Steps for success: 1) Make a Fortnite 2) Discover that your Fortnite isn't as popular as Fortnite after 3 weeks 3) Cancel your Fortnite 4) Repeat

💀 I didn't even realize Crash Team Rumble CAME OUT.

I'm learning about live service games being discontinued at the same time i learn about their existence

Shout out to Ross Scott for trying his hardest to prevent live service games being shut down through a legal precedent. Also, thank God for JSS.

"Why is there a crash in the games industry" well 500 live services are being made

ross scott has said the best, "any game that requires you to connect to a central server, is on life support" whenever the company decides to pull that pluck that game dies. so remember, live service is a death sentence.

I have a strict "no live service games" policy, and frankly from what I can see I'm not missing anything.

By putting Cait Sith on top of the eyeballs, you just made it look like he has massive balls.

Meanwhile, I'm still able to play Crash Bandicoot on PS1, nearly 28 years later....

The Jimquisition: The only show that helps me keep a track of what day of the week it is

I mostly think about squibs in special effects, usually paired with blood packs. Think of all the classic action movie scenes of the 80's and 90's that we owe to squibs.

All the successful ones seem older that the coining of "live service" as a concept - they weren't created to be live services, they were created to be fun games first and then became "live services" later.

"Damp squib" is a very British figure of speech. There's a whole conversation about it in an episode of IT Crowd and as an American I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about

As multiple villains in Yugioh have famously said, multiple times: "What a digital dummy!"

I'm slightly amusing that the game used as background when Steph was talking about failed Final Fantasy projects was XIV, the one thing that's doing good, exactly because its team refuses to fuck with fads and gold rushes

Reminds me of a concept they explored in Leverage(A TV show on tnt) where they took down a CEO that jumps from company to company. One of the crew brings up to the ceo about the huge fines the company could face the way he is running it. He replied with(paraphrased) " You know [insert another company name here] was in the news for paying 2 billion dollars in fines last years for selling a dangerous product. What the news doesn't tell you is that same company made 20 billion dollars on that product. 10% of the profits went to fines, that's like... Tipping your waiter."

jesus christ this is the only channel with tolerable games journalism thank god for you steph

The games suddenly being much better balanced after they shut down reminds me of the old "if you don't like the micro-transactions, don't buy them" videos Surprise, surprise! The monetisation was always making the game worse, even if you don't engage! By choosing to make a game a live service, you're always making a worse game

"Good" I immediately think before realising those games you bought to play are no longer playable because companies didn't bother to legacy them into an offline single player mode. Btw, Crash Team Rumble is being shuttered after less than a year, and they're still selling it. I think companies should refund games that they sell you and then axe months in.

Part of me laments that my favorite Naughty Dog games are the Jak and Daxter games which has not seen new material in more than a decade... and then I think about it and thank goodness their series was never popular enough to get the Live Service Cash Grab Treatment.

Frankly, I no longer care about fighting all the countless fires that will pop up in the gaming and games industry anymore. I've focused attention on: Getting getting rid of the fire starters - shareholders & their economic system.

> Live Services Are Being Sent To Die Thank the all mighty.

It's easy to believe that at least some of these live service games are being set up specifically with failure in mind when you consider that there are movie studios that have made film crews and editors complete movies that the executives had zero intention of ever releasing because they calculated that the expected box office return would make them less money than just padding the production budget and then canceling the release and writing the whole thing off as a massive loss in their tax returns. And, oh look, one of those movie studios is Warner Brothers, which just so happens to also have a game studio that's publishing live service games. I think when the publisher is running the live service as a grift, the plan is to basically release it, squeeze as much money as they can from the whales in as short amount of time as possible, shut down the service as soon as it starts flagging, write off the production and operating costs of the service as losses, then fire all of the staff who was working on it and sell shutting down the game to the shareholders as reducing payroll and operational overhead in order to pump the stock valuation. Some of them have probably even calculated that they could make more money with one of the failed fly-by-night live services than they could from actually making another Fortnite, because actually providing the service long term means you have to keep paying staff to maintain it and server infrastructure to run it.

@4:26. The irony of using a picture of Final Fantasy XIV, the live service game that almost single-handedly kept Square alive for years, being used to represent all the failed live service games they've released.

In the movie industry. A squib is a fake practical blood splatter usually from a character being shot!!

