Holiday Special: 2022's Biggest Gaming News (TWIG 18)

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And welcome back to the The Lambency Show show. I am Lambda C, joined here by Vex electronicaa on a very, very special day. What is today? Vex. Today is Christmas.

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It is Christmas like Santa has having a big old bag, a big old sack. We also come with a big sack bearing present. And that is this year's top gaming news. What else we got in store so far for this particular holiday edition? Vex so today we are just going to be covering what I have compiled to be kind of the biggest gaming related news of 2022.

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I figure this is a good roundup of a lot of things that we've covered on the podcast in the past and some pretty big things I think people have probably forgotten by now just because so much has happened. So that given also because it's been a light gaming news week as well, I figured this is a good way to kind of end the year off with a lot of interesting stories that graced us mostly in the second half of 2022, oddly enough. Oh, yeah, we definitely have a lot to COVID I looked over some of it, some of it. One particular thing, we weren't even sure I see that you put in the honorable mentions and stuff. Yeah.

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Although personally for that particular one, I would have made a separate category. We have honorable mentions and we have dishonorable mentions.

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Only one of those is really an honorable mention, to be fair. But again, this show is brought to you by the The Lambency Show. Head on over there and see all of our latest episodes, our blogs, which is really we write articles, find out more about us, our host, as well as find all of our socials on there. There's so much things you could find. Speaking of the store, we have about, let's see here.

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Look at this calendar real quick. We have wow. Next Sunday. We have until next Sunday to get your Clinton ring merch, which I will remind people towards the end of the stream because I'm pretty sure we're going to be covering that somewhere. And if you're wondering what I mean by Clinton ring, here we go.

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We have the Clinton ring merch right here. Honestly, I bought myself a cell phone case and a T shirt. Vex has bought herself a T shirt. I don't think yours is coming yet. I got the notice that it's shipped two days ago, right before Christmas.

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So again, it should be here next week. I love it. Absolutely fire. So last chance. We got one week.

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This is only meant to be a limited edition thing. Who knows, maybe down the road I bring it back. But as of right now, I have no intention of ever bringing this thing back. So it's a limited edition. If we get a sequel, Clinton ring too, maybe it'll come back.

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But with that being said, let's get right into this, shall we? All right, so I hope you guys are ready. You got a nice glass of eggnog or hot cocoa with you because it's a lot today. It's a lot. Okay, so let's just jump right off the bat.

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These are kind of in no particular order, by the way. These are just as I kind of put them together and ordered them. These are what I compiled as some of the biggest gaming related stories of 2022. So right off the bat, the GTA Six leaks I don't know if anyone remembers this because it already feels like a lifetime ago, but following the 9th anniversary of GTA Five, back on Sunday, September 18, there was a three gigabyte leak all over the Internet that contained about 90 clips of early development GTA Six material. So the footage also included, like, materials of our two protagonists, which we find out was a male and a Latina female, which has her own subreddit and everything dedicated to how much people want to tap that traversing through.

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What? Am I not surprised? I think that's the only thing people really remember from that is, oh, we've got a fat booty Latina. Okay, let's get this going. But the question is, is her booty as fat as our favorite big booty Latina, AOC?

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AOC has a booty?

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If you don't know what I'm referring to and stuff. I can't remember who it was, but someone decided to go on the Capitol steps, and as the AOC was going up the stairs, there's my favorite big booty Latina. No, there was even, like an actual clip of her where she referred to herself as a big booty Latina. Oh, the clip is like, barely registering in my mind right now, but she's, like, whispering to her phone, going over some events that had happened, and it's like, oh, do you think I'm just a big booty Latina over here? Oh, that was cringe.

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That was cringe. I just know the horse face, that's all. I don't think she has any other body part. Nothing can be more cringe than watching far left Democratic candidates for mayor and for the Senate and everything doing fucking TikTok dances. I think just government officials on TikTok in general are pretty cringe, in all honesty, especially now that we know what TikTok has been doing with reporters.

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It's almost like exactly what they were doing on Twitter. Pretty much. Pretty much. So, yes, we have these two protagonists going through what looked to be a modern day Vice City, which is a throwback to one of the previous entries in the GTA franchise. The clips also revealed that GTA Six was taking a lot of cues from my personal favorite game, Red Dead Redemption.

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Two incorporating a more accessible weapons and items wield as well as the ability to hold multiple weapons like you're able to in Red Dead Redemption Two as well. There were over 10,000 lines of source code that were leaked for this game, as well as apparently, like 50,000 lines of GTA Five source code, which actually came a couple of weeks later after all these leaks. So in response to this, on Monday afternoon, Rockstar released a message on all of their socials saying, quote, we recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorized third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto. At this time, we do not anticipate any disruption to our live game services nor any long term effect on the development of our ongoing projects. We are extremely disappointed to have any details of our next game shared with you all in this way.

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Our work on the next Grand Theft Auto game will continue as planned and we remain as committed as ever to delivering an experience to you, our players that truly exceeds your expectations. We will update everyone soon and of course we will properly introduce you to this next game when it is ready. We want to thank everyone for their ongoing support through this situation. So this message actually became the most liked gaming related post on both Twitter and Instagram within 24 hours of the posting, which is pretty impressive. By the early afternoon of the 20th as well, the hacker had allegedly been located in the UK and identified as a 15 year old teenager that was part of a bigger hack group that had previously targeted Rockstar in the past.

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He also had tried to bribe them for it was like a small something, it was like $20,000 or something like that in order to stop him from leaking more information. That alleged information that he was going to leak never really came to fruition. I imagine he was detained by authorities before that was able he was able to post all of that. Right now in this leak. There were a couple of other things as well.

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There were actually remastered images of a Red Dead Redemption one remaster which had been alluded to in a Take Two investors call earlier this year. For those of you that are unaware, Take Two is the parent company that owns Rockstar. So these were quickly shown to be false. These were just a fan remake so there was no credence to them at all. However, with all of these leaks and people discussing it all over the internet, Rockstar and Take Two just went on a massive spree, basically issuing DMCA strikes and flagging any content that even mentioned GTA Six.

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It could just be a camera with me talking to you about it, not even going into specific details and they were flagging people just over that. A couple of days later though, it looks like they kind of reverse some of those. So it seems like they might have had an automatic system just going through and looking for any mention of GTA Six. However, once all of this had kind of come and gone and the dust had settled and they put out that statement and everything. About a week later, it was confirmed that Rockstar was essentially abandoning all of their other IPS to put all hands on deck for GTA Six.

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This was also kind of confirmed earlier in the year, back in July when they essentially said that, hey, we're not supporting Red Dead Online anymore, despite our game files showing all of this interesting content that we promised you in the future. So there was a funeral for Red Dead Online players on July 13, which I attended. Sadly, I've barely touched that game since unfortunately because there's just no new content. But they also did reveal that they were going to be shelving basically all of the remasters that they had in the works, which did include Red Dead, Redemption One and GTA Four. There was a rumored bully remake in there as well, which a lot of people were excited for.

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And then we also got some confirmation then in mid October when a lot of job postings for Rockstar opened up for about 200 different positions that were all targeted just for GTA Six development. So Rockstar had a bit of an L year. They're actually going to come up again in another story that we're going to discuss. Any thoughts to add on? I'm still laughing at Rockstar being like, yeah, this doesn't affect the timeline of our release.

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Well yeah, here's the thing, it definitely did. But you never had a release date, so you don't actually have to say that it affected it. We spoke about this before, right? And then everyone was just kind of like dick riding Rockstar for a while despite them getting so much hate online. Suddenly everyone was just like, protect Rockstar.

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Protect Rockstar at all cost, guys. Protect this billion dollar company and they haven't given you anything. They've been trying to sell you the same game over three console generations for 50 $60 a pop. Why are you defending them? They abandoned everything that made their company big in the first place just to work on GK Six.

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And quite frankly, given what they've done to GTA Five in recent years, with Political Incorrectness becoming a bigger thing, I don't have very strong hopes for GTA Six. I don't doubt that it will break a bunch of records when it does come out. I don't doubt that it's going to make them a lot of money. But I think in terms of actual content, it's probably going to be lackluster in comparison to the previous entries. So you think it's going to do similar to what I thought eventually I got a war game was going to do and it turned out it was God of War Ragnarok.

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Yeah, probably. Yeah. And you remember I did call that one out. I'm like, eventually people are going to realize they're just buying it for name only and stuff and it's going to have a subpar release and it's going to play them out. And that's exactly what happened with God of War Ragnarok.

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What was the game that just beat them in sales? The witcher three. Yeah. So there you go. A game that came out, it was 2016, just because it got a next gen update immediately dethroned God of War Ragnarok as one of the best selling games of 2022.

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A free update, by the way. A free update that included all the DLC content. So it won't surprise me if GTA game like this does the same thing. GTA, not GTA. Rockstar itself just has proven time and again to not give a crap about its community while still trying to milk as much as they can from it.

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Let's be real, they've had all the time in the world to create a new game at this point. GTA Five, believe it or not, has been out for over a decade and they don't want to do anything about it yet. A game that Pete people have been screaming at, not just GTA having a new GTA, but they've been wanting more content for Red Dead Redemption too. They're just like, yeah, we're going to stop making content. So I have zero faith in Rockstar's ability to come out with a decent game because I'll be honest, even GTA, I liked it for about a month, and then after that, it just got boring.

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It's tedious. It's the same thing over and over again. I agree with you. I really struggled to stay interested in that game when it first released. And then periodically I would just revisit it when friends would want to play online.

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And I even did the upgrade when I got my Xbox One. But it didn't have the same pull to me as like, Red Dead Redemption Two did, in all honesty. And it's more or less the same mechanics, I'll be honest. It wasn't for the modern community combined with the Roleplay community, I think this game would have been dead in the water years ago. 100%.

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100%. Because you keep seeing these GTA Roleplay servers and these streamers getting big off of it and stuff. But that's because they've modeled the crap out of the game to be an actual playable game at that point. Like, if you look at some of the things they're able to do on GTA servers, these are things that you cannot do if you just regularly play GTA or GTA online. Yeah, I think it was like Venous and a couple of other big gaming YouTubers, they just kept modding the shit out of that game for years.

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And they were making big bucks on YouTube just with GTA Five mods. So I'm very upset that they abandoned Red Dead. Redemption two. In all honesty. I think that is that was first of all, I'd like to point out that is their last major game release, 2018.

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They haven't had a game in over four years now. So I'd like to keep that in everyone's mind. Right. But there was a lot of potential there. The game files reveal that there was a lot more they wanted to do with it.

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I think that compared with the fact that basically everyone that headed that team development team left didn't help. But Red Dead Redemption Two over the course of 2022 has consistently been making top sales on Steam specifically. I don't know about the console sales, but it's been doing extremely well there. So it blows my absolute mind that a franchise like that, that also has cumulatively earned Rockstar $46 million, was just abandoned. Unbelievable.

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Absolutely unbelievable. Especially with a fan base like they have that's been screaming at them at the top of their lungs, like, don't abandon this game. We love this game. That was the whole Save Red Dead online hashtag that was trending basically all year, all of 2022. It was trending.

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I hopped on that trend as well, like, posting as much as I could. But Rockstar just does not care about their fan base. It's just a money thing. Is ten years from now, when the The Lambency Show and Vex electronica is this week in Gaming is uber popular and becomes one of the top go to places for people to go to for unbiased news, rock Star is going to be forced to actually listen to a large following. You know what?

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I think GTA Six will kind of make or break Rockstar. In all honesty. I really think that game is going to sell well, but it will make or break whether the community sticks around and whether they still stay as like, die hard committed to them. That's all. Honestly, I think what will happen is if it sucks, they're all just going to go back to role playing on GTA Five because at this point, they've been doing it for the past five years.

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You know what I mean? They're used to it. Yeah. At this point it's like, well, if we can't get what we want out of GTA Six, at least we model the shit out of GTA Five. And until we get all the mods on Six, we'll just go back on Five until we can make Six a playable game again.

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Right? There you go. Canola did say in the chat here he wanted that Red Dead One remake as well. There is actually someone I follow on Twitter, his god, I can't remember what his handle is, but he's basically doing his own remaster of Red Dead One. And he periodically not periodically, he regularly posts screenshots and little clips from that so you can take a look.

