🚨 EMERGENCY EPISODE 🚨 Is EU’s Digital Fairness Act REALLY killing Free-to-Play games?

I guess what you're saying is that the rich companies that have enough money to do this would remain in the EU and the other ones would simply just not target European Union people, right?

Yeah, it's additional work.

It's like a lot of additional work.

What I think will happen, Felix, I actually think that the TAM of Europe will go down because people won't target or do UA in the European Union because they're not willing to do the extra work or they want to limit it.

So all that happens is budgets increase in the US, Turkey, China, etc.

And it's using the EU that basically just lose.

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Three, two, one.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to an emergency podcast of the Two and a Half Gamers Podcast.

Today, like we said, it's an emergency episode because we are going to be discussing everything we know about the digital fairness act i'm felix brawberg my name is matte lancharis i'm jako bremer and i'm john right

that's right and

we we are your

come on guys doesn't work all the time doesn't work that's fine but don't worry yeah great great to have you here john

thank you for coming

let's discuss this let's discuss this whatever because

unless you've been living under a rock today, there's been a lot of stuff on LinkedIn around people have jobs.

I don't have time to sit on LinkedIn the whole fucking day.

And you were just bombing us like, oh, they have your idea.

That's like, guys, I need to work.

That's why we're doing this.

Yeah.

This is working.

This is working.

This is work.

Okay, fair enough.

This is losing our livelihood.

This will change everything.

You need to be on top of this, man.

That's true.

Yeah.

So basically, everything, the reason why we're here, so I'm going to tee this up and I'm going to go through the proposed idea, ideation paper, right?

But the Digital Fairness Act is essentially proposed by the Consumer

Protection Cooperation Network in the European Union, which is basically a enforcement network of national consumer protection agencies that basically work together on an EU level.

So each country has a consumer protection agency and this is like the federated version of that.

And basically, their job is to protect consumers in the EU.

That's what they exist for.

That's their whole livelihood, right?

And in March, basically, they came out with a public consultation paper which looked exactly like this.

I'm going to share screen.

And they have

seven.

I want to stress this.

What was the date, Felix, again?

21st of March, 2025.

So it's been out for quite a while.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's been out for quite a while, right?

And in this paper, they're essentially outlining.

It's old news.

Yeah, it's old news.

I had no idea.

Did you guys know about this?

No, of course not, because nobody cares.

Okay.

So

you lobbyist meeting.

Exactly right.

And that's kind of the issue, right?

So they outlined seven principles.

I'll just go through them really briefly right now, and then we can kind of talk about it.

But the first principle that they want to drive through in this proposed legislation, which, if approved, which is a big if, would become law in 2030, right?

So the first principle that these guys want us to take or as a gaming industry, or for anyone targeting games in the EU, the first one is that price indications should be transparent.

So, basically, when you're buying any in-game asset, you would have to put the real-world price equivalent for gems.

So, if you're buying something in gems in a game, you basically also need to indicate what the price would be, right?0235 of

my pop-up.

Can't wait.

All right, here's probably the one that I think will that I the second most I disagree with the most, right?

But this one is essentially for bundling, right?

So the second practice they want to decouple from games or from consumers in games is that basically you can't bundle things together.

You have to sell things virtually separately, right?

So no more bundling and no more welcome packs, stuff like that, right?

Special offers.

Yeah, exactly.

Bye-bye.

Yeah.

Special principle number three is that basically.

Why is the second one?

Like, go back.

As I see it, this says something different in my book.

Sorry, it's a third one.

So basically, yeah, obscuring the cost.

So basically, it's not showing what essentially things are worth, right?

So it's mixing multiple virtual currencies in one game, right?

But like mixing multiple virtual currencies, let the sink in.

That means like what?

Like every single RPG is out?

Because I need multiple currencies.

You can have multiple currencies, right?

Because that basically obscures how much something actually costs, right?

And then the third.

No, no, like again, read it again.

It's not really just multiple currencies, it's just that multiple in-game virtual currencies in one video game because we need those.

Like, just imagine how many

things.

Let's just go through it and then we can just discuss it, right?

So then the next one, the principle three is the bundling part, right?

So no bundling.

So yeah, you have to actually show what the price is and you can't

do things together, right?

