT over here.

It's like a old Sony uh Trinitron like and it has an HDMI port in the back.

It's wild and I've been playing a dome keeper on that and it's like It just feels so like perfectly retro on that CRT

I'm gonna need a video of that at some point, Gardener.

yeah, okay.

I'll send you guys a video for sure.

that'd be interesting.

It's surprisingly really fun.

yeah, no, thanks for the recommendation on that.

I've been vibe coding while playing that.

nice.

nice.

It's not gonna be my most played game because my most played game is Destiny 2 on my Steam account.

It's followed by Starbound then Terraria, which is crazy man.

But I can see it being...

Oh man, I've been playing...

I picked up some games like I mentioned before.

Domekeeper was one of them, but I've also been oh looking for games to pick up on some random hidden gems.

You know, because I own a lot of the, like, popular recommended games.

um So I've been trying to deep dive into the Steam sale to see there's any, like, weird little hidden gems that no one's ever talked about.

Most because I'm bored.

But yeah.

Yeah, I'm usually one that go after like the most popular just because of time sake, like sometimes when there's like a gem, I, Domekeeper is the perfect game for me.

I do like all those elements quite a bit.

And so it is really fun and unlocking stuff is been fun because you get to learn about one, like the, you start out with the shield and then you can get into like these defense

creatures or whatever that will defend.

um

and you get to build out different strategies and I really like that.

So it's really fun game and it's.

the mix of all the different things you can uh unlock is really cool too.

So you can get like, like you were saying, the shield, or you can upgrade the hull of the dome, or you can get new defenses, uh or even boosts for your mining abilities and

assistance to do it too.

So it's super great.

I mean, and then one of the diggers, I don't even minors or whatever they are, they can like shoot orbs and so you can shoot the orbs to then mine while you do other things.

It's fun.

And.

I've thought of anything like that yet.

Not yet, at least.

it's one of the ones you can unlock.

But yeah, I spent a lot of time and when I.

So I'm still doing my by coding, by coding where I'm working with an AI to do certain parts of a project I'm working on and then I'm playing.

It is.

Made it so that I can work on my project or play games a little bit more, which has been very refreshing.

Like I beat Expedition 33 finally put 80 hours into that.

yeah, how'd you like it?

The editing.

think that's the ending.

I need to go back and because I think there's like multiple endings, but it saves right before the ending.

So I'm to go back and I 99 percent of the game.

There's one boss left that's really hard and I don't.

We'll see if I do that.

But but that's like an after the game kind of Love it.

I recommend it to anyone that even is interested in.

I guess a good story that's just different, but because even if you don't like RPGs or um turn-based RPGs and stuff like that, has a unique flair to it that makes it so it doesn't

feel like you're just sitting around doing nothing and it has um elements that you have to work through.

um yeah, so that's what I've been doing.

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Yes.

Okay.

Without further ado, let's go in to the main topic today, which is stop killing games.

Rost, I'll hand it off to you a little bit to describe what this is and then we can just go back and forth and chat about this because I'm really excited.

Sure.

oh Well, stop killing games.

It's one of those things that's simple in concept, but it rapidly gets nuanced depending on how deep you go into it.

The basic concept is we're trying to legally challenge or put an end to the practice of publishers selling you a game, not telling you when it's going to shut down, then later

permanently disabling it and keeping your money.

And we found that's like

Well, in my opinion, it's just the most hostile practice in the game industry towards consumers that there is.

And it's led to more games being effectively destroyed than any other.

ah So it's always just, I've always hated it and the industry has been promising nothing but more.

The industry has been promising more of it.

So what's happened lately though, is we've pursued this in many different ways.

We've...

tried to do petitions to various governments on it.

Also, there was an ideal game to tackle to bring this issue before consumer protection agencies in a few countries with the shutdown of the game, The Crew.

But the big news right now is one of the most powerful options that we've pursued is called the European Citizens Initiative, where anyone who is a citizen of an EU country

can sign this.

And if it gets over a million signatures, then a

verified signatures, I should say, then it gets, it starts a new stage where it gets brought before the EU Commission and they can decide whether they're going to make new law

on this and kind of work out the details based on the complaint and that sort of thing.

Right now, the unfiltered count is over 1 million.

I think it's over 1.1 million.

So we're really in a good spot at the moment.

However,

Anytime somebody makes a big mistake or if there is a signature that wasn't valid Those get thrown out.

So it's kind of a fog where we are exactly but we for sure have a chance it ends at the end of July July 31st, so if I could say one thing just if you are if you are an EU

citizen, you know like France Germany Belgium wherever and you can sign it, please consider doing so it's

I think it could actually change gaming history if we can pull this off for several reasons, but...

I do have one question though.

I believe you also had a separate petition for United Kingdom residents.

Is that correct?

true.

Yes, that's going on too.

That one ends on July 14th.

That one's cleared its threshold by a much safer margin.

You can still sign it for safety.

Yeah, it's like down below on that screenshot there at the bottom.

ah yeah, it says sign the UK petition.

That one is much iffier.

Like, I'm not promising anything for the...

The only thing I'm promising from that one is answers.

Because that's one thing about this practice.

that I described, you where they sell you the game, don't tell you when they're going to shut down, shut down later and keep your money.

That more or less is nailed down in the United States.

But in several other countries, basically EU ones, Australia, and to some extent the UK, it's not clear.

This is a real great area in the law where the laws were never written for this kind of situation.

I've made the analogy to like when Uber first came on the scene, know, governments weren't sure if this was

a taxi service or are these employees or contractors?

It's like the laws just weren't made for it.

It's similar in games, which is one of the reasons this initiative I think has so much teeth to it.

Because we're coming in in the middle of this confusion about what the law is and say, hey, can we just have some basic consumer rights on this to not have our purchases taken

from us?

Mm.

Yes, so I do have one question though.

I believe one of the solutions you proposed was, of course, companies implementing end-of-life policies, correct?

Yeah, yeah, here's where we start getting into the nuance a bit.

Because, well, one thing, yeah, that's one thing I should mention.

This is not retroactive.

So if this were to pass, it doesn't mean every game that ever came out would be under these laws, because that would be kind of chaos.

And it's not even an option anyway.

But, so this would start protecting game, if it passed, start protecting games from some point in the future onward, sort of break the cycle of this happening.

the end of life plans, it's actually worded kind of carefully because we're not specifically saying, okay, you need to give us the server binaries at end of life, or you

need to give us the source code or something.

Because if we were to do that, then that could run afoul of copyright laws because they're saying, wait, you're demanding their intellectual property, you can't do that.

So what we're doing is instead asking for, once they shut it down and support,

that they need to leave the game in a reasonably working state without having to connect to the publisher or affiliated parties.

So that does two things.

It leaves a lot of flexibility to the publisher how they want to deal with this.

And two, since it's not specifically asking for any individual intellectual property, it keeps us on the safe side of copyright laws.

And, well, I guess the other thing is, realistically, they probably would release server binaries or a modified version of it.

But since we're not specifying exactly what they do, that gives a...

It lets this work, essentially.

Right.

Like keeping it more open ended is going to make it easier to pass and then maybe fine tune things later.

um what about games?

Let's say if World of Warcraft went down, how would you make something like that accessible, like offline when it is fundamentally an online game?

And would it be because my thing is if they released like server packages or something like that, make it so you could run your own server.

um

You don't have to necessarily release the source code, but releasing the, even the binary, don't know if would really uh violate any copyright um if they can run their own servers.

But I'm curious what your take on something like that is.

How would World of Warcraft work if that was to go down?

World of Warcraft is complicated in at least two ways.

One, we're going to try, but we're probably going to fail on trying to get protections for games that are a subscription service like that.

The reason being is that more or less falls under a service under consumer law because you're told exactly when it ends.

You pay for 30 days or pay for six months, then your access is cut.

Well, that's how normal services work, know, stuff like Netflix or...

insurance, you know, they tell you exactly when your access ends.

our only argument for world of war.

Yeah, go ahead.

fundamentally buy the game first off, even though they do like to put in the terms and service that you're renting oftentimes nowadays, but you are buying a game and then you're

buying access to servers.

So I think um I'm curious if legally there's more uh ways that we could actually get something like uh a server binary, let's say at the end of the World of Warcraft just

ends.

so that we could run our own servers.

My guess is if this were to go through, World of Warcraft would find some language to package the actual buying as just being like, uh, activation fee for the service or

something like that.

You know, I think that's something they could wiggle out of for that particular case.

But what I was gonna say- yeah.

I bet early, sorry, I keep on cutting you off, but I bet early games, I bet early games are not gonna have that same clause.

So they can't make up new rules now, especially where I feel like the EU's definitely more uh consumer friendly.

I'm just curious, and I don't mean to get too much bogged down to some of the nuances and stuff, but uh I really do wanna see this movement succeed, but I also wanna see it bring

about

fundamental changes uh to the industry.

so that's why I'm asking some of these other questions.

But yes, sorry, continue.

as I said, it gets nuanced fast.

So for the subscription fee, there's no cons...

Well, that might be muddier with buying the game and then having the subscription fee, but I think they could end up rewarding it before the law went into effect that that's what it

is.

So they could kind of, you know, cross their T's and dot their I's prior to them being affected by it.

But the reason I think we'll fail on those is because...

Yeah, again, there's subscription fees, so they act like a regular service.

So our only argument would basically be for cultural preservation.

And the laws on that are far weaker than consumer rights laws.

So that's why we've been pushing the consumer rights angle.

But that said, there's not, well, there's some more to it.

There's not that many players, I mean, not players, oh companies.

that are running subscription-only games nowadays.

It's kind of the old guard like that, like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV, I guess Yves online has some.

because they tried that in the mid-2000s with everybody trying to get on board that train and almost all of them either died off or went free to play.

So, we did a count lately, there could be more, but I think we only found about 13 games out of just hundreds.

of online ones that were subscription only.

So, if we can only save, you know, 97, 98 % of games, that's still a pretty big win.

And there was something else you brought up.

I should have written down notes about World of Warcraft with...

Okay, yeah, you brought up the offline part.

Okay, for a game like World of Warcraft, I don't think offline would cut it.

because that is advertised as online multiplayer.

Let's say it was covered, for sake of argument.

An offline solution wouldn't do it because it was advertised as multiplayer, being able to connect to other people.

So if it's all offline, well, can, I mean, that's a hell of a lot better than killing off entirely, but that's still not really delivering what was advertised.

So in that case, you would probably, you would need some form of

private server functionality, I would think, where there's some way for people to connect to it.

