July 11, 2025 • 54 mins
This week we talk about Chris Dring (and other journalists) lied about Game Pass not being profitable, Krafton’s shady moves with Subnautica 2, Escape From Tarkov making their players mad before their 1.0 release, Stop Killing Games gets 1 million signatures and much more. Click this link for my socials, all of my other content and ways to support: https://linktr.ee/baundiesel
00:00:00 | Intro
00:00:24 | Opening
00:10:39 | News
00:50:30 | Updates
00:53:10 | Wrap Up
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
This is the Bonfire Gaming Podcast episode 345.
I'm your host Morgan AKA Von Diesel, and this week we'll be
talking about Game Passes, obviously profitable Escape from
Tarkov's weird moves right before their full launch, Stop
Killing Games hits 1,000,000 signatures and much more.
(00:25):
I have been doing this stuff fora long time.
I started doing content creation, I think I want to say
in like late 2016, early 2017. It started off with literally
making my first Twitter account,by the way, and posting builds
(00:47):
and screenshots of The Division One.
This was in, I want to say like spring, summertime of 2016.
I, I started doing that. I wanted to get involved in the
community. I had been involved in Reddit
for a long time. The the Division subreddit was
kind of a hot mess and I wanted to try to find something else.
And at the time I was silly enough to think that the Twitter
(01:13):
community would be less of a hotmess.
And you know, that had its ups and downs, but I've been doing
this a long time. I went from posting screenshots
and build pictures of of the bills I like to use in that game
to getting involved in Twitch asa viewer, watching various
streamers, specifically The Division's developer, Ubisoft
(01:35):
Massive and Red Storm had like aweekly community stream they
would do. So I used to watch that and
comment in there and started getting to know people and they
even did a gameplay stream fairly often as well.
I would jump into that and you know, even sometimes play with
the devs and that was a lot of fun.
(01:55):
Then I moved on to my own Twitchto starting this podcast, which
used to be of the Division podcast and you know, it's all
kind of gone from there. Now I have this podcast, the
Mass Effect one. I do believe they're not stream
on Twitch still occasionally. I'm still very active on social
media on basically all of them. And it's, it's been interesting
(02:19):
seeing the evolution this week. I saw an article about how Asman
Gold is the largest gaming streamer currently and ever,
ever is kind of a weird measure.It's kind of how like every time
a game console comes out, they're always like, it's the
most of this console or those console ever sold, though.
(02:41):
It's like, you know, the, the games industry in general is
growing pretty quickly. And, and so yes, a, a, a product
that releases today has a reallygood chance of selling more than
one released 5-10 years ago. But that's a whole different
thing. And it relates to, you know,
the, the whole thing with the, the, the, the biggest creators
(03:01):
now are obviously bigger than ones years ago.
But asthma gold is a unique situation because I, I don't
even care to get into the political side of things with
him really. He's obviously way out of his
depth and basically everything he does.
Asman Gould is a really interesting guy because he's not
particularly smart. He's not, at least in my
(03:24):
opinion, he, he's not charismatic or interesting or
well spoken or funny. He's just a guy who made, you
know, started doing some stuff with good timing and and
probably had a lot of luck. And when you look at a lot of
big streamers, sometimes there are people who are just
(03:45):
genuinely the most charismatic people ever.
If they weren't content creators, they would be some
other kind of personality and some industry, right?
And then you look at other people.
I think Azman Gold's a pretty good example of someone, if he
wasn't the biggest Twitch streamer in the world or, or,
you know, online game streamer or whatever you consider him.
(04:07):
He would at best to be just likea regular person who works 40
hours a week at the job he doesn't really love.
Or he would, you know, especially with some of his what
appear to be some mental health issues and, you know, lack of
being able to care for himself like a normal person would,
would potentially be, you know, in a bad situation or, or or one
(04:30):
worse. You know, his current situation
doesn't seem amazing, but he's, you know, a multi multi
millionaire, so I'm sure that helps.
But seeing someone like him become this to have this label
the the, the biggest, you know, game streamer or whatever is is
weird and it's concerning and it's depressing in a way, and
(04:51):
it's not surprising at all. I, I think the whole rise of,
you know, and the influencer content creation side of things
of, you know, these people who are extremely toxic, not really
all that smart, very click baitysensational.
This started a long time ago and, and maybe even before I
(05:11):
know this, but I noticed it backin my The Division days there,
there was a guy named sync back then and a few other people who
I will remain nameless because they're like Voldemort.
If you say their name, you fear that they'll appear again.
And, and I don't want that smokeat this point in my life, but
(05:32):
these people think was the founder of upper upper echelon
gamers. I, I think he still makes
content. And predictably, he's the last
thing I saw from him is that he's one of these hyper right
wing, hyper toxic, hyper anti woke or whatever they're calling
themselves now people now. And that's fashionable now.
(05:55):
It's like the best way to becomepopular, it seems.
But you know, there were people doing this very same stuff, you
know, back when I started makingcontent and, and likely before
right now, back then, I think itwas a little more taboo.
I think people had less patiencefor it back then.
I I think it was like more annoying back then basically.
(06:17):
And it, it was just less acceptable, right?
Unfortunately, it kind of seems like that isn't the case anymore
and it's it's become the meta ifanything, But I, I think
sometimes people don't realize that this was brewing for a long
time. Obviously we had like the
(06:38):
gamergate stuff a few years ago and, and to the point where in
the last year you, you even saw the, you know, the movement by
people like asthma and gold and grums and, and a bunch of these
losers, as you know, Gamergate 2point.
OI don't think it ever quite metthe same veracity, but it was
(06:59):
just as awful. And I guess like my whole point
of talking about this is that I worry this isn't going to
change, at least not anytime soon.
You know, as a content creator who never really made it, you
know, even to this day, I basically just do this stuff for
fun because, I mean, I'm not seeing huge amounts of growth
(07:19):
or, you know, my numbers are forme perfectly fine.
But you know, for anyone you know, getting into this now, if
they haven't been doing this forever, they would maybe not
seem worth it to them that that's fine with me.
But it also comes with the caveat of me knowing I could, I
could do like 5 things that I bet I would multiply my reach
(07:42):
and my engagement and my views and everything.
At least double, triple, quadruple, if not much more.
If. I did all of this stuff these
people do right, all of all of these things that were you
essentially sell your morality to become a you know, a a a
person in this kind of grifting industry of hypersensitivity to
(08:07):
anything that doesn't agree withyour personal morals.
Honestly, your even your personal morals likely being in
question and you do I really believe that all of these people
truly, really deep in their heart, you know, feel the things
they say are, are they truly outraged by these things they
pretend to be outraged by? I no, I, I truly don't believe
(08:28):
they are. I, I think they have found their
niche and they are exploiting itfor everything they can and
they're unfortunately making generational money doing it.
And that's, you know, that I think there's a lot of factors
too, Like why are people even drawn these people?
I think there's a lot of people who are lonely and sad and
unhappy with their lives. And they, they see someone like
(08:49):
this who kind of looks like them, who just happens to also
have millions of dollars in their bank account.
But you know, talks like them and, and, and kind of looks like
them and seems kind of equally sad and depressed as they are,
despite having all that money. And, and you just kind of get
indoctrinated into this, this awful world.
(09:13):
What I would say is the best thing you can do if this stuff
also annoys you is obviously don't partake in these people's
content. Don't watch their streams, don't
watch their videos, don't reallyeven engage with things about
them or with them directly on social media and stuff.
Just ignore them because for them even bad interactions are
(09:35):
are are good. You know, unfortunately, find
people who aren't doing those things, find people who seem to
be trying to be at least positive in some capacity, who
seem to be expressing things that they truly do believe and,
and, and support people who are doing that stuff, especially
small people. Obviously, this sounds like I'm
basically saying support me. I'm not really even saying that,
(09:58):
you know, support someone. You know, if it's me, great.
I love it. You keep watching my videos and
my podcast and interacting, and if you want to buy merch or get
a YouTube membership or a Twitchsubscription, whatever, however
you want to support a view or a comment to me is just as
valuable as a subscription or something.
Like, yeah, I'll take the couplebucks.
(10:20):
But one way or the other, I I just am, you know, happy to get
people's time because I know howvaluable that is.
So support good people, ignore the bad ones.
Let's try to fix this. Not going to say I'm hopeful,
but I would love to be surprised.
OK, let's move into some gaming news.
(10:41):
We're going to kick it off with a Game Pass discussion that has
been hilariously stupid over thelast week and has come to the
very predictable conclusion. So the, the, the topic of Game
Pass has been, you know, crazy basically ever since they
released it. Talk about profitability and and
(11:02):
sustainability and, and, and youknow, a handful of devs coming
out and saying that it's bad forthe industry, while it seems
like the vast majority either have no comment on it or think
it's good for the industry. Obviously that comes down to
personal preference, but you know that that that's kind of a
different topic in the last week.
(11:23):
Christopher Dream, who I think was formally the VGC and is now
one of the many, seems like hundreds, you know, at least
dozens of former games journalist who think that people
care enough about what they think to support them and, you
know, support their entire livelihood through Patreon with,
(11:43):
you know, mediocre podcast and dishonest articles being
written. You know, excuse my bias.
Chris String put out a tweet andI believe maybe a post on his
own stuff, I have no idea. Basically saying someone told
me, a source told me, of course,you know being very vague that
Game pass isn't profitable. If they count, I think it was
(12:05):
development cost of first party games.
This sets off a firestorm of people claiming that once again,
Game Pass isn't profitable. Game Pass isn't sustainable.
It's bad for gaming, it's bad for developers, it's bad for
Xbox, it's bad for Xbox players.Every article you can imagine
from every major outlet and I'm sure minor outlet as well, every
(12:28):
gaming influencer on social media, every content creator on
YouTube and Twitch and every platform, you know, ran with
this. And especially obviously the the
expected people, right? The the, the people who, you
know, the the console warriors and, and, and kind of what I was
talking about before with, you know, the the anti woke, like
(12:50):
all those people just as bad andoften the same people are the
hyper console warriors who you spend literally their entire day
posting about how much they hatethe other teams plastic box,
right. Like I said, these people tend
to be in similar groups as the people I was talking about in
the little preamble, but that's a different conversation, I
(13:11):
guess. And so this one tweet and
whatever else he put out from Chris during, you know, really
set off this firestorm of and, and it's something you see
happen all the time. It was unsourced.
You're, you're trusting this guywho in my experience, or from
what I've noticed, seems to be very convenient with the truth,
(13:33):
especially he, he especially seems to have an issue with
Xbox. And that led to a few days later
him recanting this claim, claiming that he had spoken to
some people who in fact notifiedhim that Game Pass is
profitable, even if you count first party game development
(13:55):
costs and all that. So that of course, set off
another discussion of one a bunch of people crapping on them
as they absolutely should for doing what he did, because he
put out that first statement, not because he honestly, he
probably knew it wasn't true, but he probably had enough
sourcing that he could at least like throw his hands up and be
like, what? I'm just saying what I'm being
told, guys. But he knew that that would
(14:17):
catch a lot of traction and get a lot of attention.
