GameStop Stands Up To Xbox Game Pass Price Increase - Kinda Funny Games Daily 10.02.25

18:34Mike Howard:yes it's annoying because everyone is doing this this is to go to fucking walgreens and if they're selling the cards for 20 bucks buy the 20 buck card right yeah to get all set up for it it's just funny to see GameStop doing it. Yeah. But I did check. Two tweets below they had this Pikachu with a pumpkin. I'm gonna buy that. Are you? I love Halloween and I love Pokemon.

18:53Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Oh, you know what? That's fair.

18:54Mike Howard:Yeah. That's fair. Should I become a pro member again? No.

18:59Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Absolutely not. Wait, hold on.

19:00Mike Howard:It's Pokemon Week at GameStop, it says. Go check out all the fresh... You know what other Week is at GameStop?

19:05Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Fucking

19:06Mike Howard:Kill Game Informer Week at GameStop. I don't like them. Listen, that worked out for the best. Now Van Aken's his own boss. You know what that is? He's fine. that is fair he's happy over there oh they got a lot of pokemon stuff when was last time we go to game stop when's last time we've been to a game stop uh you know it would be more recent than you think there was a trip the one over here is next to uh a michael's or some craft store that i got pulled into with ben and jen and then we went to a game stop and then ben bought the shadow the hedgehog over there oh that's cool he loves shadow yeah he loves shadow man the thing i

19:38Blessing Adeoye Jr.:will say is that i do miss uh the days that i will go into a mall and anytime like high school right era you're going to the mall because that's what you do as a high schooler yeah of course in illinois in central illinois um and like anytime i make that beeline right towards game stop and i look at that ten dollar bin and i'm like what playstation 2 game am i gonna buy what random crap am i what random terrible video game and then every now and then you would get a gem you know every now and then i would get a seven samurai 20 xx video game that nobody's ever heard of or played yeah but i play it and i'm like damn that's that shit right there yeah you know i mean every

20:09Mike Howard:now and then i get mtv music generator too it's i mean i still i oh you know what actually you know when i went to a game stop too it was an eb games which is still my shit but it was a eb games up in canada because in canada they still have all the old brands so i went to toys russ with tim or tim jesus with ben and then you know they like the same shit so it's very easy to confuse ben and tim of course yeah you know what i mean they're both about the same as good as show game showdown to you know i'm saying i'm fucking blue team blue three champ champion three led him to three p won the nick scarpino season i got the most stars right now gonna be away that way for a while anyways went across the way supposed to have the most stars don't worry about it i still do it doesn't matter it went across the way and they they were selling they were uh divesting their superpowers collection the dc superpowers and that was like dangerous because those are the toys i grew up with and i then now they have the modern ones with the modern characters whatever I got out of there with just a Superman and Batman.

21:02Mike Howard:Don't worry. But I spent money there. That was the last time I was there. It was scary. It was dangerous. I have a few super chats pertaining to everything we're talking about here. Okay. Alex Frazier says downgraded my game pass to premium after realizing I needed to play online. Still mad though. Again, as we live here in a post-2999 world, we will see how many people are coming down. What's happening. I want to talk about that in general, bless. But I also want to bring in a few of these ones here. Mike wrote in and said GameStop losing themselves money and propping up the service slash digital games putting them out of business is certainly a choice Mike you gotta do what you gotta do to keep the cash flow coming through the door you know yeah they're in that mode like when you're

21:42Blessing Adeoye Jr.:when you're that deep on the deathbed as a company it's like alright throw anything at a wall and see what sticks right like say what you gotta say like do what you gotta do

21:53Mike Howard:what happened when they were doing like immersive experience COVID remember is that what no is it that long ago that they announced that i'm pretty sure it was like

22:00Blessing Adeoye Jr.:and i thought that was post-covid i'm pretty sure it was like yeah 2019 2020 where they're like yeah we're gonna do immersive stores and then covid hit and then i don't know what happened

22:08Mike Howard:from there yeah fuck okay i'm surprised they're not like purely nfts at this point uh barista brand super chats just to say welcome to game slop we got your funko trash remember when everyone loved funko and then one day we were all done yeah we were all done because i yeah i feel like

22:24Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Funko had like such a strong moment. I guess what? It was just overdone. Hot topic probably killed it. You walk into a hot topic, you see the Funko wall and it's like, all right. Yeah. Well, I guess I'll get my fucking Yoda Funko.

22:36Mike Howard:There was this, I don't, you know, I don't follow the entertainment news nearly as closely, but I feel like Funko Pop is like our version of Pedro Pascal. Where like there was this thing this weekend. Who was it? I forget who. Somebody was being interviewed and they said that like Walter, Walton Goggins is in line to be the next pedro pascal where everybody loves him so much but then so they put him in everything and then people hate him no i don't hate pedro pascal i love because i because i because i'm in

23:00Blessing Adeoye Jr.:the i don't hate pedro pascal i just think he's wonderful and like i think he's a great word but he isn't he isn't too much stuff and for me it's like i feel like walton goggins pete davidson said it walton goggins has like a lot he has too much flavor you know what i mean a lot of character has a lot of character in a way and not to say that pedro pascal doesn't have character but is he he gives main character in a way where i can only have so much of the same main character over and over again long goggins gives like he's he's like a type of character you know what i mean

23:28Mike Howard:one of those let's not be assholes i'm not being an asshole but i feel like in the way hollywood is using them walt and goggins gets to express his range yes where pedro pascal is like you're pedro pascal all right what do you want me to do uh look sexy and have your mustache and then just talk yeah and just be a good actor no other accents or anything no no just do your thing

23:45Blessing Adeoye Jr.:yeah i feel walton goggins i feel like it's a scapel whereas like pedro pascal is like sledge hammer he's sledgehammer slash like he's that main tool you know what i mean he's the hammer that's the old reliable like you know what's gonna work you know what's gonna hit the nail

23:58Mike Howard:i was loving because i know you don't know shit about tools and i was waiting for it all to fall

24:01Blessing Adeoye Jr.:i don't either well you know he's the most popular tool it's the most popular one that's pedro pascal he's the most popular one uh bandar sn super chat says gamestop needs to get shoo and

