The Weekly Download

GDC shrinks by 30%, Krafton loses Subnautica 2 co-founders legal case, NVIDIA's DLSS 5 faces backlash

• Big Games Machine • Season 1 • Episode 22

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The Weekly Download by Big Games Machine is your essential weekly speedrun through the biggest stories in the global video games industry. 

This week's headlines:

  • GDC Festival of Gaming shrinks by 30% year on year
  • Krafton loses legal case against co-founders of Unknown Worlds just before Subnatica 2 enters Early Access
  • NVIDIA’s new DLSS 5 has faced heavy backlash, but maybe everyone was too fast to jump to concussions 

Hosted by industry experts, Alex Beech and John Ozimek, we break down the most intriguing, complex, and vital developments of the week to keep you informed.

Prefer your news in written form? Subscribe to our free newsletter for a concise, easy-to-digest summary of daily industry developments, delivered fresh to your inbox: https://bit.ly/big-games-machine-the-daily-download

Links to today’s talking points:

SPEAKER_01

The weekly download, podcast about interesting game, industry news.

SPEAKER_00

Brought to you by Big Games Machine. Welcome back to the weekly download, the Big Games Machine podcast, where we wrap up the week's biggest stories in gaming. I'm your host this week, Alex, as Tom is taking a bit of time off to go hiking, and I'm joined by company co-founder John Ozimet. Hello, everyone. Welcome back. I think this is the first time I've been on a podcast with you, right, John? Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think partly because the chemistry will be so overwhelming, they've kept us apart like two magnets.

SPEAKER_00

Or because when people look at it, they're just gonna struggle to tell which of us is which. One of the two. But as always, before we begin, a reminder that if you'd rather read your news, be that daily or weekly, feel free to sign up to follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for the newsletter we send out daily. So you might already know some of these stories if you've done that already. And plus, if you're wherever you're listening to this, remember to drop a like or subscribe. So uh you make sure you keep up with all of the gaming news. As ever, we're gonna have three big stories and then wrap things up with a few smaller ones. But to prime you up for what those big stories are this week, our bleed story is going to be uh GDC and how that's changed year on year, which I think is the one that you and I are gonna have the most personal input around, it being something that impacts uh the whole industry in a multitude of ways. Another story that seems to have just been continuing to roll and grow throughout the week, both in terms of tech and PR impact, is the NVIDIA DLSS5 AI, which is causing a stir. And finally, the Craftin and Unknown Worlds court case has the first part of its decision. And spoilers, it doesn't look good for Crafton. So let's crack on with the first story. And as said, we're kicking this off, we're kicking off this week's episode uh with a bit of inside baseball kind of discussions, which I guess makes sense for a games industry podcast. Uh, and it's around perhaps the game year in games, one of its traditionally largest events, GDC, which has reported uh around a 30% downturn in attendees year on year, going from 30,000 down to 20,000 uh between 2025 and 2026. This reporting comes out of Dean Takahashi at Gamesbeat, who bought this news as GDC moves its branding from GDC to GDC Festival of Gaming. The rebrand did see some changes to the format and a higher ticket price, but there seem to be a number of other factors that could be impacting this dip, which is going to make it hard to really attribute it to any one thing. Dean's article actually outlines that some people were concerned about the ongoing conflicts in the world, which obviously would impact people traveling from out of reach those regions. Others reportedly were worried about US immigration policy affecting them if they came to the country, and others were just impacted by general rising costs and of course industry layoffs that have just seen perhaps fewer people steady in their position. Now, this is the lowest attendance of the event since 2011, excluding the post-COVID year back in 2022. Uh but even that uh COVID year boasted 19,000 people going, and which you were one of, John, actually, which is where I'd like to kind of throw it over to you, as it's one I missed due to an injury. So having been there, having been there during that kind of volume of people, and having done other versions of the event, how do you how do you feel that is as a full show?