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It's like Red Dead One remastered, and then there's a little symbol at the end of it. I'm sure if someone just does a deep dive in my Twitter likes, you'll find me liking that shit. But he's been doing his own remaster of it and oh, God, it makes me kind of sad every time it comes up. But at the same time, given how disastrous that GTA Trilogy launch was, I don't know if I really want Rockstar having their hands in a remaster moving forward. They could have done it themselves and they just decided to give it to a mobile developer for some fucking reason.

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So that's all I have for that. So that was Rockstar's kind of big thing. I know that they've taken a lot of LS over the course of 2022, but I think that was the biggest rock star related news. And GTA Six has been very long awaited for many people. Even when the anniversary for the 25th anniversary for the series passed in late October, there was still no news about it either.

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So a lot of people are just holding out. Just holding out. I think the biggest overall gaming story though of 2022 was everything surrounding this Activision Blizzard acquisition. Which, I mean, if you guys haven't been listening to us, if you're a new listener, you're about to get a really good overview of what's been going on. But if you're a regular listener, then you've probably heard me for at least the last seven episodes, do some really deep dives into the specifics of this acquisition and all of the lawsuits and all the deals and what everyone is saying behind everyone's back.

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Right? So this deal was first announced at the very beginning of 2022, on January 18, when Microsoft officially announced its intent to acquire Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. Nice. Under the terms and agreements which would be expected to close, it would be expected to close by Spring 2023 pending a regulatory and shareholder approval. Then Microsoft would own Activision Blizzard Entertainment and King under the Xbox Game Studios brand.

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This deal, if it goes through, would make Microsoft the third largest gaming company in the world and largest headquartered in the Americas, behind the Chinese company Tencent and Japanese conglomerate Sony. If closed, it would also be the most expensive video game related acquisition to date, which is why it has gotten a lot of scrutiny and has constantly been in the news as well. So at the beginning of all this, according to the official announcements under the deal, bobby Kotik, who is the CEO of Activision Blizzard as it stands right now, would remain CEO if the deal went through. And he had, despite some articles saying that he would depart. No, he would be staying.

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I mean, I would probably just take a slice of that 69 billion and dip either way. And Activision Blizzard shareholders unanimously approved the deal in April 2022. Now, over the summer is where things really started to heat up for this because this is where all of the regulatory authorities started putting out all of their news and all of their filings regarding this acquisition. So the UK's Competitive Markets Authority, the CMA, stated its intent to perform a higher level review of the acquisition back in August, the Phase One ruling, which was issued on September 1, said that the merger was, quote, may be expected to result in substantial lessening of competition within a market or markets in the United Kingdom. And the phase two of that investigation is expected to last until at least March 1, 2023.

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Then, in September 2022, the European Commission began its first phase review of the acquisition. They sent out questionnaires to several game industry firms and asked them about the potential impact of the acquisition on their livelihood. This was just a massive L, in my opinion, because all that ended up happening was a bunch of Sony fanboys just emailed the European Commission because they just put out an open email and statement all over all their socials and their website. And then all you had for the week's following was people screenshotting. They're just begs and please that Microsoft does not acquire this company so that they can keep playing Call of Duty on their PlayStation.

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I just want to mention real quick, I don't know if anyone noticed that pop up, but I got us a little mini sponsorship by Ubisoft. Did you actually? Yeah, there's a little pop up and stuff, so feel free to check out that game. And if you like Assassin's Creed, Valhalla, you can now get up to I think it's 67% off by clicking the link in our Twitch chat. Thank God I did not include Ubisoft in this roundup.

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If you guys saw the original list I had compiled, like Ubisoft taking a lot of else, and I cut it out. I haven't played Valhalla. I've heard good things from some people, subpar things from other people, but overall, very good things. But back to what I was saying. Where was I?

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So then on November 8, the European Commission announced officially that it will conduct an additional review of the merger to ensure that the gaming ecosystem remains vibrant to the benefits of users in a sector that is evolving at a fast pace. And those results are also expected to come in March 2023. Now, as of last month as well, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Serbia have all approved the acquisition. I had another note down here I wanted to say first. Hold on, I don't know where it is.

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It's okay as well in November. We got the news in December, but it was officially sent in November. There was a letter that was addressed to the CMA from an unknown market competitor supporting the merger. So what that means is it was someone who's already in the gaming industry, who is a giant there, that actually supports this deal going through. If you listen to last week's episode, you can listen to my whole deep dive into that, because we went into depth about some of their biggest arguments, most of which countered the ones that Sony has been kind of leaking through with the other commissions, where how it's going to damage their competitiveness in the gaming sector, how it's going to hurt players that Call of Duty is no longer available, how it doesn't work to their advantage that it might come onto Xbox of Game Pass and so on and so forth?

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Actually, while I was doing all of this, I found an article from back in March, surprisingly enough, from a Sony rep that said, we're okay with the acquisition so long as Call of Duty remains on our console. And then Microsoft offered them a deal to keep it on the console, and they declined it several months later. I thought that was pretty funny when I found that. So now in the United States, which arguably is kind of the big regulatory body for all of this, the acquisition is being reviewed by the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, rather than traditionally by the US. Department of justice, as the agency had raised more concerns over mergers and acquisitions in the big tech sector in the last decade.

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US. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Sheldon White House, and Cory Booker expressed their concerns about the merger to the FTC as part of the FTC's investigation, saying that both companies just real quick, this will be the first time I actually ever agree with Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, ever. As someone who lives in Massachusetts, this might be the first time I actually agree with her, saying that both companies have failed to protect the rights and dignity of their workers and that the mergers should be opposed if the transaction is likely to enhance monopolizing power and worsen the negotiating position between workers and their parties. That was more in regards to the massive kind of sexual harassment and worker rights issue that Activision has been going through on their own behind the scenes. I didn't want to include that because that is a bit more of a tricky situation, and I also don't want to overload your brains too much.

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Now, the FTC formally stated its intention to block the acquisition on December 8, just a few weeks ago. The FDC expressed concern that the acquisition would harm consumers of Activision Blizzards Games and give Microsoft too much control of certain parts of the industry, such as cloud gaming. Cloud gaming and Xbox. Game Pass were like, the two biggest arguments that everyone against this merger brought up. We've also gone into full depth saying, like, yo, this was out literally in your face.

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Xbox has been working on this for over a decade. How could you not see where this was going? And in terms of Game Pass, of course, if they look at everything else they acquired, of course it was going to come to Game Pass. But at the same time, PlayStation has had more than enough time to try and rebrand that, which they did. And spectacularly, that failed as well earlier this year, because they decided it was going to be a pay to use service.

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More than just, we're here to let you guys just play as much as you can. Where did I lose my spot? So the FTC also pointed out that their acquisition of ZeniMax, which is the parent company that owns Bethesda Studios, which the FTC claimed that Microsoft had agreed to a concession from the European Union to not make their games. Exclusive to Xbox and later broke in a statement made to Axios that the EU stated that they had cleared Microsoft's acquisition of ZeniMax unconditionally as they saw no material impact on the gaming market if Microsoft made ZeniMax titles exclusive. A lot of people bring up there that, yes, they actually did go on to make some of those IPS exclusive.

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I think Elder Scroll Six was the only one that both you and I agreed on. Lambini like, why the hell would you go back to making that a Microsoft exclusive? But the other ones that they have made exclusive are brand new IPS that have no contractual obligation to be on multiple platforms. As with that other game, death Loop and Tokyo Ghost wire. Right.

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Those are both going to be Sony exclusives. Death Loop has now come to Xbox, and Tokyo Ghost Wire will probably come next year once the one year exclusivity is up. Now, as I mentioned, yeah, they offered Sony Call of Duty and they just threw that out the window. So as it stands right now, Microsoft as well as Activision is ready to fight the FTC in court. A lot of people have said that this is probably not going to work out in the FTC's favor because the woman behind it, Lena Khan, I feel like her name is do you remember Lambethy?

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I don't remember off the top of my head. Okay. She has a history of just starting lawsuits in an effort to kind of get her name out there in the bigger realm of things, and she hasn't won a lawsuit yet. On top of that, a lot of the arguments they have are pretty flimsy and some of them are just outright inaccurate and don't represent a lot of previous statements or the information out there accurately. Right.

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Bobby Kotak, as well as some of the financial advisors from Activision have also come out and just like we want this to go through, we're going to fight as well equally to make sure that we get our $69 billion, essentially. So right now, we're just kind of waiting to see what happens with the FTC. I think we'll definitely get some bigger juicier news probably in January regarding that, now that we're at the end of the year, and as that kind of March deadline approaches too, we'll get more leaks of things as well. I hate this acquisition. So here's the thing.

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It's not just, all right, so, yeah, I get from the standpoint of PlayStation, I really do, but you got to look at the larger picture of things, and this is the thing that people are failing to mention. It's not just like you. Said, the mobile, gaming, all that other stuff. But what really grinds my gears, and I've written a whole article about this as well, is how the Department of Homeland Security and stuff wanted to fight terrorism. And basically, long story short, they're attacking free speech and the game they decided to use was Call of Duty over on Xbox.

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All right? Xbox has been known to be in bed with the US government for a while now. All right? Yeah, they have actual military contracts. They have actual military contracts.

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You add into the fact that not only that, take that out of the equation when you go Sony versus Xbox. Sony used to be known for making Walkman, CD players, all that other shit, TVs. Now really they just make consoles. Microsoft, on the other hand, people forget Microsoft has a bigger market when it comes to PCs than they do with console. With console.

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So it doesn't matter what they do on their console. The market they haven't been able to hit is mobile. So with the acquisition of ABK, they'd be able to attack that too. All right, so they already are on every Android device then. They're going to have every Apple device as well.

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With that acquisition, we know what they stand for, we know what they're trying to do. I believe this is a huge threat, not just to gamers, but to anyone who believes in having freedom of choice in video games or how you think, how you feel, anything else like that. Because we've seen what the US government is willing to do to try to attack their own citizens without them knowing. We know about all the gas lighting they do and all their operations they do. Matter of fact, I'm still laughing at the FBI making a statement over the Twitter files saying that it's a shame that far right wing conspiracy theorists are making up these stories about us.

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It's not a conspiracy if we have the receipts. We have the receipts. We know what Microsoft is doing, we know what the government is doing. We have all these receipts. I think this is a bigger attack overall.

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And so of course Microsoft is going to want to fight tooth and nail for this. ABK is going to fight for it because they want that money, especially with all the problems they're having with sexual misconduct, everything but take them out of the equation. Of course they're going to want to fight because they want to get out of that. They want someone else to take it over so that they don't have to deal with the consequences of their own actions. Microsoft is going to fight for it because it gives them more power, more control.

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All right? Bill Gates is not a nice guy. I hate to break it to you, microsoft actually hasn't made a statement on the whole harassment thing going on at Activision, but Bethesda just had a unionization that happened a couple of weeks ago, which we discussed. So I don't know. A lot of people also say a lot of the developers of these smaller studios under Microsoft are saying a lot of good things, like they enjoy working under them.

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But even with that, I agree. I've been saying from day one, first of all, it's all about mobile. I've been saying that for a while. And second of all, there's no good that can come from an industry being completely absorbed and monopolized by a small handful of companies. You lose a lot of control, you lose a lot of ability.

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And then creativity also goes out the window as well, because now you've got to answer to a big guy at the top to make sure his stuff is getting out right. I don't want this to go through. In all honesty, I'm an Xbox user, and I don't want this to go through just for those reasons. I don't like this monopolization at all. But I use all systems well, not all because I don't use a Nintendo, but I use PlayStation.

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I use Xbox and I even use PC as a gamer. Even if it wasn't for anything else, we stuck just to gaming. I think it's a terrible idea. We've spoken time and again about how when there's less competition, they're less likely to actually put in the effort to compete, because who are they competing against? Competition breeds innovation, and a deal like this stifles competition.

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But then you add in all the extra elements and you start to realize how terrible the deal this would be. Not just for gaming, but for those who scream about democracy all the time and stuff. I don't hear you screaming about this. It opens a lot of doors that we would rather keep closed, essentially. Exactly.

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Now, this next section, I know you want me to keep playing the Call of Duty thing, but I'm going to play the actual clip. So go ahead and talk about our favorite gamer girl. Actually, I'm going to let you play the clip first and then we'll go into details about that. You want me to play with the volume? Okay.

