Arkane Studios Has Until November 13 to Find a Buyer

Hey, everybody.

Welcome to Game Mess Mornings with me, Jeff Grubb, your host from GiantBomb.com. Thank you for tuning in. In this episode, we're going to be talking about... Wait, wait. Did Valve just talk about the next Half-Life game? It's going to be a good one because we have Jason Finelli on the show.

Jason, how are you doing?

Batten down the hatches. Get to the storm shelters.

It's happening. They did it.

They finally did it. I'm good.

I'm good.

I'm still slowly coming out of my grief, which we'll talk about. in one of our segments here. I don't know if you can see him, but I'm hanging out with my pal Shepard here. I don't know if you all can see that in chat. I got this from a Mass Effect 3 cutout when I worked it in gaming retail when that game came out.

So hell yeah.

He's going to stay here forever now. But yeah, you know, I had a busy week this week. I had something go up every day this week. I finally reviewed that PC. which I won't mention the name of that's going to go back today. So Chuck can stop being angry with me. I was part of the stranger than heaven previews that went up on Wednesday. That game is.

Yeah.

What do you think? Interesting.

Like, so when I played it in June, I thought the combat needed a lot of work. And then this next one, they did the work. So now I'm ready to focus on the story and what they're doing there. And this whole fish out of water in two different cultures thing that the story's trying to tell, because the guy is Japanese and American. In America, he's called awful names, meaning awful slurs for Japanese people. And in Japan, he's called awful names for foreigners, like Keto, which is, I think it translates to hairy orangutan or something like that.

I put it in my article. I don't remember the exact translation. But he's kind of caught between both cultures and trying to find his way in Japan In that scenario, it was a lot more interesting than I expected, I think, after three hours with the game, and I'm ready for more in January.

Excellent, yeah, I'm very curious. I think that this game will say a lot about where that studio's at for me. I just kinda wanna make sure that they are getting back on track fully, yeah.

And yes, Caitlin Marie in chat, I did roll a joint with Snoop. That is one of the mini games that was introduced to you in the demo. You roll, they call them cigarettes, of course, You roll cigarettes, and you actually, if you're smoking during a fight, depending on what ingredients you use to roll it, you get different buffs, which is an interesting way to do that.

Right. That's going to be a problem.

Is this the game that was having problems in Australia because the weed gives you buffs?

Or was that a different? Oh, no, that was a different game. So maybe this is in Australia.

It might happen again. It sounds I'm making it sound more unnecessary and ridiculous than it probably needs to be. But it very much fits into the vein of tongue in cheek like a dragon humor. Right. That makes sense. It's very much.

It does.

Just like how the showbiz is. and the kind of parallels, the karaoke parts, which I also got to try out too. I think the marketing and the trailers are not doing it justice. And I think once it's in people's hands, they'll start to realize, well, based on this three hours, of course, they'll start to realize, oh, okay, this is the kind of game I would expect from the studio, just with a lot more weird angles to it. Yep.

I always have loved the idea of exploring a setting over many decades and I'm still curious about how that's all going to develop as they put that game out, but.

We'll find out soon, I guess.

All right.

Well, let's, let's see here.

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All right.

We have a lot to get into. So let's start the morning mess with Call of Duty reviews. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 is the big game out right now that's getting new reviews.

Not a ton, although let me refresh this. Let me just see if they've added any more over here now. I'm going to go back on there and hit refresh. And then we.

Had 17 reviews earlier, still on OpenCritic, only 17 reviews. I think there were even fewer when I looked on Metacritic. But with 17 reviews, it's at an 85 on OpenCritic.

So that's pretty respectable. It's not bad at all.

A 9 out of 10 from, and this one is the Switch-focused one, which, you know, is maybe the most curious thing here. How is this thing running on Switch? It's back on a Nintendo platform. Well, Gavin Lane over at Nintendo Life, like I said, gave it a 9 out of 10. Whether you should invest in the first Call of Duty on a Nintendo platform for over a decade comes down to the old Switch port chestnuts. Do you own another platform and how much do you value portability?

Call of Duty veterans who have followed closely its highs and lows over the last decade could probably knock a point off the score below. You likely won't be as wowed by Modern Warfare 4's sheer spectacle, but you should definitely play it somewhere. For anyone with a Switch 2 who's been waiting a long time to answer the call, though, This is an excellent demonstration of why this crusty series still matters to so many. It's a bold bombastic shooter and it's now running very well on Nintendo hardware.

Day and date with other platforms. Ooh, rah, indeed.

And then over at GameSpot, SC Doster gave it a seven out of 10 and said, Modern Warfare 4 wraps up the series with several shocking moments and ends on a high note. And I guess that's the modern, the new Modern Warfare 4 or the new Modern Warfare series is what they mean by that. And then Gyoza Baki at day one gave it a nine out of 10 and Instead, could Modern Warfare 4 have been a bit more bold and daring? Perhaps, but the end result is one of the most rock-solid Call of Duty games ever made, one that anyone even slightly interested in the franchise should really consider playing. Infinity Ward knocked it out of the park with this one, and I could see myself losing countless hours to this game throughout its life cycle. Um, yeah,

I'm look, I am at a point with call of duty where I'm not going to be spending a lot of time with it. I am curious enough to check out the, uh, switch to version, which I think I'm downloading right now. Actually, I wasn't, I was having issues and I remembered, Oh, I was doing a thing and I couldn't download.

The stuff for a reason.

Now got that fixed, got it downloading. And I'm going to check that thing out. Uh, probably this, maybe this afternoon on, on UPF, maybe just play like 15, 20 minutes of it, see what it's like, but I don't know any interest from you in call of duty.

Yeah. My no, I mean, I'm not really I kind of was interested in the new setting for the plot. I think the Korean conflict is not something that's been well tread, especially in Call of Duty. I mean, Homefront did it back in 2010 and then 2013 or whatever year that was. They did the weird sequel. But as far as Call of Duty is concerned, to get out of their normal theater and try something different is inherently interesting. Now, it is from everything that I've seen. I've watched a couple of clips on YouTube. I looked at a couple of story details because I don't care if I spoil this one for myself. I won't for you. But I am not. There was one thing that made me go, oh, that's interesting. but otherwise it just sounds like the same

sort of like, go here, shoot gun, big boom, go to the next place, shoot gun, big boom, some jumps in time back, not like super back in time, like, like a couple of months earlier in the story or what have you, you see familiar faces. You play as names you've been playing as since Christ call of duty for back in 2007. And it's everything that you would expect from that. It's not. And honestly, it, As for everything new that it does with its setting, it kind of still falls back into the same sort of like tropes that we've come to expect in the same sort of linguistics. Let's say the presentation is similar. I kind of want to see Mads Milkinson's performance. I like I just like that guy a lot. So I might play

a couple chapters just so I get to him and be like, oh, yeah, it's Le Chiffre.

