very happy because Superman uh, it was all Superman all the time. My my my suit is now being washed because I wore it 17 times in a row. I was wearing it all week. You can you can uh expect me to wear it a few more times. I got to get some mileage out of the thing. It’s expensive. Um and yeah, so Superman was both a huge success and a flop. And makes sense, right? Because everybody hates it, everybody loves it, and it’s both, right? We’ll talk more about that in in our news. Uh, so but go check out our videos on it. We’ve got a review, non-spoilers. We’ve got a 1 hour 20 minutes spoilers, plum holes, and stupid moments review. And then I’ve got a second viewing review, which I renamed the top 10 reasons why I like Superman, not loved Superman, just to give people to understand uh, you know, put it into words how how I liked it. And then uh number four is the box office video. I did some uh extrapolation, some predictions, and I think Superman will end up between one, you know, 550 million to 600 million, maybe on a really good thing, maybe 620, something like that. In any case, unfortunately, well, we’ll talk more about it in the future. So, uh Alex, what the hell? While I’ve been focusing hardcore on Superman and playing a little Mecca break, uh, got a video on that coming. Um, what has been happening in gaming news? Uh, this week, repair experts have called Switch 2’s Pro Controller piss poor. Uh, in a review, uh, look, some of the stuff’s not going to apply to you, right? Like some of the the the things they’re like, look, they’re replacing the battery is a nightmare. You have to do all these other things that I’m less concerned with. Some of these batteries last a really, really long time. But then they started talking about the JoyCons and that’s where I started paying attention because I own a Switch and I’ve had Drift on uh you talking about Switch 2? Yeah, but so this was for Switch 2, but like I’ve had a Switch and I got Drift on all of the ones I’ve ever owned for them and I’ve had to buy new ones and they’re really expensive. The original Switch and I was hoping that uh they didn’t address it. They didn’t address it. They didn’t say, “Oh, we have improved our Joy-Con. No longer drifts as much.” I’m confused by you. Are we talking about the the Pro on Switch 2? Yes. Or are we talking about the Joy-Cons on the Switch 2? Uh, this is the Joy. We’re talking about this specific controller. It’s the Pro Controller. The joystick. The Pro Controller sucks. Yeah. And then you’re talking about the sticks on the Pro Controller. Well, that’s not JoyCons. Let’s not use the word JoyCons. But what you were saying is Nintendo has a history. Yeah. All of my JoyCons are broken JoyCons. All of my JoyCons are giant pieces of [ __ ] And that Nintendo should have been [ __ ] sued into the ground in every country on earth for putting out a faulty product and not fixing it. Well, what they did is they said, “You can send me your JoyCons at your expense and then two weeks later we’ll send you [ __ ] new ones, even though we purposely use faulty products every single [ __ ] time.” And they did it again here. According to these people, the they said that they’re very low profile joysticks that are prone to drifting or use as a controller. the sticks appear to be using the exact same components found in the cheaper JoyCons. So, they learned nothing. And so, we don’t know, this isn’t, you know, we don’t know what’s for sure what’s going to happen. But if this ends up happening again the way it did last time and people are spending almost $100 on a controller and they get a year out of it before it starts your character starts to just meander to to the right. This is going to be a major issue especially with you know a history of them having that’s pretty surprising that they use the words the exact components from the JoyCons in Switch one. If that’s true this is this is big. This is huge news. This is Nintendo being stupid yet again, being anti-consumer yet again in order to save money and charge Applelike prices cuz they think they’re the Apple of the gaming world. Uh, but I’m curious. So, so they’re using the same components, but what components are they talking about? It could be that, you know, plastic type components could be the same thing in the Switch 2 JoyCons. So, if the Switch 2 Joy-Cons are made in completely different ways with completely different components than the Switch 2 Pro controller, then we’ve got ourselves a huge story. But if that is also the case, I don’t know if they’ve done a review on the Switch 2 JoyCons. Um, but you’d imagine that they would mention in the article if they’re like, “We also found the actual Switch 2 JoyCons are about to have the same problem as the original.” Doesn’t appear that’s the case. It appears that it’s limited to the Pro Controller, which uses the same components, same components found in the original found in the cheaper Joy-Cons