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Gamified #126 | Post Rug
Recorded: July 16, 2025 Duration: 1:12:09Space Recording
Short Summary
Avalanche is making waves in the blockchain gaming industry with a $100 million AI fund, strategic partnerships, and innovative token launches. The platform is set to redefine gaming experiences while providing developers with grants and users with yield opportunities through its AVAX Battle Pass.
Full Transcription
Music Thank you. Koji, why did you break that
i think that last space is over too many gutless takes
yeah we're gonna start fresh here with is this a hot take i know that that broke the last space but hopefully uh
it can handle it this time what a cliffhanger yeah yeah are you doing it right now or should
we banter for a little bit give us your build a thing we need a couple i just want to know if like
italian brain rot is just like who can fucking stuff the most cannolis in their face or like
okay listen listen search up tralaro
tralala you can sound it out it's spelled exactly the way you think it is it's actually
fucking hilarious it's really pointed and really good that's wild to hear you guys describe memes
and how you interact with them i i i don't often feel young around you guys,
but you've done it, Doc.
As arguably the second most Italian person on this panel,
and Doc clearly being the first,
this is a very rare opportunity for two straight white males
who were born in America to be offended about something.
And I plan on taking it.
I don't know about you, Doc.
Cash in. Honestly, the most offense i take
there was saying i was born in america north america this fucking guy with his american slander
a key part of canadian identity is literally being not american like if you ask any canadian that's
what they'll tell you.
Dude,
I, I actually will just as here's the banter.
I was getting a rental car in Croatia and the guy was going to give me a
shit car and said,
he saw the Canadian flag on the Lululemon shirt that I was wearing and said,
you're Canadian.
And then upgraded my vehicle because he realized I was not American.
The best part about that was not being American in that situation.
You're doing DBI for car rentals now? What is this?
The key part to being American is to scream about freedom
and then take them away from people.
Sorry, did I get too serious here?
Quick, stop.
Wait.
Sounds a lot like Canada.
All right, do we have, I believe we've got we've got everybody
except for john i'm sure he'll join let me pick this up where we left off hopefully it doesn't
break again hot take or not game pass was the worst business decision that microsoft has made
in the last 10 years obviously there is no doubt that game pass is great if you're a gamer, if you're a consumer.
Oftentimes you get access to new launches on day one for free,
or you're paying your $20 or $15 subscription, whatever it is.
But it's been arguably pretty terrible for both Microsoft's business revenue
from a games department and the actual games themselves.
We've had Paul Bettner talk about how the economics here oftentimes
don't work out for games that are featured on Game Pass.
Maybe this is a little bit of a mid-curve take and it's actually a net positive due to the overall
breach or organic traction or the downloads around the game,
but there's been mixed opinions about whether or not Game Pass is actually profitable.
We've just seen Microsoft lay off about 9,000 employees over the last year, which raises questions
about the overall direction of Xbox
and what's gonna come from it over the next couple of years.
So the question in the panel is simple.
Is it a hot take?
Is Game Pass the worst business decision
that Xbox and Microsoft have made over the last decade?
I will kind of kick this off
because I'm a certified Game Pass as a business hater.
I fucking love Game Pass. I play the shit out of Rematch. I play a ton of games on Game Pass every week. It's the best $20 a month I spend. I cannot imagine that this is a good business decision for both Microsoft and the people who are giving free access to their games on this platform. Jerry, kick us off.
Harry, kick us off.
Yeah, I don't think it's a hot take to say that Game Pass is one of the worst.
Yeah, I would agree with it.
Yeah, I think it's definitely the worst thing that Xbox has done, and it's been one of the worst things.
I mean, it's just, yeah, for the consumer side, Nock, you touched on it.
It is probably the best value for dollar spend that you get in all of gaming.
There's nothing better, right?
You get access, and Microsoft has spent a bunch of money to get people all of gaming. There's nothing better, right? You get access and, you know, they've,
Microsoft has spent a bunch of money to get people to ship, you know, games,
you know, day one on Game Pass, right?
It is fantastic for the gaming consumer,
but it's pretty shit for everybody else involved, I think.
You know, maybe arguably like the games,
it's okay for, I would say,
because like you get people to play like nothing's
remember when we had that discussion, and it was like, Tim Sweeney was like, hey, if
you make your games free, more people will play them. And we're like, yeah, no shit,
dude, you take a $50 game, and you make it free, people are maybe gonna fucking take
a chance on it. So, you know, I think, you know, teams that maybe don't have like the
expertise in how to monetize, like, they get people in, but do they get the, you know, teams that maybe don't have like the expertise in how to monetize, like,
they get people in, but do they get the, you know, financial uplift that you would expect?
Like, I would say probably not. But yeah, Microsoft is spending a fucking ton on this, and it's just not working. And I just don't think they're hitting the numbers. They're like 50% from
the numbers that they needed or that they were expecting from this. So people are just
not really taking to it, even though it is very good value, right? And so I think it's not a
coincidence that at the same time, we're seeing Microsoft lay off people. Nintendo is having one
of the best console launches of all time, right? There is a huge discrepancy in the two companies.
And I think, you know, you hear about Microsoft letting people go.
You hear about them maybe pivoting and just getting out of hardware in general at a time where another company is just firing on all cylinders.
Right. So I think that there's a lot in that.
So, yeah, I think this has been one of the worst decisions.
I think, you know, you talk to a lot of people within the games industry
who know the financials of all this stuff.
You know, a lot of people are starting to call for Xbox
to just get spun off from Microsoft because it's, you know,
Microsoft is managing this thing that poorly.
And I don't think that's out of the realm of possibility in the near future.
And I think it would be the best thing for, you know, the console itself
because I think otherwise Microsoft is ready to pretty much get out of the console business. All I took away from
that take, Jerry, was that the mistake that Xbox made was giving us new games for free instead of
force-feeding us the same bullshit they've been giving us for the last 30 years.
Can I also say one thing? I apologize i left one thing out when i was talking
about nintendo and how good the console launch was i also accurately predicted that that was
the thing i have to take a shot dude come on uh we'll go to tony v and then to lens
what a crazy take to hear from someone who's not 70 years old.
Yeah, I agree.
I think that the future is in plastic fucking machines that people buy for $400.
That's definitely where things are going.
And by the way, I have a franchise business I'd like you to invest in.
It's called Blockbuster.
You can show up and buy these things called Vhs tapes but only for a week and then you
have to bring them back or we're going to charge you fees um that is crazy town crazy town i think
that one i i don't know like maybe jerry knows more of these folks than i do now because i've
been away from it for a little while but you know i'm in touch with a handful of indie game developers
still and i'll tell you i'm not going to say who because they're not part of the Web3 community,
but one of the most successful indie games this year described their upcoming deal with Microsoft Game Pass
as incredibly good for their business on a call with me like last week.
And so I really I think it has to do with like the timing and the sequencing and how you manage your business.
But I think that's true of like anything in business and, you know,
kind of echoing what Knox said, I think it's unambiguously,
everyone said it's unambiguously a good customer value. And so I, you know,
coming out of the, the, the Amazon salt mines, right.