24:13Mike Howard:Adam to do a collab with them. Here's how you own games. That'd be funny. That'd be a good move. Colin Barry becomes a member in Super Chats. Fuck GameStop for the shiny Corydon and Moridon distribution event that happened over the weekend. That's a personal affront. That's a personal assault. I appreciate it. And then Ryu Dan X says, love GameStop. I get my magic bundles there at the suggested retail price. So good for them. Magic? Interesting. Oh, Jordan Deeb comes in late and says, I worked at GameStop from 2015 to 2018. IMO they should have doubled down on retro gaming to keep them relevant above water as more gamers do digital oh god fuck GameStop for the shiny

24:53Roger McCorry:cryon and cryon situation this was not okay what happened to what happened it was one of the giveaway things we need to like go to the store and they give you a code and then you get the it's the only way to get the shiny legendaries right and they've been doing this for decades at this point for these god damn shiny mythical creatures all the god damn things sure and I walk in they're just like oh yeah we're out we've been out i'm like what do you mean you're out like how is this possible people just took them to sell on ebay and it's like this is you gotta have a better way and i looked at the way that the guy smiled at me when he said i'm like you took them all you're selling

25:26Mike Howard:on ebay little shit that's when you swing on them you know what i mean should have swung on them tim's here everybody that's always exciting i like that uh blessing now that you've slept on it yeah Are you ready to agree with the person who wrote in on Greg Wayne and said, Game Pass value is actually perfect?

25:43Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Am I ready to agree? You know what? Sure, why not? I'll go to the dark side. I love GameStop, guys. No, not GameStop, Xbox. Xbox Game Pass. I love it all. I love all the evil corporations. They're all great. Fair enough. Is that your transition or are you just asking that? No, I was just asking.

25:58Mike Howard:We're talking about the Game Pass thing.

25:59Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Because where did you land on the Game Pass thing?

26:01Mike Howard:Me and Paris talked to the back half of Gamescast about it. So not to be a dead horse. and even Greg Wade today's even more after I slept on it or whatever of just what a fuck. I, I couldn't stop smiling, talking about it because it's such a fascinating video game industry business quagmire of like, it's to the person on Gregway who wrote in and is it actually appropriately priced? They had done all this math on what they've played and they're still even at the$10 more way under what they would have spent. It's that. Oh, gotcha. And so what I love deconstructing and talking about with this is that literally everyone who hears the price and the increase has their own use case and then immediately goes, oh, that makes sense.

26:42Mike Howard:Or that's fucking highway robbery. Or that sucks. But, you know, like everyone has their own thing for it. And so then the real fun step back to, you know, satellite view is, man, Xbox, they fuck themselves on this no matter how you slice it. Just like there's it's a no win scenario no matter what they do, where they could stay there and lose money. They could stay there and not put more in. they could put more in it everyone's gonna be mad at some change it's such a personal decision on is this a good deal or is this a bad deal kind of thing and so it's fascinating to watch that but then be like okay what do you do with that as xbox how do you what's going to happen and like you know let's see you guys on games daily you know the site crashing the people who are upset the people who aren't upset blah blah like all i keep talking about in the greg way is i just want to know what they predicted was going to happen and if we're still in that margin of error or if it's gone way of the other you know like are we going to get as you and ad we're talking about in paris yesterday the next week we were wrong sorry everybody you know what i mean we're trying well how do you or is this all exactly what they planned on because again like if xbox delivers on these 75 titles they're putting out in the next year day one on game pass and it suddenly becomes three months from now four months five months everybody's like well yeah i re-up because of this and that or that but you know what i mean yeah i don't know

27:58Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I don't know. Like, I think there's also just the commitment you're asking people to play that many video games and not that like, not even saying that six or seven video games is a lot, but for the average person who plays video games, it is a lot, but that's, and this is again, give me the documents.

28:14Mike Howard:Let me in the room. Is the average person buying game pass ultimate is game pass ultimate only being consumed by such whales already that they can see the stats of what they're playing. And they're like, these people would be the ones who would stick around and there'll be enough of them that even if we lose a double digit percentage of the people who won't pay this and they go to that lower tier to keep the ability to play online then they're buying the one game they want from us that you know like there's so many it's like don't get me wrong all of it too is gambling oh all of this is looking at your lineup looking at stats and going i think this is what would happen but like what a big gamble to take yeah i also think there's this you have

28:52Blessing Adeoye Jr.:to expect a buy-in as far as the consistency of what you're putting out right like if i'm going to pay$360 a year for a service to play the video games that they're going to deliver to me I have to have trust that what they deliver is going to be quality and be worth that$360 a year and like this is to your point of it's for each person to figure out for themselves yeah I've not had a year with Xbox yet uh since having Xbox where I'm like yes I would pay$360 every year to play the the the video games that you're delivering here right like especially on the first party side next year seems to be the big year we're talking about Forza Horizon you're talking about fable you're talking about gears you're talking about possibly a new halo and then whatever else you got uh in store but you need to deliver that those are four games you got to deliver those and then some to then equal that up yeah i think you know as always with all these

29:41Mike Howard:corporations doing this kind of shit one of the things they have working against them at such an interesting angle is that they're a big fucking corporation who can't do cool shit if they would have done this yesterday and done everything they did but been able to say we have 75 games coming day one to xbox game pass and here's 50 of them yes then i think you're in a way different ballpark of yeah of course the dozen whatever it is xbox game studios games that you'd expect with keeper with uh outer worlds 2 gears etc etc etc but here are our partnerships that we're bringing games that you look at you go oh yeah i was gonna buy that anyways oh i was gonna buy that on playstation So actually staying here, let people do that math rather than what it is now where it's like just black.

30:25Blessing Adeoye Jr.:It could be great. It could be horrible. That's my thing because, yes, there's somebody in chat that's like, well, it's not just first party, though. And I think more so it is that first party plus the trust that the third party stuff is going to hit. Right. It is the trust of, all right, what is that going to be? So if you're able to, like you said, back that up with, oh, yeah, here's a list of what you're getting. That way you can make that educated thing of, oh, OK, well, I was going to buy all those anyway. I think the problem with me, at least from a personal perspective and what I imagine people would be trying to figure out here is then, yeah, you are committing to playing just a lot of video games.

30:54Blessing Adeoye Jr.:And there are so many video games that are not for everybody, right? Most video games are not for everybody. And so there is a level of like, damn, okay, well I know I'm going to get the first party Xbox games. Those are guaranteed at the$30 price point.