Good. Moving on.

But I'm not going to go out of my way to play this, especially with so many more other games coming in the next couple of weeks. Nah. It's there. It's there. It's that time of year. If you plan your annual physical around it, it's time to get your physical call of duties out off you.

Go exactly yeah you know i i will probably not even really touch the campaign i might flip the campaign for a little bit and i'll try the i'll try the multiplayer to see what that is like on switch to.

It's mickelson not milkinson what the fuck did i just do That's Friday, y'all. Sorry.

Yeah, it's impossible to get names right.

Everyone knows who watches this show.

We've never gotten a name right once on here. But yeah, okay. Look, 85 is way better than what I was expecting. But again, that's only 17 reviews. We'll see where it sort of settles in here pretty soon. All right, let's shift gears over to some of the, you know, there's several massive news stories from the last day or so.

This one is the one that hurt my heart the most.

Leaked Mass Effect 5 trailer is salt in the wounds for BioWare's fans. A trailer titled Mass Effect Universe circulated yesterday following BioWare's closure and the cancellation of its next Mass Effect game. Jason Schreier confirmed it. There were some other confirmations that this trailer is real. Some Reddit mods talked to the person who uploaded it. They were able to verify as best they could while protecting the identity of the person who obviously wasn't allowed to share it, who did share it. Some details, it uses pre-production assets assembled by a small team. It is an internal trailer.

You know, you see some takes from people that just don't know what they're talking about being like, oh, it's another CGI trailer. It's like, yeah, no, homie, this was never meant for you. This was an internal pitch trailer to say, this is what we're going for. This is the, it's a tone piece to set a goal for what they want the game to feel like when there is something there.

There wasn't anything there.

You also see like, OK, this is if they have this man, maybe this game was closer than you when we were expecting. Maybe it wasn't in pre-production. Maybe they were at the end of pre-production. It does sound like that's probably where they were at the end of pre-production. But this game obviously was still very, very, very far away.

This is not indicative of some game that would have been imminent in the next two to three years.

It was going to take longer than that. And then and then, yeah, when.

I when I saw this trailer, I felt like, oh, my God, they went in the exact right direction.

Right.

Just lean into the very mass effect things that can be pillars after that last last story you told, which is cool alien species that have their own. have their own desires, their own motivations, interacting with one another. And you act as like basically like security for that, for the Citadel or something like that.

And you're just trying to put out fires before they start, like they say in the trailer. It was phenomenal. I thought it looked so good.

And of course, it was going to be difficult for them to deliver on that.

That's true of every game. Let us just believe, right?

The idea here is we're excited for the next Mass Effect because they do get it right. If they put out a game that was like this, it would have been amazing, Jason.

Yeah, an immersive spy thriller sim in the vein of like a space John Wick or something of that nature. I would have eaten that game up. And I... I watched this trailer like five, six times. Jason, you're getting a.

Little bit of interference on your mic. Do you have the phone or anything?

No.

Oh, I might.

You know what? I might. Let's move the phone over there.

Yeah.

Back to that old chest. That hasn't happened in a while. But, yeah, I watched the trailer like five, six times, like I said. I think there's rumors going around that the main fellow that you see, the specter walking through, was Simu Liu. That was his voice.

That would have been fun.

If you listen. That would have been fun. I shot out of my chair the first time I watched it when Liara appears behind. That was incredible. Mommy Liara is back, yes. Yeah, or was meant to be back. And it just... it just kills me, man, that we will never, now some people talking about like, maybe they can buy the IP and the studio is going to swoop in and, and fix everything. And I refuse to hold my breath for something like that.

Right.

So it's, uh, the, the things that people have begun doing are like, okay, here's a change.org petition, which, you know, knock yourself out.

Like there's no reason.

Not to do that. It's it's, there's no cost to you. So go ahead and put your name on there. How many names would have to be on there to make a difference?

Infinite, I think. There is no number. But who knows? Whatever. Maybe I'm wrong there.

Maybe if 10 million people sign that thing, EA goes, huh. And then what is the reaction from them? It's not to make the game. I think it was GameSpot talked to a bunch of analysts who were just like, yeah, look, this is what a leverage buyout looks like. Every single leverage buyout looks like this. They do the leverage buyout.

They take on a bunch of debt. They need to service that debt. What is the first thing to go? A 50 person team whose game is still years away. And that game, that, that team is in North America. So it's expensive, easiest thing in the world for a big company like this to just cut that off and be like, all right, now we've saved that money, put that money towards paying off the debt. That's like going to be a huge portion of that each month, the payroll we would have had for that studio.

So like, what does it look like?

Like if we're to imagine a world where mass effect does return, it would have to be like some partner stepping in and being like, can we acquire it? Or, or can we like take on the cost of producing it? I saw some people pointing out like, you know, Nintendo doesn't own Bayonetta. Sega still owns Bayonetta, but Nintendo takes on the cost and the risk of making those games and then works hand in hand with Sega. And they have a deal about, okay, well, you know, Nintendo owns these games and owns a lot of the stuff in them, but Sega, yeah, you still have Bayonetta.

Maybe something like that could happen.

And then the name that comes up is, well, you know, Xbox had that relationship with the first Mass Effect.

Maybe they could do it. I'm like, ah, what do we think.

They could handle? I want them to. Even if we wanted them to, could they handle it?

I don't think so. I just don't think so.

No, because then, you know, Asher would go on stage, call it Mass Effect, and everyone would be like, you don't know what you're talking about. No, I, unless, and even you say, like, 10 million people signed that petition, EA goes, huh. And the Saudis go, we don't care. And then it's dead anyway, right? It doesn't matter. Let me tell you what the future of Mass Effect is.

It's Exodus.

Yeah.

Archetype Entertainment and Wizards of the Coast have been given a golden ticket. If Exodus can come out and impress people the way that the original Mass Effect did, it will never be the same. And people will still clamor for that world and those horses and those people and all that stuff, but it will at least lessen the blow, I think. And I think archetype and wizards have to realize that, right? They have to see this as, okay, we have until April to market the shit out of this thing and fill this void and try and get some of these people to try our game. Now is the time.

