[00:03] to the Blizzard Entertainment boardroom. A legend of the gaming industry, 25 years of history, beloved by all. You're the marketing director in this fantasy. The health of the entire franchise relies on you. The CEO looks
[00:18] at you. He's 15 minutes out from his next meeting. He's got to go to golf. "Well, Tom." That's That's your name. He says impatiently, "We're excited to hear what your plans are for marketing our new upcoming game,
[00:30] are for marketing our new upcoming game, Diablo II, Reign of the Warlock." But you freeze. Oh, no. Was that report due today? You just spent the entire last month on World of Warcraft, on the 300th
[00:43] classic server they have. You and your department, they haven't done a thing. There's no marketing plan at all. You've done zero work. You're doomed. Your job and your life is over.
[00:55] A stroke of brilliance. You straighten your chair. You summon warrior level 14 that you're leveling "Boss, we're going to do a shadow drop."
[01:09] And instead of tossing you out the window like that one meme, >> So, that's what we're talking about today. We're talking about yes, the the marketing concept in in video games I
[01:21] and that that is shadow drops. I have spent a lot of time in video game marketing. Uh probably too much time. Maybe I don't know, 25 years and I I have pretty much seen some super dumb stuff,
[01:37] but but never quite something that takes the cake just as bad as this idea that has recently come across in the last few years uh that video game companies do, which is called shadow drops. So, shadow drops are essentially
[01:49] when a video game company decides to release this game without blind shadow drop or they do like a a very brief announcement at the end of like a gaming awards show which we'll see in a minute or some kind of like
[02:04] E3 type you know gaming event. And they say ups by the way the game is out right now or you can play the game right now. And it's like like ostensibly it's like a lot of hype. It's like wow the game is available right now. That's
[02:19] so crazy. And so we're going to discuss in this video for marketing nerds why I think this is one of the worst ideas ever in terms of video game marketing and also one of the laziest. By using two internet friendly example case
[02:33] studies. The first one being you guessed it. That's right. Diablo II Reign of the Warlock. So Diablo II was released totally at random on February 11th. No marketing I mean nobody knew it was
[02:50] And initially like it looked pretty good. So we can see like um No I'm good. Okay, we can see RPG Titan from Blizzard returns with new systems 15,000 player peak and 2100 very
[03:05] positive reviews. All right. So 90% rating the 1.0 release introduces the Warlock class and has recently surpassed Diablo IV in concurrent player counts. So like everybody was heralding
[03:19] this as this like massive thing cuz they passed Diablo IV like well Diablo IV came out recently. But Diablo II is 25 years old. So that's good. This must be a great marketing success. And indeed
[03:35] you can see from the Steam numbers that it's not bad. There's actually that it's not bad. There's actually still 15,000 people playing right now. relevancy or at least on these player counts over the course of the last like
[03:48] two or three weeks that it's been out. And even have um, Blizzard executives people that play. Lisa. Blizzard may expand Diablo 2 even if with the surprise Warlock class goes
[04:03] "Oh hey, we're excited about this opportunity. We still have millions of lead producer. Uh, so they're very excited. Millions of people that play Diablo 2, 15,000 concurrent players. Um, and and and and and a good thing to
[04:17] remember too is that um, the Steam count is like a fraction of the actual player base. This is just the people that don't use the Battle.net client which is uh, so so ostensibly this seems like a very successful release. And in a vacuum that
[04:30] all sounds good. Um, so great. No problems, right? What's this video about? Well, I mean if only there was like a game that uh, we could benchmark ARPGs against uh, to compare player counts and and and AND AND WHOA,
[04:46] WHAT'S THAT? WHOA. WHOA. OH, OKAY. OH, OKAY. You see a real RPG with actual marketing That's what we're going to talk about next, okay? So so Path of Exile