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Yeah, play with the volume. So, as you guys know, Frosk made headlines throughout all of 2022 for her infamous Sexism in Gaming rant. That was back in January as well, and how that more or less led to the demise of the G Four TV revival that launched only in November 2021. So, yeah, we're just going to play the clip for you guys right now, in case you haven't seen it, just so you have some context for what we're about to discuss. All right, and here's the clip.

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Sexism in gaming and joining the g. Four.

[00:33:02]
This is not where I thought we were going, but I'm here. I'm listening. Yeah. In joining G Four, I was ecstatic to be part of something that I grew up watching as a child. But every time G four is brought up in various channels.

[00:33:17]
Even in this YouTube channel, we have the chat in front of us. I can see you. Without a doubt, there will be backlash because I'm not as bangable as the previous host. Talk to him. It has somehow been expected that you can talk about how much you jerked off to women as a compliment.

[00:33:37]
It's dehumanizing and it's weird. Women do not exist to be nice on the eyes for you. Morgan Webb, olivia Munn did not exist to be nice on the eyes for you.

[00:33:53]
Hey, she cooking, y'all. And that's just obvious sexism. You don't need to explicitly objectify women or declare that you hate women to be sexist. Just go ahead and check out Thor's latest melt on Twitter for some spark notes. Now, here at Xplay, our reviews are written and produced by a team of people.

[00:34:11]
There are too many games for one person to shoulder the burden, so we divide and conquer. And when we use language like we or I, that's the reviewer. That's coming from the mouth and experience of the reviewer reading that review. And that's not to say that Gerard, Tbh, Adam, or myself don't contribute to the reviews. We absolutely do.

[00:34:31]
But it'll always be in varying degrees and take a whole team behind us. That's why we're X play and not Adam play. We have done the experiment and controlled for the variables. Adam will read a script written by the same writer that I will read the other half of the script for, but I'll be the one flamed. And, yeah, it also happens to Gerard and Tbh, but that doesn't discount the sexism of how it happens to me.

[00:35:01]
When it does, both things can be true that there is a general hatred of any change that is an Adam, and that all receive special flame just for being a woman. And I wish I could turn the camera around so that you could see the incredible team that make X play. Half of our producers and writers are women. Emily. Abby.

[00:35:20]
Megan. Joe. Jake zipper. Gabby. It goes on and on and on.

[00:35:24]
Former writers that are now on atos like Vanessa when you're in our DMs or on those YouTube comments or in Twitch chat right now, those reactionary threads, thinking that I'm somehow ruining your current exploit experience because you can't. Objectify me how you previously did to Morgan or that I'm somehow less qualified to speak on something but you can't quite put your finger on why even though I'm reading the exact same script as Adam, but you have no problem with he's part of it. You're letting your unconscious biases ruin my day, and you're gatekeeping the gaming space. So maybe for 2022, we'd be a bit nicer, a bit more self reflective, and we enjoy the fact that people are working hard to make free content for you. If you don't like it, don't watch it.

[00:36:05]
Peace.

[00:36:22]
All right. I let it play through a lot of the clapping, because I want people to see that this was a company wide issue. These people were all on board with everything she said. And I'm going to break it down a little bit from some of the things she said, but really, everybody's here for Vex's take, because Vex, as a female gamer yourself, I know you've got some words for this one, but let me just start this off. I find it extremely Sussex that she immediately just attributes her entire fan base, or rather G four's entire fan base, to a bunch of sexist pigs is basically what she calls them, all right?

[00:36:58]
That we sexualize her, all that other stuff. No, we don't. All right? What we want is we want fair, we want accurate reporting. When you guys came back.

[00:37:06]
Now, mind you, I actually started watching some of the old G four, so I can get a further kind of feel for how G four used to be. Because I remember when you reported on this the first time, I knew nothing about it. But one of the things I had commented was, by the way she's speaking, by the way she uses her hand movements, and by the veins in her neck, you could tell that she's just a toxic individual. She is the epitome of toxic feminism. She breeds stupidity.

[00:37:35]
All right? So I went back and I watched some of the old things, and one of the things I noticed is Olivia Munn didn't patronize to anyone else, which, just by looking at Frost, just her demeanor, is patronizing to other people who are watching. She acts like she's above everybody. All right? That's not a good vibe to be showing off, all right?

[00:37:57]
You could already tell she thinks she's better than everyone. Olivia Munn never did that. What she did is she accurately reported things. She kept it plain. She kept it simple.

[00:38:06]
She just reported things the way they were supposed to be reported. She didn't put any kind of spin or agenda on it, as Frosk tends to do. Now, you could sit here and claim that you read off of the script, but Vex and I both work off of the script that Vex writes. However, we leave room for us to kind of freewheel off of that script. And what I mean by that is we don't just read the script and just leave it at that.

[00:38:33]
No, we add in our own takes, our own elements, everything else like that. Vex does it. I do it. So you're going to sit here and tell me that all you do is read the scripts by the sound of that one host who goes, oh, I didn't know we were going there, but I'm all for it. You could clearly tell that she went off script on this whole rant, which I'm pretty sure she's done numerous times before, which is what she was receiving backlash for.

[00:38:57]
So watching the whole fallout of the way Frost is, and then her not being able to take any responsibility for her actions, and instead actually kind of spitting in the face of her coworkers by saying things along the twitter, on Twitter, along the lines of, oh, there's all these parties that she for, but I survived. Come on, I'm going to go through that a second. Oh, no, I'm gonna leave it at that. You go ahead now. But it's just like this was just, you know, as from an outside perspective, someone who didn't watch this growing up.

[00:39:27]
This was just insane. I couldn't believe the toxicity that was seething off of her, let alone the grounds for which this was bred. You look all the way around, it's just narcissism throughout the entire studio. And then I'm looking at the former studio. Like I said, I went back and watched some of the old g four, all right?

[00:39:47]
The old g four. I mean, while it was obviously less technology, it looked warm, inviting. I mean, yeah, dated compared to now, yes. But for the time, it looked like it would have been great, but it was warm, it was inviting. You wanted to be there.

[00:40:02]
It seemed very friendly. You got your news and you felt like you were welcome. Then you watched this and you watch everybody around froskin, the way Frosk acts and the way everybody else does, and you start to realize that when g four made a return, they pulled a Disney of the last 20 years and just completely went off the rails. Yes. So in response to this, as part of her rant, she did say, like, if you don't like it, don't watch it.

[00:40:30]
And that's exactly what people did in response. G four TV immediately started losing viewers exponentially. It was insane. And on top of by the end of all this, what ended up happening was back in September, then they started firing people off from the g four team specifically because this was costing comcast their new parent company. The old g four used to be owned by NBCUniversal, so now comcast was losing a lot of money on the survival, so they had to let people go.

[00:41:00]
As Lambda had previously mentioned, people had just come into work and not even known that they were getting fired. They actually found out from twitter, or kotaku was one of the sources that they had been fired, which is ironic. Kotaku, the breeding grounds of idiotness. And frost. She'd been on Twitter retweeting, like, support for some of the people that had gone on there and said, like, oh, I didn't know that I was losing my job today, and all that stuff.

[00:41:28]
And then just with no not an ounce of anything, she just decides to post a picture of a lizard wearing, like, photoshopped on sunglasses, and it says, I survived. Right. A couple of days after this, though, it was announced that she was also quiet. So she premature celebration, we'll say, right? To be fair, while they were already bleeding.

[00:41:52]
This spearheaded the descent into the abyss for this company. And then the catalyst was Frost. But then, all right, instead of just being humble and just, okay, things are happening. Let me just lay low. Let me be respectful of the coworkers that I lost.

[00:42:08]
She doubled down and received a second dose of immediate backlash. What the hell did she think was going to happen? Let me answer that for you. She didn't think. She never thinks.

[00:42:19]
She just speaks. I think what people need to know is this frost was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back, but there were signs that this was not going to pan out well. Even when the show re premiered back in November 2021, a lot of people immediately caught on that. A lot of the humor, a lot of the tone that was there in the original G Four was gone. And on top of that, it was the month leading up to this kind of whole, like, rant, was full of people criticizing Frost, mainly because she didn't know what the hell she was talking about.

[00:42:52]
Her previous experience before this was just reporting on esports stuff for I think I can't remember if it was Valorant or Apex, but it was esports for one of the big shooters. That was her previous experience. So a lot of people were just unhappy with the fact that, okay, it's fine that you have a female on here, but compared to the previous female host you have, she doesn't know what she's talking about half of the time. So all of this finally kind of came to an end without even reaching a year in its revival. On October 17, G Four TV officially announced that it was dead, and Frask decided to revisit the issue by putting out statements that her segment had been approved by the showrunners, and all of the people around her were totally on board with it.

[00:43:35]
But then when she started getting threats over it, then the tone had changed a little bit, and that's when they started. Things went downhill. So she essentially just tried to pass the blame that this wasn't, oh, everyone was behind me on this, but I don't know. Looking at that every time I see that clip, I'm just like, I can see some of her co hosts are shocked that they're going there. So I feel like this was just her trying to finally just get the blame offer once and for all so she doesn't have to be accountable for anything.

[00:44:03]
When we originally discussed this as well, as you mentioned, I am a female. I'm a female gamer. This is by no means what any female should aspire to be like. This is a woman that has no responsibility towards her words or actions. This is a woman that can't take criticism.

[00:44:21]
And not only this, I think a lot of people also forego this, but when you become a celebrity on the Internet in any sort of way, expect to be criticized in ways that you don't like. This is unfortunately just like a byproduct of Internet fame or being on the net. But expect it and just find ways to deal with it. Otherwise you end up like idiots, like Pokemon who's trying to she's pro Internet legislation so people will stop calling her fat online. So just beware anyone out there that is making content for the Internet.

[00:44:56]
There are going to be people that are going to be really mean to you and they're going to say things that maybe you don't agree with or they're going to poke at your weak spots, but find ways to understand that. First of all, this doesn't directly affect you in any way because it's not like these people are directly shoving you with a stick. And second of all, these are not people that have any tangible impact on your life. The people that want to troll you and make fun of you, they're just using you as an outlet at the end of the day and their opinion should not matter at all. This is the mindset that I have going into this.

[00:45:29]
I had someone tell me to start and only fans because of my criticism of that. Kathy woods tweet on Avatar too, and I'm just like, yeah, that's a great idea. I'm going to bring diversity there. That's a great idea. This is not someone that has a long lasting impact on my life, so why am I going to take it personally?

[00:45:49]
I also have not encountered any significant sexes of a gaming. I'm going to be honest. Yes, there have been times where I've joined Lobbies, but honestly, with the weight, I think my voice is a little bit deeper. So usually I just tell people I'm a ten year old boy and I usually get the off my back for a while, but as long as I just take everything as a joke and it doesn't harm my gaming experience. So I just don't understand why all these women don't show butt hurt over so many things that don't affect them.

[00:46:19]
It's just laughable to me. See, and I've said it before and I'll say it again, all right, we didn't bring Vex aboard because she's a female or anything. Nobody can hear you, by the way. We've been talking this whole time, right? Yeah, I forgot my dogs were barking, so I had to mute my mic on the OBS.

[00:46:39]
You pulled a Vex velvet I pulled a Vex. All right, so here's what I was saying as far as us hiring Vex for the The Lambency Show shows this week in gaming segment, all right? We hired Vex and basically kickstarted the whole Lamb at Sea show and the lambinshow.com with the help of VIX when we were looking for someone for a podcast segment which ended up being this week in gaming. I wasn't looking for anyone who was super sexy looking or someone who was easy on the eyes or male or female or anything. That's not what I was looking for.

[00:47:17]
I was looking for someone who's competent in what they were doing, who enjoyed what they were doing, who would provide unbiased opinions and make it in a way where people enjoy listening to it. I don't care if they're male or female. I really don't. At the end of the day, can they do the job? Will they enjoy doing the job, and will they provide something of value to the listeners?

[00:47:38]
If I could not answer those unequivocally yes when looking at it, at any individual host, then I wouldn't have hired that. That's why Vex is here. All right? So as far as Frost whole thing about sexism and gaming, and you only watch Olivia Munn because you'd like to sexualize her and all that other stuff, fucking bullshit, all right? Pull up your big girl panties.

[00:48:03]
Get your period blood off of your big girl panties. Get the sand out of your crotch, because at the end of the day, we all know what's really going on here. You're just frustrated. You're frustrated that nobody likes you, so you get more of an attitude. But the problem is, the attitude provided by you is because the attitude that you are receiving as backlash is because of your attitude.