SPEAKER_01

I mean, I'm I'm gonna take it even further back actually to E3. Okay, because I think the challenge GDC's got is that America's either, you know, number one or number two in the world in terms of revenue generating market. And it's it it it it's by far the most important country in terms of game development and game developers and VCs and everything like that. And the the kind of the games industry that we know. So it's really weird to me that they can only sort of sustain one show, which is very difficult to get right. And what I mean by that is you need you need a showcase on the high level where studio heads, investors, and everything can have those, you know, they're the people that are all shouting in the W in their private suites and and you know, in the hook in the four seasons and all that. And then you've got the kind of I wouldn't say indie, but you've got this kind of like really welcoming, super inclusive stuff that happens in and around GDC that's really, really important. It's kind of like the vibe of the industry, right? It's it's the thing that people at much lower levels that aren't big decision makers love about the games industry, is that kind of thing. And and this year, I think both parts of it have lost out. And I I I mean, I I'd be interested to see what adjustments they can make. Because I think, you know, without getting bogged down into a wider conversation, you know, there's only so much they can do. If anyone that anyone that's been to GDC, it's very kind of anchored in San Francisco, but it's kind of limited by the geography of San Francisco. Because as soon as you start getting outside of the centre, you're either walking or cabbing to really, really inconvenient places. And that's one of the things they tried to do this year by making it the festival is to expand it outside the Moscowing Center. And I'm not sure how effective that's been.

SPEAKER_00

And I mean, it even when making those journeys as well, especially for walking, I know that uh this has been apparently exacerbated post-COVID, and I've certainly seen element elements of that, and it was highlighted in the article. While the centre of San Francisco is very polished and nice, it doesn't take long to move outside that and to start to feel uncomfortable in the city.

SPEAKER_01

As you and I well know, just we still remember the year we sort of went out to the movies one night, and then we'd we walked down one road to the left of where we were going to walk down, and it was like, oh, this is a bit dice, you know. Something clean. I'm six foot two and you're six foot three, and it was like, oh, I'm not sure I'm very comfortable doing this. So yeah, it's it's you know, it's a it's not it's not a nice city to go and hang out once the sun goes down, unless you cab it to an ice bit, you know, which lots of people do.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, talking of those uh satellite events or or however you want to refer to them, I mean, even walking through the center, I remember one time I was like, I'm off to Pocket Gamer uh down the down the road, and a a little fleet of people kind of said, like, can we come with you? Because I was by far the biggest person making the move. Uh and it it wasn't far, it was maybe 400 metres, but it was far enough that they'd much rather go in a in a gang, which is a strange thing to acknowledge in a city like that. Flip sides of this kind of shrunken scale of the event, also coming from Dean, is that he seemed to report that it it was slightly better for networking. Uh, you alluded to like the the W and the off-site hotels, which it's a real log jam of people like trying to get up escalators and you're trying to find one person that through the meeting things, you might just have a letter rather than even a photo of who you're looking for. And it's like, okay, I'm going to guess who might be this name in this route C of 400 people. So I can imagine that being, you know, quite at least a little easier over that kind of frenetic.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, but the you know, this is what I mean by bringing up the example of E3. I mean, for anyone, anyone listening to this who ever went to E3, and we're, you know, cut we're going back quite a long way now. I think I went to E3 in 2005. It it was basically a bit like Gamescom in that it was an absolutely enormous booth-driven consumer show. You know, um, I, you know, I was I was there, I think, when they launched Game Boy Advance Color or something, you know, something Nintendo had a big booth, you could queue up for ages, play stuff. But alongside that, you have all the business meetings. I mean, I I remember, you know, and it's always a good story, going to meet Square Enix there, you know, and that was interesting. GDC hasn't got the exhibition bit. And since E3 closed down, the US hasn't had that, which is kind of mad for a market which is so important and so full of consumers and so driven by American IP and brands. And so GDC is really, really important for those high-level meetings because, with the exception of Gamescom, you don't get those American execs traveling very much. So if you want to have those levels of conversations, GDC is the place to be. But what it's losing, what it certainly lost this year, and it lost it last year, was companies investing in the booth space and the exhibitions and the stuff that drives the startups and the smaller companies. You know, and with uh, for example, you know, Epic, Epic used to have a triple space booth, which was a you know, a significant chunk of the exhibition hall. That's gone. People have people have tightened up their budgets, and so it's it's that side of it. I think I think the networking is great, but there's got to be more than networking to sustain a really major show where you know, for a company like us, it costs thousands to send a few people to. So I think that that's the challenge. I you know, the America needs something, and I'm not sure that GDC can tick all the boxes or should tick all the boxes.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I and also while it's and this is gonna come on to the last point here actually, while it's tied to the Moscone Centre, which is no I'm I'm sure it's a multi-year deal, it has to be. Uh the cost that they're gonna struggle to bring it down and make it more affordable or move to a a cheaper area, or or just be somewhere that's just a bit more manageable. I mean it it's one of the reasons you have all these little like I I think there were 200 and over 200, 220 something satellite events kind of around you uh around the event this year, those like dinners and different like indie things kind of all going on and and the hotel lobbies on top of that. But yeah, it it's like you say, I I think what we're seeing is it it kind of moving to regional stuff, the really big people putting out their own things digitally now as well. Like I think part of the reason the booth space is disappearing, at least from a con consumer aspect, is like the tree houses and state of plays are taking the place of what would have been keynotes once. And then then in region you or in the country rather, you've got like packs taking it up by different parts different sides of the country and having events there that draw in consumers. So break it out.