is what what the article specifically says, and cheaper JoyCons. Yeah. Which are the ones that are the prone to drift. So, they said, “Look, there’s third party controllers that have better thumb sticks, better everything.” Um, Elves 2 Pro was one that they specifically did. Um, but yeah, and when you’re paying these crazy prices that that Nintendo chose, we complained about how expensive the uh the the console was. Uh, that’s why I’m not buying one. Same thing with the games. More so the games. That’s why I’m not buying one. Uh, Mario Kart. Uh, by the way, Bonanza’s about to come out. That’s the lowerric one. I think that’s that’s coming out later in July. And uh but when you’re paying these high prices, you expect quality or you expect on a sequel that you’d have take care of all the issues across all your accessories, not just the main system to be fair, which I assure you the main said they addressed that issue. They didn’t. No, I think they actually did in their video, right? Or no, they they just showed how cool it was. That’s it. They never said this is new and improved or like we fixed I’m sure at some point in some of the interviews and marketing they said improve. No, you can’t admit fall because then that’s when you get into all sorts of trouble. Well, we’ll keep an eye on that. So, the procontrollers if they start failing in a year then then then I hope uh you know some lawyers and some people, you know, get get together with a class action lawsuit because y’all let them slide on the first 25 cents. You’ll get 25 cent. Yeah. Get check for you a good lawyer, Joe. 25 cents. Pretty good. Oh, I get class. It’s like, “Hey, we know that uh this unnamed uh credit agency leaked all your data to the worst parts of the internet. You want 10%. You want 10 cents? Here’s $7.” It’s like, “Excuse me, what?” I don’t know. When When Alex says $7, I will take $7. I’m like, “Alex, here’s $7, friend. Thank you.” Yeah. But most class action, you’ll get 10 cents if you fill out this form, email, uh, mail it, stamp it, and it’ll cost you 35 cents to get your 10 cents. alone is already over budget. Like, damn it. Stamps have gone up, guys. They’re even more expensive than that. Oh, god. All right, I got some more good news on the stop killing games front. Uh, a prominent EU politician who is the vice president of the EU Parliament has signed the stop killing games petition. Nicolay Stefanuta. Uh, and he actually had some great things to say about it. I stand with the people who started this citizen initiative. I signed and will continue to help them. A game once sold belongs to the customer, not the company. And that’s great. This guy clearly has not read all the materials from from the companies. Uh so he’s new. They’re going to try to grease his pockets before he he continues to mouth off. But hopefully uh we he continues that. Yeah. And so right now it’s still just a citizens initiative. It uh it has to move into actual legislation. Uh and this process is going to be long and it’s not guaranteed and it’s going to take a while. They still need more signatures in the EU EU uh for to hit some of the count’s thresholds. So if you live there and you think that you should Doesn’t it suck that this is always EU and other countries and we have to we have to look from afar over here in the United States like that’s hey they’re trying to protect their consumers. Yeah. The the problem is our our our consumer protection agencies have been gutted by uh you know the new administration that has come in. We we voted uh that corporations are people. Oh yeah. So we did that one a long time ago. Their feelings. Yeah. They they are people and they have feelings and uh they have they have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit to [ __ ] consumers. No. And their happiness is to [ __ ] you. Yeah. So uh we don’t get to do stuff fun stuff like this. Give me money. Yeah. Well, I hope that fun stuff does uh you know work out and then because the only way it gets really trickled on over into the US is if you know it does well in the EU. It gets codified, it gets put into law and then we we bother our senators one at a time, I suppose. Yeah. But I feel like once they get something going, they’re going to look at that like how can we get around that? Yeah. Who can It’s almost like a test bed for the Americans like okay so that tactic work into the next step. So, we’re going to cut that tactic off when it gets here. Yeah, that’s how it works. Yeah, the EU video game groups do not want this to pass. The video uh video game groups and like four weird bootlicking YouTubers for some reason. Uh again, I’m not going to bring them up cuz I don’t care and I don’t like them. Uh but they according to these groups, private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure player data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave right holders liable. Shut the [ __ ] up. We didn’t ask