[05:01] is a beloved game in the ARPG community inspired by Diablo 2. Chris Wilson's Path of Exile basically made this game as a haunt as as an homage to Diablo 2. And it has since done some amazing stuff. But one of the things that I love
[05:15] know, just on a on a on a personal note here, we can see if I go to my Path of Exile, I have I have a few hours on this game. Um, you know, you know, just a just a bit. So I get to talk about this game a
[05:29] >> Um, it's obviously one of the most successful ARPGs of all time and the like cracked schedule to release updates for this game. Usually like every four months between Path of Exile and Path of Exile 2. And you can see in the league
[05:42] launch numbers compared to something like um, Diablo 2 for example. Uh, the league launch numbers are crazy. So, like you you these big bumps here, you like you you these big bumps here, you can see are um 160,000, 180,000,
[05:55] 174,000, and so on. These big bumps basically mean that um the game gets an update. You can see some of these are real successful, like 200,000. And like Diablo, only a fraction of the player base is on Path
[06:08] of Exile Steam. So, about 40% of the users. So, you pretty much double these you people you're actually getting. Which is pretty cool. So, um Path of Which is pretty cool. So, um Path of Exile I bring up because they have a
[06:21] Exile I bring up because they have a pretty fantastic marketing plan. Um they use traditional marketing. Which I say in my script here. Path of to 4 months. They use traditional marketing trailers months in advance,
[06:34] access, community builds, and reliably pull 250 to 230k concurrents on Steam alone, which often accounts for about 300 to 300,000 uh Settlers of Catan had a record 290 229,000
[06:50] people, a 350k total, and they never let us forget it. We had to play that league for a straight year after that uh because they were so happy with it. Now, uh compare that to Diablo 2's Reign of the Warlord drop. And now all
[07:03] of a sudden those Steam DB numbers I was showing you for Diablo uh are not that great. Um plus I mean we're going to talk about some stuff here, and and and you're going to I I already know some of the objections
[07:15] going to get to that, okay? But let's take a little bit of time because, you know, just the marketing nerds in us, we got to figure out how beautiful a single league, and the kind of marketing they put behind just a just a free update,
[07:30] okay? Um not a paid update, a free update. So, we're going to analyze um the Keepers of the Flame announcement and everything they did to do that. worthwhile, and it will be really fun to do for me.
[07:44] Um and maybe you. Flame. Keepers of the Flame is their latest league came out about 2 and 1/2 months ago, and they started the hype cycle with an announcement 7 weeks before
[07:59] and a forum post and a trailer. So, the initial Hiveborn trailer for Keepers of the Flame >> was um was here. And you can see it was just a very simple gameplay release trailer released
[08:14] like about 8 weeks before the league. And it got 783,000 views. And I mean, this is like we're not talking like super crazy production quality. 30 super crazy production quality. 30 seconds. It's like a bug in like an egg.
[08:28] the announcement, that's that that's it. That's the whole thing. That's the it is, when you can find out more. So, so that's cool. That's the first thing you see if if you are a Path of
[08:41] Exile aficionado. Okay. Um and then after that, they have a short like for a little bit, but they update like little forum posts and little things.
[08:53] And then um at at the at the 8-day mark, there's at at the at the 8-day mark, there's like a major reveal, which again is posted on YouTube. And this is like a content reveal about
[09:05] a million views where uh the game directors basically go is happening in the new update, and it's awesome. And like it it it's also streamed live on Twitch. This gets tens of thousands of views on Twitch. People
[09:19] awesome. It's like it's it's it's like a really great um thing. And if that that goes out, which comes out about the same time. And that's a that's just a this is a simple 2-minute trailer for Keepers of
[09:34] the Flame. And again, it's like gameplay footage. and stuff. And you can see like a little bit of gameplay and it's really exciting. And there's 803,000 people that watch this
[09:47] with 7,000 upvotes. But then there is a crazy huge two week drop promotion that happens on actual launch day.