It just wouldn't be run by the publisher at that point.

oh

not to mention like if you if you made uh, like if publishers or or the developers like Changed world of warcraft to being like an offline game that would not be preserving the

game itself, right?

That would be a fundamentally different game at that point.

So I I think like I think like having the private functionality or the private server functionality Like you were talking about ross is probably the best bet for an online game

like that, right?

Yeah, it depends on the game.

I'm struggling to think of one offhand, but there probably are some because they usually get the DRM removed by end of life.

let's say it was a single player only game, but that it still needed to connect online to run it.

For a game like that, offline would be sufficient because what are you missing out on really?

I mean, it could be some minor things like, you know, news on the site or, you know, Twitch.

uh

bonus or something, but you you're getting the core funk.

That's also why we put reasonably playable.

We want to leave some wiggle room for all these scenarios here.

So I should mention that uh WoW does have private servers, albeit Blizzard does like to take them down as they get really popular.

Now I am curious if legislation could protect those private servers from being taken down because, you know, obviously they're not getting server binaries from Blizzard directly,

they're reverse engineering things.

Yeah, I was gonna mention this, yeah.

I'm curious.

Yeah, to the...

I was looking at...

Well, everything I said, I was looking at it more conceptually.

In real world terms, World of Warcraft is already safe because of the...

those private servers do exist, but...

Yeah, to the best of my knowledge, well...

Actually, I'm not sure how it works with the cop...

If they were truly reverse engineered and contained no code that was leaked or stolen...

It might depend on the jurisdiction as to how...

above board that is or not.

But, um...

I think some of the emulators did have code that came from Blizzard and...

It wouldn't necessarily protect those, uh, because...

I would need more details as to how they were created, I guess.

But...

sense.

Yeah, I think but sorry.

Go ahead, James.

with the private servers and reverse engineering, all they'd have to do also is uh sniff the packets and see what endpoints are, what they're doing and stuff and recreate it.

would be, it's not easy, but I am, like, I do think there's a way to save it, but if the game goes offline and Blizzard does, you still have to use the client, but they remove it

from the client, would you, do you think this would,

ah Maybe save that to where you're like, hey, I have to always at least have access to it even though there's no servers But then I could put in my own server Do you think it would

protect something like that?

Well again, we're probably lose on the subscription game so in that particular case no, but if it did actually there's some nuance again where You said they have to keep the

client up They would have to keep the client up for a reasonable amount of time for customers to grab a copy before they shut down So let's say let's say they want to end

World of Warcraft and they say okay.

Well, here's the client Here's like some server form that you can run

You have 30 days to grab it.

After that, we're shutting it all down, and we're never touching this again, and you're on your own.

So at that point, it's onto the community.

So as long as there's a reasonable chance, they wouldn't have to keep hosting it or make any updates, uh anything in the future at that point.

They could absolve themselves of all liability.

um, so

what I would like to see is people to have access to it.

obviously, for me, preservation is a big part of it.

But even I think that would be a win to be able to grab the client and then still be able to use it if something like World of Warcraft, which I think one of the more or less

likely to happen games.

Yeah, sorry, high tech.

So I do have one question.

So to take it back to stop killing games, think one question I have is that one of the things you want is for companies to implement end-of-life plans, or at the very least

mention it.

So what's the stop of developer from...

So because I think one of the main complaints with this is that you buy a game like The Crew and there's no indication that it's going to end anytime soon, no expiration date

mentioned.

But what if games just started having expiration dates?

Like, oh, this game will last three years.

And it's on the box.

Expiration date, 2030.

That's crazy.

I'm not too worried about things going down that road because I think if there was an expiration date that would wake up a lot of customers.

Like if it said, like on the box, this game will end in three years.

Plus companies don't want to have to go down that route.

If the games of Smash hit, then that's going to hurt, then they want to keep it going well beyond that.

Whereas, and plus having that expiration date is going to hurt sales from a psychological perspective.

Whereas if it's a total flop, well then they don't want to keep spending money to run these servers.

They want to shut down as soon as possible.

So it becomes the path of least resistance to have an end of life plan if it's planned for from the beginning.

That's why keep emphasizing it's not retroactive.

This can range from easy to near impossible for existing games for trying to implement something like this.

It all depends on how the game was set up.

Yes.

So, alright, I have a question.

uh When it comes to console games, for example, if it's an online game, private servers, I guess it would be up to the developers to support it that way, or is the movement just

focused on PC games at this point?

No, would include console games.

It's similar, but it gets muddier.

And some of it would have to get resolved in the EU Commission itself.

some possible options would be OK.

Because I think the tricky part with consoles is if it's an online game and then the developer wants to shut it down, but then you still need to pay like Sony or Microsoft to

have that internet access.

I think, in general, it sort of shifts to whoever the last man standing is kind of keeping, kind of requiring you to go through them in order to run the game.

So, let's say you had a game on Xbox or something, and the developer's like, all right, we're done with this, we're gonna shut it down, we're gonna make available, uh yeah, let's

make it more complicated.

Let's say, okay, we're gonna, as our end of life plan,

we're gonna release a server for you, but there's no way this server software can run on the Xbox.

It's just too complicated.

It's not meant for that.

So what we're gonna do is you're gonna have like 30 days to download it, but we're gonna tell you what kind of hardware it can run on, and you're on your own for that.

And it might patch the client on the console end to say like, okay, you can enter in an IP address or something, and that'll connect to it that way.

So...

Yeah, there might be more hoops to jump through for the customer at end of life in order to keep it working.

Our main metric is that it's not impossible.

But if you also have to pay Microsoft to even have an outward internet connection, it could be you can't run that game without continuing to pay to Microsoft.

And then once Microsoft decides to end the Xbox, they have to give you some means to be able to connect your Xbox to the internet, to that IP address and not...

interfere with that.

So it kind of shifts depending on who's involved in the chain there.

Yeah, I was going to mention, with the 360 shutting down, the Xbox Live support would, hypothetically in the future, you know, PlayStation 4 shuts down its PSN access, uh what's

that going to look like in a world with your initiative here?

that's another thing I left out.

It kind of depends on when it happens.

See, let's say this goes through and they say, know, okay, this law goes into effect 2028.

One, I mean, for sure option would be if they're thinking, okay, there's no way we can comply with this.

They might shut down the service by that date, but they were going to anyway.

So it can move the timetable up on a few games, but it's not really changing the dynamic.

Another option, depending on how this goes in the EU Commission is, say, okay, this is too radical to just jump in like this, even at a date.

What we're gonna do, we're gonna grandfather in every existing game right now.

And that only games that start being sold, so yeah, if you're already selling now, you're exempt for that game moving onward.

But any new game that gets sold after that date, then the laws start applying to that.

That would probably be what the industry would prefer if they have to comply with this.

Right, I think that makes sense.

I guess my question to reframe it would be, what if, like, PlayStation 6, you know, ten years from its release, like, shuts down PSN?

to, what they would have to do, you have a PlayStation 6 game that required their servers to run it.

Once they're ready to shut it down, for the games that you bought, I guess if it was, Sony would have to remove the parts that interfere with you running that game in some form.

So the responsibility would be kind of split depending on

was in the way.

The game developer, if they were shutting it down, they would have to give you some means to run it.

And then Sony, you know, like a client or a patch client or server that may or may not run on the PlayStation, that sort of thing.

And Sony would have to basically remove whatever DRM or checks they had that would interfere with you connecting to that kind of end of life build.

So...

It could be a dual process, but that's the way I would envision it working.

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.

You know, I go back and play my 360 a lot and, you know, you boot up a game that like has Xbox Live leaderboards or something and it is constantly just prompting you to like

connect to Xbox Live, you know, and it's like that doesn't exist anymore.

So it would be cool if this legislation were to address those nag screens and stuff too.

the bad news is, as long as you can get in that game and play it reasonably, you might still get nacked.

I have to warn you.

That's the...

Because we're kind of looking at like the core way it was advertised.

So, you know, if it's a driving game, you need to be able to get in, drive around, have races.

If it's a shooter, you need to be able to shoot at things and have, if it's multiplayer, it'd be possible for people to connect to you.

It can jettison a whole lot of...

That's something else I should mention, especially if uh technical people are watching.

It can jettison a whole lot of ex- A lot of the complexity and cost for many of these online games is related to like kind of microservices that are typically for more for

either running this as a business that's being supported and monitored or that's for scaling this so that up to 10 million people

could play simultaneously through different servers.

Whereas we don't really need almost any of it at end of life.

let's see some examples.

If I didn't screw up my notes.

Well, I can remember some off the of my head.

Oh yeah, here we go.

So like cross-region saves, that could be gone.

Anti-cheat, that could be gone.

Payments data, analytics, measures to have 99 % server uptime, crash reports, voice chats, failover.

So they can just rip all of that out for the end of life bill because yeah, there could be cheaters on it.

You're playing an unsupported game.

That's how it works, you know?

And the community, as long as it can kind of run reasonably, especially if you have people connecting that you trust, you know, that's kind of the standard there.

So if so here's an interesting thought I just had if a game like Call of Duty that has an online component and a single-player component would they be able to just uh Jettison the

multiplayer and just have the single-player available Okay, right Okay

component for some people.

Do you see developers re-implementing LAN connectivity?

Kind like how you would do in Quake 3 back in the old days, or maybe even server browsers like TF2.

TF2 is practically dead.

It's not technically dead, but you can still connect to TF2 servers.

Run by people.

technically dead counts for us.

uh I don't think we would see, it might be a few companies, I don't think we would see a resurgence.

That's another aspect of this is that upfront for their business models, none of this interferes with it while they're supporting the game.

So they can structure it however they want, but they really should be having an end of life plan in the background.

So...

And there are multiple reasons why companies do want to have everybody connect to a server they control.

They can kind of control anti-cheat more.

I think the number one reason is so they can, you know, sell more microtransactions because if you can just run a private server with all those microtransactions enabled that

undercuts their economy.

um But they can have updates to make sure everybody's on the same build.

They can do it, you know, makes bug checking easier.

It's absolutely an anti-piracy prevention technique.

So there are several reasons to have that.

So we're trying to make this as light touch as we can.

That it's only after they're all done, they've sold everything they're going to sell to it, that's when they need to implement something.

So they could run it 20 years and not have to do any of this if the game's still successful.

Fair enough.

What about a game like Destiny, where they have so many expansions that kind of uh make the older versions obsolete?

That's another muddy territory that I think would have to wait for it to get to the EU Commission.

