[MUSIC]
Welcome to the Off the Console podcast,
the hottest podcast that's all about
gaming and tech news and anything nerdy.
This week, we've got
some big news to cover.
We've got Nvidia becoming the first,
what is it, $4 trillion
company, is that right?
Yes.
We've got an update for the
Stop Killing Games movement
and a whole bunch more.
And my name is Gardiner.
I'm joined by my
co-host, James, and Hitec.
And we're joined by our special guest,
Muda from Somewhere Near Gamers.
How's it going, Muda?
Hey, everybody.
How's it going, guys?
It's good to be on here.
I've followed Gardiner here for a bit.
And I'm meeting two new
guys here as well, too.
So it's a fun day today.
And I like the actual
topics you guys had,
because I've been talking about Stop
Killing Games a fair bit.
But this Nvidia stuff,
man, $4 trillion, dude.
I know.
God, I hate Nvidia.
Easy.
I've been following your
channel, Muda, as well.
And I was shocked the first time you left
a comment on my video.
And I was like, wow, this
guy actually knows who I am.
So that's pretty neat.
Dude, I used to have like your--
you had like this
Linux teach series where--
when I was like setting
up my art for a while,
I used to just be in
the terminal all day.
You know what I mean?
I used to set up my auto
mounts through the F-staff folder
until I found one of your
videos where you're auto
mounting with a GUI.
And I was like, oh my
god, it's that simple.
You tell me I don't
have to go through the--
dude, I have like-- you
know that Best Buy meme
where the guy's like, oh my god.
That was literally me.
I'm like, I cannot
believe it was that easy.
Holy-- my wife was in the room.
She was like, what are you doing?
I'm like, honey, I just found out
how to make my life so much more easy.
Just how the Linux got me.
Yeah, I was like, oh
my god, it's that easy.
What the heck, dude?
Because at that point, I was like, man,
you know what I miss about Windows?
The goddamn user interface
sometimes, it makes it so easy.
And then here it was.
I was like, yes.
There's a lot-- I
should go back to doing that
because there's a lot of things that
people don't realize
you can do like with a GUI that people
think, oh, on Linux,
you have to do it with a terminal.
So I should probably--
Yeah, like fucking flat pack permissions.
Everyone-- dude, I've always loved--
anytime I cover a video regarding Linux,
I'm like, let me show you
the easiest way possible.
I have to show it the
laziest way possible.
Because you've got to
remember, it's like,
there's somebody in
the comments who's like,
why are you showing it the lazy way?
You know, it's just
like one terminal command.
I'm like, all right,
there, Morpheus from The Matrix.
I get it.
You know how to manipulate your system.
I'm just talking to the guy that's
scared to death
loading up the terminal, OK?
Because it is scary
to somebody new, right?
It's like, well, what is
this 1990s MS DOS prompt
that I've been given?
Yeah.
It all sorts of events.
A lot of comments of
people just begging for help.
Yeah.
Two.
Yeah.
Or if you're doing
like a Steam Deck video,
people are going to be like, I don't
want to type all that
stuff in with the track pads.
Right.
Well, to your point, high tech, flat seal
is the answer to managing
permissions on the flat packs
with a GUI.
I don't know if you've heard of that.
Yeah.
I know of that.
But I think they
implemented it recently in KDE
in an update to KDE Plasma.
You can go into settings and
change it directly in Plasma
itself without flat seal.
Yeah.
It's baffling to me that
GNOME hasn't done that.
Maybe they have, but I haven't seen it.
I think Bazaar now does it too, actually.
Like managing permissions.
Yeah.
Which is like the new--
it's like the replacement
for Discover Store for Bazite.
I don't know if they've done that yet,
but I think it might be on the roadmap.
Anyway, we like to start the show
with talking about what
we've done over the week,
whether it's the games we've
played or any cool projects
we've been working on.
And, Muda, you're the guest.
So what have you been playing this week?
I have been trying to platinum
that "Dead Straining 2" game.
So I've just been so into it.
Like I remember when
the first game came out,
I was just fully in.
I probably didn't
leave my house for a week.
I had to finish this game.
Same thing with the second title.
Absolutely trying to chomp through it.
It is the best
package delivery game ever.
Would you say it's game of the year?
Honestly, if that new ghost of that
Tsushima game or whatever
doesn't hit as hard, probably
would be my game of the year.
No, actually, game of the
year might be System Shock 2.
I just played that in a sitting.
I bought the remastered version.
And I was like, I'm going
to play this for an hour.
And then the sun came up.
And I'm like, well,
I'm already at the end.
Might as well.
Dude, on the topic of
"Ghost of Yote," I think it was,
someone was complaining
about how it looks like it's
kind of the same.
I mean, it's a sequel after all.
But then they also
mentioned how they want to expand
Jin Sakai's story.
I'm pretty sure he-- spoiler alert--
he dies in the first game, doesn't he?
I don't think he dies in the first game.
But the game takes place
hundreds of years later.
So technically, yeah, he should be dead.
I don't think he should be alive.
That's awesome.
Not with that attitude.
No.
What was the life
expectancy back in "Edo Japan,"
like what, 40 years, 50 years?
Well, you know what they say, man.
Japanese people have
long life expectancies.
Yeah, but I mean, when you're a samurai
fighting with swords
and shit, you're probably going to cut
that down a little bit.
Pun intended.
That's just a skill.
I think that's just a skill issue.
He almost dies like
four times in that game.
That was such a good game.
I remember when that dropped on the PS4,
the one thing that blew my mind was like,
how did they make the load time so fast?
I remember fast traveling in it, and I'm
like, oh, two seconds.
Wow.
How did they achieve SSD loading back
on these mechanical drives?
I don't think I played that on the PS4.
Yeah, so funny story.
The actual island of Tsushima
named the entirety of Sucker
Punch Games ambassadors to the island.
Oh, that's pretty cool.
Nice.
Hi, Tech.
What have you been playing this week?
That's a good question.
I've been playing--
it's a game called Dungeons and
Degenerate Gamblers.
It's like Bellott-- all
right, so it's not like Bellottro
with gam--
but it's like Blackjack.
But you essentially build your own deck,
and you get cards like--
you get 21 of hearts and stuff like that,
but you can also get Pokemon cards,
quote unquote Pokemon cards.
And it's like a duel to the--
it's like a duel to the deck.
You have to essentially
reduce your enemy's HP,
and it's calculated by
the difference in values
of Blackjack, of the
cards you draw and stuff.
And coincidentally, I did
go to a casino yesterday,
and I played some actual Blackjack,
and I made like 90 bucks.
OK, I was going to ask
if you stole the house.
We have a running joke
that he is incredibly lucky
and manages to count
cards and stuff as well.
Wait, at the casino?
Bro, I wish I had you in Vegas, man.
I really do.
Dude, you hit me up next time, man.
You know, my older brother went to Vegas
to watch the
Mayweather versus Floyd fight,
and he said it was a waste of money.
But he went to Vegas, so it was worth it.
No, I was at the win.
I went there with the
wife for the first time,
and it was just like--
I cannot believe every casino in Vegas
has just opened 24-7.
They're just ready to have
you siphon your cash out.
So it was like the
first time where I'm like,
I'm going to play some Blackjack on it.
I think I lasted, I want to
say, maximum six, seven minutes
before I was like, well,
the money I just put down
is completely gone.
Like, there's just--
Dang.
There's no waiting here.
Dang, there are some house
rules that you do have to know.
For example, dealers must stay--
they have to
essentially stand at 17 or above.
So if they're at 16,
then they have to hit,
even though they're
most likely going to bust.
It's just a rule.
And also, the strategies for figuring out
what to do when, say, for example, they
have a face card running.
Because if they have a face card up,
then your best option is to try to hit,
because they could have
like a 20 on them there.
See, sometimes you think
you'll win in a Blackjack,
because you feel like
there's a method to it.
Anybody that tells me, it's
like roulette has a strategy.
I'm like, how do you
mind control the ball?
How do you get at the
land where you want?
At least with Blackjack,
you kind of think you can win.
And then, because you're in a casino,
you're always against
the most intense odds.
So it's always just
like, that's the one game
that I jump in thinking
that I'll make money on.
Always end up losing, 99% of the time.
One of my favorite
things is loading up GT online
and playing the casino with my friends,
we'll make millions
in a night doing heist,
and then we'll lose the
millions in the night.
I'm just like, I think I
can make it in Blackjack.
I think I can.
I put these 50 large bets on it.
I'm like, I think I can beat it.
And then I'm like, a
casino already makes you lose
every step of the way.
Imagine if the casino
was run by Rockstar Games.
Then you really don't have a chance.
I don't know, man.
I feel like it'd be a little more fair
if it was run by Rockstar Games.
Oh man, you should see the
Diamond Casino in Los Santos.
It is like, they will ensure,
I think they must have hired experts.
I remember a few months ago, there was a,
or years ago, there was a report
where they hired psychologists
to find dark patterns in games.
I really think Rockstar is
the one that landed it the best
when they were making a casino,
because we're like, how do we
make this addictive gambling
in our video game?
And it really is
super addictive gambling.
It's the only game
that I ever have played
where my buddy who's in Argentina
has to use a VPN all the time,
because they actually
go through gambling laws
in GTA Online, apparently,
if you're in other parts of the world.
So, I don't know. I didn't know that.
It's really intense.
Even the, every single
time you go to a slot machine
in that game, they'll give
you return to player percentage.
I'm like, it really does
feel like a real casino,
except run by the
scummiest life service publisher
that I just can't seem to shake off.
Don't worry, they'll
have you back for GTA 6.
Oh, absolutely, dude.
Come on.
If they, come on now.
I can't say that I won't get GTA 6.
That's just a blatant lie.
That game's gonna be like game of the
year next year, easily.
It's not coming out till 2027, man.
They're gonna keep delaying it.
Dude. Yeah.
Dude, yeah, that's right.
They gotta keep delaying them.
Otherwise, we're not
gonna get any game releases
at 2027. I mean, that game looks,
actually, you know,
like that game looks like
still so good.
Like every time I see a screenshot of it,
I'm surprised that it
is running on a PS5.
Like I'm really genuinely blown away
because I saw like Digital Foundry
like talk about the ray tracing in it.
And it really does look like a screenshot
that I would have
captured with path tracing
on like cyberpunk.
And that alone needs like,
what, a 40, 90 and above?
I'm just like, I don't even
know how they're achieving
that level of fidelity on a PS5.
Like those, the engineers
that work on that engine
at Rockstar, magicians.
I think we'll see
when the game comes out,
assuming it doesn't get
delayed multiple times.
Yeah. Yeah.
And generally like with Rockstar stuff,
like anything they show in trailers
usually just gets
upgraded, at least historically.
So I don't know how
it can change for this,
but I mean, when you're
making a game for like what,
over 10 years in one of
the biggest franchises
in the world, it's like,
thank God we're not Game Freak fans
because if this was a
Game Freak production,
oh boy, this would look like apps.
Oh boy.
They wouldn't have moved
past the PlayStation 2 era
visual fidelity.
I don't know man, have
you seen that trailer
for the Game Freak game
that they're publishing?
Oh yeah, the one they're doing on Xbox,
but not on Nintendo platform, yeah.
Yeah, man, then they do great.
As soon as you leave Nintendo's camp,
it's like, well, now you're able to just
innovate like crazy.
Yeah, man.
Oh yeah, I should mention,
I don't endorse gambling for
all the kids that are watching.
I really doubt there's
any kids watching this,
just in case, don't gamble kids
because you're gonna lose.
Yeah.
James, are you a gambler, James?
No, I go to Vegas and I take advantage
of everyone losing their money
and staying in the nice hotels.
So I just go and eat and
just do everything else.
Oh, so you just, yeah.
So you're like the
leech around the torrent.
I love that shit.
Pretty much.
Never see, never see boys.
Whoa, I've seeded a
few things in my life.
Let's just say that.
I have a rule for seeding, okay?
Like if I've torrented for six hours,
I'll seed for three, why not?
I see Linux distro images.
It depends though.
Like if I go to the peer list
and I see a whole bunch of
like 15 kilobytes a second,
I'm like, yeah, fuck,
I'm out of here, dude.
All these assholes, we
need to get out of here.
That's funny.
Yes, I'm Vegas' leech.
Nice.
So, Chase, what have you
been playing this week?
Well, a certain game
dropped another set of worlds
that I've been talking about.
Astrobots has more
worlds that they dropped.
So I started playing
that again and then--
Wait, they got more free content?
Yeah.
Oh my God, I gotta update it.
They still keep on
dropping updates, like it's crazy.
They said they were going to.
I heard one of the worlds
was a Final Fantasy world.
They finally have Cloud
from Final Fantasy VII
in Astrobot.
Yeah, yep.
Like they really have a
lot of characters in that.
It's really fun.
Honestly, I think you'd like a high tech.
But yeah, been playing
that, playing Domekeeper
while I like program
and do my vibe stuff.
Domekeeper's so awesome.
I love that game.
Thanks for the recommendation, Gardener.
Yeah, that was a good recommendation.
Yeah, I would turn my PS5.
Yeah, Gardener
recommended to us during the,
I think it was not the last episode,
but like the episode before.
Yeah, it is so good.
It's super fun.
It's like a cross
between like missile command
and like a tower defense sort of,
but with like mining and crafting stuff.
Not really crafting,
but like mining resources
and like building out your defenses.
This is one of those games, man.
It's like, I'm just
looking at the screenshot
and it reminds me of like,
my buddy Carson told me
about this game, Factorio.
It's one of those games
where I started playing it
at like 8 p.m.
Sun comes up, I'm like,
"All right, well, that's another nice
spin on a free hack."
Yeah.
I've been playing that too this week
in between doing some other fun things.
I'm working on this
really interesting idea
for a crowdsourced like database website.
And it's all about the DRM free games
you can buy through Steam.
Because I was inspired by the story
that you sent me High Tech.
The guy who does Special K
and he hear how he
deleted his like 20 year old
Steam account.
So I made a video about that.
And then I'm like,
"There are a ton of games
on Steam that are DRM free.
And it seems like people
think you have to have Steam
in order to launch all these games.
But like, you really don't.
Like, there are a lot
of games that were like,
because they rely on
like the achievement system
or any of like the
built in things in Steam,
Steam functionally will
act like DRM for the game.
But there are a lot of
games that go out of their way
to make sure that they can launch
without the Steam client present.
Even if, but, and then
also support like Steam input
and achievements and stuff like that.
They are DRM free.
And there isn't a great
resource that can like tell you
which games on Steam are DRM free.
So I've been working on it.
Yeah, because there's
one game that I think,
I don't know if this is true,
but like Cyberpunk 2077, I
think is also a DRM free game.
Because I did run the,
because usually the
way that I test is like,
you go to the executable
file and you just launch it.
And as long as it doesn't
bring up the connecting Steam
account or fires with the client,
then it should be DRM free, right?
Yeah, yep, exactly.
Yeah, it sounds like
even some AAA stuff, yeah.
Like Cyberpunk worked
without the DRM check
and that was pretty awesome.
Yeah, and they'll still
award like achievements
or whatever.
Like if you're playing the game,
you can still earn like marketplace cards
or whatever from these games,
but it doesn't need Steam.
Like my game, for example,
like you can, if you
buy doodlings on Steam,
then you can like close the client
and launch the
executable and it just works.