[09:59] that happens on actual launch day. And so the what happens is the um there's Twitch drops so you can get these like really cool portal effects stream for three hours on Twitch you get these like really you can get this thing
[10:12] use and there's all these like promotions they can use to encourage not but for Twitch streamers to stream the league. They also have a huge paid campaign where they pay streamers and they even have a what they called a
[10:26] support a streamer campaign where if you purchase two Twitch subscriptions incentivizes like a huge number of people to to to talk about it. So just this or stream it. Just this got 130,000 views and that's like
[10:40] most of the marketing that goes into a single Path of Exile league. It's like it's like a crazy amount more but but it's not even like that much work compared to like what Blizzard like a like a triple A studio should should
[10:54] like a triple A studio should should should do. So so like but but but but surely you you can't compare a free game because Path of Exile is free with the storied history of updates to a paid
[11:07] release of an expansion at $25.99. Like you know like of course there's not going to be as many players that are going to put down $26 for Diablo 2. course it's going to do a little bit better.
[11:20] Yes I can compare it and I'm and I'm going to. Why? Because Diablo 2 is actually that big. So so so it's really important to understand that Diablo 2 sold 4 million copies within the first 2 months of release
[11:35] and tens of millions of people have played it across the 25 year historic In fact, there was an article that recently came out that said that over 100 million people have played games from the Diablo
[11:49] series. That's crazy. So so like This is this is a a legend of a game. I mean I mean the whole reason we have Path of Exile and ARPGs in general is because of Diablo. I
[12:02] mean this announcement of a new class in Diablo should have been gaming news everywhere. It would have been crazy because especially because the last major update to this game was Lord of
[12:17] major update to this game was Lord of Destruction which was 24 years ago They they did all kinds of cool stuff for it. If you remember there was like this really cool cinematic. Blizzard did these epic cinematics. It was like
[12:30] everybody was like super hyped for it. and like the last content update that did anything for Diablo 3 years ago and they added like eight new rune words and some charm updates
[12:46] for like the terror zones or whatever. So you have a game. This is like in your catalog. This is like this is your baby. This is your legendary game. And and you hadn't
[13:01] updated it in 24 years. This should have been massive. Like a franchise with tens of millions of lifelong fans sat basically untouched for two decades. And then Blizzard decided that the best
[13:17] way to bring that back was a surprise shadow drop. No marketing, no warning, shadow drop. No marketing, no warning, just here is a new class in 25 years. So so to me, even though these articles and stuff are saying like, "Oh, it's like
[13:31] great like we we did pretty well. We beat Diablo 4." Dude, Diablo 4 is not a >> [laughter] >> And so, like like beating Diablo 4 is like beating like a coughing baby. It's like that
[13:44] >> like that game is really needs help. And and and so, I don't understand the argument that like this was a successful release when they could have done literally any marketing and made this better.
[13:59] like as a person who is actually old enough that I grew up with Diablo 2, I I hype cycle for more people to give this game a shot.
[14:11] And you might say, "Well, all they did was add the Warlock." And it's like but marketing like the thing is like these updates individually for for for Path of Exile, they're they're it's pretty crazy. Like they add a lot of content,
[14:24] but you could have easily made a a little bit more on the rate of the Warlock thing. Again, for like the like the 25-year anniversary basically of this game getting an update, I just I just don't understand why it
[14:40] wasn't done. Like I think we've entered a reality where gaming companies are so confident in their legacy and their brand or they're just like their teams are actually just that lazy that they just think they can
[14:54] like the traditional marketing rules. And that brings me to >> [laughter] >> case study number two, which is going to be the ultimate demonstration of this. But before we get to case study number
[15:09] two, that's right. It's time for the secret callout. secret callout. 15 minutes and 15 seconds. 15 15, that's a good call. If you are still here in a Devin Nash marketing video, please leave
[15:21] a comment 15 15 that you were here. I appreciate you all. Thank you so much. I only have a couple of things to say. The first one is these videos are entirely supported via Patreon. patreon.com/devinnash.
