This week, Niki and John were supremely lucky to have Jeff Gerstmann on the show to discuss the shocking sale of Polygon to Valnet (laying off the vast majority of the team there) and the implosion of Giant Bomb, the very website Jeff cofounded 17 years ago. We did not plan Jeff's appearance like this! We promise. Niki, as of this recording, was still technically under contract there!

Very wild and sad and emotionally-draining day, but we still go around to other topics, including:

• What to make of the State of Play for Borderlands 4
• Apple losing the ability to block third party payment platforms
• Xbox price hikes
• Skin Deep, the new hilarious immersive sim from Blendo
• Jar Jar's in Fortnite now
• Clair Obscur is still unbelievably French

We even got Jeff to briefly talk about Blitzball. What a treat.

As usual, we pulled your burning HIVE QUESTIONS straight from our Discord like we do every single week.