SPEAKER_01

Gaming's bled into South by Southwest and other shows like that. But you know, when it comes down to it, is that happening because there isn't an event that meets the exact need and people are just going other places? You know, so South by Southwest is driven because it was it was where startups and VC money was, and as games became very much important in that field, it it became a launch pad for stuff. And you're you're right, the on the online, the online experience is is a great way for those brands to control something, do it quite cheaply, reach a global audience with no effort. But be careful of what you lose. That's what I'd always say.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Uh so yeah, as alluded to, it's not going to stop GDC coming back next year. They're already booked in for March 1st to March 5th. Even I think that's the earliest I've ever seen it. So let's see if this new factor, this new format continues to grow, change, evolve, and if the other factors get a little less impactful, so the actual format can shine in its own way.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. And I and I, as I say, it'd be, I don't see anything out there, but you know, it would be really, I think it's crying out for somebody in the media space, maybe, to do a consumer-facing event. Because I think if there was another thing that grew up in the US, I think I think people would definitely want to get involved with it. Because as I say, it's it's the fundamental market for the English-speaking world.

SPEAKER_00

Right, our next story. So generally, I get trapped talking about unions and layoffs when Tom pulls me on, and I don't quite know why that is. So now I'm in control. I've tried to avoid those, but there's one subject at the moment that seems to be permeating gaming that I couldn't avoid. This is going to become very apparent through this and the rest of the stories, which is AI. And if you've been reading the daily download, this is a story that's been in the kind of small quick hits section at the end of each wrap-up, but it's been in most days of the last week because it's been this kind of rolling snowball of disaster and then a little less disaster and then a bit more disaster for NVIDIA as it's kind of come along. And that's around NVIDIA's new DLSS5, uh, which is deep learning super sampling technology, that has faced a lot of backlash since it was shown at GDC. But bear with us because as I said, this has been a real up and down uh story both on the tech side and the PR side for NVIDIA since its start started. So in the first telling, there was this kind of the technology was shown to do this kind of AI generative filter, is what it was perceived as. And it wasn't just upscaling or frame rate smoothing as been the as NVIDIA's previous AI tech has been used to just kind of make games as they are look better. But instead, it's it was again perceived as something that looked like a TikTok filter. Post-processing kind of make you look like something else. But in fact, it was AI that was impacting lighting and material textures just to make it look more photorealistic. But like I say, these first images were very much perceived by from the photos as AI slop, which I feel at this point is just something that people are lumping all AI into for the buzzword or SEO of it when it comes to searching. And then also perceived as the Yassification, which I don't really know what that means, John. So if you've got any insight on that, I don't know. But I do like seeing it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I don't do young purple person speak as you well know. LOL WTF. Yeah, no, this is really interesting, and it's like if we're talking about PR, this is an absolute massive PR nightmare that I kind of feel a bit sorry for NVIDIA very briefly, and then I don't feel sorry for them. But I think that there's there's quite a lot going on, and I think fundamentally this was a gaming thing announced within Jensen Huang's very AI-driven keynotes. And tonally, if you listen to the him actually doing the presentation, you know, it's he within the context of the I think that his whole keynote's like two hours or something. And it's and you know, they are effectively an AI company now, right? They're an AI company that happens to make graphics cards that people can occasionally buy for a lot of money, but they are very, very firmly in the AI space. And if you're in the AI space, you drink the AI Kool-Aid, and therefore this is the best thing ever. Unfortunately, if somebody had really sat down with some gamers who were feeling pretty bruised by the influence of AI and don't really like it, they would have maybe changed their approach to that, the way they announced that. And there, I don't know if you have you had a chance to um the Digital Foundry piece that then got loads of negative and unbelievably got death threats in the comments, which is the most mental thing ever. You couldn't you couldn't meet a team of more unoffensive people than