[15:34] Now, you don't have to go to the Patreon and just give me money for nothing. I have 200 videos, about 30 or 40 minutes long each on that Patreon discussing everything from business, how I built two companies
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[16:29] but if you wanted to get in there, that is possible, as well. So, thank you very checked out the Patreon and support this video. Let's move on to case study number two, and yes, you may have already guessed it. Did you already
[16:42] guess it? The case study is on High Guard. Yes. Now, I recently did a video on High Guard and it's sort of very bad reception. And one of the reasons why I
[16:55] really like like talking about this game is I think it's one of the best one of the coolest examples of like marketing working and not working and how how marketing narratives like sort of shape
[17:07] people's perception of games and just things in general the best one since Concord. So, I'm making sort of two and a half videos about it because I I I really like this idea. So, High Guard, you can go to my
[17:22] previous video on my channel, which is probably the one like one or two before this one, and you can kind of get the whole hoedown, the hootenanny, if you Guard. Um but what I'm going to talk about is
[17:35] what the aftermath is and why this was yet another example of nonsense video game marketing, particularly in the realm of shadow drops. So, High Guard actually was intended to originally be a shadow drop. And honestly, I actually
[17:49] think it would have been better if it was. Like so, what ended up happening was um Geoff Keighley, who's the dude that runs The Game Awards. He The Game Awards is this big thing that happens every year and and it's turned into like
[18:02] basically E3 2.0, where they do huge amounts of game announcements and they also announce like the best games of that year. Geoff came to the studio, played High Guard, and said, "This is going to be a banger. Let me do an
[18:14] at the end, which is supposed to be like the big drop and the big information on on on the next on the most uh heavily hyped game that's ever going to exist. Like like Elder Scrolls 6 got that spot. Like I think a couple years
[18:28] ago. So, it's a big deal." Uh Geoff said, "Hey, this game is going in fact, I'll do it for free. It's normally a million-dollar sponsorship dollars to get your video there, but I'm going to do it for free. No questions
[18:41] will not shadow drop it. We will trust your judgment. your judgment. And we will hand our game over to you." And it was terrible. Um it was so terrible
[18:54] that about 1.5 million people tried it. And uh within about 3 weeks, there was a 98.5% player loss with overwhelmingly negative reviews in
[19:09] hours part. That's the really interesting part and look what what kind We're going to come back to that in just a second. So, massive massive massive layoffs. Basically, this is just like two or three weeks after the game even
[19:24] released. Uh layoffs hit Wild Entertainment just weeks after the game were laid off is not going to be a concern. It states that its size is or was 51 to 200 employees. So, uh now it's just run by quote a skeleton crew
[19:37] uh that is barely able to keep the lights on and just doing some updates. like where I I I really like one of the ex uh developers said well, it was gamer culture. We were turned into a joke from minute one. Uh thousands of people
[19:52] Game Awards and in the weeks that followed the the the devs were silent as consternation grew. Once it was released, High Gard was review bombed and its player count dwindled in mere
[20:04] hours. Two weeks later, they announced company-wide layoffs. Now, in the wake speaking across social media and one in particular went into a bit of detail calling it the fault of gamer culture. The future seemed bright um
[20:17] but the trailer came out and it was all downhill from there. Um under fire. They laughed at me, told me to get my McDonald's applications ready. Ahem and and mocked me um for listing having a a dis- a disability in in my
[20:32] bio. That's not cool. But the the first part's kind of funny. Uh all this was very emotionally taxing um for the moment the game was revealed, a Uh they were fighting an uphill battle. So,
[20:44] they were fighting an uphill battle. Most of it had to do with false Within minutes, it was decided the game was dead on arrival. A popular argument on social media was that Wild Life had paid Jeff um but it's
