A leaked trailer has made Mass Effect fans angrier than anything BioWare has done recently. With the studio shut down and Mass Effect 5 cancelled, a petition is circulating to force EA to sell the franchise. Luke and Matt go through the whole sad run from Andromeda to Anthem to the purple Dragon Age game, and they ask whether EA might still have plans for the IP (probably involving microtransactions).

From there the show gets bigger. Anthropic reportedly lost $80.7 billion in the first half of this year. Matt is paying $20 a month for something that costs far more to run, and Nvidia is pre-selling RAM to companies that haven’t got anywhere to put it. Epic Games has gone AI-first on its Disney shooter after laying off 1,000 people. Matt, a senior developer, asks how anyone becomes a senior developer when there are no junior jobs. Luke’s answer is that people will be paid to play games again, and he says it with a straight face. We also try to work out whether Star Trek is a realistic model for universal basic income.

There’s a Congressional bill that would let you actually own the games you buy, and Luke’s plan for Microsoft to get rich by bringing back a feature it scrapped on the Xbox One. A Valve developer said ‘HLX’ out loud and got teased for it afterwards. Luke says Half-Life 2 was repetitive and will defend that position. Matt has been playing Little Kitty, Big City for his daughter, and he keeps putting off the chainsaw ladies in Resident Evil 4. Luke reviews Street Fighter and Other Mummy after two “private screenings”, there are rumours about the next James Bond, and Taika Waititi’s Star Wars movie has been shelved.

• Rip Bioware Ea Shuts Down Storied Rpg Studio After Over Three Decades
• Mass Effect 5 Canceled as EA Shuts Down BioWare
• Leaked Mass Effect Universe Trailer Gives A Taste Of What Were All Missing
• Mass Effect Fans Call For Ea Boycott As Petition To Save Biowares Canceled Game Garners More Than 75000 Signatures
• Report Epic Games Goes All In On Ai For Disney Collaboration
• Video game ownership bill introduced in Congress
• Everybody Panic A Valve Developer Said Hlx In Public
• James Bond Screen Tests to Happen This Weekend: Finalists Emerge for Next 007 Movie
• Taika Waititi Says His Star Wars Movie Is On Ice

Luke went to PAX Aus! What did he do there? What does he hate about conventions? And what was Matt playing this week? You’ll have to tune in to find out.

Topics discussed

• PAX Aus recap and Luke's pinball glory
• Board games over video games
• Con pet peeves, long lines and panel etiquette
• Pokémon, Pikmin Bloom and location-based games
• Con food and drink
• Alec Baldwin documentary follow-up
• You Can See Everything (Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos)
• Tesla's new Roadster demo and electric car competition
• Mike Flanagan and Stephen King remakes
• Strange Horticulture, Resident Evil 4 remake and Outbound
• AI mashups and Xbox

Links

• ‘The Trial of Alec Baldwin’ Review: Rory Kennedy’s Bold but Blinkered Doc Centers the Movie Star in the ‘Rust’ Tragedy, Nearly Erasing Halyna Hutchins
• The Tesla Roadster flew, drove upside down, and hit 60mph in under a second
• Carrie Showrunner Reveals Which Stephen King Movie Should Never Get A Remake
• Xbox is officially embracing the chaos of AI-powered game ports

It’s episode 666, so naturally we spent a chunk of it assigning the Seven Deadly Sins to the gaming industry’s worst offenders. Unity took Greed for trying to charge developers retroactively per install (still unforgivable). AI took Gluttony. Microsoft took… also Gluttony, basically. Luke took Sloth personally and voluntarily. Chris Roberts, who has been making Star Citizen since 2012, has taken over a billion dollars, and still hasn’t released the game, nearly got Sloth but ended up on Pride, which honestly tracks more.

Also in this episode: Luke bought a shirt in Vietnam that might have sea cucumbers on it. Matt went to a fake Warped Tour at a brewery and thinks the Green Day tribute band put in more effort than actual Green Day. The Witcher 3 Remastered looks incredible on an ultrawide with ray tracing. Luke wants Night Trap but can’t get it in Australia. Someone is selling bootleg 4K discs of The Abyss on Amazon. The Minecraft Realm still exists and nobody has logged in.

Oh, and the website has a new topics browser now: you can see that we’ve talked about Red Dead Redemption 2 fifteen times and Rogue One eighteen times. Which is a lot.

Topics discussed

• Matt went to a fake Warped Tour at a brewery
• Luke bought a bright sea-creature shirt in Vietnam
• Matt's been playing Graveyard Keeper
• The Witcher 3 remastered is out and looks incredible
• Xbox now has Mythic achievements
• Developers at The Coalition (Gears of War E-Day) are reportedly worried
• The 7 Deadly Sins of gaming and tech
• Bootleg physical media is apparently a real problem now
• Colin from Accounts season 3 is out on Paramount
• We're watching Ted Lasso season 4
• The Pokémon TCG printed so many cards in their new set that scalpers are stuck holding stock they can't flip for much profit. Extremely satisfying.
• Matt updated the Multiple Nerdgasm website with an AI-powered topics page
• Daylight saving is about to mess with their recording schedule again
• PAX Australia is next week

Links

• Paramount & Warners Become Skydance
• Report: Gears Of War: E-Day Developers Fear For Their Jobs And Bonuses - Kotaku
• The Witcher 3 Remastered Nintendo Switch 2 Can Be Unlocked For Free Even If You Borrow A Switch Physical Copy From A Friend
• Mythic achievements