Giant Bombcast 578: Chrome-Ass GameCube

Baby Smurf didn't have his name yet!!!!

*ALSO* @Jeff - Im on Soundcloud - I'm signed in - how do you download this amazing banter? I want to use it as intros between songs on a mix (yes I still make mixes)

Surprised and disappointed about the Giant Bomb teams lack of nuance in this podcasts discussion of the Epic Games Store. "It's just another launcher", "it's just the internet being the internet" and "competition is good" are pretty darn reductive positions to take. I do though agree that the China specific concerns are entirely overblown and are being used in a pretty distasteful way to stoke fires.

yall aren't up on the DK lore, the current DK is not Jr, he's DK the third

@raszagal: But it is just another launcher. A free and very small piece of software that is just an interface to run games on the same platform as Steam, Origin and U-Play. Your PC. EGS exclusivity is not real platform exclusivity. It's nothing like console exclusivity.

@gram1124: As a mainly PC user. It's pretty damn funny to me to.

so will we get the full break theme in every podcast again now going forward? its been pretty sorely missed. never made sense to me to cut it down. there are always new people who havent heard the whole thing and its also a huge part of the personality of the show (and gb in general). giantbomb needs MORE of this not less.

With regards to games, I have rarely found user reviews to be that helpful. The truly helpful reviews tend to be crowded out by "10/10, best game ever!", and/or "0/10, complete garbage!". I would rather get GB' s take on a game. If anything, Epic not having this feature makes their storefront more attractive to me.

Jeff is not curmudgeon. Jeff is one if not the best game reviewers and we fans will take his opinion and not the ranting epic store haters. Jeff is right about pretty much everything. His take on dark souls came from playing a bit into the first or so boss. The same amount of time to tell that the game is poor to control, clunky, slow, no progression, and just hard for the sake of being hard so fans can stroke about how you need to GIT GUD. Honestly jeff and crew are just speaking from heart and we should take it as their opinion no matter how much it sounds like they are hammering a mallet and stating facts dismissively. We are all fans here and should act like them. Support the site and maybe thed have more time free to read articles etc. As of now the revenue may be slow and they spend tons of time working on the site which takes away from their free time. just my guess thou. Great work crew.

Its just their opinion. I think well see some banns with the way people offensively state that the crew is off on this topic. We gotta remember that this community is built on trust. We can trust that the crew is seeing both sides of the argument and as stated they dont think epic is the hugest issue.

TANTO-R is the original Wario Ware. So... yeah.

Also, what the hell is going on with this comments section? Between the Epic and Bioware stuff this whole place is a bummer.

Posted without comment.

https://soundcloud.com/christopher-armes/45-minutes-of-paul-stanley

Yes, I see your point and I agree with you. I am not opposed to them having this (or any) opinion. I think that I just have overreacted with my comment at that time and I do apologise to any people who got an eeky feeling from reading it.

Ehh dont apologize. You were just as justified in stating your opinion since this is an open forum for discussion. Me denouncing any opposing or informative constructive critisim of the crew was pure fanboy overload. Sorry and to tell you the truth i see your point as well.

Its just a very difficult thing to see your biases and adjust them with everyone in mind. I believe the crew tries most days, especially jeff but sometimes he can come off jet lagged and just takes one side without noticing the others merits. I can take off the fanboy goggles for a second and realize no ones perfect. Thanks for the reasoned response and comment.

Thank God for Dissenter. This Elitist "Californiacation" is why I stopped funding GB years ago. Am I far-right? Naw mate, you're just so far left that you can't recognize what the middle looks like any more. What does this have to do with this podcast you ask? Good question. They use tired old tactics like, "you're racist if you don't like X" They don't actually listen to peoples legit arguments, they just point to the extremes, and wipe their hands of any responsibility. Well done guys. And if this turns out to be a "scorched earth post" to you guys, then so be it.

I'm not sure why you are all shocked about the GB Crew's take on EGS. Anytime a discussion arises about an industry practice that is bad for customers, but has some benefit for developers, the customer side is always wrong/acting entitled/being shitty. The best you'll get is "this game does 'x' shitty practice more than everyone else and that sucks". I think it's a shame, but hey, opinions and all that.

@noelveiga: No Vinny so it isn't awash in blind love.

@ripelivejam: We can not be dicks even when Vinny is not around. I know it seems hard, because outside Vinny's radius of happiness --AKA the Vinnyshine--, things feel a bit dour, but it's possible. I suggest we all get together and try.

Like, right now. Just to prove we can.

Because ew.

The break music needs to stop

The blind hate about the Pre-Sequel and the oxygen mechanic is a little hard to listen to. Yeah, it does sound like an annoying mechanic to manage oxygen... but if you actually play the game, you discover that it isn't. Jeff seems more and more convinced that game was total dog shit based on seemingly no experience with the game. It was fine, folks. The oxygen management was not that big a deal, it mostly meant you could jump higher sometimes. That's it!

It's not just a launcher and you know it. Your purchase gets tied to your account with the platform holder. Epic or Valve, not Gearbox in the case of Borderlands 3. Everything connected to the purchase of that piece of software in terms of downloads, cloud saves, achievements, customer support, reliability of not removing games, etc are handled by the storefront, not the game developer.

You can definitely see it as the same as console exclusives depending on what's important to you. You are seeing it as, do I need additional hardware or not for the game. But you could just as well see it as do I need to give money to a company I don't trust or want to support? If I want to support Gearbox and purchase Borderlands 3 but I don't want to Support Epic. Then this is not possible during the the games exclusivity period. So it comes down to who do you trust to handle your games.

To boil it down to the most basic principle of Valve and Epic. Do you trust your games to the company claiming "Piracy is a service problem" or the company that left pc gaming completely because pc gamers are pirates and the money is on console right now?

