This week, we talk about EAs executive wage cuts and Chucklefish's progress to a more worklife balanced enviroment by raising their wages while still maintaining a 4 day work week. 

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/ea-caps-cash-severance-plans-for-execs-but-stops-short-of-limiting-stock

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/uk-studio-chucklefish-boosts-wages-to-help-offset-cost-of-living-crisis

https://twitter.com/AlexisTrust/status/1566789742187905025

CD Project Red is not introducing expansion DLC to the previous generations consoles due to system limitations focusing more on the PC and Latest Gen consoles.  

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/cd-projekt-red-leaves-last-gen-consoles-behind-with-i-cyberpunk-2077-i-s-first-expansion

A familiar voice actor from Portal talks about her dreams...

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-voice-of-glados-says-she-dreams-about-murdering-people/ 

RIP Thurston - https://twitter.com/ThurstonWaffles/status/1567618309612240899

fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

Chapters:

0:00 Intro and Topics

2:50 EA Executive Wages

15:20 Chucklefish Wage Boost

38:57 CDPR Cyberpunk Expansion drops Last Gen Consoles

47:24 Voice of GlaDOS

56:20 Roundtable and wrapup

This week, we tackle Harassment, Scams and Bans.

Harassment tackles the events happening with Arc System Works and the Guilty Guear Strive character Bridget where gender is in question. 

We also talk about Keffals and the trials she faced against the Kiwifarms group hosted on Cloudflare. There is also the harassment of a female Call of Duty streamer,Nadia Amine, that faces harassment from the community for being genuinely good at Call of Duty Warzone. In this list, we cover a developer who decided to post their political commentary

and anti-transgender rhetoric in their patch notes and was completely wiped from the Steam catalog after being banned from their own community.

https://kotaku.com/guilty-gear-bridget-trans-arc-system-works-email-1849464307

https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=700,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/114/873/706/original/2c7d8ec18d77aa13.png

https://kotaku.com/keffals-steam-dev-rant-domina-sorrenti-patch-notes-pc-1849487860

https://kotaku.com/call-of-duty-warzone-nadia-amine-cheating-tiktok-1849462452

The Developer behind Brok came up with an ingenious way to deal with Curator Key scammers who review bomb developers until a key is granted. 

https://twitter.com/COWCATGames/status/1563957983884845056

https://kotaku.com/brok-dev-steam-curators-scammers-review-bomb-scam-1849471272 

Nintendo is in the news again with more bans for modding the demo of Splatoon 3 to access a test range for a game. 

https://twitter.com/OatmealDome/status/1563202850767118337

https://kotaku.com/splatoon-3-splatfest-mod-ban-nintendo-switch-online-1849476257

Finaly, we touch on Sony and Tencent acquiring stakes in FromSoft to stregthen the Dark Souls/Elden Ring developer production and publishing capabilities. 

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/sony-and-tencent-increase-stakes-in-fromsoftware

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/tencent-and-sony-increase-stake-in-elden-ring-developer-fromsoftware

Chapters

0:00 Intro

0:35 Harassment

24:06 Scams

34:56 Nadia Amine

45:18 Bans - Splatoon

59:00 Round Table and Outro

This week we tackle Denuvo's involvement with Emulation Protection for publishers looking to port to the Nintendo Switch:

https://irdeto.com/denuvo/nintendo-switch-emulator-protection/

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/denuvo-says-devs-don-t-get-refunds-if-its-anti-piracy-tech-is-defeated

https://www.howtogeek.com/400126/what-is-denuvo-and-why-do-gamers-hate-it/

The PS5 price hike in select regions:

https://blog.playstation.com/2022/08/25/ps5-price-to-increase-in-select-markets-due-to-global-economic-environment-including-high-inflation-rates/

https://kotaku.com/ps5-playstation-5-price-rise-raising-hike-increase-sony-1849455516

And we finish with talking about the 3 day weekend by only working 4 days a week:

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/07/1103591879/a-big-32-hour-workweek-test-is-underway-supporters-think-it-could-help-productiv

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/rogue-games-shifts-to-four-day-work-week

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/adopting-the-four-day-work-week

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/4-day-work-week-iceland-study_n_60e3e409e4b06fb1a6ee7f55 

Chapters:

0:00 Intro and Topics

1:05 Nintendo/Denuvo Emulation Protection

25:30 Sony PS5 Price Increase 

41:01 3 Day Weekend

55:00 Round Table and End

This week, we talk about Tencent and Ubisoft and what this acquisition means and why it is happening. 