Fourth principle, you basically should have, before you buy anything, you should be given clear and comprehensible comprehensible pre-contractual information.

So, I guess this would be your warning

logo that would come up and basically say a scarcity.

This one, principle five, is probably the one I agree with the most, which essentially is that in the EU, when you buy something, you have the right to return that product within 14 days.

So, that's a European right.

And basically, they say that you should also be able to return anything you buy in the digital sphere, right?

Within 14 days.

You buy a special for, well, you buy something, you play for 14 days, then you get the refund, and then you do it again, and then you basically play forever for free.

No, man, special gotcha, just let that got you sink in.

You didn't roll what you wanted.

Yeah, come on, yeah, yeah.

And then, principle six is that contractual terms should be fair and written in plain, clear language.

So, this is probably the weirdest one because one of the things they're also suggesting here is that you, as a gaming company, can't modify the value of in-game virtual currency after you release the game.

So, basically, any changes to the economy after you release the game wouldn't be allowed, which is weird.

Just this one line is every fucking single terms of agreement of every single game that's on the market.

They can do whatever they want at any point unilaterally and shut down the game at any point.

That's how it's done.

It's a single one.

Right.

And then for the final one, which I can't wait to see Matthias's reaction here, right?

So basically, it's that game design and gameplay should be respectful to consumers with vulnerabilities.

But let me read you this part because it's actually crazy, because it kind of says a lot about what these legislators are actually thinking about our industry.

Let me read you here.

Consumers that are willing to spend an excessive amount of money on and in a video game or so-called whales may be considered vulnerable since they are likely to struggle with impulse control or gambling disorders.

So they're saying that essentially anyone who's spending a lot in a video game most likely is gambling addicted.

This is this is basically the

point of view of everybody who is talking about games that they're just gambling.

It's just gambling.

I mean, exactly.

You're a whale.

Are you gambling addicted?

Yeah, I have disorders, but not these types of disorders.

Right.

So pretty much two days before this paper came out in March, there's also this thing that came out, which is basically the same agency that basically came out united against star stable which is a stockholm studio that's based on how can you describe it jakob you're gonna describe it

sweden is the problem

yeah yeah

me and ulrich over there uh you know representing sweden anyway so these things together is a very specific developer from sweden that focuses on children's kind of horse theme horse games.

Yeah, basically.

It's your like my little pony fantasy somethings.

It's slightly different, but still like it's just a horse game for kids, basically.

Yeah.

And basically...

For girls, maybe.

You can choose like a boy gender in the game.

Yeah.

So getting into how legislation in the EU works, right?

So there's four main stages to passing laws, right?

So right now, what we have been in and what ends tomorrow on the 9th of October is what's known as public consultation, where essentially the suggestees they present a couple of things.

So, this is one of them.

What I just read out before is another position paper, which is basically evidence submissions.

Then, when that closes, it basically starts the commission draft work, which is basically slated for late of this year to mid-2026.

And that's essentially when the commission makes internal drafts and they assign a commissioner to basically drive this forward.

And this is basically in lobbyism terms when you, as a consumer or someone, has the most influence to basically change what actually goes in it.

Because this is when they draft the actual proposal.

So then in Q3 in 2026, that's where basically the full legislative text would be submitted and be able to be downloaded by people in the EU, right?

Then in 2027, this would be debated among

parliamentarians.

And then that's when you've had amendments, committee reports, and voting.

So this is essentially stage three,

two, three, and four.

It's essentially where you have a lot of influence and essentially where lobbyists get to work on basically having their insights.

So that's exactly what's going on.

But wait a second, just to finish the process.

It goes to parliament voting floor and it needs to pass.

It might not pass, right?

It's in 2027.

It still might not pass even after all this shit.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

So I spoke to a lobbyist for this and basically this is huge business, right?

So he said, like, if you want to fight this, usually.

Yeah, usually what happens is that you get together, you raise one to two million Euros, you hire the best lobbyists, and then they fight on your behalf, right?

So that's a fight.

So it's not a law, right?

It's a proposal.

It's not a law.

Yeah, exactly.

It's not a law, yeah.

Yeah, so what lobbyists do is basically they make papers exactly like this that argue the other side, but the lobbyists themselves can't make these position papers because that's not seem as fair, right?