Yep.

Uh, you know, there's that, uh, Fate of the Old Republic, follow up to Knights of the Old Republic from a lot of people who worked at Bioware at the time, now at.

A new team.

So we're seeing what that looks like. And now, yes, hope has shifted to Exodus.

And you're right.

It'll never, never fully fill the void, especially if that TV show comes out and is any good. Uh, that'll, that'll be like a big, strong reminder to everyone involved to be like, Oh man, I kind of wish we had a mass effect game to go alongside this. Um, who knows by then when that, if that show comes out, I bet someone at EA is just like, Hey, we should just port legendary edition to switch.

And that's what we'll do. And we'll update that one more time.

And it's like, yeah, man, but come on, it'd be nice if you still had Bioware around to, uh, to do something with this. Um, you know, uh, they aren't, they aren't going to sell mass effect. It seems very unlikely that they'll sell mass effect. So, uh, a company wanting to come in there and take on the risk without getting the benefit of owning Mass Effect, that is always going to be very, very unlikely. And it's hard to imagine that in this very risk adverse business, anyone would be willing to do that. But it got, if any game has the juice to sort of get over those hurdles to get over.

Those obstacles, Mass Effect has, has it, it does.

It is widely beloved and has sort of only grown in people's estimation over the years. And, you know, they're, are people who are completely dedicated to this franchise to the point of tattoos and cosplay and.

A lifestyle almost. It's that kind of sci-fi series.

Yeah, and to people who haven't played the game and aren't fully familiar with the kind of fervor we're talking about here, There hasn't been a new game in that franchise since 2017. Legendary Edition was a remake. Andromeda was 2017, 2018. Then the original trilogy was 2017. That's crazy. Yeah. And then the original trilogy was 2007, 2010, and 2012. That's four games in that length of time. And people still, every single year on November 7th, because Spectre is coded N7, so they made November 7th, Mass Effect Day still share fan art and tattoos and costumes and cosplay and all this other stuff. That's what they were running their teases for this new game around. There's a small part of me that thinks that this trailer was this year's tease, right?

Because you go to this and then next year is the 20th anniversary of the original Mass Effect. You can blow shit out there. And now it's going because line go up, numbers on an Excel sheet. and Saudi Arabia.

It's a shame.

Uh, and then, you know, we, I've mentioned this every time we talked about it, uh, the conversation about.

Uh, people just don't get that. It's not, this is not the same studio you loved like one.

Yes, it is.

Uh, that's, that's not how it works. A team gets built and it attracts people who want to work for that, that kind of team. And, um, They keep the spirit going. And then there were a lot of people working at that studio who had been there for a very long time and had actually worked on Mass Effect. And it kind of discounts those people when they're like, oh, that's not the same studio I loved.

Just shut the fuck up. Just shut up.

Yeah, the studio didn't change. You did. And I just want to say one thing because the name I don't think has come up yet in this conversation. I just want to make sure it's properly addressed. Fuck Jared Kushner.

Oh yeah, of course. It goes without saying, but let's say it anyhow. Uh, yeah. Um, leverage buyouts.

They're like, we got to do something about the, the vulture capitalists, uh, who just come in and do this. So, you know, uh, toys for us was a business that was doing just fine. And then they, they come in there and they take it over and take on, do a leverage buyout.

And then suddenly it's gone. And it's like, who does this benefit?

It is, it is not your normal, Hey, make a great product and then, uh, sell it at a competitive price. And then people get good products and you get a bunch of money. It's not that it is just strip mine. Well, you know, things that are working or even things that have issues, but strip mining them for parts to the benefit of a very small number of people. And I just at a certain point, how are we not standing up and doing something about this?

We have to at a certain point. All right. Let's shift over here again. Like I said, big news day.

A Valve developer says HLX out loud during a public panel. Sounds like that's the next Half-Life game. This is from Andy Robinson at VGC. A Valve developer may have accidentally revealed the codename for the next Half-Life game at a convention panel this week. Speaking at Game Sound Con 2026 in Burbank, California, Valve music designer Mike Moraski participated in a talk about how the company implements audio in its games, notably...

Murawski mentioned HLX, the alleged codename for the next Half-Life game, which has been mentioned by insiders and discovered in game files in recent years. In a section discussing the implementation of HDR, the designer said, in fact, Deadlock has its own version of HDR.

HLX has its own version, and so on and so forth.

According to notable Valve insider, Half-Life 3 is in active development at the Steam Studio. and is far along enough that testers could play it from start to finish last summer, and they are now in the polishing phase. Also, apparently it's not a VR game, according to insiders. And also when this Mike Murawski said HLX, there were other Valve presenters on the stage who like looked over at him when he said that, and were like, uh.

Yeah, oh, my favorite part, my favorite part of that video, the guy right next to him goes, nice going in like quiet tones under the mic, which is the most professional public facing way of saying you fucking moron. You could possibly do.

I think when they ended, I think when they finished, they also were like, good job. You only mentioned HLX twice or something like that.

Only once.

Yeah. And then they took him out back and they shot him.

But he was like, he was like, I did. Great. Yeah.

Yep. I mean, this has been this is kind of like what people have been thinking this is for a long time. And then he has now said it. He has put legitimacy to the rumor and people are going to be rabid. I already saw a Reddit post of saying that it's going to be Keely's last announcement this year. at the game awards, which is what they were saying last year.

They were saying it last year.

Yeah. Also a shout out to game sound con, uh, in Burbank, California. Cause I had never heard of this shit until this specific, uh, uh, happening here. So if they can like parlay this into a bigger con next year, come see what gets leaked next year. Perfect. Good for them. Uh, but yeah, this was a, quite a slip of the tongue, quite a Freudian slip here, a freemium slip. Let's call it, uh, And I hope these players finally get what they want.

Let's talk about, I mean, Grand Theft Auto 6 has more mass appeal, but in terms of like the hardcore gamer shell that we all live in, Half-Life 3 is like the one, right?

Yes.

So if they finally do this.

And it's been long enough and it's been so mysterious and mythical that it's one of those ones that's like, even a lot of people who never played the Half-Life games will be like, well, I got to pay attention to Half-Life 3. It's entered that strata. So, yeah, this is a big deal. Yeah, so much smoke has been around this for a long time now. This game is real.

I think it comes out. It just feels like, yeah, it's going to come out. When it comes out, who knows how they'll do it. Part of me just thinks they will just release this on Steam one day because that would blow up. That would be massive if it just appeared on Steam one day.

