Are Gamers Done with EA? Discord’s IPO and the Quest for Better Games

And welcome to a new episode of digital coffee gaming brew, and I'm

your host, Brett Deister. If you could please subscribe to this podcast and all your

favorite podcasting apps. You have a five star review, really does help with the rankings.

Let me know how I'm doing. But this week, we'll be talking about a

little about kingmakers, discords IPO, since it keeps

on well-being talked about. We also

have a bolt gun too a little bit, and we

have Claire Oz

or obscure expedition thirty three.

We have Capcom and kind of their digital sales

and a little bit of discords orbs, which is interesting

in general. The AMD r RX nine

sixty x t, and then

really mainly about EA and kind of their their

cancellations since they love to cancel things. And also just

them not understanding gamers and a little bit about Battlefront two and why it's

not really not gonna be Battlefront three is not gonna be made. I just do

not believe that EA cares enough to actually be made

since their focus is going to be more on their

core products, but I always could be wrong.

So we will see, but let's get on.

That's good. Alright. So I hope you're having

a great Friday and a great weekend

as well. But first off, Kingmakers is going to be

in early access on PC on

10/08/2025. So

you got a little time to wait, but it's still right around the corner. And

this game looks like the most interesting because you're playing in

a medieval world, but you have, like, modern, like,

weaponry, like machine guns, tanks, that that type of

thing, motorcycles. You could play with friends. I mean, it looks like a

really fun third person strategy game that no one

really has tried or even wanted to make. And so this is why

it gets so much attention because, I mean,

as guys, we always thought about that too, like, going back and, like, giving

people modern weaponry when they didn't have it, which would be an extremely

unfair advantage as we if is if you've seen in the game, it makes

you have a extremely unfair advantage, but it is fun to

roll tanks through, like, wooden buildings and see them destroyed.

And, I mean, it's just gonna be to me, it's it just looks

like a lot of good fun.

Alright. Moving on to Discord, and Discord is reportedly

working with JPMorgan Chase on an upcoming IPO as reported

by Bloomberg in March 2025. The former CEO,

Jason Citron, indicated that the company

would probably go public in late twenty

twenty four, which did not happen. Discord has

hundreds of millions of registered users and is significant for

developer community management. There are concerns that

changes benefiting Wall Street can negatively impact user experience and a

phenomenon referred to as

an shift of vacation. Never heard that's a made up word.

At the twenty twenty five gaming to developers

conference, discord CTO, Stan

Vinicki and SVB,

Peter Celis discussed their monetization

strategy emphasizing discord night Nitro as central

to their offerings. Discord user base grew significantly

during the COVID nineteen pandemic because no one could go anywhere and it was the

only way to communicate with people. The company attempted to expand

its focus beyond gaming, but retreated from that strategy in

2024, leading to layoffs of a 70

employees. Discord has invested in making its mobile

app more accessible for low end devices, which has led to increase

mobile user usage among gamers. Yeah. The old way

was a lot better. I I still don't like it that much. Discord

Nitro, a subscription service offering, various features

is is a key part of Discord's monetization strategy differing

from other platforms that prioritize advertising.

Cellist identified three products for Nitro subscription, time

spent in Discord, time in voice chat, and the number of friends with

Nitro. The company plans to monetize through a carrot

and stick approach post IPO potentially enhancing

Nitro offers with limiting features for free users.

Yeah. So here's the issue with always going

public is that you always have to make sure that the investor is

satisfied, which basically means you're gonna be nickel and diming the users that

major product popular. And it has always happened. Facebook was great

until it went to its IPO, and then basically, your organic reach

and just showing it to your friends fell off significantly

to pay us money so you you can show yourself to your

friends or businesses likewise. And

it it this just keeps happening because,

unfortunately, investors are mostly stupid about a lot of things.