Yeah, that one's kind of a mess because they vaulted almost all the content from some of the DLCs.

yeah they did.

That, yeah, see that one's weird because...

Yeah, that one's a mess.

Because if you bought those DLCs and you can show that it's almost all gone, that might be a valid complaint that they can't just vault it the way they do unless they're giving you

a date when it's gonna come back, maybe?

Or...

I don't know, but I guess on the...

an easier version of that would be...

let's say...

when we mentioned World of Warcraft.

You know, 1.0 of World of Warcraft is very different than what it is now.

And they kind of change things as they go through it.

There several games that are like that.

We're not ne- Yeah, go ahead.

like World of Warcraft does have um retroactive uh or like they've gone back in the time, right?

And they've re-released World of Warcraft Classic.

so um it's definitely doable.

Destiny 2, definitely think could just, um they have patches and stuff like that that they could probably reverse.

um

So it'd be interesting, the company probably doesn't wanna deal with it, and so they're gonna say it's not possible, but I'm really curious to see where that goes.

lawsuit against that author that claimed that Bungie plagiarized their story, apparently Bungie doesn't have a playable build of their old shit.

it's kind of a...

I don't believe it either.

I don't

these companies to say, I guarantee their legal team said stuff like that just to make it so they didn't have to deal with anything.

um I bet you it would be, but now in the 90s when we didn't have, um because there's a lot of different types of repository and like, um what is it?

Like Git.

um But there's a couple of different ones for uh games.

Unless they purge their logs, which is crazy, ah you could go back.

um Sorry, that's just really one where I'm just really, as a developer myself, I don't believe them in any aspect.

Yeah, I don't believe it either.

think the reason they didn't do that is because once the public sees that they can have this content working, that's going to be an uproar for them to bring it back.

And it's easier just to point.

yeah.

oh

could be a monetization aspect even if they really wanted to like World of Warcraft Classic did.

But yeah, sorry, continue.

the simplest answer for something like Destiny is for every, like, uh thing that a customer gets to buy, they just have to have, like, an end of life for that product,

right?

Which, I don't know exactly how the monetization worked with DLC or whatever the story content for Destiny was, but, like, it just, it doesn't make sense to me that they could

just sell you something and then change it over time and then take it away from you.

Yeah, that's one where we would kind of see how it went, I think, because there's, it's like, it's a spectrum.

Because on one hand, it could be an update just leads to like some balance tweaks and everybody's and people might be screaming for the previous one, they liked it better, but

it's like, well, you're still kind of getting the game.

But there's other instances where they just remove levels and maps and stories.

So it's like, well, okay, you really are being deprived at that point.

So we're not going to be real hard about pushing like which version has to be available.

But again, it kind of comes to that reasonably playable aspect again.

If you do have the, you know, a DLC effectively removed, then you have a much stronger case reporting that to a consumer protection agency.

And they can say, yeah, you removed this from them.

So we're going to fine you.

Yes.

So I do have an important question I've been wanting to ask about this and this leads into it.

Do you think it is more important to focus on this overarching goal than it is to go after these individual cases that we've been kind of bringing up?

Where do you think even bringing that stuff up for this case would hurt it?

Like if we keep on like counting, oh, World of Warcraft needs to work.

at the end of life, do you think focusing on that type of stuff will hurt the movement more than just like a broad aspect?

Because I do think focusing on the broadness is worthwhile, but I do think uh once, let's say, laws are passed and stuff like that, or we have like a really good end of life plan

for a broad ranging of games, then just focus on later to...

go after some of these specific cases like Destiny.

I don't think that...

Okay, for the initiative, it's not going to go after any specific company.

They are...

It's going to be a broad practice.

And what might happen is they would bring up...

examples of the way a game might go, like World of Warcraft, and see, okay, well, how would this fit under it?

Or how would a game like this fit under it?

For the specific example, that's something we have underway and it's been going on for over a year now with the crew.

The reason I never really did too much on this aside from try to raise awareness was because there wasn't really a good Avenue to take action on this prior to last year.

See the crew was almost Not the perfect but almost perfect test case for this for a few reasons One is that it was semi big there were up to 12 million owners according to

Ubisoft So that meant there were a lot of people still

standing around with receipts that they could send to a consumer protection agency as proof that they bought it.

So we we were able to get thousands of complaints in that way so it can get their attention.

The second is that the, what we're talking about here is that it's what I call a clean kill.

There was no ambiguity about what happened here.

It's not like the DLC went down, but then some of the games still works or the multiplayer went down, but the single player works.

No, every single person who had it

just had it completely removed from their libraries in any capacity.

It was just dead.

And there was no compensation given.

Because uh Overwatch was a much bigger game that got shut down.

But then they released Overwatch 2 for free, and then they gave benefits, like with skins or whatever, to people who did own Overwatch 1.

So an agency might look at that and thought, well, they're compensating the owners, so we're just not going to worry about that.

I would have...

They would've killed me to like lose on a technicality like that.

I want it just black and white.

Is this legal or not?

You know, not have these little...

You know, in-between issues there.

And the final reason...

Okay.

Okay, just quick.

The final reason was that this was in...

Ubisoft is in France.

Which means it is subject to all kinds of consumer protection laws.

Both for the EU and France.

stuff that wouldn't fly necessarily in the US or get muddied.

It's just as clear as day there.

Yeah, and so I would love to see eventually, and that's why I ask, is like, I wanna see this past where games like The Crew, that type of thing does not happen again.

But I would like to see more, honestly, I'd like to see more legislation on stuff like Destiny 2, where they have to have snapshots.

uh of each time they do uh a release of DLC, which they could do.

And it doesn't have to be retroactive.

It could be like, hey, any games in the future, just make sure you save a copy of the game and that there's some type of client that can activate it.

With planning, it does not take a whole lot to do this type of thing.

um Do you think that'd be a movement that would be reasonable later on after something like this uh is successful?

Yeah, I think so.

oh Two thoughts of this.

One is that right now, it's unclear if we have any rights whatsoever.

So, you we can answer this stuff and they can say, yeah, whatever, we'll turn off the game, keeping your money.

So we need, we need like a beachhead of rights first to just say, no, that's beyond the pale.

This is protected.

Then after that point, then you start getting into more nuanced issues like Destiny where you can point to obvious stuff they've removed.

Even that gets a little thorny because you know how many there's some games that have just hundreds of individual updates like okay This is 1.03 a this is 1.03 1 1 a and then So do

they need to keep and let's say the games huge, you know, well destiny is pretty big It's like what 100 gigs now or something or 80 gigs so

I'm usually saying snapshots as in like, if there's a major change like a DLC, or I'm not talking about uh like individual updates, let's say, we fixed a couple of things here and

there.

I know some people are gonna argue, some gamers are gonna want like some old hack they were able to do a couple of versions back in some of these games, but fundamental changes

to the game and snapshots, they guarantee the companies already have that type of stuff.

but making sure that it is unlockable would be, I think, a huge win, but it definitely is something we don't need to talk about because it is down the road kind of stuff.

There's still lot of stuff to get over, a lot of hurdles to get over before we get to that.

that's a lot easier when you do have clear markers, like an expansion for World of Warcraft or a DLC for Destiny.

The problem is you're going to have games that are just kind of this ongoing fluid update that, yeah, things do change over time, but where exactly was the big change and where

does this count and that sort of thing.

So I mean, guess the way you could legislate that would be by time intervals maybe, like every year.

they have to have like some build of it or, but.

It would be nice, but it's definitely one of those things.

It's a nicety and there's a lot of other big targets before that.

perfect solution, which is rare unfortunately, would be, I think it's like what oh Deep Rock Galactic did, where they have this option where you can just hit a mode and go to

their previous expansions, like as if you were going back in time for years or something.

But I can understand if developers don't necessarily want to do that, but I'm all for what you're describing, but we need a

it.

Yeah, we need a foundation first to say that before you worry about different versions, we need to establish that they can't just take away the entire game at any time for no

reason, you know.

Yeah, I think it would make sense if there was like, you know, if developers just wanted to be ethical, which I find hilarious to say, they could um just create snapshots of the

game at certain intervals, like you were saying, James, and then use like Steam's beta thing that's built into it now.

And there's an API that lets the game opt into different versions of betas.

So you can...

um

kind of just roll back to different snapshots.

And if your legislation goes through, Ross, I think that it might be smart for uh platform holders like PlayStation and Xbox and even Nintendo to offer a similar feature, right?

Yeah, that's, yeah, we're kind of straying into stuff that sounds like a great idea, but somebody else is gonna have to pick up after we get a victory on that.

Like, it's because, it's been hard enough pushing this, you know?

love I love your movement and I'm thinking it like practically down the road how it can actually be implemented so I understand

yeah, so last time we checked the last week when we did the podcast, we checked the we checked the website and I think it was at like 51 % James, am I correct?

But yeah, obviously now it's at 100 and like over a million and a million and close to 1.2 million actually.

And we've noticed that we've gotten some very you've gotten some very powerful allies for your movement.

And I wonder how much

of it came from their fan bases going over there.

because I know none of these guys are-

it's hard to say, but a significant amount.

mean, we were kind of in a lull for a long time.

the biggest, one of the biggest things where it started ticking up again was when Moist Critical started covering it.

then, yeah, I think at least about 5 % of his audience translated to about that many views.

I mean, about the many signatures.

That's crazy.

There's PewDiePie also who's, he's a European citizen, isn't he?

So, yeah, or.

I think he lives in Japan now, but he is from- he was from Europe.

Yeah.

not denaturalized from Europe, right?

I think he's still, sorry, not to get into.

it's less about the nationality of who's covering it and about their audience, you know?

That's, well, I'm kind of thinking that someone like PewDiePie would have a probably pretty big European audience just because he's from Europe.

But yeah, that's why I was kind of going with that.

And so that'd be a big deal.

No, this is, I'm seeing it everywhere now on my new, like my YouTube newsfeed now.

Everyone is promoting this.

I can only think of really one.

Well, actually, no, now we have two major opponents.

First and foremost was Pirate Software.

I don't know if you...

Yeah.

if you want.

I'm not trying to twist the knife on him, but...

yeah, yeah, don't worry man, we're not gonna- I have no ill will against him, personally speaking.

I just don't agree with his take on stop killing games.

But there was another major opponent that rose up too.

VideoGamesEurope.eu So- m

I plan to make a video on that, but I can discuss it.

uh

I am curious though, like if you could answer, maybe, cause I haven't looked into those sources too much, but if there's anything you wanna like uh talk about to maybe uh not

discredit, but like to answer maybe some of their uh issues with the movement, maybe there's something you can.