On the Steam store.

Yeah.

If it were me, it's either that or, although, I mean, Sega with the Saturn, this is a game, so it's not quite the same thing, but people have been hesitant to do that since the Saturn came out, right? There are shadow drops now, but this, I don't know, this one might crash Steam, so maybe they'll give it like a week.

Yeah, that is one thing, but I mean, it kind of, no matter what, it's going to crash Steam, it feels like, yeah.

If it were me, and we go with the Game Awards scenario where Keeley comes out and he says, we have one more announcement, you see the Valve logo, and then it's deadlocked. And then after Deadlock, it's this.

That is the way to do that. That's incredible.

You just give them the old 1-2 because Deadlock finally gets announced and it goes into 1.0, let's say. And that's the one that Shadow drops. And then you slip Half-Life 3 in there right at the end. more in 2027 or something like that.

You have a presenter's heart, Jason.

That's fantastic. That's that's. And then right before that, the award before that should be presented by the Scribdune guy, Biddy Blaze.

He should be a presenter. Get Keely out of there.

Let's let's just, let's get Biddy Blaze hosting that show in a tuxedo, please.

I would love that. Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

I'm, What do I expect from this game? Half-Life 8, which should be Half-Life 3. I mean, they're calling it HLX because they're afraid to put 3 in the name, of course. But I don't think this is some side project. I don't think this is another spinoff. I don't think this is something that's meant to be like, oh, a reboot.

I think they'll follow up Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2 Episode 2 with this.

Game in a real way.

And the things that have scared them off from doing it before, like, hey, we didn't feel like we were doing something super new and innovative, or innovative, innovative, when we were originally working on the previous versions of Half-Life 3, and so it kind of just fizzled out. Well, now they have a game that is, you can play from the beginning to end, and they are reportedly in this polishing phase, and it's like, okay, so what do I imagine it's going to play like? How different, how game-changing is it going to be? And it's like, I think we're at a point where Even Valve realizes that's not necessary.

Make a really fun game that has a lot of ideas. It doesn't have to be the idea that changes gaming like of the physics system of Half-Life 2. It just needs to be like Titanfall 2 where it's like, oh, we are just so creative and we had a million ideas and we took the top 1% of those and made a.

Game just based on those.

And then you have something that is going to be memorable and then you have the Half-Life name cachet to have it explode in a way that like Titanfall didn't.

And the ecosystem's there now, right? Steam Deck exists. Steam Machine exists. If you want to do a VR mode at some point, what is their VR mask called? Steam Frame exists. All of that is there now. So all they have to do is put this on there. Do you give some sort of like... exclusive small cosmetic benefit or something for people who are playing on those devices.

I don't know about that.

I don't think it really needs it.

You give it away for free for people who buy a Steam machine for like a month or something like that.

Sure.

Because for them, they're still going to make all their money from cosmetics and deadlock.

Like they're going to be fine if they do that.

And then the question was asked in chat, consoles.

Yeah, yes. So that's a good point.

And that leads into the final point I would make here, which is Prima Luce in chat says Source 3. So one thing that they are probably going to be doing with this is introducing their Source 3 engine. If they have a big follow up to Source 2, which is something that Titanfall was built on Source, for example. Um, if they want to sort of make this a thing where it's like, Hey, our, here's our engine, here's an alternative to all the other things that are out there.

Here are the tools we've worked with, uh, showing that this game, you know, runs on consoles and making it feel like it's an ever present thing would be important to them. So yeah, put it on consoles. Uh, I think it, I think it's on Xbox and PlayStation.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it belongs there too. uh i don't know if this switch 2 is in that realm yet depending on how powerful this engine is but that would be kind of cool if you just hit it all at once um but yeah and i keep going back to this uh hypothetical tga scenario all throughout the show you just hide the g-man in frame all throughout He's in the audience. He's backstage.

He's up in the rafters.

And then eventually, maybe he makes the pronouncement at the very end.

I don't know.

I gotta stop. I'm gonna hide myself up here.

People are right.

Source 3 is just a name. I just mean their next big update to their Source engine.

Yes.

Source 3, yes. I think they have clearly... If they're doing this game, it is to showcase... A lot of new stuff that they're working on.

Sure.

And I think that would be something they would be like. And now it's productized in the engine.

And somebody else pointed out in chat, too, they're basically testing all of this tech via Deadlock, the game that exists that nobody that they haven't actually officially acknowledged. So perhaps we're seeing it right in front of our face and don't even know it. Yep.

All right. Let's go ahead and take a break.

When we come back, plenty of news to get into, including switch to being jailbroken and stuff happening with Arcane Leon.

We'll get into all that right after these messages.

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Game S Mornings is back.

Jason Finelli, Jeff Grubb, we're getting back into it on this Finelli Friday, everybody, with Yeah, it's happening to Nintendo now. Switch 2 Jailbreak enables Mario Kart World mods and more. Researcher Sammy Pepsi Pew, Haj Mahamud publicly showcased NS2JB, which is Nintendo Switch 2 Jailbreak. a software-only Nintendo Switch 2 jailbreak on October 22nd. His write-up says it works on firmware 23.0.1 and links to publicly available exploit code, no mod chip required. His demonstration adds Peter Griffin, Hatsune Miku, Cinema Roll, and other characters to Mario Kart World. And this gives a concrete example of what this access is enabling in this time frame right now. An original Switch programming game, Smile Basic 4 provides the initial opening through

backward compatibility. A separate weakness in Switch 2's file system service then gives the researchers more powerful access. He says this enables homebrew game modification, reverse engineering, and save backups. Smile Basic 4 has now already been delisted from the eShop.

Following the disclosure.

Nintendo Life reports that Nintendo has not otherwise officially responded. a legitimate programming tool has become collateral damage. So they are trying to close that entry point. This is important note. This is a tethered access thing. So what that means is every time you turn the switch to off and turn it back on, you are going to have to redo this jailbreak to get it back to a point where it can run.

The homebrew code.

But it does run homebrew and people are already showing off like tools to begin booting up homebrew software and begin booting up game backups and pirated games um hajj hamid did say you know then this is the reality here with all these things he just used open ai codex and it took him about two weeks of just telling open ai you know chat gbt to do this and after about two weeks uh he was able to get to this point so huh Uh, that is what everyone keeps saying is, um, that, that this AI, the AI stuff, the tools are just going to make every vulnerability that much more vulnerable. And now Nintendo is going to have to go on the back foot and try to defend against this.