So usually what they do is they work with think tanks.

So they go to a think tank, they pay them.

Luca, hello.

Can you post something for me, please, on LinkedIn?

Oh, yeah, yeah, sure.

You have, oh, yeah, that would be amazing.

That basically is like, no, that needs to be impartial.

So what you do is you go to a think tank, you pay them 100,000 euros to write a position paper according to your views that then you as a lobbyist can argue in the draft proposal, right?

So you go

back

to this.

Yes, it's essentially.

I had a great time on the call finding this out, right?

So now essentially is when you hire lobbyists to argue this, and basically they pay think tanks to write your positions because they're impartial, even though you pay them.

Of course,

they're so impartial.

Everybody gets their cut along the way, it seems.

Everybody has an agenda.

So, anyway, everyone's earning money, you know, until the end.

So, anyway, first takers here, guys, do you want to talk about any of these principles before we kind of get into implications?

Yeah, implications, right?

Let's go one by one by the boxes.

So, one by one.

Yeah, so the first one, the cat, let's call it the cat.

It's basically the oldest trick in the free-to-play book, which is you always mask the real-world value by using like non-real-world currencies.

It's like, it's there, it's out there, we know it, you know it, everybody knows it, it's normal.

On this basis, I can agree with it that like it's protecting the consumer and da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Like you can do these things, of course.

But the problem is that games don't work that easy.

in a way that you just obfuscate it and suddenly you know like the value of every single item thing whatever you put hard currency on.

It changes, for instance, you have inflationary economies, like even Clash Royale has an inflationary economy.

The value of gold changes within the game during your progression because you have more gold being given to you on Arena 10 compared to Arena 2 or whatever.

Therefore, even the shop amounts change, everything changes.

So, yeah, you can do these things.

Like, that's nice of you, but I can't imagine the amount of bureaucracy being added into just the game designers, whatever.

There literally would need need to be a company to have some kind of SDK in to just do this, basically.

Basically, what would happen here, I guess, what you're saying is that the rich companies that have enough money to do this would remain in the EU, and the other ones would simply just not target European Union people, right?

Yeah, it's additional work.

It's like a lot of additional work to just do.

And so, like, what I think will happen, Felix, I actually think that the TAM of Europe will go down because people won't target or do UA in European Union because they're not willing to do the extra work or they want to limit it.

So all that happens is budgets increase in the US, Turkey, China, et cetera.

And it's us in the EU that basically just lose.

And people do decisions based on even much less intrusive stuff.

I remember when I was in Japan before Corona, I was talking to some local producers and they literally told me like, oh, we don't want to go to EU because of GDPR.

Like, really?

That's your main hurdle?

Well, now I have a gaming soft launch which also has the same problem.

Like, oh, we kind of postpone G L E U because of the GDPR stuff.

And then we soft launch again.

GDPR is really kind of easy, you know,

yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

But it's another, it's another hurdle, right?

It's a

thing that people have to get their head around, have to learn about, and, you know, and it costs money.

And sometimes things are not worth the effort, right?

Or they don't think they're worth the effort.

Yeah.

So here's the second principle, right?

So obscuring the cost of in-game digital content and services should be avoided, right?

So it's basically the practices they're outlining here.

And the second one, offering for purchase and mixing different in-game virtual currencies in one video game should be banned.

So I guess this is them saying that you need one currency, maybe the Euro, I don't know.

Like

economies just don't work with one currency.

It's just like impossible.

You need multiple currencies in order to be able to kind of create different circuits of economy and progression that needs to be independent of each other.

Otherwise, like economy crumbles, basically.

So I guess like, what are they saying?

That casinos are okay, but then games, I guess, like, yeah.

Because casinos just use money, which is like money.

It's okay.

Money is okay for blackjack and for roulette.

Basically, basically.

Yeah.

I guess this one is the weirdest.

Principle three, right?

Where basically they say that force customers to purchase unwanted in-game virtual currency should be avoided.

So this is the bundling one, right?

Who is forcing anyone to buy stuff?

I mean, come on.

I think what the guy who was designing it meant that he would would literally want to type, like, I want to buy 38 gems.

And it would give him a price.

Like, imagine, like, a grocery store.