You can copy it to a different system
without Steam
installed and you can play it.
Which saves you time as a developer.
Hey, Gardner, I have a video idea.
Having considered going
down your entire Steam library
to see which of these games qualify
and then when you get to doodlings,
you'll be like, oh
shoot, doodlings is DRM free?
Well, I didn't know that.
Thanks, developer.
I have some 1000
something games on Steam.
So I don't know if
I'd do the entire thing,
but yeah, that's a good idea.
I'm gonna add that to my list actually.
Awesome.
Did you guys pick up
anything to Steam sale by the way?
Dumpkeeper.
Dumpkeeper, some other stuff too.
I recommended 100%
orange juice to Gardner
and James, I don't know if
they've checked it out yet.
I did not pick that up.
I have been super busy.
I did pick up a game on GOG
during the GOG sale though.
And they don't remember what it is.
It's on my wish list, high tech.
I have a lot of stuff
recommended on my wish list.
I'm gonna get eventually.
I just got it.
I mean, I put 80 hours into expedition 33
and I finally got that done.
Nice.
It's like Mario Party, but anime.
So good, dude.
That's my game of the year.
It's so good.
Yeah, if it wasn't
for Death Stranding too,
that would easily be
the game of the year.
Oh dude, so what you're
saying is it's gonna be a fight
between Death Stranding and expedition.
I just love working as a UPS delivery guy
in the post-apocalypse.
That's my favorite.
That's my enjoyment.
I don't know man.
33 is higher than two.
So obviously, expedition 33
is game of the year, right?
Yeah.
But then at that point,
you know, Final Fantasy
should just be a series that keeps
skyrocketing to the top.
But you know.
Man, they said we have
like Final Fantasy 24 by now
or some shit like that.
I don't remember which one it was.
It wasn't like human revolution.
You know that like
little gag from Square.
That's funny.
And now we're at like,
what's the newest Final Fantasy?
Like what?
16. 16.
16.
God, that game had
like, that game was decent
until you got to like the
very end and you're like,
man, I think Hideo Kojima wrote this game
because they just dropped like the
cringiest one-liners
imaginable, like, God damn.
That's funny.
I still gotta try Death Stranding too.
Like I stopped to play the first one.
I have it on like multiple platforms.
I still need to play it.
It's just.
Yeah, I have it.
Like, did you play it at all at all?
Do you know like, have you ever
experienced a bit of it?
Okay.
I've experienced some of it.
If you enjoyed playing it.
Yeah.
If you enjoy it, then you'll enjoy it.
I did enjoy it.
I just need to sit down.
I had so many other games I was playing.
Yeah.
And so I need to sit down.
It also has Half-Life Easter eggs in it.
So that also got me into it.
A huge Half-Life fan, so.
My favorite thing about Death Stranding.
Say what?
I was just like, you think we're asking
three or something anytime soon?
Half-Life.
When GTA 5 drops.
GTA 6.
Or 6, I mean 6, sorry.
Whatever.
GTA 5 is gonna drop multiple times again.
So you never know.
True that.
We're gonna get GTA 5 on the Switch 2
before a 6 drops.
Just watch.
Oh yeah.
Are people still making fun of you
for buying the Switch 2
when you said you wouldn't buy one?
Probably, dude.
You know.
Give the internet what it is.
You know, I'll be real.
Like, I wish I still didn't get it
just because like the
only game I played on
was Cyberpunk 2077.
Which is a great port, by the way.
An absolutely exceptional port of a game.
I'm still surprised it works.
Like I saw the Digital Foundry video.
I'm like, man, they
got it running on like
a nine watt Switch 2.
And it looks that good.
Runs better than the Steam Deck.
Which is still a shock
because the deck is still
such a great like low power device
compared to like
obviously like the rogues
and the Legion goes to the world.
Yep.
I wrote the shaders
for Cyberpunk for Arm.
So it's coming out for Mac.
Which I do all my
professional stuff there.
I'm wondering when that port comes out.
Cause like, man, if it wasn't for how
restrictive Apple was,
I think they'd be a
really good gaming device.
Like this, like the M
series of laptops they have
are super duper powerful, super good.
Like the graphical quality is awesome.
Especially when you're
running things through like
crossover or like through
the game porting toolkit.
It's like, why is it
that they're so restrictive
on like gaming?
Like this thing would be
a decent gaming laptop,
but it's just, you know,
Apple being Apple, I guess.
Right?
Like.
I hope that would change.
I hope it changes.
Steve Jobs, it was
embarrassed that like the way
he made his first like good
amount of money was breakout.
Right?
Like he was embarrassed about that.
And like ever since they
just have held this grudge
against gaming.
That's what it seems to me anyway.
Sounds like a skill issue.
And then it's like, even now it's like,
they'll go out and
they'll like port like,
they had a, I remember
like when the new iPhones
were coming out, they had
like resident evil four remake
running on these things.
And I'm like, I don't understand why
they're so embarrassed.
Like it's kind of a huge
deal when your chipsets
are running PS5 quality games.
Sometimes with ray tracing
even on like mobile hardware.
I mean, even like Mac M1s,
they're like mobile chipsets,
like arm-based chipsets.
If you want to go buy that technicality,
I'm like, if I were
you, I'd be flexing that.
And now you've got like Nvidia with like,
I think it's the N1X and
they're coming into the picture.
It's like, why would you not be able to,
why would you not be
flexing the advantage you have
for as long as you can?
And so of course the other
players start getting involved.
It's so weird.
It's like such a, it's
like a weird Apple thing.
Like they want to be like innovators.
It's like people do a
lot more on their devices
than just like browse the
web or like maybe engage with,
you know, like office tools.
Why not just like flex it?
It's such a huge
thing that you have over.
I think it's market share, man.
I really do.
I think it's because like, if
you go and look at the games,
like the Resident Evils,
there's not that many
reviews and stuff like that.
So they're probably weighing that,
even though they're
going to have to realize
they need to pour a ton of games over
before that starts becoming relevant.
Well, the thing too is
that mobile games are tainted
with a stink of just being
a gacha ridden hellscape.
Yeah.
And like people are used to not paying,
like not paying for video games, right?
Like I remember, what was it?
Super Mario run or
whatever it was called?
That came on mobile.
It was like $10 to like
access the whole game,
but no one bought it.
But then guess what they
released like a few months later,
Fire Emblem Heroes,
gacha game, mega successful.
Yeah, well, Resident
Evils are released on Mac, iOS
and the iPad OS.
So it's probably because they're all ARM.
And so it's a full
release across all three.
And to be honest, they
play really well on the iPad.
You can hook up a PS5
controller, plug it into your TV,
and it's pretty impressive on an M chip.
If I just had to guess,
it's just that like mobile gaming,
I don't know, like the
whole mobile gaming like market
isn't really designed around
paying for $60 video games.
Or I guess, how much was it on iOS?
Oh, it was full price.
The Resident Evil
remakes are all full price.
Like they're the same price
you would pay for on things.
So like $60, $70.
Yeah, around them.
And usually what they would
do is in like the first week
of the release, they
would like slash the price
by like 50, 60%.
So I mean, that's really
when they only made their sales.
I don't think anybody
bought those games after,
like during their full price,
because it's like, as
much as it's a cool novelty,
it's like a party trick almost
that you can run "Resie
4" remake on your iPhone.
But it's like, if you
ever actually went through,
like if you ever actually played the game
without like the attached controller,
it is the most laughable
touchscreen control interface.
Like I have debt straining on my phone
and I bought that just to show my buddy
how insane the onscreen controls were.
Cause it's just like, they have,
I want to say like at least 18 buttons
and you have to somehow have like more
than like five fingers per
hand in order to make it work.
Cause like, yeah, when you
get to the end, like dude,
imagine doing the final
boss fight of that game
with like the touchscreen controls,
anybody that's able
to do it, bro, you are,
you have the utmost super
gamer badge applied to you
if you can beat a video game like that.
Yeah.
I saw my friends, kids
who like only play games
on touch screens and
like, I just worry about like,
cause they won't play a
game with the controller.
They don't understand it.
And they're young still,
but like still they're like,
they have their tablets and
they just play like Minecraft
or whatever with that.
And I'm like, what are we,
what kind of generation are we raising
that don't know how to
use game pads, you know?
Bunch of psychos.
I mean, my kids, I put a
controller or a keyboard
and mouse in their hands.
They, none of this touch, I
mean, they do it a little bit.
Yeah.
Gotta raise them right.
It's crazy though.
Like a lot of the kids and
like my family and stuff,
I don't even think that they even come
across many games now.
It's just like all TikTok for them.
It's all just like social
media brain rot they're on.
So, you know.
That's even worse.
Like I won, like one time I sat down,
I'm playing like Deus
Ex and they're like,
can you put on like something exciting?
This is a boring game.
I'm like, you were, you kids, you just
don't know how easy,
you have it these days.
You just don't know like good quality.
I feel like an old
man screaming at a cloud
when I'm like telling them
like, these are good games.
Deus Ex is a good game.
Metal Gear Solid 2 is a good game.
Yes, it's 20 years old.
It's still good.
Obviously it's rated M not
because of the blood and gore,
but because you need to be
mature enough to sit down.
Yeah, because you need to
be mature enough to play.
Yeah, dude, I was playing
San Andreas and they're like,
this game just looks terrible.
And I'm like, I don't
know how to reach you kids.
Okay, this is one of the
best open world games ever made.
Okay, three cities in one.
And you kids don't
understand how amazing this is.
Okay, come on.
Just throw a reshade shader on there
and then it will look like an indie game.
Dude, on the computer, it's even wilder.
Like I'm on my computer.
They're like, you have
like Call of Duty war zone
or something.
I'm like, no, I try
like, I'm like a Linux gamer.
Okay, all the good multiplayer stuff
that you kids love to play
just does not work for me.
Okay, I just play single player nonsense.
Same.
(upbeat music)
Cool, we're gonna get on
to the first story here.
Nvidia has become the first company
to hit $4 trillion in valuation.
Hi, Tech, you wanna
fill us in on this one?
Yeah, it's exactly
what it says on the tin.
Nvidia became the
first $4 trillion company.
And it's now the most
valuable company in the world.
A huge historical moment
for the tech sector says,
so how do they, so
they're big claim to fame
is just obviously their AI, right?
Like that's why
they're the biggest company.
So that's man, so great
when they're like, you know,
honestly, anybody's like,
why did Nvidia abandon gamers?
It's like, well, you don't
become $4 trillion overnight
by being for the gamers.
I was reading the other,
like, I think it was like
the other day, the other
night that apparently they,
they're selling their AI in
like military applications now.
Like, you know, they're just like,
they're basically almost like
a defense contractor now too.
So, you know.
I have a theory that this,
like their meteoric
rise on the stock market
is literally just a
pump and dump by Nvidia.
Like they're taking cues
from their old customers,
the cryptocurrency crowd,
and they're just pumping
their stock price with AI.
And then it's just gonna crash,
but Jensen's gonna get
out before it crashes.
That's my take.
I sure hope it crashes, man.
I wanna get a 59D on a fire sale.
(laughing)
The thing with the AI
stuff is I feel like
you're on the money there,
cause I don't think the AI
stuff is super duper sustainable.
And that just goes for like
every company like Microsoft.
It goes for like open AI.
It goes for like, is it Twitter?
Is it like it's Grok?
Oh, XAI, that's their own company.
XAI. Yeah.
I feel like for a lot,
like the way that I
always look at it, right?
Is that you have to make
it super duper sustainable.
And one of the approaches that I like
from companies like Apple is like,
they want to move it as much as they can
to the local like system to process.
Because I think like Apple
sees it on the wall, right?
It's like, we can enable
AI for millions of users
to access on our servers.
But it's like at some
point, every request they make,
like I was reading that
like a chat GPT request
was like 10 times the power requirement
of like a standard Google search.
So it's like, at some point it's got,
and it already is just
way too unsustainable
to have so many users
on at any given moment.
And generally speaking, I
feel like the advancements
between like all these AI models,
like Grok 4 and Grok
4 Heavy just dropped.
And all I've seen is
praise just from the AI bros.
I haven't really seen any praise
from like the general user, you know?
And so it's like they
keep pushing this technology.
They keep upping the ante,
but I just don't
personally see the actual like fruit
of the labor, so to speak, right?
Being provided.
Yeah. Yeah.
Grok is an interesting one
because Grok is powered
by a bunch of diesel motor
or generators in Texas.
Like it's crazy what it takes to,
because well, Texas
doesn't have a good power grid.
And so it's yeah, diesel is running Grok.
It's interesting, but I've
read good things about it,
but I don't think it's
much different than Claude
or chat GPT or AKA
open AI, but I like them.
But I definitely think
that a company like Nvidia
is going to, the bubble's gonna pop
because it's gonna be more accessible
to lower end systems as
models become more optimized.
And we've seen this
already happen multiple times.
And I just, I would not put any money
into Nvidia right now.
So I think that bubble's gonna pop.
Yeah. They're talking about like
stuff like DeepSeek almost,
where like they were
able to run their models.
Exactly.
I was able to run
DeepSeek on my Steam Deck.
Like it's a pretty good model.
The seven billion, I
think it was, wasn't it James?
We did it together.
Yeah, it was like-- I
think it was seven billion.
I think it was like the seven billion.
It was really impressive
that I was able to get it done
in a quick enough manner for what it was.
I mean, it wasn't as fast as
or as like good as running it through
open AI or something,
but it was still like impressive.
But it's local. Yeah, it's local.
Yeah, it's local and it's
also like lower powered too,
right?
Yeah, and the Steam Deck
doesn't even have like AI
dedicated like NPUs or whatever,
where I have a
Minisforum AI X1 or something
and it's really, really
fast at running like even,
I think it has 64 gigabytes of shared RAM
and it's like very fast at running
like the 20 or 30 billion model,
which is really, really impressive.
I'm running on a 96
gigabyte shared Mac Studio
and it like locally for some stuff.
I'm really impressed with it.
That's why I'm like, I really think
eventually you could just get a Mac.
I mean, they're expensive,
but like a $4,000 Mac Studio
as opposed to what these graphics cards
that Nvidia sells are,
like that's huge difference.
I can do a lot with my Mac Studio.
Yeah, like in a server downstairs,
like where I just have
all my VMs come out of,
like that's where I put
like a Gemma model in there,
probably it's around, I
wanna say 13 billion parameters
and it's about like,
it's not the same as like chat GPT,
but like connecting it to
the internet through CRX and G.
It does a lot of the
research that I need to.
I'm even getting deep
research working on it,
hopefully later today.
So I have found that like local models,
even if they're not as
shiny as like Grok and chat GPT,
they run locally and it just feels like
I'm kind of outside the scope
of these like crazy subscription models.
Like even with Grok, it's
like, I looked at the price,
it's like 200 a month for 4 Heavy
and like I think it's 40 bucks for Grok
or 30 for Grok for if
you go through the app.
And they're upping those prices.
Yeah, they're upping the prices.
Why?
Because it's not
sustainable at the prices they're at.
Like I think-
Because every idiot on fucking Twitter
wants to be like, Grok, is this true?
Yeah.
Yeah, Grok is true.
The thing is though, I
think Apple's really smart,
like with their not rolling out of like
cloud-based AI stuff
because they know that at some point
someone has to foot the
bill and their customers,
while they are going to be more open
to paying higher prices
because of the Apple tax,
it's just not
sustainable as a business model.