Uh, but it feels like this is only the beginning. Like if they are at this.

Point now, after two weeks of trying with like just a couple of prompts, uh, when a bunch of people now see that this is an, an open access point, now that they see this as a vulnerability, uh, They are going to a swarm.

And I imagine in a month, it's going to look a lot worse than this. Jason, what do you think?

I agree. I think that this, these advancements in vibe coding, like recomps and stuff like this is a, I don't want to be hyperbolic, but it's the way I think about it. It's existential. It's a huge threat to games as if it needed any more existential threats. Right. Because now people are, can just vibe code or tell a prompt to make whatever they want. They're not going to buy any games anymore because the vibe coders are doing it for them, right? The vibe coding firms are doing it for them. And I, I just, I think there needs to be some sort of action, like very public action and Nintendo notorious for being litigious would be the one to do it. I don't know how you go about that. Do you go after the, uh, the person

who did the coding? Do you go after the program? Like, do you go both? Like what, what, I don't know what the legal pathway is there, but this, this is, this is bad. Like, cause it was PS five. We were talking about last time we were on the show, right. It was jailbroken.

And that's, that's developed super fast to the point where it's like, yeah, they're cracking that thing open every which way, but loose.

Yeah.

And it's, and it's possible as somebody puts out in chat that the Pandora's box is already open. Now it's just a matter of time to see how far they can get. And if that is the complete assimilation of these consoles to bend to AI's will, then we're fucked. That's it. How do you come back from that?

And the reality is, I see there's a conversation in chat right now about corporations should be scared.

And yeah, corporations.

Have lawyers, like teams of lawyers who are going to find a way to go after and scare the people who are using these tools or go after.

chat GPT, go after.

OpenAI and go after Anthropic and scare them and be like, look, if someone's trying to do this, you need to tell us and you need to shut it down and ban their account.

We're not going to have that same power.

They're going to begin turning these tools against our personal lives here very quickly because that'll be probably just as profitable at scale. And we do not have the defensive mechanisms to protect ourselves in that situation that a Nintendo and a Sony does. The ability to lobby the government, the ability to get on a call with the people who own these companies that are running these AI models.

In the meantime, though, yes, they're going to do what they can to decimate the security for all these consoles. And existential is right. Like, we don't know how far this is going to go. We don't know how deep Pandora's box is. It might lead to a situation where making and selling video games and therefore running a business that employs people to do those jobs is untenable. Now, they probably figure something out. I get the hyperbolic.

Absolutely.

But there will be massive dents put into these companies in terms of their ability to make money from, you know, like remasters, right? Remasters are done. That's, that was a big chunk of money for a lot of these companies. Remasters are fucking done. People are just going to do that themselves. They'll port it themselves. They'll add the ultra widescreen feature themselves.

It is done. Uh, and for as miserable as it is.

To have to deal with these people who are not actually part of the community coming in and contributing code, uh, to, to D comps and static recomp, recompilations. Um, the, the, the cat is out of the bag there and they've taken over to the point where the people who were running the, those communities have retreated.

They're like this. I want nothing to do with this anymore. So it's done.

Uh, and that's just the beginning. It is going to like get worse and worse. And now you got Tim swinging out there running. AI, yes, AI, like a couple, like one of these game-making sessions or whatever. Man, what do we need you for? I guess he's going to say this is the tool to use to actually make the games, but what are we going to need them for, really, when people break open these models and just do it themselves?

It is existential. You've said this on this show before. If people can use these programs to do what these companies do and these CEOs make all this money from, it makes you obsolete. They don't need you anymore. And then what do you, what do.

We need them for?

It's exactly right. Did you see that poster from Tim Sweeney too, with the pills take months and the blue, and then the red pill is used AI in a couple of days. The, the one, the hand holding the AI red, the red pill has six fucking fingers. Really? Like, yes. Come on, man.

Wow.

They still do that, huh?

What a dipshit. Maybe it was purposeful because it's AI and it's six figures, whatever. But I don't understand just maybe– get back to the word existentially. How have we got to a point that we don't– I don't want to sound like my parents here, but we don't want to work for shit, man. What makes these games so good is the heart and the soul from the humans.

The expression.

That put their expression into this. And people can now think, these edgelords who have been in forums for years and ex-Twitter for years, who think that it's just click a button and a game is made, are now doing that and being proven right, unfortunately, by these AI programs to a point.

And I have no feasible.

Way to counter it. Like, how do you, how do you counter that? I don't, I don't know. And it scares the shit out of me. Like, I don't know what gaming's future looks like in a couple of years.

Right.

I'm even saying that for a couple of reasons now for a while, but this is next year. Yeah. Next year.

I think like, you know, we're going to look back on this year where just every game we were looking forward to came out and was good to great.

And it was mostly made by people.

There was almost certainly some AI involved, but it was like, you know, oh, we're just testing it out and maybe doing some, we're using it to do some research. Not great, obviously, but it's not going to be the depths that we are going to reach here very quickly that Epic is pushing us toward at light speed.

And in the meantime, Switch 2 is jailbroken.

And we've seen the speed at which that has affected the PlayStation 5 and is going to come for Switch 2 as well. And I think, you know, Nintendo is in a slightly different position where they're near the beginning of their generation and they can sort of reserve new models of their system, exciting new versions of their system that can be roughly the same price, but have like an OLED.

And then they have a much more secure chip inside.

And that will probably be something that they introduced it to deal with this, to have some sort of hardware security protection in there.

To block off stuff like this.

But, In the meantime, as these things get jailbroken, they're also going to continue doing the ports of just taking a Switch 2 game and porting it to PC. You don't even need the emulator anymore. It's just going to run natively on there, and that's going to happen more and more. The profit motive will disappear, and then I do wonder where that leaves a lot of these companies.

And, you know, they're going to have to figure it out.

That's not our problem until it is, and we're suddenly looking around being like, wait, I really like the way it used to work And I really liked buying games from people that knew what they were doing and had a passion and spent their entire life perfecting that craft. And now I don't even know where to where to go to find that. Not that it's not like maybe it's still happening. Maybe it's not like it's all been replaced by by vibe coding instead. And that, again, feels like that's where we're headed, which is a travesty.

Gary.

All right, let's shift over here.

Here's what you need to play your games that you already own on Xbox's cloud service. Microsoft's Insider Preview lets eligible people without an active Game Pass subscription buy streaming time ahead of a broader November rollout.