And you know, for someone who's trying to make a living now on
his own with this kind of what Iwould call the Patreon get grift
that you see so many of these creators and journalists and
influencers go to when, you know, I assume their regular
jobs aren't paying the bills. He, you know, he knew that
(14:41):
putting that out there, that's out there forever, right?
There's hundreds of thousands ofpeople, if not more who saw that
and they will never see his recanting or the coverage of his
recanting of this, who now forever just be like game pass
does suck, you know, and and he obviously did this in the
fallout of Microsoft doing theirlayoffs.
And he's the same type of personwho I don't think he did it
(15:04):
himself, but the same people whowere pushing the fact that Xbox
fired 9000 people when that wasn't true.
The true numbers around 1000, which still sucks, but it's a
big difference, right? A 9000 would be almost half of
Xbox where 1000 was, you know, obviously a much smaller
percentage and to the point where that got pushed so hard.
(15:25):
A game developer who's been in the industry for like multiple
decades posted that that he couldn't believe Microsoft fired
9000 people like he's one of themost senior individuals I've
ever interacted with in gaming. And even that got to him, right.
So anyways, during recants, his statement saying that he's been
(15:46):
told that it is profitable. That sets off, like I said, this
conversation about, you know, a bunch of people still trying to
like, kind of, you know, still hold their hate for their their
animosity towards Game Pass by saying things like, well, well,
what about marketing and stuff, you know, things that you know
who we don't, Who knows, right? And then, you know, like I said,
also people kind of crapping on them.
(16:09):
At least with Dream, he's been pretty blatant and and and at
least in my opinion, pretty blunt about his biased against
Xbox. Like he obviously sees Xbox as
whether he likes it or not, I have no idea.
But he obviously uses Xbox as like a foil is like, I can write
any negative tweet or article ormake a video, whatever, do a
(16:31):
podcast, whatever and and say bad things about Xbox and it's
going to get good attention. Whether it's true, who cares?
He obviously doesn't care too much about that.
Good for him, I guess. But what's frustrating is that
while he got called out and really showed his ass in this
moment, even though it's not going to change anything, he's
still going to be, you know, respected by too many people.
(16:53):
In my opinion. He's not the only one and
there's plenty of journalist. Jordan Midler is a big one, who
also hilariously is that VGCI think Andy Robinson as well.
I think you start to see a pattern here of people who just
very clearly, whether or not they have personal animosity for
the Xbox brand, I have no idea. I can't read their brains.
(17:15):
But if you see their reporting, if you see them on podcasts, on
videos and stuff like that, you know that's they're not really
hiding it, right? They, they are, at the very
least, you don't see them talk about other platforms the way
they do Xbox, even when those other platforms are doing, you
know, equally bad or even worse things in the industry.
(17:37):
I, I think that's kind of expected.
I've talked about this before where from a purely human
standpoint, I, I can appreciate that in the past, especially
PS4PS3 era, that PlayStation just put out a bunch of really
great games and people really love those games.
And that wasn't a particularly great era, especially PS4, Xbox
One for Xbox. And so, you know, people had
(18:01):
good feels for Sony, right? And, and it's, and now those
people are in their 20s and 30s and even 40s and they have
those, those biases, which are totally fair.
Everyone has a bias, right? But then I think there's also
been this trend in the last three 4-5 years of, you know,
these websites, these these gaming news outlets are, are not
(18:22):
doing great. It's not a great industry.
It's a very profitable industry.You know, we see all these
websites shutting down left and right, these podcasts and other
outlets, you know, falling apartbecause they can't get clicks
and they can't get ads and they can't do this and that.
And it seems like they've all basically resorted to, you know,
click bait rumors, sensational articles, all this and you know,
(18:45):
for deserved or not. I think that's AI guess a
subjective opinion. Xbox has become a pretty good
target for these people, it seems like, and for better or
worse, what I like, I expect content creators and like big
influencers and stuff to be kindof weird bias fanboys to a
(19:06):
point, like because, you know, no one's looking for integrity
from them, right? But what sucks is that, you
know, gaming journalism. Now, I, I think it's arguable
that there's no true games journalist out there, that
there's, there's no one out there who it is truly trying to
report on things in the interestof reporting on the truth,
right? It seems like now every single
(19:28):
one, whether it's the more experienced folks or not, are
basically just, you know, content creators with notepad on
their computer, right? And, and, and either a large or
an also large audience, whether they are self doing their own
thing like Chris String or whether they work for an IGN or
a Kotaku or a VGC or, or whatever outlet.
(19:49):
And, and I think that really blows because it means that
we're not getting, you know, basically any quality reporting
on gaming at this point because there's no money and quality
reporting. All the money is in, you know,
borderline toxic and dishonest sensational click baity
articles. Or maybe it is real news that's
(20:10):
being reported, but it's being reported in the most dishonest
way because that's the only way to make it worthwhile from from
a money perspective and. And and then the line gets
really blurry with like these really, really big content
creators. You've got people like skill up
and others who have like a gigantic reach a a larger reach
(20:30):
than many of these game news outlets, but also have a very
clear bias and I would argue a borderline hate or disdain for
certain brands and platforms andthings like that.
They don't really seem to hide it.
They don't even try. And, and my thing, what I will
say is that I don't even like, there's absolutely things to
(20:52):
hate on Xbox for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo 4, Ubisoft 4, you
know, and blah, blah, you know, insert whatever gaming
corporation here. My issue isn't that there's
people who are negative towards those are critical towards
those. My issue is is with people who
have no balance or, or, or very little balance and you know, the
(21:13):
kind of content they put out, you know, the people who only
put out sensational, toxic negative stuff and or the people
who completely ignore, you know,you know, who really ignore
brands they like and really focus on brands that they don't
like, Whether it is just strategically like I've been
talking about or because of a personal bias.
(21:36):
And at the very like, like, if you're going to hate, hate on
everybody and also try to love alittle, I guess.
And it's so hard at this point. There's been so many podcasts
and so many influencers and content creators and streamers
and journalists who, you know, Ifelt like we're doing a better
job of this, you know, four or five plus years ago and who have
(21:56):
like completely fallen off the wagon and the chasing engagement
and chasing clicks and chasing ad revenue and chasing, you
know, industry clout and things like that.
And I think that sucks. And, and I think all of that has
led to this moment where this fairly notable person in the
industry just straight up wide and is now, you know, trying to
(22:18):
be like, oh, my bad, I was wrong.
Which like, I appreciate that. But you do that in the, you
know, in, in in the aftermath and after the devastation.
Now you know, and in knowing that the initial statement
always gets more attention than the recantment, right.
Hilariously, I believe he put out this recantment either the
(22:42):
same day or close to the most recent Sir Connor report, which
is a big industry analysis on sales and things like that.
And it suggested that Game Pass likely grew 30% in June.
Kind of hilariously, I have to imagine that was boosted by, you
know, some games coming to it last month or coming soon, as
(23:02):
well as the Xbox Game Showcase where they showed off a bunch of
games that either soon or already or you know, in the
future are coming to Game Pass. And that probably got people
going and, and getting it on allthe platforms you can get it on.
There was also a kind of an interesting note, you know, kind
of a side note here that a LinkedIn profile from a laid off
employee suggests that Game Passdeals can range from $50,000 to
(23:25):
over 50 million. This is ranging from, I assume,
indie games all the way up to full AAA games from big giant
publishers and, and studios. This shouldn't be surprising.
Some deals are for games that have been out for a long time
and they're basically just a youknow, hey, we're we'll give you
it will spot you this much moneyand you and you can put you
(23:47):
know, we'll put your game on theservice.
And I think that there's a bonusdeals where like if you hit so
many downloads or so many players, you get more money and
things like that to the 50 million.
Like that's where, you know, you're paying for a big chunk of
a game's development with a deallike that.
So the deal like that you're looking at third party game, a
AAA game, likely that is, you know, day one on game pass,
(24:07):
maybe even as exclusive the Xboxor, you know, for a top for, you
know, six months or however long.
And and that's that's obviously a bigger deal.
I just I think at the end of theday, the whole conversation
around game pass is so silly because it would suck.
But if game pass was a drain on Xbox and Microsoft, they could
(24:29):
just turn it off. You know, they would just very
likely they would just refund people or, or give some kind of
credit to the people who had like months, if not years of
game pass saved up. They, you know, would likely,
you know, give people discounts on the, on the many of the games
for a limited time. So if you wanted to keep some of
(24:49):
that library, you could just buythem for a discount.
My honest opinion is that I don't, I don't think Xbox Game
Pass will ever disappear. I could very well see at some
point if it doesn't make sense for them, it would just be
reduced to a service more like PS Plus where you would get
older games and you know, indie games, stuff like that as part
(25:11):
of the Game Pass. And you would get first party
games maybe like eventually in the long run and you would get
like other perks and stuff like that.
But that doesn't seem to be the case.
And and if they needed to do that, they would just do it.
I I think that there's this weird assumption that Xbox is
like they have to keep game passforever.
Like they don't, they could justturn it off, right?
(25:32):
It would not be a great look forthem.
It would upset a lot of people, I think, including myself.
But they could just do it. Like if, if the numbers told
them it didn't make sense, they could just get rid of it.
And I feel like that point gets lost on people a bit.
So like I said in the opening, you know, mind who you're taking
seriously, you know, try not to fall for the bait and, you know,
(25:56):
check their sources to Subnautica Twos publisher
Crafton replace the striking distances founders right before
they and others at the studio were expecting a multi
$1,000,000 bonus. I believe the number was $250
million to be spread amongst thepeople at the studio.
So this has been pretty shady. This came along with news that
(26:19):
the game has been delayed to 2026.
And from what I can tell, there's already talked about,
you know, these these former thefounders of Striking Distance
who make the Subnautica series and where, you know, they were
acquired by Crafton, who is the pub G, you know, publisher a
year, two years ago. And it was all hunky Dory.
(26:41):
They're all, it was all, you know, good vibes, and now
they've removed all the craft and has removed the founders,
replaced them with their own people and now the game is
delayed and it's doesn't look great.
That's not a great situation to be in for Crafton or striking
distance. It looks real gross, especially
because it looks like the move may have been motivated by this.