Show Segments:

0:00 Intro and Topics

2:17 Tencent looking to acquire majority share of Ubisoft

19:57 ABK and Nintendo Worker's Rights and Unionization

50:35 Pokemon Company humanitarian equity and Nexus Mods Pride

59:48 Roundtable and Exit

Refs:

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/exclusive-tencent-plans-raise-stake-assassins-creed-maker-ubisoft-sources-2022-08-04/

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/tencent-is-reportedly-looking-to-become-ubisoft-biggest-shareholder/1100-6506148/

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ubisoft-shares-soar-report-tencent-115705867.html

https://kotaku.com/assassin-s-creed-far-cry-tencent-ubisoft-acquisition-1849370656

We also hit on more worker's rights topics with Activision Blizzard King.  Nintendo joins the mix with some sex discrimination, pay gaps, and harassment that was in the news this week. 

ABK Refs:

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/activision-wants-all-blizzard-albany-employees-working-on-diablo-iv-to-vote-on-unionisation

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/activision-blizzard-accused-of-illegal-surveillance-in-new-nlrb-complaint

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/culture/activision-fails-to-shut-down-california-civil-rights-department-s-lawsuit

Nintendo Refs:

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/nintendo-of-america-contractors-describe-sexual-harassment-frat-house-environment

https://kotaku.com/nintendo-of-america-sexual-harassment-doug-bowser-1849424139

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/culture/new-report-alleges-sexism-harassment-and-pay-inequity-at-nintendo-of-america

At the end, we squeezed in some good humanitarian efforts and an incredible response by Nexus Mods to a Spiderman Remastered mod which removed pride flags and replaced it with the USA flag. 

Pokemon Company Refs:

Refs:

https://press.pokemon.com/en/THE-POKEMON-COMPANY-INTERNATIONAL-PLEDGES-25-MILLION-TO-PHILANTHROPIC-

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-pokemon-company-international-pledges-25-million-to-address-social-inequity 

Nexus Mods Refs:

Refs:

https://www.nexusmods.com/news/14733

https://www.pcgamer.com/worlds-biggest-mod-site-bans-mods-replacing-pride-flags-we-dont-want-to-and-wont-argue-this-with-you/

https://gamerant.com/nexus-mods-ban-files-anti-diversity/

https://twitter.com/ModDB/status/1560048806602866692 

Sit Back and ENJOY the show :)

This week, Unity has been in the news more than once with some of the new projects they are undertaking.  The flow at which it came in and headlines called our attention to a partnership with China business and another with US Military for simulations.  

Gamestop never ceases to amaze with the sheer amount of shenanigans with NFTs and their Beta Marketplace.   We go over what NFTs are in easy to understand terms and dive into why Crypto and NFTs are just bad.

To finish us off, a new ESports is in town with the worlds best productivity software...  this will surprise you...

Chapters:

0:00 Intro

1:20 Unity

24:12 Gamestop NFTs

41:55 ESports

51:00 Roundtable and Outro

This week, we talk about some of the practices we see with developers misrepresenting, misleading, or outright lying about their games before launch. This comes at the heels of 2 PCGamer articles regarding a mobile game that is a Witcher knockoff and a Kotaku Article for God of War clone for Xbox.  

Loot boxes come into the picture with some of this and we focus on how the EU is backing off making legislation for loot boxes and how Belgium is unable to enforce the loot box rules they have implemented. 

We then move to China with their loot box rules and begin the conversation with how difficult it is to release a game in china due to some of the barriers involved along with the 80+day review period.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

0:47 Developer Honesty

27:26 Loot Boxes

41:43 Regulation

53:36 Close

This week, we talk about Mods and the effects of enabling Easy Anti Cheat into VRChat - How it removes some essential accessibility options not baked into the software only supported by mods.  

We also touch on Microtransactions and their role in gaming using Diablo Immortal as an example since they have hit a 100 million in revenue across all mobile platforms in 8 weeks. Second only to Pokemon Go who achieved this in a single week.