[00:48:24]
In the firsthand, if you had toned down your bitchiness, think for once in your life, people might have actually been able to like you or your personality. Instead, you were demeaning. You hated everybody around you. You acted like you were better than everybody. All right?

[00:48:39]
Here at the The Lambency Show show, like, I don't like doing name calling. I really don't. But I have to say it, Frost, you're just a bitch. There's no simple way to put it. You sit here, you put your foot in your mouth all the time, and then you sit here and complain about the backlash you received.

[00:48:53]
If you'd actually think for one moment in your life you could have avoided all of this. All right, I don't believe in cancer culture. I really don't. But if I ever was to believe in cancer culture, you would be the person I'd want canceled, because you are the worst of humanity. She's bad, but I think there's worse in humanity, to be honest.

[00:49:12]
Let's say she does not help this whole modern feminism movement that's going on, this radical feminine Nazi movement. She definitely helps the feminazis. She does, yes. But, yeah, honestly, women, if you're female gamers, don't be offended by things in games. Don't be offended by pointy titted, Laura Croft or women and half their armor and all that stuff.

[00:49:36]
You don't see guys getting upset that every male protagonist is jacked and handsome as fuck. Where are the cries for sexism for them? Right? They don't care. This is all a fantasy.

[00:49:48]
This is meant to emulate a fantasy. I like that you said that, because now that you mention it, you're fucking right. Every fucking male protagonist I've ever used is fucking Jacked. I mean, they may not be like Chad Jacks. They may not be like, I'll be back.

[00:50:07]
But they're fit and they're definitely well toned. Because I was just thinking myself, I'm like, Wait a second. Tinas from Final Fantasy X wasn't Jacked. But I'm like oh, no. But he was definitely fit.

[00:50:19]
Like, you could see the muscles. All right, there you go. I have man boobs. He has an actual chest. I was like, okay.

[00:50:27]
Yeah, she may have a point here. Yeah, we really don't care, though. We don't, matter of fact, because it's a fantasy. You could have a male character who's buff. You could have a male character who weighs £500 who sits behind a computer eating potato chips.

[00:50:42]
All right. Playing World of Warcraft We don't fucking care. Give us a good story. Exactly. That's why I have never taken it personally that on the trend of this whole sexism thing.

[00:50:53]
I also never took it personally that there weren't characters of color in any of my games, right? Because when I got the option to characterize my characters, I just made them. I gave them purple skin because I like purple. It's all I did. Women, stop being so upset about this.

[00:51:11]
There's nothing there. If you don't enjoy what's in the game, then stop gaming. There you go. There's your solution. Then you have nothing to complain about.

[00:51:19]
It's going to be the same thing. I say when it comes to anime, there's something there for everyone. So if you don't like a certain thing, that's fine. Play something else. It's really that fucking simple.

[00:51:29]
Exactly. If you don't like it, don't play it. There you go. I'm going to use Frost's line against her. Exactly.

[00:51:34]
If you don't like it, don't play it. Although I will say the only thing I liked from this revival is just that wall behind them. Hold on, let me pull it up right here. Come on. With the gaming controllers and stuff?

[00:51:46]
Yeah, with the gaming controllers. I don't care about the little games here, but these gaming controllers in the background that they have, I'm going to see if I can pause it at a good time. Come on. No, the setup is very nice. The room is very nice.

[00:51:57]
Inviting as well. Imagine having a wall like this behind you with all retro controllers. I mean, modern controllers, too, but basically controllers for every system ever made. That's awesome. They put a lot of effort into how they look as a company, but then just failed to do the same research on the actual people.

[00:52:18]
I'd also like to just add in there that Adam Sessler, who was there when the original G Four was on air 20 years ago. He was fully on board with all of this, and he actually ended up losing his shit on Twitter over it, calling people Nazis for disagreeing with him and trying to back Frost. So this was not solely a Frost issue, this was an entire team issue. And the fact that Comcast thought it was okay to have these people on here is they deserve what they got. There you go, you get what you fucking deserve.

[00:52:47]
So, moving along, let's make things a little bit happier. Okay? Actually, first into this, I have to know, okay, is this going to be easier on the ice? Because apparently we sexualize everything.

[00:53:02]
If you're not a horror fan, this won't be easy on the eyes. But if I'm a horror fan, it would be easy on the eyes. Yes, if you like to sexualize the pyramid head guy from Silent Hill, this will be easy on the eyes for you. Which by the way, I know for a fact now that there are women that think period like not pyramid head from the Silent Hill franchise is hot, and there is NSFW sexy art of him. It is what it is.

[00:53:32]
I find it ironic that they talk about sexism and gaming, yet females are sexualizing male characters, killer male characters. Killer male characters. But yes, to continue this trend of things dying versus going to be sad, then it's going to get happy. Okay, so Google Stadia, that obscure Google console that we kind of all forgot existed after it launched back in 2017, announced back on September 29 that it was officially coming to an end. Phil Harrison, the vice president and general manager of Stadia, said in a blog post that the console will be shutting down in January 2023, officially.

[00:54:13]
So the company confirmed as well that they will be offering refunds on their hardware and some of their games for a limited time through Google. Anyone who would have of course registered their stadium and had an online profile, they would have gotten actually an email notice back in mid November because that's when they officially put out word that they were starting those. Now, when this was announced, there were many people were kind of concerned, like, what happens to all the games that I spent money to play on here? So quite a few companies like Ubisoft and Square Enix came out and said like, hey, we will transfer your data or offer you kind of partial gosh, what's the word? Credit.

[00:54:51]
There we go. To purchase other console versions of their game. Surprisingly, Rockstar was not on board with this until they were coming back. There was a player that famously took to Twitter and Reddit and posted pictures that he had almost 6000 hours spent in Red dead online. And he didn't want to lose all that progress.

[00:55:12]
Eventually take to the parent company did cave about a month later and agreed that, yes, they would help port player data for their IPS over to other consoles once Stadia officially. Shuts down. Amongst all this, Jason Shreyer, who's actually a prominent video game journalist, and he is usually pretty unbiased, and I enjoy his stuff. He published an article on Bloomberg that actually revealed Google had spent, like, tens of millions per port of triple A titles. So at the time when this guy was tweeting about his time in Red Dead Online, red Dead Redemption Two had literally only been on the stadium for like, a year.

[00:55:51]
This guy had 6000 hours in Red Dead Online in a year, which is impressive, maybe a little bit sad. And they were doing this for every major release that the console got. So it looks like Google was kind of hemorrhaging money to keep this thing alive. So the last day to access and play games on your stadium, you want to know how sad that really is if we did that in a year, okay, 6000 hours divided by 24 hours in a day is 250 days played. You know what?

[00:56:25]
Hold on. That's 200. And no, you know what? I did that. I did that for a while during COVID especially because I just get lost, and that was my sleep.

[00:56:36]
But you're going to understand there's 365 days a year if you include sleep, all right? So if you look at it, that's 250 days. There's 365 days a year. Let's see here. If I clear this, let's say you try to sleep 8 hours a day times 365, you're going to get let's see here.

[00:57:00]
That's 2920 hours. Divide that by 24. That alone is 121 days. So if you did your normal sleep, you've got approximately 40 days left where you're not sleeping or playing Red Dead Redemption. Red dead is life.

[00:57:18]
There you go. Red dead is life. There's a proof. Go ahead and do the math yourselves. You will see I'm not lying.

[00:57:27]
It leaves, like, 39 days where he wasn't either playing Red Dead or sleeping. And of those 39 days, if you do the math, he probably spends at least 30 of them eating, which leaves nine days of him using the bathroom. You know what? He was probably getting his sleep when his character was sleeping, okay? There was a pay off there.

[00:57:52]
All right? Red dead is life. I do his love. So, yes, unfortunately, Google Stadia will officially close its servers and you can access your library through January 18, 2023. And then it's KAboot.

[00:58:06]
All right, now on to the happier news in terms of game hype, I know that there was a lot revealed and a lot hyped throughout 2022, but I think there were two that stood out more than any others, just for people across any console, any gaming community, throughout also multiple generations. So the Golden Eye Remaster, the seven game that we all hold very dear to our hearts. A remaster was finally confirmed. Sorry. Big head mode.

[00:58:34]
Big head mode. What? The original golden Eye Seven. There's a code to get Big heads. Okay, I'm actually not aware of that.

[00:58:41]
Okay, yeah, there's a code you could put into the actual game itself, and it basically made the head about the same size as the bodies. Oh, my goodness. It would look like the same size body, but your head is about the same size as your body itself. So you're looking at and you're like, oh my god, how do they fit that up there? But it made it really fun for headshots.

[00:59:02]
There you go. Easy. So I know a lot of articles originally discussed how, like, it was like months of speculation, but this is actually years of speculation. There were leaks of remastered footage coming out in 2000 and 22,021, and even before that, if you go back to just 2017, 2018, there was a rumor mill going on about that as well. So then finally, back in September's, Nintendo direct showcase, there was an official trailer for the long anticipated rerelease, confirming that Xbox Studio Rare Limited was going to be remastering the game for not remastering, but actually remastering.

[00:59:42]
Sorry not remaking remastering the game for Xbox game pass. And there would also be a separate version that would be coming to the Nintendo Switch online. Now, there still isn't an official release date for it, but the announcement did come on the 25th anniversary of the original release. For the Xbox version, there will be local split screen as well as an option for online multiplayer. Nintendo's version will have local multiplayer in comparison and will work online via a virtualized emulation.

[01:00:14]
So there will be some difference in terms of specs for both versions. But yeah, we still don't have an official announcement. I know that for Xbox users it will come to Game Pass, but that's about it. We haven't gotten anything else outside of that official confirmation. So 2023 is probably hopefully when we get it because that's a much anticipated one for me as well.

[01:00:32]
Now, the second biggest game release, I think also happened not long after this. So on October 19, there was a Silent Hill transmission where Konami finally announced that it was returning to the Silent Hill franchise. Hence why we are playing Silent Hill footage in the background. So among this, there were actually several projects, both game and non gaming related, that were announced. The biggest was the Silent Hill two remake.

[01:00:57]
So this will retell the story of James Sunderland, who's looking for his dead wife, who sent him a mysterious letter from the town of Silent Hill. This will be developed by the Bloor team, which has a bit of a hit or miss history, so we'll see how this comes out. But it will also have the original team silent artist Masha Hero Ito, as well as the composer Akira Yamaoka. And this will also be a PlayStation exclusive for a year before coming to other consoles. I believe the official release date is in March.

[01:01:31]
They announced it a few weeks ago. Think so. Double check that for me, please, boss. Got you. Employee so this remaster will also be fully reworked using new game technology.

[01:01:44]
Unreal Engine Five was confirmed for this and it will be delivered in 4K. Did you get it there, boss man? I'm unable to find it because it keeps trying to it keeps trying to show the Silent Hill Two from September 24, 2001. I don't think that's what you're looking for. No, I'm looking for Boss.

[01:02:01]
I'm pretty sure it is March because there was like a PlayStation started looping it in with a PlayStation Five console commercial and there was a release date at the end of that. So feel free to fact check me if you guys can in the comments. Now, along with this remake as well, we got a new game called Silent Hill Townfall, which is a spinoff developed by no Code Studios and will be published by Annapurna Interactive. They've had a pretty stellar year so far with their success with that key game Stray. This new project will be a unique take on the Silent Hill franchise and is just going to be kind of AA release.

[01:02:39]
We don't have a lot of information outside of that, in all honesty. Even the commercial or not the commercial, the trailer reveal for it was like 20 seconds long and it just had audio from a walkie talkie on it. Right. So we have no details on that. What I was most excited about and if you guys remember, it was like episode eight.

[01:02:58]
I was so excited about this. I think I basically pissed myself on stream. But Silent Hill F, so this was also going to be another spin off set in 1960s Japan and will be more narrative driven in comparison to other entries in the franchise. Now the big thing about this was this was going to be written by Ryukishi Seven, who actually is the writer for one of my favorite manga's, Higrashi Nokorney, or when the Cicadas Cry, fantastic, fantastic, fantastic psychological horror anime. So for that reason, I think this is the only game I'm really excited for in the near future.