you to do that. Yeah, we’re not asking you to pro retain liability in perpetuity. They’re like, you know, that’s the biggest straw man ever. They’re like, well, we can’t give you $5. What? I didn’t ask for $5. Uh, and then they finally said, “In addition, many titles are designed from the ground up to be online only. In effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.” So, I think the problem with this is um, you can just give people the ability to run their own private servers. We’re not telling you to run them. We’re just How dare you suggest that the company? Oh, that’s like that’s in a realm that’s outside of possibility because they would tell you Alex and lawyer speak. No, because we would be you would be taking our work, our trade secrets, our you know code, our we would have to share that with you and we don’t want to. We should not be forced to you know share that. You took my money. Yeah. Because you asked for a product and I gave you a product but you took it away. But what so what what happened was you signed the contract that said I was going to take it away at the beginning. So yeah, you almost had me there, Joe. If you continue to run the game, you get to keep your trade secrets, you get to keep all those things. But if you take the consumer’s money and then decide it’s no longer profitable enough for you to run, that’s when you have to, you know, be like, “Fine, we’ll release. No, I don’t have to do nothing. I have to make money.” Yes. So that’s what this Games is hoping to do. And that’s I mean it seems like a really good thing and like it’s a long process like I mentioned to go from a citizens initiative to legislation and hopefully experts on both sides can you know because you don’t want just one side writing a bill. You want people to be like hey this is not going to it doesn’t actually work this way and then that’s how these things should be done and we just have to hope that that’s the case. But um I don’t know. I hope that it keeps its momentum going and then we get more people within the government, young people in the government who know what a video game is. Video games. Yes. Cuz I young people. Yeah. That’s the old people. Like the really old people. They’re always the ones making the laws and trying to figure out what to do with these these new fangled Yeah. old video games. Yeah. Yeah, same back in my day. Well, that’s I mean, we’re old now, so they should at this point the people in charge should know a little bit about gaming. Uh, but 20 years from now, it’ll be even more so. Yeah. All right. Apple has appealed the EU’s unprecedented 500 million euro fine. Uh, what? 500 million? That That’s actually That sounds like a good size. It’s a good size, Joe. And so the reason they got fined, and I’ll kind of explain what it means for them, is uh they violated EU law by not permitting app store apps to link or even make reference to alternative means of payment. So the EU is like, “Hey, we’re going to let you sell your cell phones to our people. We’re going to let you use the the, you know, the the things that we license, the mobile networks, and all these other things.” Uh and then Apple’s like, “Cool, I want to make 30% of everything that goes across that.” And they’re like, “Bro, no. You you can’t. you can sell your phones and you can make a lot of money and do all the you just can’t make all of the [ __ ] money for no reason when you yourself aren’t making the apps. And then Apple’s like, “Well, you’re going to have to legally force me to.” So, the EU did uh and then uh when they didn’t do it fast enough and they tried to like, you know, drag their feet. Yeah. Uh the EU said, “Hey, [ __ ] I was serious. I’m the I’m the EU and I get it that you’re a trillion dollar company and like the fourth biggest company that’s ever existed on Earth, maybe third.” Yeah. Um, but you have to do what I say be and you want to continue doing business here. Do this. Yeah. Uh, so they find them $500 million and Apple’s like, I this is unprecedented. It’s too much. Half a billion dollar. Half a billion. So Joe, it’s it’s tough for them because last year they made $180 billion. And so that would be like 210 of 1%. So not not 1%, 210 of 1% of what they made last year. Oh, we’re we’re at the we’re at the 0.0 area. Nice. 0.0 0.2 0.02. Wow. 0.002 of the total, which is 0.2%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s um Yeah, they that’s like a slap on the wrist, but that would be like if an ant was crawling on your uh No, cuz that would actually hurt. What if you’re ant? So So an ant well that would hurt even more. We’re trying to go backwards. So, an ant a kind, gentle ant with a tiny ruler in its hand slap your your hand. It’s Wait a minute. Ants are actually very strong. They can lift 10 times their body weight. A butterfly landed on your hand and that’s it. And didn’t even slap it with a a tiny butterfly ruler. Sue the butterfly. You sue the