Like, he goes and like, like, give me my tomatoes.

Like, I just want three of them.

Why wouldn't this work?

Just steal money at Yakub?

It can work, but we get to the decimal thing, whatever.

And the worst part is that all of these things that you see here, from the game designer standpoint, why you do these bundles is because you create anchor.

You create an anchor so people can derive value from it.

When an offer comes in, then the offer is a bargain compared to these prices, which creates the value of the offer, and then the discount makes the bargain itself, basically.

So, yeah, it's pretty hard to kind of go against this philosophy in the current setup.

But

supermarkets do this all the time.

They check up prices and then, like, oh, there's a discount, even though the price was the same two weeks ago.

Yeah.

You know, just make it happen.

Exactly.

So, yeah, I guess.

Felix, go please, control F or like search and see if there's any mention of the word loot boxed because I'm kind of super surprised that there's no mention of this because I would have thought that like this whole principle, if you scroll up a little bit and like what it says there, that the next move them out, but I think it was even more like unwanted something, items or something.

That's basically the definition of loot box organization.

I have a theory on this because there was legislation a couple years ago in the EU that got voted down against loot boxes.

So I have a feeling they're avoiding that, but basically they're using other words, right?

But this is even worse to some degree.

Like some of the points that they're like putting into the law here are even worse is it worse for the consumer would you say or is it worse for game developers

come on you can you can look at from the consumer i guess we can go to the like very high level implication later which what this would do in context of like reality check of like you know different markets different developers outside of eu power of develop and stuff like that like well you can just call it for later no no we always say let's do it later we never do it again okay later so let's just go here.

It's like this.

Just imagine that, like, for a consumer, it shit because, as John mentioned, like, some people just will not consider this worthy effort.

Essentially, you have less games for your access because nobody cares now about this store bloated with regulation that I need to first cut through in order to release the game even on the market.

Bye-bye.

My game just won't go there.

Great consumer protection.

We're protected from the whole game.

That's number one.

Number two, the enforceability of this will be very questionable.

Like, how do you enforce this?

And, like, how this whole thing will kind of look like in practical terms, which means that, like, we have still the giant problem and like elephant in the room that is called fake ads that nobody cares about.

And, like, that's been running amok all like last, I don't know how many years.

That's okay.

But, but this is unacceptable.

So also, plus, like, I've been to a supermarket and sometimes basically like shampoo and conditioner, they bundle it together and it's cheaper.

Like, why is it providing supermarket economy?

Behavioral economy practices that's been there out there from like, I don't know, 70s or something.

It's normal commerce.

Yeah.

And I guess also I want to add to your point, Jakob, that like eventually, like, if there's less games being played in the EU, that's also less jobs eventually for people working in the EU in the gaming sector, right?

So it doesn't make sense.

But as I said, like, this just gives more power to the outside competitor countries, pretty much, like US developers, Asian developers, they just won't care about this you know we we just when our own market kind of shut down away from us so we'll be just forced to go to their market our market like will be just sitting doing nothing pretty much yeah this is my major concern guys is the ramifications like people will stop investing into spending money into Europe you know European consumers will get less content and less games job market in Europe for for gaming companies will subside and you know we'll lose X thousand positions out of the hundred thousand we have currently within Europe and then everyone's just trying to you know fight their way out of the EU and and trying to go to greener pastures right we've got teams being airlifted to US or Southeast Asia or China and the only one who loses is the Europeans and also the consumers themselves because they won't be able to play the games they want and then what do they do VPN in to other countries to get access to the games and IP that they want and then it's just it's just like I think like we don't really need to go f far to kind of see the ramifications of this Like you've seen what happened in China where like these very massive j time constraint regulations were put in, which means that it's driving their developers to can go out and expand into outside market outs outs outside of China, which is like makes the life harder for us.

So this would be basically kind of similar setup where like everybody from Europe would still continue making games, but they wouldn't just be focusing on EU markets anymore.

They would be still focusing on US, uh, whatever, Asia and like wherever they can kind of get their uh kind of market share much easier than this, basically.

Yeah, Yeah, how much money do you actually can get from EU markets in comparison to US or Asia?

Yeah, we can check and see how some of the games do.

I mean, of course, it's not.

Mobile games are not made for EU.