One of the things that they drilled into us was like things that are good for
the customer are ultimately good for the company. And I think, you know, Microsoft being willing to light a bazillion
dollars on fire or fly into the sun in order to try to, you know, create a foothold or create a
beachhead in owning digital distribution in a space that frankly, there's only one player right
now. And that's, that's Steam. No one else has really solved the buy video games like you collect pokemon just because you want to look at
your steam library grow um and i think that that microsoft's trying to solve that with their infinite
money glitch and we should all be taking our clothes off and running around naked and celebrating
that because they're a huge company that's willing to light the money on fire to to do you know
something innovative and not scalable.
I think the thing that concerns me with the Game Pass model is exactly what happened with Netflix.
You mentioned Blockbuster.
Obviously, Netflix came in and sort of ate its lunch.
But what we've seen with streaming services over the course of the last decade
is what turned out to be an incredible value,
a wealth of content available on Netflix for one price,
is now six or seven subscriptions to a bunch of different streaming services
that all fight over the licenses for a particular game
or a particular show in that case.
And now you end up spending more than you did on cable 10 years ago,
and people are now cutting the cord and just buying fucking cable packages
or using IPTV or some other bullshit.
I'm worried that the success of Game Pass somehow devolves into the madness that we're all right i
gotta push back on this one though because this is another take i hear from people all the time
and i think it's bullshit i think it's a boomer fucking take going back to what i was just saying
that like what you just described the fragmentation of content into hyper specialized categories or hyper specialized providers, I think is what's beautiful about this technology that we're launching, right, is that it makes it so that there doesn't have to be a monolithic digital distribution winner.
And we don't have to languish in the wasteland of the shitty content that comes out when there is only one distribution source, right?
content that comes out when there is only one distribution source right there's a reason that
we got fucking arcane and castlevania and the dota anime and it's because some dude at netflix
his only job he wakes up every morning and he goes to sleep every night or he or she
thinking about how he's going to spend netflix's money to secure ip that they're going to make
banger content from and if there was only one distributor that would would not be the case. And we saw that with cable.
That's why cable fucking died.
Because soap operas suck.
And there was like, we ran out of shit
for the cable companies to sell advertising for.
And like, I could not feel more strongly
that fragmented distribution of creative content
is ultimately a good thing.
But Tony, like, it's nice in a vacuum, right?
When they have to answer to shareholders and they can't just infinitely light money on fire,
and it's not turning profit for Microsoft, they have to sunset it, right?
And I think even it's probably a good deal for a lot of developers and a lot of distribution.
To solve distribution is helpful for a lot of indie devs, right?
But if they're still losing money on the deal as Microsoft,
they can't just do it forever.
Right.
Cause then Jerry,
Jerry,
I watched,
I watched Amazon fly hundreds of millions of dollars,
maybe billions of dollars right into the sun.
I mean,
we talk about lumber yard all the time,
brother.
Like they,
these companies will take bets on their fucking golden children,
pitching them the future to the,
I mean,
to the tune of a lot more money than what I think they've spent so far,
especially because it's not like they have no traction.
Like they spent a lot of money on mixer and like five people showed up to
watch it.
But like the,
the number of people playing these game pass games is like,
not it's,
it's not insignificant,
right?
They didn't,
they haven't taken over the inside.
They don't have a fucking 300 million monthly average users yet,
but they're not sitting around with like 10 million monthly average users
wondering where everyone else is, right?
Like, I think there's enough, I don't know.
I can't imagine them killing this.
I mean, I see where you're coming from.
I think all that to say,
they're doing all that to be a distant third place in console right now.
And so thus they have to do something different.
Can anybody explain to me why they're doing it at such a steep discount
like i don't think that foundationally the game pass model is a bad idea but whenever they're like
let's take the 60 brand new call of duty and put it into the 11 subscription or whatever it is it
like economically i go what the fuck like just, just make it $30 a month then,
or something that makes it not stupid financially.
Brother, this industry,
you'll get a free-to-play AAA game,
and you'll put a $2 microtransaction in,
and people will be like,
oh, these fucking greedy corporate fucks.
These suits over here are just ruining gaming.
Yeah, I gotta say,
one of the things that confused me about Game Pass
is the fact that it's not just the biggest fucking platform in the world.
I almost exclusively play Game Pass games now because everything is on it from day one, and the wealth of content is ridiculous.
I love it as a gamer, but again, as somebody who's looking at it from a business perspective,
perspective i just cannot see how a company who six months ago literally said we need to buy
activision blizzard or we will lose the competitive battle that we have against nintendo and sony can
run a business at a loss for for much longer koji over to you i mean i i think don't don't
underestimate the power of the subscription model you know like putting a 60 game up uh at a certain price that just gets
people to buy in it's the same thing with gym memberships right like the amount of people that
forget or or you know don't really take full advantage like and just the money just keeps
rolling in month after month after month i think it's like something they're counting on and i would
guess that this is more of a play for the future, right? Like we're seeing the, you know, okay.
Like we can all point at, at, at switch too.
And be like, look at, look at how well they've done and whatever.
But I think like an aggregate, if you like totaled up, forget about steam deck,
but like all the mobile PC shit that's coming or that's even here that people
own, you know, you can, you can access, you don't need to,
you don't need an Xbox to play game pass games. Like I can play them on my PC. So I think that like, maybe they're banking on
the future of gaming, going back to the more sort of PC oriented model or the like mix and match
model. I mean, like, if you want to think of it like the Android ecosystem, as opposed to the
Apple ecosystem, right? Like they're, they're betting on Android. Like people are just going to have their own devices,
access game pass, however they want to access it.
And pretty soon it's just going to be the service that people use to play,
you know, PC games on for a monthly fee.
Like I could definitely see a future in which that happens.
And I think that Microsoft is one of the,
one of those corporations that has more than enough sort of ammo to be able to, like, fire bullets until that actually ends up working, if that becomes the future.
I mean, they'll know pretty soon whether or not people are gravitating that way.
But I think, like, we forget, like, Netflix was burning money in the beginning, too.
It wasn't as if that their business was instantly the most
profitable thing in the world and in fact it's still not that profitable so like i have to
strongly agree with tony even though i adamantly disagreed with him in the last uh topic you know
uh you guys are all boomers yeah i gotta say tony won me over with that doubling down and telling
me why i'm an idiot i i will say the best part about gaming, like the best experience that I think exists
is the ability to play a game on your PC
and then later that night, walk into the living room,
turn on the TV, your Xbox,
play that same game from the same save state.
That is something that I think as a kid, I wanted to do.
And the fact that you can do it now as an adult
for pretty much any game that exists for 20 bucks a month
is genuinely fucking insane.
We've got four more hands.
We were a little delayed because of the sort of X collapsing.
I'm going to run through these ad reads and then we're going to go to Tatted.
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Tadid, bring us back in.
Yeah, so I'm going to say like on its face,
Microsoft just kind of giving away all these games for free
definitely probably looks like a terrible business decision.
You know, they're there. As Tony said, as a lot of other people said, they're burning through cash.