[01:03:36]
Like genuinely deeply excited for. I know I'm excited for Golden Eye, but that's just like, oh, I'm happy if that comes out. But for this one, I'm like, I'm tits up for this one, essentially. Now, on top of this, we also got Silent Hill Ascension, which is going to be an Immersive project basically where participants around the world will have control of characters in a new Silent Hill story and will basically be a let's play version of like let's play Pokemon version but with Silent Hill on multiple platforms and will be live. This will be a collaboration as well between multiple studios.

[01:04:12]
And we also haven't gotten a lot of details on that either. The last is we actually got news too that there was going to be a third Silent Hill movie. It's currently in the works with Christophe Gaines as the director. We don't have any details in terms of who else, like actors that are attached to the project. No writers as well.

[01:04:32]
The details are being pretty kept under wraps. We also don't even have a general release window for it. Commons lambda. I'm not a solid hill guy, so no. Oh yeah, you're not a hard guy.

[01:04:42]
Sorry. Sometimes I forget. I'm sorry. Even though I just remembered it before we went into this. But it's all good.

[01:04:48]
It's all good now. On also comeback news CD Projekt Red and Cyberpunk 2077 made massive comebacks this year after that disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077 back in December 2020. The company had basically lost about three quarters of its like value overnight because of that launch. And on October 4 of this past year, they released a roadmap of basically all of their upcoming projects, which included a new Witcher trilogy, the recently released Witcher three remaster for the next gen consoles, as well as a witcher One remake instead of remaster, which, again, we were also a little worried about that because they said they were going to adapt it for modern audiences. And we always know what that means.

[01:05:32]
There was also the announcement of the Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty DLC, which is coming out in the near, I believe, next month. That's coming out because we got another trailer at the Game Awards with Idris Elba in there. Right. So that expansion is coming out and then there is a sequel that's in the works in Boston. Not Boston.

[01:05:51]
Oh gosh, what is that company on the West Coast where Nirvana is from? Seattle. There we go, Seattle. They launched a new American based subsidiary of CD project in Seattle and that team will be exclusively working on the Cyberpunk sequel that is codenamed Orion. And then there was just a new IP that's going under the code named Haydar for now, which we don't have any details on at all.

[01:06:17]
So in the official, like the conference call in which this all happened, there were a couple of things that some of them had to say. So Michael Noakowski, which is CD Projects senior Vice President of Business Development said we're not providing any specific dates in terms of the start of the pre production of the title. In terms of Orion and Haydar, we're still at the phase of building that setting and this is part of that preoccupying. The core team working on it. When it comes to the genre, we do certain types of games and I think it's safe to assume that we want to continue to do the games within that kind of genre.

[01:06:51]
So you can imagine what kind of game to expect. Now, all of these, like he had said, there's no release date. This is just what they have planned for the near future. So I don't think we'll be getting any. I think the thing we'll get a solid release date for is probably that which are one remake, but everything else might be touch and go, especially since for just Cyberpunk 2077, they do have multiple DLCs planned for that game.

[01:07:15]
Now, along with this big announcement of all these things coming, they also confirmed that oh, hold on, the CD Project's cofounder and joint CEO Marson Iwinsky sorry if I butchered that announced that he was stepping down from his role, and this was the same day as all of these announcements. He's resigning his joint role and submitting his candidacy for a position of chairman of the company's supervisory board instead of just staying as CEO. In a statement, he said, quote, I've been at CD Project for almost 30 years, and I've seen it go from a handful of passiondriven rebels to an internationally recognized developer of story driven roleplaying games loved by millions globally. Back when Michael Kaczynski and I founded the company, I don't think either of us would have been able to imagine this incredible journey, not even in our wildest dreams. Our hugely ambitious strategy has taken such an inspiring and strong team at the helm and I deeply believe our plan to take CD project to new heights.

[01:08:14]
In our plan to take CD project to new heights as such, I intend to remain a major shareholder and in my new nonexecutive world, I will remain active and engage, dedicating my focus on supporting the entire management board. Now, on top of all of this, like we had mentioned earlier, witcher Three absolutely has been killing it with this remaster and the patch for the next gen as well. That includes all of the DLC and additional content too, at no extra cost for people that already own the game. And like we said, it's already outsold Ragnarok. And this is a game that came out in 2017, right as well, when that Cyberpunk Edge Runners anime came out back in September, that really renewed interest for Cyberpunk as well.

[01:08:58]
Because over the course of late 2021 and throughout 2022, they were really at work trying to fix that game to actually be playable and kind of redeem themselves from that launch. Now, by all means, CD Project has rightfully so. Lost my trust because that was a game that I pre ordered and picked up. I still have it, actually. I didn't bother refunding it, but it's just now that I know that they're willing to put out half ass projects, I'm weary about anything else they might put out in the future.

[01:09:26]
That being said, they seem to be doing a good job right now with making the game playable, and they seem to be doing a good job with that remaster. Two of Witcher Three, I haven't seen any people say anything negative about it. I haven't had a chance to play it myself. And on top of that, Cyberpunk has been topping the Steam sales charts the last three months, consecutively. And that's also kind of thanks to it going like 50% to 75% off.

[01:09:50]
But that's a comeback. They're making their money. All that money that they lost, that they gained from Witcher Three that was then lost after Cyberpunk is slowly leaking back in. To be fair, I also think it has a lot of things to do with the people up top of CD Projekt Red just trying to rush things out. That's what I mean.

[01:10:11]
Faster than the game designers wanted to. I don't think the game designers themselves wanted the game to be put out because I too also pre ordered Cyberpunk 2077. I ended up getting a refund for it because it was absolutely unplayable. Like, I couldn't even load the game. And I completely forgot that the game even exists up until Cyberpunk edge runners came out and became this massive hit and decided to play again.

[01:10:36]
And I've been having a blast with it. I told you I've been having a blast with that. I really think you should retry it back because it's well worth it. But it was funny because one of the things you had asked me was, well, what about crashes or anything? I'm like, I haven't experienced any yet.

[01:10:50]
I've been playing for a solid, like six, 7 hours. And as we were talking, the game crashed. And I'm like, oh, I just talk good about you. But that was the only crash I've actually experienced. It was just like one of those but I don't even think it was the game itself.

[01:11:04]
I think it was just one of those things where you know how sometimes just games, there's no real actual issue. It just decides all of a sudden, it's like, oh, there's been a sudden, unexpected error. We're going to close your game. Do you want to report it was one of those things. So I'm pretty sure it didn't even have anything to do with the game.

[01:11:23]
But I'll be honest, the way Cyberpunk was able to come back, I could see it because I played it myself. I still haven't even beaten the game, but I plan on going back to it to go try to finish it. But I've been busy with the Christmas season. But I'm having an absolute blast playing.

[01:11:41]
It's got a really riveting story. And then on top of that, all the side missions you can do, everything just ties together nicely. And some of it is just absolutely hilarious. There's this one mission with Dellaman Taxi Services where you have to get back these robotic taxis that have gone haywire for Dellaman, who's also an AI computer program. And each one of these taxis are like a different personality of Dellaman himself.

[01:12:11]
So some of them there's, one of them, you roll up on him, he's like, yeah, just follow me. I'll go back to the fleet. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't really want to, but since he sent you out here, I'll do that. And then he leads you to an ambush where he basically tries to have you murdered.

[01:12:27]
Like the taxi itself tries to get you murdered. And then there's another one where you're looking for the taxi and he's sitting on the edge of a cliff and you find out that this is like the emo almost. And I'm not trying to make light or fun of the situation and stuff, but he's kind of like an emo, suicidal kind of taxi. He's looking out like, I should just end everything and stuff. It ain't going to take much.

[01:12:57]
Just a little bit of a push on the gas and I can end it all, is basically how he's talking. I'm just like, oh my God. But for anyone who's actually played Cyberpunk, I'm telling you, I have not seen anyone really say anything bad about how they've remade the game to be playable. The story is just absolutely it's great. It really is.

[01:13:21]
I think you would enjoy Effects if you still have the game play it. Yeah, I can see it on my shelf right now. I said to myself, I was going to wait until I got a next gen to revisit it and then I got a Next gen, but I got a next Gen in October when all of the releases started piling out, it just went to the sideway because we got like beginning of October, it was just nonstop releases. That's why I had gay reviews out every week. I was trying to play all these things right and then I just kind of forgot about it.

[01:13:53]
And now Eldon Ring is my next. I installed Eldon Ring last night, so I'm waiting for my podcast for tomorrow's Mischief Mayhem movie to be finished, and then I'm just going to fully immerse myself in Elder Ring for, like, a whole day because I know I will get lost in that game until we move track of time. I know Wiki Be Bad said he's been on a boss fight for the past 2 hours. Oh my goodness. Yeah, see, that's why I don't want to have any commitment.

[01:14:19]
You may like it. For me, it was just not my style of game. Like, I technically still own Eldering. I bought it digitally, so it's not going away. I didn't like it.

[01:14:29]
That was just a me thing. I'm not saying it's a bad game, it's just not my style of game. No, that's fair. We all have our own styles, right? But no, I understand.

[01:14:38]
It did look amazing to me and stuff, but I know nothing about the story, nothing about the lore. The gameplay for me just wasn't it. And it wasn't the fact that it was too hard. So before you guys start, oh, it's just a hard game. So we didn't like it.

[01:14:52]
No, that had nothing to do with it. I've played hard games before. It's just, in all honesty, games like that have never really been able to pull me. I've always been more of a single player, RPG kind of player. Got you.

[01:15:05]
Story based, if there is combat, it's usually set in a certain way. It's not that I'm incapable of playing difficult games. I've beaten difficult games, but usually I like those difficult games first. I understand everyone has their preferences when it comes to gaming, and it's not necessarily like to say the game is bad, it's just not your cup of tea. That's like how horror is not your cup of tea.

[01:15:28]
There you go. Got you. I'm very much of a right. My only exception is what are they called, the trios shooters? Like war zone.

[01:15:37]
What do we call those? Battle Royals. Yeah. Battle royals. That's my only exception.

[01:15:42]
I've tried, like, three different battle royals and I can never get into them. They're just boring to me. So that's really my only exception. I have someone trying to get me to play some other Battle royal. I can't remember exactly what it's called, but it's almost like a cartoony one.

[01:15:58]
It's not fortnite, but it just looks weird. It really does. I know. Let me know when you figure out royal is what they're trying to get me to play. Never heard of it.

[01:16:09]
Honestly, never had. I and then I watched some gameplay and I'm like, I have no idea what's going on because at one point I'm watching the streamer play and all of a sudden he gets turned into a chicken. I'm like wait, what? I don't know what happened. My husband is really into those and I just watch him play it and I'm just like, the only reason I'm watching this is because I love you.

[01:16:27]
That's it. I don't care for this genre at all. That's how you know I really love you. I will put up with things I genuinely dislike. So that's my roundup, I guess, for CD project.

[01:16:40]
They had a massive comeback this past year, but now it gets really stupid for the rest of tonight's episode. I'm sorry, Bayonetta Three came out this year. Do you recall all the drama that happened with that at all? They would see, yeah, but I have to mute my mic for a second. But yes, I remember the drama.

[01:16:58]
All right, got you. I will remind you to unmute yourself when you come back.

[01:17:04]
So, back on October 16, helena Taylor, who has famously voiced the protagonist Bayonetta in the Bayonetta series all these years, came to Twitter and alleged that she was offered just $4,000 for her return in Bayonetta Three and highly criticized the developer, Platinum Games, and publisher Nintendo. The video, which I think is still up on her Twitter, I haven't checked recently, but it was like three minutes long altogether. And basically she went through saying that, I haven't had a lot of work lately, I need a livable wage. I was about to lose my home and they come back and they offer me $4,000 for what she alleged was a franchise worth approximately $450,000,000. Now, when these videos came out, they were circulating nonstop, and a lot of people immediately jumped to her defense.

[01:17:56]
And even Lambethy and I, when we first reported this, we were just like, why are people jumping to her defense? We don't have receipts yet. We don't have both sides of the story yet. And lo and behold, that's exactly what happened, because Platinum Games came with receipts a week later, and we're just like, we offered you this much hourly, and you declined it, and it ended up only being like, 10 hours of work for $4,000. So a lot of other voice actors in the industry came out and said, it's a dream for me to be offered that much money for that little voice acting work, and we can't believe that you're making such a fuss over this.