(27:03):
I I assume it was part of the acquisition deal that there
would be, you know, if they hurtcertain hit certain milestones
with this, with this game or as a studio that the people at
striking distance would have this big giant bonus spread
throughout the, the team. And now that's not happening as
far as we know. So I, I think this is especially
notable because Crafton has beengetting tons of praise over the
(27:26):
last couple months because they acquired Tango Gameworks in the
Hi-fi rush IP from Xbox after that studio was shut down by
Xbox last year, despite, you know, people loving hi-fi rush,
even though they didn't buy it. And then, you know, the big hero
story was crafting, buying up the studio and the IP and saying
(27:49):
that they're going to make hi-firush too.
I believe this should throw a lot of water on that excitement
because Subnautica and striking distance is a is a proven
commodity. It's Subnautica was a huge hit
and the Symaka 2. I've seen tons of people hyped
about it just in my own kind of,you know, personal outlook and
(28:13):
this looks real bad. And if I was the studio that got
bought up by them who hasn't made anything yet and is likely
years away from putting anythingout.
I, I'm just saying and I, I, I, I always felt like that story
was, was a little overly cheeredfor because I wasn't under the
(28:34):
impression that Crafton is really the best steward on
earth. And they were mostly focused on
like pub G and mobile games and things like that.
This move, I think kind of reinforces that concern.
And I just, if I were people at tango, I wouldn't feel super
secure. My, my take on it was always you
know, the, the, the, the reporting was is that that Tango
(28:55):
was in trouble before Bethesda and Zenimax were even acquired
by Xbox that they were likely going to be shut down anyways
and an Xbox got them let them finish hi-fi Rush, which was the
project they were working on andit just still didn't make sense.
Hi-fi rush didn't sell very welldespite being critically praised
pretty highly. And they, you know, they, they
(29:19):
cut and run. I mean, you know, and, and The
thing is, at the end of the day,if, if a company like Xbox can't
make it work and, and doesn't feel like they can do it, I, I
just don't know what people think that Crafton brings to the
table that Xbox couldn't. I'm not going to praise Xbox for
shutting down that studio. I'm not going to say it was
justified. And I feel bad for the people
(29:40):
who lost their jobs and stuff, but like, you know what, what
does Crafton have that Xbox doesn't?
And you know, what makes people think that they can do what Xbox
couldn't? And then you see a move like
this. And I feel like, like, I feel
like this is dirtier than anything we've ever seen Xbox
do. Obviously, layoffs are gross and
studio shutdowns are gross, but,you know, avoiding this big
(30:00):
bonus by firing the founders of the studio you acquired kind of
suddenly, I don't know, that's dirty business, in my opinion.
Escape from Tarkov has made a bunch of really weird moves with
their game in this big update that seems like it's only a few
months away from the game actually releasing.
(30:21):
If you didn't know, the Escape from Tarkov extraction shooter
game has been in a beta or alphatesting for almost 10 years.
I believe it's nine years at this point and it's still a beta
game, despite the fact that they've, in my opinion and
basically treated it like a release game.
There's I believe some financialincentives for them to keep it
(30:43):
in beta, but they claim that they're moving it to 1.0 to full
release, probably at the end of 2025.
A big thing with Escape from Tarkov is they do these things
called wipes. Sometimes they're six months
apart, sometimes they're more, but it's where they reset the
game. You lose all your progress, all
your gear, you lose everything. They normally add new maps or
(31:03):
update maps and change mechanicsand add guns and gear and and
all then, you know, updates to AI and all this crap.
And then they so a wipe is essentially a reset of the game
with a big patch. And in the most recent wipe they
just did in the last week, they essentially turned into a
hardcore game. So Tarkov in my opinion, has
(31:24):
actually been made much more casual over the last 3-4 years.
And what happens is that there'sa bunch of streamers and content
creators who literally will playTarkov for like 10-12 hours a
day. And because they get bored in
between these wipes, a few of them were doing this thing
called, it's called a hardcore challenge, where you essentially
(31:45):
self-inflicted a bunch of rules that you could only buy
equipment from certain things orget it in certain ways and you
couldn't use some mechanics in the game that other people can
and blah, blah blah. Well, essentially what happened
is the developers of Tarkov haveimplemented a bunch of these
things into this wipe as like just part of the game.
(32:07):
So it's it's interesting to me Isome of the patches, some
they've already patched out someof these changes, which has made
a lot of people happy. Things like there were no quest
in the game when it when they first wiped, which is like the
main thing that you do in this game.
They they've made it so you havelike a pouch that even if you
(32:28):
die, you don't lose stuff in it.You used to be able to put
almost anything in there. Now it's only very certain items
that can go in there. So it makes, if you die, it
makes it truly devastating if you have a bunch of money or
gear on you, you can't even keepstuff that's like hard to get,
especially in early game. And you know, they, they made it
so that the, the, the vendors, like the stores that you can buy
(32:49):
equipment from are super expensive now and you don't make
as much money and, and all this stuff in some capacity.
They're essentially, you know, trying to go back to the roots a
little bit to make the game a little bit more what the vision
seems to have been like 6 or seven years ago.
But then they wanted the game tobe big and popular, so they made
it more casual. And I think most of the changes
(33:10):
were good in that way. So to me, it's just strange to
do this last minute. Like actually we're going to
make most of the people we've been targeting for the last, you
know, four or five years. Hate this right before this big
version 1 release, then, you know, right before the game
leaves beta. Just seems odd to me.
I, I think one of the issues with Tarkov is that it's gotten
(33:30):
a lot of coverage in the last couple years, especially because
so many other teams have tried to do the extraction shooter
thing. And especially in recent
conversations about Marathon andArc Raiders and stuff like that.
You know, they've kind of presented EFT Escape from Tarkov
as this like pinnacle of extraction shooters.
When really, you know, Escape from Tarkov is not a very good
(33:52):
game. It's a very janky game and it's
badly balanced and it's very buggy and it's on a bad engine,
at least in my opinion. And the studio, Bao State Games
is run by like someone who's extremely shady.
It's run out of Russia. It's run out of Saint
Petersburg. The the founder of the studio
(34:14):
has possible ties to like the Russian military and the Wagner
Group. There's a bunch of really weird
stuff they've done with money over the years where it looks
like he may have hoarded like 90% of their money and that, you
know, the people who work there might not really get paid very
well and it might be kind of a bad work environment.
And that all gets ignored because a lot of the journalists
(34:36):
and content creators who were covering like Marathon and Arc
Raiders just don't know anythingabout Escape from Tarkov.
All they know is that it's been fairly successful.
It kind of founded the extraction shooter thing even
though there were games before it.
But yeah, in the coverage of Marathon and Arc Raiders over
the last, you know, six months, it's just every time I see, you
know, whether it's kind of funnyor, you know, any of these
(34:56):
various other influencers and content creators being like,
yeah, they're all chasing that escape from Tarkov, whatever.
It's like, well, they'll never do that because Tarkov is this
like decade long process of, youknow, building a community and
stuff like that. And Tarkov also is kind of a bad
game. Like it's not a very good game.
It does some things that no other games do.
It has some really great gunplay.
(35:17):
It has moments where it's the only game that can do some of
the things it does. But I I still think it's just, I
think a lot of people who talk about Tarkov don't actually know
Tarkov and that's become pretty obvious.
And I think it's not great for the conversation.
I will give kind of funny creditthat a couple of their people on
their team did play Tarkov for acouple of weeks.
(35:40):
I think on stream they were getting some of the worst advice
and they really needed like one of like the Tarkov vets to kind
of come in and guide them a little bit more.
But I appreciate that they at least kind of tried to get into
it and see what it was all really about.
It's just such a hard game. Like in my opinion, Tarkov is a
game that you kind of have to learn it for like a year or two
(36:03):
and then you kind of figure out how it goes and then you kind of
decide whether or not you're a Tarkov fan or not.
So, so I'm curious to how they, they play this out for the, the
kind of 1.0 release. It's, I'm assuming they're going
to have like a casual character and then have this hardcore
mode, which it seems like they're testing right now.
And then they also have a Pve mode.
I, I don't know. And they, they, you never know
(36:24):
what they're going to do when they, they always delay
everything they do. The, the, the studio head will
change his mind at any given moment.
And he is especially influenced by the big content creators who
are related to the game, like Pasteli and others.
So we'll see what happens. I am definitely very.
Curious, the stop killing games movement has gotten 1,000,000
(36:47):
signatures and it's EU sign up. The big deal about that is that
it gets them recognition by the European Union.
They basically have to bring it up in some capacity.
And it means that they could pass some new laws or rules that
Wood forest any publishers in their region to follow these
(37:09):
rules to make sure games can be played after the studios or the
publisher stop supporting them. And most of the time when they
do that, they basically do it everywhere.
It's just cheaper just to have one development kind of path.
Now, in this case, that may not be true.
And there's even been thoughts of, you know, some publishers
may skip Europe. I find that pretty hard to
(37:31):
believe. It's a gigantic market,
especially for PlayStation. And I don't think that'll
happen. So one of the interesting things
that means this may be getting some movement is that a bunch of
gaming lobbyists in the EU have rallied against this movement,
basically saying it puts like anundue burden on publishers.
(37:51):
And, and the the truth is that may not even lead to anything
that big. I think honestly, the, the most
pressure that can be put is fromgamers on publishers to make it
clear the the thing about this whole thing is because like some
of the logic is kind of flawed, right?
Like some of the ideas around this aren't really realistic, at
least not with games that are already out and even moving
(38:14):
forward. I, I think the best way to
handle this would be for games to have multiple options, right?
So a publisher or studio, they could have like an expiration
date where when they are, you know, in the, in the terms of
the game, when you purchase the game, they make it very clear
(38:35):
that, you know, they, they, theywill definitely support the game
for at least two years. And even then they can probably
have an out. But they can say, you know, we
guarantee we'll keep the serversup for two years and then after
that, you know, we can't guarantee it.
And then if the consumer goes inknowing that it kind of covers
their butt, they could also, youknow, make a statement or even,
(38:58):
you know, they could, they couldalso do a thing where they, you
know, do a final patch that allows the game to function as
much as it can without servers, you know, to have some
experience. Anthem was a good example of
this. So which actually the same day
that the petition got a million signatures, EA announced that
(39:20):
Anthem servers would shut down in early 2026.
And Mark Dara, a former BioWare employee, did the whole video
about this and talked about how there's so many layers of
infrastructure in anthems designthat use different banks of
servers that it probably isn't really possible to actually make
the game function without essentially remaking a big chunk
(39:43):
of the game. So that he he said that
basically that the offline portions of the game are like
the intro and that maybe you could keep that accessible, that
maybe you could do like peer-to-peer stuff.
He he said that the consoles that this was released on to the
last generation likely couldn't handle all of the stuff that the
(40:03):
game needs. But it's very likely like modern
consoles actually could run all of the back end systems on its
own for single player, but that the multiplayer.
It's just likely isn't going to work.