They're not really making any money, just like how Amazon's burning through cash with Twitch. of consumers that now are going to have this ridiculously fiercely loyal
ingrained in them to Microsoft, to Xbox, and to everything that they're doing,
which can also be essentially utilized to spread them out into Microsoft's greater
ecosystem of products from their cloud servicing products with Azure to all these different
Microsoft products that are coming out. And then this also doesn't touch upon the data that I'm sure Microsoft is collecting on the backend
from all these users and their consumer behavior data in these games
that they're then obviously going to sell to people who are training AI models.
We just saw obviously a company like Scale AI, which is just a data,
excuse me, a data organizing tool tool sell for like $14 billion.
We see another, when you see another AI data company right now valued at like $3 billion.
That's going to be such a huge industry and huge market that people are, I think,
vastly underestimating. So on its face, sure, terrible, terrible business decision,
but I think Microsoft has enough money where they can understand that, hey, this might not be profitable for us like on its face in the beginning right now, but five, six, seven years from now, as we have all these players now playing on the Game Pass, as we all are collecting all this data, as we have this new fierce brand loyalty, as we start to take on Steam and challenge their dominance for cloud gaming.
I actually think this is a wonderful business decision. And that's coming from a Nintendo guy
first and then a PlayStation guy second. So I actually am pretty impressed with what Microsoft
has been doing. I think it's one of those things that when you have long-term vision, you kind of
have to ignore the naysayers. And it's essentially the reason why we are all here. We all have long-term vision you kind of have to ignore the naysayers and it's it's essentially the reason why we are all here we all have long-term vision i remember people saying i was crazy for buying
bitcoin in 2017. now we're doing great like you know what i mean so it's sometimes the result
might not materialize right in front of your face but it doesn't mean that there's not a greater
plan that maybe you just don't know about because you're not deep in the weeds with microsoft and
the news likes to make stories about everything and scare everybody and say,
this is a terrible idea.
And then, you know, three years later, they're like, wow, maybe we were wrong.
Just like they said about O'Neill Beckham Jr. taking his salary in Bitcoin in 2021.
They're making fun of him for the last three years.
Now that man is laughing all the way to the bank.
So I actually think it's a brilliant business move, especially if obviously they can execute on it the way that I just mentioned. But I think it's very short-sighted to say
it's a bad move.
I actually wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. I will say it's difficult to believe that
this is coming from a position of strength given some of the things that we've seen unfold.
Massive layoffs, specifically in the Xbox department, a lawsuit or a legal proceeding
in which they explicitly say, if you do not allow us to buy this thing, we will die.
You know, they're losing the console battles. They're having trouble maintaining first party
platforms. I agree with the vision. I hope that that's the way that it plays out. But it's
difficult to believe that they're currently in a position of strength.
I tend to say one thing, Knopf, is they've never won the console battle. And I think
that's actually why they made the decision to exit out of the console battle and try to take
on another arena still within gaming, but just seeing that, oh, hey, just like Tony's point,
we're not going towards more physical products. We're going more towards digital products that
live on the cloud. So I see what they're doing. Also, when it comes to lawsuits, you have to remember,
people will say a lot of things in lawsuits to make sure that they win. So it's like,
you could be the richest person in the world, but I'm going to say I'm poor if that means I'm
going to win my lawsuit. I'm going to do that every day of the week. So just always keep that
in mind when it comes to lawsuits. There's certain things that might not live in truth in those types of things.
Fair enough. Hard to argue.
We'll go to Lems and then to Kevin Lambert.
Yeah, this one is interesting.
Obviously, as a gamer, it's fucking great.
But you guys are talking about subscription models.
We're saying that subscriptions are bad.
And that's not, I think, the argument here at all.
It's like, is this model that they've
designed actually viable and like long term like it's also not like game pass is a new thing like
it launched in 2017 it's been around for eight years it's not like oh we're going to do this
promo thing for you know two years we're going to hook all the users like everyone does that
whether it's you know your phone your cable whatever it is they're like oh we're going to
give you this special price for two years and then we're going to basically fuck you on the other end.
Cause we got you on this contract now.
And that's like, I could understand them doing that.
Cause it would make sense of like, Hey, let's hook people in,
let's get them on.
And then when we have them on board, then we like hike the price or whatever.
Like even see it with like Amazon prime, Netflix, all this, like the,
they're adding ads or the price goes up and they have these tiered systems.
Now, like I pay, I think it's like $200 or whatever it is for the highest tier PlayStation subscription
because I'm a PlayStation maxi and uh at first when it first launched it was like the usual used
to be 80 bucks and then it was like oh if you want the like fancy one it's 200 but and I bitched
about it at first then I'm like oh wait a minute I get like all these extra games and it doesn't
even have the newest games like game pass has but I'm like oh oh, wait a minute, I get like all these extra games and it doesn't even have the newest games like Game Pass has. But I'm like, oh, if I get like three good games
a year on this, like this is totally worth the money and I get more than that out of it.
I'm fine paying that extra. It feels like why can't they have a tiered subscription where
maybe if you're on the 1199 one, which is the cheap one, you don't get the new game on day one.
Like maybe you get it after 30 days, 60 days or 90 days. And if you want the like, you know, new games on day one, maybe you're paying 30 bucks a
month, because that's still really good value. You're getting a brand new game. That's like a
$60 game $80 game, you're getting it for like $30 a month on your subscription. It feels like
there's better ways of them doing this than they have done. And it's actually wild to me that it's
been out for eight years, and they still are like this much in the hole with it. And it's actually wild to me that it's been out for eight years and they still are like this much in the hole with it.
And it's like they they've made these statements like, oh, it's technically like profitable because they do this.
Like, you know, they jig the accounting, basically not accounting for, you know, all the studios where it cannibalizes the sales, even though they're their own studios, their own like, you know, it's all under Microsoft.
And they're cannibalizing the sales on those. But they don't include that in the accounting because it's not the
P&L just for Game Pass.
And they're like, see, Game Pass is technically profitable, but let's not talk about our game
studios who were like basically, you know, stealing the money from to make this, to prop
this thing up.
So yeah, I'm just surprised they've managed to keep it going this long and it feels like
they should figure out a way to make it work.
But I guess they're trying to just get back market share from playstation which you know props to sony they've
managed to do it and have a three-tier subscription and make a bunch of money off it can i just say
really quickly all the devices that access game pass that aren't xbox you know what they all have
in common they run windows right it's not just like they're not just
playing for consoles here like they're playing for i don't know technological supremacy won that
though i mean that's that's that's different it's like nobody's linux isn't gonna come take amazon
right now is kicking their ass in cloud computing that's crazy my space won social media once upon a time you know
just saying my god lems mentioned uh ads on paid subscriptions and i i haven't been able to hear
a word since that happened there's a special place in hell for whoever fucking put ads in my paid
prime video subscription that person kevin lambert i can't tell prime after that oh my god
that person kevin lambert i can't tell prime after that oh my god all right i worked at microsoft
for a little over 10 years i promise this will not be a microsoft bro take though
um but it will be hot and spicy compared to some of the takes we've we've had here
um let me give you guys a little perspective. Open up your Chrome browser. Wait, excuse me.
You're brave or DuckDuckGo, you filthy purists.
Open it up.
Open up TradingView.
Open up MSFT and take a look at the stock chart of their business and how well they've been performing.
This is public information.