[01:18:36]
On top of this, a lot of people went like, some people looked really deep into this $4,000 offer. And actually, according to just, like, the governing bodies who set kind of the worker standards for voice actors, that would equate to about 16 hours of voice work according to the regulations. Now, in her statement, she asked people to boycott the game. And this was like, two weeks before the release as well. Two or three weeks.

[01:19:03]
So she wanted she did this perfect timing, I guess, right? You got to hop on that bandwagon when you can. So she wanted people to instead donate all of the money or what they would have spent on the game to some of her favorite charities and people in need. And some people began to criticize her. The same people that supported her began to criticize her because one of those organizations, I should say, was a pro life organization that was the antiabortion.

[01:19:30]
So there was a brief period after Platinum Games had come out with their receipts saying, like, you're a liar. Shut your mouth, that people were now just hounding on her because she was pro life, which it's the same group of people that you would think would hound a person for being pro life. Now, Hidiki Kimia, who is actually the creator of the Bayonetta series, he is known to just be a wild card on social media. And he actually was very critical of some of the things she said, and it actually ended up earning him a 24 hours suspension. On Twitter, he was saying things like, beware of my rules, and I warned you, dot, dot, dot.

[01:20:07]
So he was being very ominous in response to all of this. Now, a Platinum Games producer did eventually come out. He since deleted the tweet, but he said, quote, I'm incredibly disappointed. The Bayonetta team did not deserve what happened to them today. I don't believe that is the full story at all.

[01:20:23]
And I hate that all the Internet knows how to do is retweet. I love Helena, I love the team. But what happened today is very shameful. And this is exactly what we thought when the receipts came. People were backtracking like, no tomorrow.

[01:20:38]
And Bayonetta Three ended up earning a million dollars within the month of release. It was the best earning entry in the entire franchise. Now, people also decided to attack voice actor Jennifer Hale, who took over the role of Bayonetta in Taylor's absence. And she had stayed quiet for as long as she could until she finally released an official statement for five days later, basically just saying that she's under NDA and that she hopes that everyone could resolve their differences amicably and a respectful way. She was very just nonpartisan about the whole thing, which I can admire that because there's no need to get in on drama when it's not needed.

[01:21:18]
And this wasn't good news for Platinum Games on top of this because they had had a pretty bad release window for 2022 with that game Scale Bound, which everyone was really excited for, that got canceled. And then Babylon Falls, which was a PlayStation exclusive, shut down just within months due to poor reception and sales. And that was notoriously one of the worst releases of 2022. So after all the receipts came out, helena Taylor came to Twitter, like, two weeks after all of this. I was like, yeah, I might have misrepresented some of these numbers a little bit.

[01:21:53]
Oh, God. Our other co host was really on this. And I kind of ignored it because, as people point out, all Twitter knows how to do is retweet. Nobody actually looks into any of the information they share. And honestly, I made this mistake earlier today when I accidentally shared a satire article with one of the groups I did.

[01:22:13]
But nobody actually wants to look deeper into information or do their own research. They're just happy with a headline and then they roll with that. I feel like that's been very prevalent throughout most of the activision. Blizzard acquirement stuff because people just see a headline from Stony and they just roll with it. And then you have all this misinformation spread.

[01:22:32]
Lamasy, are you back? I guess he's not back. Okay. Are you unmuted? Yeah, I'm unmuted.

[01:22:38]
Okay. Yeah, this this whole I remember you went on a quite a bit of a rant over this as well. Well, the thing is, it's like, I'm so tired of people not doing any of their own research. People just read headlines. That's all they do.

[01:22:53]
They don't even read the articles anymore. And then on top of that, those who do read the headlines and those who do read the articles, if they get that far, they can't think for themselves. They just take everything they read as gospel. I understand that all the information you need can be found on the Internet, but that doesn't mean the first thing you read is 100% accurate. There's a lot of companies that we've spoken about this time and time again.

[01:23:17]
The news does this. And every industry does this as well. Gaming does it in particular, and we've seen it particularly play out with Kotaku. Who could forget the infamous, the Xbox is now at its lowest price ever and stuff. And while we don't agree with capitalism, we also want to get paid.

[01:23:34]
So we're going to write this article about how it's the lowest amount while continuously complaining about it. Stop looking at things and just taking everything at face value. Look and do your own research. This is why I get so annoyed with people, because it happens in my personal life too. Someone will be like, hey, did you hear about this?

[01:23:57]
Hear about what? And they'll talk about whatever was the hottest thing that just happened, but they only know the headlines and the bullet points that are being fed to them. And then when I hit them with any counter argument, they're like, no, that's not what this said. Blah, blah, blah, blah. You don't know what you're talking about.

[01:24:14]
Actually, no, it's you who don't know what you're talking about. Where did you get your information? They don't want to admit they're wrong. And that's what happened with this whole nobody wanted to admit they were wrong when they were backing her. Like, no tomorrow.

[01:24:27]
Nobody came out and backtracked. Nobody said like, oh gosh, I was wrong about this. Everyone just went silent about it. That's it. I don't know what it is with people that it's okay to admit you're wrong or unknowledgeable about something.

[01:24:41]
If anything, anyone with half a brain who actually has some moniker of respect for you will respect you even more that you can just admit, hey, I don't know anything about this, so I can't have an opinion. Or how many times, hey, I was on Live on Stream. You'll ask me if I have an opinion of something and I'd be like, I know nothing about this. I'm not willing to speak on it. The reason why I do that is because, mind you, it's not just a saying that I've been saying forever, which is it's better to let people think you're an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

[01:25:12]
It's the fact of the matter is, if I'm going to talk on something, I feel everybody should do this. By the way, unfortunately, most people have foot and mouth disease. If you don't know what you're talking about, don't open your mouth. Because what ends up happening is people actually believe the lies that you portray over and over and over again, just simply because of their friends with you. Or maybe you have a good following so they think what you're saying is real.

[01:25:39]
This is why you see all these people for the virus that should be named, all these celebrities who viciously attacked anyone who didn't want to get vaccinated. They were saying things along the way I have not forgot at all. All these celebrities and politicians and everybody who are talking about, it's going to be a winter of death and we should lock up everybody who's unvaccinated this, that, and everything else like that, all right? They didn't know what they were talking about at all. The science did not add up to what they were saying.

[01:26:10]
Do your own research, all right? I didn't get mad when people got vaccinated. If you want to get vaccinated, fine. I didn't want to get vaccinated for my own reasons, all right? But just like I took my own calculated decision in that particular thing, whether or not to get vaccines, every form of information I report on and that I weigh in on, I do my own research.

[01:26:32]
And if I don't know what I'm talking about, I'm either A, not going to speak, or B, I'm going to be like, I don't know about this particular topic, but from a retail perspective, because I've said that too. You've heard me say it back. I don't know about this, but then I'll tell you about retail because I do retail. That's what I do. That's my whole career.

[01:26:56]
It's not hard, people. That's all we're saying. It's not hard. This is why it matters. It's really not hard to do your own research at all.

[01:27:03]
I don't get why people can't why do you have to be told how to think and what guarantees list it really is? Because once you open your eyes and start doing your own thing, you can't unsee it anymore. No, you can't. And I was actually having this conversation in one of the chats yesterday that it's kind of actually no, it was on my Twitter this morning. It's sad being this aware of things because it kind of ruins your joy for things, but at the same time it's just you come to learn to tune it off here and there just to try.

[01:27:32]
But yeah, it's really hard when they keep shoving things in your face. But that aside, yes, this is a clusterfuck, basically, and people just do your own research. You don't have to blindly jump to someone's side. It's okay to wait to see how things turn out first before you form an opinion. It's totally okay.

[01:27:49]
Now we're going to go on to another big meltdown that actually collectively took the internet by storm just over the course of 2022. The Lambency Show Three Industries, which if you don't own an Xbox, is the company that basically spearheads the Halo franchise ever since Bungie left it, what was it over ten years ago now? Twelve years ago, give or take, yeah. Microsoft formed The Lambency Show Three Industries to take over Halo after Bungie had left the company and gone solo. Now in Halo, Infinite launched at the end of 2021, and it was pretty popular for those first two months, and then come the New Year player counts immediately dropped off.

[01:28:29]
Nobody was interested in it, and a lot of people began to openly criticize very regularly what was going on at The Lambency Show, Three Industries, because here you had a very hyped game, something you promised was going to be a game changer, take us back to classic Halo. And then you offered no content, offered no support. You provided us with a very lackluster open world that you told us would be like revolutionary for Halo. I literally just no life to that game just to get the achievements that's it. The campaign itself was fine, but the open world was just tiresome and repetitive.

[01:29:03]
In all honesty, it wasn't exciting at all. And amidst all of this, we saw The Lambency Show Three essentially bleed and hemorrhage like major employees throughout 2022. Most recently back in early December. Tom French, who was Halo infinite's Multiplayer creative director. He had been with the franchise for over eleven years.

[01:29:24]
He announced that he was leaving to start embark on some new adventures, but he was really proud to work alongside the team that helped create Master Chief. He departed, actually, right before the big winter update, which also drew quite a bit of criticism, mainly for the fact that it was a lot of just superficial content dragged out over about eight or nine months and it was split into like two seasons, which didn't make any sense. And they had famously delayed co op mode yet again, which eventually did come last month, I believe it was. They delayed forge mode again and most of the seasonal stuff was just three maps all together. That's it.

[01:30:05]
And some cosmetics. That's their winter roadmap for Halo Infinite over a year after launch. So, yeah, French left before all of this, which I guess is a good thing because now he doesn't have to deal with that shit. Most famously, back in September, Bonnie Ross, who's the general manager over at The Lambency Show Three Industries, announced that she was stepping down after 15 years with that company due to some family medical issues. I mean, when this broke, we even discussed like, no, this is just dipping out before things get really bad because there has been a lot of call for Bonnie Ross to step down over the years.

[01:30:41]
I'm going to flat out say that Bonnie Ross is one of the reasons why Halo is as lackluster as it is today. When she took over after Bungie left, we immediately saw a lot of identity politics not only embedded into the franchise, but also inside just the corporate runnings of things and in the development teams. She also spearheaded that disastrous launch for the Master Chief collection. She didn't really listen to the fanbase at all, she just had her singular vision and she tried to frame a Halo universe around that. Right, so to me, I'm glad she left because the people taking over are people that can hopefully actually bring Halo back to its former glory.

[01:31:23]
So Peter hints he will fill in for Bonnie Ross's role. He is actually the reason the Halo master Chief Collection is even playable right now because if you guys recall several years ago, you could not even launch that game without it basically crashing your entire system. Like my Xbox Straight just shut off one time trying to load that game. It was a pain to try and get into Lobbies just locally to play campaign with people. It was an absolute nightmare.

[01:31:49]
And he's the reason that it actually functions as a working collection now. So I think he is a great addition to take over as well. The studio's senior leadership team, including Brian Koski and Elizabeth Van Wick, will also be kind of spearheading roles to supplement her departure as well. Now even further back in the summer, on May 26, Halo Infinite's head of design, Jerry Hook left three, four, three industries as well. He had originally joined Microsoft back in 2003, working as a lead program manager for commerce and accounts on Xbox Live, and he was actually one of the Live founding veterans over at Microsoft.

[01:32:27]
He just said that he was moving on to bigger things and that he enjoyed the journey and seeing Halo kind of evolve through Xbox Live over the eons kind of deal. And on March 5, Halo Infinites lead multiplayer designer, Andrew Witts also left the team, which was actually at the time the highest profile departure from three, four, three industries. And then further back at the very beginning of the year, on January 3, the lead narrative designer for Halo Infinite, Aaron Lind, also announced that he was leaving and joining Riot Games actually. So Halo Infinite is really bleeding people and three, four, three industries is bleeding people. So who knows what the future of Halo is going to be like.

[01:33:09]
I honestly don't have very high hopes for it. I mean, maybe it will get back on track, but they have a lot of recoursing to do in order for that to happen. There were also some numbers that were released about Halo Infinite player count as well. So its peak player count was at over 256,000 back in November 2021 when the game launched on Steam. And then by the time mid April came around, the game was peaking at about 5700 active players.

[01:33:38]
I did notice that there was a lot more people on my friend's list playing it when the winter update started, but that quickly, as soon as it came, it was gone. Also, the Halo Infinite developers got quite a bit of backlash back in June for the June 10 celebration, which is a silly thing we have now, unfortunately, in my opinion, not because I'm a racist, but for other reasons. But they had decided to celebrate June 10 by releasing some cosmetics for online multiplayer and the cosmetic was of an endangered ape code named Bonobo. And then after backlash, they rebranded it and named it Freedom. I wonder, there are so many people that have to approve things before they go through and I really wonder, that's all.

