This week, Zak and Aaron kindly beg your attention to a very serious matter: the censorship of thousands of NSFW games across Steam and Itch.io at the behest of payment processors like Mastercard. 

Prompted by a grassroots organization with far-right connections called Collective Shout, this incident could have far-reaching implications for free speech, result in LGBTQ+ erasure, and mean that corporations become the arbiters of what does and does not constitute art in the future.

Please, enjoy.

Missed what's happened? Check out the links below. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlEHovdeKZw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUMwQ1euK8Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTDhsqN2NB4

Intro: 00:00:00
21,000 Points for Censorship: 00:04:02
Collective Shout Pt. 1: 00:15:39
Morality and Context: 00:25:58
Collective Shout Pt. 2 - Erasure: 00:35:32
What About Age Ratings?: 00:42:30
Applying the Same Logic to Books: 00:51:03
Conclusions: 00:55:30
Outro: 01:03:10

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This week, Zak and Aaron dig into a topic that's as absurd as it is concerning: the CEO of Roblox wants to officially incorporate dating into the platform. Completely ignoring the fact that the game's core audience is mostly children, David Baszucki seems to believe that bringing horny adults into the fold will act as a balm to soothe the "loneliness epidemic" plaguing the modern world. What could possibly go wrong?

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This week, Zak and Aaron delve into the nitty-gritty of the Stop Killing Games movement — an initiative with the simple goal of persuading publishers to, well, stop killing games. From preservation to protecting consumer interests, Stop Killing Games aims to solve a lot of high-level problems, and your hosts have many thoughts to share.

Oh, and feel free to jump ahead to Chapter 3 (or the 29-minute mark) if you don't want to hear two goobers explain what the initiative is in exhausting detail. 

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This week, Zak and Aaron sit down, inexplicably inspired by a meme, to discuss the rise of so-called "FriendSlop" games. These are titles like Repo, Lethal Company, and the recently released Peak, all of which are currently laying waste to the Steam charts as we speak. 

Why are these games so successful at the moment? What differentiates them from others on the market? What could this be saying about the industry at large? Your intrepid hosts are ready with, if not answers to these questions, at least a bunch more to match.

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It finally happened! A set of entertainment juggernauts — Disney and Universal — are taking the fight to AI in a big way. This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss the new lawsuit against image generator Midjourney, why it's happening, and what it could mean for the future. They also spend some quality time complaining about generative AI in general, because, well, there's a lot to complain about.

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 This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss the absolute onslaught of video game movie adaptations coming down the pike at breakneck speed. From questions of quantity over quality to musings on which projects have the most potential, your intrepid hosts dig into what may be the next Hollywood craze - or an unsustainable bubble building towards an inevitable burst.

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This week, Zak and Aaron take a moment to celebrate the runaway critical and commercial success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33... and then dig into why it won't matter at all to big publishers and the money-making machine behind them. Tragically, the narrative that breakout hits in the singleplayer space can somehow make them appealing to investors again is misguided, and Clair Obscur is just the most recent example. This is why we can't have nice things.

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Watch: The games industry is screwed - Alanah Pearce
Read: The State of Video Gaming in 2025 - Matthew Ball

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This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss Bungie's newest project, Marathon! The dig into everything from the upcoming extraction shooter's aesthetic to its narrative to its choice of genre in service of answering one question — will this finally be the game to make good on Sony's lofty live service ambitions? 

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This week, Zak and Aaron dive into a new controversy that may have long-lasting implications for the industry at large — Nintendo's decision to price some first-party AAA games at $80.

The duo discusses why this price increase is not only unnecessary and bad for consumers, but also how it stands to open the floodgates for greed among big publishers looking to make the all-powerful line go up for shareholders. They also spend some time dissecting why the argument that games need to increase in price to keep up with inflation is myopic at best, and completely misguided at worst.

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This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss the newly formed United Videogame Workers Union — a brand-new collective attempting to bring the power of collective bargaining to every corner of the industry, regardless of company or position.

They spend some time outlining the circumstances that brought us to this crossroads, and then dissect some of the potential positives of the movement as well as the challenges it may face moving forward. There are still a lot of questions left to answer, but one thing is for certain: this is a significant moment in video game history.

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