Chapters: 

0:00 Intro 

0:47 Game Mods 

27:42 Microtransactions

59:30 Wrap up

Watch us LIVE on https://Twitch.tv/luminariweekly Saturdays at 22:30 UTC -5

This week, we talk about unionization of game developers within the scope of Activision Blizzard King. IMEI gives a great breakdown of what a union can bring to not only the software developers, but how it can benefit many across all disciplines. We touch on the Bungie v. Inkcell case and discuss the toxicity and hate issued at developers.  We finish off with talking about Stray and some of the neat things with raising funds for actual stray cats as well as Top Cat releasing some really cool swag for your favorite real life feline. 

Catch my live shows on Twitch.tv/luminariweekly and youtube.com/c/luminariweekly every Saturday at 10:30pm UTC -5 (cdt)

This week we tackle Nintendo of Japan's declaration of equal benefits for domestic partnerships both same and opposite sexed. We also comment on an article found on Kotaku of a Bioware Developer being surprised about users wanting romance options with Garus.  Finally, we tackle a hat that can detect if you are viewing porn from China as reported by PCGamer.  Topic Guide: 0:00 Intro 1:35 Equal Partner Rights 17:14 Porn Hats 44:12 Alien Romance 53:39 Round Table and end   Welcome to the UDP Broadcast - Where we discuss gaming related stuff and offer somewhat uninformed opinions.  Podcast Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbUXjvzDRTCW4ZmQRJjpthYibc3QCVDff The UDP Broadcast is made up of 4 gamers with a focus in gaming, game industy, game theorycrafting, game news, and games politics. We hope you have as much fun listening as we do talking about it.   Watch us LIVE on https://Twitch.tv/luminariweekly   - Lumi - LuminariWeekly -  https://www.Twitch.tv/luminariweekly https://www.Twitter.com/luminariweekly https://www.Youtube.com/luminariweekly https://www.tiktok.com/@luminariweekly - IMEI - IMEIGaming/IMEI21 -  https://www.youtube.com/imeigaming https://www.twitter.com/imei21 - Cajun - TheNordicCajun -  https://www.Twitch.tv/thenordiccajun https://www.Twitter.com/thenordiccajun https://www.Youtube.com/thenordiccajun https://www.TikTok.com/@thenordiccajun - Boombati - MrBoombati -  https://www.Twitch.tv/mrboombati https://www.Twitter.com/mrboombati https://www.Youtube.com/mrboombati Podcast hosing: Youtube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbUXjvzDRTCW4ZmQRJjpthYibc3QCVDff Anchor.FM: https://anchor.fm/udpbroadcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4PuQBgiPnqm4Ag1qp7iu6T Amazon Music : https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/81c64ffc-4627-43a7-9001-15f826350f3c --ALL opinions in our casts are our own and not representative of the organizations that employ us.

Welcome to the UDP Broadcast - Where we discuss gaming related stuff and offer somewhat uninformed opinions.

Escapism and mental health are an important consideration with gamers. Between enablement by other gamers and complete neglect from those that suffer from severe cases due to addiction. Cajun also gives us insight into the Pokémon TCG crossover with Pokémon Go to look for a Ditto.

Release: July 9, 2022

Full Podcast: 

Podcast Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbUXjvzDRTCW4ZmQRJjpthYibc3QCVDff

The UDP Broadcast is made up of 4 gamers with a focus in gaming, game industy, game theorycrafting, game news, and games politics. We hope you have as much fun listening as we do talking about it. 

Watch us LIVE on https://Twitch.tv/luminariweekly 

- Lumi - LuminariWeekly - 

https://www.Twitch.tv/luminariweekly

https://www.Twitter.com/luminariweekly

https://www.Youtube.com/luminariweekly

https://www.tiktok.com/@luminariweekly

- IMEI - IMEIGaming/IMEI21 - 

https://www.youtube.com/imeigaming

https://www.twitter.com/imei21

- Cajun - TheNordicCajun - 

https://www.Twitch.tv/thenordiccajun

https://www.Twitter.com/thenordiccajun

https://www.Youtube.com/thenordiccajun

https://www.TikTok.com/@thenordiccajun

- Boombati - MrBoombati - 

https://www.Twitch.tv/mrboombati

https://www.Twitter.com/mrboombati

https://www.Youtube.com/mrboombati

Podcast hosting:

Youtube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbUXjvzDRTCW4ZmQRJjpthYibc3QCVDff

Anchor.FM: https://anchor.fm/udpbroadcast

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4PuQBgiPnqm4Ag1qp7iu6T

--ALL opinions in our casts are our own and not representative of the organizations that employ us.