Gaming is about almost 10% of their business and the digital within that, including Game Pass, is about 80% of that.
So tell me that this is a bad business decision for Microsoft when for the eight years that Game Pass has been in existence, their gaming business financials have been steadily growing
as well. Now, you can make an argument it's terrible for the studios, but I think we've
heard some folks say that it's actually not. There's another perspective there. And then I
think we're all agreed that it's excellent for players. So who is this worst business decision
ever really bad for here in this world it's certainly not microsoft
maybe some game studio deals not players um so but i will so that's my high level take is that
they're crushing it with this are you kidding me but the the big but and the caveat there
is that what i think it's doing is it's creating a cultural shift
in the way players value games.
I know this happened to me.
Like, I used to be like, is this game worth $60?
Oh, it's on sale for $50, whatever.
Now I'm like, is it on Game Pass?
Shit, I guess I'm going to wait.
And that's really weird.
And I do think that's going to impact how people buy you know buy games in the future
like it's i i think it's good for a lot of developers it's excellent for gamers it's it's
clearly good for microsoft and has been but i i think that you know um in the future the way
people value games is just going to shift and And, you know, I don't even think
it's bad if they were losing money and the financials were clearly showing data that it
was bad. I also don't think that's bad to just piggyback off what Tony was saying. Like, you know,
having get the customers now is excellent because you can monetize them later but they're not having a problem monetizing
they're monetizing them now but even if they weren't i still think it would be a great business
move uh because of that but i'm curious if anybody else on this panel is looking at game pass and the
way that you value games is shifting because of it kevin if that was true though wouldn't wouldn't
part of this be that xbox sales should be up? Because shouldn't PlayStation and Nintendo players say, oh, well,
if I go over there, I can play all the games I want for $75 a year. So it's like the economical
thing. But Xbox sales are in the dirt. Partially, yes. But like Koji said, said you know some of this play is pc and other devices right and so
you know like i play a lot of the game pass games on my pc you know just like i play steam games
right so because i don't have i don't use a steam deck so i i do think it won't totally be reflected
in the xbox sales but i do agree partially it should but their gaming financial earning statements
have not been going down.
Maybe now they've peaked and will go down,
but they haven't in the eight years that it's been around,
unless I'm looking at different data
than you might be.
I think the thing that I continue
to struggle with Game Pass,
again, as somebody who plays it
literally every day,
is if this was a success,
if this was a key part of the business
that is generating significant revenue,
you would think the tune of the news that would be coming out of Microsoft around this product would be less doom and gloom
and more, look at this fucking thing, we're fucking geniuses, this is the best business model on the planet,
but it seems like every other week there is a story that is never refuted by Microsoft and Xbox themselves
or the developers with their games on the platform
that is talking about the poor position that Game Pass is in.
Maybe that's just selection bias,
but that's one of the things that I'm struggling with here.
Jerry, over to you, Dubb, to wrap up the topic.
Nah, you know, honestly, I feel like I won this one,
so I'll happily cede cede my time to doug um
enjoy whatever xbox comes out with uh next enjoy that it'll be the last one you didn't even get a
dub you were just called doug so over to you doug whatever dude i'll be the hype man also spangler
is going to go after me i don't know if you missed his hand. But I wanted to be the weird dude in the room and to point out beyond the Game Pass that Microsoft's biggest blunder and mess up here was
their original failure in getting into the mobile market to begin with. I always grew up being like,
why the heck is Microsoft all over my PC yet Apple and Android are on my phone like that is for sure the
most gigantic business mistake that they ever made I think they spent like seven
two point two billion trying to acquire Nokia to get into phones and all that
stuff and let's not also you're not old enough to remember Windows CE well yeah
and where is it where is it now right
it's definitely a thing yeah but it's not it's not here anymore and that's where
stop freaking dude he just took my point cool you jerry we're not we're back to not friends anymore
i hope you go down let's not forget about the zoom guys their second biggest blunder which is
even worse than battle pass thanks for front running me. Try to use your hand. Over to you, Spang.
Look, I'll keep it quick because we've been going on this for far too long. But,
Noch, you said something that I haven't heard in probably eight years, which is i walked into my living room and sat down and played my xbox and i think that's
the fundamental crux of of how people are looking at this and i think we're tapping into it now that
it's not an xbox play xbox died a long time ago unfortunately because and you know it holds a
special place in my heart but that that's not the game that they've been playing. What they have been doing, interestingly enough, is tapping into all the Xbox 360 players that have grown up and bought PCs to play games on.
And that's what I think is really exciting about games.
They do a 360 and walk away.
Exactly. Exactly.
Scott doesn't know how 360s work.
What you just described is a 180, Jerry.
You guys need to spend more time on the internet in the year 2007.
I remember when it was going to be the Xbox 720.
I was so hyped for that.
But anyways, all this is to say is that I think a large element of why people haven't gone into the Game Pass
and haven't bought into the Game Pass at a sentiment level.
Why do we, as people who game, feel like the Game Pass isn't doing well?
It's because while there's been this kind of simultaneous aggregation of games and presenting them in this unique way that completely changes how we value game. There's also been this
significant loss of trust in Microsoft and how they deal with games because of this switch up.
They went from a console developer, they went from this big player, they had exclusive titles,
they had Halo, they had Gears of War, they were coming out with exclusives, they had all of these
studios under their belt, they were purchasing all of these different studios. And then none of that
really went anywhere. And I think that at a fundamental level, people really don't know
what to expect from Microsoft. Like the way you guys are talking about Game Pass makes me want
to buy it. And I think it's kind of crazy given all the facts that you guys have laid out that
I haven't purchased it already. But I think that there's something to that. There's something
to, I don't know what shit Microsoft is going to pull. They've shut down studios. They've shut
down initiatives. You know, it's crazy that it hasn't gotten shit yet. And I think to somebody
else's point, do I think that this is a, do I think this is a bad play for them? No. Do I think that this is a bad play for them? No. Do I think that they are doing this from a position of strength? Absolutely not. I think Microsoft Game Pass might be all that kind of Xbox Game Pass might be all of what is left of Xbox as an institution.
And that is the real kind of shift in how people view Xbox.
It's not just for Xbox anymore.
You know, Microsoft is releasing their exclusives out onto other platforms.
They're completely re-engineering how they're being perceived by the market.
And what I think we're seeing right now in those articles and in the current sentiment that we have is the growing pains of that shift.
What is this?
They're shedding the shell of what they were, and it's painful, and it's confusing,
and we have no idea what that's going to look like in the future.
Deb, I'll give this as a quick PSA to anybody like Wills
who's thinking of downloading or paying for Xbox Game Pass.
Do not fucking connect your Riot account
if you care about what your League of Legends inventory looks like at all.
It unlocks every fucking hero.
It totally fucks everything up.
I had to make a new account to play ARAM.
I'm still not going to forgive them for that.
All right, we'll move on to our final boss topic.
As a quick refresher, final boss is a game where panelists have to pick a side.
I do not want to see fence-sitting.
This topic is a little weighty, so give me a second to sort of
set the stage here. I'm sure some of you have heard of it, especially, you know, being people
who work in the video games industry, but we're going to talk about an initiative that has been
going on for the better part of the last, let's call it nine months to a year or so, called Stop
Killing Games. For anybody who is not familiar with this, a very quick overview from their website.