31:08Mike Howard:I honestly just jump in for me is like the least exciting part of it. Yes. Where it's like, cool. I look at the lineup and it's like, well, yeah, outer worlds and forza and keeper but like gears no whatever this halo thing they're gonna do no like then it becomes the what about a hollow knight what about what what are those indies

31:24Blessing Adeoye Jr.:and double a's that i'm gonna be getting that at that yeah so and i and you look at that and like when you're looking at the things that are concrete it is those xbox things and then it's riot like memberships plus fortnite crew or whatever like that i do like that and like some people that's like i'm not saying that nobody's gonna fuck with that but you're casting a wide net and making that net very expensive yeah 100 but if they could have done that yesterday and had

31:49Mike Howard:a podcast with phil or sarah or whoever and be a human being on it we're raising the price why well value add and this that the other but also we've noticed that the number of people who play play at this level already and play so many games you know i mean like yeah actually get into the things i want to know of why did you do this rather than just be like here it all is three tears it makes sense right everybody's a fucking mad yeah everybody's fucking mad it went by already but yeah no i think it was christoph who was like the playstation's biggest marketing uh pushes letting xbox open their fucking mouths i like that a lot uh we'll just close this out because we're gonna move on to some other stuff alex frazier says i pay 30 bucks a month uh if they had consistently good games that were must play but they don't and again we'll see what that means

32:34Blessing Adeoye Jr.:going forward i i i feel that and the weird thing though is that i feel like this year they have See, and again, let's get into it. But it's also like, what do you want?

32:42Mike Howard:You know, get into the use cases about it where you're talking about like, you know, how much you use your Xbox in the past year or whatever. Yeah. This gets fishy with us because, of course, video game reviews and codes and stuff like that. I consider myself so in the Xbox ecosystem this year, not on my Xbox, on my ROG, where it is the amount of times I've gone to do something. I'm like, wait, go to go to my Xbox PC app. OK, I can do this here. I can play Blueprints here and send my save back to the Xbox. play Hollow Knight here, send my save back to the Xbox. Like, that's my reasoning in how I've played so many more Xbox games this year.

33:16Mike Howard:I guess Game Pass games this year. Like, do you want to code for this game? Like, you know what? No, I don't, because it's on Game Pass. I'm set.

33:22Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Like, I've done that a lot this year. Yeah, I think for me, too, I look at the games that came out this year, even though I would say this is a great year on Game Pass, but if I'm talking about value, even though it's a great year, I didn't play all those great games. You know what I mean? Like, I still got to get back to Hollow Knight, but like i'm not sure i'm gonna play silk song all the way through like i played blueprints i played clear obscure and so those count but then like you you to get that value out of it you then have to commit to playing all those great games and like i mentioned not every game is going to be for every person and so you just had then have to pay this price to trust that xbox got you on the selection of games there that you're going to make up that that price point which i don't know that's a big for me that's a big trust to have the other thing i've been i talked about yesterday

34:06Mike Howard:but more on Gregway today, right, is the idea of like, I'm cheap as shit. So cheap. You know what I mean? Yeah. So excited when we fucking make the company pay for lunch here. It's great. Yeah. If I was on the outside and was doing this, I really feel like for me, and again, this is back to the question from the Gregway and everybody having a different rate of just like, it would be such one-offs for me. Outer Worlds is out this month. I'm going to do a month right now to save the 40 bucks to play it. Now, again, that's a game I would burn through. Like if I was going to be like, I'm going to play this for the next six months, different question.

34:39Mike Howard:But the way I consume games, I think it would be the same way of like, if I was on the outside, I'd be like, man, this indie is on Game Pass and that's cool, but I'm not going to spend for it. And I don't want to buy it outright. Let three or four of those stack up and then do a month of Game Pass to play all of them. Yeah. Like I feel like, I guess it's just the, this is exactly what I imagine Xbox doesn't want people doing. Thinking so hard about how to use this system to game the system. Yeah. It was much nicer at 20 bucks to be like 20 fucking dollars or whatever. Every month something will come out and I'll fuck with it and do whatever.

35:12Mike Howard:Gamecat specifically a white tiger says I don't understand all the words here. GP, which is Game Pass, offers no USP. PS5 is full of USPs. Portal, PlayStation VR 2, PS5 Pro. Sony made many blunders this gen like live service, but PS5 is my fave gen due to PSVR 2.

35:31Blessing Adeoye Jr.:USP. the usp unique selling proposition oh thank you that's a very businessy term i appreciate yeah hilarious that you put psvr2 on here hilarious that you put also hilarious when i type in when i just type in google usp with it what is that i had to like look at the two first options and i'm like okay either he's saying you unique selling proposition or he's saying u.s pharmacopoeia which

35:54Mike Howard:i don't even know ty wilkins vo gets the final comment before we go to an ad break and says that's true uh but then i think we're talking about i don't even know which part we're going that's true but you then you have to deliver on dates i ask can xbox do that how many games do they cancel just this year and what about games that are third party you can't control for their development no 100 you're 100 right and again though that's the the way i would come at it of rather than preemptively purchasing game pass memberships doing a reactionary wise of oh this is actually coming out i know i'm going to play fable i'm gonna get that but again maybe fable's for dozens of hours.

36:31Mike Howard:So I don't know. Yeah. But this is what I'm talking about. Go forward and you have to keep choosing and you have to keep thinking and nobody wants to do that. Agreed. If you want to give your money to something that rarely ever changes price, let me tell you about the Kind of Funny membership. For$10 a month, you can get all of our shows ad free and get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller and Gregway. Today, I went for 24 minutes about this question, ranting, raving, smiling, wanting to be a fly on the wall. If you want to do all that, patreon.com slash kindoffunny, YouTube.com slash kind of funny, uh, Apple and Spotify to pick up your membership.

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39:18Mike Howard:Gamecat in the chat did shout out in all caps hitman vr it's so clean it cleans your eyes have you i know you liked hitman did

39:25Blessing Adeoye Jr.:you ever play hitman vr first of all i loved hitman all right don't put that like word on it everybody i apologize i didn't mean to misrepresent blessing um no i never played i never played it

39:34Mike Howard:was one of those where it's like i saw a clip of it the other day because i'm selling the psvr subreddits or whatever and it was like damn that actually looks awesome really because it was the it was like you know it's hitman right but it's vr so the dude rolled up took his silence pistol out of his pocket threw it over a brick wall then walked around to the security checkpoint got patted down went in went up got his gun i was like fuck that's really cool that's a really cool use can we put that on the stream i would be so down yeah i'll be so down to play some michael i don't know if he's here yet that's how he's doing drugs or double coffees but you know how it is for him.