Digital Foundry, and then somebody's making a death threat because they like the demo. Um, and then they they they did a reaction piece yesterday, which they go into a lot of detail actually about how it works and and some really considered stuff about how it doesn't work. And one of the things they was they were saying, which I think is really a really good point, is by leading on the most kind of shocking is the wrong word, but the most obvious use of DLS Far, DLSS 5, which is on resident evil, and the most significant change to a character, they've actually done the thing that pisses people off the most, which is basically where we're getting the the AI filter memes from. And actually, when the the Digital Foundry guys sort of dig into it, they're saying, you know, much to NVIDIA trying to diffuse the situation and say, well, look, we're using existing vector information, physic, you know, model information and lighting it differently, and then in interpolating that with um a layer of AI to upscale it, there's actual material changes to how the character looks. And a really great insight from Digital Foundry was, you know, one of the, I can't remember the team member that said it, but he said, you know, he played loads of of Resi because he'd been sort of deep diving into it. And he said the moment that moment in the storyline, you'll probably know this, is is the character is actually looking quite sad, right? Because it's a moment where she's she's on her way somewhere, right? And the and the upscaling changed her emotional appearance, and that's another thing that was just quite misjudged. But actually, if you look at some of the other stuff, it is technically it's very impressive, but it's to an audience of people who are quite strong in their opinion, shall we say, and it's not worked out well.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely, and I think this is something that that that as part of the rest of the talk and as part of the later reporting, it's kind of come out is that this isn't something that you're just going to be able to apply as a filter. It it just isn't that in any way, shape, or form. It will be a tool that's given to the same artists that people are complaining that kind of authorial control will be taken from or artistic control will be taken from, and they can choose how to apply it to shortcut some of their work on their path to anything. Essentially, how extreme or how subtle or how the effect or the the the technology is used. Move the slider, the realism slider. Exactly. Exactly. So that control is going to remain in their hands. And it it's very and I understand like when as you point out, that that Grace Ashcroft from Resident Evil 9 and that this will count for my weekly Resident Evil 9. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, to get it in there. Um it she does look like a you know, everybody one of those TikTok filters or whatever along those paths, or or AI characters, and the idea that everything's being beautified and brought up to one standard and all these other complaints. It it's but that was just them essentially showing like this is how far it can go.

SPEAKER_01

Yes and then in a in captured in a single shot, just the one that they poorly just and and and then to your point, Alex, you know, and then and then what happens is also it seems what Digital Foundry is saying, you know, they're saying, look, they got three hours hands-on with a bunch of working playable demos plus access to the technical team. But what was put out by NVIDIA were these very short, short before and after shots. And then what obviously happens is a million and one YouTubers, influencers, and people with very, very, very strong opinions pour over it and go, This is the worst thing ever because the upscaling on Virgil van Dyke's football shirt isn't physically correct or whatever, right? Therefore, burn it, burn it all. Because you're taking it out of context, and you're not, you're not what you haven't done is you haven't put together uh demo footage that answers the questions that it will raise, if that makes sense. They've just gone, here it is, it's using AI, it's doing this, you'll love it, and it's coming soon. And obviously, you know, NVIDIA is at a point where it has 95% of the global um graphics card market. So it, you know, I think that's the other thing going on here is that is it's a miss. And I kind of get it, right? If you're in the if you if you're in-house at NVIDIA, why why would you be worried about about what people say, right? It would take a very, very strong internal PR person to turn around and go, do you know what, guys? People don't like you as much as you think they do, right? But there's been a reaction because it's been put out by a dominant company, and people are rightly or wrongly saying this will be imposed on us. This will be imposed because it will become the de facto standard. So there's a lot of stuff now that NVIDIA's PR team are going to have to try and untangle, and we'll see if they can.