Stop Killing Games is a consumer movement started to challenge the legality of publishers destroying video games that they have sold to customers.
An increasing number of video games are sold effectively as goods with no stated expiration date, but designed to be completely unplayable as soon as support from the publisher ends, this practice is a form of planned obsolescence and is not only detrimental to customers, but makes preservation effectively impossible, end quote.
There's a petition that is going on in the EU right now that has reached over a million signatures.
I believe that's the mark that it needs to go to Parliament to have a conversation about this.
There's two big questions here.
One, how practical would it be
to actually implement some of this stuff?
And does it just become bureaucratic overreach?
Or is this something that gamers should actually be entitled to
when they are purchasing a game?
I want to sort of add one additional piece of context here.
There is a lot of confusion around what this initiative actually is
because of a content creator that I mention all the time on this show, one of my favorite content creators, but absolutely dropped maybe the worst, most uninformed take I've ever heard from anybody ever about what Stop Killing Games is.
This is designed not to be retroactive, so we'll debunk that right away.
So that would mean new games would have to follow this law, not existing games that are in the wild.
This is not designed to change a multiplayer game to a solo player game once they shut down online servers,
but it's simply intended to be,
if you purchase a thing and you are buying that product,
you will have access to that product.
Now, it'll be unsupported, it'll be unstable,
it might not be able to connect to the friends
that you want to play the game with,
but you would still, in essence, have access to play the game, whether or not it's officially supported.
Set the stage there.
Hopefully that made sense.
We'll go to Koji, then Tatted.
I mean, this is going to be a hot take.
I'm going to use Tony's turn here as fucking show me the money.
In order to keep some of this stuff alive, it costs money.
And if not enough people are playing it, it's not feasible to keep it alive and i think that you got to know going into some of this stuff that like
that's just the way it is you know like the expectation set here is completely unrealistic
for a modern game i mean for some indie games fine and single player games fine even some
multiplayer games if you want to go peer-to peer to peer or whatever. But there are server costs involved.
I mean, you could open source a game once it dies, and that's a different story.
But I don't know.
To ask for this is kind of...
I understand why people want it.
And as a gamer, I would probably want it.
But as somebody who's already seen behind the curtain,
it's like, there's no way that this works in any practical way,
to be honest.
It's just not possible.
Okay, so I'm glad that you brought that up right off, Rip,
because I want to bring up two examples of two games
that are officially unsupported, still run live.
Starseed Tribes and not Age of Empires, Stronghold Crusader,
the original game,
are both games that are officially unsupported by the developers, have been taken over by the community and run on private servers that allow players to continue playing this game.
The other thing that was brought up...
Yeah, but hold on. Those games were built with private servers to begin with.
Starseed Tribes was never a centralized server-based game.
So this is the other piece.
Yeah, I completely agree.
The other piece to this is this, and then we'll kick it to Tadded.
The question that a lot of people who are in favor of stop-killing games are posing is,
if a purchase is not ownership, then is piracy really that bad?
Tadded, over to you.
I love that question.
So I look at this in a couple different ways i mean
we all can scream into the void every single day about what we want you know i think people used
to call that wishing uh but it doesn't mean it's gonna happen and here to me this is insane because
i do understand the the concept of it as a you know as a gamer it's amazing but like if your
favorite burger place shut down uh on the corner
are is the community just going to take it over because i really love eating those burgers
no that's that's insane to me also if it's community owned quote unquote community owned
we've seen that uh in the crypto space a lot it's called dows they usually fail um who takes the
liability for the game so the game if the game pushes any new update or if it breaks
or if the new technology comes out and it's not running,
who's maintaining the game?
Is it just random people in the community
out of the goodness of their heart?
Maybe, but to me, it seems like a very slippery slope.
Nobody responsible for liability if something goes wrong.
To Koji's point, no servers really being maintained here
if they didn't set
up for private servers in the beginning. So to me, a lot of this sounds more or less like a pipe
dream, because if you actually look in the terms and conditions of majority of the games that you
buy, which I guarantee you nobody here does, they actually say if the game shuts down and the servers
are shut down, you as a gamer are supposed to destroy all your copies of all the games, just
like they usually put that disclaimer in movies and all these things.
Obviously, the average person, including everybody here,
including a normal person, is not going to do that.
They're not destroying anything.
But that is technically what you sign up for when you play the game
and you agree to those terms and conditions.
So do I think this is going to go anywhere?
Do I think it's just people yelling for things that they want?
Like, we want free games, but we also want them to be AAA. We also want you to spend
$100 million developing it, but we don't want to pay for anything. To me, it's just a bunch of
people writing a list of Santa Claus and things they want. And it's like, hey, come back to reality
a little bit. Understand how the world works. This isn't how it works. And people screaming for it,
I get why why but it
really shows that i don't think they understand what really goes on behind the hood of a lot of
these things i hate being the host on this topic because i absolutely fucking love this um i will
say one thing you bring up the burger analogy of hey burger joint that you love shuts down what are
we gonna do sam and i are gonna take it over we're gonna start the burger joint up and people can
come to it i think people who are in favor of this movement
would actually argue the analogy is closer to you walk into the burger joint
you buy your burger combo you take a bite of your burger you take a sip of
your coke and then they go sorry we've shut down the burger joint and they take
your shit away before you're done enjoying it I thought will hand go up
we're gonna go to you okay also you, Tatted, for giving the lawyer take that I 100% expected from you and outlining that very well.
Do I think that this initiative is reasonable and is going to pass through the levels of EU Parliament and actually go through?
to pass through the levels of EU Parliament and actually go through? Absolutely not. Do I think
it is significant and needs to be taken as something more than a bunch of gamers just
yelling into the void because they don't know any better? Absolutely. I think this is a symptom of
unrest within shittification and in sloppification that has plagued the entire industry. How can we,
how can we look down on them and be like, oh, these are just a bunch of gamers who don't know
what they're talking about as traditional gaming is crumbling around us in terms of how companies
are able to make money and how studios are able to stay afloat. Like stuff is broken right now.
And this is a symptom of that.
What has really shocked me,
one is that I feel like I haven't seen people really in Web3
talking about this at all.
Well, that's the main thing that shocked me is because like we can be
the solution to this.
We can offer a road to this.
Tattered was talking shit on DAOs,
and yet DAOs usually fail.
But we've seen games persevere before
when they're given the opportunity
to be cultivated by their community.
So often what I see on the attachment to NFT collections is the idea that
you have a stake in the game. What is a governance token if not the ability to have ownership in the
game? I think this movement represents something. It represents unrest. It represents unsatisfaction
with the way that things are currently done. And I think we as Web3 have an opportunity and an obligation to
listen to the distress that is coming from gamers and their critiques and why they are angry
specifically, instead of just tossing it aside and saying they don't know what they're talking
about and they're all full of shit. I think we should listen to them. And I think we should see
how can we maybe not solve the problem that they're asking for? Because I will agree,
it does seem a little unfocused and a little sporadic. And the people who are so-called
leading the movement aren't the ones who actually know what they're talking about.