And that's why I think
this is a huge bubble
and Nvidia's valuation is
just gonna topple pretty soon.
And they've pissed off though,
the segment that got
them there, the gamers.
The gamers, I don't
wanna touch Nvidia stuff,
like let alone it runs horribly on Linux.
Yeah.
They need to fix that.
Like Baz, I had to go
back to Windows on my 3090.
And just-
I have a video hopefully sometime soon,
probably like a month
where I'm just gonna be like,
I downgraded my system
because I'm going to an AMD card now.
And it's like what you said,
like the Nvidia stuff
runs like, I have a 4090
and it's just, you feel like you lose,
I think it's like what
20, 30% of your performance
on like Linux and
it's just, I like Linux.
I'd rather just get like
the 30% slower AMD card
and get my full
performance, wouldn't really matter.
Cause I have an AMD 6800
XT in my computer downstairs
where I have like Bazlight installed,
it's like my home console.
I just like, I use it
like a literal PlayStation
and dude, the
performance on it is insane.
I'm playing Cyberpunk, I'm
playing like Death Stranding,
I'm playing FF7 Rebirth,
everything is 60 frames.
And if I need to get
like extra GPU power,
you can just always inject like FSR.
And at that distance,
like the FSR
artifacting is so unnoticeable.
So it's like, you just get so much life
out of the AMD stuff
and Nvidia is kind of
like dragged their heels
on patching their driver
up for like Linux anyways.
So it's like down the road,
I think it's just team
AMD processor and GPU wise.
If you can get one too, you know,
like getting Nvidia
card is near impossible.
I wonder if I can
smuggle GPU out of Japan.
The thing is with the,
That's some rare stuff.
The thing is with
Nvidia cards too on Linux,
I have never had an Nvidia card on Linux
that is capable of
consistently sleeping and waking.
Really?
Yeah, never, ever.
It like just, I can't in good conscience
have Nvidia cards anymore.
I remember back in the day.
Even with Mint, it's better,
but it's still not close to
the AMD experience of like-
I remember back in the day,
the tables used to be turned.
It used to be that Nvidia
was the like Linux friendly GPU
company and AMD was the opposite.
And I guess,
but that was probably
like two decades ago, right?
Maybe like a decade and a half.
I mean, I remember in 2013,
like when around the time
where AMD was working on Vulkan
and they started
talking about like retiring
the Radeon drivers for Linux,
that was when the tides turned
because at the time they were,
they were both probably at parody
in terms of their Linux support.
Neither was great.
Nvidia was slightly better, but yeah, no,
Nvidia like legitimately
removed useful features
from the Linux version of their drivers
because they wanted to quote unquote,
increase feature parody
with the Windows drivers.
And that was when I was like,
oh, this is not, this doesn't bode well.
Yeah, they, so I don't
remember exactly what it was,
but I think it was like
display resolutions and refresh rates,
or maybe no, it was like the
number of supported displays
was much higher on Linux
than it was on Windows.
And then they removed,
they pulled that feature out
and they were like,
nope, you can only have four,
a maximum of four displays.
Do you think they did
that because it was like
maybe like an enterprise
feature or something, right?
Like, you know, like
sometimes they have it
for like an enterprise grade card,
like the multiple
displays I think would be,
you know, like how
people set up like displays
and like Times Square,
like advertising stuff.
Yeah.
Just run them off like enterprise GPUs.
Oh yeah.
So I'm wondering if they like removed it
because they were like, wait,
we're giving this like expensive feature
to let the plebeians, you know?
It makes sense.
Kind of sounds like
what they did with SLI
or what would become EnvyLink too.
Cause you can't use
EnvyLink on any consumer GPS,
but for like the, like,
no, not the Tesla cards,
but like the Quattros, I think it was.
Yeah.
Those can be EnvyLink together.
No practical game.
Well, they took away GPU virtualization
for no real reason, other
than it was an enterprise feature
and we couldn't run it on
like, you know, Linux or,
I mean, I think the only
way you can do like GPU
virtualization on like most
modern Nvidia cards properly
is through like that
Hyper-V GPU P like trick.
Other than that, like on Linux,
it's such a nuisance to go through.
I thought that they had recently,
like in 3000 series cards, they had
re-enabled virtualization.
Am I wrong about that?
I don't know if it's like for Linux,
I think you can do it through like,
like as long as maybe you're
in their developer program,
I'm just saying like for
the consumer aspect of it.
I see.
Yeah.
Yeah, they suck.
(laughs) They're like, they're one of
the final bosses of gaming,
right?
Unfortunately, we all
need that demon for now.
I know, right?
You know, the thing that
I always hate about like
with Nvidia though, is like,
I've like recently had this
and I've said it in our Discord chat too,
I've had this like
revelation that I think
this whole ray tracing craze,
aside from like one or
two games that I've played,
I really hate how much it's pushed
in an unoptimized
state by every developer.
Because, you know, playing
something like Death Straining
too, right?
Like it's a game that has no ray tracing,
yet the lighting somehow looks better
than a lot of games with the
unneeded ray tracing sometimes,
and it runs better like a
lock 60 on the PlayStation.
And I'm just kind of
sitting there, I'm like, you know,
I play a lot of games on PC,
like that Monstrone or Wilds,
I played a little bit on
PC, I ran the benchmarking,
I'm like, this runs like
absolute dog shit, you know?
And then like, and then it's funny too,
because then you look at
the developers and it's like,
how do you make it run
at a consistent frame rate
and a resolution?
It's like, well, just
slap on the frame generation
and the DLSS upscaler.
And I'm like, I look at
the system requirements,
I'm like, dude, for
1080p at 30 frames or 60,
they want me to like generate frames,
they want me to like
upscale from like 720,
I'm like, what happened to
like basic optimizations?
Like what happened to like
having a game run rock solid?
You know, I can play
games from like 10 years ago,
like Phantom Pain that maybe the textures
are a little muddier, but
damn, does that thing walk
on integrated graphic cards even,
as opposed to like modern
day GPUs where it's like,
games look, I would say
marginally better in some cases,
but the requirement is
like, it's like, brother,
why do I need all the
upscaling tech in the world?
This is not
optimization, this is just Nvidia
locking every other vendor
out from basic optimizations.
Yeah, man, plus they
deprecated physics support
for 32-bit games as well, I think.
Yeah.
I think Borderlands 2
has won such a game too.
I love everybody who's like,
whoever played old physics games,
and like the day I got that news,
I was playing Mirror's
Edge on my PC, I'm like.
Oh no.
Wow, they just removed like, you know,
pretty like, and it's funny too,
is like they removed that tech,
and then I kind of sit there, I'm like,
you know, if it wasn't for
the fact that ray tracing,
like as software,
wasn't something that was
kind of a little
feature agnostic these days,
imagine if like 10,
15 years down the road,
they took away ray tracing,
like the RTX technologies,
like would you not complain then?
Especially now that games
are built with that technology
in mind in certain cases,
like it's so outlandish to me.
Like some of the defense
that I hear about Nvidia too.
The average age of the
games that I've played
over the last year, like in my Steam
account, 17 years old.
Like I don't play a lot of modern games.
And so like the idea that like, you know,
at some point the RTX technology could
just be pulled away,
you know, and so
people my age in the future,
can't play the games they grew up with,
that seems like just.
Yeah.
Dude, imagine growing up with Fortnite.
Dude, you'll lose Fortnite.
You'll lose it at some point.
That's what'll happen.
Dude, it's like, you'll lose actually.
Unless stock killing
games succeed, that is.
Yeah, great segue.
I was trying to find one.
Yeah, so video game
Europe has emerged as like
an opponent of stock killing games.
Hi, Tech, you wanna hit
us up with this info here?
Well, let's see what the
games industry has to say.
We appreciate the
passion of our community.
However, the decision to
discontinue online services
is multifaceted, never taken lightly
and must be an option for companies
when an online experience is no longer
commercially viable.
We understand that it can be
disappointing for players,
but when it does happen,
the industry ensures that
players are given fair notice
of the prospective changes in compliance
with local consumer protection laws.
Private servers are not
always a viable option for players
as the protections we put in place
to secure players'
data, remove illegal content
and combat unsafe
community content would not exist
and would leave rights holders liable.
In addition, many titles
are designed from the ground
not to be online only.
In effect, these proposals
would curtail developer choice
by making these games prohibitively
expensive to create.
We welcome the
opportunity to discuss our position
with policymakers and those who have led
the European Citizens
Initiative in the coming months.
You know how much it hurts my soul
that everything they just said there
was a fucking blatant lie?
Like nobody is asking
companies to be responsible
for the games they take down.
It's funny to me, like,
okay, so stop killing games.
I think as an
initiative, I think everyone here,
I think every gamer
really who plays video games
supports it because look,
yes, games are a lot different
than the games we used
to play as a kid, right?
Like I remember back, you know,
when it came to the
PlayStation 1, you slap your disc in,
you could play a game
from start to finish, done.
And yes, there are a lot
of games that have unneeded
open like services to the internet.
And I think those are all bullshit.
I think all that
stuff is completely wrong.
Like there was a game that
I brought up in my videos
I talked about Need for Speed 2015.
I know that you just took
down like Need for Speed Rivals
or whatever, like that online service,
but that's not a big deal because at
least for that game,
a big majority of the
game is playable offline,
like through the single
player, like, you know,
functionality, but like a
game like Need for Speed 2015
that I really enjoy.
I think it's a great Need for Speed game.
The shitty side of it is
that it needs a permanent
connection to EA servers.
And there has been no
discussion on like, hey,
down the road, what are we gonna do
when we have to take these servers down?
They just took down Anthem,
a game that could have been,
you know, processed locally,
at least when it came to
that game's logic, I believe.
Why, you know, gamers are okay.
Why people are defensive of this.
It's like this weird
world we kind of live in.
And it goes into so many
other aspects where like,
even when it comes to physical media,
I've made so many videos
where I've talked about like,
if you buy a PlayStation
disc, even some Xbox discs, right?
Provided they're not
first party Microsoft
or Switch game cards, you
can play an entire, like,
you can play the entire game from the
beginning title credit
to the end credit
sequence without a patch.
So it's like, we have,
there's so many aspects
of game preservation that still exist,
but a lot of these big
companies are fighting
to take that away from
us and turn everything
into a live service
or basically require us
to constantly be connected to services
that will go down at some point,
and then we'll have no
choice other than to buy
a sequel of a video game.
I don't understand the
weird world we live in
where like, even certain
gamers are kind of like,
eating that bullshit, even
though it's so provably wrong.
And so I think stop
killing games is so great
because when you got like
these six figure lobbyists
who are actually getting off their ass
and to write a briefs about how evil
consumer rights are,
you know, you're doing
something right in this situation.
Like, no matter how you slice it.
You know, we had Ross
on the channel yesterday,
not like yesterday, last week, actually.
And he spoke further, we
gave some hypotheticals like,
what about World of Warcraft?
Because, you know, a
game like World of Warcraft
functionally would not be possible
without like hundreds
or like thousands of
players of course, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, he's a good guy too.
And I'm surprised it took
this long for someone to do this,
but I guess none of us are European, so.
Yeah.
Yeah, their consumer
rights are a lot better
than us in North
America, that's for sure.
You said it.
I just relish the fact
that the video game industry
feels so threatened, you know?
Like, they recognize that
like the way they've been doing
things is wrong and they
know that they have to lie
and spin to make sure that
they can keep doing things
the evil way.
And I love that.
Yeah, and the crazy part
is they shot themselves
in the foot by doing exactly that,
making these online
games playable offline.
Like, let's look at two games.
Not great games, Redfall, not great game,
but it's playable offline,
in the case you ever want to play it.
I think you can still buy it today
and play it offline if you want.
Yeah, it was on Steam sale, yeah.
Yeah, and Multiverse,
this is another game
that's not that great, but
you can play that offline too,
with all the characters unlocked,
something like that,
from what I understand.
Yeah.
And actually there's
another interesting one too.
It's a gacha game.
It's called Mega Man X Dive,
based on the Mega Man X series.
It was a gacha game,
it failed, it shut down,
but then Capcom decided to
just take that gacha game
and just repackage it
as like a game game,
for like 30 bucks, and you can play it.
You know they did the same
with Animal Crossing gacha
on an iPhone?
Did they?
Yeah, Nintendo, they made
an Animal Crossing gacha,
they released the whole thing.
All of its updates, all of its content,
I think it's like a $20
iPhone game, just the whole game.
And it's funny too,
because it's like the good parts
of the game, with all of the
predatory gacha shit removed,
because it's not a live service.
So, unironically, not only
did they not kill the game,
but they actually made it better.
Oh, that's like, I wouldn't
have seen that from Nintendo.
Yeah.
But hey.
Yeah.
I think it's just, I
think it's like, you know,
like at the end of the
day, companies like Nintendo,
as much as I wanna shit on or anybody
wants to crap on them,
I think they realize,
like, when they make a software
product, you know, you
might not like like a certain
Mario Kart game, or like a
certain like Fire Emblem game,
but I think when they
produce a project, like there's
kind of like that ego where, or at least
like an understanding
like, okay, we made
something good, we might as well keep
it active or something,
maybe that kind of is present
in a company like that, as
opposed to like, you know,
an EA or like a Take
Two, where it's like, shit,
we just like throw out
all these sports games
and all this nonsense every other year.
Who cares if one goes
down, they're just gonna buy
the next, right?
Like every project is kind
of treated with like some
reverence as opposed to,
this is just coming out of the
factory for, you know, all
the little piggies to consume,
I guess.
Yeah.
Well, it's like a level
of disposability, right?
Like so many of their,
like EA's games specifically
are disposable because they
want you, like their revenue
model is you buy the
yearly iteration of the product.
And if they are forced to
have like the, to, in some way,
like end of life, their product
gracefully and let people
preserve those games, it
threatens their unethical model.
And you know, so people
are seeing through it too.
I mean, like the fact that
they have hit 81% over their
target, is that right?
Yeah.
81% of the way to like the target.
Yeah, they want to get the short, like,
because they know they're
gonna lose a bunch of signatures
for.
I mean, there's a good
chance that we do have at like
one million like actual
signatures at minimum,
but it's just a safety net.
Yeah.
Plus if we were to get to the two
millions signatures,
it'll really show them
just how important this is.
Yeah.
So keep signing.
Yeah.
If you're in the EU.
The thing about stop killing games,
it's super important,
like as well as that.
I think it, you know, we,
games are not the only
things under threat, right?
Like obviously it's just
like general use software.
It's like software in general.
So I feel like this can just
bleed over into other consumer
protections for, you
know, software that we use,
like video editing stuff.
Like maybe Adobe is
looking at this and wondering,
oh shit, maybe, maybe this might kind of,
maybe the dragnet might
hit us, so to speak, right?
Maybe even operating
systems down the road too, right?
Like maybe at some point
companies like Microsoft,
companies like Apple may
have to look and revise more end
of life plans for their software.
I don't know, maybe, but I
think this has more of an effect,
could have an effect on
the industry and larger,
and it shouldn't just be games.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of the
principles here also coincide with
right to repair.
Like, I mean, this is,
you have a right to
the product that you buy,
and you have a right to
maintain that product well after
the whoever decides
that's an obsolete product.
So I think that there's
more than just even software.