[01:34:27]
So, yeah, The Lambency Show three Industries has been having a shit show of 2022, but here's hoping for a better 2023. I don't think you actually tried out Halo Infinite yet, did you? Because you haven't played any of the Halos. I don't like Halo. Halo is never my thing.

[01:34:40]
Halo was actually the reason why I chose the original PlayStation over Xbox. Got you. Noted. Very deep. Why do I play Halo when I could play Final Fantasy?

[01:34:50]
Come on. I guess those first three Halos were great and then it definitely does taper off after that. You do notice I could make an entire podcast on me just deconstructing Halo Five. I think that is the worst Halo game in the entire series for a multitude of reasons. The only good thing about it, do it.

[01:35:11]
All right, I guess I'm going to have to replay Halo Five then get some footage for that video. Fair enough. So that's my roundup of kind of the biggest things out of 2022. Now I do have some honorable and dishonorable mentions. Let's go with the honorable mention first.

[01:35:28]
Clinton Ring, of course, which is the merch that you plugged earlier. Okay, good enough. I will say though, I've got some footage for the other thing just to show what kind of person this person I got you. Okay. So most famously at the Game Awards earlier in December, there was a kid that kind of snuck on during from software's acceptance speech for Game of the Year for Eldon Ring.

[01:35:52]
And he basically dedicated the award to his former rabbi Bill Clinton. His reformed Rabbi Bill Clinton. His reformed Rabbi Bill Clinton. There we go. He ended up just being a troll.

[01:36:04]
In all honesty, a lot of people kind of jumped on him because he had been on an Alex Jones broadcast in the past where he had spoken out about the Hong Kong protests. That was all. It was like it wasn't a very long appearance at all. And then there were some hold on, hold on, hold on. There were also some unconfirmed leaks or screenshots that he was part of a neo Nazi group as well and it all just turned out to be false.

[01:36:31]
Go ahead. Look, all I'm going to say is that 15 years old to already be on someone that famous as podcast, the kid's doing something right. There you go. Whether or not you agree with what Alex Jones has to say, you can't deny the large audience that he has. And for a 15 year old to be able to get on that, are you kidding me?

[01:36:49]
So a lot of people were upset because they immediately took like these ten words this kid said as some antisemitic attack, which I don't agree with. This was clearly a troll. And if you took it any further than that, you're an idiot. I'm sorry if that makes you feel bad. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings with that, but this was just clearly a troll.

[01:37:09]
And there's nothing antisemitic about saying, my reformed rabbi, Bill Clinton, honestly, people were really reaching for that one. But yeah, he was just a troll. So that was our honorable mention, our dishonorable mention. So let's start small and then go big, I guess. Ubisoft absolutely imploding.

[01:37:29]
Over the course of 2022, ubisoft had a bunch of actually, releases planned for 2022, but COVID set them back, unfortunately, and they revealed new footage for their Skull and Bones game, which has been in development for over eight years now. And the footage that they did release back over the summer was no different than the footage we got about six years ago. So a lot of people were disappointed. There even came to a point where Devs on that game came out and said, yeah, you should not preorder this. It is not a done game.

[01:37:59]
It is not a good game. You should not wait for this one if you're going to buy it. And then Ubisoft also kind of pared down their releases for this year, basically depending on a Mario Rabbits crossover. And I think it wasn't Valhalla. There was another game that they were depending on.

[01:38:16]
Do you remember what it was? Lamb and see. Oh, God, no. But I know it got delayed. Yeah.

[01:38:21]
Oh, it wasn't it'll come to me. It'll come to me. But it was delayed, at least expected it was delayed into 2023, so it's not even coming out this year. On top of that, was it ten Cent bought a 14% stake in the company just a couple of months ago, too. And that's going to actually help finance further projects, which kind of gives us the inkling that Ubisoft might be financially struggling right now to offer such a big company a stake.

[01:38:51]
So Ubisoft hasn't been doing very well. And then on top of that, all of those remasters that people have been waiting for, we still have no word on that. Or they've just been infinitely delayed, essentially. They also announced that they were going to be remaking some of the Splinter Cell games and that they would be updated for a modern audience. I hate this term.

[01:39:10]
I just know anytime I see this term, not just to expect garbage. Right? So Ubisoft had a very troublesome 2022, and our last dishonorable mention is the Amaranth abuse allegations. Lambda went into pretty good depth with this when it first came out, but essentially back in September, amaranth, or was it October? I can't remember which month it was amaranth kind of broke down on a stream and during a phone call, she basically put it on speakerphone and people were able to hear that her husband was essentially verbally abusing and mentally abusing her into doing only fans and all this stuff.

[01:39:48]
And most people immediately came to her rescue and whatnot came to her side, because when it comes to domestic abuse, of course, nobody wants to challenge you because that's a very serious thing, and only a crazy person or a clout chasing person would use that as a means to garner any attention and fame. As we had suspected, it looks like it probably was a publicity stunt because not only did her numbers go up on Twitch after they had been dwindling for several months, her subscribers went up. Her only fan subscribers also went up, and she started earning a lot of money on top of that. For a woman who claimed that she was being abused into appearing naked and scantily clad on many websites, she continued to post half naked pictures of herself on social media just within days of this happening. She also did not take off the time that she said she was just back on Twitter in, like, two or three days about this.

[01:40:43]
And it was never it was never brought up again. She didn't leave her husband. Apparently, he went to therapy, and it was all good after that. After many, many years of this, take it as you will. I'm personally on the side that Amaranth was lying about all of this because she's done some pretty shitty things in the past for clout chasing, including some very testy racial comments as well.

[01:41:03]
Lampsy way in here, please. Weigh in, please. All right, I want you guys to notice that this is actually coming from Amaranth's YouTube channel. Like, her actual YouTube channel, all right? So none of this is, like, clipped up made by anyone else.

[01:41:17]
This is an Amaranth product, all right? Those are fake kids, by the way. She's had breast implants. I just like to point that out. Oh, yeah.

[01:41:23]
So this is actually coming from Amaranth herself. Now, the funny thing is, I had made a whole comparison to the boy who cried wolf when it comes to Amaranth, because as you had mentioned how her stats were doing, and then it seemed like it was going downhill, she wasn't doing as well. And like clockwork, a scandal comes out. Boom, there you go. She gains all this money.

[01:41:45]
This is nothing new. This is something the Amaranth has been doing for years. As a matter of fact, when we actually looks at the footage, everything else like that. When you look at the person who's calling, who's supposedly making who's supposedly her husband, it was like a picture and a name of a female. So it made it very suspect that any of this was going on.

[01:42:05]
Then you add in the fact that she said she was being sexualized and that she only has an only fans because her husband is making her do it, but she continued to keep posting on it even after this whole thing happened. My personal favorite ad, if I can add, she makes $1.2 million a month off her only fans. Just a heads up. Continue. My personal favorite of the whole situation was how she said that every stream of income.

[01:42:33]
She had had a two factor authentication to her boyfriend, to her husband's phone, so she could not access her money. Yet she got that done in like 24 hours. She got control 4 hours. She had access to all her accounts again, which makes absolutely no sense. Anyone who knows anything about two factor knows that it takes a lot more than 24 hours to try to get your account back.

[01:42:58]
If someone's able to put two factor after taking your account, it was all a ploy. I don't believe none of what she said. And this has nothing to do with clout. It has everything to do with the way she has always acted and continues to act. History has a tendency to repeat itself.

[01:43:16]
And I had stated when this all went down that I find her very hard to believe. And I hate the fact that people immediately jump to her side when all you have to do is look at her history to realize that what she's saying is extremely suspect. Especially when you realize how often men get absolutely crucified at the mere mention of sexual abuse or sexual misconduct or the R word and then later find out that it's not true. But it's too late now. That man's whole life is ruined.

[01:43:48]
So it was very difficult for me to believe, knowing her past. And I had even said, I'm like, I hope I'm wrong. I really do. For her sake. If what she's saying is true, I hope that she gets all the help she needs.

[01:44:03]
However, in an effort to be transparent, we need to talk about her past for people to realize that you can't just jump on anyone's tray. It doesn't matter who they are, but especially when you have a past like she does. So I don't believe for a second that she went through anything she claimed she did. I think what really happened is her numbers were starting to dip. She went to her husband, who nobody knew she had, by the way, and was like, you know what?

[01:44:30]
We're going to record a voice message or something along those lines or I'm going to have you call me. You're going to act abusive so we can create another scandal. Because the last five scandals I've done have done really well for us. Actually. On that note, remember she showed the phone on stream, right, of all the messages her husband had been sending her and it said like sherry or something.

[01:44:50]
And people are like, that's a very odd name to have for your husband in your phone. So some people pointed out to that as well, which even I thought was strange. But this woman is just a narcissistic mess. I don't know why people are still giving her any attention. It's just because she's a redhead.

[01:45:07]
She's a hot redhead. That's all it is. The funny thing is, I like how you said she's a hot redheaded. I'll be honest, I don't even think she's hot. To me, okay?

[01:45:15]
To me, she just looks like an untosted marshmallow. She's stereotypically attractive. Right. I understand that. Everyone's company attractive.

[01:45:24]
It's like Pokemon. Pokemon is nice on the eye. She's your stereotypical key. If you've ever seen her without makeup, it looks normal without her makeup on. No, in my opinion, without makeup, Pokemon, which I'm going to say this about her, because Pokemon is a horrible individual.

[01:45:45]
Oh, yes, 100%. And I'm going to say this. In my opinion, Pokemon without makeup looks like Et needs to phone home. She's Canadian, by the way. More proof that Canadians are terrible source an actual Canadian.

[01:45:58]
I'm Canadian. Where people come at me for that. I'm just seeing Wookie's comments. By the way, he said Halo was hot trash good at first, but they were never finished. It's just a cod.

[01:46:10]
Yeah, Halo started trying to copy Cod, and I don't understand why they did that. Because they had a stellar kind of shooter planned out. Their multiplayer was great. Halo multiplayer was its own thing, and it worked. I don't know why they kept trying to copy cod.

[01:46:24]
Right. The other thing I want to mention is I just want to mention how much she's been booty shaking and showing off her body on this video right now. The only reason you haven't seen an ad is because this is on my Brave browser, which blocks all ads, okay? This is a Monetized video. I have had a YouTube channel that showed a video game character in a bikini.

[01:46:44]
Right. It was just one scene, and they tried to demonetize me for that scene. Yet this is allowed on YouTube. I'm just saying, YouTube knows that this will bring the money, not whatever you put on YouTube will bring the money. That's why well, the thing is, I was the only one, and some of the people who are posting similar scenes because they were reporting on the same game, because this is actually from a video game, they were reporting on the same game.

[01:47:09]
And one of them in particular, who also his video, got demonetized for the same thing. His video, before they demonetize it and stuff, had gained like, 2 million views. I see. That's crazy. So to close out tonight's show, I do have an article that came up in my feed this week, and I just thought it was exciting.

[01:47:30]
And it's a nice little follow up to that whole Hogwarts legacy deep dive we did with JK. Rowling last week. So a lot of people are still set on course to boycott this game and label anyone who plays it a transphobe and an enemy to the cause, essentially. There was a post I saw earlier today that anyone who decides to play the game will effectively be banned from any of the Harry Potter subreddits, which, whatever. That is what it is.

[01:47:54]
But the Mary suit. Yeah. People still use reddit. Reddit has been proven time and time again to just be a cesspool of extreme leftism. That's why I've really gotten on it, because I realized how insane these people are.

[01:48:08]
I still remember the first channel I had. I created a reddit account. I created my own sub forum where I can post my own shit. And some moderator from Reddit immediately started deleting all of my posts, talking about how you can't post that here. The fuck you talking about?

[01:48:25]
It's my own subreddit. It is what it is, right? But now there was the Marystew.com, which is a website much along the same Brainstream as Kotaku and such, decided to release an article called Ten Things to Buy. Instead of buying Hogwarts legacy, I'm just going to list the most interesting ones, and I'll just briefly go breeze over the other ones. So the first was fantasy.