Yeah, sure.

I can give a preview of what I'm going to say.

Let's see.

I'm trying to pull up their exact...

Ah, shoot.

Well, I mean, I have my script, but OK, I'll try to...

I don't have the exact link up in front of me.

It'll make it easier.

ah let's see.

OK, so yeah, no, they had several things.

Because some of the stuff we agree...

Yeah, their first sentence is, um...

They're saying that...

know, publishers must be able to discontinue online services.

Yeah, we agree.

You can shut them down whenever you want.

So we're good there.

Let's see.

They are.

Yeah.

And they talk about giving fair notice for when they shut them down.

Well, one, that might not be true, according to a German lawyer, WBS Legal for the crew.

But second, that's irrelevant.

We don't care.

We're not arguing about how much notice you need to give people.

We're arguing that you can't deprive them of their purchase.

yeah, that's another thing that some people get hung up on is they might think we're asking for all these new intellectual property rights.

We're actually not.

What we're asking for is to prohibit taking away what's already been sold to the customer because they've been sold, you know, limited access to a working game.

And but they have provisions that, we can terminate this at any time for any reason.

We're going after that provision saying that they can't do that.

you have to sell the customer some rights just to even run the game.

That's one thing I think people forget, you know?

And when I say some rights, you know, you're not getting the rights to the franchise.

You're not getting the rights to resell copies of it or maybe even monetize a server, you know, if they prohibited that.

We're agnostic on that.

So it still leaves a whole lot of power.

They just can't, you know, take away your purchase.

But let's see, they gave...

this is Netflix for games, right?

Like, I'm not purchasing access to a streaming service that has thousands of games, even like Game Pass.

If I'm spending 60, $70, I'm expecting a copy.

Well, that, I mean, but the crew is, I'm going after crew and that was a little.

is, you don't have to look at it like that.

They're selling you access to the game and they're giving you no expiration date.

And the terms that they give, they can terminate at any time for any reason.

We got a quote from the EU Commission saying that actually could run afoul of, it's called Directive 9313 EEC, which protects consumers against unfair contracts.

So if that term is unfair, saying like, okay, you can't just take it away for no reason, that's...

Kind of ridiculous.

Well then, long is your game expected to last?

Well, they didn't give an expiration date.

They might have put themselves on the hook for indefinitely.

Now that's not realistic, so the only kind of way out of that is to have some sort of end of life build so they don't have to keep supporting it.

funny story, you mentioned the crew because there is a lawsuit that's still going on in California, but two players allege that there is an expiration date that shipped with the

code that they got for the crew and it says 2099.

So.

in fact, I may have had a hand in making them aware of that actually Yeah, we had nothing to do with the lawsuit.

We didn't start it.

I but I made a video reacting to a lawsuit as I think I think even if they win, it's gonna be a Pyrrhic victory It won't stop future games from being saved.

But I said well since you're already doing it, you know Well here you might as well mention on the box.

It says expires at you know January 31st or uh

2099 because that might help them win.

But the problem, the reason that won't save games is the lesson the industry will get from that is don't put that on the box.

And that's a pretty solvable problem that will, but will lead to games still getting destroyed.

I think you might be surprised in like, let's say the States, like the United States, like we could honestly see some pushback on some of these clauses in their terms of services

and even to some copyrights because um we've had pushback, let's say in the labor force where uh you couldn't go work for, I don't, I shouldn't get too deep into that, but I'm

curious.

To reframe all this, do you think a movement like this in America could uh take place?

Or is we just really focused on the EU because it's just going to be easier?

I think it's technically, it's technically not impossible.

That's the way I look at it for the United States.

Every lawyer I've talked to on this, the US lawyer, says that nothing less than an act of Congress is going to fix this.

So yeah, if you know somebody with deep pockets who can lobby Congress, this is possible.

But if you don't, I think you might as well buy a lottery ticket if you're feeling that lucky.

Now the good news is,

in the next four years.

Let's just say that, not to get too political.

But yeah, sorry.

reason I'm so hell-bent on the EU, well also Australia, is that let's say this goes through and they have to start releasing end-of-life plans for games they sell in the

European Union.

Well, once that's happened, then they'll have already done the work for the end-of-life build, so they may as well roll them out globally because it would barely be any more

effort and it would be much better PR than not doing that.

We've seen this before or something similar Within Australia when they sued valve over not allowing refunds on Steam valve lost So rather than only allow Australians to refund the

games They just rolled it out globally because they decide okay.

We lost this It's not worth going through this in every country one by one.

Let's just get it over with you know So I think it would become the path of least resistance to just so I think Americans would get almost all the benefits downstream from

this

we usually benefit from the EU greatly, like USB-C alone, I'm grateful for with iPhone, because of something, especially California really pushing a lot of stuff, it tends to

trickle up um or at least there's protections in certain states.

So I'm not a lawyer with all this stuff, but I am curious to see maybe this could even become.

a state-based issue to where some states have more consumer protections.

I'm not a lawyer, but I can address that part.

I've talked to lawyers about this.

In fact, we were pursuing something like this in Florida originally with one of them that where we thought we might be only the case going.

But what he found in his legal research is that because United States law differs so much to the ULA, the end user license agreement, they often specify which state that any

conflicts with them are going to be tried in, which is

typically California, sometimes Washington.

So even if, so if you buy the game in, you know, Alabama or Florida or wherever, doesn't matter.

If you want to go to court over this, you're going to California and then whatever their loss says goes.

Now, if you're really optimistic, does California have a direct ballot initiative?

That's a good question.

None of us live in- none of us live in California.

if you can get a bunch of typical voters who probably don't care about video games to care about this and get it on a ballot, that might be a back way to it.

man, the odds are just, I see that as just 50 times harder than what I'm doing.

So.

I see it.

think reframing it as owning your product that you, like at least owning partially the product that you buy.

And I know that there has been a lot of, the people have talked about it here in the States, a lot about, well, if I'm going to buy something software, whatever it is, how do

I not, I just have a license and they're starting to do that with hardware.

So I'm curious if there is a way to get this through to at least offer.

better protections for consumers.

But, you know, think we don't need to get too deep into this because I think the EU is a gray star.

Yeah, no, believe me, if I could have done things in the United States, it would have a lot easier because most of my audience is American.

So, but I just was not, we just had to go to where the openings were.

No, yeah, I think getting awareness alone is helpful.

Like it's a trickle down.

Like eventually this could spread out to maybe being a bigger issue in the States, but especially let's say if the EU initiative doesn't, uh it works for the EU and some other

countries, ah but doesn't work for the United States.

It still sets a presidents and it still sets like expectations for people.

I think the United States will be getting most of the benefits still.

mean, not every last game, but 80, 90 % of what's getting destroyed now are those types of games.

You know, uh I looked into your major opponents here, the video games Europe, and they're not, obviously, of course, they're not a legislative body.

They are, in fact, a conglomerate of video game publishers, kind of like what we have in the US, the ESA.

So let me read out all of your...

and CD PROYECT is not on that list, and I wish they were.

They're the ones that own GOG, you know, and have DRM-free stuff.

Yes, so let's see who we have here.

We have Activision Blizzard.

uh These guys, AEPDV from Portugal.

We have AVAVIA.

Let's get to the good ones.

We have Bandai Namco EA Embracer Epic Games.

yeah, it's...

James, do see that...

Do see that triple the hamburger button up there on the top right?

Oh, wait.

Never mind that.

You

we have Microsoft, Netflix, Nintendo, Sega, Roblox.

Oh, we haven't even talked about Roblox, that would be another, that'd be another, another can of worms open.

Let's see, Sony, Square, Supercell, the guys that make Clash of Clans, course, Ubisoft, Take Two.

WB Zenimax.

You know, funny story.

uh What I do find interesting is that I think even before we hit a million subs, a million subscriptions, I mean not subscriptions, sorry, a million signatures for your stop killing

games movement, I think we already started to see some effects because we're starting to see more of these failed live service games implementing their own offline, uh their own

end of life plans, like offline services like a...

Multiverses.

Have you heard of multiverses?

Yeah, that...

Yeah, so, I mean, those are totally play...

That's totally playable offline.

Yeah, granted, you can't play online against people, which is kind of unfortunate because that's kind of what it was billed as.

It's still a hell of a lot better than Completely Dead.

uh

and also Redfall 2 is playable offline as well.

That one's tricky though, because Redfall, believe still has De Nuvo DRM.

So I don't know what's going on with Redfall.

It could be in a few years, it shuts down and nobody can play it.

Because if nobody removes the DRM before they end support.

So I don't know about Redfall.

That one's tricky.

So I could see them removing Denuvo at some point because Denuvo is also in and of itself a subscription.

Developers have to pay thousands of dollars to keep Denuvo up.

if a game like Redfall isn't selling super well, then I think if they're cutting a bunch of people and stuff, which we'll talk about later, they're cutting corners everywhere,

might as well cut out Denuvo or either too, right?

I mean, what's the point at this point?

It's shocking that they're still paying for that subscription for a game that probably doesn't make them any money.

Even though I like the game, I even haven't bought it yet, but I do like the idea that there's offline support that I could potentially buy it one day, just for the heck of it.

But, yeah.

I'm honestly, I didn't even know it still, I didn't know it had Danube to begin with, much less still has Danube though.

That's crazy to me.

Well, I think it does.

I know it did at some point.

The Steam, I just checked the Steam page, it still says it has Danuvo.

But no one's asking for people to remove Danuvo from Redfall, because no one's playing Redfall.

So what about Anthem?

Like that's on the list, right?

That's like the next story.

Like what's going on with that?

How does this, yeah, so with Anthem high tech, how does this kind of loop into Stop Killing Games?

Um, well, all we know for certain is that uh they wanna kill Anthem on January 12, 2026, will most likely mean they'll kill it before Stop Killing Games actually takes effect.

Yes, and also, I also found this super funny in the uh last question of the FAQ.

Has anyone else at Bioware been affected by these changes?

No.

The sunsetting of Anthem has not led to any layoffs.

So I thought it super funny that they had to mention that.

But let's go over to the details.

Let's see.

Why can't I play Anthem in offline mode?

It was designed to be an online only title, so once servers go offline, the game will no longer be playable.

Can I install Anthem if I previously had purchased the game?

Yes, if you purchase Anthem, it can still be downloadable from a digital library and played until January 12th.