I think that this applies
to like anything that has
digital capability at all.
I don't know, I love this.
I'm really glad that we get
to have Ross on the episode
last week too.
Yeah, it was pretty insightful,
and I got to do the
whole World of Warcraft.
Yeah, we can't not work.
Well, it's such an interesting one,
because there's like unofficial servers
and stuff like that.
And so it's definitely
one that where I want to see
game companies have end of life plans of,
especially like Blizzard,
like you have enough money,
you can open source at
least part of the servers.
There's no reason, except for they want
to protect their IP,
and they don't want to.
Yeah, so I do want to talk
about the second paragraph
of their statement,
that how private servers
are not always a viable option.
So they say that private server operators
can't secure player data, but really,
they probably wouldn't
collect nearly as much data
as like a major AAA company would,
because they're not
trying to sell your data
to the highest bidder, right?
Yeah, you know who also
can't secure your data?
Publishers.
Sony.
Sony, for God's sake.
Sony has led a leak
every single year, it seems.
I don't know, they're so self-important,
and they think that they love to use
a grandizing language like this,
but they are literally
like complete morons.
I just want to know--
But the loot is sometimes pretty cool.
I want to know what those private servers
are going to be stealing
too, like can't protect,
like what, telemetry even?
Like, I don't know, like it's so bizarre,
because don't get me
wrong, you shouldn't install
or even play on, I guess,
servers you don't understand,
but what are they going to steal?
I don't know, like it's--
Let's see.
Well, if they have to have the anti-cheat
go along with the graceful endpoint,
then their games are
suddenly going to be root kits.
Yeah, the root kit, yeah.
So they can't be having
private servers for root kits.
I hate the anti-cheat like stuff so much.
When I made my video, I'm like Valorant,
I had like every, I think I
like XQC fucking like react
to one of those videos
and he's, I like, look--
One of your videos?
Yeah, I don't have a beef with Felix,
like he's an okay guy, but like, goddamn,
it's just like any time you
come across like the gamer
without like the technical understanding,
and this is really
douchey with me to say,
it's like they will always take the side
of these corporations for
no fucking reason, right?
Like to explain to
somebody that you shouldn't have
root kit level software
running on your system,
and then you find like these no name,
like programmer
wannabes come out and be like,
well don't you have a
keyboard or mouse connected?
You know that you, I'm like, first off,
there's a big fucking difference between
having a input method
and then like a video game
that I occasionally play
running its anti-cheat 24 seven
on my system, right?
From boot time, from the
initial like startup phase,
and then it's always like,
well, you need some level
of anti-cheat to protect yourself,
and it's just even with all
of these measures in place,
every single game that I play with
anti-cheat and shit,
it's still filled with
the most insane hackers.
Like I always find it funny every time
when like a Linux game gets rejected,
like some developer like kicks off,
like they remove Linux
games from like, you know,
Apex legends.
Yeah, like Apex exactly.
I'm like, how stupid is it, right?
That like you're blaming us.
Like, first off, it's funny,
because these guys are like,
well Linux users are just
like a tiny like fraction
of a fraction, but suddenly
they're significant enough
to be like the
craziest hackers in your game.
Just admit that your games aren't,
just admit that your anti-cheat engines
aren't protecting you.
Actually, it's all scapegoat.
They use it as a scapegoat.
Yeah, so like the crazy
part is that, you know,
companies like Blizzard, you know,
Pirates of the Childs of Pirate Software,
who used to work at Blizzard by the way,
but like, okay, but like Blizzard,
does secure their games, like,
like better than say, Battle Eye or like,
easy anti-cheat, like,
like they don't use those.
And those games, like
Blizzard games work on Linux, right?
Like you can play
Diablo 4 on Linux, just fine.
You can play D4, you can play Overwatch,
you can play like, wow, yeah.
Yeah, you can play wow.
Overwatch was the first game I remember,
I was like, oh, this
one's great under proton.
And I was like, wow, at least,
as much as I don't care about Overwatch,
I'm like, congratulations,
it's the one game that I can play, right?
You know, as it's released.
You can play Hearthstone on Linux,
but like, that's a card game, so.
And it's funny, like the
Activision side of Blizzard,
definitely does not
want to support Linux,
you got all the, God hatred,
it's like Blizzard side
cares, Activision side,
bottoming Activision cares
about anybody in general,
but you know, certainly not about those.
See, and--
You just have higher ups
looking at the market share,
they're like, nah, it's not worth it,
let's just say that they're hackers,
and then we don't have to worry about it.
And spend money on it.
But Valorant, you brought up Valorant,
I have to mention this, like,
I installed it on
Windows like a year or two ago,
and it wouldn't let me use DaVinci,
I think it was DaVinci
Resolve or some editor,
it said it was like a virus or something,
or like, not a virus,
obviously, it's not anti-virus,
but like, it said it was not allowed.
I had multiple
programs that would always,
I could not have them
running with Valorant,
and so I'm like, well, fuck this,
I'm done, I'm out.
Yeah.
You should make a little better.
You should make a video about that,
all the list of legit programs
you can't run while playing Valorant.
Just having it running,
because it's rooted in your system.
And it's insane too, like, even then,
you'll still find people that defend
this kind of a practice, it's like,
you should never be okay with having any,
like, that's what, when I make videos
on even anti-viruses
throughout my career,
I've always said, like,
I don't really even trust anti-virus
software too, right?
Like, I just use the common sense model,
because you know, like, certain
anti-virus softwares,
it's like, you're still giving them
an unprecedented amount
of access to your system.
As you do a lot of this, like,
anything software related
that has to run at that level,
like that permission
level on your system,
it's like, you should trust it 100%.
And I'm like, do you really trust,
do you really wanna open up the door
for a video game software even, right?
Like, if I'm not willing to do that
for anti-virus
softwares, I'm sure as hell
not doing that for a
fucking video game, right?
Like, that computer back there,
that's the only computer in my house
that runs Windows natively,
and it runs it for one
game, Rainbow Six Siege,
and that game has been shit
on so hard in the last month
that I don't even think this computer
is a necessary thing anymore.
Like, they have
completely ruined that game.
I don't know if you guys have seen,
like, they made that game
free to play this new season,
they released Sea Jacks.
Oh.
So they make it free to play, right?
And then like all the reward earning,
so all the money you
earn after every match
has been like diminished.
Like we're talking like
South Korean MMO levels
of grinding.
Classics.
Oh man.
I'm just like, I don't even give a shit
about this game anymore.
Cause it's like, and then not only that,
but because it's free to play,
and I guess because of their new
anti-cheat technology,
so whatever the fuck
Ubisoft has been working on
or not working on, that game is
completely unplayable
with the new player base
that you have in there.
So yeah, that might be a
completely retired system.
There's no need for me to
have a Windows system at all.
Now that the primary
software is completely useless.
Yeah.
I don't know.
In terms of like,
in terms of like
studios that support Linux,
like it feels like AAA
publishers don't give a shit
about like Linux users, right?
Because it's such an
infinitesimally small as they say,
like user base.
And yet like, there are
more Linux native games now
than there ever have been.
And most of them are
coming from like indie studios
or double A studios.
And apparently half of them,
half of this year's top
performing steam games
have come from double A or indie studios.
How was that for a segue?
That was a pretty good segue.
You know, honestly, like
I'm so glad you guys bring up
like the double A, like indie market,
because like I said earlier,
aside from Death Straining 2,
it's like my only other
game was like System Shock 2.
Schedule 1 was a great game as well.
Just in general, like I think for me,
I am not a passionate gamer
when it comes to the triple A space.
Like I don't give a shit anymore
about like most of the
mainstream stuff that releases,
other than maybe like
the Sony movie game.
But even that like interest is like
waning pretty heavily.
But when it comes to
like the hours I spend,
like I mentioned with Factorio,
like all these indies
titles that release for,
by the way, a fraction of the cost.
Now games are like 70, 80 bucks.
You know, I buy like
Schedule 1 for like 20 bucks, man.
And I'm already putting
like hundreds of hours
into a game like that
for a fraction of the cost.
And it's funny too,
because like a lot of
the indie double A stuff,
it feels like early PS4 generation,
where you guys remember
when games like Watch Dogs,
like MGS4 kind of dropped,
or Rainbow Succeeds great example,
where it's like, okay,
we have updated hardware.
Let's kind of like,
the graphics are
gonna be better obviously,
but can we push the open
worlds a little bit more?
Can we make these worlds livelier?
Can we add more gameplay features to them
that wouldn't have
been possible on the PS3?
Yeah, I feel like with triple
A now in the PS5 generation,
it feels like only the
graphics have gotten better,
but not the actual like
gameplay systems, right?
One game that I was playing on Steam,
I don't know if you
guys have heard of it,
Shadows of Doubt,
super duper awesome game.
It's a detective game, right?
Oh yeah, it's a detective game.
It runs like shit on any computer.
Guys, I'm telling you,
any computer you have,
if you wanna humble your system,
even if you have the
best thing available,
like 59Ds, the greatest
processors in the market,
the fastest RAM, this game
will run at like 15 frames,
because it's like the
developer behind it,
the indie guy did the Oblivion approach,
where he made every NPC a living
breathing character.
Like everything is like constantly
running in this world.
So there's like a
murder that's running around,
and you're like, your job is
to basically stop the murder.
So the murder keeps murdering,
or they're just
murderers that keep happening.
So you go-- Little bird keep.
Yeah, so you go to the crime scenes,
and you're actually
investigating like a real immersive sim,
like you're getting fingerprints,
you're like checking
for security cameras.
There's multiple ways
to solve these cases,
and it's all happening in real time.
And I'm like, how is it that like a
double A indie developer
makes something that's super duper cool,
like LA noir, but on crack?
And the triple A industry is like,
they're still just making PS4 era games
with ray tracing and like
slightly higher resolutions.
This goes to afraid.
Games are so expensive
that if one game bombs,
then it could be the death of the studio.
But whose fault is it
that the game is expensive?
Whose fault is it then that the game
just suddenly jumped up in price, right?
Like is it our fault?
No, I think it's just
the crazy development
like processes they have over here.
They want every game.
First off, like every game
needs to be a live service
in their eyes, like technically speaking,
because they want you to be able,
they want you to be like giving them a
billion bucks a year.
They want every game, they
want every online experience
to be like Grand Theft Auto Online,
where like it makes a
crazy chunk of cash.
When they forget the fact that a game
like Grand Theft Auto Online only works
because the core game is good,
like the core actual game is amazing.
You know, we bought it for
the single player, we love it.
The online is just an
extension of that technology
and that gameplay loop.
Not every game can be a
successful live service,
but they want
everything to be a billion dollar
like generator.
And if it doesn't, you
know, if it's like a Concorde
where it comes out and it
doesn't make that money back
in like four days,
just destroy the entire
project you've worked on.
But then whose fault is that?
Is that the gamer's fault?
Or is that the company's fault
for making something so
unnecessarily expensive?
I blame Sega.
(laughing)
When they're at their best.
Go back to like the
marketing that Sega was using
in the 90s against Nintendo.
It's like Sega does what
Nintendo don't, you know,
like we have blast processing.
That's really what I
think has pushed the industry
to this unhealthy position is it's like,
we have the best graphics.
We have, we're like a billion, you know,
we have billions of
polygons, you know, X, Y and Z.
I think that the marketing has like
pushed it to a point
where it's just
fundamentally unsustainable now.
And they're there, they
have to make the game look
as beautiful as they can
and sacrifice literally everything else.
Like the games, you know,
like, oh, we have, you know,
80 million square
kilometers that you can explore
with hundreds of thousands of NPCs
that are dynamically generated.
And it's like, cool,
but none of that matters
if the game isn't fun, you know?
Yeah, but the
difference was that the games
on the Sega Genesis were fun
and the games
themselves were evolving too.
Like you couldn't see a
game like Sonic the Hedgehog
on the NES now, could you?
I was being facetious when
I said I blame Sega, but--
But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I get what you're saying though, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it goes back to
the Bit Wars, right?
Like, you know, 1816 bit, like, you know,
PlayStation one has
like FMV's everything.
I mean, I kind of look at
that as like a logical extension
of like what games should
look like or like, you know,
like good, like that was
when like, I think video games
had like their biggest obvious jump
in graphical technologies.
Like, yeah, it's a,
when you go from the PS1
all the way to the
PS2, I remember as a kid,
the thing that blew my mind was like,
bro, the mouths are moving.
Oh my God, they actually have fingers.
Oh my God, it goes from day to night?
Wow, that's great.
I was blown away. Oh my God,
the dialogue is voiced?
Yeah, well, voiced good now
from the PlayStation one to
the two, it's voiced better.
And then PlayStation one
dubs are like a classic though.
Yeah, but then you go from like the two
to the PlayStation
three and you're like, okay,
when we jumped from Metal Gear Solid 3
all the way to like,
oh, MGS4 is, God,
it's a good looking game.
And then the online
functionality for the video game,
like that was really the generation
where like online
gaming kind of became a norm
and then like they kind of centered,
like they made some good
gameplay changes for online stuff.
Like I remember when the
Dark Soul games came out,
you could play them single player,
but man, there's a
whole ecosystem you built
around that like asynchronous multiplayer
that was super awesome.
But then yeah, as soon
as you go to like the PS4
and then that PS5 generation now,
yeah, games are just
pretty looking and you're right,
they just wanna put money towards it.
Like the only good Xbox
first party game that I played
was Indiana Jones.
That's the only one that
like kind of screamed to me
in the last like couple of years.
And it really felt that
way because, you know,
they focused on the
gameplay first and yeah, sure,
the visuals were great for that game.
Nobody's denying it, but it's like,
when a game is successful,
it's because it's just fun to play.
You know, it's just like
a game that's engaging.
It's fun, you wanna get back to it.
I've never played a game more than once,
just because it looked good, you know,
just because like, you know,
it had like pretty features.
So who gives a shit?
Yeah, like, honestly, man. Far Cry.
Far Cry.
I played Far Cry a ton
because it was
beautiful when I tried it out.
But like with Dead Space, one of my
favorite franchises,
the third one had, I
think a third of its budget
in marketing, like--
Wait, James, you said Far Cry.
You mean, do you mean Far Cry 1?
Yeah. Yeah.
To be fair, that was a benchmarking game,
kind of like what
Crisis was back in the day.
But that was also a good
game though, back in the day.
Like Far Cry 1 was like a solid release.
I remember like going prone in Far Cry
and seeing like the
blades of grass casting shadows
on the gun model.
And I was like, oh my God,
this is the best
graphics we'll ever look.
I remember when I was young
and I saw like the Crisis 1,
remember that dropped?
There was like one guy
showing like screenshots
and I remember the thumbnail for Crisis.
I was like, oh my God,
is that a real forest?
And I click on it, I'm like, oh my God,
it is a real forest.
10 seconds into the
video, I'm like, no, no,
it's just Crisis.
It's just that good looking.
That's so good.
That makes me think of
like the PC Gamer like cover
when Unreal Tournament 99
came out and it was like,
yes, this is a real in-game screenshot.
And it was like, and
it looks like crap now,
but it was impressive.
Back then you're
like, whoa, lighting, wow.
Yeah.
Whoa, man, it's crazy
just how we're plateauing
in terms of graphics.
Because honestly, I'm not sure if the PS6
will look much better than
the PS5 Pro is right now.
I don't think it will.