[01:48:51]
I'm just going to read this quote for quote, by the way. These things, just so you can understand how stupid this article was. Fantasy RPGs so you want to play a video game with wizards in it? Boy, do I have news for you. Almost every video game has wizards in it.

[01:49:05]
Video games are made to house little wizards in them. You can be one of those wizards. You can even have sex with some of those wizards. There's no wrong answer here. The best thing is, many of these RPGs are so goddamn long that there's no way you won't get your money's worth from them.

[01:49:20]
Off the top of my head, I can think of Divinity, Baldersgate Dragon, Age Skyrim, and even Eldon Ring, all of which you can scratch your wizard love and itch hell, I might as well throw in a wizard 101. Two. Two fantastical wands. Whether you're single or taken or stirred, not shaken, you always have the right to get down with your bad self and cast a little spell on your bits. Toys are a great way of doing that.

[01:49:45]
And wouldn't you know, wherever there's a fandom, there's sex stuff involved. All I had to do was Google wizard sex toys, and I immediately found several options worthy of note. For reference, here's this number on Etsy, which has unfortunately sold out but should give you a picture of what we're working with. Several similar products are listed below, but this one is a gerthier. Is it a good time to tell all warlocks out there that your wand size doesn't matter as much as your proficiency with it owell?

[01:50:14]
That's just my witchy experience. Three fancy cocktails. You know, the nice ones, the ones that have weird ingredients that, according to the menu, have a hint of tire fumes. Yes, I've had such a cocktail, and yes, it was disgusting. But how fancy was I, sitting with my yitties out on a warm summer day, tipping such a fancy fair in frogtown.

[01:50:35]
Personally, I love cocktails with hints of cucumber. Cucumber vodka is surprisingly good. Don't yuck my yum in any. Case, wouldn't you rather have an excuse to get dressed up, go out and get drunk with your friends, than play a game that cannot help but pander to the willfully ignorant by its very design? Four witchy weed products?

[01:50:55]
God. I know I sound like a try hard by including this, but I really do mean it. For $60, you could get yourself a wizard themed bong or pipe or even some nice prerolls if you're lazy like me, there's some beautiful stuff out there that's very much worth the price if well made. And I mean, damn, why not indulge your wild side? And you won't just roll a play as a wizard, you'll become the wizard.

[01:51:18]
I would personally rather be a wizard than screw around in virtual Hogwarts, but that's just me. The other things on the list included costumes for your pet to a black cat, concert tickets, specifically, Burmese food, terror readings, and trans artist artworks. Please tell me this was Kotaku that wrote this. This was the Mary Sue. Oh, God.

[01:51:40]
This might as well have been Kotaku, especially the whole I'm no stranger to video game porn article they wrote. Oh, God. So basically, instead of playing a game where you can immerse yourself as a wizard and your favorite fandom, you're encouraged instead to buy girthy wizard wand dildos, get drunk and buy weed. Solid, solid, solid options. The funny thing is, I'm looking at this is like, all the people who are getting mad, oh, you hate trans.

[01:52:12]
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you play this game. Yeah, go fuck yourselves. Seriously, I'm not going to fucking play nice anymore. Seriously.

[01:52:20]
Just crawl back under whatever rock you came from and just go fuck yourself. Literally, all right? Because the fact of the matter is, people will like what they like. Not everything is about you. Just because you don't like one particular person's viewpoint, which, mind you, what they said wasn't that controversial.

[01:52:37]
You just didn't like the fact that what they said got traction and it didn't agree with your beliefs. Hate to break it to you. People have different beliefs. This is why there's been wars over thousands of years over religion alone, all right? They all had a different belief in who was God, all right?

[01:52:55]
So if they can have their own opinions on that, the fact that we can't have our own opinions about you says a lot about you and not about us. At the end of the day, go play Hogwarts Legacy. If you like Hogwarts, don't worry about what the LGBTQIA plus alphabet community is saying about it. You're not a transphobe if you play Hogwarts Legacy. You don't hate trans.

[01:53:20]
If you play Hogwarts Legacy, it's a bit like the pot calling and the kettle black, because they'll sit here and support other organizations because they make money off of them, but they have similar viewpoints that they don't like, but they won't say anything about it. But because it's something that they feel they can control. And they've had some mild success in semi canceling JK. Rowling. They continue to attack JK.

[01:53:46]
Rowling. We had a whole breakthrough, and I love the breakthrough you did vex, by the way, about what caused this whole situation. By the way, thank you for the follow. Gina ADHD we had a whole breakdown of what caused this whole thing. It wasn't even that bad.

[01:54:01]
It really wasn't. And as she said, she basically long story short, she went to go what was it? She went to go meet up with a person who was dying or something like that, who didn't have a viewpoint that the trans community particularly likes. And because she followed this person, she was automatically called a transphobe and everything else like that, and got viciously attacked by the community. So instead of buckling to the community, she doubled down and they continued to attack her.

[01:54:30]
And in reality, the party at fault here was actually the trans community and stuff, because like everything else, immediately they jumped the gun and immediately they started attacking someone off of the assumption that they don't like the trans community. When JK. Rowling beforehand had spoken numerous times where if you show an issue where someone is having a problem with you as a trans person, she will stand there by your side, but you have to actually have a legitimate complaint. However, you chose to attack what used to be an ally up of a simple misunderstanding. And that's the thing that gets me the most, is she was an ally and she had very good reach, but because of a misunderstanding and jumping to the conclusion they lost an ally, that is the ironic thing to Mexico.

[01:55:17]
My thing is just what do people expect to happen to Harry Potter if JK. Rowling is not there anymore? Just think about this logically for a second. She still created the universe that you love so much. So what point is there in trying to no one's going to take over in her absence.

[01:55:36]
What's the point? I don't know. Maybe they'll get Disney to do it. They tend to fuck everything up. Well, they're owned by Warner Brothers and Warner Brothers already fucking everything up, so you don't need to worry there about that.

[01:55:49]
But speaking of, you told them to go fuck themselves. They can with wizard dildos. Well, the thing is, it's not even like all right, here's the thing. I don't have anything against trans people. And I'll say it time and again.

[01:56:01]
I do not have anything against trans people. What I have against is not trans people in particular, but the unruly extremism from certain members of their community how they will just flat out attack anyone off of the assumption that they're not friendly to trans people. All right, I hate to break it to you. First of all, the whole world doesn't fucking revolve around you. And second of all, you sit here and you want acceptance, yet you're the least tolerant group of people, at least the ones that are attacking anyways, are the least tolerant group of people I have ever seen, because anything they don't agree with, they will immediately attack.

[01:56:39]
And I mean, anything they don't agree with. Yet you sit here and you want acceptance, and you couldn't accept yourself in the first place. Just saying it. So how about this? Instead of just attacking people for opinions they have or anything else like that, again, going back to what we said earlier, doing your own fucking research and looking beyond just the headline, because if they had done that in this particular situation, they would have realized that JK.

[01:57:06]
Rowling was a very powerful ally for the trans community. But instead of doing their own research and trying to look at the bigger picture of what was actually going on, they immediately jumped the gun, viciously attacked JK. Rowling and her well being, and made a very powerful enemy. They've got nobody to blame but themselves. If people go out and play this game and they have their feelings hurt.

[01:57:30]
You are not a transphob. If you play this game, ladies and gentlemen, if you enjoy Harry, fine. If you enjoy Harry Potter, go out and go play this game. Matter of fact, with the exceptional Final Fantasy Seven remake, which we've been waiting for well over two decades for, this is the only game I have preordered in the past 20 years. Why?

[01:57:49]
Because this game looks absolutely stunning. It looks like it's going to be a blast. And here's the thing. I'm not even a huge Harry Potter fan, but you cannot sit here, look at these trailers, and look at everything going on and say that this game doesn't look like you would have an absolute blast play. I'm not a Harry Potter fan, so it looks good, but it's just not going to be my cup of tea, so I'm not even going to bother personally.

[01:58:13]
That's just me. So that's all I have for this weekend gaming's holiday edition. Keep in mind, we did bring up the whole Clinton Ring and stuff. So just a reminder, if you go to the labelshow.com you guys have, until the first once the first hits the Clinton Ring collection, merchandise will no longer exist. All right?

[01:58:33]
So get it now while it's hot, because it won't be here for much longer. We will be coming out with a new line shortly, but this was only meant to be a limited timeline, and you can find that on our website. Yes, if you want to find out more about that or more of our merchandise in our store, if you want to read some of our articles, find us on all podcast platforms. Follow us over there, leave us a review, visit our fan page, or find more about us, including our social medias and what we like to do, feel free to visit the lambinsachio.com to get all that information. And if you're interested in just seeing what I do day to day or whatnot, you can follow me on Twitter at vexelectronica.

[01:59:19]
I'm pretty active on there and you can get all the up to date news and game reviews I do. My most recent review was for High on Life, which is on our website right now and also pinned to my Twitter account for those of you who are on PC or Xbox. I personally thought the game was great and definitely an underdog for 2022. Actually, speaking of which, what was your game of 2022? Lamb and see my game of 2022, there's quite a few to choose from.

[01:59:46]
You know, what was yours? Mine is tied, and I'll probably get called for being an Xbot or whatever for this, but it just so happens that I have an Xbox console and I had the chance to be exposed to both of these. But my tied games of the year are Scorn and pentiment, both of which I did reviews for, actually. What you can find on the website for me, I don't know. I mean, there were quite a few of them that came out.

[02:00:13]
Of course, we were backtracked a couple of years because of COVID and everything else like that. I think this is going to hurt me to say, though, because I've always been a bigger PlayStation fan. I play both systems. This is going to hurt me, but this is just PlayStation slipping on their individual thing. It might not be pentiment.

[02:00:31]
Have you finished pentiment yet? Actually, I haven't even had a chance to and stuff. Okay. But I've gotten a fair amount through it and stuff. But it might have to be pentiment.

[02:00:41]
Just for bringing back the old school nostalgia. That was the choose your own adventures. Just great storytelling and character development. Overall, fantastic. Oh, my God.

[02:00:52]
I could do a whole deep dive into that game, too. When I was writing that review, I was trying to stop myself from it becoming basically a thesis. There was so much, so much in that game. It was, oh my, it it didn't people, I understand that it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it did not deserve to get reviewed. Bond, that is also a huge underdog for 2022.

[02:01:14]
My goodness. My goodness. If you're not a heavy reader, I can understand it's not for everyone. And if you're not into those narrative driven tales, but beautiful game. Stunning game in every way, from top to bottom, from start to finish.

[02:01:28]
And then Scorn was just I can't begin to describe what Scorn is to me. It fills me with scorn. Just leave it at that. So once again, Merry Christmas from all of us at the Lamb and Sea Show and Happy New Year. Happy 2023.

[02:01:46]
I hope you guys have a fantastic upcoming year. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season as well. You got to celebrate in the ways that you appreciate best. And I don't know if we're going to be here next week. Are we going to be here next week?

[02:02:00]
I'm pretty sure we're going to be here next week. All right, well, you'll find out on the Socials if we're here next week. I can honestly, it's funny we're streaming on Christmas, but we're also going to be streaming for the gaming the first of the new year. Yeah. So we could be the first podcast you listen to in 2020 if there's any gaming news between now and then.

[02:02:25]
But yeah, us here at the The Lambency Show show, we started really taking this serious, what, like two, three months ago. But we've been doing it for about a half a year. But it wasn't until about two or three months ago where everything started really clicking in place for us. And I'm thrilled with the community we're building. I'm thrilled with the fact that people are resonating with the content that we're providing and that they feel we are creating value for them.

[02:02:50]
And I'm looking forward to what 2023 has in store for us. I'm hoping that in 2023 we can get a bigger stranglehold in the gaming community as well as the anime community for the weekly anime recap and continuously continue to improve our podcast. I'm also hoping that we get more of a following on Spotify and everything else, but that will come with time. So I'm extremely thankful for everything that has been going on lately and we hope everyone has been enjoying the ride and the journey thus far and continues to enjoy it as we move on into 2023. Thank you, everyone.

[02:03:30]
Thank you. With that being said though, that is going to be the end of this podcast. We'd like to thank you for joining us in this podcast. And until next time, you guys enjoy. We'll see you next year.

[02:03:41]
But can we get the link last, the Christmas and the last of 2022? Mike noises from Vex electronicaa Mike noises. Oh, we know you, Mike.

[02:03:58]
See you guys next year. See you next year.