[20:57] the argument still gained traction. Ultimately, he had admitted there was gamers do wield great deal of power and said the power could be partially blamed for downfall. So, here we are looking at 14,000 review bombs within hours. So,
[21:12] themselves. So, there's going to be like the discussion of the marketing for Highguard where people say, "Well, the game was bad." And and I agree that I think that there was a lot
[21:25] of things that like if the game was like a total banger, then like maybe it would have lived through this and it would have been okay. But, the expectations were so high for Highguard. See how I did that? That there was just
[21:38] no you could have released GTA 6 in PvP form or GTA 5. I don't know if 6 will be a good game. Um and and it and it wouldn't have mattered. 14,000 review bombs in less than hour. Nobody even gave this game a shot. Now, like I I've
[21:53] gave this game a shot. Now, like I I've heard so many people blame gamers for thing of Highguard not getting a shot and like this game failing. But, nobody is talking about the fact
[22:06] had worse than zero marketing. It released a trailer 3 weeks before the game launched showing basically nothing. interviews. There was no trailers. There was no discussion of anything. There was
[22:22] one of the most successful games in this genre, Arc Raiders, had an initial were actually three if you want to count it. The initial initial playtest of Arc
[22:34] Raiders was received horribly. The devs had a vision for the game. They wanted to be like a pure PvE extraction shooter and they tested it with a small focus "Hey, this is not exciting. This is boring. We don't want to play this." And
[22:48] so, they you know what they did? They they they went back. They delayed the game by 2 years and they remade the entire game as a PvP extraction shooter extraction shooter. And what happened? They did another playtest. Gamers said,
[23:01] most successful play test of all time. They did another play test which they called like a stress play test. That had over a million players. And then bam, applause. Still to this day as of this
[23:13] most successful games of all time. What happened? They they they did marketing. They listened to the like cuz that that entire time they had trailers, they had they had feedback, they had back and forth. High Guard's entire mistake was
[23:28] hubris. Okay, and hubris brings you here. This is current right now. Like I'm not making this up. 97,000
[23:40] all-time peak 29 days ago. Right now, 457 people playing with a 24-hour peak of 800. Oh my god. What like like that is
[23:52] that is just brutal. Like like when a game comes out a few weeks they're going to suffer like a little bit of player attrition. But dude,
[24:05] >> this is like you like High Guard is like not that nobody ever gave it a shot. I mean, it's not like the next Apex Legends or whatever else or or or or League of Legends or any of those legend games,
[24:19] Legends or any of those legend games, but this is because of the hubris of the team where they thought that they had something so good it didn't need to be impacted by anybody that actually plays these video games. Like
[24:33] get a focus group. Bring Shroud in or something and he could be like it's good or not good. Bring I don't know, anybody. Like do anything. groups, you you you could you could communicate
[24:48] your vision with people and over the course of that 3 weeks if you had like a plan to marketing idea, you would be able to like better set expectations for like what the game is and the narrative wouldn't go against
[25:00] you like this. And and and and and that's what I think I I I think this is that's what I think I I I think this is just such an interesting um discussion be be be because of like
[25:12] blasted they got because they didn't allow the narrative um to to be good to to to to be anything but what they decided to be. And I I thought there was a cool ask on this that was in response to
[25:27] to the Serato's article about this. Uh they them for the downfall of everything, whatever. Uh in a world where nuance is I think this is actual takeaway. You could never blame the consumer for not
[25:39] worth consuming. Inversely, we have to stop pretending negative reviews don't successful. Highguard has thousands of overwhelmingly negative reviews from You can't call that fair no matter how you slice it. Take League of Legends for
[25:52] that, I would definitely give it a like a 1.5 out of 10 cuz I didn't understand and champions. But after playing it for thousands of hours, grinding every say with my whole chest that it's actually like a three out of 10.