Like the last like really
jaw-dropping good game was,
I'll say it again, Death Straining 2,
like if you've seen the
visual features for like,
how Norman Reedus looks in that game,
it's like, damn, it is a really,
like they really pushed
the visuals out on that game.
But even then it's like,
I've never kept playing a
game because it looks nice.
I just play it because it plays okay.
So when it comes to the visuals,
like I'm okay with plateauing visuals.
If it means like the focus is
just the gameplay, you know?
Like as long as you can make
a 60 hour gaming experience,
super duper fun to play,
that's all I give a shit
about, you know, other than that.
Yeah.
Because nobody wants
to play a 60 hour game
that plays like us.
Nobody does that.
Like we all just stop playing it.
You know, it just goes
into the backlog forever.
Well, I have one question for you.
Since you're playing Death Straining 2,
is Joff Keeley in there in the game too?
I have not seen him yet.
I know he was in the first game,
but I haven't seen him in this one.
I wouldn't be surprised if he was like
the biggest Kojima guy.
Yeah, for sure, man.
I know he also put a
Usada Picora in the game too.
He put like a VTuber in one of these.
Yeah, he put like, he put a lot of,
I want to say, they weren't like
influencers immediately,
but they were just like,
he's like a weird guy, man.
Hideo Kojima is this weird dude.
He'll manifest, he just manifests himself
into any situation he wants.
He could just think to himself,
I want to hang out with Keanu Reeves
and like a week later,
Keanu Reeves will be announcing
a new Silent Hill game
or like Death Straining 3.
Fucking insane
developer that guy is, dude.
Unhinged guy.
This game is definitely the products of a
lot of drugs though.
Like if you play this game once, I swear.
Like I felt like I was high
playing this at some point.
Like when you get to
the ending of the game,
I feel like it's a contact tie.
Like I experience his drug
usage through this experience.
It's just so outlay.
That's one of the reasons
why I actually liked the game.
Like I like playing a video game
that's so detached from reality.
It's like, I remember
like my dad was like,
why do you play Grand Theft Auto?
I'm like, well, dad, would
you like me to be a heister
in real life or in a video game?
Because that's what I like to do.
I like to live vicariously
as a criminal in a video game.
Not in reality land.
It's one of the reasons
why I don't play, you know,
like a sports game or
something really boring.
You know, I don't do tax
filing simulator for fun.
You know, that's not a joy to me.
I play System Shock
because I like to see
what it's like to be trapped
in a space
environment against a rogue AI.
I wouldn't like to actually see it.
That's the only reason I
play the most outlandish games
out there.
Not without that, dude.
(laughing)
It's like, would you want to be in the
debt space universe?
Probably not.
Cause I would die,
I would die probably in
the first five minutes
of that universe.
(laughing) But you know.
True that.
Yeah.
So I wonder if any of
these games are on Game Pass.
Any of these games?
Any of these games are listed.
Yeah.
Yes.
Well, I know Indiana
Jones is on Game Pass.
I know Expeditions on Game Pass.
But I also know that Game Pass
shouldn't be sustainable boys.
Hmm.
That is, yeah.
That's our next story.
It's not just me.
I think it's the arcane boss
that also said the same thing.
Yeah.
Hi tech.
What's this story all about?
Well, essentially,
arcane founder Rafael Colantio?
Colantonia, yeah.
Has publicly stated that.
He basically believes that
Game Pass is unsustainable.
It's been found to have
lost up to 80% premium sales
for games that are on the service.
And Game Pass' main selling point
is that first party Xbox
games go to Game Pass day one.
So you don't have to
wait like a year or so.
But other people suggest
that Game Pass is sustainable.
If I had to guess who those people were.
Microsoft.
I would imagine Microsoft leadership.
All I'm gonna say is
I've been saying this
for five or six years.
That's all I'm gonna say.
Like it's just does not
make sense as a business model.
I just don't see how it's sustainable.
I mean, it's sustainable
if you have just
Microsoft dumping money into it.
That's the only sustainable aspect of it.
I mean, but when are they gonna recoup
the money they're investing in it?
Like that's why it's not sustainable.
Like you can be Microsoft
and you can dump hundreds of
billions of dollars into this.
But like at some point they
have to make their money back.
And I just don't see
how they're going to.
By selling your data, of course,
that's where all the money really is.
Yeah.
But what data?
I mean, there's some data.
They're also probably
doing tax write offs for now.
So they're like, well, we
don't wanna pay more tax
like any taxes.
So we're gonna write
this off with this service.
Yeah, I mean, Game Pass
would be a great model
just so you can write losses of.
Well, the thing with
these subscription models
is like you have to go
back to like Netflix, right?
Like what was
Netflix's model for 10 years?
But spend like billions of
bucks on like original content.
Especially when you have no competitors,
raise a user base and
then like jack up the prices.
Yeah, sure you can do that.
And they kind of have been doing that.
But then when you have like
Disney and like, you know,
all these like HBO
Max, all these other guys
in your in your pond.
And they're not willing to start
with that level of investment.
And you know, you kind of see
where this is streaming model
at least for video and TV shows.
Keep jacking up the prices,
take away all the features you can
and hope that people are
buying and they are buying.
And that's just how they have it going.
But the thing with like gaming is like,
I think Game Pass would be a great model
if it was like you could get your AA
or you know, indie game on there, right?
Like we give a bunch of
money to like the schedule
one developer to get like, you know,
their game on our front
system shock remake or remaster
or whatever shows up like, you know,
the double eight standard
game, the game that doesn't cost,
you know, hundreds of
millions of dollars to produce.
But yeah, when you put
a game like Starfield
or you put a game like Indiana Jones,
these are games that I
would have bought like $60,
you know, prices for.
And I'm actually glad for Game Pass
that I didn't get Starfield.
You know what I mean?
(laughing) Definitely saved the punch there.
Okay, great.
But you know, for like Indiana Jones,
like what I like to buy it, sure.
But no, they put it on Game Pass.
So it's like, you know,
why would I ever even think
of ever buying a first
party Microsoft game?
Like, why would I buy a new hit?
Why would I buy Oblivion
remaster or Halo or anything
if I know that that's just given to me
for a pretty low price?
So on that front, it's
great for a developer,
for a public, for the, you know,
firms that are taking these deals.
I used to think these
deals were pretty good,
but it seems like they're not
given what the Arcane Boss has said too.
And I think honestly, I
think like with Game Pass,
it's like, it's a
great excuse for Microsoft
to like release shoddy
games and put them on Game Pass
and just say, "Hey, you're not paying a
full 60 bucks for it.
What do you give a shit about?
We can release janky
releases here and there."
You know, and I guess that's kind of like
a weird justification.
But Microsoft's also that
company where it's like,
even if you wanted to buy
their game for 60 bucks,
like if I wanted to buy a
disc copy of Indiana Jones,
they don't even have the
whole game on disc anymore.
What's the point of getting it?
It's just, they are
treating their entire games
in this, like their
side of the games division,
like crap, like they're
making all the terrible decisions
that are just burning all the goodwill
from actual like people in
their space, like actual gamers.
So maybe they hope that everyone just
gets a Game Pass sub,
but I don't know.
Well, they're also
not just burning gamers,
they're burning studios.
Like all the closures that have happened,
was it, I don't
remember the exact number,
but it was like the
10th closing of studios
and last like however long.
Yeah, they had like what,
half of playground games
gutted or not playground, sorry,
the Turn 10, which was
the Forza Motorsport guys.
Yeah.
You had, what was that?
Hi-Fi Rush Tango Game Works.
That was like last year.
Dude, imagine being a developer.
But like, imagine being
like a game developer,
you make Xbox's most like marquee game,
like you make the game
that everyone talks about,
like they share in all
their press releases,
like look at how great of a game we made.
And then you shut
down that studio, right?
Like what's the, like it is
such a black pilling thing
for a game publisher or game developer
to work for an
organization as large as Microsoft,
what like the second or third largest
company in the world,
and still face financial closure
because the bean counters
obviously don't consider you
as valuable as like, you know,
Microsoft Windows or like 365
or another set of subscriptions.
Yeah, it's totally crazy to me that
you can make a good game
that Microsoft claims sold well
and still get shut down.
Like it's one thing if like the studio
behind Redfall shut down,
was Arkane Austin I think it was.
Like they got shut down,
but they also made Redfall.
So it's not entirely unexpected,
but like when Tango Game
Works makes Hi-Fi Rush,
critically acclaimed,
supposedly sells really well,
and they get shut down
at the same time too.
Like what even, why even bother?
What like, what is the point
in making a good video game
if you can't even secure your job?
Yeah. Well,
it hurts morale too.
So you're gonna cause
other studios to not do as well
cause they're not
sure what's gonna happen
and fall into, fall in
under what, you know,
the higher ups really
want and push for like
the live services, which then ends up
just taking them anyways, it's just.
Yeah, because it's like,
think about a game like Redfall, right?
Like Arkane, they make
really good games, right?
Like even when I like shat on Redfall,
I shat on Redfall for
what it was as a product.
As a game, I think
Redfall was the perfect example
of like a live service
release, or not live service,
it was like this online tide release
that probably started
off as like a really fun
like single player game
in the same vein as like,
one of my favorite games
that they made is like,
if you guys ever played Prey,
Yeah. At all.
Yes. Yeah.
Prey is an amazing Arkane game.
It's like, oh man, System Shock 3 is not,
but at least we get it in Prey, right?
Prey, awesome title. Yeah.
You know, they made, I
played their worst game,
technically, Deathloop,
which I still really enjoyed
a few days ago.
So Arkane makes good stuff, Dishonored.
It's just that this one game,
I'm pretty sure at
some point in development,
they were probably nudged to
make it more co-op friendly,
like, hey, make a game that, you know,
people just wanna
keep playing repetitively
because it's a game you
play with your friends, right?
Which is not the Arkane Wheelhouse game.
They're more like the last developer
that kept the immersive sim
kind of alive and functioning.
So, you know, all these big companies
that wanna make live service stuff,
whether it be Sony,
whether it be Microsoft,
I don't know if Nintendo
has many live services,
but they just wanna, again,
create a game that makes
a billion bucks a year.
Yeah. They wanna create something
that like you subscribe into,
and then you also spend money
in the game storefront, right?
Like, I've always kind of said,
I'm like, load up any big live service,
or load up any of these live
services that get shut down,
or like, you know, these companies,
like they put hundreds of
millions of dollars into,
go into their main menu and just see
how much of a
monetization scheme they have.
Like Call of Duty, you know,
we played Black Ops 2 when we were
younger, game was nice.
Game was a single player, multiplayer,
zombie filled experience.
Load up Call of Duty,
now just Call of Duty.
I mean, that's all it
is, it's just like a hub.
And then it's just a
hub that's filled with,
what skin to buy, what
$40 skin to get for your,
you know, Call of Duty Warzone,
like, or the flavor game of that year.
It's like, you load up these video games,
they don't even feel like video games,
they just feel like other
stores for you to log into.
Like I went from the
Xbox store to the COD store.
I went from the Xbox
store to the GTA Online store.
You know, it's like less of a game.
And then when the
gamers don't attach to it,
you know, can you
really be that surprised?
I think we have just a whole
bunch of business graduates
who like look at video,
they probably saw the success
of mobile gaming, obviously.
You know, like how do you translate that
to like console PC gaming?
And it's not a good transfer.
Because fundamentally
the market that plays the,
the gotcha, like the micro transaction
written free to play stuff on phones,
almost never touches the
actual like console gaming
or PC gaming side of things, right?
But they're trying to
fuse that in some weird way.
And the whole industry suffering for it
because you have a whole bunch of
unattached business experts
that don't really get what gaming is
or don't understand why
people or the type of gamers
that are on the PC or consoles.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, yeah, go ahead James.
It's about milking them really.
Like it's, you get
these like business guys,
C-level execs that get in
and then they just wanna
from other areas too.
Like look at Unity, Unity
tanked hard, the, you know.
John Risatello from EA
coming in clutch to ruin it.
Yeah. Man.
It's just gonna keep on happening.
Do they ever recover from that?
Yeah.
I, yeah, I think they've
recovered, but you know,
this point it's like,
you know, you got Godot
that siphoned as much
as they can out of it.
And then like Unreal
will always be Unreal.
So, you know, there's still
not much of a competitive front
or at least too many
players in that game.
They killed their progress
because they were really good for
especially indie studios.
And I really think they
killed a lot of ill will with them.
And so they're gaining some back,
but I think they lost
so much that I will see.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Like a lot of
companies that used to like,
well a lot of indie
studios that used to use Unity
for their games have
like switched to Godot.
Like a Slay the Spire
2 is gonna be in Godot.
And they're promising
it's gonna be way better
than Slay the Spire 1.
Which is already a good game.
Which is already, yeah.
Yeah, it's like one of the like giant,
giant defining games of like this,
like last generation, I think.
Yeah.
And everyone wants to be
Slay the Spire, but anyways.
Yeah, I think it's
important to actually highlight
what Rafael here says.
He says, "I think Game
Pass is an unsustainable model
that has been
increasingly damaging the industry
for a decade, subsidized by
Microsoft's infinite money.
But at some point reality has to hit.
I don't think Game Pass can
coexist with other models.
They'll either kill
everyone else or give up."
And like, I think that
that is very prescient
because I think that you can only have
one Game Pass style thing where every
person is subscribed,
every gamer is subscribed to Game Pass.
And that's the only way
that this is sustainable.
And Microsoft's infinite money,
I feel like the writing is on the wall.
There is no infinite money
pit for Game Pass anymore.
Like the fact that
they're closing so many studios
just tells me that their bean counters
are done with this, right?
It just doesn't seem sustainable.
And I think Microsoft knows it.
I mean, I think there were just like,
when you buy a company
like Activision Blizzard
for how much was that
acquisition, like 10 billion?
I thought it was like 70 billion.
No, fuck, it was way
more, yeah, 70 billion.
I'm thinking of like another acquisition.
But when you buy like
something for $70 billion,
so largest acquisition
that Microsoft's ever made,
and arguably it's
probably not the most value
adding acquisition because you have
companies like Skype
that probably mattered a whole lot more
for Microsoft at the time.
When you have like all
these acquisitions going off,
yeah, the bean
counters are gonna come harder
because now you're the division with the
largest expenditure.
So it's like, how do
you justify it, right?
And one of the things that I thought
that they were gonna do,
and I'm pretty sure they
legally fought for this,
is to have like Call of
Duty be a full Xbox exclusive
or lock things down to the
console exclusivity side,
but they didn't do it.
They just were like, all right,
we'll make everything super open.
Everything will be the status quo.
We're just the company
that I guess owns this IP.
You know, we're just a
company that owns Call of Duty,
but we're not gonna make it in any way
where it's like actually exclusive
or we won't actually provide anything.
In fact, if anything, for
the Xbox side of people,
which probably weren't a
heck of a lot of buyers,
we'll just make the whole
game subsidized for them
or we'll release it completely for free.
There's people that I know
that would buy Call of Duty
every year as if it was Madden.
And hey, for a while, I
was one of those guys too.
I had friends that were just playing God.
Haven't bought my
Call of Duty games since,
fuck was it, modern warfare one?
Yeah, 2019, no, Call of
Duty Black Ops Cold War,
the one that came right after it.
And there's just never been a reason to.
It's like now it's all on Microsoft.