“The more I look at the live service market, the more I feel failure is a part of the business model.” Bingo. tax write-offs, son. The games industry is a casino where the big rollers are basically playing on free credits because all of their losses are made back and more via tax loopholes and intentionally bloated sales estimates which is why they always like to spout that games “Failed to meet expectations” so they can “””credibly””” write even successful games off as failures. It’s an infinite money glitch for them, and a colossal drain on tax dollars for everyone else.

Came for garms jurnalizm, stayed for Berk, bless his little blue blobbiness.

The "basic Lee" joke was perhaps the single greatest visual gag of any video you've made this year! Well done!

"Squib" is the movie industry term for the special effects that mimic a person getting shot. They're little devices usually taped to the actor's costume. The blood and apparent tearing of flesh you see in a film or TV show when a person is hit is the squib being detonated by a special effects engineer somewhere off-screen.

I remember when they announced a new Crash game I was so excited... but when it turned out it was a live service game my interested totally died.

A squib is also the slur JKR decided to use for kids that can't use magic that have wizard parents. Basically meaning those kids are defective

"Live Services Are Being Sent to Die" And nothing of value was lost.

The thing about games being scams but only if they fail reminds me of the bezzle, the phase of a scam where it is actually providing what it promises, until the rugpull comes

Up next on my recommended list: "Why the PS3 is everyone's new favourite system".

Imagine if something like Crash Bandicoot Rumble had come out in the late 00s, as a fun online multiplayer deathmatch-style game. I bet it would have been awesome.

dang ffxiv catching strays, and thats the only square enix life service they actually fixed and are still making content for.

Get ready to talk about Foamstars in 6 months too lol

No other content goes off the rails into random song/adhd/'tisim dumps like a Jimquisition video. Makes me and my mental health feel 'seen'.

That report about 500 studios working on live services, it's worth pointing out, was commissioned by VC companies with a vested interest in making GAAS look as profitable as possible and essentially frames any game receiving updates as a live service. That would, for example include Baldur's Gate 3. Not to deny that there is far too much of what Steph is referring to, because yes, if you can't count them on one hand, that is still far too many, but it's more to just to point out the source of that news is highly propagandised to appeal to corporate shareholders and their imaginary monopoly money.

9:40 If I wanted an autobattler I'd set a buncha Smash NPCs up with infinite lives in a match with no timer.

To join in on the completely off-topic tangent, I only ever heard the term “squib” in relation to, as you put it “that wizard series”. So it’s permanently lodged in my mind as an allegorical equivalent to a slightly ableist slur. It being a reference to wet fireworks makes a lot more sense, now.

That is the problem. When one of these things is a hit, it makes so much money compared to its cost that companies don't care if reality means most will fail. The funny thing is that they rely on you getting invested in something that can be taken away at a moment's notice. I keep thinking about how this is just the MMO gold rush all over again, and how the industry doesn't learn. They looked at WOW and wanted that recurring monthly revenue, even though most would fail to catch on, or would close as people went back to something they already played. And that was 20 years ago.

And just think, if Activision had given Toys for Bob another real Crash or Spyro game to work on, they might not have bolted for the door and fled as far and as fast as possible.

Full disclosure: I have only a passing interest in the gaming world and find its social & political realities depressing (don't think I'm alone in that). BUT I love listening to you talk about it. This is poetry 😁

*Socialize* the games industry. Transition to independent studios. The company and workers will own and control their work and eventually both get most of the earnings.

Squib is also the term for a bullet getting stuck in the barrel, which makes the next shot fired very... dangerous. {Edit} Additional Context - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squib_load And yes, the word gets around in other areas. Yeah for English were we use the same word for completely unrelated things to confuse the fuck out of ourselves and anyone trying to learn the language!

I never even heard of Crash Team Rumble.

The live service that ALWAYS makes me a chuckle is Marvel Snap. I see ads often that proclaim "YOU CANT JUST PAY TO WIN IN THIS GAME". Which makes me go - "okay but you can DEFINITELY pay so it's pay to still lose?"

It's pronounced like "catshee" (cait sith), similar to "banshee" (bean sith), both being celtic fairy creatures. At least that's how it is in Scottish Gaelic, I think.

I am starting to wonder if these games almost designed to suck as much money as possible then fail are being used for tax scumminess. WB cancelled fully finished films as tax writeoffs where they earn more not releasing it then releasing it. Could this be similar? I wonder if these games, made super cheaply, suck a bit of money, then shut it down let's them put that as a big loss on their taxes and end up making even more money. Like you said. They HAVE to know these games are going to fail...