And that, you know, it's also worth keeping in mind that this
petition is for future games. It's to make publishers and
studios in the future clarify how long a game will be
(40:27):
supported and and to potentiallygive options for people to, you
know, be able to play the game after it isn't supported
anymore. And the Anthem example is a good
one. The kind of weird part about
this has been that a large part of this movement has kind of
turned into just being like weaponized and just turning into
(40:47):
kind of like a brigading crew. Pirate.
Pirate. Oh, what's his name?
Pirate Software is a former Blizzard developer.
His dad is really well known in the gaming sphere back in the
day. If you've ever seen the South
Park episode with the World of Warcraft nerd to the big fat guy
(41:08):
who's like lean back in his chair, that's his dad.
That's modeled after his dad. He's become a pretty
controversial topic amongst you in general, but especially in
this, you know, stop killing games movement as he pretty much
came out against it. He's an ND dev now.
He has his own video game he works on.
He's also part of some other publishing things and stuff like
(41:29):
that. And he's I don't love him.
I I find him to be very pretentious and a big know it
all and and kind of a kind of like a nice jerk.
I guess. That said, I also think that
this whole thing is really turned him into this like pariah
that he probably isn't really and has kind of, you know, kind
(41:52):
of artificially turned into thiskind of, you know, it's just
been weird. It's been it's it's weird vibes
and it kind of makes the whole movement seem a little less
serious, at least to me, becauseit just feels so artificial.
Like it seems like a lot of these people are kind of losing
the plot a little bit and not realizing, like not remembering
(42:12):
what they're actually here fighting for and and kind of,
you know, using this original intent, which is good to try to,
you know, make games accessible forever for game preservation,
things like that. And seems like a large chunk of
those people have turned this into just like, you know,
brigading and hating this one guy because he doesn't agree
with them. He he's pretty notable.
(42:34):
He has a lot of influence, for better or worse.
It just feels yucky in my opinion.
But Long story short, I'm reallycurious to see what happens with
this. I kind of don't know if anything
ever will, but we'll have to wait and see.
Some and some really good news sag after the union that most of
the voice actors for video gamesare part of has ended their
(42:56):
strike and they have signed a deal with all the major
publishers and players in the games industry.
This is a big deal because, for example, Dragon Age of the Vale
Guard. We recently got a story from
Jason Schreier about how Dragon Age of the Vale Guard, the Mass
Effect team came in and kind of redid a bunch of stuff in the
(43:17):
game in the later parts of development.
One thing they weren't able to change though was to record new
voice lines and stuff because they want to change the story
and the tone of the story. But they weren't able to in a
large part because of this strike.
It was towards the beginning of the strike, so they couldn't
have voice actors come back in and redo lines.
So they had to just kind of recycle what they already had.
(43:40):
And, you know, that probably wasn't ideal.
This is cool. This is exciting.
If you who are, you know, I'm sure there's a bunch of studios
right now and in publishers as well, who are breathing a sigh
of relief because now they can get all these voice actors back
in to start working on these games again.
Because there's a pretty good chance that games have been
development the last couple of years while this has gone on or
(44:02):
the last year and a half or so have probably just been sitting
on these projects or doing everything they can do other
than the voice capture so that they could have, you know,
finally finished their game. So I wouldn't be surprised at
all if we see kind of a rush of games in the next 6 months come
out, especially before in the next like 7 or 8 months before
(44:22):
Grand Theft Auto comes out. So that's good news.
I'm happy that. And that does mean that they
must have gotten some compromiseon the AI voice stuff that they
were most worried about, which Ithink was a very fair concern.
Multiple studios are bidding to do a Banjo Kazooie game.
This is kind of the short part of the the end of the news here.
It appears that Toys for Bob, a former Activision Blizzard King
(44:46):
studio who went independent but is still working with Xbox,
seems like Toys for Bob's in therunning and Moon Studios, who I
believe did the Ori games. That's interesting because that
studio is pretty maligned and that the ownership or that the
head of the studio is supposedlyawful, allegedly awful and very
(45:07):
hard to work for and presents a really awful dynamic in the
studio. So it's kind of interesting that
Xbox is even willing to work with them potentially.
We'll have to wait and see. Cyberpunk Edge Runners is
getting the season 2, the Netflix animated series.
It's the same animation studio. It's going to be a new story.
I anticipate the Cyberpunk 2077.We'll probably get some updates
(45:31):
to add, you know, weapons and some kind of nods to the
characters in this new season. Assuming it takes place before
2077, I think there's a chance that it could take place after
the events of 2077. They could very well establish
some kind of a lower, some Canonand it may be kind of a hint
towards where the next game is going, which I, I am predicting.
(45:54):
And we, I've seen a lot of otherpeople predict it may not take
place in Night City again and wemay see it take place in Chicago
or a, a future version of a of amore known city today.
So I'm super punked for Ed Runners season 2, the first one.
I I would argue Ed Runners has abetter story and characters than
the actual game itself. And the music was just insanely
(46:17):
good. Really great story.
I, I need to watch it again sometime.
But yeah, excited for that. Can't wait to see what they do
with it. Ubisoft Red Storm has laid off
around 20 employees. They were not part of that $0.10
deal earlier this year where a few studios and projects got put
under the this, this new basically studio inside of a
(46:38):
studio or, or publisher inside of a publisher in partnership
with 10 Cent. Unfortunately, Red Storm was not
one of the studios who got to bea part of that.
If you don't. Know Red Storm is a studio that
was founded by Tom Clancy to make Tom Clancy games.
So the early Rainbow six games, Ghost Recon games, you know,
some of those early games were you know under them they got
(47:01):
bought out by Ubisoft and then came the was it a Splinter Cell,
I think and the Division and a bunch of other games that have
come out. Rainbow 6 Siege, all here,
Rainbow 6 Vegas, all those gameswe're all done by Red Storm
until fairly recently, around 2016, they started helping out
(47:22):
with the division and they started doing some VR games as
well. And the Ghost Recon franchise
was given to Ubisoft Paris, who I think ruined it personally,
but that's a that's a hot take for me.
And so this sucks because Red Storm was working on the
division heartland. It was going to be their own.
They were leading it and that got cancelled and then they were
(47:44):
Co Devin X defiant, but we also know that is currently shuttered
as well and it was a big disaster.
So I don't know what they're doing.
My assumption is they're going to Co dev on the Division Three,
which we assume is in productionor will be soon, and that might
be what they're relegated to andthat sucks.
It especially sucks because the four or five kind of head people
(48:07):
there who I knew Terry Spear andsome others like I don't think
any of them are still there. So since The Division Two,
they've lost most of the people,least I was aware of and and
that's a bummer. So good vibes to the people at
Red Storm. It's probably not a great
feeling that right now. STALKER 2 has been announced for
PlayStation Five later in 2025. This was a game that came out on
(48:31):
Game Pass day one and was on PC as well.
Obviously it's they're saying it's going to have some the the
expected upgrades for PS-5 pro and the dual sense controller
all that it's also supposed to have just general enhancements
and updates and and content for all the platforms it's on.
This game was so strange becauseit was a complete mess when it
(48:53):
came out and I believe they've patched it and then and updated
it quite a bit made it a lot better.
And even though like you had to restart the game like every hour
or else it would bog down and and the FPS would drop to
nothing that would it would quit.
Even with that, I played 30 plushours of it and it was one of my
favorite games last year. The story, the world, the
(49:17):
combat, like it's a really fun game and I'm really excited to
potentially play a another playthrough with the like fixed
version of the game that isn't quite as a hot mess as it was
when it came out. I still managed to enjoy a ton
and I'm glad to see that's coming to another platform.
It's always good for a third party studio like that and and
(49:37):
you know, I hope it gets gets more of its flowers.
And then finally I have upgradedmy phone finally from a Pixel
6A2A9A, the newest model. I am super pumped.
It is quite exciting to have something that that 6A S you
with your old phones. They always feel fine until you
(49:58):
play with a new one. And I recently played with like
a Galaxy S25 or something and itmade me realize just how much of
A dog my old 6A was. So I'm enjoying the upgrade.
Maybe I'll do a more formal review next week or something,
but so far I'm pretty impressed by it.
I did hate the I got a spig in like kind of like an armor case
and it's way too thick. I don't like it.
(50:19):
So I have a much lower profile 1coming soon.
And yeah, maybe I'll do a littletech review next week with that.
Maybe I'll even do a video just for for funsies.
As for content updates, I don't have anything big.
I have been playing a little bitof the new Tarkov wipe.
We'll see if I stream any of that.
I do want to finish the Mass Effect stream.
(50:40):
We the Mass Effect 3 playthrough, which we recently
did the right knock arc, which means we're kind of in the
latter half of the game or really the final act is coming
up basically. So we'll be doing that on stream
the podcast. I, I don't think I have enough
material to do anything for the Mass Effect typecast anytime
soon. Hopefully that changes.
Obviously, I'll keep doing the bonfire over the next few weeks.
(51:04):
The last thing I did want to talk about, just because it was
on my mind and, and I'm thinkingabout trying maybe to do like a
little charity stream or something in the United States
if you're an international listener.
If you're not, then you've probably heard of this.
In Texas, there was a big flash flood event where over 100
people have been found dead already and that number is very
(51:24):
likely keep going up. And one of the locations that
was hit the worst was in the between a couple rivers that all
had flash floods. If you are don't live in an area
where that happens, I do and I've seen it happen before.
You can have like a basically a Creek that's like, you know, 4
feet wide and a foot deep turn into a like 100 foot wide, like
(51:46):
40 foot Deep River in a matter of minutes.
What happened here was there wasthis girls camper is actually a
boys and girls camp of the girls.
You know, cabins and tents were closer to the water.
They the the, the water raised in their, their camp 26 feet and
(52:06):
40 minutes and there were hundreds of kids there.
Luckily, the vast majority they evacuated and were able to get
out. But unfortunately, I believe
right now it's around 38 and 9 year old girls and a couple of
the camp counselors and the owner of the camp who was trying
to save some kids, I guess all got swept away and, and have
(52:27):
either been found or are presumed dead.
So, you know, we talked about games, We do all this stuff.
This whole issue here in the States is turning into a big
political issue. There are definitely political
implications that should be explored and talked about.
That's not really my place though.
I just feel awful for those parents.
I can't imagine sending your kidoff for, you know, a.
(52:48):
Few weeks to go have. Fun at a camp and then to never
see him again. So have just those people in
your thoughts. And you know, I, I, I am.
I think it's smart to explore the mistakes in the political
side of all this, but just remember the people.
It sucks, and that is where we're going to wrap this one up.
(53:11):
Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app, leave a
review on Spotify or iTunes, andsubscribe to the Bond Easel
YouTube channel to get all my videos, including this podcast.
Thank you to everyone who supports as a YouTube member or
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supporting this podcast and all of my other content, please
check out the links in the show description.