butterfly and then you sue the butterfly and then you make more money for everything you got. Yeah. Uh according to Apple, you come here for the great analogies and we give them to you. Yeah, this is EA. The EC is mandating how we run our store and forcing business terms which are confusing for developers and bad for users. Um users don’t want to pay Apple. I don’t think they do. Look, there’s some Apple stands out there that doesn’t make sense to me where they’re like, “No, Apple deserves 30% of everything that runs through their app store even though they didn’t design any of these apps. They probably work at Apple.” Yeah. Uh but so this bad I don’t know how it’s bad for users because this means that developers can keep more of the money, continue to make more apps. I mean they’re making the apps the things that you’re using uh them having money is is good because you get better apps probably with less ads because they get to make more money and not have to give so much. Should be a privilege though that they’re on Apple. Yeah, it’s a walled it’s a walled garden for a reason though. Beautiful, right? It’s prime real estate. Prime real estate. Uh and so uh the appeal is ongoing and I’ll let you know what ends up happening. Um, but they’ve got a lot of money. So, yeah. Cool. Yeah. Uh, the big story of the week is Subnotica 2. We talked about last week that Craftton had fired the uh former leadership at Unknown Worlds. These are the people that were in charge. Uh, and I mean all sort lots of stuff happened. So, they got fired and then the former owners decided they’re going to sue Craftton for firing them. And then it was revealed that if Subnotica 2 had released and hit certain sales metrics within this year, there had been this $250 million bonus paid to the company, not the employees, the owners, because that’s how this all works. And then uh they’re like, “Oh, that sounds nefarious. Craftton just doesn’t want to doesn’t want to pay this thing.” And that could be absolutely, but like we don’t know. But all of this stuff has started to happen. According to Craftton though uh absence of core leadership resulted in repeated confusion and direction. Uh they said that they abandoned the responsibilities entrusted to them and then they went on to like say exactly what. Um so they had made multiple requests to Charlie and Max to resume their roles as uh director and technical director respectively. Both declined to do so. Uh they just said they didn’t want to do what they were being asked to do. Um, one of them was working on a game called Moonbreaker, which failed. Then Craftton asked Charlie to devote himself to the development of Subnotica 2. However, instead of participating in the game development, he chose to focus on a personal film project. Um, and so Craftton believes that the These are probably all the reasons they come up with, right? Again, we have no idea. Are you The guy’s like, “Wait, are you talking about the thing that I work on in my free time?” Yeah. You’re including my free time. No, he filmed his kids. even breathe about this. Yeah. Yeah. 90 hours a day. Um so they believe that the absence of the core leadership resulted in repeated confusion and direction and significant delays in the overall project. Now to combat this, the three the the other guys that that used to run the the shows like the game’s ready for early access now. We don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s ready to go. We can get this out. We can get this bonus. We can do all these things. So we’ve got wildly different views on both sides. Crazy. Um but they are suing them. Uh, and they’re saying, “Yeah, and these are a lot of money. Their bonuses are a lot of money. This is That’s $250 million bonus.” I don’t I didn’t think Subnotica was that big. It’s pretty big. You can make $250 million when you make it Subnautica. So, $500 million purchase price for the company and uh 250 earnout compensation. God damn. Um to the three former executives with Well done. So, and it said, uh, and so now that’s why these they’re like, “We we have to pay 250 million.” Uh-uh. We got to find some way to not pay 250 million. Delay the game into next year. Hey, you were working on some film project. You told you told us one time, right? Yeah. It’s taking too much time from your Yeah. You got to let you go. It’s like, but that’s when I’m off. Yeah. When I was off. Why does it matter? The dude took a picture of his dinner. It’s like, nope, you’ve been filming stuff on your own. It’s like, no, that’s on company time. And so you’re stealing from the company that get out of here. Wait, what? I don’t know. I obviously I’m being hyperbolic about all this stuff and the details will obviously uh you know that’s a court case. Uh more than likely civil and or they will settle out of court and we’ll never know any of these things. Settle well that then then the company wins because I have to pay you $250 million. I’m going to do everything to figure out not to do that cuz that’s what companies do by default. So maybe all this was [ __ ] so that they can have the guy come to the table. Okay, here’s $120 million. So, uh, yeah, there was a bit a lot of people were real riled up over this $250 million thinking that it was going to go all to the developers and things and the it was just this publisher taking away all these things. And then I read, so there’s multiple layers that doesn’t go to the developers. So it says in addition to the initial $500 million purchase price, this is what Cfton is saying, we allocated approximately 90% of the up to $250 million earnout compensation to the three former executives. 