Let's see here.

So if you want to have 10 hours of play time... You could spend $ 4, which means it's approximately 40 cents an hour to play a game you already own, which, again, you have to buy the game first, or you can play a free-to-play.

Game, I suppose. 25 hours, excuse me, is $ 8, so 32 cents an hour approximately.

And then 50 hours for $ 12. That's 24 cents an hour approximately. Yes, again, you're going to have to buy these games or own these games. In many cases, you probably already do. And if you did the whole thing where everything is an Xbox and I can play these games everywhere, well, now the business model has shifted.

Up on you.

And I just, I want to meet the person for whom this feels good because this is just AOL minutes.

It's cell phone minutes.

And there is a reason we all shifted, or like the business shifted away from that Cause this feels terrible. The idea of putting in a quarter into your TV to play a game you already bought.

That's basically what this is. Somebody mentioned internet cafe. It just moved the internet cafe into your house. This makes no sense to me. And right now it's without an active game pass subscription, but there is no guarantee that it's going to stay that way.

Okay.

So if you have a game pass subscription, you get a couple of, you get like a handful of hours baked in. So I think at the, um, The lowest $ 10 a month one, was it five hours a month or something like that?

And then you.

Have to pay for these things on top if you want more, probably at the same price point.

Right. So how much nickel and diming are people really going to put up with? I mean, what people?

Who's playing games in the cloud this much?

That's true.

That's another point.

A handful of people, maybe. Is the internet infrastructure good enough? in the country to sustain that? I don't think so. It's good in urban areas, sure. I could be able to play it on the cloud, play a game on my phone with a backbone or whatever. But if I'm in my own house on my Wi-Fi and my console is right there, I'm going to play it on my television on the console and not play it on, what the hell do I need this for? Right?

And it's like, I guess these people that just got it and had a Samsung phone that had the app earlier or something like that, maybe there's some people doing that that were playing Fortnite.

Maybe? Maybe.

I struggle to create the fiction of this person in my head.

But then even Fortnite has native clients on the mobile devices. It's in Google Play Store and it's back in the iOS store. Who is this for? What fictional gamer do they think this is appealing to? It makes no sense to me at all, this whole business model. And Game Pass itself... is starting to make less sense. So now to bake this on top of it and eventually roll it into it because you only get so many hours on Game Pass to begin with, it's just another feather in Xbox's what the hell are we doing cap. It's just full of different colored feathers that of all these different ideas, disparate, have no cohesion, no plan, just trying to get as much money out of this as they possibly can.

Right, and make their stuff worse before GTA 6 because maybe GTA 6 changes something.

And, of course, it won't. It's not going to change Xbox's thing.

It won't.

It's not. It's not happening.

Most of the people who are buying a console just for GTA 6 are buying the other one, even though it's probably a little more expensive. They're buying PlayStations because they played the originals on PlayStation, and that's what they're used to. They're just swimming up Schitt's Creek without a paddle, aren't they? Yes. Rowing. Yes.

Yes.

They have swimming and rowing. Yes, absolutely. They, uh, uh, it, yeah, it just feels like, okay.

Like the things are going to change going into GTA six and we want to make sure that we are ready to make as much money as possible.

And it's like, this is what that looks like. This is your plan to do that.

So do they think people are going to play GTA six on the cloud?

I don't even know.

I don't even think they've, I think they haven't even been able to say that you're going to be able to stream GTA six over the cloud on Xbox. Like there was some conversation about that and they're like, Oh, we never said that.

Like, none of this, it's just so frustratingly incoherent. It is obvious that nobody in a decision-making capacity in the Xbox team has any fucking idea what's going on. And that's particularly a shame because at least one of them, Mr. Booty, has been there forever. And he still hasn't learned shit after all this time. It makes no sense.

So, okay, so let's go through this situation. So, yeah, they said no on PC streaming. So that means you have to own an Xbox if you want to stream this game on your Xbox. So it is specifically for people who have been unable to afford an Xbox Series X or S and still have an Xbox One. And then they would stream over the cloud to Xbox One.

And the plan is to charge those people more money than they've been willing to pay so far.

To stream a game. And I guess GTA six is the one, maybe they would do.

That for, they go in there and they buy the game and then they spend $ 12 to get 50 hours of, of streaming, I guess.

And if the game is a hundred, 200 hours, they really think they're going to get, what's that?

Uh, yeah.

So they get like 40, 50 bucks out of them. Is it worth it for that much hassle? Yeah. Is that all this confusion that we're talking about?

A small, a small percentage of a small percentage. And yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't make, I don't get it. Maybe I'll just go buy an Xbox series, but no, they're going to buy, if they go to buy a different console.

They're going to buy a PlayStation six.

They're going to buy a PlayStation.

Um, I don't think we've ever been speechless before. I don't think you and I have ever been speechless before.

It's like, yeah, don't worry.

No decision Xbox ever makes again is going to make sense. And it's like, oh, yeah, that is where we're at over and over again with this company. I mean, look, I get like, hey, we're we cost us money to run these things. We want to make money off of it. It's like, yeah, but like the long term prospects for this thing have kind of been blown up in your face.

Now, if you do this and they're just like, what do you mean? They don't get it.

And then what happens when somebody five codes GTA six onto the PC in a week anyway? Uh huh. Because that's still there.

Yep, that feels, yeah, like that's inevitable at this point. CD Project says roughly half of Cyberpunk 2's quest team came from modding. This is from Chris Sculling at VGC. Just kind of, they just like, hey, yeah, a bunch of people made mods for Witcher 2 and Witcher 3 and a bunch of other stuff. And we brought those people in and now they are key to Cyberpunk 2.

And, you know, we talked.

About it a little bit, but AI could blow up that pipeline as well, because who do you trust? But in the meantime, yes, this is what modding is all about. Like proving you know how to make a game, what makes a game fun, adding content to something that already exists. And modders often make some of the best developers. So very cool that CD Projekt continues to do that. Nintendo announced three more Game Boy games coming to Nintendo Switch Online.

Let's see here.

That included Mole Mania, a 1997 puzzle game, which was produced by Shigeru Miyamoto. There was also Avenging Spirit, which is a side-scrolling platformer from Jaleco that has an incredible cover of just a man with a Tommy gun. And then Pinball Revenge of the Gator, which is a, let's see here, yeah. Predecessor to Howl Laboratories Kirby's Pinball Land, Because it looks very similar in how they took those ideas and turned it into Kirby's pinball land. This is another NSO drop not too long after the last one.