If you have any questions or feedback, please check me out on
(53:34):
social media and reach me there at Von Dieseler at the Bonfire.
Hit me up on my Discord or leavea comment on Spotify or YouTube.
That is all I have for this episode of the Bonfire Gaming
Podcast, so until next time.
This is the Bonfire Gaming Podcast episode 345.
I'm your host Morgan AKA Von Diesel, and this week we'll be
talking about Game Passes, obviously profitable Escape from
Tarkov's weird moves right before their full launch, Stop
Killing Games hits 1,000,000 signatures and much more.
(00:25):
I have been doing this stuff fora long time.
I started doing content creation, I think I want to say
in like late 2016, early 2017. It started off with literally
making my first Twitter account,by the way, and posting builds
(00:47):
and screenshots of The Division One.
This was in, I want to say like spring, summertime of 2016.
I, I started doing that. I wanted to get involved in the
community. I had been involved in Reddit
for a long time. The the Division subreddit was
kind of a hot mess and I wanted to try to find something else.
And at the time I was silly enough to think that the Twitter
(01:13):
community would be less of a hotmess.
And you know, that had its ups and downs, but I've been doing
this a long time. I went from posting screenshots
and build pictures of of the bills I like to use in that game
to getting involved in Twitch asa viewer, watching various
streamers, specifically The Division's developer, Ubisoft
(01:35):
Massive and Red Storm had like aweekly community stream they
would do. So I used to watch that and
comment in there and started getting to know people and they
even did a gameplay stream fairly often as well.
I would jump into that and you know, even sometimes play with
the devs and that was a lot of fun.
(01:55):
Then I moved on to my own Twitchto starting this podcast, which
used to be of the Division podcast and you know, it's all
kind of gone from there. Now I have this podcast, the
Mass Effect one. I do believe they're not stream
on Twitch still occasionally. I'm still very active on social
media on basically all of them. And it's, it's been interesting
(02:19):
seeing the evolution this week. I saw an article about how Asman
Gold is the largest gaming streamer currently and ever,
ever is kind of a weird measure.It's kind of how like every time
a game console comes out, they're always like, it's the
most of this console or those console ever sold, though.
(02:41):
It's like, you know, the, the games industry in general is
growing pretty quickly. And, and so yes, a, a, a product
that releases today has a reallygood chance of selling more than
one released 5-10 years ago. But that's a whole different
thing. And it relates to, you know,
the, the whole thing with the, the, the, the biggest creators
(03:01):
now are obviously bigger than ones years ago.
But asthma gold is a unique situation because I, I don't
even care to get into the political side of things with
him really. He's obviously way out of his
depth and basically everything he does.
Asman Gould is a really interesting guy because he's not
particularly smart. He's not, at least in my
(03:24):
opinion, he, he's not charismatic or interesting or
well spoken or funny. He's just a guy who made, you
know, started doing some stuff with good timing and and
probably had a lot of luck. And when you look at a lot of
big streamers, sometimes there are people who are just
(03:45):
genuinely the most charismatic people ever.
If they weren't content creators, they would be some
other kind of personality and some industry, right?
And then you look at other people.
I think Azman Gold's a pretty good example of someone, if he
wasn't the biggest Twitch streamer in the world or, or,
you know, online game streamer or whatever you consider him.
(04:07):
He would at best to be just likea regular person who works 40
hours a week at the job he doesn't really love.
Or he would, you know, especially with some of his what
appear to be some mental health issues and, you know, lack of
being able to care for himself like a normal person would,
would potentially be, you know, in a bad situation or, or or one
(04:30):
worse. You know, his current situation
doesn't seem amazing, but he's, you know, a multi multi
millionaire, so I'm sure that helps.
But seeing someone like him become this to have this label
the the, the biggest, you know, game streamer or whatever is is
weird and it's concerning and it's depressing in a way, and
(04:51):
it's not surprising at all. I, I think the whole rise of,
you know, and the influencer content creation side of things
of, you know, these people who are extremely toxic, not really
all that smart, very click baitysensational.
This started a long time ago and, and maybe even before I
(05:11):
know this, but I noticed it backin my The Division days there,
there was a guy named sync back then and a few other people who
I will remain nameless because they're like Voldemort.
If you say their name, you fear that they'll appear again.
And, and I don't want that smokeat this point in my life, but
(05:32):
these people think was the founder of upper upper echelon
gamers. I, I think he still makes
content. And predictably, he's the last
thing I saw from him is that he's one of these hyper right
wing, hyper toxic, hyper anti woke or whatever they're calling
themselves now people now. And that's fashionable now.
(05:55):
It's like the best way to becomepopular, it seems.
But you know, there were people doing this very same stuff, you
know, back when I started makingcontent and, and likely before
right now, back then, I think itwas a little more taboo.
I think people had less patiencefor it back then.
I I think it was like more annoying back then basically.
(06:17):
And it, it was just less acceptable, right?
Unfortunately, it kind of seems like that isn't the case anymore
and it's it's become the meta ifanything, But I, I think
sometimes people don't realize that this was brewing for a long
time. Obviously we had like the
(06:38):
gamergate stuff a few years ago and, and to the point where in
the last year you, you even saw the, you know, the movement by
people like asthma and gold and grums and, and a bunch of these
losers, as you know, Gamergate 2point.
OI don't think it ever quite metthe same veracity, but it was
(06:59):
just as awful. And I guess like my whole point
of talking about this is that I worry this isn't going to
change, at least not anytime soon.
You know, as a content creator who never really made it, you
know, even to this day, I basically just do this stuff for
fun because, I mean, I'm not seeing huge amounts of growth
(07:19):
or, you know, my numbers are forme perfectly fine.
But you know, for anyone you know, getting into this now, if
they haven't been doing this forever, they would maybe not
seem worth it to them that that's fine with me.
But it also comes with the caveat of me knowing I could, I
could do like 5 things that I bet I would multiply my reach
(07:42):
and my engagement and my views and everything.
At least double, triple, quadruple, if not much more.
If. I did all of this stuff these
people do right, all of all of these things that were you
essentially sell your morality to become a you know, a a a
person in this kind of grifting industry of hypersensitivity to
(08:07):
anything that doesn't agree withyour personal morals.
Honestly, your even your personal morals likely being in
question and you do I really believe that all of these people
truly, really deep in their heart, you know, feel the things
they say are, are they truly outraged by these things they
pretend to be outraged by? I no, I, I truly don't believe
(08:28):
they are. I, I think they have found their
niche and they are exploiting itfor everything they can and
they're unfortunately making generational money doing it.
And that's, you know, that I think there's a lot of factors
too, Like why are people even drawn these people?
I think there's a lot of people who are lonely and sad and
unhappy with their lives. And they, they see someone like
(08:49):
this who kind of looks like them, who just happens to also
have millions of dollars in their bank account.
But you know, talks like them and, and, and kind of looks like
them and seems kind of equally sad and depressed as they are,
despite having all that money. And, and you just kind of get
indoctrinated into this, this awful world.
(09:13):
What I would say is the best thing you can do if this stuff
also annoys you is obviously don't partake in these people's
content. Don't watch their streams, don't
watch their videos, don't reallyeven engage with things about
them or with them directly on social media and stuff.
Just ignore them because for them even bad interactions are
(09:35):
are are good. You know, unfortunately, find
people who aren't doing those things, find people who seem to
be trying to be at least positive in some capacity, who
seem to be expressing things that they truly do believe and,
and, and support people who are doing that stuff, especially
small people. Obviously, this sounds like I'm
basically saying support me. I'm not really even saying that,
(09:58):
you know, support someone. You know, if it's me, great.
I love it. You keep watching my videos and
my podcast and interacting, and if you want to buy merch or get
a YouTube membership or a Twitchsubscription, whatever, however
you want to support a view or a comment to me is just as
valuable as a subscription or something.
Like, yeah, I'll take the couplebucks.
(10:20):
But one way or the other, I I just am, you know, happy to get
people's time because I know howvaluable that is.
So support good people, ignore the bad ones.
Let's try to fix this. Not going to say I'm hopeful,
but I would love to be surprised.
OK, let's move into some gaming news.
(10:41):
We're going to kick it off with a Game Pass discussion that has
been hilariously stupid over thelast week and has come to the
very predictable conclusion. So the, the, the topic of Game
Pass has been, you know, crazy basically ever since they
released it. Talk about profitability and and
(11:02):
sustainability and, and, and youknow, a handful of devs coming
out and saying that it's bad forthe industry, while it seems
like the vast majority either have no comment on it or think
it's good for the industry. Obviously that comes down to
personal preference, but you know that that that's kind of a
different topic in the last week.
(11:23):
Christopher Dream, who I think was formally the VGC and is now
one of the many, seems like hundreds, you know, at least
dozens of former games journalist who think that people
care enough about what they think to support them and, you
know, support their entire livelihood through Patreon with,
(11:43):
you know, mediocre podcast and dishonest articles being
written. You know, excuse my bias.
Chris String put out a tweet andI believe maybe a post on his
own stuff, I have no idea. Basically saying someone told
me, a source told me, of course,you know being very vague that
Game pass isn't profitable. If they count, I think it was
(12:05):
development cost of first party games.
This sets off a firestorm of people claiming that once again,
Game Pass isn't profitable. Game Pass isn't sustainable.
It's bad for gaming, it's bad for developers, it's bad for
Xbox, it's bad for Xbox players.Every article you can imagine
from every major outlet and I'm sure minor outlet as well, every
(12:28):
gaming influencer on social media, every content creator on
YouTube and Twitch and every platform, you know, ran with
this. And especially obviously the the
expected people, right? The the, the people who, you
know, the the console warriors and, and, and kind of what I was
talking about before with, you know, the the anti woke, like
(12:50):
all those people just as bad andoften the same people are the
hyper console warriors who you spend literally their entire day
posting about how much they hatethe other teams plastic box,
right. Like I said, these people tend
to be in similar groups as the people I was talking about in
the little preamble, but that's a different conversation, I
(13:11):
guess. And so this one tweet and
whatever else he put out from Chris during, you know, really
set off this firestorm of and, and it's something you see
happen all the time. It was unsourced.
You're, you're trusting this guywho in my experience, or from
what I've noticed, seems to be very convenient with the truth,
(13:33):
especially he, he especially seems to have an issue with
Xbox. And that led to a few days later
him recanting this claim, claiming that he had spoken to
some people who in fact notifiedhim that Game Pass is
profitable, even if you count first party game development
(13:55):
costs and all that. So that of course, set off
another discussion of one a bunch of people crapping on them
as they absolutely should for doing what he did, because he
put out that first statement, not because he honestly, he
probably knew it wasn't true, but he probably had enough
sourcing that he could at least like throw his hands up and be
like, what? I'm just saying what I'm being
told, guys. But he knew that that would
(14:17):
catch a lot of traction and get a lot of attention.