They're good about investing in things, but they're stupid about a lot of other

things. Like, for example, before the

Ryzen chipset went live, I put a whole bunch of money into

AMD because I knew that that chip was actually going to be good as in

other investors were like, no. AMD is gonna be terrible. This is not gonna be

good. It's not gonna move the needle. And they were dead wrong. I was right

because I knew what they were doing, and I had

faith that this chip was going the CPU was gonna be

different from bulldozer, which was abysmal. It was

awful. And I was right, and I

didn't know how right I was because Intel had dropped the

ball so terribly that basically AMD took

a very commanding lead for a while. It's still going back and forth, and

AMD is still hurting at least in the

GPU side, but the CPU side is very healthy. My

issue with this in doing the carrot stick approach and

limiting free users is that

it is always going to be an eighty twenty thing. You're always gonna have

80% people not paying for what the 20% of people are

going to pay for. So if you're trying to get more than 20%,

you really are going to be hurting yourself. Look at Evernote.

Evernote kinda did this and they kinda started limiting

features for free users that were before not

limiting and this cord did a little bit and people were upset. And if discord

keeps on continuing down this road, they will

lose most of their users because users will go

fine. I'll go to guild. I'll go to team back to

teams to speak. I'll do something else and

discord bye bye. Like, gamers have

been nickel and dimed with monetization strategies through

different games that if you push too hard, we

will find another route. We are very savvy in figuring out

what other way we can do it. Now for the as quote, unquote, the

normies, yeah, you will stick on there, but eventually when it

starts to become too much, even the normies will leave. So

they have an issue. I would not advise this. I know it's

the easiest way to do it in limiting free users, but

it's gonna be stupid if you give time limits on how much you can

use voice chat. You're gonna if you're gonna even have

more restrictions on the file size you're going to be delivering, and they

already did this once. And if you're gonna be significantly limit

limiting video calls, This is not gonna go well, and eventually

they will be sold. This doesn't sound like a

good strategy at all. I get where they're coming from. I

get that they're trying to appease investors so they can see, like,

they're making money off of this, but there has to be a point

where you're like, we're not going to do this because this could actually potentially

hurt, which also leads me

to their new in game or new in app currency called

orbs, which users can earn by watching commercials.

Orbs can be used to purchase cosmetics from Discord shops.

Initially, orbs will be awarded for completing quests related

to Discord advertising such as watching movie trailers or streaming

partnered games. The only available quest in the beta

involve watching a commercial for orbs resulting in

you earning a 50 orbs. Users can buy

Nitro discord nitro with orbs with a

three day credit losing 1,400 orbs.

So this is their other carrot of the stick, which is, hey, get the

orbs, you can get nitro, so you can get the full benefit of discord.

And this is where it's heading in

2025 with discord. Like I said, discord has got to be

very careful about how they do this because companies have done this

before where they started heavily limiting the free users and the free

users bolt because there are always alternatives

to you. You are popular because you

were easy to use and it was a great alternative to

using in game chat because I needed to have to talk to people through in

game chat. However, people can always just go back to in game

chat or they can find an alternative. And there's, like I already

stated, team speak, there's guild, there's alternatives to it.

So Discord, you are not the only one

in this little playground of virtual communication and gaming.

Be very careful on how you do this because if you push too

hard, people will leave.

Alright. Moving on to Bolt Gun two is a sequel to the game Bolt

Gun, which is basically a boomer shooter in the Warhammer 40 k

game. Great game. Fun game. The

principal design of bolt two's Matt Boone

and bolt two, the character Malam Sadio will not

be limited to location of Korea and will have a branching

campaign across new worlds. There will be new environments and enemies in

Boltgun two, including some of some that fans have requested.

The game aims to maintain a tone described as joyous,

grim dark, celebrating Warhammer 40 k universe. The sequel

is set to launch in 2026. Development team is considering player feedback

for game modes including the potential return for horde mode.

The original bolt gun was connected to events of Warhammer 40

k's Space Marine, and the team aims to incorporate Easter

eggs for fans in the sequel. I think this is great. The

original one was fun. It's a fun boomer shooter if you actually like that. If

you don't, then yeah. But it it was a good take on this, and

it's relatively cheaper to make because you're not using

the latest tech. So I said relatively

because, I mean, it's still gonna cost money, but not

opposed to, like, Assassin's Creed shadows

or GTA six, which

supposedly may be costing a billion dollars in development cost, which

is insane to think about and should be

interesting to see if they actually do break even or

are profitable with this game. Because the higher the cost gets

and you have to add in marketing, the more money you have to make to

recoup that.