I think at this point, a lot of times they are going to be underwhelming to most people. I usually am just relieved that they remember they have NSO. How do you feel about recent drops and about the service overall?

I don't mind the obscure stuff I either forgot about or didn't know existed in the first place. I might try Mole Mania just because Shigeru Miyamoto made it. And plus, it was original Game Boy, which was way out of my head by 1997. Like, I wasn't playing original Game Boy anymore. So, yeah, I'll give that a shot. I do have a problem with them renaming Pinball Revenge of the Gator because the Japanese title, The Great 66 Alligator Parade, was fine. That did not have to change. Yep. So now there are 49 Game Boy and Game Boy Color games on Switch Online with four more exclusive to Japan's version of the app. That's pretty decent. And you're not going to be spending a lot of time with these games.

They're Game Boy games. I'd be surprised if Mole Mania gets two hours out of me, right?

But that's fine.

That's what the games were in that day and age. That's why you play them on even the virtual console just to sit for an hour. Oh, what is it? I'm sorry, NSO. it for an hour hey i never heard of this game before i missed it when i was a kid let's try it out if you like it great if not you move.

On to the next one i want to dabble keep doing it uh all right let's then let's see here uh report that arcane studios has until november 13th to find a buyer this is from sal romano at gamatsu arcane studios which xbox announced plans that to divest in july faces a november 13th deadline in the consultation process surrounding its proposed closure with several forms of takeover reportedly under consideration, according to French publication Le Monde. The report, citing a union representative from Prenteps Ecologie, I'm not going to be able to say that correctly, Arcane Studios sole representative of trade union, yeah, Ecologique, that sounds right, Arcane Studios sole representative of trade union, states that several takeover

options are being considered as Microsoft seeks a partner for the studio. The search for a buyer began in midsummer under Francis Flourange's law, which requires companies with at least 1,000 employees to seek a buyer when planning certain closures involving large-scale layoffs. The November 13th deadline marks the end of consultations with Arkane Studios' Social and Economic Committee. Approximately 217 jobs are at risk. The information comes from Le Monde's reporting and union statements and not directly from Arkane Studios.

Microsoft separately told the publication that it was actively seeking a partner to support the next phase of development and enable commercialization of Marvel's blade project, which they should still be making. They're still making that. That hasn't been canceled. So another weird situation where, you know, Microsoft says for years, this thing is coming, it's coming from us. And now they are trying to get rid of the studio. Uh, one of the many reasons I am frustrated by that company and think they're kind.

Of a joke right now. Um, Yeah, look, Arcane, they already shut down the other Arcane.

And and now the one in France is trying to find some way to scratch towards survival.

Not a lot of buyers out there for.

Studios right now that have 217 jobs, you know, waiting to, you know, waiting to take that on.

But.

You know, Blade may be the promise of getting in there to help out and get Blade across the finish line and reap the rewards of that.

But who knows what that looks like?

This seems like a complicated situation that a lot of companies are going to be scared off of.

It does. But hot skeet off the wire from Jason Schreier on Blue Sky. Let me share some positive news for a change. Despite all the gloomy headlines today, my understanding is that there are multiple paths being explored that would save Arcane Lyon. Anything can happen during negotiations. But at this point, I'd be surprised if the studio doesn't.

is shut down. And that makes sense to me because I think I can think of at least one firm that wants Marvel's blade to come out. I feel like a good partner is right in the goddamn name. I don't know if they're exploring that or if Marvel even has any interest. I will say hot ski and I'll say it again, blood arms, but I, It seems like a no-brainer to me. They're making a... The immersive sim company that made Dishonored and Deathloop is making one of those for a very popular Marvel character. I'm just seeing a lot of boxes being checked. How is that not very valuable if to no one else than Marvel themselves?

Yeah, I think the fact that this game hasn't been canceled is the thing that screams to me, oh, something is going to be figured out here one way or another to at least get the game out And then, and then after that, what happens to the studio? I think it's still a question mark to me. Um, but, but you're right. So if that's the situation, Marvel comes in and sees it through.

You're right.

Um, you know, does PlayStation step in? They have had a lot of success with Marvel, right? That's not impossible.

That's true. And blade seems to be back in the public eye a little bit outside of the comics. He was in token. Uh, he was just featured heavily in, uh, magic, the gatherings latest, uh, uh, press conference media briefing thing is going to be featured in a set prominently in April. This could just be another way to get that name back out there, especially since the movie seems to have fallen apart and, and, uh, I'm not even going to try and say his first name because of my track record today. Last name Ali. Mahershala, is that it? Is now talking mad shit on Kevin Feige. That was his fault.

So maybe it needs a little more. He's in Marvel Rivals 2. Thank you, Carl Germ. So, yeah, I mean, keep that iron going. The iron is clearly hot. I'd like to air with my fellow game journalist, Jason, that they're not going to be shut down. But I would put the asterisk of yet. I think anything that happens here is just going to buy them a couple extra years or whatever it may be to get this game out and then they can start worrying again.

And then finally, Matt Piscitella gives an update on new physical game sales.

I'm just going to read what he wrote here.

New physical video game software unit sales in the United States during September 2026 increased by 17% versus a year ago. So these are physical games, games on disc, or I guess Nintendo Switches, excuse me, on card.

And 2% year-to-date. That's how much it's up year-to-date.

Nintendo Ecosystem new physical units sales jumped 40% in September. versus last year, while PlayStation grew 4%. I bet part of that is they no longer include Mario Kart in the box, so that's probably a big part of that. And then, yeah, while PlayStation grew 4%, Xbox dropped 32%. He says, 2026 year to date new physical software unit sales for xbox have yet to reach 900 000 that's.

Insane that is absolutely wild and their own doing right they did it themselves oh yeah but that last little caveat that he adds here uh october will include the full implementation of the disc to digital program so maybe they'll see a bit of a spike but man the fact that we're in the 10th month of the year, and they're not at a million physical sales yet for 2026.

That is wild.

When it comes to the share that Xbox ecosystem consoles have, let's see here. For the math challenge, this means that the new physical software unit share for Xbox ecosystem consoles was 4% in September and just shy of 5% year-to-date.

Goodness gracious.

Just one in 20 physical games sold at retail is an Xbox game.

Which always, you know, we've done that for a while.

Kelsey Lewin was like, hey, we will buy, we'll order three copies for Xbox and not sell any of them of a new game and things like that.