But is this important? Absolutely. And do we have a chance to, you know, listen to these concerns and build on them?
A hundred percent.
And I think that that's what a lot of us are trying to do.
We're trying to fix a broken industry.
And this is a symptom of that.
All right, real quick.
I see literally no hands except for Sam.
So I know that hands were up.
If you've got them up, put them down, put them back up.
Hopefully I can see them then.
I will add one piece of context to this.
There is an active lawsuit that Ubisoft
is fighting because of the shutdown of the crew, in which Ubisoft is now arguing, you never owned
the crew. You did not purchase the game. You bought a license to play the game. If you've got a
physical copy, if you spent money, if you own the actual disc to play this game, no, you don't. You
own the license. That license has been shut down. We've removed
the crew. You have no access to it.
I think at the core of this argument,
it is, as a gamer, when you
make a purchase to buy a game, are you buying
a game, or are you buying a license?
That's ultimately what I think
a lot of people are trying to find out here. We're going to go to
Sam, and then to Kevin Lambert.
Man, those dudes
just continue to find new ways to suck.
My take on this one is, you know, I think Good Old Games,
it was trying to solve this for a long time.
If anybody knows the website, goodoldgames.com,
they've created a DRM-free marketplace
where you can buy games and truly own them.
And it's just a shame that more people aren't doing that.
But I think this is another case where,
and I'm sure, you know, capitalistic knock would agree with me here,
that capitalism is the solution,
not a fucking petition that's going to force people to do things
that are not in the best interest of their business.
Maybe we should be supporting organizations
that are creating a marketplace
that actually prioritizes this instead of the alternative.
The only counterargument I have to that, Sand, is that the only reason my iPhone has USB-C
is because of the EU and not because of capitalism.
So maybe we can't rely on the visible hand of the market to fix everything, you know?
Well, my fucking iphone
still has the previous one and i'm frustrated because my girlfriend my fiance has the new one
and so there's 74 fucking iphone chargers and i never seem to have the one in front of me that
actually fits my phone so every solution has multiple problems i could point out there koji
kevin over to you. That was pretty good.
Spang had a really good take.
I'm going to preemptively give him MVP for me, by the way,
so we can just close that loop.
That was such a good take because there's the problem statement
and the solution that came along with it.
And the solution is not viable, sadly.
I mean, what are you going to do?
You're going to hand over to the community. What if there's IP involved where you literally can't do that? The community can't operate. The IP has to go with the game. By the way, this is only a
consideration for live service games, not for boxed, you know, boxed games. Right. We're talking
about live service games that shut down. And so totally agreed with the problem statement
here. It's excellent. And it is a symptom, you know, that that we're seeing. And the, you know,
the solution is stop shutting down games. You're like, okay, one way to do it, not practical.
But I thought have ever since this movement came up, I've been thinking, is there a more practical
solution that would also address the problem statement. And where I go with this is like a sunset, you know, a more transparent sunset clause
and developer exit commitments where you're just like, this wouldn't add anything to the,
you know, the cost of development.
It's just like, hey, if you're taking on a live service game, these are the things that
you need to be transparent in the very real possibility that you need to sunset this.
And just kind of setting those up front, even if it's just like expectations more clearly so that gamers could be like, F this, I'm not going to play this if it could go down, you know, kind of thing.
kind of thing. I'm not saying double down on we should have told you better, but, you know,
some combination of transparent sun setting procedures and upfront expectation setting,
I think does some damage on the problem statement without, you know, exactly doing the you can't
kill the game handed over that everybody's asking for. Okay. So one of the things that I want to
touch on that you mentioned, and then I'm going to kick it over to tony um is in the case of single-player games a lot of drm checks require
online activation or an always online requirement before you can even play the game in the case of
the crew which is the game that ubisoft is currently fighting off lawsuits for the actual
argument there is that this is a single-player game that has been shut down entirely because Ubisoft has made the decision that we are no longer going to support the online servers, which are required to check that you actually own a license to this game, which will then allow you to play the game that you currently physically own.
Stop Killing Games is in part arguing that that should go away. If I own a single player game, that I have the game, I have the physical copy,
I should not have to check online
to play this game once it has been
sunset. Tony, over to you.
Yeah, I'm going to go, I'm actually going to echo
something that Sam said, but with a slightly
more cynical take.
I think it's
like a non-issue, and this is like a very vocal
minority. And the reason that I feel that way is, is backed up by, you know, 15 year old data.
So take this for what it's worth. But I remember, I remember when good old gaming was, was like
starting to ramp up. And in fact, I was running marketing for the Amazon retail video games team
at the time. And when they were a competitor of ours, I actually got, I was running marketing for the Amazon retail video games team at the time. And they were a competitor of ours.
I actually got, I think I got promoted my first year, the year that I wrote the doc about how we were going to take over DRM free gaming because it was such a hotspot for the community.
And we went and negotiated just an incredible amount of deals.
Ironically, the largest one with ubisoft uh to
get them to actually strip a bunch of the drm out of their games and we ran like a three-week sale
and like i went out and researched like we all of the games were the cheapest the games had ever been
and they were all drm free and we put it on the fucking home page of amazon.com
and no one gave a shit uh like at that point steam was so entrenched and embedded
and i said it earlier people uh there there's a whole subset of people many of them are probably
on this panel um that either currently or in the past have purchased games during the steam summer
sale as a form of entertainment without actually ever even intending to play those games uh there's
a whole like there's
one of those one of those third-party sites we were talking about earlier that was sprung up
around like you can go and check how many hours you have left in your steam library that you're
you know for games you're never going to play um there's a whole meta around that right and
this is i think this is like an extension of that there's like a small group of people
who believe very strongly that there is a small group of people who believe very strongly that
there is a large group of people who would play the crew after the servers shut down and that they
should and they feel entitled to continue to be able to play the game whether or not they're right
or wrong i just don't think it matters it's a real show me the money conversation like it's just
you know who gives a shit like and and i feel that way because consumers have told us again and again
that they don't give a shit.
And if that wasn't true, then as Sam said, good old gamer would be the dominant form of retail sales for PC games right now.
But it's not.
Yo, consultant Tony has become a shark.
I love it.
This is the guy that I want in my corner.
All right.
I have to pose the question before we kick this to Jerry.
Really, this breaks down into two arguments on the side of four stop killing games when you purchase the
game you are making a purchase you own that title you are entitled to the ownership of that product
in the same way that you would with a purchase of literally anything else the other side is that you
don't own the game you You've never owned the game.
You own a license to access that product.
And as a developer, I can shut down that product at any time.
You know, Blizzard famously, in the terms and conditions of Overwatch,
explicitly says, we can shut this game down at any time.
Not only do they say that, but they go as far as saying,
we can also remove your access at any time for any reason at
all even though you've paid us the 80 to buy overwatch one or you've paid us you know 150
in cosmetic purchases i want to maybe throw a little wrench into the mix here do you believe
that purchasing in-game is ownership because i think that is the core part of the stop killing
games argument jerry over to you i mean i don't understand why all these people don't just
fucking make MetaMask wallets
and, you know, come over to
the dark side of the world because
this sounds like the same bullshit we've been talking
about for like the last four years.