40:12Mike Howard:I mean, what's the difference? You didn't find the clip immediately, did you? Okay, no, this is just a trailer. I was like, wait a second, wait a second. How'd you do that, Kevin? That's fucking insane.

40:18Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Okay, so yeah, this is straight up hit me in. Chat, is the gameplay different at all, or is it just that your motion is determining what you're doing here? Because I want to know.

40:30Mike Howard:Because that throwing the knife over the wall thing sounds cool. Gamecat, let us know. You know a lot about this, apparently. Maybe this is how we get blessed back into this VR. You do an hour of this, two hours of Ghostbusters with me. And then I threw up. Moving on to story number two on the Roper Report. Starbreeze has canceled its Dungeons & Dragons game and is laying off 44 staff as it focuses on Payday. This is Chris Scullion at VGC. Swedish developer Starbreeze Studios has canceled its Dungeons & Dragons game and plans to lay off 44 staff as it shifts its main focus to the Payday series.

41:05Mike Howard:The studio announced today that it will quote-unquote discontinue development of its D &D title, Codename Project Baxter, which was originally announced in 2023 with an anticipated 2026 release window. Quote, following a strategic review, the board of directors and management have concluded that resources are best deployed to accelerate the growth of Starbreeze's flagship Payday franchise, end quote, it said in a press release. Some of the Project Baxter team will be redeployed across Starbreeze's other projects, quote, most prominently within Payday, but the studio also notes that, quote, headcount will be reduced by approximately 44 full-time employees across employees and contractors, leading to a lower cost base going forward, end quote.

41:49Mike Howard:The studio believes that by canceling Project Baxter and increasing its focus on the Payday series, it will become cash flow positive next year. Quote, this was a difficult but necessary decision, Starbreeze CEO Adolph Chris Jensen said in a statement. Our strategy is clear. Payday is one of the most iconic IPs in gaming with unmatched reach and potential. By focusing our investment in talent here, we can accelerate delivery, engage players with more content, and reinforce Starbreeze's position as the clear leader in the heisting genre. This is about sharpening our focus to create the strongest long-term value for our players, our people, and of course, our shareholders.

42:29Mike Howard:Jesus. That's who I'm worried about right now. That's cool. 44 people out of work, but it's the shareholders we really got to be worried about everybody i hate that of course what a shitty fucking way

42:39Blessing Adeoye Jr.:to end that sentence very shitty wave kind of like a very cold statement too i understand that this is business or whatever but yeah yeah like i read that i'm like oh man you just laid off 44 people and you're out here talking about what you got to do for the show holders um yeah of course our hearts go out to the people that are losing their jobs here that always sucks um it always i know it always sucks to have a project canceled as well especially when you're working hard on it and you have like a creative passion behind it um i i'm i'm a little bit fascinated by this just in the sense of i find it a little surprising i know probably the game probably wasn't coming together slash like funds are shortening um but i find it surprising that you cancel a dnd game in 2025 i would have thought that like post walters gate 3 we're we see the acceleration of dnd games dramatically i feel like that's especially compared to how did the last payday

43:26Mike Howard:do i guess that's my question that was honestly what i was starting to google around about not so much that but the fact as we joke around about GameStop being on life support the fact that Starbreeze is still here yeah you were do you remember how bad it was for them they published Overkill's The Walking Dead which was just a terrible video game and it was literally like I forget the exacts it came out and Starbreeze was immediately like oh fuck oh fuck and like they were on the verge of bankruptcy I'm trying to get I have in front of me a James Bachelor article from gamesindustry.biz pulled up.

43:59Mike Howard:This is May 19th, 2021. Starbreeze 4.0. How the Payday Studio escaped the brink of insolvency. CEO and the developers plan for the future. I'm trying to... There's not going to be obviously a great synopsis. Maybe... Let me just give you the first four paragraphs of this. Like many of Payday 2 players, Starbreeze Studios has made an impressive escape. Not from the virtual law enforcement as part of a video game heist, but from one of the lowest financial positions a business can be in without collapsing completely. Following poor performance of Overkill's The Walking Dead, a title the Swedish developer had invested heavily in, the company found itself facing insolvency by the end of 2018.

44:39Mike Howard:Starbreeze was granted a period of reconstruction, a measure in Sweden to give businesses the chance to course correct and ensure they are on the path to recovery. And after multiple extensions, it emerged in December 2019 with a plan to pay off its debts and promises of a new payday on the horizon. by the end of 2020 the studio had paid off most of its creditors and in march it secured a 50 euro 50 million euro publishing deal for payday three with coke media understandably the new ceo is feeling optimistic like that's crazy because i remember reading it on games daily all the time be like this shit's cooked it's over they're not going to come back from this the fact they came

45:15Blessing Adeoye Jr.:back but now are people off again people in chat are saying that payday three was a mess and i pulled up the wikipedia article talking about the sales portion of the game where they say it starts off payday 3 became the fifth and sixth best-selling video game in the us and uk respectively in september 2023 when it launched uh one month after launch the player base on steam plummeted with payday 2 having 10 times more concurrent players than payday 3 in november 2023 embracer group owner of deep silver said that payday 3 had failed to meet their sales expectations and so for them to be like hey we're focusing back on payday that surprises me um and makes we think that like okay well this dnd game must have just not been going well because like i feel like if i'm if i'm at a crossroads between focusing on a payday thing or focusing on a new dnd thing

45:59Mike Howard:yeah i'm going dnd yeah but you know how this industry is right now nobody wants to take a chance on anything that isn't an established ip and it's got to be that argument i know we're saying dnd i don't know what that exactly we don't know what it is so it's like the name payday in the title even maybe this is the return to form for a payday or maybe you're adding more stuff into it to make you know what I mean like yeah investors and you're again and our shareholders that's who we're really worried about here so yeah I don't think the shareholders want you to take a chance they just want to make money fucking insane uh speaking of shareholders number three on the roper report new ea investors will reportedly look to ai for cost cutting profit boosts this is maddie ang over at this week in video games following the announcement of a private acquisition of Electronic Arts by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund and investment firms Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, investors will reportedly look to AI for help in cost-cutting measures, according to a report from the Financial Times.