And people just do not have physical Xbox games. All right.

Let's see here. I think that does it for the headlines, everybody. Let's start wrapping things up. We have a poll question from yesterday. Let's get the most up-to-date results there. I am going to fresh let's go over here and hit the giant bomb face i'm going to click on posts because that's where we put it uh what is the bioware game you think everyone should play mass effect trilogy star wars knights of the old republic dragon age origins or something else that you'll put in the comments um i bet janice scrolling through the comments right now but uh.

People are chad is hot he had something up there and then moved to the poll i don't know what he did.

Uh-oh, uh-oh. Okay, well, let's listen.

Let Jan be Jan, everybody. What's your problem? Mass Effect Trilogy was number one at 64.

64%.

Number two was Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic at 22%. Then Dragon Age Origin at 10%. And then 4% something else. I did see some people mentioning Baldur's Gate, like Baldur's Gate 2 and Jade Empire and other things like that.

Lots of Jade Empires, actually.

Yeah.

Yeah, I get it. But man, play Mass Effect if you haven't.

That Legendary Edition was an incredible package.

Really great way to play through that whole thing.

Could not endorse those games anymore, Mass Effect 1 through 3. Same with Jade Empire. If you have not gone back and played Jade Empire, it's a little dated. It came out in 2005, 2006, I want to say. But man, there is that. The writing in that game, the writing of the or opposing force, let's call it, is so good and so effective and so well done.

It's worth it.

Even now, once you get over the bit of the janky combat system to experience that story from front to back. You owe it to yourself to do it if you have never played it before. I may pick it up again. I was thinking about streaming it under the name Jade Empire, J-A-Y, for me. We'll see. I don't know if I'm going to do that, if I have time to do that, but I really, really want to because, man, that game is so good. He's keeping Beyblade.

Hell yeah. There's Beyblade on the screen right now. He is our Beyblade.

He is our Beyblade.

I will now move the show on to do this part where I say, okay, we did the poll question.

We have a no new poll question because it's Friday.

We're going to wrap up the week with the bomb 12, but let's go ahead and get with the latest from Jason Finnelli. Jason, what do you have going on? What's what's happening in the life? Tell people about it.

A lot of whole things happening here. I wrote a lot of stuff this week. We talked about, Well, last week, since I haven't been on in a little while, all of my New York Comic Con previews have gone up since then. I had an interview with the team behind that new magic set, Darkhold Destiny, which is like Marvel, but getting into the more mystical, magical stuff. So Hila, Dormammu, Doctor Strange, Thor, Blade, that kind of thing. That was a really cool interview over at GameSpot. I also previewed Final Fantasy VII Revelation and Romancing Saga 3 remake, which I had not really dabbled in Romancing Saga at all.

but this demo had a playable character that was a snowman. So I am in.

Stranger than heaven saga sold a million copies. I didn't include that in the news, but it's doing very well.

The second, probably the two remake.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Which is cool. The stranger than heaven preview. We talked about the PC review is also on MMORPG.com right now with a link to a certain quick play video that I did. Because I used this PC to record that footage. So that's embedded in the article as well. So if you want to see that, if you haven't watched that yet.

I recently, I'm going to start to re-up my TCG side thing, TCG John. I added it to a couple of social media platforms. I have some Pokemon over there. I have to open, I just received some Riftbound that I have to open while we've been talking, so I'll be able to do that. That's basically it, I think.

It's been a busy week for me, but yeah. Oh, no, Star Trek, Magic's Star Trek set was fully revealed, or starting to be fully revealed. The big blowout was Tuesday. I wrote up a big thing about that on GameSpot, and then there's little previews coming out other places around the internet. You can check those cards out. I'm 12th.

I think I'm done.

Hell yeah. All right.

Tune in for the UPF later today, everybody. Jan, that thing with Chuck, are we doing that live or are we doing that recorded?

I can't remember. Recorded. Thank you. Okay.

Well, we got another cool thing happening that we'll get up to you guys all that we're going to be doing between now and UPF. So keep your eyes on GiantBomb.com for a lot of cool stuff that's happening all the time. Lots of stuff that we did promise at the Bombathon. Maybe not as much as last year, but... Giantbomb.com is going to have all your resources for keeping up with that.

So head there right now.

All right. It's time for the Bomb 12.

These are the 12 games that really matter to people who are really playing video games.

And I lost my place here. Let me see here. I got to click through on the Figma post. Let it load. Make sure I have the most up-to-date results. Yes. Figma. That's what we use. Okay, here we go.

The Bomb 12 starts with number 12, The Blood of Dawnwalker. Again, number 11 is Silver Pines, which I did start. Man, that game's got vibes.

I am into it.

Number 10 is Well Dweller. Number nine is Dragon's Dogma 2, Dark Arisen. Number eight is Deadlock. Number seven is Gears of War E-Day. Number six is Ace Combat 8, Wings of Thieves. Number five is Uma Musume, Pretty Derby, of course.

I feel bad for them. They got their concert canceled.

Yeah, they got their money back.

That sounds like Cygames stepped up to refund a lot of people more than they needed to. Number four is Control Resonant, still holding on very strong there. Number three, Fire Emblem, Fortunes Weave, and that means number two, Castlevania, Belmont's Curse, and number one, your repeated champion, Star Wars Galactic Racer, which just has taken over the world.

Very well done.

Hey, if you want to see the Bomb 12, go to giantbomb.com. Just scroll below the fold a little bit. You're going to see the most up-to-date Bomb 12 there. I'll get it put in there as soon as we're done here. On the left side of that, there's a Vote Here button. You click on that. You can add your game for consideration for next week's Bomb 12. Looking forward to seeing what everyone has to say for all of that. I did want to say, let's see, the number 246th vote here. I just want to read what the person wrote. Let's see here. You got fired so you drown your sorrows in booze. She had to get a part-time job working a grocery store cash register. Only reason she could earn a wage at all is the manager liked the way she looked in a skirt. You remember, right?

Exactly 10 months back. So someone was playing PT as.

Well, I guess.

All right, we're going to get out of here, everybody. Thank you for watching and listening. Jason Finnelli, thank you so much for hanging out with me and talking about video games, man.

I really appreciate it.

Always a pleasure. Get Bioware on the Bomb 12 next week, chat. Do it.

We are going to get out of here, everybody. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. You're the best audience in gaming. Until next time, have a good one. Take care of yourself and sync, baby.

Arkane Studios Has Until November 13 to Find a Buyer

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