And you know, for someone who's trying to make a living now on
his own with this kind of what Iwould call the Patreon get grift
that you see so many of these creators and journalists and
influencers go to when, you know, I assume their regular
jobs aren't paying the bills. He, you know, he knew that
(14:41):
putting that out there, that's out there forever, right?
There's hundreds of thousands ofpeople, if not more who saw that
and they will never see his recanting or the coverage of his
recanting of this, who now forever just be like game pass
does suck, you know, and and he obviously did this in the
fallout of Microsoft doing theirlayoffs.
And he's the same type of personwho I don't think he did it
(15:04):
himself, but the same people whowere pushing the fact that Xbox
fired 9000 people when that wasn't true.
The true numbers around 1000, which still sucks, but it's a
big difference, right? A 9000 would be almost half of
Xbox where 1000 was, you know, obviously a much smaller
percentage and to the point where that got pushed so hard.
(15:25):
A game developer who's been in the industry for like multiple
decades posted that that he couldn't believe Microsoft fired
9000 people like he's one of themost senior individuals I've
ever interacted with in gaming. And even that got to him, right.
So anyways, during recants, his statement saying that he's been
(15:46):
told that it is profitable. That sets off, like I said, this
conversation about, you know, a bunch of people still trying to
like, kind of, you know, still hold their hate for their their
animosity towards Game Pass by saying things like, well, well,
what about marketing and stuff, you know, things that you know
who we don't, Who knows, right? And then, you know, like I said,
also people kind of crapping on them.
(16:09):
At least with Dream, he's been pretty blatant and and and at
least in my opinion, pretty blunt about his biased against
Xbox. Like he obviously sees Xbox as
whether he likes it or not, I have no idea.
But he obviously uses Xbox as like a foil is like, I can write
any negative tweet or article ormake a video, whatever, do a
(16:31):
podcast, whatever and and say bad things about Xbox and it's
going to get good attention. Whether it's true, who cares?
He obviously doesn't care too much about that.
Good for him, I guess. But what's frustrating is that
while he got called out and really showed his ass in this
moment, even though it's not going to change anything, he's
still going to be, you know, respected by too many people.
(16:53):
In my opinion. He's not the only one and
there's plenty of journalist. Jordan Midler is a big one, who
also hilariously is that VGCI think Andy Robinson as well.
I think you start to see a pattern here of people who just
very clearly, whether or not they have personal animosity for
the Xbox brand, I have no idea. I can't read their brains.
(17:15):
But if you see their reporting, if you see them on podcasts, on
videos and stuff like that, you know that's they're not really
hiding it, right? They, they are, at the very
least, you don't see them talk about other platforms the way
they do Xbox, even when those other platforms are doing, you
know, equally bad or even worse things in the industry.
(17:37):
I, I think that's kind of expected.
I've talked about this before where from a purely human
standpoint, I, I can appreciate that in the past, especially
PS4PS3 era, that PlayStation just put out a bunch of really
great games and people really love those games.
And that wasn't a particularly great era, especially PS4, Xbox
One for Xbox. And so, you know, people had
(18:01):
good feels for Sony, right? And, and it's, and now those
people are in their 20s and 30s and even 40s and they have
those, those biases, which are totally fair.
Everyone has a bias, right? But then I think there's also
been this trend in the last three 4-5 years of, you know,
these websites, these these gaming news outlets are, are not
(18:22):
doing great. It's not a great industry.
It's a very profitable industry.You know, we see all these
websites shutting down left and right, these podcasts and other
outlets, you know, falling apartbecause they can't get clicks
and they can't get ads and they can't do this and that.
And it seems like they've all basically resorted to, you know,
click bait rumors, sensational articles, all this and you know,
(18:45):
for deserved or not. I think that's AI guess a
subjective opinion. Xbox has become a pretty good
target for these people, it seems like, and for better or
worse, what I like, I expect content creators and like big
influencers and stuff to be kindof weird bias fanboys to a
(19:06):
point, like because, you know, no one's looking for integrity
from them, right? But what sucks is that, you
know, gaming journalism. Now, I, I think it's arguable
that there's no true games journalist out there, that
there's, there's no one out there who it is truly trying to
report on things in the interestof reporting on the truth,
right? It seems like now every single
(19:28):
one, whether it's the more experienced folks or not, are
basically just, you know, content creators with notepad on
their computer, right? And, and, and either a large or
an also large audience, whether they are self doing their own
thing like Chris String or whether they work for an IGN or
a Kotaku or a VGC or, or whatever outlet.
(19:49):
And, and I think that really blows because it means that
we're not getting, you know, basically any quality reporting
on gaming at this point because there's no money and quality
reporting. All the money is in, you know,
borderline toxic and dishonest sensational click baity
articles. Or maybe it is real news that's
(20:10):
being reported, but it's being reported in the most dishonest
way because that's the only way to make it worthwhile from from
a money perspective and. And and then the line gets
really blurry with like these really, really big content
creators. You've got people like skill up
and others who have like a gigantic reach a a larger reach
(20:30):
than many of these game news outlets, but also have a very
clear bias and I would argue a borderline hate or disdain for
certain brands and platforms andthings like that.
They don't really seem to hide it.
They don't even try. And, and my thing, what I will
say is that I don't even like, there's absolutely things to
(20:52):
hate on Xbox for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo 4, Ubisoft 4, you
know, and blah, blah, you know, insert whatever gaming
corporation here. My issue isn't that there's
people who are negative towards those are critical towards
those. My issue is is with people who
have no balance or, or, or very little balance and you know, the
(21:13):
kind of content they put out, you know, the people who only
put out sensational, toxic negative stuff and or the people
who completely ignore, you know,you know, who really ignore
brands they like and really focus on brands that they don't
like, Whether it is just strategically like I've been
talking about or because of a personal bias.
(21:36):
And at the very like, like, if you're going to hate, hate on
everybody and also try to love alittle, I guess.
And it's so hard at this point. There's been so many podcasts
and so many influencers and content creators and streamers
and journalists who, you know, Ifelt like we're doing a better
job of this, you know, four or five plus years ago and who have
(21:56):
like completely fallen off the wagon and the chasing engagement
and chasing clicks and chasing ad revenue and chasing, you
know, industry clout and things like that.
And I think that sucks. And, and I think all of that has
led to this moment where this fairly notable person in the
industry just straight up wide and is now, you know, trying to
(22:18):
be like, oh, my bad, I was wrong.
Which like, I appreciate that. But you do that in the, you
know, in, in in the aftermath and after the devastation.
Now you know, and in knowing that the initial statement
always gets more attention than the recantment, right.
Hilariously, I believe he put out this recantment either the
(22:42):
same day or close to the most recent Sir Connor report, which
is a big industry analysis on sales and things like that.
And it suggested that Game Pass likely grew 30% in June.
Kind of hilariously, I have to imagine that was boosted by, you
know, some games coming to it last month or coming soon, as
(23:02):
well as the Xbox Game Showcase where they showed off a bunch of
games that either soon or already or you know, in the
future are coming to Game Pass. And that probably got people
going and, and getting it on allthe platforms you can get it on.
There was also a kind of an interesting note, you know, kind
of a side note here that a LinkedIn profile from a laid off
employee suggests that Game Passdeals can range from $50,000 to
(23:25):
over 50 million. This is ranging from, I assume,
indie games all the way up to full AAA games from big giant
publishers and, and studios. This shouldn't be surprising.
Some deals are for games that have been out for a long time
and they're basically just a youknow, hey, we're we'll give you
it will spot you this much moneyand you and you can put you
(23:47):
know, we'll put your game on theservice.
And I think that there's a bonusdeals where like if you hit so
many downloads or so many players, you get more money and
things like that to the 50 million.
Like that's where, you know, you're paying for a big chunk of
a game's development with a deallike that.
So the deal like that you're looking at third party game, a
AAA game, likely that is, you know, day one on game pass,
(24:07):
maybe even as exclusive the Xboxor, you know, for a top for, you
know, six months or however long.
And and that's that's obviously a bigger deal.
I just I think at the end of theday, the whole conversation
around game pass is so silly because it would suck.
But if game pass was a drain on Xbox and Microsoft, they could
(24:29):
just turn it off. You know, they would just very
likely they would just refund people or, or give some kind of
credit to the people who had like months, if not years of
game pass saved up. They, you know, would likely,
you know, give people discounts on the, on the many of the games
for a limited time. So if you wanted to keep some of
(24:49):
that library, you could just buythem for a discount.
My honest opinion is that I don't, I don't think Xbox Game
Pass will ever disappear. I could very well see at some
point if it doesn't make sense for them, it would just be
reduced to a service more like PS Plus where you would get
older games and you know, indie games, stuff like that as part
(25:11):
of the Game Pass. And you would get first party
games maybe like eventually in the long run and you would get
like other perks and stuff like that.
But that doesn't seem to be the case.
And and if they needed to do that, they would just do it.
I I think that there's this weird assumption that Xbox is
like they have to keep game passforever.
Like they don't, they could justturn it off, right?
(25:32):
It would not be a great look forthem.
It would upset a lot of people, I think, including myself.
But they could just do it. Like if, if the numbers told
them it didn't make sense, they could just get rid of it.
And I feel like that point gets lost on people a bit.
So like I said in the opening, you know, mind who you're taking
seriously, you know, try not to fall for the bait and, you know,
(25:56):
check their sources to Subnautica Twos publisher
Crafton replace the striking distances founders right before
they and others at the studio were expecting a multi
$1,000,000 bonus. I believe the number was $250
million to be spread amongst thepeople at the studio.
So this has been pretty shady. This came along with news that
(26:19):
the game has been delayed to 2026.
And from what I can tell, there's already talked about,
you know, these these former thefounders of Striking Distance
who make the Subnautica series and where, you know, they were
acquired by Crafton, who is the pub G, you know, publisher a
year, two years ago. And it was all hunky Dory.
(26:41):
They're all, it was all, you know, good vibes, and now
they've removed all the craft and has removed the founders,
replaced them with their own people and now the game is
delayed and it's doesn't look great.
That's not a great situation to be in for Crafton or striking
distance. It looks real gross, especially
because it looks like the move may have been motivated by this.
(27:03):
I I assume it was part of the acquisition deal that there
would be, you know, if they hurtcertain hit certain milestones
with this, with this game or as a studio that the people at
striking distance would have this big giant bonus spread
throughout the, the team. And now that's not happening as
far as we know. So I, I think this is especially
notable because Crafton has beengetting tons of praise over the
(27:26):
last couple months because they acquired Tango Gameworks in the
Hi-fi rush IP from Xbox after that studio was shut down by
Xbox last year, despite, you know, people loving hi-fi rush,
even though they didn't buy it. And then, you know, the big hero
story was crafting, buying up the studio and the IP and saying
(27:49):
that they're going to make hi-firush too.