46:56Mike Howard:Per the report, sources involved in the acquisition claim that EA's new investors are hopeful that, quote, AI-based cutbacks will give the company's profits a boost in upcoming years. This comes after EA was sold for$55 billion, of which$20 billion will be taken on as debt. But EA CEO Andrew Wilson, who will remain in his position following the acquisition's closure, has briefly, I'm sorry, has positively, nope, all again, has spoken positively about AI and games in the past. Speaking at EA's 2024 Investor Day, Wilson stated that, quote, This pursuit of innovation has led our games to be at the forefront of the technology curve.

47:34Mike Howard:AI in its different forms has always been central to this creative journey. This remarkable technology is not merely a buzzword for us. It's the very core of our business. Beyond writing or coding AI to ensure the believability of our characters, we have always used forms of machine learning and AI across our games and processes. Right now, we have over 100 active novel AI projects across three strategic categories. It's one of those of like, how could you make the fucking news about EA, Saudi Arabia, and Jared Kushner worse? Oh, they're going to use AI as a cost-cutting measure. which is interesting for this week in video games, the way they're framing it.

48:15Mike Howard:When I had first read about it, I, it sounded like they were trying to use it as like cost cutting in the back end of people working there, which I know is becoming a thing of like, Hey, how do we make this? Like, how do we streamline and lay people off? Like, that's what I thought it was, but maybe inside the game, maybe it's both. I have no idea. And also let's be honest, all three of these investment people that were firms were talking about probably have no fucking idea what AI is and how they could use it. But they know AI is a thing that they're going to keep talking. They know it's a buzzword.

48:41Blessing Adeoye Jr.:we're gonna use ai to do this like you know you put ai on a thing and then the money flows in from shareholders or whatever even though i don't i guess when they're i've like i was away during the whole ea uh news here it's not good private yes they're going private they're going yeah this is all part it's an ongoing thing yeah either way um what was ea voted that was like an insane thing

49:01Mike Howard:was like the most evil corporation or your most evil company which is funny because at the time

49:05Blessing Adeoye Jr.:they got like two or three years in a row at the time when that was happening i was i remember being like man that seems a bit aggressive even like over time i think i became defensive of ea like i think toward the late 2010s as they're putting out star wars jedi and apex legends and titanfall 2 and battlefield 1 and it's like oh he's doing good things out here like oh man he is man they might be making they might be making a return like this might be the equivalent of like a a wrestler appearing on a show after a decade and being like yo we're back to take most evil corporation we're back give us the title hey you gave it to us

49:38Mike Howard:when it was like, you gave it to us under false pretenses. Now we're here to prove. Yeah. We're going to be the most evil corporation.

49:46Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Last time you gave it to us because we're microtransactions. Now, Oh man, we got Saudi Arabia. We got Jared Kushner. We got AI. We're going to lay off everybody. Like, yo, give it, give us the trophy.

49:56Mike Howard:If you didn't know, of course, Christopher drink has a show called the games, biz, the game business. It's a podcast, but it's also a newsletter. It's somehow loosely connected to the Jeff Keighley stuff or whatever. Anyways, He's doing great work over there. Deep dives on stuff. Today's newsletter, I've read a little bit of on my way to work. I'd like to read a few graphs for you. All right. Again, this is the game business. I urge you to go subscribe wherever you can. It's a sub stack. Christopher Dring, you might remember from games industry. That is now over there doing this. But it's called about that EA deal.

50:28Mike Howard:When the news was confirmed that EA was being sold to a group of private investors in a$55 billion deal, I had many thoughts. Most of them are around the possible synergies between EA and its future sister companies, the long-term implications of leveraged buyouts, and the future financial potential of electronic arts. But just writing about that seemed a bit incomplete, because as Just Van Duren wrote earlier this week, the numbers don't add up. And then he hyperlinks to something else, but we'll stick with here. The offer almost values EA at 20 times its annual cash flow. There's clearly something more at play.

51:03Mike Howard:This deal is about Saudi Arabia. This is about using the cultural power of games to shift its reputation and perception both locally and internationally. This is about building up a game development industry within that country. And it's about the Saudis history with the Trump administration, in particular Jared Kushner. Ultimately, this is about powerful men and regimes using our industry for political and economic gain. And then he goes, parentheses here. And this is because he's nailing all this. I want to keep reading if you don't mind. Parentheses. If you want to get a real understanding of this, I must recommend George Osborne, who is literally writing a book on this very subject.

51:38Mike Howard:He's also just done a superb newsletter that I am sure you'll find informative, if a bit depressing. This one I haven't had a chance to read yet. This is Video Games Industry Memo is the substack. You can go to VideoGamesIndustryMemo.com to read that. I haven't read that one. I want to continue here. Just four more graphs. All of this does mean any typical business analysis is hard to do. there's a huge 20 billion dollar debt that needs servicing as a result of this acquisition and so you would expect to see some rationalization parentheses whether that's uh through redundancies or selling of ips and studios the instinct to worry for these teams the instinct is to worry for teams like bioware and ea motive which aren't making sports games or shooters and are working on single-player projects with less financial upside namely mass effect and iron man but this is a political deal.