They are made for either West or East.

That's the usual denominator.

But still, you're still talking about 20-25% of 100 million TAM of mobile as part of a one monthly TAM of gaming, right?

So you're still talking 20-25 billion, I guess, you know, of potential loss.

I guess there's only be gonna be ad monetized games then in the EU.

There you go.

Felix is celebrating right now.

Exactly, yeah.

All right.

Uh, okay, this one provided with clear and comprehensible pre-contractual information.

This is the warning screens, right?

Warning you're about to make a purchase.

Yeah.

I mean, seriously, I mean, I was reading some of these like notes from also Mr.

John Dride here.

He's labeled as catastrophic.

This is catastrophic for the industry.

Like, come on, guys, like, chill the fuck out.

Also, like, this is another IDFA moment in the industry.

Maybe.

What happened?

Yeah.

Are we here?

Yes.

What changed?

Literally, almost nothing.

Come on.

What are you talking about?

Like, the KAGO of the industry is dramatically lower than what it was pre-ATT.

We have our trajectory as an industry is nowhere close to what it should have been.

Temporarily, maybe.

Maybe.

I mean, come on.

Man, the power shifted.

That's the thing.

Power shifted.

If you cannot do your, you know, fake, fake ads, fake onboarding game, fake thing funnel, you're just thrice out of the market, which means, again, Asia going here and doing what they want, and we can't do shit because people are just not capable of pulling that thing off.

Exactly.

So?

But

whose problem is it?

No,

because people are not capable of doing things and adapting.

Which is their problem.

That's it.

I know, but you know, at some point, like, especially with these giant super states kind of economic problems, kicks in.

All right.

Do we want to talk about the last two ones as well, or do you want to talk about Ilka's position favor?

These are super important.

Yeah.

Which one was the previous one?

Go up.

This basically right of withdrawal.

So after 14 days, you have the right to get your money.

My favorite.

Favorite.

The endless role of Gacha.

Yes, exactly.

Until I'm satisfied when I get it.

I'm seeing this as something different.

I'm seeing this as right.

If I bought some currency and we held it, I held it for 14 days and I didn't use it, then I can get a return, right?

Which I think is active in most sort of bigger IAP games anyway.

Of course, you bought a currency.

It's called scrolls or it's called keys or whatever it is called, man, that you use and throw into the gacha.

I want it back.

So what now?

Yeah, okay, look, gacha makes this much more complicated.

For my thing, it's just buying

a currency.

I can return it, right?

Same as taking back something to the shop.

Gatcher just won't work with this, period.

Could buy.

It just won't work at all.

So I don't see how the current market which is i think i would guess top 100 is like 70 having gacha based mechanics yeah there you go yeah on principle six contractual terms should be written in fair and plain language so this is the one that really got me going because basically they're changing like you can't change your virtual currency after right explain why this is right and why you need to be able to rebalance your economy as the game is basically released i i don't i don't get this like like an aiming with this.

It means that if I spend money with it, it's considered to be consumer goods, like something similar to consumer goods that's like, you know, on the real-world market.

Like, that's what they're saying here.

Like, does it also mean that they're forcing you to kind of keep up the game in its original state forever?

Like, it doesn't work at all.

I guess this would be like, hey, if I put it in a real-world example, if you're a supermarket, you're not allowed to change the prices of the goods inside the store.

During the day.

Yeah, during the day, I guess.

From the point you put it on the shelf for the first time, then it's price fixed for the for the forever.

But you can change the prices.

Like, you know, every every single month inflation kicks in, prices go up.

So there's a little bit of nuance I think we're missing here.

But still, just the terms of agreement of every single gaming company, if you like, go into the game, it always starts with, like, we have the right to do whatever we want with the game, with its currencies, with the thing that you buy, with everything.

Like, it's just every single terms of service is there.

So nobody's buying like a chunk of land or something that's like protected by whatever EU laws.

Like,

I don't know.

This seems like out of the

out of touch completely with the reality of how software development even works.

Yeah, and the final one here, right, which assumes that everyone who spends a lot or a whale, they're all gambling addicted and have no impulse control.

John, how much did you spend on IAPs last year?