Help me to advocate for a truth in advertising bill to legally require video games to display pricing on the cover that represents the true cost of the game plus every single piece of DLC and purchasable addon. Consumers should be seeing the real price of the games they buy.

I see the Glasgow Oompa Loompa is in the rotation of Jimquisition images.

Whenever I heard the word "squib" I think of "Baman Piderman" and fondly remember the days when animators could make a living off of KZfaq. I'm glad you took a moment to tackle this subject. As for this "live service" games, it seems the strategy to enjoying them is not play them, and wait out the Publisher/Developer deciding it's not making enough money, and therefor removing the crappy monetization elements, thereby leaving us a better game. Or the game shuts down and dies. But hey, collateral damage is a shame, but hey, it happens.

As a lifelong lover of the Crash games I didn't even know Rumble existed, how tf do they expect to make a profit if they forget to advertise their expensive product?! I'm glad to see Toys for Bob break free, they did a good job of making the recent (non-live) Crash games, and it'll be cool to see what might come of them! Plus now we can hopefully do this without the stink of an abusive company too

This is the first time I hear about Crash Team Rumble at all. I was completely unaware this was ever a thing, lol.

There's something oddly poetic about JSS just ending the video after petering out at the end there. Maybe I'm just reading into it a bit more than I should, but it's like a mirror held up to the way live services also just don't seem to last, no matter how much you want them to, no matter if there's more to be said. Big "if" on the part of live services, but the point still stands. Ironically, these games would mean more and last longer if they weren't charging money to do so.

interestingly a lot of aaa failed live services were games for which you expect single player campaigns; suicide squad, gotham knights, avengers etc. the successful games are the one sthat have a clear multiplayer structure and are not part of a singel player ip like fortnite, apex, ark, roblox and even helldivers. the big mutated exception is destiny 2 which limbs along

I felt so smart about this for the longest time. There's Warframe, sure, but I've learned to moderate my spending there, and even if it ended next week, that's a *lot* of return on investment. But then came Dissidia Opera Omnia. And that 'heartbreak' analogy was suddenly very apt. Sure, it was a fanfiction-ass game. But it was also being written and designed by people who actually loved the material. Who used the opportunity to do things like giving characters who didn't make it a second chance to talk to loved ones. The opportunity to come to terms with what happened to them. It was beautiful. It was just also part of a game that charged 30 to 70 dollars US for alternate skins. Can't imagine why they didn't pull the numbers they wanted. It's not just that Squenix is overcommitted to the live service genre. They're also astonishingly bad at it.

"The live service gold rush is panning out exactly as I predicted it would" That is one thematically relevant clip to choose!

Live services are dying, while Stephanie is thriving.

I just started showing my daughter Trapdoor! Fantastic!

The musical interludes just keep getting better 😂

I just wanna give that squid a hug. He looks like he could use one.

I usually put these videos on and toss my phone in my pocket to listen along at work, and without visuals, the intro joke felt like it was going in a completely different place

The substitute moogle was a brilliant idea

Side note on Squibs: If you're in the Firearms community, you will hear that word in another context. It's a bullet that doesn't have enough pressure behind it to leave the barrel, so it gets stuck in there and requires a gunsmith to get out. Probably a holdover from the days of black powder and paper cartridges to be honest where that could be caused by wet powder, but these days it's caused by anything that results in an overly low pressure cartridge. I'm reminded of the Hi-point customer who suffered 36 squibs IN A ROW and sent back a barrel stuffed with 9mm rounds because his gun "went bang, but nothing came out". Hi-Point was befuddled.

Today Steph taught me that the phrase "panning out" came from prospectors in the gold rush! You're a good writer, you are!

Crash Team Rumble was destined to be a failure when even Caddicarus wasn't interested in playing the game.

The whole point of these games is to be thrown off a cliff in the hopes some people dive in after it, letting the studio climb down and pick the pockets of the now dead fools.

Hopefully Ross Scott's campaign to do something about live service games being lies will work out.