I believe this should throw a lot of water on that excitement
because Subnautica and striking distance is a is a proven
commodity. It's Subnautica was a huge hit
and the Symaka 2. I've seen tons of people hyped
about it just in my own kind of,you know, personal outlook and
(28:13):
this looks real bad. And if I was the studio that got
bought up by them who hasn't made anything yet and is likely
years away from putting anythingout.
I, I'm just saying and I, I, I, I always felt like that story
was, was a little overly cheeredfor because I wasn't under the
(28:34):
impression that Crafton is really the best steward on
earth. And they were mostly focused on
like pub G and mobile games and things like that.
This move, I think kind of reinforces that concern.
And I just, if I were people at tango, I wouldn't feel super
secure. My, my take on it was always you
know, the, the, the, the reporting was is that that Tango
(28:55):
was in trouble before Bethesda and Zenimax were even acquired
by Xbox that they were likely going to be shut down anyways
and an Xbox got them let them finish hi-fi Rush, which was the
project they were working on andit just still didn't make sense.
Hi-fi rush didn't sell very welldespite being critically praised
pretty highly. And they, you know, they, they
(29:19):
cut and run. I mean, you know, and, and The
thing is, at the end of the day,if, if a company like Xbox can't
make it work and, and doesn't feel like they can do it, I, I
just don't know what people think that Crafton brings to the
table that Xbox couldn't. I'm not going to praise Xbox for
shutting down that studio. I'm not going to say it was
justified. And I feel bad for the people
(29:40):
who lost their jobs and stuff, but like, you know what, what
does Crafton have that Xbox doesn't?
And you know, what makes people think that they can do what Xbox
couldn't? And then you see a move like
this. And I feel like, like, I feel
like this is dirtier than anything we've ever seen Xbox
do. Obviously, layoffs are gross and
studio shutdowns are gross, but,you know, avoiding this big
(30:00):
bonus by firing the founders of the studio you acquired kind of
suddenly, I don't know, that's dirty business, in my opinion.
Escape from Tarkov has made a bunch of really weird moves with
their game in this big update that seems like it's only a few
months away from the game actually releasing.
(30:21):
If you didn't know, the Escape from Tarkov extraction shooter
game has been in a beta or alphatesting for almost 10 years.
I believe it's nine years at this point and it's still a beta
game, despite the fact that they've, in my opinion and
basically treated it like a release game.
There's I believe some financialincentives for them to keep it
(30:43):
in beta, but they claim that they're moving it to 1.0 to full
release, probably at the end of 2025.
A big thing with Escape from Tarkov is they do these things
called wipes. Sometimes they're six months
apart, sometimes they're more, but it's where they reset the
game. You lose all your progress, all
your gear, you lose everything. They normally add new maps or
(31:03):
update maps and change mechanicsand add guns and gear and and
all then, you know, updates to AI and all this crap.
And then they so a wipe is essentially a reset of the game
with a big patch. And in the most recent wipe they
just did in the last week, they essentially turned into a
hardcore game. So Tarkov in my opinion, has
(31:24):
actually been made much more casual over the last 3-4 years.
And what happens is that there'sa bunch of streamers and content
creators who literally will playTarkov for like 10-12 hours a
day. And because they get bored in
between these wipes, a few of them were doing this thing
called, it's called a hardcore challenge, where you essentially
(31:45):
self-inflicted a bunch of rules that you could only buy
equipment from certain things orget it in certain ways and you
couldn't use some mechanics in the game that other people can
and blah, blah blah. Well, essentially what happened
is the developers of Tarkov haveimplemented a bunch of these
things into this wipe as like just part of the game.
(32:07):
So it's it's interesting to me Isome of the patches, some
they've already patched out someof these changes, which has made
a lot of people happy. Things like there were no quest
in the game when it when they first wiped, which is like the
main thing that you do in this game.
They they've made it so you havelike a pouch that even if you
(32:28):
die, you don't lose stuff in it.You used to be able to put
almost anything in there. Now it's only very certain items
that can go in there. So it makes, if you die, it
makes it truly devastating if you have a bunch of money or
gear on you, you can't even keepstuff that's like hard to get,
especially in early game. And you know, they, they made it
so that the, the, the vendors, like the stores that you can buy
(32:49):
equipment from are super expensive now and you don't make
as much money and, and all this stuff in some capacity.
They're essentially, you know, trying to go back to the roots a
little bit to make the game a little bit more what the vision
seems to have been like 6 or seven years ago.
But then they wanted the game tobe big and popular, so they made
it more casual. And I think most of the changes
(33:10):
were good in that way. So to me, it's just strange to
do this last minute. Like actually we're going to
make most of the people we've been targeting for the last, you
know, four or five years. Hate this right before this big
version 1 release, then, you know, right before the game
leaves beta. Just seems odd to me.
I, I think one of the issues with Tarkov is that it's gotten
(33:30):
a lot of coverage in the last couple years, especially because
so many other teams have tried to do the extraction shooter
thing. And especially in recent
conversations about Marathon andArc Raiders and stuff like that.
You know, they've kind of presented EFT Escape from Tarkov
as this like pinnacle of extraction shooters.
When really, you know, Escape from Tarkov is not a very good
(33:52):
game. It's a very janky game and it's
badly balanced and it's very buggy and it's on a bad engine,
at least in my opinion. And the studio, Bao State Games
is run by like someone who's extremely shady.
It's run out of Russia. It's run out of Saint
Petersburg. The the founder of the studio
(34:14):
has possible ties to like the Russian military and the Wagner
Group. There's a bunch of really weird
stuff they've done with money over the years where it looks
like he may have hoarded like 90% of their money and that, you
know, the people who work there might not really get paid very
well and it might be kind of a bad work environment.
And that all gets ignored because a lot of the journalists
(34:36):
and content creators who were covering like Marathon and Arc
Raiders just don't know anythingabout Escape from Tarkov.
All they know is that it's been fairly successful.
It kind of founded the extraction shooter thing even
though there were games before it.
But yeah, in the coverage of Marathon and Arc Raiders over
the last, you know, six months, it's just every time I see, you
know, whether it's kind of funnyor, you know, any of these
(34:56):
various other influencers and content creators being like,
yeah, they're all chasing that escape from Tarkov, whatever.
It's like, well, they'll never do that because Tarkov is this
like decade long process of, youknow, building a community and
stuff like that. And Tarkov also is kind of a bad
game. Like it's not a very good game.
It does some things that no other games do.
It has some really great gunplay.
(35:17):
It has moments where it's the only game that can do some of
the things it does. But I I still think it's just, I
think a lot of people who talk about Tarkov don't actually know
Tarkov and that's become pretty obvious.
And I think it's not great for the conversation.
I will give kind of funny creditthat a couple of their people on
their team did play Tarkov for acouple of weeks.
(35:40):
I think on stream they were getting some of the worst advice
and they really needed like one of like the Tarkov vets to kind
of come in and guide them a little bit more.
But I appreciate that they at least kind of tried to get into
it and see what it was all really about.
It's just such a hard game. Like in my opinion, Tarkov is a
game that you kind of have to learn it for like a year or two
(36:03):
and then you kind of figure out how it goes and then you kind of
decide whether or not you're a Tarkov fan or not.
So, so I'm curious to how they, they play this out for the, the
kind of 1.0 release. It's, I'm assuming they're going
to have like a casual character and then have this hardcore
mode, which it seems like they're testing right now.
And then they also have a Pve mode.
I, I don't know. And they, they, you never know
(36:24):
what they're going to do when they, they always delay
everything they do. The, the, the studio head will
change his mind at any given moment.
And he is especially influenced by the big content creators who
are related to the game, like Pasteli and others.
So we'll see what happens. I am definitely very.
Curious, the stop killing games movement has gotten 1,000,000
(36:47):
signatures and it's EU sign up. The big deal about that is that
it gets them recognition by the European Union.
They basically have to bring it up in some capacity.
And it means that they could pass some new laws or rules that
Wood forest any publishers in their region to follow these
(37:09):
rules to make sure games can be played after the studios or the
publisher stop supporting them. And most of the time when they
do that, they basically do it everywhere.
It's just cheaper just to have one development kind of path.
Now, in this case, that may not be true.
And there's even been thoughts of, you know, some publishers
may skip Europe. I find that pretty hard to
(37:31):
believe. It's a gigantic market,
especially for PlayStation. And I don't think that'll
happen. So one of the interesting things
that means this may be getting some movement is that a bunch of
gaming lobbyists in the EU have rallied against this movement,
basically saying it puts like anundue burden on publishers.
(37:51):
And, and the the truth is that may not even lead to anything
that big. I think honestly, the, the most
pressure that can be put is fromgamers on publishers to make it
clear the the thing about this whole thing is because like some
of the logic is kind of flawed, right?
Like some of the ideas around this aren't really realistic, at
least not with games that are already out and even moving
(38:14):
forward. I, I think the best way to
handle this would be for games to have multiple options, right?
So a publisher or studio, they could have like an expiration
date where when they are, you know, in the, in the terms of
the game, when you purchase the game, they make it very clear
(38:35):
that, you know, they, they, theywill definitely support the game
for at least two years. And even then they can probably
have an out. But they can say, you know, we
guarantee we'll keep the serversup for two years and then after
that, you know, we can't guarantee it.
And then if the consumer goes inknowing that it kind of covers
their butt, they could also, youknow, make a statement or even,
(38:58):
you know, they could, they couldalso do a thing where they, you
know, do a final patch that allows the game to function as
much as it can without servers, you know, to have some
experience. Anthem was a good example of
this. So which actually the same day
that the petition got a million signatures, EA announced that
(39:20):
Anthem servers would shut down in early 2026.
And Mark Dara, a former BioWare employee, did the whole video
about this and talked about how there's so many layers of
infrastructure in anthems designthat use different banks of
servers that it probably isn't really possible to actually make
the game function without essentially remaking a big chunk
(39:43):
of the game. So that he he said that
basically that the offline portions of the game are like
the intro and that maybe you could keep that accessible, that
maybe you could do like peer-to-peer stuff.
He he said that the consoles that this was released on to the
last generation likely couldn't handle all of the stuff that the
(40:03):
game needs. But it's very likely like modern
consoles actually could run all of the back end systems on its
own for single player, but that the multiplayer.
It's just likely isn't going to work.
And that, you know, it's also worth keeping in mind that this
petition is for future games. It's to make publishers and
studios in the future clarify how long a game will be
(40:27):
supported and and to potentiallygive options for people to, you
know, be able to play the game after it isn't supported
anymore. And the Anthem example is a good
one. The kind of weird part about
this has been that a large part of this movement has kind of
turned into just being like weaponized and just turning into
(40:47):
kind of like a brigading crew. Pirate.