52:28Mike Howard:This is partly about changing a narrative. And what statement would it send to if these investors immediately started closing or hacking away at beloved game studios? Might EA's new owners want these teams to make things that aren't necessarily going to deliver huge returns, but could offer other political and cultural benefits? That thinking takes us to other political areas of concern. Considering the conservative leanings of this investment group, what does this mean for games like The Sims or Mass Effect, which are openly diverse? how involved will these investors be in ea's green light and creative processes there is understandable fear around this deal across the wider industry consolidation hasn't been kind of the game business in recent years but for now all we can do is hope and see and keep close watch on what influence these saudi arabian backers might have on one of america's

53:15Blessing Adeoye Jr.:most influential entertainment companies yeah oh they hit the nail on the head right there yeah yeah like i would worry a lot for yeah the mass effects the the sims like in apex legends which is a game that has a lot of diversity in it right like when you're talking about jared jared kushner and you're talking about the satirabia uh i believe the pif right like public investment fund um yeah no like it is very much a cultural thing this goes back to was it wrestlemania i know i'm doing a lot of wrestling references uh lately but like i think wrestlemania had like fatal fury city of the wolves one of those like big big big wwe events had fatal fury advertisements like on the center of the ring they had wrestlers coming out dressed up as fatal fury characters and for me as somebody who was like paying attention to fatal fury city of the wolves i'll tell you right now that game is not big enough for that kind of marketing push yeah that game is not like of that level but that game is an snk game snk was um uh uh bought by the um the pif right i believe the savvy games group if they're still called that right they are still called yes like that was them throwing way more money than that level of marketing was worth because they want the cultural cachet and yeah they're doing this as a way to like get that cultural buy-in to then expand i believe like the culture of whatever they're doing like i it's this is one of those things that's kind of above my head a bit in a way where i'm like i don't totally understand it but i can see it and it's very plain as day that they're like yo we just we we want to invest in video games because we want to invest in entertainment because entertainment is powerful for messaging and just being present so much of uh the saudis

54:45Mike Howard:uh investments here and what you've seen so far i think in a public forum has been through the lens of sports yeah we talk about wwe wrestlemania is going over to saturday and aldo like he's

54:56Blessing Adeoye Jr.:joined a saturday and league because they threw a lot of money at him the boxing all these different

54:59Mike Howard:things comedians mark maron's been on a tear right now tearing into all these comedians who are going over there to do this in sports what they had been calling it was sports washing the idea here is that saudi arabia doesn't have the best public opinion right because of a number of issues we'll read about in a second just to remind you of it but cultural uh you know how they treat uh anybody who's in the LGBT community, how they treat women, how they treat journalists and murder them. That's all bad. And so the way they're trying to change their public images by getting into all the entertainment things people like, and then throwing money at those things so that when you come over there to these events, it looks like it's this amazing place for amazing events and amazing things.

55:39Mike Howard:It's why when you watch WWE and many of the PLEs, you've seen Saudi Arabia ads on there, right? And now they're again, they're doing one and they're going to do there. they've done of course night of champions over there where you see the women from wwe dress fucking chin to toe because they can't show any skin over there because that's the level of rights women have i mean there's far less rights for a saudi arabian woman but i'm saying in terms of it's all these things i want to go back to something i had pulled and put into monday's games daily if you have missed all this and you don't understand what's really going on in saudi arabia this is from game developers chris kerr talking about the ea buyout but then giving you what I think is a great snapshot of all this, all right?

56:18Mike Howard:The Sovereign Wealth Fund, which bills itself as a catalyst of change on its website, is chaired by Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler and crown prince, Mohammed bin Salam. As noted by the BBC, Mohammed bin Salam was linked to the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who frequently criticized the policies and leaderships. Remember, of course, not just murdered, like hacked up. Yeah. Like fucking sawed into pieces. Advocacy groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have spoken out against Mohammed bin Salam and Saudi Arabia for, parentheses, among other things, attempting to control the media, restricting free speech, legally prohibiting LGBTQ plus relationships and gender expression, outlawing protests and demonstrations, and discriminating against women.

56:59Mike Howard:Human Rights Watch specifically claims PIF, quote, has facilitated and benefited directly from serious human rights abuses linked to Crown Prince Mohammed, and is being used as a tool to whitewash the company's abysmal human rights record. PI and then this is just again if you are like man this sucks for EA fuck them remember that they're everywhere PIF has heavily invested in the video game industry directly or through subsidiaries such as Savvy Games Group earlier this year Savvy owned publisher Scopely purchased Niantic's video game business and key franchises such as Pokemon Go the wealth fund also owns stakes in Nintendo, Coe Tecmo Capcom, Nexon and Take 2 like you're talking about big stakes

57:42Blessing Adeoye Jr.:they have 8.3 percent ownership of embracer group as well um hero esports they have a 30 ownership stake right like it goes deep as far as and we've been talking it's funny we've been talking about this for years there are every i feel like every few weeks on khd um going back maybe like five years now there's been a story of like oh yeah it looks like you know saudi arabia pif the saudi games group has like done a small investment here oh they're doing another small investment here right and we like keep slowly bringing it up of like the context around it now this shit is blown up in a way where it's like oh now they're buying EA they are partnering with Jared Kushner and his company to buy EA like this shit has reached a fucking critical mass now

58:20Mike Howard:and so what's interesting about it like I don't know shit and who knows I follow very I fall very much into what Christopher Dring saying where I think you're buying all this to hide the abuses you're doing in your country and so I think that honestly I think it will be status quo I don't think they're going to step into Mass Effect and be like no same sex relationships seems cut down the diversity oh yeah i think i think they i personally think they take their hands off the wheel maybe i'm just hoping because that's at least in this grand scheme of a fucked up future we have the best case scenario but like i feel like they want you

58:54Blessing Adeoye Jr.:to think saudi arabia isn't horrible even though it's clearly fucking horrible yeah i i don't think they care i i mean i think they'll step in and i think they will make those changes but i don't think they think enough people are going to be loud enough to really take away you think they will go in and knock out the diversity everything yeah i don't think because i i think they're i think that they think that they're so powerful and that not enough people will be loud enough to where it'll shake up anything right i think they look at it and they're like enough we we have enough cultural cachet to do whatever the fuck we want and so fuck them we're gonna we're gonna do that like the fact that they have they put cristiano ronaldo in fucking fatal theory as a playable character like they are putting their hands on these things like they are i mean who

59:35Mike Howard:knows nobody has a magic ball or the magic eight ball here yeah what's crystal ball that's what i was looking for to know what's actually happening in the future here i just disagree with you because so far i think this whole campaign is to make them look like they're not those people and so to step in and do that like don't get me wrong here's where it gets interesting that's definitely the fucking republican move yeah that's definitely the fucking mega move of like oh like no we believe in you know pursuit of happiness but like we're gonna push our values and everything else on you yeah whereas this for the saudi part of it seems like it's been no come here everything's fucking chill it's a party have a drink have a thing see a fight do a whatever yeah kill a