When they announced that,
what, Black Ops seven or six?
Which one was it?
Seven, I think.
Who cares?
It's on Game Pass.
You'll play the single
player and be done with it.
It's all the multiplayer is worth
wasting your time on these days.
So yeah, it's a model
that just doesn't really
make a lot of sense.
Release your high marquee profile games,
like these hundreds of millions of
dollars of investment
and just sell them for like, what, 20
bucks at best a pop?
What's the cheapest sub on a Game Pass?
Like, I think it's 13 a month?
Not like Game Pass Ultimate or something.
I'm thinking, I think Game
Pass Basic is probably less,
but yeah, just doesn't
make really any sense.
Like even with like Sony, Sony has a
subscription model too,
but they're not
releasing Death Straining 2
or like Ghosts of Yotai
or anything in their like
current year subscription on that model.
I don't even think you
can get like Spiderman 2
on the Sony subscription model as of now.
And for Nintendo, it's
just online multiplayer
and like old games.
So I don't know why
Microsoft went this route.
To be fair, like it's
the best bang for your buck
if you wanna go with one
of the services, it's just.
Oh, it's great for consumers.
They're gonna have to up that price
and hopefully they don't
do some really weird shit
where they just only do a
Netflix styles, you know,
service where you can only
get it through a subscription
for some of these games for a while.
Hopefully we don't see some exclusives.
That's what I have worked out.
I think that's what's gonna happen
because look at how they've
been treating physical media.
I think we're gonna
get to a point where like
they'll be locking
games behind Game Pass.
Like ironically, you
will not have the option
to buy these things on maybe on, I don't
know, even on Steam.
I think if that, like,
cause you gotta think about like
the bean counters
probably would find that
to be an amazing thing.
Like imagine, right?
Like all of a sudden like Call of Duty
isn't available to be bought
except through a Game Pass subscription,
even on like PlayStation or like, you
know, Nintendo or PC.
Yeah, those numbers are gonna go up
and people will be paying a premium price
just to get access to, I
guess, COD each year, you know?
Yeah.
Or any other big popular game.
Big turn off that
you're gonna have to get,
like Starcraft 3 is gonna have to be
what gets me onto
something like Game Pass like that.
Dude, just imagine if they did that.
Imagine if that was an effect
and you have like Elder
Scrolls 6 by that time.
I'd have.
That would be like, that's a shit storm
that happened to be honest.
But it's a shit storm
that like, you know,
gamers will just buy it
cause it's Elder Scrolls.
How can you not buy Elder Scrolls?
How can you not get into it?
It'll be good content, but Dave,
you're gonna be buying
it. Unless the game sucks,
unless the game sucks
like Starfield that is.
Oh, people still buy.
You know, I saw the
dumbest defense of Starfield.
It's like, you know, Starfield was the
most over hated game.
I'm like, buddy, you
clearly were not playing it
when it came out.
Sounds like a sweater post.
It was probably me.
I like Starfield.
Okay, I had to never beat it though.
You see, that's the thing.
It's like, I never
fucking went through the whole
like beating it either.
I've been like, I got like all the way
through all the side
content, got like all the way
to the end, just didn't do it.
And then I played like
the expansion material
and I'm like, man, they
could have just done this
in such a better way.
Well, what's the
expansion? It's just a shame.
Cause I really had a lot
of high hopes for that.
I was like, man, a new
IP from Bethesda, come on.
It had so much potential too.
The side missions are
so boring after all.
They're so repetitive.
They're like
definitely generative to where
there's no soul to them.
I just, I got so bored.
And you know, with all the money they're putting
into like co-pilot and shit,
like how much money do
they put into like 80 billion
into that?
Bro, you're gonna see a lot
more of the AI generated shit
in the upcoming Xbox
like first party stuff.
To be fair, it would have been better
than what we got with the side quests.
There's only one side quest
in that game that I enjoyed.
It was like the Crimson,
the Crimson Pirate one.
Oh yeah, this is kind of cool.
That was interesting.
And then even then, I remember like,
I don't want to spoil
anything for the audience member
watching, but like there
was a, the heist on the ship.
And I was like, I thought
that would have been way cooler
than it actually was.
And I'm just, now that I keep remembering
every single aspect of
that game, I'm like, man.
It just makes me more mad.
It just, it drives me
insane how they ruined it.
I guarantee you that game
probably was like a ZeniMax
online game at some point.
How barren the content is, you know?
Like how like MMO like
the side quests feel.
Yeah, yeah, no, like
it would be much better
if it was like co-op in some weird way.
At least you'd be talking with someone.
Well, speaking of game paths,
have you guys played the
newest malware drop on it?
Call of Duty World War II.
Oh boy, I love that dude, that story.
I wish I could make
the video on it at time,
but they shut down
the servers long before
I could ever talk on it.
So for anybody that doesn't know dude,
this World War II stuff,
you guys have obviously
been following it, but like, man, they,
this is a story that's
been brewing for so long
because I did talk about this problem
when it came to the
older Call of Duty games.
So this has been an issue with COD
since I wanna say
Modern Warfare II on PC.
So RCE attacks have
been a thing since then.
And what's funny too
is like when this story
was kicking off, I
went over to my brother's
and he was playing
Black Ops III on his PC
and he had to use like a fan-made,
community-made
patching tool to get the game
to function in a way
where he wasn't exposed
to an RCE attack.
Oh my god.
I'm like, when the
biggest company in the world,
Microsoft, like the biggest publisher,
lets this shit
constantly fly and it really
requires the game
developer, when it requires
the community to put like patches
together for it, why?
You know, like how do
they, and it's crazy
because they took it
down and like they were
just straight up saying
like, oh, this is like
a minor technical issue.
I'm like a minor
technical issue where people
can run like remote code on your system.
Like get the fuck out of here.
Dude, like even from software,
Dark Souls 3 had an RCE exploit too,
but even from software who's notoriously
not great at PC ports,
they took their game down
for a while, they fixed it
up and then they patched that
and they brought it back.
But like Activision has
experience with PC ports.
Like Call of Duty is not
a PC, like Call of Duty 1.
And you'd tell me that
they couldn't fix this
or like go back and like fix it.
You know, it's funny
too, because it's like,
remember like what video
games Europe has said too?
It's like, it's just
unfeasible for a big AAA like company,
for big companies to
like, you know, like imagine
having private servers and
exposing people to malware
and exposing people to like,
you know, failures like this.
Dude, this is
happening underneath Microsoft.
This was happening and
like the example I brought up
with Black Ops 3, when
it took the community
to put together a
community patch to fix your game
while it's still
accessible and live, bro,
these companies don't
care, they don't give a shit.
This, the game was recently
added to PC Game Path, right?
And it like, and that's the version
that is currently vulnerable.
Is there vulnerable ones in the Steam
version of the game?
I believe the Steam
versions were also vulnerable.
I may have to check that
again, because the RCE stuff
was existing again in like
MW2, like old MW2, Black Ops.
Like a lot of those
games were like kind of,
you would not, you should
not have played those games
at any given moment without fan patches
or through like private servers like,
forgetting the name of it,
but Activision took them down.
Who's zooming?
I wanna see what that guy said.
I forget the name of it,
but there were like
private server solutions,
Plutonium or something like that,
where you could just go
and like play Modern Warfare,
fan patched with all the stuff removed
and upgrades added down the road.
But yeah, you should never have played
the original versions
of these games for years
because these exploits were
never patched by Activision.
Marky Mayor, just RCE'd your ass.
Please contact
Mitchell Silbergen, not LLP.
Wow.
Man.
That's wild.
Dude, and so these
were known vulnerabilities
and they added it to Game Pass anyway?
Yeah.
Oh my God.
Talk about, dude,
yeah, like the absolute,
like grandiose bullshit
of the gaming industry
where it's like, you
can't trust private servers
like you were saying, Munnar,
like that's just insanely stupid.
Like they're so--
And they were the
only ways to preserve it.
Oh my God.
Like I would trust a fan made patch
from like known people
in a community of gamers
more than I would trust
any of these companies.
Like, oh man.
I watched, you know what's funny?
I actually, before I got on the show,
I watched a code review of the Thor,
what's his name?
Pirate Software.
Like I watched someone review his code
and he's like, oh yeah,
this is an unbreakable DRM
and the guy that was
reviewing it was like,
here are eight ways I can
break this DRM in three minutes.
And it was like, like some of the,
and he, at least he says
he's like a 20 year veteran
of the games industry
and his code doesn't pass
like junior dev muster, you know?
It's like, how can we trust,
like the gaming
industry, like they cut corners
and the budgets are
so low and the people,
I'm not gonna say
everyone, but like 20 year veterans
don't know how to pass like
junior grade tests for coding.
It's like, what are we
doing with this industry?
Well, yeah, I mean,
like I think with like
the whole Pirate
Software stuff, it's like,
and I just hate to like
constantly like twist a knife in
or like, you know, get into
like the code drama for it.
But to be fair, it's like, you know,
this is a guy that like, I
remember the first thing I heard
that kind of rubbed me a
little bit weird was like,
when he said that he was at
like Blizzard and like he wrote
the like, they worked on
solutions to get rid of like
all the bots or something.
And I'm like, bro, what
universe are we talking here?
Cause last I checked still to this day,
all the Blizzard games
are filled with bots.
So evidently this was never pulled into
the actual like chain.
But yeah, when I was
looking at his code, it's like,
to an extent, like I'm not a game
developer or anything.
So I wouldn't know like the logic around,
cause coders in different fields have
different aspects of
or different ways of
how they like write stuff.
But when I saw like his
stuff, like somebody posted it
to our Reddit and like
somebody like brought it up.
Like I saw the coding
Jesus video about it too.
And even the DRM stuff.
And to me, it's just like,
there's a lot of ego and bravado
to be like publicly coding
and having all of these like
insanely long arrays and switches and
thinking that it was
good. Cause yeah, once
like a real like programmer,
like once a real like developer looks at,
even if you're like a,
like a first year, like a,
what CS1 student, like a
computer science students,
like you'll look at that and be like,
there's so many better ways to handle it.
It's like that one game
Yandere simulator, right?
Like take all the X, take all the,
take all the exterior drama
out of it and just look at the
coding and like
you'll realize, oh my God,
this is why the game runs like shit.
It's because it's programmed so weird.
You know, there's no, go ahead.
Just the nested switch
statement is wrong to me.
Like if you have two switch statements
inside of each other
or one switch statement
inside another, that's just wrong.
You're doing it wrong.
I don't know about you James.
I think that that just
seems wacky beyond belief.
Yeah, no, technically wrong.
You'd probably set it into
another function, but yeah,
these are stuff that you
learn in college or boot camp or
whatever.
Like that's where you
make the mistake of those,
those types of mistakes, not
20 years in or 15 years or even
one year in.
And the reason I bring this up, right?
Like he's a 20 year veteran
of the games industry, right?
So it's like, is this the
kind of like code smell that we
want running in our,
you know, running game?
What?
You said 20, are you
talking about Thor being a 20 year
developer?
That's what he says.
Oh, I thought you were
saying the other guy was a 20 year
game developer.
No, no, Thor. Yeah.
So, but like, do we want like
that level of like what seems
to me amateurish coding?
I'm not saying all game
developers are like that, but
Yeah.
Do we want them running our,
you know, our games that are
connecting to the internet?
Do we want them having
the code in our kernels?
You know, like, I don't,
I don't trust that shit.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I mean, that's like the,
that's like the most logical way
to kind of look at it too, because you
know, a guy like Thor
or whatever that's, and the brief talks
that I ever had with
them were just talks about like, you
know, cybersecurity,
very brief conversations.
Cause I remember one time I
hit him up about like kernel
level anti-cheat and it was
just like a one or two message
thing.
Kernel level anti-cheat,
a lot of people dislike,
I know that Thor dislikes it.
And I know that like most
people that understand computer
security, like dislike it 100%.
But it's just one of those
things that were overall the
gaming industry, when you're
trying to communicate to like
a group of people that
have no idea what, you know,
ring levels are, have no idea what
kernels are in general.
It's like the easiest way
to like gaslight them into
thinking that, no, this
isn't that big of a deal and you
need this to make your
gaming experience super duper
awesome.
And then down the road, cause
I've always said when one of
these things gets
compromised and we saw this happening,
like, I don't know if you
guys remember what happened with
Genshin Impact, but one
of their drivers, right?
You know, they were able to
take them, they were able to
take them, I think it was a
my prop too, they were able to
take their driver, didn't
even need to have like Genshin
Impact, they took their signed kernel
driver and were able
to do like the nastiest things with them.
So, you know, you should,
these are people that I'm not
going to like judge
their coding or whatever.
Like, you know, I'm sure if
you look through some of my
projects, we would all be able to like
criticize each other
and roast one another.
Boys.
But these are people
that are writing the most
commercial grade software.
And if you're, yeah, if
you're making that level of a
mistake, you know, do I
really want your code on my
computer running, knowing
now how bad things can get with
things like World War II, Call of Duty,
where like you still
have these unmitigated RC exploits
running around, right?
Or sometimes you have a DRM
solution that just completely
opens a pathway for exploitation at some
point down the road.
I mean, they should at least hire an
external like company
to do some validation on security.
There's a lot of them that do this.
And when it comes to the
security level, you don't really
want a game developer.
You don't need a game developer.
You need a security developer, someone
that that's their job
that understands the
security level of stuff.
You don't need to understand
how to write a C++ game code
on, you know, whatever it is.
Like you gotta, there's
different levels and I don't know.
I just don't trust them.
I don't trust that they know
what they're doing to get the
right people to create
these low level stuff.
The problem is too, is like
you're also asking them to
hire people that charge
dramatically more than game
developers, right?
Like the moment you start going like,
okay, you go from like
a game development team, right?
And these people are
severely underpaid for the level of
effort they put into, you
know, the stuff that they write.
But then you go to like, you know, the
cybersecurity analyst,
you're like a cybersecurity
team, all of a sudden your costs
have just jumped up astronomically.
So now in the game development industry
where your costs are
already so high, are you willing to have
a dedicated security
team and are you willing to see that
like, do you think that
that's justifying your cost, right?
Like that's the question
that a lot of these C-suite guys
will ask.
So really then like you're
asking these people to out of,
out of the kindness of their
own hearts, think that maybe we
should find a way to like
think of the security of our
user base, bro, they don't
care about the user base.
We're fucking little piggies.
That's all that matters.
If a company like Microsoft
gives no shit towards protecting
the user from like these RC
exploits, I could not imagine a
company like EA or Ubisoft
to even think twice about this
stuff.
Well, that's one of the reasons that I
think like so many of the
big like publishers don't
support Linux is because you
want to pay someone who has
the expertise to optimize a Linux
client.
That's going to be twice or
three times the salary of your
standard run in the mill game developer,
you know, like James,
what are you going to say?
Even with like, even like Linux, one
thing that I want to say is
like one of the things that I keep talk,
like the things that
I keep seeing mentioned,
and I feel it's a bit of a
misinformation is like, why
don't we just tell developers to
enable anti-cheat for Linux, right?
And the reason why I always
found it to be like a bit like
misinformation is that let's say that
you're battle eye, right?
Like battle eye, you can email to them
and just tell them to
enable battle eye for Linux.
But then conveniently, I always find that
people leave out that
battle eye for Linux isn't as deep as
battle eye on Windows,
right?