90% got allocated to the the owners. This is [ __ ] But what about the goddamn developers? You know, you know, they’ll get they’ll get some of them. That’s $25 million to split amongst the little people’s pizza. Everybody’s a bad guy in this. Pizza parties are expensive. You got pizza. I want that little tiny slice that’s this big. That guy did did a lot of hard work. Why can’t you pay him the $250 million? And then you realize that when the guy gets the $250 million and the next person said, “Hey, we did a lot of hard work and we get no sprinkles in pizza party.” Uh [ __ ] boy. Of course the developers, you know, these three guys are like, “Oh, of course you would have given out a bunch of it.” It’s like they would have done it. Yeah, I I’m sure they would have given out some of it. Uh but it’s like you’re going to keep the majority of it like like it ends up happening. Um a major maybe they should keep a I This is complicated. You know what I mean? It’s like, well, what is a majority? I me if I was running a game company, I’d make sure $250 million. That’s that’s I’m going to give everybody on the team a million dollar B. We’re going to make everybody’s millionaires now. You know what I mean? I don’t know. And but it let’s say I did that. I don’t know how many developers were on Subnotica. Um what do you think? At least when at least core me team members probably, you know, 20 50 something like that. You could still That’s number one. That’s still not a majority. You could take 250 and give everybody a million. Barely scraping by, Joe. Yeah. With only 200 million. Barely scraping by. With only 150 million. Well, that’s after you selling for 500 million on top of the 500 you already sold for. Oh my god. Yeah. So, we again, we’ve got two radically different sides. One saying, “Hey, we bought we gave you a whole bunch of money and the promise for more money later. You were supposed to run this project because you had the secret sauce. you made the first one which is pretty universally even I I mean I [ __ ] hate that game because of my corrupted save files but that game is awesome but I [ __ ] hate it but it’s awesome and so it’s like yes I want another one and I’m sure millions of people want another one but those people were supposed to run it and so it’s like we don’t know it’s like was he really focusing on different games and not running the show you know or or was was it in good hands is the game ready to go as of right now and they’re just trying to skirt a $250 million bonus I don’t know we have to say alleged ly to allegedly allegedly allegedly I don’t know. All right, that’s it. You got you got a a little one or two. I got a little one or two. Uh you know, so right now uh if you don’t know uh Overwatch and it just said that uh the director set the record straight. Look, competition is healthy. They said in its rival with Marvel Rivals. So Marvel Rivals just released what is it? Season 3 Phoenix. I’d like to try it out maybe today or you know this week just to see uh check in on the game. But um Marvel Rivals released 400,000 people uh players at launch. Meanwhile over uh Overwatch 2 at the same time saw a decrease in turnout and a little slower season though it picked up afterwards which I’m kind of surprised about. Um people are creatures of habit. People are creatures of habit. Yeah. So he said, “So much of what we’re doing this year, from perks to stadium to map voting, we did full hero bands and the heroes we’re releasing have been in the works for over a year.” He’s talking about Overwatch 2 as part of a new strategy for the game to have a big annual kickoff of the year. You know, they’re trying to say, “Look, hey, we think competition is healthy.” Keller says it does force people to innovate more and to always put your best foot forward. And I don’t think what you’re seeing in Overwatch 2 right now is exactly in response to Marvel Rivals, but you just said it in the same sentence that it forces you to innovate more. It forces you to put your best foot forward. Why do I bring this up? Well, because uh little game, little little EA Sports, basically all sports games, if one company gets a goddamn monopoly on it in a genre, then they don’t real they don’t