For me its about trust. Epic has not earned my trust yet by having Tim Sweeney lying about transaction fees on twitter, shutting down all their games except Fortnite and having his company throw money around to entice people to his platform.

I don't think the way Epic store is trying to do businesses right now is good for pc gaming at all. They don't want to compete on features or price. They just want to be the only place to sell specific games to maximize their profit, good for them but not for customers. They may change in the future when they get a bigger non Fortnite customer base. But until then I refuse to support their way of making business.

Having seen the chart that Brad refers to, it reads like a bad joke or a parody, but it's completely serious.

Yes, the storefront that took down a game because it poked fun at the Chinese President is your best alternative for "Chi-Com Spying."

It bums me out whenever people claim that store exclusives are promoting consumer choice. They are removing consumer choice, rather specifically, not adding it. It gets a -bit- muddy in the case of Epic since you could say that these exclusives are in favor of better consumer choice down the line, though that doesn't invalidate all concerns on the matter.

I am all for Epic's store being around and successful, and am thrilled with some of the pushes they're making in regards to developer cuts and other such things. I just they weren't using such an anti-consumer tactic to try and strong-arm the situation in their favor while their platform itself is rather lackluster, but they have the money to do so and they've clearly made their choice. Consumers are perfectly valid to make their own choice and not support their store, and also valid to state their dislike for the business practices, though throwing childish fits about it does get silly and old pretty damn quick.

@m16mojo2: lol, just go listen to something else, and post there, my dude. Although elitist Californication is one 9f the more hilarious nonsensical jargon things I've seen lately, so thanks for the laugh.

And it's hilarious to me that people think there is a pure center in American politics. Newsflash: our center is on the right. Basically always has been save for a few tiny windows.

The Epic Game Store discussion was the first time in a while where I had to hit pause and just stop listening due to how disappointing and disagreeable their whole discussion was. I'm also not surprised at their stances after this many years listening to them but I wish there was at least one person on the staff that could try to see it from the consumer's point of view without acting ultra condescending about it.

1. Steam didn't take the game down the devs did.

2.The "Chinese President" you refer to made himself pres 4 life and censors or disappears any one in opposition.

How was 'Kong-Mitzvah" not the episode title?

I would've thought the emailer talking about humming along to the break song was a bit silly, but it turns out that when the break song was played in its entirety before they got to the email section, I totally hummed along to that bitch without even thinking about it. Shows me right. What a good little ditty; wasn't even aware that I was missing it until the full version played.

Brad is 100% right, the break song is cool but I don’t want to hear the whole thing every week. I prefer the smaller version.

Any news on a minecraft server? I'm itching to play since you mentioned it.

I don't know how i feel about not putting negatives on loot in the division. It feels like it makes loot even less interesting & worthwhile to care about. In a lootgame. What's the benefit? To make people frown less?

The epic game store discussion might seem like a 'good for devs' vs 'good for customers' discussion, with GB taking the side of the devs, but i have concerns for the devs. Especially the smaller & upcoming studio's. Just look at the store now. Which games are being put in the spotlight? Which studio's are getting paid? Which games are rejected to be on this exclusive store that promises increased visibility to the ones that get to be on it? Which games will get marketed by the streamers that get a mandatory revenue share from future purchases? How will devs use their pricing & revshare numbers to entice streamers to pick their game over a competing product? How will smaller studio's market their upcoming games across influencers when competing products have put price barriers in place? How will a handcurated frontpage serve millions of different people with all their niche tastes? Which type of games will get preferential treatment when we're dealing with limited slots? How will smaller games get in the spotlight once it has 100+ games when many indie titles already drown between the borderlands, division & bloodlines 2 now? How will quality rise to the top in a world where every creator has a financial benefit to gain from the sales of games in an evergrowing more competitive streaming space? Will games have to offer revshare to streamers to even get an honest shot if they're not on the epic store, given that they could be playing a financially more viable game instead?

Suddenly you might realize this has big implications for a bunch of smaller games & studio's. Unless you believe creators don't actually matter when it comes to games. While Fortnite, League, Pubg & Apex Legends reign supreme. And sure, more people tend to be angry when something directly impacts them than when it's indirect. On top of that, there are a lot of kids into games that really don't care about the people that make games, that do care about how they are able to get the games and if it uses their local currency or the prepaid cards they can buy at the supermarket. A whole new group that will shout on twitter at you. Sometimes i wonder if we'll all get more anti-consumer through social media because that will naturally be the bigger group that you get to see being angry & being shitty, instead of the smaller group on the other side of the aisle. It certainly makes it real easy to feel like you don't want to be on the same side of the debate as this shitty racist teen that gives 0 fucks about anything but his own enjoyment, eventhough that might only be one (bad) opinion.

It's also pretty hard for me as a consumer to fight the good fight for the devs unionizing. Like we're getting the 'i guess it would be good for those devs to unionize' shout pretty much every week by now, but i don't see how i can impact that from the outside. Not buying AAA games? I'm doing that already. Spreading the word about how garbage a lot of these studio's are being ran and how treating your employees badly will negatively impacts the games? I'm on it. But yeah, after that i'm kind of at a loss. The idea that you can't push back against multiple things at once is not accurate. Like we just voted for the upload filter & link tax idea here in the EU. An idea that starts with 'let's give the original source, the little guy, a boost instead of the big corps that muster a way larger crowd and benefit of that story way more than the little guy'. And that's a great ideal. But then you look a bit further into it and you start to realize what happens when everything needs to be verified for existing content and which companies would be capable of producing that capability & how that will affect the power dynamic & money streams in the future and suddenly that original ideal sounds further away than ever.

It was really good to hear the long break song come back! Missed it.