Yeah, so that level of
protection people want like kernel
level anti-cheat, the thing that you
know, the thing they're
going for isn't available on
the Linux versions of these
anti-cheat engines.
So just asking a company like Ubisoft or
Rockstar to enable it
wouldn't be the end all be all.
It would be hiring somebody
that can find a way for Linux
anti-cheat to be as effective
as kernel level, while still,
you know, working in the Linux ecosystem.
And I kind of have thoughts about this.
I was like, what if we had, you know,
valve steam OS and one of
the things that I'm thinking of is maybe
they're finding ways
to make steam OS a sign sort of kernel in
a way where it can be
validated by some of these big companies
like, hey, as long as
you're running the signed steam OS
kernel, you should be safe
from anti-cheat or like you
should, you should be able to
run like a Linux compliant anti-cheat,
you know, as opposed
to somebody that's running
like a kernel from like Hannah
Montana OS where things have been
obviously modified to like
some insane degrees.
Maybe that's what it'll take.
But yeah, you know, it's like you're
going to up the cost and
like bring more people on to do like a
crazy job that yeah,
probably wouldn't justify
the cost of like all the Linux,
like the handful of Linux
users that you're going to.
I mean, it's, it's complicated.
I'm looking at it all from a
business and technical sense.
So I'm trying to be really
charitable to these companies,
even though I probably shouldn't be
really, I just want a solution
to go forward.
Like I want Linux to be a
place where I can play Rainbow
Six Siege and Granthathotl online.
But I just know that it's not as simple
as screaming at these
developers to like or publishers to open
up support when I know
at a technical sense that
there's a lot of under the hood
changes that still need to
be done from the penguins end
before these game companies can overall
support it, you know.
Yeah.
I think a lot of this, I think a lot of
this misinformation came
from when Valve initially
made the blog post on Steam.
They said, well, something to the effect
of you can like easy
entity has a little slider
where you can just be able to
export and that's that and it
just works magically in Linux.
Yeah.
Now, like it's kind of a minor
thing, but I do think Valve is
partly to blame for that.
Yeah, because like in the same board,
they should have just
been like, yeah, you can enable it, but
you're going to get a
weekend anti-cheat.
And of course, no developers
like, yeah, of course, we don't
want to weekend anti-cheat.
The whole point of this kernel level
anti-cheat was to fight
off a lot of the cheats that are sitting
at the kernel level.
And I'm going to just throw a little
black pill to the people
out there.
Kernel and anti-cheat is
not going to do anything to
somebody that is using
obviously DMA based cheats, like,
you know, like a lot of those
DMA based cars that plug into
different systems, like those guys are
always still going to
be completely outside
the matrix, you know.
So really all this stuff
does, I think, is just affect the
average common gamer.
I don't know.
It's so weird to deal with the
anti-cheat solutions because I
feel like a lot of them really don't
target the real cheaters
that I see in these spaces.
Now, the big question
though is, could AI be used as an
effective anti-cheat solution?
That would have to be on
the server side, though.
Yeah.
And that would probably cost
more than it would be worth it,
yeah.
They're probably already using
some type of machine learning
and some side of it,
but it is a little pricey.
But I think that is--
you could get some-- as long as they have
people reviewing the
telemetry and some of the
stuff that the AI catches and not
just an auto ban, I think
that's the best way to go without
doing kernel level.
But it's going to cost more.
Well, they're one thing--
And the thing is it's like--
Oh, sorry.
Go ahead.
The thing is it's like, can it also be
done effectively and
in real time, right?
It doesn't matter if you ban the guy
after they've cheated.
If they've already ruined the experience
for somebody in real
time, that's a lost client, right?
Somebody's probably not going to play the
game again if they're
just dealing with
cheaters all day, right?
Right.
They could, because there's a lot of
predictive movements
at bots.
And even with certain bots
that have come out that are--
they'll try to mimic real human.
And then you're going to have
AI against AI, but whatever.
At least the AI is not against us.
But AI against AI, whoever has the most,
I guess, the best AI
and the most money is
going to win that battle.
But I don't know.
It's hard to--
We're just giving Nvidia
more reasons to become the $5
trillion company, boys.
Yeah.
Well, speaking of companies
that are-- or people that are
breaking the rules, there are some
companies on Steam that
are breaking the rules.
Hi, Tech.
Tell me about this story here.
So Blue Archive is a gacha
game that just released on PC.
There's been this very
interesting trend of gacha games
releasing on PC, on Steam, no less.
And they had a little event
where they'd give Sensei's,
the in-game name for your character,
they would give you rewards
if it reached a certain number
of Steam reviews.
So while it's kind of a minor thing,
it also is textbook review manipulation.
Yeah.
Yeah, because we're giving people an
incentive to just go in
and like, hey, drop those five stars.
Tell us how great the game is.
Yeah, so Blue Archive
is kind of controversial
because of the community.
It's a very-- how should I say it--
Nux-taku-coded game.
What does that mean?
Muda-heart.
Muda-heart. Muda-heart. Muda-heart. Muda-heart. Muda-heart.
Muda-heart.
Every time I've ever talked to Nux,
it's like he's an anti
one of those kind of guys.
But if you're talking about
the styling of the characters,
yeah, I've never played Blue Archive.
But it wouldn't be surprising.
It's like a gacha thing, though.
That's a pretty big trope.
So despite the fact that all the
character names are Japanese,
it's a Korean game, which has
some people a little confused.
But anyways, that's besides the point.
Point is, it's review manipulation.
They have since deleted the post.
But it still--
I mean, it still happens.
But the other major-- but there was also
another game that was mentioned, too,
that was breaking the rules, not because
of review manipulation,
but for straight up
not disclosing the fact
that there was AI-generated content.
Oh, was that that altars game?
Man, I heard that game
was really good, though.
I don't know much about
the game, to be honest.
So from what I understand,
one asset was a placeholder.
So they are changing that.
But I believe the other thing they did
was they mentioned that
some aspects of the game
were localized using AI.
And if I'm not mistaken, that should also
warrant just being listed
in the AI disclosure, no?
Yeah, I mean, Call of
Duty did the same thing
with Black Ops 6, where they had
AI-generated calling
cards, or they used AI to
make some of the art materials.
But they later had to disclose it.
I don't know how steam--
how seriously do they
even take that, though?
Because I feel like they
see so much AI shit on Steam,
and it's not disclosed.
I doubt-- I mean, if they
wanted to make an example out
of someone, this is the
game to do it, probably.
But yeah, I doubt it's
going to happen at this point.
I think the way the
altars did the AI was like,
they just had the
text in the game, right?
The little flavor text
and the computer screens.
That was all completely AI-generated.
I think that's where the
whole moniker came into.
Sometimes I even wonder, do
you think even the company,
like when they were released in the game,
knew that AI was used?
Some artist they've outsourced to
probably put it together,
inject it into the game?
That's really the
difficult thing with AI these days,
is that you don't know--
whether it's software
development, game development,
some people could be using--
I mean, I use AI in my
software development.
But it's-- I think I'd like to see a
public solution on this,
where the public can just like--
kind of detect it.
And enough people
reported as, hey, there's
AI for this portion, and
then it's just flagged as AI.
I don't care if people use AI, but it
would be nice to know
certain games that they're using AI
and how much.
Well, you could just do
it the old fashioned way,
like Bungie does, and just
steal the art assets directly.
Dude, I love me, Bungie, man.
That shit was--
that marathon stuff
is a fever dream, dude.
What I saw, like--
normally, I was like, man, there's
got to be a bigger story.
There's got to be one asset.
When I saw how much was
copied that day, I was like,
there's no shot.
They ended up thinking they
were going to get away with this.
And they did.
Bungie, of all companies, man.
Fuck.
Man.
Yeah.
That's crazy, too, man.
Because that was like the
one thing that was universally
praised about marathon.
It looked like teenage
engineering is the game.
But then it turns out that
not only were specific assets
stolen, but there's a theory,
there's a prevailing theory,
that potentially the whole
art style was just straight up.
And it was just copied
and plagiarized, too.
And it led to the
little nickname, Art Raiders,
reference to another--
Yeah, Art Korea.
That's just crazy, man.
It just-- it makes me
wonder, because it's like,
how do you not expect to get caught?
Like, how do you--
I remember back in the early YouTube--
this was like super early YouTube.
There was these Call of
Duty guys, these channels.
And they were like, got
into this beef with each other.
And I don't know.
And I don't know. But I remember in an ad, it was all copied video ideas.
And we're talking some CSI
forensic intelligence levels
of looking at each other's videos
and determining what
aspect of the video was copied.
yada yada yada.
And this is a huge thing.
And mind you, plagiarism is one of those
things that eventually
just gets caught.
Like, it doesn't matter.
I think it was like H Bummer guy made
that video on plagiarism.
And he just went after a
whole bouquet of creators.
Yeah, you got away with it for a while,
but like how long did you expect people
to not eventually go
through and look through the
Script or be called out and then to see
like a big triple-a company do it so
blatantly to an artist that they
interacted with apparently
just
Now here's also the other thing too is
they said they were gonna go
through and scrub the game out
They were gonna scrub like any assets
that might have been stolen, you know,
they're gonna look over everything
But then one has the whole game. Yeah,
would it not just be
cheaper just to hire the person?
Have them be art director
That that would be the smart way to go
another what they're gonna do is they're
gonna use that they're
gonna just just on a downward
trend of just
Stupidity they're gonna use
AI they're just like hey AI
Can you replace all the assets and then
the AI is gonna
plagiarize something else so
They're gonna plagiarize teenage
engineering directly
I mean, yeah, it's funny like when I saw
like marathon and it's like
all the people who are like
This is such a unique game from Bungie
and I'm like guys I can see the exact
animation from Destiny 2 inside marathon
I don't understand what you guys are
seeing that's like so
mind-bogglingly awesome
Like when I when I said cuz sometimes I
feel like I'm too cynical
about gaming and it's like man
I just I guess I hate everything and I'm
like no, no, no, no, no, no
I'm gonna stick to my guns here
Okay, that is a reskin of destiny to PvP
that I just saw and I
don't even enjoy destiny to PvP
So why the fuck would you
think that I would enjoy?
Capacity dude marathon like I was excited
cuz I'm like I played the original
marathon games again
I was like, all right, let me go and
could I played them back
on the 360 a little bit?
But then I went through like the left one
like source ports and I was like these
are really awesome games
Are fun titles for their time and then I
and then immediately when like, you know
marathon is more of
that live service shit
I'm just like, okay. Well all the
interests just died like the art style is
the only thing that made it look cool
But this is just like marathon and name
only like bastardized this
25 year old game franchise just to
release another
nonsense extraction shooter
imagine a timeline where
Microsoft didn't buy Bungie and
Bungie remain an Apple only studio could
have been the rock could have been the
birth of Apple gaming
Hmm. No, no Apple arcades a thing, buddy
Yeah, Bungie would have
been their premiere developer
Apple buying
Apple is gathering some studios, but
they're like, I think the last one was
just some indie studio with two
developers, but they've been
Don't either but I know that I
Pay for the Apple arcade. I
paid for the whole package and
That's how I played Resident Evil I guess
on Apple, but it's okay
Yeah, I've heard I mean Apple arcade has
some pretty good games like it has a
Fantasian which uh, I
heard Linus tech tips
Talk about a lot
I honestly Linus never like if you watch
Linus's videos, he never
strikes you as a jrpg kind of guy
But then he just is hmm. Oh
Linus has to be a jr anybody that's
played video games as long as any of us
has you probably fucked
with the jrpg at some point
career
My favorite is definitely earthbound
Earthbound so good. Yeah, Linus had some
pretty spicy takes about sea of thieves
I'm not see if you sight sea of stars
What did he say about sea of stars?
well, all I remember is that he didn't
really like it because
Of the game the gameplay just wasn't
super interesting to him. I guess I have
a different experience with sea of stars
I got ruined because of an investigation
I did on that completionist guy
Oh no, wait, wait, wait,
wait, what was he involved with?
Well, it was like the
charity case situation
He's like he had the Alzheimer's charity
that just you know, can haha forgot how
to donate right? Yeah
So when I see a star as I'm like, dude, I
remember that story just kind of happened
I was like when I looked through the
filings I sent that to my accountant and
it's like my account is never
like
CFO of her company like she's never like
Written anything like she's very frank of
the matter when she's texting right? Like
it's almost like chat GPT is
writing to you perfect like
vocabulary
First time in my life. I've ever heard
her text. Oh, well, I didn't know this
I didn't he wasn't they
patched him out they patched
You know the first time when I sent all
that stuff to my account like I sent the
IRS forms from from there like
Alzheimer's charity only time she's ever
written the words lol to me
I was like, bro. She unironically laughed
out loud. Dude. What the fuck?
Did you make these up? I'm like no
S link and she's like no way
The rule number one of making video games
don't add real people to video games.
Remember Jesse McCree
He was a real guy Blizzard. I think he
was like a Diablo
director or something like that
They had to because of what he did they
had to rename the character and
Jesse McCree was such a perfect fucking
cowboy name now. I
don't even know his new name
What was like cast like
butch Cassidy or something?
Capcom cancels
lecture on
Monster Hunter wilds optimization amid
harassment concerns. All right. I gotta
hear the gist of this one here
I think so
Would you so when you think of monster or
wilds, do you think of words like
optimized runs? Well on PC?
Anything that oh not a
Capcom game. Absolutely not
so I found it super interesting that
Capcom had a lecture on optimizing
monster hunter wilds cuz like
What would the lecture be?
Dude I made a video just like about the
monster hunter world stuff because it's
like when I when I saw
how bad because it's overwhelming the
negative on steam for
a good reason because
This is a game that just
runs like shit on everything
So I remember like when I benchmarked it
on PC guys with the 4090 with everything
in place frame generation
I wasn't even hitting a consistent 60 FPS
and this is on like DLSS balanced
Like maybe maybe if I went to performance
and totally destroyed
the image quality sure but
It was not a good PC game. It was not a
good experience and like one of the
things you have to know about like
Capcom is that this re engine and
Somehow it feels like anytime when you
make a Resident Evil game like an
enclosed environment not open world
Nothing with more than four NPCs on
screen at any given moment. It runs
great. Absolutely
amazing engine brilliant
Even raytraces great the moment you make
an environment slightly larger than a
small room and you have
like open world things to keep
track of
Yeah, whole this thing ships itself
pretty hard like this thing is
Dragging is like he was like
Dragons dogma
That was the best that you know
That was my first locked at
30 FPS game on PC for a while
Because I was like it was so erratic as
soon as I went to the town. I'm like,
alright FPS locked v-sync 30 FPS
It's not ideal, but
it's better than nothing
That's that's what I knew not to get
monster under like wilds on PC
My brother stupid stupidly buys it on PC
complains about it and I'm like home
This is running this
is running it like what?
Minimum 720p maybe 1080p on my
PlayStation 5 if it's
running that bad on my console
You know like we're cuz I told him I'm
like homie we are talking like ps3 era
resolutions were hitting okay
Why would you even think of buying it on
PC? What is what is wrong with you?
You're asking for a bad time
Has your brother
considered buying a 59 D?
Dude, he you know, he
he has like he has a
4070 and it's like that. He literally did
say that by the way, he's like, maybe if
I upgraded my GP. I'm like stop
stop
Okay, no
You're fine with your car.