So, you know, I just don't
get it, man. Like, what do we
want people to do? It's like, okay, the game is not
working. It's not economically viable
at this point. But we got it because you bought it you know for fucking 4.99 from a target bin
we got to keep the shit on you know like what's what are we doing here this this is the kind of
shit that makes me go like i'm literally about to go look myself in the mirror and go like why don't
i just go work in private equity or something? Why do I deal with these fucking idiots?
These like vocal minority that catches steam and you know, then everyone on reddit talking about it. This is
I hate every part of this, you know, I just like
That's gaming at its core. Yeah, this is so at the top of this topic
I said a guy I really love in pirate software gave a fucking ice-cold take
Jerry you just echoed a lot of this the core here is not you must keep the game online
Indefinitely is is that simply people should have access to it
Even if it is unofficially supported even if it's no longer managed by the actual game developer
Tatted I saw that hand go up immediately after I
Hold on no then they should go fucking put that shit on chain,
go fucking call John Radoff, do some D-pin bullshit,
and go pay for a server yourself.
Like, you know, what the fuck?
Who says where the server has to come from?
You're teeing us up for something that Lems will talk about shortly.
Tatted, over to you and then to Lems.
The only thing I wanted to make a point of here is
we're all missing a huge, huge point of this,
and it's like, yes, you buy the game.
But you know what you don't buy when you buy the game?
The IP that that game's attached to.
You bought the game.
You bought the game itself.
The game and the IP are two completely separate things.
So if a game shuts down and the IP wasn't included in that thing that you purchased because you don't own the IP, then all of what we're saying is nothing.
you purchased because you don't own the ip then all of what we're saying is nothing i mean do you
still want that same exact game just completely stripped and devoid of all of its ip uh to
basically be like a reskin like the whole you know other deed world that yugo launched a couple years
ago i don't know but that's that's really what we're talking about here you know you know hold
on knock dude this is why gaming isn't great anymore right we gaming used to be fucking punk rock dude
gaming used to be like the sex pistols or like you know some cool shit and then we just started
putting red tape and everything we're talking about terms and conditions and we're talking about
end licensing like agreements and stuff and it's like come on man what as an industry the fact that
we've taken like i'm not saying this panel like this is an interesting conversation so i'm not like shitting on you
guys for putting this forth as a topic in the show i'm shitting on everybody who's like involved
in the games industry for just like having this be something that has been like the talk track
for like the last month you know i can't wait for this shit to go away you know when you used to buy
a game uh and you owned the physical cartridge,
you could still play the game, even if that company shut down.
I think that that is a key piece to what these people are arguing.
Will, hand came back up quickly over to you and then over to Lems to tee us up.
Legal bullshit aside, I think that's the whole area that we're trying to get
to that sentence legal bullshit aside which is what you can't with this because it's all
about the terms and conditions right like it's about the ip sure but people have been making
sex mods for skyrim since 2011 and no one seems to give it and and Bethesda is okay with that and
everyone is kind of okay with that because they know that's not Skyrim every like you know I I
don't get a letter from Microsoft when one of my buddies draws a swastika in my server to piss me
off you know like these these are things that just happen and it's stupid and it's retarded and it's horrible use of
the ip but like that's the like that should like the fact that that is what we're getting caught
off on is what is pissing people off i think and and where this vehement sentiment as jerry said
you know you used to be able to play a game and mess around with it download cool things to have
fun with it and that is exactly what you cannot do now,
because there's the potential that in three years
after somebody shut something down
and they've been running it for three years,
that it's monetizable again.
They want to be able to take that back off you.
And that pisses people off.
I fucking knew our resident Zoomer
was going to be on my side on this one.
Lens, here's up for the last topic.
And after you raise your hand to answer Lens' new question, give us your MVP.
All right.
First, I'll say, like, so every week I go on Reddit to see, you know,
some news of what's happening in the gaming industry.
And when I stumbled on this, my God, Reddit was insane over this thing.
They're like, yeah, fuck the game studios.
They need to, like, support these forever.
And they need to pay support these forever and they
need to pay for all the costs they're taking all our money so like and i'm just like man do none
of you guys have any business sense whatsoever of like what this actually would mean they haven't
yeah i know i know four years it's reddit right this is what it is but as someone who also like
used to live in the eu moved away for over a decade and came back again. I'm like, as much as my passport makes it really easy to come back,
the amount of bureaucracy here is so fucking insane.
And then I think of this is coming from the EU side.
And they're like, yes, we have a million signatures.
We're going to do this.
And the EU are going to pass this thing and force everyone to do it.
And I'm like, that's 450 million people in the EU.
So 1 million people is not actually that much relatively.
But the private servers thing is like maybe,
but like trying to force devs and studios
to like maintain these things is just an insane take.
And like gamers are just like so unrealistic with that.
But it does lead to the question of like,
does web three actually fix this?
As much as we say that like in an ironic like ironic, like, tongue-in-cheek way,
but could this actually be something?
Like, you know, Jerry, you kind of alluded to it earlier,
but put things on chain.
I think it was Chris Heatherly had a tweet on it earlier,
like, hey, like, this thing is happening,
but why don't we actually look at Web3?
Does it actually, like, solve this problem?
People can have decentralized servers and do that sort of thing,
and, like, maybe we can actually have a real solution here,
and maybe we can get some gamers on board with it.
Yeah.
Well,
I'll go first.
I'm so happy to thank you for calling on.
My hand was up,
sir.
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
I'm going to let you finish Jerry,
but I also,
I have to go.
So I just want to say this really quickly.
And then,
and then I'm going to go,
first of all,
you're all my MVPs,
especially dove for telling somebody to put their fucking hand up.
Incredible.
But I'm going to have to go with Spang, MVP this time, just because, you know, he made some very, very good points.
But I think it's all part of the contract that you enter into, like, socially when you're accruing these things, right?
Like, everyone, well, not everyone, but a lot of people on this panel know that I'm a big movie collector
and I collect 4K Blu-rays, right?
But part of that is like,
hey, I own the physical thing.
And the reason I'm buying it
is because I don't need an internet connection.
I don't need anything in order to like play these movies.
And I understand the sort of parallel between that
and buying the physical games. but here's the thing though like
if i'm buying like purchasing a movie from say like apple or amazon or whatever not like renting
but purchasing through their service i know realistically that if for whatever reason prime
is no longer a thing or apple ceases to exist, I'm not going to have access to those movies anymore. So I'm not actually buying them for life. All I have is just, you know, a lifetime, let's say,
rental of that thing. And so like the gamers have to realize that right now, what they're getting
isn't necessarily, you know, full access to this thing forever. It's just sort of this like a
rental in perpetuity or something and so if
on-chain gaming can fix this so long as the promise that is being made and delivered is
hey this thing is going to exist forever and whether that means you know open source servers
or peer-to-peer or whatever like if it's built that way then i think that on-chain gaming can fix this you know as long
as we adhere to the promise anyway uh i think i answered all the questions spang mvp let's go
way to leave us koji appreciate it jerry uh you get your turn now yeah i mean listen like these
are the same people that are all bitching about, like, this is, you know, I apologize to my fellow panel here, because I called you guys hypocrites.