Like, come on, like, dude, I reckon I've spent personally, I don't know, 500 to 600 pounds on internet purchasing games i like yeah just just the pokemon cards just i reckon i've spent 600 quid in pokemon trading cards i'll seek as soon as something drops i'll spend i'll sit there and spend but i have the dissoci disposable income to do so it does not affect my life in any way and the fact is once i've got what i wanted i don't go back you know like it's not like yeah you're wrong because you're uh you're a gambling addict so you're wrong i mean no like this is gamble like this is the wrong one like it's it's just like because somebody said so.

It's like, who's saving uh, you know, the poor ladies from their overpriced Louis Vuitton bags?

Who's saving them?

Yeah, look, I d I just don't get it, man.

I don't see why, like, a persona, like a whale, dolphin, minnow, salmon, all these sort of terms that we've been using for decades, right?

Not just in gaming, but in in other types of industry.

I don't know why now people are seeing this as like, oh, this is something super super bad.

Like this is, oh my god, there's a whale.

Like, again, we're abusing them.

Like, no, it's their choice as a person as an as or as an adult you know I don't believe we'll talk about the children part of this stuff later which is a big part of it well it comes right now right if you're an adult and you choose to buy something it doesn't matter if it's an in-out purchase in a game or it's buying a pair of sneakers in foot locker or it's going to a restaurant and spending too much on a meal you

you are controlling your own decisions by choosing how you spend your money nobody's saving you for excessive alcohol spending or cigarette spending or whatever vice you currently have on the menu.

Like, you know.

Yeah.

So here comes the kids part, right?

And what's really popular when I spoke to this lobbyist when I prepared for this podcast, right, is that usually when you propose something in the EU, the thing you need to do for your bill or your suggestion, right, or your act is that you need to have a name that no one can disagree with.

So Digital Fairness Act, right?

Who can disagree with fairness?

Then also what you start to do is you have your positions, right?

And then you bundle it in with other things.

So like I said right now, we're in the stage right now where it's evidence submission.

So, these are the principles, but it'll also be baked in with this one that came out two days before, right, from the same group, which is basically to protect children, right?

So, these things, like, yeah, children should be protected and this is the way to do it, right?

And then it's very hard to disagree with it because you can't be against the Digital Fairness Act because it's fair and it's protecting kids.

So, if you're against this act, you're against kids.

Sounds like Federal Reserve Bank.

Yeah.

The thing for me is: like, I mean, look,

we've got three, free fathers on here.

Yeah.

Right.

And I think all of us have got an opinion about like, you know, how we,

you know, introduce our kids to games, right?

And my kids play games, they've got a Switch,

they've got their iPads, but do they have access to the internet?

No.

Like, I mean,

you'd have to go through like an approval process with me.

None of the games on my kids' iPads have shops or economy.

You can't even do purchases because it's disabled.

So, like, because it's a kid's game, because it's a kid's game, exactly.

It's a kid's game.

So, all of this stuff is prevented.

And all we're doing is saying here, right, what we're going to do is we're going to negatively impact the entire audience of a game on the basis of some kids

on their parents' phones, right?

And I don't know, man, I just feel like we should need to be better parents and give better education onto digital safety.

and this should be much more of something in the school system or something we we control as the parents i don't like i don't know i don't think just like blanking brushing this stuff as it's it's protecting kids is the right what happened is with star table case some parents failed at parenting and now we're fucking suffering all of us that's what's that's what's happening that's what's happening honestly i don't have any

i didn't say it you know i was being diplomatic

i don't have any problems with the kids stuff like you know putting all the kids stuff that you want but the problem is that the majority of the strand that we're talking here and this late is not kids targeting, it's adults.

It's like adults.

And like, you know, kids are kids, and kids are kids because they don't have money.

They're kids.

And they also don't understand where they're just tapping everything.

I don't think it's like they just.

That's definitely like, I'm all for it.

Like, it should be preventable.

There should be like, you know, have parental controls in the game.

Have like ease of access.

Yeah, that's like, I don't have any problem with that.

The problem is that the legislation never talks about kids and adults as a separate categories or something.

It's one bundle.

While they're bundling it, they shouldn't bundle it.

Everybody is an addict.

They shouldn't buy a kid.

Yeah, exactly.

What percentage of people are addicts and kids in this thing?

That's what I wanted to say.