Why can I no longer purchase Anthem or in-game currency?

Over the next 180 plus days, Anthem will still be playable offline and online and you can use the last of your in-game premium currency as we prepare to sunset the game's live

servers on January 13th, 2026.

We'll also be using in-game currency, yes.

How long will it be on EA Play?

Anthem will be removed from EA Play playlist on August 15th, 2025.

So, Anthem hasn't seen an update.

since 2020.

for all intents and purposes it is a game that is no longer in active development.

Yeah, Anthem is a...

It's not the best candidate because it was reviewed so poorly, but it is an example of why we're pushing this, because there's many, many other games like that that are kind of at

risk.

And I'm annoyed too, because I heard it wasn't good, but I was curious because I saw, you know, all these canyons and waterfalls and worlds to run around in, so I figured, well,

you know, if I keep my expectations low going in, that could be interesting, but...

getting eradicated, so I won't find out.

Yeah, and plus you can't buy the game anymore now.

They took it off of...

I don't think it was ever on Steam, but it used to be on the Origin, what they used to call it.

Not anymore though, of course.

I played the beta for Anthem.

I thought it was pretty fun, though a lot of the...

But that's just like the early game though.

A lot of the issues with Anthem really crops up in the late, the end game, from what I understand.

But that's...

But what matters is that the game will not be playable.

I thought it was a pretty cool, like, cause of flight mechanics, you, all of the suits can fly.

Kind of like if you're, kind of like Iron Man.

And I thought that was pretty sick, to be honest.

That was easily the best part of the game.

I mean, that's what they sold us was that you can be Iron Man, essentially.

uh I never played it.

I was always curious, but this is one of those games where I'd like to see the preservation kind of take place, where I just don't want to see.

I consider games art and uh killing games to where we can never get them back as they can to like ripping up a piece of art that is, you know, whether it be dozens of years or.

100 years old like it's it's I think a little atrocious, but that's I think a little beyond the movement at this point Yeah

getting paid to rip it up, yeah.

Yeah.

this reminds me of that story, you know the uh, I think it was the ecchi homo or something, it was like a picture of Jesus that was starting to get like, that was starting

to get deteriorated but then someone painted it terribly and yeah I feel, I mean feel

that looked like my mother might do.

I feel bad that she had to take a lot of the blame for it because, I mean, she didn't really do a great job, but I feel bad because it's an old lady.

but.

I mean, I don't know.

How would you rub this back into games because have some old...

Yeah.

re-implementations.

Like it's a totally different thing, you know.

um

I think

the issue...

Yeah, go ahead.

I was just gonna say, think even just allowing some protections to modders and to the open source community to make sure that these games don't die off would be like substantially

better.

Nintendo can't just go and fricking sue a whole emulator, let's say, and just destroy a whole group of preservations for Switch.

Preserving so we can play games, let's say, down the road or...

even the games I bought now.

or take two, taking down the open source re-implementation of Grand Theft Auto 3, if you guys remember that.

Yeah, where they got their money.

It's all about protecting IP and I get it, IP laws, I make it so you have to protect your IP or you can lose some of the rights to it.

ah Yeah.

that's trademark that you're thinking of.

I mean, so-

and also um patents.

Patents have to be defended, I know that.

think that's a cop-out though, because you can release it on your terms, even if you have that.

I'm pretty sure Rockstar has released old Grand Theft Auto games for free as a promotion with the new one coming.

I remember them, you think they lost the Grand Theft Auto trade bargain anyway by doing that?

know...

but that's under their terms.

I'm just talking about defending.

I'm just talking about defending.

I don't like it.

fact is, uh Sega allows uh Sonic fan games, they don't have...

They're not fretting, they're not clutching their pearls over if they're gonna lose their IP to Sonic.

Like, it's just...

I think that it's just...

uh Honestly, I think it's the same uh reason that the games industry is so opposed to stop killing games, right?

It's because they want to have control.

and they don't want to answer to anybody.

And uh they want to be able to like take away the games that you already own so that you are more likely to buy their next thing.

And I think that's a flawed uh thought process, but I think that that is where they're coming from.

I think it's the...

I think that's the case for some companies.

It depends on the company culture.

I think the leading reason is they don't have to do anything, so they don't.

And the people who are making the games typically aren't the same people making the decisions on the games.

Those are going to be kind of the shareholders or something.

from their perspective, it's just product.

It doesn't...

Okay, so we can...

People want to keep playing this for 0.001 % cost?

Well...

We don't have to, so let's just not do it.

Okay, move on to the next thing.

Like, EA, think, is an example of that.

Everything about EA's behavior suggests they just don't care.

They don't care when the game goes down.

They kind of don't care when it comes, then the few times it comes back up.

They just don't care.

So...

Whereas others are trying to usher you into the new game.

Like, I guess Overwatch would be example.

With Blizzard.

speak on the EA thing real quick, there and to your point about it depends on the company culture.

Like there are leaders within EA who actually care about the community.

And then there are ones who don't write like the guy.

I can't remember his name.

Jim Vasella.

He's like the guy behind Command and Conquer.

And he like really cares about the community.

And he has like he's open sourced the original Command and Conquer games and he's done a bunch of work to help.

uh OpenRA and you know these other these open source Command and Conquer projects and so uh to your point it I shouldn't just speak broadly about like all game publishers are all

you know executives, but there definitely are some good ones out there for sure

Mm-mm.

Yeah, and there's some leaders in those.

killing Anthem.

uh

m

that will end Dead Space 2.

I now that we brought up EA, Dead Space is one of my favorite series, but Dead Space 2, I bought it on Steam and then they moved everything over to their EA store, you know, and

they kind of like F you guys over on Steam.

I cannot place Dead Space 2 on Steam that I purchased without a CD crack because their services for checking whether the CD key is um

Registered and like a whole other like it was back during a whole time where you could only register so many CD keys on so many computers uh Doesn't work now, so there's no way

to play it unless you crack the game so That's EA to When it's a really simple like well look I shouldn't say really simple as long as they have the source code It's ripping that

service out that check all they have to do is release one update for that check and It would work

Well, don't you remember the whole studio that made Dead Space Beginning with is gone.

Yeah, I know, but the Dead Space remake studio did an amazing job, but they still have the source code.

They can give it to me as a contract, I'll do it for free.

Like they don't, I'll release the patch, because I guarantee it's like a one or two line piece and I'll fix it for them.

But it's really annoying to that.

Don't have to hire me, just.

of your problems for free.

Honestly

once you put this public, know, so they can reach you.

cheaper.

It's cheaper than AI.

James is cheaper than AI.

Hire him for free.

Okay, well, I mean, I'm not gonna be doing a bunch of work for them for free, but like, I could solve a lot of their problems if they wanted me to, but that's, uh it's ultimately a

leadership issue.

And so I don't think they're gonna like that.

Yeah, it is what it is.

It sucks that Anthem is gonna die and it seems like EA...

You know, this news article came out the same day that your thing hit a million signatures.

So it makes me think that maybe they just want to kill it ahead of time before SKG can actually...

have plenty of time.

Yeah, if they're closing in at 2026, they'll be in the safe zone for sure.

So I wonder how many...

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I am too, but I wonder how many more failed live service games we'll see, uh live services we'll see, you know, try to wrap things up before stop killing

games can save them.

I'm getting annoyed looking at these questions, what they can't play in offline mode, because it was designed as an online-only title.

Fine, so rip out all the microservices and have the end of life build.

Yeah, that's another thing I heard from a developer that's saying, not having a local test environment is basically bad practice, period, to be able to test it, because if you're

relying on all these services while you're developing the game, well, what if one of them goes down?

Well, then now you're stuck in the water trying to fix the game, and you can't.

Well apparently Bungie doesn't have an internal test environment for their old versions of their games.

So much so that they can't up- Alright, so back to the Bungie lawsuit.

Apparently they-

the services.

I'm just gonna say this, sorry, just to help people.

Like you can mock services locally.

We do it on every other, like in every other development industry where we develop software, you can mock services.

So sorry, continue.

aren't needed for end of life.

You know?

Yeah, so.

You could mock them even.

could even ship it with the mock because for tests and for doing uh certain testing, you can mock services.

You could ship it even with those mock services.

anything that would be like a privacy issue or monetization, know, stuff that would have personal rights.

You don't want that stuff in the final.

Yeah, so.

but they have, I would be shocked if they didn't have uh a way for testing locally in a mocked service to where you could just do unlimited, let's say, credits or something like

that.

There's aspects to, they could ship at least like that, but.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sorry, were you going to high tech?

Yeah, so anyway, so apparently they have to use video.

They have these fan videos which contain like compilations of cutscenes that were recorded by, you YouTubers, which is bullshit.

But speaking of YouTube, I think I think we should talk about Google or rather the de-Googling of...

de-Googling movement, which uh there's whole Reddit community that's around and everything.

ah I'm kind of like halfway in there.

I've gotten rid of a lot of my Google um services except for my one Gmail account, which I just can't get rid of because there's so much tied to that one.

But I moved everything over.

I'm done with it.

But you know who else is done with this?

A little shocked even though he's been diving into Linux more and more.

That is PewDiePie.

PewDiePie!

my gosh.

This is interesting to me.

I haven't watched the video yet, but I think I might for like react to it for my Monday video.

So PewDiePie, he is trying to cut out Google altogether now.

Obviously you can't cut out Google for things like YouTube, of course.

But everything else, I mean, he switched to Arch Linux.

And he's even riced out his Linux distro in a way that even Gardner Bryant, our resident Linux YouTuber here, hasn't.

FROG!

I've I am a fraud.

I I have never riced even a little bit I like the standard gnome desktop environment and I don't care about customizing it ah So yeah, that's just me Ross.

Do you Ross?

Do you have any experience with Linux at all?

Yeah, I'm monkeyed with it for a while.

I was doing like game compatibility testing on stuff that was kind of off the beaten path.

That, you know, there are no entries on like, what was it, ProtonDB or WineHQ.

I'm essentially envious of people who can completely migrate to Linux.

I have too many weird things I do that I would have to jettison too much.

I'll tell you, it is a lifestyle that you have to fully opt into if you're gonna do it.

Yeah.

I've gone through...

I buy a lot of hardware, uh and half of it, or maybe three quarters of it, isn't compatible with Linux, so then I have to return it, you know?

ah It's super fun.

Yeah, the nightmare scenario on my end would probably be running games that were never designed for VR with wrappers or hooks or something to make them stereoscopic and running

those in VR headsets that might not be supported.