Anyways, moving on to expedition 33 has

surpassed 3,300,000 units announced by publisher

Kepler Interactive and developer Sandfall Interactive. The game was

released on 04/24/2025 for

Xbox and PlayStation five, Xbox series, PC via

Steam, and Xbox, Epic Game Store. It's also available

on Game Pass. The game sold 500,000 units on its first day and reached

1,000,000 within three days and 2,000,000 units in

under two weeks with an additional 1,300,000 sold since then.

The game features a turn based combat with real time mechanics allowing players to craft

unique blends for their characters. And it involves

a quest to destroy a character known as the painters who alien races

individuals of a certain age. The game is developed using Unreal

Engine five and includes graphics and soundtrack designed to enhance the gaming

experience. It's a great game. It's a little hard, but it's a great

game overall. It's fun. It

kinda hearkens back to the old school way of RPGs with turn

based instead of real time combat, but there are

some mix of real time combat like blocking and dodging and

jumping. So there are some aspects of real time, but it's

not fully real time and it's not fully turn based, but it's

for the most part turn based because you can't just swing

your sword whenever you feel like it. You do have to wait your quote unquote

your turn, but you can do other things like block dodge,

which can be difficult because you really have to time it very

correctly. And the camera angles do

well, they don't do a great job of helping you figure that out a lot

of times. So all in all, it's an

interesting game. It's a hard game in a particular way, but

once you figure it out, it's a great game. Alright.

Capcom has reported that in the most recent fiscal year, over

6% of its digital game sales were on PC. More than

54% of total game sales, including physical, were

also attributed to PC. This marked an increase from the

previous year where PC sales accounted for just over 52

percent and digital sales, about

47% of total sales. In terms of

unit sales, PC digital sales rose from two point

21,600,000 units in,

2023 to

28,200,000 in

2024 while digital sales decreased

from 19,700,000.0 to 18,500,000.0.

Capcom has posted its eighth consecutive year of record profits largely

driven by the success of monster hunter wilds. And they will keep on

doing it as long as they don't go, quote, unquote, woke, which basically means,

like, censoring things they shouldn't be censoring and just keeping

whatever they're doing to the real aspect of what the game was. They kind

of done it with a few games and they're hurting from that. But

all in all, if they keep to, like, their core basics of the game and

what people remember from their games, they're gonna do very

well. There is no doubt about it,

but we will see what actually

happens. I am

optimistic about it, but

just you just cannot rely on Western developers

to help you with your games anymore for the most part. There's

some good ones, but for the most part, no. They're all pretty

much leaning towards that, and it's it's

a little

weird. Alright. So moving on to the

AMD Ryzen RX nine sixty

XT or the RDNA four GPU benchmark has been released showing that

it performs slower than the RX

7,700 XT, which is based on the

RDA RDNA three architecture.

The r t x, nine sixty x t will be available in two models of

16 gig version priced at $3.49 and the eight gig version

priced at $2.99. So spend the extra

$50 and you get double the memory. And then rather than

just get rid of the eight gig one. I mean, seriously, stop it. The

GPU utilizes TSMC's four nanometer process

technology and features a boost clock of up to 3.13

gigahertz with expectations for custom models to reach

3.2 to 3.3 gigahertz. The total power

consumption of two d p of the GPU ranges from a 50 to a

82 watts depending on the v ram variant.

There are the r r x nine sixty x t's

scored a 9,315

points in the open c l benchmark which is 31%

faster than the r x 7,600 XT,

but 14% slower

than the RX 7,700 XT

in Vulcan test. It was 25% faster than the RX

7,600 XT, but 12% slower than the RX

77 XT. The testing system includes

well, they included in the in that is the seven the

Ryzen seven ninety eight hundred x three d CPU, 32 gigs,

Ram and DDR five Ram.