SPEAKER_00

I think the other thing that they're jumping into, and I haven't put this in my notes, sadly. I think it's you need at least a 560 to kind of start utilising the technology at all, that their graphics card. And of course, with graphics cards going up, that might type to even use it, you've then got to essentially defeat an error expenditure.

SPEAKER_01

Well, at the at the at the moment, so so that demo is running where where one graphics card is handling the lighting and then the other is handling the the neural AI or whatever they're calling it, right? So you're effectively running with what's it seven and a half thousand dollars worth of graphics cards in that? You're saying again, this is where this is where um the problem with these things is it gets a bit tone deaf. Jensen Swan in in the reveal was joking about all of his mates have like the absolute latest graphics cards, so this is great because it'll work for them, right? And then obviously everyone else is. Kicking off going, we can't afford any RAM, you know, everything's got more expensive, and you're joking that that everybody should be able to do this. And it's like a recipe to piss off a group of people who are quite angry to start with.

SPEAKER_00

Everyone. But no, I mean the other side of this, and then this is coming from obviously it'd be I'll backtrack a second. It would be lovely if it had a few more words from smaller publishers and developers. But there have been voices from within development communities, and one of those is Epic, who called the criticism insane. Respawn, on the other hand, felt it undermined it, undermined artistic intent, which I think we've touched on, and maybe at that point other reporting hadn't come out. Bethesda then pointed out that it is entirely not then like they're in a room discussing this, but they pointed out it's entirely optional. And then breaking news after all of that was this idea that Capcom and Ubisoft didn't know anything about it, which of course is a great headline for the journalist because it sounds like they used it out of nowhere. But of course, exec signed off on it, and what you're more likely looking at is artists at Capcom and artists at uh Ubisoft who saw their work being put through this and didn't know about it, which of course then led to them reporting this to journalists, which has only fed into this fuel that Nothik's being discussed and NVIDIA's doing whatever it was.

SPEAKER_01

I'm just, I'm just, you know. And again, reporting's gonna come out, more reporting's gonna come out on this, but you know, why didn't they show this at GDC? If they'd have done this at GDC, it would have been the biggest news. And correct me if I'm wrong, Alex, I've not seen any big news come out GDC this year, right? I've seen more reporting on the drop-in attendees than anything else, right? So they could have had the run of the show with this, okay? And they didn't. They saved it for their own event. Okay, I get that, but then to time it immediately after GDC is just once again, you know, hindsight, 2020 hindsight in this one. But I'm amazed that nobody internally went, hang on a minute, this is gonna blow up. This is a big thing. Gamers will care about this. We are the by far the number one company in the graphics market for games, and we're messing with a load of IP that that, you know, there is not a single demo that they didn't do which isn't a you know a billion dollar piece of IP, right? So you've also picked collectively games that are played by millions of people. They could they have shown, you know, what does DLSS 5 look like if it's on a cell-shaded indie game? Well, it's not gonna make any difference, right? So they've picked these things and it's going to really, really polarise opinion. I mean, personally, I can see how impressive it is. But it's, you know, technology is a tool and it's how it's applied, and and everybody has jumped to the conclusion that it will be applied like this. And you're and you're right, if they if they'd have done this launch and then and then had lined up some developers to go, oh yeah, well, we tried it and we like it, and you blah, blah, you know. But unfortunately, the reaction, the positive reaction, is coming after the outrage. Uh, and and it's not gonna drown it out.