Some numbers, you know, like what percentage of gamers are they saying are addicts?

Like, are all my friends crackers?

Is that what

they're saying?

It's about gambling addicted, right?

I don't know.

Maybe someone can ask ChatGPT for some numbers, but like, honestly, it's not going to be 100%, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

That's that's the piece of evidence we want, and that's if Chat GPT said it, it's true.

Chat GPT is one level behind trust me, bro.

No, no, no, no, just use, just use, do, use deep research, just do it,

and therefore, it's fine.

That's it.

I think, like, do we want to take this a step further and also talk about Ilka's letter, or do we just want to end it here?

Because I think we kind of talked it.

We can talk a little bit.

Do you have it?

I don't have it up here in front of me.

Does anyone have it?

I have it.

I have it.

Give me.

Give me

a second.

This app.

everybody has an agenda yeah everybody has an agenda yeah so for those who don't know why like the link is very on fire because there's this giant post by ilka that got like 2560 likes and 200

yeah i'm guessing those like approaching 300 can you scroll down a little bit maybe you'll find one interesting comment

yeah here yes this is it This is what I'm saying.

Wait, wait, one second.

Scroll down though.

I do want to show that picture.

Please click on that picture above Matei's, which is the one that shows you what the UI will look like.

Because it's my favorite

up-up.

This is what people are going to see, basically, when you're trying to do a transaction.

Fantastic.

You know, like, I mean, come on,

this is a big stretch.

This is a big stretch, and you can design it in a way different way.

Perfect.

It's just like it will go one by one.

It won't be three pop-ups in one screen.

It will like consecutively walk one after each other.

There are three opportunities for people to bounce, you know, three or three square screens.

But yeah, I don't know.

Like,

you'll pop up every time you just fewer air.

I just want the EU to make all our games because, you know, they're going to be great and fun and force us all to play them, and then we'll all be safe as well, right?

So, yeah,

it's safe to not play games.

That's it.

Oh, I don't know what I'm going to do.

I'm going to start playing tic-tac-toe.

You know, my kids.

Do you want to scroll up and read the letter?

Because it's never going to end there.

Yeah.

So there's this kind of, you know, Ilka's credentials and like what he's doing and what he's saying.

There's even video games European Game Developer Association or Game Developer Federation is quoted, which is again so these are the lobbyism group that would fight this, right?

So basically

Apple guys fighting like

our lobbyists.

Yeah, so that's there.

So if we go in, there's this three-page document, a pretty heavy one, I would say, where the interesting part is that it never even kind kind of like quotes the thing that we just went through, the PDF, like the EU Commission one, which is why we wanted to do this episode because there's so much conversation, not about

what's actually being,

yeah, it's it's more of like already done from the perspective that's like Europe's gonna kill another industry.

I don't think so, this is gonna kill it, honestly, just gonna put the giant, as we said, bureaucracy dent, everybody loses, everything goes down, but it still lives.

Another IDFA moment, Yeah.

The

the you know, the premium people are basically just laughing all the way today.

The comments, like, it's everything is there.

Everything is there.

There's gold.

Literally,

people are.

It doesn't affect premium games

at all, basically.

So, anything you're doing, if you're doing premium games, or even most like I guess PC games, like, they don't really care about this.

It's just like 99% targeted towards PC.

But remember, also, the the purists out there are the ones who are saying that free-to-play is a cesspit.

It's cancer.

Of course, free-to-play is a lot of people.

Worst things since

forget about all the accessibility to games and giving people the ability to do

that.

Some people would never be able to do without it being free to play.

Forget all men.

Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, it goes into like the startup ecosystem and stuff like that.

Just the first sentence, like putting Clash of Clans, Candy Crash, Minecraft, and The Witcher in one sentence isn't really

equal to either

because, like, Witcher won't be affected by this at all, ever.

Never.

So, Minecraft probably also.

So, if the economy of games in Europe is affected, then certain studios might opt to relocate or move.

Yeah, they'll do whatever.

And then that Witcher wouldn't be European.

But again, the question is,

do you even need to move?

Like, if you mean from the first place, games aren't, as I said, games aren't made for European people.

Like, this is not like physical goods.