I think the idea behind damp squibs is that a squib is already a pretty pitiful explosive, so a damp one would just be another level of pathetic This is my offering to the algorithm 🙏

Good video. Though it was slightly funny at 4:30 hearing the line about going over SE's disastrous live services of late....while showing FFXIV in the background, a pretty well received MMO that's still going strong and is is heading into its fifth expansion. Well received from its 2.0 revival onward anyway. Kind of sad to see the company that apologized for FF 14 1.0 and rebuilt the game to make it better rather than cut their losses and run, now making all these live services they don't plan to support.

It's baffling that so many of these live service games are looter shooters as if the publishers don't understand people aren't magically going to have time for more of the genre that even as an offline experience demands a lot of time when they're probably already playing Destiny or one of the other few successful ones. You'd think that by now someone would realize that WAY more effort needs to be put into the development of these games for them to even have a chance to stick. I get that goal is just get in, get as much money as possible, then get out, but with how quickly a lot of these games are dying, are they even achieving the base goal of making money in the first place? I can't imagine many of them are even doing better than breaking even.

I was watching Sting's Last Match with my dad last night and I was talking about how Commander Sterling is one of my favorite wrestlers and it's been great to watch you come up and develop as a wrestler.

Alongside all the relevant and important points to take away from this video, I can't help but notice just how wonderfully weird some of the background clips are! Man with a pumpkin helmet? A Bull terrier shitting in a scenic field? The stock video search history must be wild 🤣

Thank god for James Stephanie

When I saw how bare bones Crash Team Rumble was & how expensive it was, I knew it was going to die or go free to play in a matter of months & low behold. I still can't wrap my head around why Rumble got a $80+ deluxe version. Apparently there's evidence to suggest it was originally a multiplayer mode for Crash 4, which might explain why it's so barebones.

The songs in each episode are fucking awesome

The editing on these videos is honestly the best on youtube!

Ross Scott of Accursedfarms is trying to start legal action about this

I thought squibs were those explosive blood packs Verhoeven buys in bulk when he makes a movie? Never heard it in context of a "damp firework."

I'll never stop quoting the Palworld devs about the massive drop in players their game had after a few weeks: "It's not a live service game, you can finish playing it and then stop." Of course, it looks like most people stop playing live service games pretty quickly... And man, I haven't fired up Bleeding Edge in a while. Your review of it made me give it a try, and it's just about the only game that's let me recapture some of the feeling of playing one of my all-time favorites, Super Monday Night Combat.

Very cool intro! Really like the transition and references. Thank God for you!

Today we learn that the word squib has not one but TWO meanings: The first is the fireworks that hisses and the second meaning of "squib" is a satirical attack. Which means that our dearest Sterling has been, in fact, squibing for a very long time! (Please use this word more for satire, i beg of you, its hilarious)

Welp, the squib song is now stuck in my head

Adding Squibs to my next DnD campaign

What baffles me about Square Enix is they already HAVE their wildly successful live service. Final Fantasy XIV is one of the most successful MMOs in existence. Millions of people giving them $15/mo and buying expansions and merch, the cash shop that only exists because players begged for one to buy cosmetics and account services in its early days. Squenix has done what every company in the mid-late 2000's dreamed of - they got their own World of Warcraft. And yet that's just not enough for them, they still sink all this money on "services" that get shut down within months when they already have their golden goose. It's insane.

A squib sounds like an aberration for a squid in Dredge

"The Services of Burke" sounds like both an upmarket suit store in London and a 50-something plumber from the Northeast of England, I love it

It's genuinely hard to call some of the survivors "games" when they take up more time than an full-time job.

Nintendo: sues Yuzu out of existence Sterling: "Better make my hundredth video about live services sucking."

Fun fact squib is also used to describe a bullet or a round rather, that exits the chamber without enough force to actually exit the barrel, and provide enough blow back to eject the spent round and chamber the next

Didn't expect a lengthy diatribe and musical number about the term 'damp squib', but it's moments like this that keep life interesting

It’s a shame people investing in these live service items only to see them crash and burn a few months later.

That 'Basic lee' gag took me a couple of minutes of head-scratching to get

Thank God and that goes double for you, Steph.

Squibs are also the tiny harmless explosives with fake blood that simulate bullet impacts in older movies.

Your rant about the word squib is probably one of the best things ever posted to this website XD

Zombobby chasing the Toys for Bob logo was an excellent touch

As a gamer since the late 80s i didn't even knew there were so many live service games (and rightefully cancelled it seems). It really is true what they say about bubbles. If you're into something specific everything else flies past you.