SPEAKER_00

No, it's it's hard to put that back in the bottle. You think at the start, just because I'd done the GD story first, I might have erroneously said that during GDC, but it wasn't. You're quite right, it was just after.

SPEAKER_01

So I'm gonna correct myself before it's GTC, so you can just pretend you it was a slip of the tongue. I think I think we did say GTC.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt. That's all right.

SPEAKER_01

Anytime. So, yeah, so I mean, I don't know. What's your what's your closing story? What do you think will happen next on this?

SPEAKER_00

I think it like, as you say, it's gonna continue to kind of patter along until something it's always the way. It's until a game comes out that uses it appropriately that that then that's gonna shift the mood on it. I think it's with all technology all gaming technology. It takes one game that does it well and that blows up and all will be forgiven. It's it's time and again with any controversy around games.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's a tough one, isn't it? And do you know what it goes again? It goes back to a point we made earlier, right? By relying on online reveals and social media and stuff, you know, if you if you if you were to now spend the next six to twelve months doing hands-on demos at shows with fans, I think you change a lot of people's opinions. But, you know, it you that that's now very difficult to do. So we'll see. But I think I think they definitely didn't expect the amount of PR fire that's come that their way this week.

SPEAKER_00

And maybe because there was very little at GDC, it was something to latch on to for the people who were looking for stories. Okay, our final story this week. I'm going to read this more carefully than the others because it's it's a legal thing, and I don't want to not our legal thing, but all at the same time that I don't want to misrepresent what's been going on with this. But this story is about Unknown World's legal victory against Crafton as reported in the video this week in video games. They described it as a bombshell legal victory for the developers of Subnautica against their parent company, Crafton. And now you may remember this from around this time last year when Unknown World CEO Ted Gill was fired by Crafton, which feels bad enough, but then the claims kind of bubbled up that it was around that period in the next few months if they delivered on things that Crafton would have had to pay out £250 million to the studio for meeting their targets as agreed in the original purchase. The well now, the Delaware judge has ruled that Crafton breached its purchase agreement of Unknown Worlds with the leadership fire citing the leadership firing as being without valid cause and ordering Ted Gill to be reinstated as CEO. The judge also agreed that the massive earnout performance bonus for Subnautica 2 was the underlying cause of Crafton's actions, with it and it characterized the internal justifications for the firing as newly manufactured and pretextual. You can see why I'm reading this very closely. These are words that are not in my common vocabulary. Anyway, the bottom line is that Ted Gill is now back in control of Unknown Worlds and Subnautica 2, and is likely going to have to make up for the harm done by this and start rehiring any other members of the team that were let go, assuming they haven't moved on or got something else that's going to tie them up beyond that. And this is all in the shadow of the next phase of the court, what's going on in the courts, which will decide on the financial recompense that may come out of the world.

SPEAKER_01

They haven't decided if there's any compensation due yet, have they?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. I assume at least a year's lost earnings and possibly that quarter of a billion pound payout that they were promised.

SPEAKER_01

But did somewhere. Correct me if I'm wrong though. Didn't the judge leave it so Cause the Because the the performance bonus was based on them chipping it into early access by a certain deadline. Was it early access? Yes.

unknown

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Early access, yeah, right. It it was performance in terms of earnings, but the early access is going to push them towards that number really quickly. Because it included I think it included updates and other sales going on. It was purely, as I recall, because that wasn't the story.

SPEAKER_01

It still remains the most wish listed game on Steam. So that that was, I think that was part of it was that that you know the suggestion that he was got rid of because of not meeting goals was like, well, actually, the the potential there's every chance it it hits the goals and stuff. I just think I'm as soon as I read that, I was trying to imagine what the next meeting, exec meeting would be like. Like how frosty and awkward would that be? Like, hi God, I'm back, you know. Um, but that's actually, if you read the judgment, it's it's quite it's quite interesting. That the judge basically says, you know, in not you know, in his own version of the words, which is like, well, they're all grown-ups and they should be able to deal with that, you know. But it's I'm I'm not aware of any situation where you've had a CEO reinstated. I think, I think maybe that they were angling at, well, give us the compensation and call it quit. But to say, oh no, you've got your job back is like, let's see what happens.