feel motivated to spend the extra money. And so Overwatch 2, them people are having to really uh work on it, listen to their player feedback. That might be why they’re gaining players back is because their Marvel rivals forced them to actually pay attention. If they had known that Rivals was going to be so goddamn big on its launch, they probably would have put more effort into that single player than canceled content that they kind of sold everybody on. They’re like, “Hey, join get this second one and we’re going to show you all this new Oh, never mind. It’s all canceled.” It’s like, oh. So, next story I got the Expanse RPG. We did a video for it. uh when they revealed this during the recent uh sort of E3 reveal kind of stuff uh the developers are humbled by the comparisons to Boware and but don’t expect it guys to be a straight copy of Mass Effect cuz we were even saying Mass Effect and then other people are saying Mass Effect too and say well you know we make a you know our story a little bit differently from that um and so let’s see the creative your expectations bro yeah the creative director Alexander has addressed the comparisons directly he said he was humbled Uh Mass Effect is a great inspiration for us because it’s an iconic game for the Xbox 360 generation and a lot of the Outlat team members played it in their youth. Um it would be impossible to deny that Mass Effect has had a lot of impact on us as game developers, but he stressed he won’t be completely mimicking uh that particular case. He says, “We make our story a little bit differently. we’re making more choices and consequences and we want to make sure that this game still has a lot of them provided uh with a lot of agency. So, um let’s see, one example cited is how players can choose different planetary origins for their characters and then the way this plays into how other characters are perceiving. So, if you happen to be playing a character on of Mars or Earth, you’re going to be able to select your origin from the start of the game, but then you’re, you know, the wave characters react to you differently. Uh, but if you begin in as a belter origin with that weird accent, then you’re going to be much more welcomed on Cersei’s and you’ll have to uh you’ll have more opportunities, more places to visits, more side quests, you know, and then vice versa depending on where playability there too. if your backtory actually matters unlike it did in Cyberpunk which but as far it’s funny that he says that because um that just encourages more Mass Effect that just encourages more comparisons and I guess Mass Effect didn’t have like different origins. You were either female shepherd or male shepherd but other other RPGs have that. So that’s good. I’m I I I’m happy that they’re um you know humbled and they’re you know drawing comparisons with really good RPGs. Uh so I’m I’m excited for the expanse if you can’t tell. Um okay. And then uh let’s see. Uh I do want to mention just one more which is after seven years in development the most exciting Grand Theft Auto total conversion mod. So if you like mods here’s a little mod corner. Um what is it called? Let’s see. It’s um Grand Theft Auto San Andreas’s stories. Um and this was, let’s see, a prequel. Um and it looks like it’s probably going to be available for people to play around August. Um let’s see. By August, the plan is to have the first introduction mission showcase. That’s the cutscene dialogue and the mission itself. After that, I want to put bits and pieces and crumbs out there which lead up to the bigger release or even more showcases and more videos. At that point, I may drop a link somewhere on the internet and have everybody go download it. So, the guy’s been working on a total conversion with Rockstar quality without compromise for 7 years. Um, and it’s got a dedicated area on the GTA forums and it’s been in development if you’re keen to follow the development of GTA 1991 is what it’s called. So, GTA 1991. Some of those mods are so well done that these people get picked up by the the developers themselves. And sometimes the mods are so good what is it? Sea synthesis. Well, or they the they steal the mods and they put them in the remaster and that’s actually how you get Geralt’s penis flopping around cuz they forgot or who I think was it Geralt’s penis. I don’t know. No, it was something different. But the there was like some you’re combining two new stories. Yeah, there was uh there was some some nudity got thrown into some remasters because they just took some mods that they found online and they’re like, “Hey, we like these and the penises were too big cuz they were uh adult modifications.” All right. Well, anyway, thank you guys. That’s not all we got. We got another episode for you. Come check us out on uh part two. Thank you guys so much. Thank you to our sponsors. We love them so so much and we’ll see you on the next Angry Joe Show. Bye guys.