1:00:13Blessing Adeoye Jr.:journalist who cares but i think that's more so about like i don't think it's that they don't want people to understand their values i think they just want people to come tour like i think they're doing this for tourism right of like oh yeah they want money yeah they want money they want you know to be like to be known as that they want people to come through and spend money in their country but i don't think it's the thing of like oh but we don't want you to think that like we don't like do what we do right like i think best part of this is that i think i assume that uh the people are in charge of this like whether it be jared kosher but even more so on the south arabian side right like i believe they're probably proud of this they're probably proud of like the way they operate they're probably proud of the culture oh yeah so i don't think it's a thing of like them being like ah we want to hide it i think it's for them being a thing of like yeah but like look how great we are yeah look how much money we have look at our look how tall

1:00:58Mike Howard:buildings are i hate it here number four on the roper reports some good news that we talked about on gamescast walton goggins will appear as the ghoul in fallout 76 this is jordan middler at ign walton goggins is coming to fallout 76 as part of the game's biggest update in five years goggin who plays the ghoul in amazon fallout tv series will reprise the character in fallout 76's next expansion fallout 76 burning springs players will explore the post-nuclear ohio and meet the goal for the first time in the video game series fully voiced by Goggins the new expansion is planned to release in December the goal will provide new bounties to players throughout the expansion but won't be available as a companion Paris and I played this in New York we did a gamescast yesterday the first part's all about that second part's all about well what we've been playing but then in game pass and a lot of stuff of course of course but yeah I it's really cool I think it's a great addition you can hear me on gamescast talk about playing it and all the other new stuff they're adding to this neat number five k-pop demon hunters join fortnight with demon rush mode this is tom phillips at ign fortnight has now announced full details of its expansive crossover with netflix movie sensation k-pop demon hunters which ibgn reported yesterday launches fully this week aside from owning rumi mira and zoe as new skins hunter uh huntrix right hunter i call it i like just saying hunter but they put the xa huntrix uh will also be the star of their own in game mode and pop up in core battle gameplay Royale core battle Royale gameplay launching today, October 2nd and available until November one Horde rush demon rush.

1:02:28Mike Howard:These players team up with hunt tricks for a new version of fortnight's fan favorite horde offering in the past. The mode was traditionally arrived alongside the game's main fort nightmares event this year. However, the newly retitled demon rush has had something of a makeover fitting both the demon hunters themselves and fortnight chapter six is wider demonic theme. I have been eagerly anticipating this because I love the movie and then of course Ben is super into it so last night right before bed I saw this pop and I showed him the trailer and he was like there's a K-pop video game and I'm like well they're in Fortnite and he's like what can we play it right now and I was like I don't think so Ben we'll play it I think it comes out this weekend every game comes out Saturday afternoon yeah that's when games come out for us so

1:03:08Blessing Adeoye Jr.:this is why I can never hate on Fortnite I know people are like oh it's just it's just fucking marketing form like you know fucking form together we're putting everything and everything right and like i get it and i'm actually kind of with you but if i was a kid if i was a kid who loved k-pop demon hunters yeah and you're telling me that now i can play as them in the video game the video game that i already probably like and play a lot with my friends yeah

1:03:32Mike Howard:man good for them yep good for the kids out there exactly damn big bad blue says i dropped 35 dollars in the skins last night waiting for the songs now fuck me is that really how much it cause to get all these idiots you want to take i take it back this is what i'm talking about where it's like man why didn't they start the xbox game pass fortnite crew three months ago i would have all the credits i needed i would have been ready to go there you go bless k-pop demon hunters coming to fortnite is huge news big news big news but if i wanted something smaller say the tiniest news i

1:03:58Blessing Adeoye Jr.:need to know about where would i go you go to our last news story the we news channel where you cover all the small news items you need to know about number six we news just two from game developer

1:04:07Mike Howard:Disco Elysium developer Zaum has established the first recognized workplace union in the UK games industry. Good for them. From this week in video games, Slot Machine Roguelite Clover Pit has now sold over 300 ,000 copies in four days. It previously delayed its release because of Hollow Knight Silkson. Good for them. Hell yeah. Good stuff. And that's it for WeNews. Of course, we ask you to super chat to be part of the show. Many of you have. Let's see what we can get through in a non-topical fashion. Alex says is Ben too young to enjoy skeleton crew. Oh, that's Star Wars as well. I imagine. But yeah, Barrett.

1:04:45Mike Howard:I don't know what that is, but I know it's Star Wars. It's Goonies Star Wars. Oh, is he too young for it though? What do you think? Is it a cartoon? Is it a cartoon? Oh, live action? Huh. They make a lot of Star Wars stuff. They do. Alex J. Sandoval says, could you say again who made the custom saber? Thanks. Justin T. Mars who you see in our chat all the time makes amazing lightsabers Lucy Dream says chance for a KF Marvel Studios design shirt reprint there's always a chance but no plans RSC Raptor Face says birthday tax I'm turning 35 again thanks for being read this is it this kid's doing stuff in Star Wars do any of them have lightsabers they can't see it okay it's just for you do any of them have lightsabers I don't think so but I don't know man Remember at the end of the one movie The one kid started Doing the broom with the force Yeah that's fair Give the kids what they want They want lightsabers That was Ben's whole thing Watching episode 4 He's like where are the fucking lightsabers They got an elephant kid They've got an elephant kid

1:05:47Greg Miller:They got a cyborg kid She's pretty cool She's pretty neat Is it a movie or a show? It's a show And it's got what's his face As maybe a Jedi? Question mark Forget his name

1:05:59Mike Howard:Kumail

1:06:00Greg Miller:Who's the guy from

1:06:01Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Stick with me here Gattaca Jude Law that's my touchstone for Jude Law what was it said? I would have said he's in Captain Marvel that's what I would have said I would have said Captain Marvel

1:06:12Mike Howard:I would have said the guy who cheated with his nanny or he was in Captain Marvel Jude Law we don't talk about him enough for a reason

1:06:23Mike Howard:happy birthday we just said it right now optimistic92 says money for Greg's deadly class shirt thank you I love this sweatshirt it is nearing the end of it's life cycle it breaks down It was supposed to be like a wear on the house sweatshirt, but today I was like, you got to get out there again. Let's go. Get out there. Hard Defiance says, I buy a few Game Pass codes at one time to avoid things like this. I do the same with Nintendo and PlayStation. I have to pay rent Microsoft. Smart person right there. I'm going to start speeding through people who are coming in late to talk about this. Red Hudson, grateful for Kind of Funny and the KFBFs.