I don't think that would be a fun time on Linux.

No, I mean, the thing is, even Valve's, like, index headset, which I have one out there, I have a Windows PC for that, because even to this day, like, the last time I tried, which I

guess was like a year ago, but the last time I tried Valve's own VR headset on Linux, it was kind of a nauseating experience.

ah Yeah.

And Valve's, the biggest, like, for-profit company champion of...

Linux gaming out there, so.

My line in the sand is if later Windows just two things either requires you to be online at all times or there is simply no way to stop updates on your own terms, then at that

point I'll probably be Luddite for a little while using old Windows, but I would eventually go to Linux and set up a KVM for like it.

I would use Linux for whatever is easy to use Linux on and then for everything else I would have a

KVM maybe for old Windows and then another one for modern Windows that I'm just treating like it's a thin client or something that I'm assuming it's all temporarily.

It'll get screwed up with whatever just for just stuff that has to be online through Windows.

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, the thing that's stopping me from switching full time to Linux is online multiplayer, but also just laziness because I have a lot of stuff that's set up.

I have my video editing set up like set up right here and it would take me a lot of time to like migrate everything, migrate all the fonts.

Heck, honestly, I don't know.

I mean, it would just take a long time for me to get everything the way I wanted to on Linux.

and uh, not knocking Linux, it's a great system, I explored it quite a bit and even before, like, I really dove into a deep when the Steam Deck was announced, because I was

like, there's no way, there's no way Linux is a good experience for video games, but then it was, so.

I was kind of a doubter at first.

With enough time and with enough developers, you can make Linux be the best experience, which I think we're already getting there somewhat with the Steam Deck.

But I've given up on Windows and I have switched, I have not switched over to Linux.

I've switched over to Unix based system, which is Mac OS.

So I'm sure.

they're cousins

I thought you were gonna say free BSD.

No, macOS, just because I'm done with Windows.

Now that being said, my plan is to have a handheld once the Legion Go 2 comes out to get that and to have that be like my gaming device with an eGPU.

And so I probably won't be going away from Windows anytime soon, but I'm gonna be limiting it as much as I can how I use it.

Like it's gonna be used for games that I.

I kind of just don't want to deal with on Linux.

And then I'm gonna dual boot it, of course.

So I'm gonna dual boot it with probably SteamOS or with Bazite.

And then slowly, once I feel like it's really gotten there, I'll just switch away from Windows completely.

uh VR is a hard one.

VR is a really hard one.

And eGPUs, I just don't know if Steam Deck supports eGPUs quite yet.

I'm sure if Valve wills it, they will make it happen.

know, PewDiePie, not only did he cut out Goot, not only did cut out uh Windows, he also cut out, uh he also started doing self-hosting stuff.

Like he self-hosts Nextcloud as well, which I know Gardiner does.

I've played with that a little bit.

So do you know what Nextcloud is, Ross?

Sorry, it's bit subit.

Did the last word?

Next cloud, no.

So let's say self-posted.

So think of like Google Drive and also Google Docs and all that stuff.

It's self-hosted, like you run it on a machine on local network and you can expose it to the wider internet and you can use it just like you would use Google Drive or anything

like that.

yeah, yeah, yeah.

apparently he also runs a self-hosted password manager on his Steam Deck.

So he's using his Steam Deck for server-related tasks, which is kind of insane to me.

That's actually really cool.

uh I thought about buying like a broken Steam Deck and just running the hardware in a 3D printed rack mountable case.

uh Like just the motherboard itself, you know?

You should do that, God.

What do you need?

Like I have some, I have one Steam Deck where the daughter boards don't work so the control, but you can still hook up a keyboard and mouse and it works fine.

What would you use it for out of curiosity, Gardner?

a web host.

You could use it to do uh crunch.

So I don't know if the LCD model has been unlocked yet, but there were a bunch of AI cores that were locked in the CPU.

um And you could use, if those have been unlocked at some point, we could use that for like some AI crunching stuff.

to me, I crunching.

I do know that like the Steam Deck is horrible at multi-threaded tasks compared to, it's very optimized for games, let's say.

Because I have developed on a Steam Deck, because I have software that I need to bring back, ah but I have developed software for the Steam Deck on the Steam Deck and it was a

nightmare.

Yeah.

the simplest solution could also be to just turn it into like a home console of sorts.

Put that baby in a little 3D printing enclosure that, you know, screw it up, put a fan on it just in case, and Bob's uncle.

think there's someone who's already done that.

I've thought about doing that, but at the end of the day, I really just like the eGPU, it does bother me.

Like there's not eGPU support for the Steam Deck.

I really think that's the final piece of the puzzle to just have the main gaming device would be a handheld and then you can hook it up into an eGPU in any house or any part of

the house you want.

But yeah.

Yeah.

To give you a quick Linux story I had when I was doing tests on it, one of the things I wanted to simulate was like trying to, a lot of old games, especially on Nvidia cards, but

both to some extent, I mean with AMD, you can force anti-aliasing on older games.

And there was some of that on Wine, not on Proton, but on Proton, you could still have the option of down sampling, know, so rendering it higher.

Well, on Windows...

I think of both AMD and Nvidia, that's just a matter of just, you know, putting in some numbers or checking a box and you're done.

On Linux, I was, it was led to the down the road where we have to use GameScope to do it and specify the numbers.

But then we tried it and it wouldn't work.

And I was getting help from people much more experienced than me on this.

And there was like a whole thread in my forums on it where it just kept escalating where it wouldn't work.

And then for a long time, I found out like one of

one of the repositories for it, they were actually sending me a bad link of an older one.

That was the reason it wasn't working.

But then we found that, and then it still wasn't working properly or, yeah, like I was trying to do just a 2x scaling.

And what we found was that for some reason, like just simple integer numbers didn't work, but if you did 2.01, then that did work.

And then somebody went and modified that on the, on it for it to finally work and then...

got rid of some extra blur filter and then it finally worked.

I'm just like, good God, you know.

That's the thing, like some things on Linux, for me, it's like a third that they work just fine.

And then there's like other things that are like that where it's just this weeks long rabbit hole, sometimes with help.

see what scares me about Linux is that I don't always know if there's gonna be light at the end of that tunnel.

See, if I knew it was just a matter of jumping through 50 hoops, I can do that, but it's...

When I don't know um how deep the well goes, you know?

That's what could scare me on it.

No, that was it.

It was just an example.

No, I get it like that.

There's a bunch that can just go wrong in the walk wonky as ways But like I also find that fun so the uncertainty as long as I'm not like Yeah, as long as you're not like doing

mission critical stuff that has to be done at a certain time And you just enjoy it then it's it's quite quite fun um but there are there are some Linux distros out there that

like

Just for some reason they just seem to like have better support for everything uh Linux Mint is one of them.

Yeah

was...

I could probably find the version number, at some point when I was running into some problems, it was just feeling so crazy to me that I thought, like, okay, should I just try

another distro?

And some people recommended Nobara just for, like, a testing purpose.

And at the time, they probably fixed it by now, I downloaded it, started...

This is a second system, so I just nuked everything, you know, wiped the drive so it could install fresh, that sort of thing.

And it just screwed up its own bootloader.

And it would just, I could never actually, it would install and then it would just screw up every time.

And this is with me giving full permission to just wipe the SSD or wipe the hard drive.

It can do whatever it wants.

And so.

Yeah, I yeah, I get that I've seen I've seen some very strange things uh Just I once I think I've the story on the podcast before but Ross I installed a Ubuntu a long long time

ago on my dad's laptop and uh He was not super savvy with computers, but he knew enough to be dangerous.

So uh he wanted to uh Start chatting with like

peep like women from other countries and he ended up he ended up installing a Chinese like malware chat app a Windows Chinese malware app and he installed malware on Linux through

wine and I was very impressed that that not only did he was he capable of doing that uh but he also like the malware actually worked on Ubuntu I was like holy cow I can't believe

that

Kind of reminds me there's an Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode where they get flooded with all these malware ads and just keeps clicking on everyone that comes up, know.

yeah, that's my dad.

My dad is Master Shake.

That's hilarious.

That's good.

ah

believe it.

Sorry.

Totally stole the momentum of the conversation.

Dude, you're good.

That's great.

Love it.

I am curious though, like, so PewDiePie de-Googling, like I haven't, I wanna watch, I haven't actually seen his video.

I just have read a lot of stuff on it.

is he getting rid of YouTube?

Cause I feel like that's the last part of the whole piece and he can't, like it's really difficult to do that for him.

Like it's, do you know if he's doing that or is that a high tech question?

Cause yeah, like,

oh

He's he's got a big following on other.

I'm sure he's got a big social media so he could rebuild his his base, not that he's semi-retired, but it is interesting to get rid of, you know, everything Google, but

YouTube is such a hard one.

And so.

I mean there is PeerTube.

So, Hi Tech, what is PewDiePie gonna be doing with YouTube?

Is he gonna be trying to get away from YouTube now?

Um...

You know?

I haven't watched the video, actually, but...

I just read the article, and the article doesn't mention anything about...

Oh, wait, no, there's a- no, it says, except YouTube.

I literally can't escape, so...

There, dude.

I figured he would not be getting rid of YouTube because he's got 110 million subscribers.

We should have him on the podcast and ask.

that's kind of the dynamic for some people staying at Windows.

It's a hostage situation.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

It's designed that way.

though, because you're the Linux Tuber.

Dude, I will.

I'm gonna reach out to him right now.

Yes, but uh

Yeah, but I think a lot of people can really trust PewDiePie's opinion on...

Well actually, can you really trust PewDiePie's opinion on Linux?

Yeah, he I honestly believe he had one of the best uh Videos on the topic of Linux like it showed how much fun it can be and that's why I use it right like I use it because it's

enjoyable ah and He just showed how like all of the enthusiasm he had for it ah And how deep you can go down that rabbit hole and I thought that it was fantastic

Yes, but can you trust...

Xbox?

Can we trust Xbox?

I know, I don't think we can.

I think you can, I'm gonna be...

I Have a long memory.

I remember where Xbox kind of sold out PC gamers down the line, you know Where would you started coming Microsoft which control windows?

there was an era of all these exclusives on Xbox that they kept off windows and I was even part of the contract and It's like what the hell are they doing at that point?

You know, I mean I get it but it

That's where I feel like, okay, if you want to do that, then I think you should have antitrust regulation, know, or investigation at least, that you're setting up competing

products against yourself.

That's it.

like I've said multiple times on this podcast, you can't trust any big corporation.