SPEAKER_00

I will say, and I was actually part of what I was kind of gearing up for the question because Andy Chalk had this amazing quote from Crafton, uh, which was uh, we're looking forward to working with Ted Gill to support a true asymmetrician back to a successful launch. He's so gritted, they're shattering. I know, it's like, but what I will say is that it probably will help the successful launch. I think like whatever's happened in the year, continued development, whatever, I think this is going to people are gonna go people that might have been like, we're not gonna buy it at launch, we'll wait, get it on sale, whatever, are probably gonna come in to support the fact Ted's back in charge. I'm calling him Ted. Ted Gill. I don't know the man.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But yeah, absolutely. Like you can't imagine that being a friendly work involved.

SPEAKER_01

Gamers love an underdog. We love an underdog. Oh, we're British. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, I I agree with you. And it's it's just, you know, I think, I think in a in a in a period of lots and lots of layoffs, this seemed a really shitty one. Yes. You know, and and that's not even to comment on how bonkers it is to have a performance bonus like that. I mean, that's just nuts. But somebody agreed to it, and so to to you know, to deliberately, according to the judgment, get rid of people so you don't have to pay it to people, is like that. It's just ah sorry, phone fell over. Yeah, but if that wasn't clear, John's recording from his phone. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think, I think it's it's a nice outcome, but I don't see it. Let's see if they can live happily ever after. Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

Now I'm going to I'm gonna drop a marker there, but I'm also going just to add this in as a proper a possible bonus. Possible bonus. Part of the court filing that was uh that Craft and CEO Cheng and Kim used ChatGPT to help him brainstorm reasons to let Ted Gil go.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That's right. Yeah, they got that in Discovery, didn't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And the best part of it was that even the AI was like, this could impact product quality and fan trust. You're like, okay, you're still gonna go ahead with it, fair enough. The chat GPT, possibly coming in with the best advice there for once, and then being ignored, which feels like the wrong way around.

SPEAKER_01

Well, you know, they're always saying people should use AI more.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. Right, and coming back in for our final quick hit three, which is just a fun way to wrap things up, which are stories that maybe we don't have enough information on, but are exciting to kind of cover off. The first is that Saudi Arabian investment firm Electronic Gaming Development Company, or EGDC, uh, has just purchased a 5.03% stake in Capcom after acquiring, oh, this is a big number, 26,788,500 shares, which is not to be compute confused with the PIF's 5% stake that they already held in region by Capcom or by the country rather than in region. It's just one country. Which I think all of this kind of demonstrates how serious Saudi Arabia and MENA in general are about moving into gaming and in putting their investment behind it. Both at the same time.

SPEAKER_01

Do you think they added that extra 0.3% over the five so they'd have more than the PIF?

SPEAKER_00

Maybe, maybe. No, no, I'm worried that I've rounded up or down that PIF's number. But maybe that would be great if they're getting real petty about it. They're at 5.02 or something. It's like, no, no, we want we want more control. You know, it Capcom obviously its star is has been ascendant for a while now of all the kind of Japanese companies, with the exception of Nintendo, it seems to be the one that is consistently beating it or hitting its targets at the very least with some fantastic games. So if you're gonna invest in a company, it seems to be a goodie to have your money on. Next one is sweep on through, because I think that kind of covers all of that. The next one I suspect there will be more opinions on, however, is Microsoft's gaming copilot, which is coming to current gen Xbox consoles, and I think is already coming to the handheld and PC version of their titles. Microsoft will bring its AI assistant to consoles later this year. The company also feels that future game ecosystems will rely on heavily personalized, data-driven AI to improve player accessibility. Now I think there's a couple of thoughts to this. First, where it sits, but then also for us, how it's going to impact media outlets and journalists. So I'll let you pick up whichever one of those you liked.