And AMD has positioned the RX nine sixty XC as a

competitor to the Nvidia's r t x fifty

sixty t I lowering, offering a lower price than the competitors

eight gig variant, which I still don't understand why they're doing eight gigs. Just just

get rid of the eight gig variant and just do 16 gigs. I mean, we

just just doesn't work anymore. I mean, it's I

don't understand why they keep on doing this, and and video is probably the worst

at it because they keep on being, like, the gamers want it. I'm like, yeah.

Because you price it competitively, but it's doesn't

work out in the long run. Like, stop doing it.

Just do a 16 gig version and let that be it. I

like, for AMD, it's it's a weird thing because they price it

$50 difference, and it's like, well, might as well spend the extra $50 for the

16 gig version than the eight gig version, but

I don't know. To me, I would just wait until the next

generation cycle because all these are it's it's a weird

time. Like, none of these are that good.

Like, the 5,000 series is just a head scratcher for

gamers with NVIDIA because it's just like you didn't really

make it better than the 4,000 series. For whatever

reason, the 4,000 series is still better,

but you can't get your hands on the 5,000 series because they're always sold out

every time because they just can't make it fast enough or ship

them everywhere, which, I mean, leads to we should start

manufacturing here because it does just help

with that time of getting them to stores. But, I mean, then

again, how much more is it gonna cost us? Because

Nvidia already is expensive as it is. They're

great cards for the most part. 4,000 series is still better than

5,000 series, but I was interested

in the 5,000 series, then I kept on seeing that there was gonna be low

stock. It was gonna be hard to find, and then it was like, well, it's

kinda sorta better than the 4,000 series. And And I have 3,000 series of the

3090. I was like, I'm just gonna wait until the 6,000 series

or the super or heavily price drop because no one's buying

them. I don't know what's gonna happen, but to be honest with you,

it doesn't look good.

Alright. So EA. EA is in

is very weird because they keep on doing the

wrong things, and they keep on having

the dumbest philosophy on

gamers that I've ever seen. First of all, it's

now this was probably a better decision from them, but EA has

canceled Black Panther game. We all know about this. Cliffhanger Cliffhanger Games

is gone, which is funny because Cliffhanger Games

was a very racist develop developer that basically

only cared about hiring people of color and not white people

because white men bad for whatever

reason. And it's usually stupid because it's like we need a safe space. I'm like,

that lady that's been all over from her last thing. It's like, lady, you are

more likely to be killed by black men than you are by a white guy.

More than likely. It's not even, like, close.

But they are still making Marvel

games. So the Ironman game is still in development. The Black Panther

game is not, which it seems like the Black Panther game was gonna was

almost done, which is funny because

it must have been really, really bad for them to be like, nope.

We are not publishing this. This is not good. You guys have had

enough time to try to fix this, and this is not doing well.

Plus, they've already laid off a bunch of people from the Titanfall

game that they were supposedly making, and

I wasn't in favor of an instruction shooter Titanfall game. I just wanted an

Titanfall three, which is basically just a

a Arcadia could be a very competitive shooter, which I don't understand why

they don't just don't want a competitive shooter. I don't know why they don't wanna

go toe to toe with Call of Duty and figure out their own way, which

is different from Call of Duty because Titanfall is

a great game. Everybody that has played Titanfall wants

more Titanfall, but then we got Apex Legends, which

wasn't better than Titanfall. I know it's in the Titanfall universe and maybe some of

you actually like it, but it still wasn't better than Titanfall. I'm sorry.

Titanfall was the best, and Apex is

below that. So you have

that. Then we have people are playing Battlefront

two. Fun game. Again, I've been playing a little bit too. Fun game.

Great game. Frustrating game at times, especially when you're on the

losing team for several rounds, and you're like, I don't wanna play this

anymore. But fun game all in all. It's got the look and

feel of Star Wars. They they really did hit the mark on

Battlefront two. I was never a fan of the star cards or their

modes, but they're still fun to play. It's not bad.