Like, you made them for the whole, as I said, the Western market and then the Asian market or China specifically, because they have lots of regulation to kind of go into their market.

But that's there.

But yeah, let's continue the case here.

So he goes into all of these things.

Then there's this like theme park analogy where he says that instead of buying tokens in a theme park once and then like using them all around, you need to go and approve, verify, and like, you know, call your D2C partner and pretty much do whatever you need to do, doing every single attraction buy-in where you can go in, which adds a lot of friction stuff.

That's that's if you saw that, like, triple scare screen combo, like, that's completely verified.

If I think it works, like, it works.

And then there's just some statistics, statistics, statistics.

Like, yeah, there's lots of us, and like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada.

And like, it's not really good to kind of go forward with this.

And then at the parenting issue, like, it's basically this, like, last paragraph where it says like 18 of families where children are allowed to make purchases or in incoming have parental supervision so it means like you know people are responsible to begin with don't make idiots out of us and then uh

yeah like please include genuine industry engagement i guess because they i don't know like this is the part i'm kind of confused because it was out from march and i'm guessing that people like Supercell knew about this much sooner than we did because they have their...

The call I had with a lobbyist that explained this to me, right?

And he also said that it's kind of funny you're calling the day before it closes because essentially the public consultation is where you can actually put in evidence that then the commission uses in the draft on the impact assessments, right?

So basically the only way to fight it now is for us to get lobbyists.

Or if you want to basically fight it, you have to get lobbyists.

So now it's a bit too late.

So yeah, I guess I have no idea.

I've never heard of this before today.

Yeah, and

that's the question here.

Like, if you could fight it before, why not talk about it in March?

If this taken

in March, I'm kind of missing the point.

This are they?

Like, it's not like the politicians or the people on the other side are actually sharing this information publicly.

Yeah, like, how do you find it?

They're like, yeah, yeah, go to the EU's website, click through the horrible website, and then you'll find stuff that they're suggesting.

And you're like, what?

Like, yeah.

You're not doing that as a

daily news.

You go there, refresh.

Oh, it's there.

This is the best part because they literally have Felix embedded in it.

They're also forcing video game companies that rely on optional purchases of in-game content to look at other business models like advertising-based revenues, which we know undermines the user experience.

Which we know undermines the user experience.

Like, what the actual fuck?

Supercell cannot monetize with ads.

I mean, they're doing well on heyday, no?

So, come on.

Do they need to?

That's the thing, though.

Do they need to?

I mean, they don't need to, but they are doing it still in one game at least.

Why would you put something like this there?

Because everybody has an agenda.

Okay.

Anyway, I guess we can probably finish there unless anyone else wants to say anything about it.

Essentially, if I'll leave the link in the show notes here, or Mati will, but I'll send it to him and he'll put it in.

And essentially, you can go read these documents yourself.

We kind of just thought there was a lot of things flying around today and not that much from the actual

proposed.

So we just wanted to set the record straight.

But obviously, personally, I don't agree with many of these points.

The only thing that can be done now is basically to federate and get our own lobbyists if we wanted to fight this.

And essentially, the only thing you can do is find the parliamentarian or the commissioner who's going to drive it and email them.

But yeah, it's not going to be that effective.

And look, it's not going to come into play, even if it does get all voted in for a couple of years anyway.

So by that time, the industry could move on and we could find better solutions.

This is a very good job of Taco Bell.

Very good forwards together.

We're still still talking like the

2030.

2030, yeah.

Yes, five years from now.

Yeah.

Which is not going to happen.

Five years from now, we could be

so far away from the whole free-to-play model, not so far away from mobile phones, even that, like what do you mean?

In five years, super intelligence is going to be a thing.

Exactly.

Skynet's coming, baby.

Don't worry.

Like, we're having this conversation now, but we don't know what's around the corner.

Jesus, like, who knows?

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

This has been another fantastic episode of the Two and a Half Gamers podcast with a special guest, John Wright, who came on to talk to us.

Thank you so much for joining.

If you want to talk to us or have any questions, we're in our Slack group.

It's right below.

You can join it as well.

And thank you all for joining us.

Have a great weekend.

Oh, have a great week.

Bye-bye.

Oh, weekend as well, maybe.

See you next time.

See you.

Who knows?

Thanks, guys.

See you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.