It's just how it is.

They've got their stakeholders, which should include us, is their uh investors and stuff like that.

And that's who they're gonna appease to.

So yeah, that's my biggest take on this.

You cannot.

So, here's the crazy part.

So, Xbox recently just laid off over 9,000 employees, which is like, I believe, 4 % of their entire workforce.

Still a lot of people though, and it's really the most unfortunate thing.

Well, any layoff is unfortunate, really, but like 9,000 people?

Shit, man, I don't even think I know 9,000 people.

That's way more people than...

Yeah, that's like a decently attended concert.

Like a very, very well attended concert, actually.

Yes, and among those are actual entire game studios being shut down, like uh the Initiative, which was responsible for developing, well, guess what?

The Perfect Dark game.

Now, I don't know how interested you guys were in the game, but I was vaguely interested.

Yeah, Perfect Dark was my favorite game on the N64.

It was one of my favorite Xbox Live arcade releases, and I am devastated that they canceled that game.

Hmm and

for me, I liked Perfect Dark on the N64, but then I didn't really care for anything else that came out, but this one looked really good.

I was shocked that they killed this game.

It brings me back to StarCraft Ghosts, which was canceled decades ago.

That it's just like, they promoted a game, and then you're really excited for it, and they just never released it.

And I don't know if I want to put like any rules down or anything for them to have to release games that they're promoting, but I would like to see games come out even if

they're not fully ready.

Yeah, well, I would just like to play it.

The the wild thing about their announcement here is that a lot of the games have been in development for like six seven eight years the ones that they're canceling and it's like

is this a matter of them just cutting the cord or is this just like indicative of mismanagement at these at Microsoft

one thing I'm baffled by is didn't that, was it like, Hi-Fi Rush game do well?

And then they're just like, okay, great, now we're gonna kill us.

Like I thought that one was profitable and like had some acclaim, wasn't it?

yeah it was.

Microsoft said that at first, clearly it must have not made enough money for them to care that much about the studio.

Yeah, though, I mean, I don't know.

I'm curious about what the thought process is if it is making money and winning awards.

Because I think they said they wanted kind of a division that might be more indie and win some more.

Also, I think I heard that they wanted more presence in Eastern markets, and that was a good game for that.

So, yeah.

was, you know, was that perfect, like, Jap-

like they're getting what they say they want.

So yeah, let's kill it.

That was kind of my understanding.

I think there is a leadership battle going on because uh they bought a ton of developers and then from my understanding, they were supposed to have a huge increase in subs for uh

the um Xbox Game Pass, but that did not really happen.

And so their sales were a little underwhelming and then I bet you some other leadership are a little bit higher than the one that had that initiative.

kind of stepped in.

This is all me guessing, but like killed a lot of this stuff and like going through and just trying to make things profitable.

And that's the problem is that games don't work that way.

If you have a game that is profitable and the studio is making, like it's making money, it's not losing you money, why shut it down?

The next game could even be bigger.

Part of it I think is that live action also drive to just, or not live action, sorry, live service too.

driving to really try to have a live service game that's going to be the next billion dollar game.

Yeah, I've heard stories about EA before where they, in the company culture, there was some developer there that came up with a model for like a, know, lowish budget that could

produce a respectable profit.

And there wasn't, he was told that that's not how things work.

They kind of want to, you know, roll the dice on like a giant hit.

And they're almost like not interested in like small wins.

It's like all or nothing kind of mentality.

Yeah.

it's an investment mentality that's actually not great.

It's actually caused a lot of issues in the other parts of the tech industry is that they'll, they do, roll that.

It's it's it's a form of gambling in some form of fashion where they want to hit big or it doesn't matter, but that's not how you develop a healthy portfolio.

And so they're learning, they're learning, but well, okay, they're not learning.

They're, they're seeing the results of that.

We'll see if they actually learn because I don't think they're going to learn either.

I don't know.

Microsoft is, I mean...

They're suffering.

So there was also one crazy article.

uh It's a LinkedIn post from Matt Turnbull, executive producer at Xbox Game Studios Publishing, here's the quote.

It says, I've been experimenting with ways to use LLM tools to help with reducing the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss.

Is that not crazy to you that he recommends using AI to coddle you emotionally?

Therapy AI therapist, ugh.

we just use AI to replace all these hired management people?

mean, what does a producer really do?

Here's the funny thing.

The position that's easiest to replace, like right now, is upper management or mid management.

Funny enough.

So.

a company that's run by a bunch of incompetent leaders or a company run by a bunch of AI?

I don't like this answer, but I'd rather.

algorithm is.

Mm-hmm.

I'd rather work for Skynet, I think.

think they'd be nicer to me.

That's brutal.

It's br-

need living expenses.

They don't need housing.

They don't need food, gas.

like it's too dystopian, but

them is a company run by a group of individuals that don't care at all about the people underneath them and have no emotion and only care about money, and the other are AI.

uh

AI, which is more ethical.

following the bidding of the first group, essentially.

But it would be more kind oh of chaotic or incoherent.

So maybe you could figure out how to squeeze between the cracks, carve out something.

are some prompts that Mr.

Turnbull recommended.

Oh, the post has been deleted from his LinkedIn since then.

here's one.

Act as a career coach.

I've been laid off from a quote role at video game industry.

Help me build a 30 day plan to regroup, research new roles, and start applying without burning out.

uh Crap like this is why I play games, so I don't like focus on

I just I'm just putting myself in this guy's like mindset He's like how can I help the people that I've ruined their lives?

let's find out what yeah, recommend like what are you thinking, bro?

AI!

Oh, they recommend recommending AI to people.

Wow, that's really helpful.

this is just gonna drive more union.

profits from the use of OpenAI, so...

They're selling the sickness and the cure.

See, here's my resume.

Here's my current resume.

Give me three tailored versions.

One for AAA, one for a platform slash publishing roles, and one for a startup slash small studio leadership.

Bro, I'm, bro, I was-

owns half of the studios in the West.

like, what is he talking about?

They've laid off most of the studios.

I know, but how these big companies work is if you get laid off, you can still get hired at another studio.

They don't like repositioning people.

If Google does it, it's a very super bizarre practice to not just reallocate your developers.

What they will do is they'll lay them off and then they'll rehire them.

They're fine rehiring them at another studio, but it looks better on the books.

terrible prompt.

Oh my god...

That is the craziest.

So yeah, this is pretty dystopian and this is gonna drive for unionization.

I'm sorry, game industry, you're getting unionized like very soon with this type of behavior.

There's no way to...

Yeah, so one commenter in our comments has been accusing us of some pretty severe anti-Xbox bias, which I mean is totally fair.

But at the same time though, Xbox is doing this stuff.

Yeah.

I mean, I only have such resentment for modern Xbox because I am such a fan of original Xbox and like early 360 era.

Like I miss that era.

Yeah, like if you weren't a fan of Xbox to begin with, you probably wouldn't care all that much about the things they're doing to self-destruct, right?

Yeah, exactly.

I don't know man, Xbox is crazy.

Ah, shit, there's so much.

Yeah, that always kind of baffled me, is the naming too, like Xbox Series X.

I mean, it's almost parody level at that point.

Like, I mean, I would think you just want Xbox Three or just Xbox Fusion or just something easy to identify.

How about the ROG Xbox Ally X?

I hadn't heard of that one.

it's there.

It's ROG's new Xbox handheld.

It's like the ally, but it's the Xbox ally X series S pro max.

Right.

would understand?

It's it.

on the go.

It's Asus Xbox Alley.

Or whatever you know.

right.

ROG, Xbox, Ally X, my god.

I uh still cannot get over the name.

Listen, is the...

Who decided this?

Was it Microsoft or Asus?

par for the course for Microsoft though.

Like their naming conventions are so terrible.

ah It's so bad.

they're just so.

I heard for the Xbox One, that one was Steve Ballmer's project where he thought everybody was going to be calling it The One.

You know, like he had this kind of like, yeah, yeah, I think so.

Like that's, thought that, and then when people started calling it X-Bone, that kind of backfired because that's like, wait, this isn't what, you know.

Ugh, dude.

I kinda dig X-Bone, I like X-Bone.

My problem was, even Xbox One was like, okay, this is stupid, but I just cannot believe that after the Xbox One, they went with Xbox Series X and stuff like this.

They ramped up the stupidity with the names.

kind of works.

That one kind of works.

did you think that we're going to call the Xbox one to?

Xbox one two three switch

people.

I don't know.

No, that's the thing, like, it is stupid, but like, having, the more complicated you make the name, the more likely you're gonna confuse the consumer and you're gonna lose sales.

So.

mom wants to buy it for kids.

Like, well, wait, what's an Xbox series?

Because they're going to see the old Xbox One, Xbox Series.

You know, what is this?

You know?

It's very confusing and that's why PlayStation's winning and Nintendo.

Like, they're like, well there's a Nintendo switch and then there's the OLED, which obviously is just a better screen.

It's...

You

So.

I guess.

Everything's in Xbox now though, so.

I think it was Jesus Vista or seven where they made like a Windows 7 party to celebrate it's like the whole thing it was a marketing thing it feels like it was filmed by aliens

or written, but let's see Windows 7 I can't remember if it was Vista or Yeah, Windows 7 launch party that was it It is surreal.

Yeah

To be fair, the Windows 7 was a massive improvement over Windows Vista.

is, but this is like an alien, aliens put together like a documentary about people having a social gathering.

It is so bizarre.

Yeah, man, that's just Microsoft C suites at their best.

Yeah.

They went on that.

I think though there are some calls to have Phil Spencer step down.

What are your thoughts on Phil Spencer's leadership at Microsoft or Xbox specifically?

I think Peter Moore was the best head of Xbox and they need to bring him back.

Peter, he's at EA Sports, I think.

Or he could be retired.

mean, that was like almost 30 years ago when he took over for Xbox.

Damn, man.

EA Sports, that doesn't give me lot of hope.

I just think Xbox needs new leadership personally, if they're gonna survive.

got new leadership too, and it looks like they're doing a little better already.

It's only been like a year or two.

Like they just released Astro Bot and they're marketing the hell out of that.

Astro Bot's so good.

If they keep on going that direction, PlayStation's just gonna royally fuck Xbox, I think.

They're just gonna win.

Because Astro Bot's so good.

If they can just release a new PlayStation Vita kind of situation where it's just like, kind of like the Portal, but an actual handheld, I think they're gonna be on a huge

winning trend.

uh

Xbox though, um Sony released Helldivers 2 on Xbox, and some Sony fans are reeeeally pissed.

um

Sony fan- man, fandoms alone are just toxic.

m

Yeah, I think-

am glad the ratio of exclusive seems to be lower and lower these days compared to the past.