Pirate. Oh, what's his name?
Pirate Software is a former Blizzard developer.
His dad is really well known in the gaming sphere back in the
day. If you've ever seen the South
Park episode with the World of Warcraft nerd to the big fat guy
(41:08):
who's like lean back in his chair, that's his dad.
That's modeled after his dad. He's become a pretty
controversial topic amongst you in general, but especially in
this, you know, stop killing games movement as he pretty much
came out against it. He's an ND dev now.
He has his own video game he works on.
He's also part of some other publishing things and stuff like
(41:29):
that. And he's I don't love him.
I I find him to be very pretentious and a big know it
all and and kind of a kind of like a nice jerk.
I guess. That said, I also think that
this whole thing is really turned him into this like pariah
that he probably isn't really and has kind of, you know, kind
(41:52):
of artificially turned into thiskind of, you know, it's just
been weird. It's been it's it's weird vibes
and it kind of makes the whole movement seem a little less
serious, at least to me, becauseit just feels so artificial.
Like it seems like a lot of these people are kind of losing
the plot a little bit and not realizing, like not remembering
(42:12):
what they're actually here fighting for and and kind of,
you know, using this original intent, which is good to try to,
you know, make games accessible forever for game preservation,
things like that. And seems like a large chunk of
those people have turned this into just like, you know,
brigading and hating this one guy because he doesn't agree
with them. He he's pretty notable.
(42:34):
He has a lot of influence, for better or worse.
It just feels yucky in my opinion.
But Long story short, I'm reallycurious to see what happens with
this. I kind of don't know if anything
ever will, but we'll have to wait and see.
Some and some really good news sag after the union that most of
the voice actors for video gamesare part of has ended their
(42:56):
strike and they have signed a deal with all the major
publishers and players in the games industry.
This is a big deal because, for example, Dragon Age of the Vale
Guard. We recently got a story from
Jason Schreier about how Dragon Age of the Vale Guard, the Mass
Effect team came in and kind of redid a bunch of stuff in the
(43:17):
game in the later parts of development.
One thing they weren't able to change though was to record new
voice lines and stuff because they want to change the story
and the tone of the story. But they weren't able to in a
large part because of this strike.
It was towards the beginning of the strike, so they couldn't
have voice actors come back in and redo lines.
So they had to just kind of recycle what they already had.
(43:40):
And, you know, that probably wasn't ideal.
This is cool. This is exciting.
If you who are, you know, I'm sure there's a bunch of studios
right now and in publishers as well, who are breathing a sigh
of relief because now they can get all these voice actors back
in to start working on these games again.
Because there's a pretty good chance that games have been
development the last couple of years while this has gone on or
(44:02):
the last year and a half or so have probably just been sitting
on these projects or doing everything they can do other
than the voice capture so that they could have, you know,
finally finished their game. So I wouldn't be surprised at
all if we see kind of a rush of games in the next 6 months come
out, especially before in the next like 7 or 8 months before
(44:22):
Grand Theft Auto comes out. So that's good news.
I'm happy that. And that does mean that they
must have gotten some compromiseon the AI voice stuff that they
were most worried about, which Ithink was a very fair concern.
Multiple studios are bidding to do a Banjo Kazooie game.
This is kind of the short part of the the end of the news here.
It appears that Toys for Bob, a former Activision Blizzard King
(44:46):
studio who went independent but is still working with Xbox,
seems like Toys for Bob's in therunning and Moon Studios, who I
believe did the Ori games. That's interesting because that
studio is pretty maligned and that the ownership or that the
head of the studio is supposedlyawful, allegedly awful and very
(45:07):
hard to work for and presents a really awful dynamic in the
studio. So it's kind of interesting that
Xbox is even willing to work with them potentially.
We'll have to wait and see. Cyberpunk Edge Runners is
getting the season 2, the Netflix animated series.
It's the same animation studio. It's going to be a new story.
I anticipate the Cyberpunk 2077.We'll probably get some updates
(45:31):
to add, you know, weapons and some kind of nods to the
characters in this new season. Assuming it takes place before
2077, I think there's a chance that it could take place after
the events of 2077. They could very well establish
some kind of a lower, some Canonand it may be kind of a hint
towards where the next game is going, which I, I am predicting.
(45:54):
And we, I've seen a lot of otherpeople predict it may not take
place in Night City again and wemay see it take place in Chicago
or a, a future version of a of amore known city today.
So I'm super punked for Ed Runners season 2, the first one.
I I would argue Ed Runners has abetter story and characters than
the actual game itself. And the music was just insanely
(46:17):
good. Really great story.
I, I need to watch it again sometime.
But yeah, excited for that. Can't wait to see what they do
with it. Ubisoft Red Storm has laid off
around 20 employees. They were not part of that $0.10
deal earlier this year where a few studios and projects got put
under the this, this new basically studio inside of a
(46:38):
studio or, or publisher inside of a publisher in partnership
with 10 Cent. Unfortunately, Red Storm was not
one of the studios who got to bea part of that.
If you don't. Know Red Storm is a studio that
was founded by Tom Clancy to make Tom Clancy games.
So the early Rainbow six games, Ghost Recon games, you know,
some of those early games were you know under them they got
(47:01):
bought out by Ubisoft and then came the was it a Splinter Cell,
I think and the Division and a bunch of other games that have
come out. Rainbow 6 Siege, all here,
Rainbow 6 Vegas, all those gameswe're all done by Red Storm
until fairly recently, around 2016, they started helping out
(47:22):
with the division and they started doing some VR games as
well. And the Ghost Recon franchise
was given to Ubisoft Paris, who I think ruined it personally,
but that's a that's a hot take for me.
And so this sucks because Red Storm was working on the
division heartland. It was going to be their own.
They were leading it and that got cancelled and then they were
(47:44):
Co Devin X defiant, but we also know that is currently shuttered
as well and it was a big disaster.
So I don't know what they're doing.
My assumption is they're going to Co dev on the Division Three,
which we assume is in productionor will be soon, and that might
be what they're relegated to andthat sucks.
It especially sucks because the four or five kind of head people
(48:07):
there who I knew Terry Spear andsome others like I don't think
any of them are still there. So since The Division Two,
they've lost most of the people,least I was aware of and and
that's a bummer. So good vibes to the people at
Red Storm. It's probably not a great
feeling that right now. STALKER 2 has been announced for
PlayStation Five later in 2025. This was a game that came out on
(48:31):
Game Pass day one and was on PC as well.
Obviously it's they're saying it's going to have some the the
expected upgrades for PS-5 pro and the dual sense controller
all that it's also supposed to have just general enhancements
and updates and and content for all the platforms it's on.
This game was so strange becauseit was a complete mess when it
(48:53):
came out and I believe they've patched it and then and updated
it quite a bit made it a lot better.
And even though like you had to restart the game like every hour
or else it would bog down and and the FPS would drop to
nothing that would it would quit.
Even with that, I played 30 plushours of it and it was one of my
favorite games last year. The story, the world, the
(49:17):
combat, like it's a really fun game and I'm really excited to
potentially play a another playthrough with the like fixed
version of the game that isn't quite as a hot mess as it was
when it came out. I still managed to enjoy a ton
and I'm glad to see that's coming to another platform.
It's always good for a third party studio like that and and
(49:37):
you know, I hope it gets gets more of its flowers.
And then finally I have upgradedmy phone finally from a Pixel
6A2A9A, the newest model. I am super pumped.
It is quite exciting to have something that that 6A S you
with your old phones. They always feel fine until you
(49:58):
play with a new one. And I recently played with like
a Galaxy S25 or something and itmade me realize just how much of
A dog my old 6A was. So I'm enjoying the upgrade.
Maybe I'll do a more formal review next week or something,
but so far I'm pretty impressed by it.
I did hate the I got a spig in like kind of like an armor case
and it's way too thick. I don't like it.
(50:19):
So I have a much lower profile 1coming soon.
And yeah, maybe I'll do a littletech review next week with that.
Maybe I'll even do a video just for for funsies.
As for content updates, I don't have anything big.
I have been playing a little bitof the new Tarkov wipe.
We'll see if I stream any of that.
I do want to finish the Mass Effect stream.
(50:40):
We the Mass Effect 3 playthrough, which we recently
did the right knock arc, which means we're kind of in the
latter half of the game or really the final act is coming
up basically. So we'll be doing that on stream
the podcast. I, I don't think I have enough
material to do anything for the Mass Effect typecast anytime
soon. Hopefully that changes.
Obviously, I'll keep doing the bonfire over the next few weeks.
(51:04):
The last thing I did want to talk about, just because it was
on my mind and, and I'm thinkingabout trying maybe to do like a
little charity stream or something in the United States
if you're an international listener.
If you're not, then you've probably heard of this.
In Texas, there was a big flash flood event where over 100
people have been found dead already and that number is very
(51:24):
likely keep going up. And one of the locations that
was hit the worst was in the between a couple rivers that all
had flash floods. If you are don't live in an area
where that happens, I do and I've seen it happen before.
You can have like a basically a Creek that's like, you know, 4
feet wide and a foot deep turn into a like 100 foot wide, like
(51:46):
40 foot Deep River in a matter of minutes.
What happened here was there wasthis girls camper is actually a
boys and girls camp of the girls.
You know, cabins and tents were closer to the water.
They the the, the water raised in their, their camp 26 feet and
(52:06):
40 minutes and there were hundreds of kids there.
Luckily, the vast majority they evacuated and were able to get
out. But unfortunately, I believe
right now it's around 38 and 9 year old girls and a couple of
the camp counselors and the owner of the camp who was trying
to save some kids, I guess all got swept away and, and have
(52:27):
either been found or are presumed dead.
So, you know, we talked about games, We do all this stuff.
This whole issue here in the States is turning into a big
political issue. There are definitely political
implications that should be explored and talked about.
That's not really my place though.
I just feel awful for those parents.
I can't imagine sending your kidoff for, you know, a.
(52:48):
Few weeks to go have. Fun at a camp and then to never
see him again. So have just those people in
your thoughts. And you know, I, I, I am.
I think it's smart to explore the mistakes in the political
side of all this, but just remember the people.
It sucks, and that is where we're going to wrap this one up.
(53:11):
Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app, leave a
review on Spotify or iTunes, andsubscribe to the Bond Easel
YouTube channel to get all my videos, including this podcast.
Thank you to everyone who supports as a YouTube member or
a Twitch subscriber. If you're interested in
supporting this podcast and all of my other content, please
check out the links in the show description.
If you have any questions or feedback, please check me out on
(53:34):
social media and reach me there at Von Dieseler at the Bonfire.
Hit me up on my Discord or leavea comment on Spotify or YouTube.
That is all I have for this episode of the Bonfire Gaming
Podcast, so until next time.
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