So we have that issue, and you haven't

heard anything from EA about either with the cheating problem it's

having in PC because more people players are playing it, or battlefield

battlefront three is gonna be coming, which I highly

likely it's not going to be coming.

Here's why. They just don't know what to do with it, And most of the

team that created Balfour and Balfour two are gone.

So the only way, and I talked about this last week, the only way to

do it was to remaster Balfour two for the

modern, like, consoles and everything and for the

team to understand how to make it.

That could work. Plus, there's really is not

that much destruction in the game. There's some destruction, but it's not very

much. And

EA just really does not wanna make a lot of Star Wars games. They had

Star Wars Squadrons, great game, just

did not put a lot of resources into it. Probably could've made it a really

best seller and really great game. Just did not wanna do

it. Probably could've made the second a second game of it

because it was really well received. Not gonna do it.

We had Battlefront and Battlefront two. Great games. Very

well optimized, mind you.

Probably not gonna make the third one. Why? Don't know what to do with it.

The release of it was pretty awful because of the

monetization strategies that they implemented,

but they don't know what to do with it. They don't really want.

The main issue is is the licensing fees, even though they're doing

Marvel. The CEO, Andrew Wilson, has just

not wanna do more Star Wars games. I don't really know why exactly, but they

just don't wanna do it. They do have a few of them. They

have the Jedi Jedi series, which they're doing the third and

final one, and then Zero Company, which is more of a

X COM meets Star Wars type of a thing. They did have other ones in

the works. I know they had like a like a

RPG type Star Wars game. Open world did not

do canceled that one.

So to me, EA is going really

gonna be focusing on their course. The Sims, Battlefield,

and Apex. Really, it's gonna be that with maybe Mass

Effect. Dragon Age is no more, and it's probably not gonna be

made anymore, unfortunately, because they screwed it up so badly

with Dragon Age of the Vale guard that

they're not even gonna try again. It's just kinda like you guys made your

game. It was terrible. Get out.

That'd be me. Get out. You're all fired because it was

bad. And I played it for

free on PlayStation. I still haven't completed it because I don't care enough

to complete it. It's just that bad of a game,

which leads me to, again, the creator of drag Dragon

Age setting, a veteran, BioWare

discussed EA's approach to handling RPG fans

during a conversation a conversation with

GameRadar. He stated that EA executives believe that

RPG fans would buy any game labeled as RPG without

requiring a specific appeal to them.

EA bosses referred to dedicated RPG fans as living in the

cave. The focus of BioWare shifted towards making games that

appeal to broader audience rather than just traditional

RPG fans. The the shift resulted in games like Mass

Effect two, three, and drama dragon age two in in the

inquisition, which had more cinematic and action

oriented focus. He expressed dissatisfaction

with the direction of the games doing that he wanted to maintain

traditional RPG mech mechanics, which were not

welcomed by EA. He left BioWare in 2016

and subsequently worked at Beamdog and established

his own studios, summer fall. So

and this is the problem with EA. Your bosses are stupid.

This is stupid. You don't this

is the same thing with with podcasting with a lot of people. They keep on

saying podcasting. It's for everybody. I'm like, no. That's not how this works. You

don't make a game for everybody. You make a game specifically for the

audience. What happens is if it's really good and you make a game for the

audience, it becomes a wide appeal. But you don't do the

opposite. This is dumb. Yeah. You got away with mass

effect two and three. And drama, you did not get away with.

Dragon age two, you didn't get away with either because people hated it, and inquisition

was okay. And I mean that

loosely. It was okay, boring, and then you

and then dragon age Vale guard happened, and nobody

wanted to play your game because you did not care about

RPGs, which Dragon Age originally was that.

The original is still the best one. Everybody keeps on saying

Dragon Age origin is the best one, and they are right about

that. Dragon age two was interesting from a story

perspective, but all in all,

since it has so little time to actually be developed,

it was redundant. You use the same things. But story

wise, interesting. Inquisition

wasn't bad, wasn't as good as Origins,

was better than Dragon h two, but it's not saying a lot, And

had an interesting story to tell. Then we hit

Dragon Age Velgarden. They're like, whatever you did in your past ones, we don't care,

which is weird to say because it was all about, like, continuing that

story and having your saves actually matter.