Why would you even think of it?
My god, if I had the 50s here maybe this
I'm like no remember cuz
I'm like dude back in the day
When you when you went to somebody's
house and they had like a 90 600 GT
It's like bro
You were going to like some kid whose dad
worked for NASA or something, you know
We have like the system that could run
Assassin's Creed wanted a high
Okay. Now you should not need a flagship
AI crunching GPU to run a video game, man
It shouldn't even be a requirement
even be a thought
They need to spend more money on the if
they're gonna run engines
They need to and they
want to use the re engine
let's say like in monster hunter like
they've got to start spending more money
on optimizing it because it's like
Streaming the
textures is a big part of it
They probably don't do that and there's
just so much stuff
that they could do that's
Industry standard that they could
probably hire some mid-range
engineer to fix but you know
Come yeah, yeah, you know, you know
dragons dogma 2 has a
mechanic where if your
pawn gets infected with something like I
guess pawn aids or
some shit like that and
You gotta you gotta sleep at some point
they kill all the residents in a town and
your frame rate goes up
dramatically because of that
Why would killing the NPCs and reducing
their logic increase the frame rate?
Like this is the kind of stuff that you
sit in cover if you write like, you know
when you're debugging your shit
You're like sitting in the boardroom and
it's like how is it that the frame rate
dropped when you
removed the logical NPCs?
Wait, does it make sense?
They've got to be doing like single
threaded and it's
their event loops really
Yeah, it's like you just sit there and
it's like it's like
dude do we it's like, okay
Well, let's crack open the codebook for a
minute boys. Let's see
Let's see how we designed this town
because at that point it's like you what
you've done is not bad optimization
You've done something that should belong
in an alternate universe of bad design
Right
Optimizing for Nvidia to
have a four trillion dollar
Valuation there's a
shame to you because dragons
I actually like the like gameplay like
the combat, you know
The game the moment of a gameplay and
dragons don't want one dark arisen is
actually really good
But I probably should have recommended
that their sale but it's too late now
It's a it's a really good
like 360 era open world game
Yeah, so it's a fine steam
deck game that I've been playing
I really like dragons dogman one and I
wish dragons dogma to ran
just as good on my steam deck as
Resident Evil 2 does but new
You know, it's funny they also have games
that run on cell phones. How is it that
they're optimizing for
fucking Apple Silicon?
Like the standard x86 shit that they've
been hitting man wake me up when they put
fucking Moss owner wilds on your iPhone
Solely for the joy of playing the worst
Experience that came in the worst way
possible. Yeah, it was like
with like 20 minute battery life
It's crazy when I saw like Ubisoft
announced like Assassin's
Creed for the fucking iPhone
I'm like who would Ubisoft here
optimization? This is definitely a buy
that I have to go for. Absolutely
Did mood a hard sees red
flags and you go straight at them
Really like anytime I see
the worst way to play a game
I get excited like it really is a joy in
my heart like there are times where
there's this game store near me
It's like this local game store
they buy all these games from Asia for
the switch and it's like
like I go in and I'm like
Oh, what is that? Like it's this ps5 game
that they back poured it to the switch
somehow. Is it all on cart?
Okay, I have to pick it up and try it cuz
it's just there's a joy. It's like
It's like, you know back in the day when
the GameCube and the ps2 had like
different versions of like
the games release cuz they
Were fundamentally different systems when
you played splinter cell chaos theory
back in the three six
or the Xbox the original
It's like whoa
This is a glorious such a good-looking
game and then you fucking go to the
GameCube and ps2 and it's like whoa
They really cut this game down
I literally have I literally have both of
the the first two Xbox versions of
I've been I've been
playing them on my Xbox
Yeah, well no I literally have
Like a stack of my original Xbox games
here. I've been ripping
them onto my retro nass
man, if there's any doubt that Gardner
secretly hates Xbox or
We've gotten so many comments about our
like anti Xbox bias is crazy like
But like it comes from a place of love.
Yeah, cuz although it has
look one of my favorite games
I have it right here. No,
man sky on the Nintendo switch
Okay
this is a game that used to run like dog
shit on the PlayStation 4 and
Somehow down the road after so much
bullying, you know, if anybody said that
bullying doesn't work
bullying. Hello games
10 years for them to make a fucking
version of this game run on the weakest
arm hardware at the time
I mean that that's just glories to me
That's always the most impressive stuff
like I don't care so much when you get
your game running on
like a 40 90 like a 59
Congrats, man, you you managed to make it
work on a GPU that costs more
Than anything you could imagine right
like just a super
expensive piece of hardware
But when you get it running on like an
Apple watch or something, right? That's
when I'm interested. That's what I'm down
Cyberpunks that way that's exactly
cyberpunk right? I like cyberpunk when it
released when it first released but
Now they're getting it to where it's
they're running it on, you know
I mean switch to is impressive. I I'm
really curious to see where's gonna go
with the the Apple Silicon
Yeah, I mean if they can get a running
like butter on that I am super duper
ready to I mean that
that's that's the one
Port that I thought was gonna come out
pretty soon actually, but it's in a
couple months. They
really at the end of Apple's uh
little conference they little footnote on
the last slide that is coming out in like
a couple more months so
Wait, you have to do we have to buy it
again? Or is it gonna be
like a steam version that'll be?
Mac port they say it's
gonna be on steam and
GOG and and also Apple Store, so I don't
think you're gonna have to buy it again
I think you're gonna be
able to play just like yep
That's the thing that I think sucks about
Mac gaming the most is like generally
when they release like a Mac port
It's never like also on steam or like
just because you own the game on Steam
You don't get access to that port like
some Mac games used to do that
But now it's like I saw Assassin's Creed
shadow had like a Mac version
I'm like dude as much as I'm
interested a it's a Ubisoft game
So I'm not a that excited to play it now
and be I doubt that that game is gonna
run that great on em
Silicon I saw like
Andrew sigh made a video on it
And it was like he was just like it's a
real bad port like it's really bad
And I'm like his his tolerance was for
shit gameplay is way higher than mine
And if he's saying
that's bad. It's gotta be bad
But imagine being able Spartan kick like
samurai's out like dude
There was there was this one clip we saw
it was it was like I don't know why dude
It was like Yasuke. I think it was name
was it was like oh, yeah, like these two
walls. It was awesome
Yeah, I saw that like that
It's funny because the controversy around
that game like and I always hate jumping
into like the whole
culture war side of stuff
Cuz it's so irrelevant to like the
gameplay that we talked
about when I saw like Yasuke
Just like the seven foot tall like
fucking black samurai dude walking inside
and kicking dudes off of cliffs
I'm like, I don't even care how late it's
an Assassin's Creed game.
Okay, it's already outlandish
It's been outlandish since Assassin's
Creed goddamn war. I'm playing this just
for that like goofy shit
Yeah
It's definitely a sale game
It's definitely a sale game because you
know that without the DLC that game story
just like ends on the dumbest cliffhanger
Yeah, I haven't played
it so no spoiler-renos
It's got a lot of DRF. So but yeah
Ubisoft DRM isn't really it for me. Yeah.
Well, there is that one
Sega Genesis game that
has like homebrew DRM in it
What's it called?
Papeer on papprium papprium?
So it's a beat em up and
so there's this developer of
Making essentially just Sega Genesis
games like brand new Sega Genesis games.
It's a community of like people
It's a company that's
making like homebrew games
So they made a Sega Genesis game with DRM
Man there's got to be a
special place in hell for you
It came out in like came out in 2020 and
there's DRM and it's crazy
That's it's a is it like a 2020 like
steam game they ended up porting or is it
just like fully on the mega drive
No, it's no it's fully for the mega
drive. I mean they they made a game prior
they released out in steam
I think that's called pure solar
But this is not on Steam
yet, and
apparently some backers have even
received their copies
like physical copies and
Some physical copies don't run on certain
Sega Genesis revisions.
There's been like a bunch of those
And it's sometimes it doesn't and
sometimes it requires a 32x
despite not being a 32x game
So it has like copy
production hardware in the cartridge
Yes, wow. I'm not I haven't read too much
into it. But all I know
is that that's basically it
Yes
And do they just spend more money to like
protect their copyright then the game was
ever really gonna sell like it's a
fucking mega drive game man
But
Thanks to the magic of emulation. You can
now emulate it with some glitches
It's not perfect yet, but
it'll get there eventually
Yeah, cuz I was about to say I'm like
isn't most of the emulation so mature for
Sega that like you
could just rip this disk and
Probably patch whatever nonsense. It's
kind of like DS emulation, right? Like
remember the days where DS
ROMs had to have like
crazy anti piracy methods
But like they were
always patched out in a day
You could always patch them out through
like action replay or like
game shark or whatever, right?
Just so it would be like a memory fix
most of the time. So it's like I don't
know what they were expecting
Well, the problem is if you
have if you have an emulated
If you have like a piece of hardware that
isn't emulated and the game like requires
That chip to do something and the
emulator doesn't function with that chip
Then the game is not
gonna run an emulator
So I think that's what's going on here,
right like that. They've started to
emulate the actual the
hardware that's in the cartridge
Yeah, it is super
interesting though because like
Yeah, it does have it does have add-on
like hardware that would
make the game like, you know
Like kind of what's super
Nintendo did as well? Oh
So it's like it's like the what is it the
super effect stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah like
sort of I'm not
entirely sure cuz I haven't
Played this game yet. But what I do know
is that in addition that that they do
have like it's causing issues
with actual Genesis hardware
So like that has to be some sort of copy
protection issue. Oh
It seems like it seems like they might
have tested it on like their hardware
But yeah with the revision might be the
way that it reads a cartridge
differently that causes their
That the hardware component they have on
the cartridge to not function or like not
even be able to like
picked up or something
I would imagine I'm the game looks like
it's up my alley to be honest, but like
yeah, the game looks nice
It's just a your
standard arcade beat them up
Yeah, I mean
This one of the links in
here says that the chip
I don't know if it's saying that the chip
requires is required to stream mp3 files.
That's what it says in this
Reddit post here
Which I don't know if that's like that.
The emulator has to
stream the mp3 files or if
The chip is providing
mp3 playback on the Genesis
Which wouldn't be impossible like if you
had a dedicated decoder chip on the thing
Oh to give the functionality of mp3s
because that doesn't even seem like a
thing that the Genesis would have
Yeah, no, I mean the Genesis would is way
underpowered but if you have like a
special chip on there
I mean you could put like a risk five
processor on a on a board and plug it
into your thing if you've got the
Right code for it, you know, they've made
a Super Nintendo games with
what they call the MSU one
I think it was that gives you access to
like full FMV videos and like
CD quality are what CD color
There's a one cool project. I don't know
if you guys ever saw it for
Super Nintendo, but remember when the guy
put ray tracing into
the actual Super Nintendo
Racing on a Super Nintendo. Yeah. Yeah
Look at there's like actual ray tracing
on like Super Nintendo like some guy made
a hardware like a cartridge that allowed
Super Nintendo to do
Like actual hardware based ray tracing,
but it was surely a super duper
expensive, but surely
it runs like crap, right?
I mean, it's right. No, no, it runs
proper real-time here. I should throw it
into like the Riverside chat for you guys
Is this it? Oh
Yeah, super RT. Yeah. Oh wait, I have
seen this I've seen this
There was another guy who like did Super
Nintendo emulation on the NES
Did you see that?
What no?
Wait, no, how's that? What so is that
possible? I'll pull up the video super
that's forward compatibility, too
I
Gotta see that that's sick
That would have been cool like maybe 30
years ago when the Super Nintendo when
the Super Nintendo was new
And people didn't want to replace their
NES's. Oh, I don't know if I
know that's cool. That's cool
Now I want to get our super I want to get
a Nintendo just to run
the Super Nintendo on there
I I can't find the video but like the guy
he basically put a raspberry
He cheated essentially, but he put a
raspberry pie on on a board though
Plugged into the NES and
then it was streaming pie
But what it was doing was it
was like it was in real time
emulating the Super Nintendo and then
Taking the video output turning that into
tie into tile sets that the NES could
then display because
it can't do real-time
video, but it was pretty neat like the
fact that they were like
rendering that in real time and
And then converting it to the tile set
format for this. That's
that's pretty sick. Yeah
That is that does sound
pretty sick. I'm curious though
How would you play a Super Nintendo game
on an NES? I mean, there's
six buttons on a Super Nintendo
There's like two buttons on an NES. Yeah
Yeah, cuz Nintendo didn't have the L.
Yeah, I guess maybe like if you had like
combinations or
something here it is sucker pinch
He's reversed maybe he wasn't doing Super
Nintendo I might have get
that a little bit wrong but
He's reverse emulating the
NES to give it superpowers
Reverse emulating. What does that what
does that mean? So I I
Must have remembered this kind of wrong,
but but I said all these graphical
glitches. He's like emulating
Stuff and then generating the tile set
and outputting it on the NES
Yeah, cuz you just went 3d and one of the
stages for Zelda. Yeah
Yeah, that actually looked really cool
You know what? There's some minds you
have it. There was this there was this
video by talking on
who's another content creator
yeah, and he was running Linux and
He was running. I think
it was you zoo on Linux on
The switch and then it ran Pokemon better
than the actual switch hardware
somehow
Wait, wait, so he he put Android onto the
switch through homebrew
Well, it was a little Linux
not Android, but yeah, okay
But yeah, he ran you he ran
Pokemon through you even be emulating
though considering it's just
like how would this oh dude
It's just like you have all the hardware
present buddy. How can you end you like
the hardware while you're
running it on the hardware?
I want to see that's fucking sick
So let me let me find a
Super Nintendo running on it
See that's so in right and I imagine like
all the visual glitches are just like
The tiles have format not 100%
appropriating to the
video. Yeah being translated. Oh
My god, you know wild
That's just like that's
That is I
Mean like it plays it play it obviously
plays well cuz a raspberry pie is like
you shouldn't have an issue
I'm glitting super
Nintendo, but damn. Yeah
The visual the visual glitches are kind
of like a vibe. I know it. Yeah, I would
actually fuck with this
I wonder how much this board probably
cost right like well, he's
probably not selling it but I
Found the video. It's a it's
technically a mix switch video
but
It shows him playing.
I think what's Pokemon
From his cart on you zoo on the switch
Yeah, where the mix switch can you can
still run that on the switch right? I
Think technically you can with an update
but you'll get instantly banned
So you can you can you can
run you can run a backup?
So if your switch one stuff
on the on the switch I think so
Okay. Well, that's good to know
Yeah, that's good. All
right. Well on that note
We've gone off the rails
We're looking at Ray-tray Super Nintendo
Yeah, all the best episodes go off the
rails. Absolutely. I think
this is our best episode so far
Thank you mood or her for being here.
Yeah. Thank you guys. It
was great to be on here
Yeah, it was great to finally meet you
we've been kind of like interacting in
passing for a couple years
Yeah, no, it's it's it's
good to just be on here
Like I love talking tech and I love
talking all the nerdy stuff
with you guys and you know
Anytime we get to talk Linux and shop,
it's always a it's
always it's always good
absolutely
With that said thank you to everybody for
watching if you haven't already get
subscribed on YouTube
We're trying to hit a thousand
subscribers on the on the dedicated
episode channel for the podcast here
So I think we can do
it with your guys's help
Um, excellent, I think I think that's it.
Goodbye everybody. Take care guys. Bye