Agreed.

dealing with fandoms is a true horror story, but have you seen this true horror story?

So, how many of you guys watch anime?

I do.

I do too.

What about you, Ross?

I've seen very little.

I mean, just Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Princess Mononoke.

They're just really mainstream stuff.

Just like a handful.

Yeah, just a handful.

I'm not a big anime guy.

I have only ever watched the Animatrix if that gives you any context.

Gardener, you gotta get you into some more anime.

The Animatrix is good, but there's more out there than just a Matrix spinoff.

But anyways, Crunchyroll has been discovered using AI-powered translations.

So, one of the biggest debates is uh subs versus dubs.

Now, what does that mean?

Well, it means...

watching it in Japanese with subtitles versus watching it in like English or German or Spanish or whatever language it is, right?

And these subtitles feature multiple grammatical errors and some subtitles have start with chat.

GPT said now that in the document there are some screenshots.

Are you able to pull those up James?

Oh jeez, yeah sorry, I'm doing a horrible job of...

Yeah, here we go.

It's all good, man.

Yeah.

So look at that.

It says, chat GPT said when Ike died.

I'm not sure.

So basically, here's my thing.

A lot of people have issues with localizers because they quote unquote mistranslate, like because they want exact translations, but like they don't really want exact.

And they claim they want AI to translate.

But this is what happens when AI translates to a different language.

And they don't do the work in like

They don't do the work of cleaning that shit up.

There's like no human oversight basically.

Yeah, and one of them says...

if this is more like a disgruntled employee to put in this is what they said This is what you said It's too bizarre

we have no idea.

They did this for a new series called Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Story, which I haven't seen yet.

I don't know what it's about.

It looks very colorful, by the way.

It's...

mean, shit, man.

What the fuck?

Is it incompetence or is it malicious slickness?

This seems like it's just an automated thing, like they're not even reviewing any of the results, they're just running maybe a script that they wrote to translate stuff.

are the jobs AI are coming for because if the company doesn't really care about a certain quality standard and just needs to just get anything out, then yeah, that's the sort of

stuff that AI can take over on.

Because if you don't care if your quality drops 20, 30%, then yeah, AI can open up a lot of doors.

Yeah, you know, know, know, funny story though.

This isn't related to the topic at hand, but crunchy roll started out as an anime piracy website where you could watch animes that were like subtitled by they they're called fans.

They're called fansubs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I watched Naruto when I was a kid on there with my older brother, with my older brothers.

Yeah.

They had a date bio fansubs for Naruto when the Japanese only episodes were still, you know, not they weren't brought over here still.

But yeah, that's basically why.

They also had a pirated K-drama too, back in the day as well.

The Korean dramas.

they started out by like taking the videos and they translate them and now they're just like completely the opposite now, completely paid and they don't do any translations

themselves.

Or at least they're going that way.

they uploaded the videos with fan translations from people.

they are mostly...

Yeah, that's still something.

And, you know, Sony owns them now.

They're owned by Sony now.

Sony owns a lot of the anime industry in the West.

Like the translations and shit.

owns a lot of it too, you know, and then intrinsically Sony, yep.

I'm curious, oh, that does actually sound really good.

Let's not talk about, so I am curious about this.

Like, I think automated AI translations, well, not, don't even know about translations.

I know YouTube's rolling something out, aren't they?

Like, you can translate videos.

into uh different languages now with YouTube.

um Is this just going to be a trend that's going to go into games?

I'm assuming games also probably some game studios do this too.

But every gonna just like the so if you watch subs, I'm not as big into the subs just because I don't want to read.

I usually distract myself.

I usually do work and then distract myself with shows and stuff slightly.

But

The translation is very important because if you get it wrong, really just really screws up the whole show, in my opinion.

ah

mean to be honest I'm kind of used to really bad translations as I've played a lot of like, g-r-p-g's that brought over to the west.

You know, know how it is.

but I mean you can point them out very easily if you know how to read.

But here's, here's the thing though.

They could have masked this whole situation had they had someone like, read over it and then correct any bad grammatical errors or shit like ChatGPT said, you know, assuming it

wasn't some sort of disgruntled intern or some bulge like that.

I don't know man, it's a crazy situation.

know, Crunchyroll's president, Rahul Parini, he said in the past that there's no plans to use AI in the creative process, and that they wouldn't use AI to impact voice actors.

But, I mean, are translations not also part of the, uh

I would say so.

Yeah, I think that's a lie.

I think anyone that says that at this point, and I hate to say this, but as AI gets better, and I can promise you that AI has drastically better over just a year alone, ah I

don't think it's gonna replace, they're gonna try to replace jobs, they'll fail at this with certain jobs, but some jobs it will just replace.

if the company doesn't do it and they have competition, which.

Crunchy Roll really doesn't.

But some of these, like let's say games, then they might lose out sells, they might lose out to other, to competition.

So if they say they're not gonna do it, they're just lying.

They're thinking about it.

Yeah, I don't know man.

It's a weird, it's a terrible situation all around.

And I mean, at least they're not doing it for the dubs, but I don't watch anime dubs, to be honest.

It's just not a thing I do, cause...

I don't know.

I mean, I am kind of a purist, but it's also because it's just kind of how I've watched anime like almost my entire life.

Except for like Dragon Ball Z.

Yeah, except for like Dragon Ball Z.

I watched that on TV when I was a kid and it was dubbed.

But yeah, it's a very disappointing situation to see Crunchyroll go through.

And it's not like I watch anime and Crunchyroll anyways, but I certainly won't be doing it even more.

Yeah, it's definitely voting also for the other industries like I mentioned.

um So with that, any other topics we want on the cover, Hi Tech, we're gonna call this.

We're let Russ go.

did skip a topic.

I don't know if we have time to talk about it.

Gardner, what do you think?

Do we have time talk about it?

I gotta pick up Emily pretty quickly here.

Yeah.

I was just gonna go over it really quickly.

Nexus...

I'm gonna go over it really quickly and like, yeah.

Nexus Mod requires age verification in the EU and UK for adult content.

Adult content typically means, like, porn.

But, in this case, the definition of adult content goes even further than that.

They include porn, extreme violence, harmful substances, suicide, self-harm, depression, body stigma...

eating disorders, swearing, or profanity, and sexualized, as they call it.

It's a pretty big list, I don't know if I agree with all of that.

Yeah, I mean it's their platform and they're probably going by the law in the UK.

Yeah, it sounds like a legal thing, unfortunately.

be depressed if you're under 18.

Yeah.

I don't think it's a bad thing to go little extreme sometimes, as long as they're not getting rid of it, but they're putting it behind an age verification system, then I'm a

little bit more of being safe, but I also have kids, so I'd rather be safe, and they can just turn 18 and then they can play all they want.

They're gonna be over 18 most of their lives, so a few years won't kill them.

I guess.

I know it's a weird way to think about it, guess, but I'm fine with it.

ever seen any mods featuring eating disorders?

I can't think of a single game that's ever done that.

Or any modder that's-

if they're gonna count stuff like, you know, eating rate meat rates in something like Oblivion or DayZ or something where they're like, okay, they're eating, they're messing up

the files, or you eat cheese to get health or something.

I wonder if that's even gonna fall under this, actually.

I think eating disorders would probably be like a super skinny model or maybe some stuff like that or but yeah, that's bizarre though.

Is there a mod that's like that?

Maybe, maybe like.

uh

is a feature in Metal Gear Solid 3 where you can rotate where I forget it's a menu in the game you can rotate the camera around to make Snake purge whatever he ate in case he ate

like a poisonous snake or anything like that

that's very important.

That's not an eating disorder, though.

And I don't think they'd ever classify that.

It could- It could fall into the net though.

But...

Yeah.

because with Nexus mods, you can get some very extreme mods.

And so I agree, like how is this going to be handled?

It will be interesting, but uh there are some pretty extreme mods out there.

And I do think that this is important, but yeah, there's some open-ended questions like the eating disorders one is interesting.

Body stigma, interesting.

swearing profanity.

There was a huge stink when YouTube tried to censor that shit like a while ago.

Yeah, I definitely don't think that needs to be censored in adult content.

Swearing in profanity is not a big deal.

That's...

Plus middle schoolers swear all the fucking time.

sorry, I do too, I guess.

Yeah, it's almost feels like a religious thing almost at that point, but yeah, I don't know.

I think, I don't think it's bad.

And once again, like, I think a lot of it could actually, like a lot of teenagers, I think do get into the modding thing and along with social media and this, I think could help

them getting into some bad habits.

But I'm also, you know,

in my 30s and I don't care that I lock out some kids from doing this, from the mod.

So I don't know.

As long as it's not banned altogether.

um Yeah, so that's it.

Anything else you guys wanna say on this topic or should we start calling it?

Let's do this.

Let's sign off.

Ross, do you want to plug anything extra?

I know we already plugged your your channel and your and the movement, but anything more you want to do or do want to reiterate?

I'm kind of singular in focus these days.

Happy when it's done.

So yeah, stop killing games.com for info, how to the initiative.

Nice.

Good work, by the way.

Yeah, go sign the position.

It gets...

you're eligible, don't...

EU citizens only, though you can live anywhere, and you have to be at least voting age.

Yeah man, hope for the best man.

I know it's a hard fought battle man but I'm glad you're doing it because I don't know if I would be able to do it if I started up.

To be honest.

a nagging doubt at the end of this, however it turns out, you know?

You've probably had that feeling where, if only I'd done this, maybe things would have gone differently.

I'm not gonna have that.

Yeah.

Yeah, move forward, man.

The battle may be won, technically speaking, but the war...

I feel like we're in for...

We'll keep updating...

Yeah, but it'll be other people fighting it past my...

I just needed it to cross that threshold that somebody else takes over,

it's, I think it will set some good precedents and I think it will, it will continue with momentum.

Cause I do think there's a lot of importance with these types of movements.

So I think you're doing a great job.

Doesn't mean you need to spend the rest of your life doing it.

haha

no.

I never wanted to do this.

It's just it bothered the hell out of me.

it needed to be done.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, good job.

Yeah.

So with that, let's call it.

Let's let everyone go so they can go, I guess, enjoy their lives on a nice Saturday.

But thank you guys for watching and let's peace out, guess.

Thanks for watching everybody.

Alright, take care.

Later guys.