And, well, we're not really gonna follow the inquisition

with solace as the main bad guy. We're gonna do

something different. And then we're gonna put in a bunch of woke

ideology, like gender and

mispronouns. And then everybody was like, yeah, no, we're

good. We're not going to buy this. So their

approach from the bosses were stupid because you

cannot just put things into a game and expect gamers to keep

on buying them. Because eventually we're like, okay. We're we've had enough.

Your game is gonna fail. We don't want your game to fail. We actually like

we liked Bioware. We liked Bioware games, but EA is

stupid. I'm sorry. Most of these bosses need to be

fired. These are terrible decisions.

Terrible. The reason why Baldur's Gate three did so well because

it respected the fans. The reason why expedition 33

did well, respects the fans. The reason why

it was a tinted grove, that new one that came out respects the fans.

When you respect your fans, you know exactly what they want.

In turn, they will buy your game. When you disrespect your fans,

eventually they'll be like, we're done. We don't want this

anymore. We're tired of this.

So EA, get your act together. Stop thinking that people

are just gonna buy your game because it has the name recognition.

It only works so far. Battlefield is in the same spot

now because after two terrible releases,

I'm talking about Battlefield five and Battlefield twenty forty two, and

Battlefield five was not as bad of a release as Battlefield

2042. Battlefield five release was bad because your stupid

bosses again said open their mouth and said, if you don't like the game, don't

buy it. And we're like, okay.

Stop being stupid. It's not that hard.

All you have to do is make a game that fans want.

Maybe try some new directions. I get it. '20 '40 '2 tried some new

things, a 28 players in a battlefield.

Not a bad decision, just implemented terribly,

but at least you tried something. It was a little lackluster because I felt

like the development was rushed because you switched midstream, which, again, why

does EA do this every single time? It's like, oh, we gotta switch

gears. Alright. You have half the time you had before to make the

game, and it's like, of course, it's not gonna do well. You

barely had a functioning scoreboard.

Stop doing this. I mean, mass effect is people are gonna be

very, like, twitch eyed about this being like, I don't know

about mass effect, and I'm not even sure about mass effect five or whatever you're

gonna be calling it. Because to be honest with you,

Dragon Age kind of was the last straw for a lot of gamers in

BioWare. It's like, this is awful. Like, I don't want this

anymore. So, yeah, get your act

together and stop stop this nonsense of, like, you'll just

buy the game. Uh-huh. I know you I know sports fans do

this maybe a little too much, but the other gamers, we don't really

do this. We're like, okay. What are you offering? What is different from what I've

played before? Is there something new or interesting? Is this a good story? Or are

you just gonna try to, like, jam down things that I don't agree

with and go, well, if you don't like it, don't buy it. And it's

like, okay. From a

marketing's perspective, never tell your customer,

if you don't like something, don't buy it. Because guess what they will do?

Not buy it.

That's the point. You go, okay. I'm gonna take your feedback.

Maybe we shouldn't have a faked armed lady in the

trailer of Battlefield five because that's weird

and way too woke and stupid. It was the

that trailer was the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

Oh, disabled lady can actually fight in World War two. What the hell is that

all about? Like, I'd it was

so mind numbing numbingly dumb that I'm like,

who is running this company? Like, who thought this was a good

idea? Check mark checkbox. Yep. Good idea. No. It wasn't. It was a

terrible idea.

Anyways, what do you think about all this? Do you think

I'm right or wrong about this? I just I just think EA is in a

terrible spot, and there probably will be more layoffs. So don't be surprised if there's

more layoffs. But thank you for listening to

Digital Coffee Gaming. I really do appreciate it and

join me next week to talk about what's going on in the gaming

industry. I really do appreciate you guys listening to this,

but as always stay safe and get the game, play

the games that you want, or even get the games you wanna get and see

you next week later.