But, you know, really, you guys are an extension of the average gamer who are, again, you know, we can look at them being hypocrites here.
Because these are the same people that you go on Reddit, I'm sure if Limbs goes on the same subreddit and just searches back to about two or three years ago, they'll all be bitching about Web3, right?
searches back to about two or three years ago, they'll all be bitching about Web3, right?
So these are the same people that have a possible solution in front of their face,
but then they're like, oh, but Silk Road.
And it's like, you know, people don't want, like, here's the thing, man.
Like, they don't want a solution.
They don't want this to be fixed.
They just want to complain about it, right?
And I've never really been a fan of people like that, as you can maybe tell.
But, you know, then therein lies the problem.
Let's say that they all make the jump.
They all make wallets on Magic Eden and OpenSea and all this stuff.
They're putting together some shitty DAO to talk to John and get a server going for the crew.
Then they're just going to listen to this panel where these people
are also hypocrites like as i pointed out at the beginning and then they're just going to be like
oh it's the same bullshit over here you know but no i mean i don't know i do think there's like
an answer in there somewhere but um you know i just like they don't actually want it right they
don't actually want it they just want to fucking rattle their swords and you know fire each other
up and then just keep posting on the game for them is posting on reddit okay it's not the crew it's it's fucking
karma on reddit nothing but i hope i hope they i hope they do want it john i hope you become a
multi-billionaire fucking making servers for these losers and you deal with them instead of me
reddit is their ct like we log into ct every. They just log in and love to just bitch and moan. Jerry, was there an MVP in all that?
Oh, yes.
My MVP is, sorry.
I was very unfocused today, Nock.
I apologize.
It's Dub, because I rudely interrupted him,
and he also knows the greatness of the Zune.
And, yeah, Dub's the man.
All right, Dub.
Is it reciprocal?
Who's your MVP?
No, dude. fuck that guy.
I don't care about the question either.
I just want to give MVP to Koji for using Parallel in his statement.
I thought that was just a wicked good advertisement.
So yeah, definitely MVP for Koji for that one,
even though he's not even here to hear it.
I may have actually blacked out during that because I didn't hear anything
about parallel.
Tony V over to you.
Yeah.
I share some of Jerry's perspective on the,
the impact that the,
this particular audience has on the industry
without quite as much vitriol for the individuals in that audience.
I do think that they, by and large, talk a lot of shit
and don't back it up with their wallet.
So in the spirit of show me the money,
it's not where I go for my business advice.
I think that's a good thing.
We don't want to be doing business based on the advice of Reddit.
But I am going to have to give it to Spang, too.
Not just because he had really good takes today, but because he's never afraid to just get out there and talk about the crazy shit that happens in his life.
And I love it every time he comes up here
did i just mute myself wills who's your mvp
my mvp has got to be kevin because uh for the same reason that i often give uh mvp to tony
i love it when someone just quit with chatting through a topic and someone comes in with a yeah for the same reason that I often give MVP to Tony.
I love it when someone just,
we're chatting through a topic and someone comes in with a,
yeah, I actually spent like half of your lifetime
working at this company.
So here's the context.
And that's why I come on these shows.
And that's why it's an honor to talk to all of you.
Maybe the most creative way
anybody has called any of us old.
Tatted,
Lems,
Sam,
Yomi MVPs.
My MVP,
I gotta go with Kevin.
I thought Kevin was on fire today.
I really agreed with all of his takes.
So Kevin Lambert,
you're the man.
Lems,
what do you got?
it's gotta be Jerry for,
he defended the gigaverse and called out all the hypocrisy
Called out all the bullshit Reddit gamers
Jerry's on fire today, good job Jerry
Hey, thanks, Lemz, I appreciate that, I thought I had a solid
Episode, you know, if I got no votes
I was gonna, I was really just gonna be like
Does anybody have connections at private equity?
I'm fucking done with this industry, so
Thank you, Lemz, I'll stick around in gaming
For at least one more week
For the love of God, don't give him a second vote.
I'm giving Jerry minus one vote with my vote.
I also, I can't believe Kevin's getting votes after saying that fucking Microsoft's Game Pass is a good business model.
I'm still in fucking shambles over that.
Spang is getting mine. Spang feels like he was on the pulse tony was
runner up for me i thought he was also close and i to be clear i love that tatted and kevin
both had divergent opinions on that i just it's hard for me to wrap my mind around how it's it's
good but spang wins for me oh thanks for saying something nice about everybody except for me and
dub he actually said something negative about you so it's yeah um all right i know i'm not supposed to give my mvp but since it's not going to affect about
anyway wills you're my mvp tony was definitely a close second wills give us uh 45 seconds what's
going on what do you want to shill you're the mvp i want to see i want to shill knock for doing
uh an amazing job hosting today.
Everybody, wherever you are, give them a round of applause.
Crushed it.
I do want to shill mandatory shill of my baby project, the Battle Pass.
We are coming to the end of Season 1, so get in there, get your rewards.
We've got Pokemon cards, we've got crazy NFTs.
Go crush some of that and then get some more awards for season two, which is coming, and it's going to be a lot more fun, a lot more customizable, and we're not going to get crazy shit coming on that.
But otherwise, I'm just going to do the usual tearjerker of I love you guys, and I love doing this every week.
Did this guy just back-to-back MVP?
I wasn't hearing why.
I did, and I think I'm never leaving Europe Because of it I think as long as I say
The EU I get them
You are in rare
Rarified air over here buddy I think that's only
Been pulled off once before I'm not gonna name
Names or anything it's not three
In a row though Jerry's
The guy that gets his own name tattooed
Across his back like he's wearing a jersey
Jerry you're the type of guy
That you're on MVPsps when i'm not around
brother wins a couple mvps while i'm on vacation he's feeling good about himself
looks amazing in stripes that's all yeah hey dude knock you chose to host instead of come
facing me on this panel dude you coward no no no all right listen listen it's funny that will
shill the battle pass
because i'm about to do so in a second here but look leaving gamified five stars on spotify or
apple podcast is like doing a side quest it doesn't take that long but it helps unlock way better gear
so get so go get some xp and help us beat the boss the link will be pinned to the top of this space
welcome to the chain where frost fuels fire Fire gameplay meets Glacier-grade tech. Avalanche, the official chain of Gamify, your gateway to a frostbitten frontier of fun.
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Climb, earn, unlock NFTs and AVAX tokens, then meet me at the next summit for the after
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Summon isn't just a protocol, it's a passport to permanence.
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Game 7.
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No existential meltdown, just a shiny AI-powered studio
that lets you build and launch games faster than you can say,
I swear this is the last coffee I'm having today.
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Open the AI studio, dream of something unhinged,
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Go to Remix.gg to learn more about the official game of Gamified.
I'll leave you with this.
While I was reading all of that,
I was literally just watching my puppy take a shit in the hallway next to me.
I'm going to go deal with that.
Appreciate you guys for being on the show today.
Great episode.
We'll catch you guys next week.
God damn it.
You deserved it.
Good job, little puppy.
Good job.
Love you, Doc.
Thanks for guest hosting.
Thanks, everybody, for making it another good show.
Appreciate you guys.