SPEAKER_01

I would say, dear Microsoft, don't be arseholes. Pay journalists for creating the content that you're going to use in your AI tool. That that's if they don't do that, then you know the re the reason why guides are so important is they are a key traffic driver to gaming websites. And, you know, you and I both know journalists who this is the bulk of their work. So I get the convenience of making guides searchable directly from within the device, but you, you know, you've got to pay for it.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, actually, and this has been the case for a long, long time. My first ever not professional, but video that went up on a gaming website was for PC Gamer making a guide for Fez, which is a really unfair way to torture an intern. But I put together this dreadful video that they they dutifully posted on how to complete all of Fez, 100% it. But they take a lot of work, a lot of time, and the idea that AI is going to come in and pick all that up in two seconds and dilute it down to whatever form of the city.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I think the other the other thing here is you know, I was trying to uh I was trying to think about it. I I can't see how a site has the ability to opt out as well. You know, you just can't opt out these things. So yeah, look, you know, we're just we've just in the UK, we've just had the decision this week that the government isn't going to move ahead with like, you know, opting music into AI learning models. I just think that journalism is just this big unresolved issue because it's driving so much search and it's just not being fairly monetized. And I think for games journalism to survive, people need to put money back into it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. But it remains so important. I understand that there's this kind of sense that the creator model probably drives more sales, but it doesn't drive more information. I don't think there's half the stuff we talk about today wouldn't have been covered were it not for the fantastic work of each and every journalist that we will have linked to in the description of this article. Okay, and staying on the journalist uh side of this and AI in kind of better news for the industry, Google has de-indexed videogamer.com uh since its acquisition by Click Out Media. The site has fired since that buyout, Click Out has fired the majority of human staff and instead moved to AI-generated articles. And this is good news as it should discourage other companies from doing similar buyouts, uh taking legacy titles and then kind of letting them die and reconstituting them as what are being called zombie sites. And that's not a Resident Evil quote. I am kind of dodging that one there, and just putting out things for SEO harvesting rather than quality work.

SPEAKER_01

And is it would I be right in saying it was aftermath that did the original investigation into this? Think so, yes. I it's gonna be a good one. In which case they might they should be thoroughly applauded because it definitely kicked off other bigger sites picking it up, and and you know, it's it's good to see Google do something. However, and and uh also because they they were previously they owned the escapists as well, didn't they? That's that they're not gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00

They were the escapist, yes.

SPEAKER_01

That's right. A lot of people left the escapist because of this acquisition. Uh what was it was about two years ago, wasn't it, a year and a half, two years ago, something like that. Yeah. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, again, look, it uh you're right, Alex, it all ties together, you know, journalism is really important, and then when it's not there, people get very annoyed, you know. Treat it well, invest in it, cherish it.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely, absolutely. I I I I know the what we got the story from the gamer, but if it we I will check and if possible, add in the correct the original story from Aftermath, it is them because they they deserve that shout out if it was their reporting. This oddly links back to a story last week, which was they they got in all sorts of trouble for having a completely AI-generated Resident Evil review, which obviously, without any reviews previously out, was just gobbledygook grab from store pages and things like that, because it had couldn't form an opinion.

SPEAKER_01

It went live before the game the day the game came out, didn't it? So nobody was available. Yeah, with all these, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

With all these fake AI people behind it. So yeah. It's an interesting path, but it's good to see that Google are stepping in at some point here and being like, if you're not gonna make anything of quality, you're not gonna get the SEO bump. Excellent. And I think that brings us to the end of another show. John, thank you very much for joining me. It's a pleasure. Have me on more.

SPEAKER_01

I enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00

It's not real work. Well, I'll I'll step out and let Tom do that. But as alluded to, all uh the stories where we created these stories from will be found in the description as links. We'll we'll try and add any others that we kind of mentioned in passing, because obviously we we bring in things from mind as we talk and banter through it all. So we will do our best to make sure all of those are there. In the meantime, share, follow, like this uh wherever you're listening to it. Uh, and if you'd like to either read your stories or get them more regularly, remember to sign up to the daily download uh via the newsletter from our site or the weekly download on LinkedIn. If you've got any questions for us, if there's anything you'd like to know or a story you particularly like covered, also feel free to drop a comment and uh we will hop on that next week. And it will be then that Tom is back in the driving seat. So he'll have to deal with that. Thank you again, John, and see everybody next time.