1:06:57Mike Howard:Mental health has been rough lately and Kind of Funny always helps. Long live the champ team blue for Pete incoming. You know it. You got good taste. We're sorry it's been rough lately. Hang in there. I can't say it'll get better. But I mean, how much worse can it get? We'll find out. I don't ask that question because the world will find a way.

1:07:24Mike Howard:I'm just a Billy says late to the chat, but is GeForce now the best deal in gaming after game pass price hikes? You can listen to me in Paris talk about that at the end of yesterday's gamescast where we bring that up and I start playing Starfield using it right away. It's crazy, huh?

1:07:41Mike Howard:I mean, Bam has a nihilistic view. It's great y 'all are talking about this, but like WWE thing, no real consequences happened to them when they went to Saudi Arabia. People are going to still play and buy EA games. Well, if you say that and just give into that, yes, it's also, this is a much larger conversation yeah this is a much larger conversation than we have here at

1:08:03Blessing Adeoye Jr.:the end of super chats not yeah i mean not to be not realistic but i think there is an element of i agree to some extent agreed as far as like what the what the world is like right what the population of even like we're just looking at our country what the population is like right like fucking donald trump won the popular vote this time like this is i think there's a reality to well he's gonna lower the price eggs on day one don't forget of course and he's gonna run for the third term and when people want i mean people want a dictator it's whatever yeah um i think there is i think there's an element to that but also i would say yeah don't stop fighting right like i would say hey like we still got to be vocal and we still got to you know fight for what's right fight for what's good even though that sounds like i'm quoting some high school musical shit but

1:08:44Mike Howard:yeah we got to stand we got to stand on what we believe in and go that way and so then you get into this whole system though of like with this and what's happening and when this goes through like okay but then we got to watch what they're doing again i just i don't i don't know i am notoriously naive and stupid and believe i've proven time and time again i believe in the good and people far too much but like i just as i look at saudi arabia and i see them pulling like just lex luthor shit i really just don't see them coming in and be like mass effect no gay shit anymore all right like and because i feel like if they did that yeah then that would be the blowback in our space because the idea here is to sneak into all these different levels of americana in the world yeah and be like see it's totally sure we're fine we are we already have that view we

1:09:36Blessing Adeoye Jr.:already are like oh man they're doing evil shit over there right like i think the best way to do it not to do the evil shit no more they're not gonna do that like they're gonna continue to do the evil shit and we're gonna continue to talk about it and they're gonna continue to go all right but most of the people like don't care right most of the people just want to live their lives do their thing like live in ignorance and do that and that's that's how we continue to be here the

1:10:01Mike Howard:good news is if they start stripping the diversity and themes and the compelling narratives out of all these games they're gonna be dog shit and no one's gonna look at that like you know what i mean like oh sure we won't have to talk about these kids because everyone's fucking hate them

1:10:18Mike Howard:purely GT super chasses I find it likely that EA studios will comply in advance and just start adjusting pitches to reduce diversity LGBT etc without

1:10:27Blessing Adeoye Jr.:the new owners one other thing I'll throw in there is that like I think I'm even less worried about like as far as how this stuff affects the content on the Saturday radio side I'm more so on the Jared Kushner side of like what he's going to do this shit I'm like I think they're way more in tuned of like strip out the gay shit yeah like if a mass effect comes out and there's a bunch of gay shit they will i i think that will make them go close down that shoot that studio like we're out here canceling jimmy kimmel and stephen colbert i i yeah i think they'll take out like i i think they'll

1:10:57Mike Howard:keep an eye on the content is what i'll say yeah i don't know uh jenny send nuggies is sneaking in a birthday tax love you all we love you happy birthday uh bam 2018 wwe started the year 2027 and Wrestlemania's yeah we talked about that earlier the Wrestlemania's coming up and then George says for Greg with the Saudi Arabia stuff and multiple ties to the Trump administration uh how is it affecting your WWE fandom oh I mean not positively do you see a lot of WWE shirts are talking about WWE that much anymore it's like what a fucking bummer I haven't watched a lot triple fucking H and Stephanie McMahon and Linda McMahon in the fucking Oval Office or the White House I forget fucking saying like and this is an administration that won't will let cancer go on they cut the cancer funding they cut the cancer funding now they want to use AI to do cancer research what the fuck are we talking about he's going to lower the price of eggs though half of project 2025 already done but he didn't know anything about that

1:11:52Blessing Adeoye Jr.:don't get me started imagine being efficiently evil it's like man at least suck at it I fucking can't

1:12:01Mike Howard:stand the president but I would at least have a modicum of respect if once he got it, he was just like, by the way, I am the bad guy. You know what I mean? Stop fucking still acting like you're the good guy. We see it. You suck. You suck. You're bad. You're the bad guy. You paved the rose garden. What the fuck are we doing? Don't get me wrong. Don't take that out of context. That's my number one problem with President Trump and his administration. We're going to stop. I can't fucking do this right now.

1:12:37video games you know what i mean they're out here seeing if anybody

1:12:41Blessing Adeoye Jr.:October's a big release month guys lock in we gotta play Hades no no these are all jokes or

1:12:46Mike Howard:things we've talked about and you're wrong or whatever before uh ladies gentlemen NBs I won't lie to you it's bad out here it's bad it's bad it's real bad uh but we have each other and that's what kind of funny as a community and a best friend group is all about so you can lean on each other and talk to each other all the time don't worry about that um play games with each other and have fun don't take your eye off the ball though uh that's what they want you to do i don't know if you know this uh the president is in the epstein files but every time the epstein files come up he does something out more outlandish to fucking throw you off of it because i'm looking alcatraz still isn't reopened uh that was a threat if you remember that was going to happen super cool too that my family's in town for ben's birthday and they're like we should go to mere woods and i was like oh yeah you got to get a reservation went to the mere woods website oh oh yeah, there's a government shutdown.

1:13:34Mike Howard:So you can't do that. Now, do I need to remind you that the Republicans are in charge of every branch of government? No one is standing in their way that, and then they're like, but the Democrats are the reason, man. Fuck everybody who voted for this guy. Thank you. It's a good games daily until next time. Fuck off. Jesus. Fuck. Right.