[26:05] A generous generous gift to to gift from this guy. Highguard deserved the same Well, they maybe could have got it. Think this dude's like actually right. they had done like any sort of marketing any sort of point like descriptions of
[26:19] work, Q&As, Reddit posts, anything. You know, traditional marketing, guys, right? And and and and so this is just like I I I just I just don't understand between like these two AAA releases like where the conversation has. Like in the
[26:34] beginning of the video I I I I I made that imagination thing of that boardroom and it must really be like that. I I I I just don't understand like you have a whole marketing team. You have a budget. You have like all
[26:46] this stuff like set up for it. Why not do marketing? All right. Like like like when was it decided that we are just going to release these huge dollars to make. High cards cost millions of dollars to make. It ended up
[27:00] maybe Tencent or somebody. Uh they cost so much, and we're just not going to do any communication. We're not We're just going to bet that this is just the like it as if like the shadow drop sort of uh the the uniqueness of that is enough to
[27:15] like propel the whole game forward and like that alone is going to generate a lot of um a lot of hype. Uh no, it's not. It And like it's not the only example of it. I actually did a bunch of research
[27:29] on games that have been shadow dropped, and I wanted to make like a whole list, typical Devin Nash video, you know, 40-minute 5-minute like deep dive into some marketing concept that nobody cares about. Um I didn't want it to be an hour
[27:41] Like, here's this one of God of War: Sons of Sparta. Yeah, did you know that God of War had a new game? Did you Did you know that? Well, would it be the lowest-rated God of War ever if it had benefited from some buzz? That's right.
[27:53] They shadow dropped this. Um and nobody cared. It It got a bit more than 500 reviews, and it just didn't get any attention. Um they did no marketing. Again, storied franchise, super successful. But there there have
[28:07] super successful. But there there have been some games that shadow dropped and like Elder Scrolls Oblivion Remastered, or you could look at like although uh could look at like Apex Legends, but Apex Legends, which was the game that
[28:21] inspired High Card to be a to be a shadow drop, by the way, had a multi-million dollar marketing campaign that launched immediately out of the gate with sponsored streams, uh dev vlogs, tons of like tons of content,
[28:35] Apex Legends had a very, very planned execution for that the ground, it hit the ground running, and I I think that's why Apex Legends like Tech just 99 that did okay. The I don't think many people play it now. Um
[28:51] overall, it just comes down to the fact that like shadow drops are just a bad form of marketing. You can do so much better. And um there's there's a there's want to discuss that I think are kind of interesting here. Number one is like you
[29:03] miss out on Steam sales and pre-listing and pre-orders completely. And I did the listing and pre-orders are actually 20 to 30% of an average video game's sales. So, a lot of the time like you just lose a straight 20 30% of your [ __ ] of your
[29:17] sales by deciding to do no marketing. And I don't like I genuinely don't believe that this is a budget problem where it's like, "Oh yeah, we don't have spent all of our money on the game." Like it's Blizzard Entertainment. It's
[29:30] enough marketing budget? What are you doing I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I which is that like you need to do this
[29:44] marketing because people don't actually really buy games. Um there was this crazy study that was done by Sirkan A. And it says that um more than 60% of US gamers only buy two games or fewer per
[29:58] was doing research for this video. And so, here's the breakdown. It it it's actually wild. Um
[30:10] buy a new game less like often like less than once a year. 18% buy one about every 6 months. 12% buy one roughly once a year. And only 4% of gamers total buy a new game more often than once a than once a month. So,
[30:24] most of the people that are going to buy games like High Garder people that are like enthusiasts. And to get like to get the Arc Raiders style numbers, you really need to be a one of the top games
[30:37] of the year. Cuz like most people are are are going to play like Expedition are are going to play like Expedition 33, Arc Raiders, um whatever Call of Duty comes out, you know, cuz they buy that every year. But most people are are
[30:49] are are not going to even buy a game every 6 months. This is crazy to me because I buy like five games a month. I I I buy a lot of games. So, I like talk to people about it. I was like, "Do you buy a lot of games?" And
[31:01] was like I was like, "Oh, shoot. So, I guess people don't." So, you miss out on all this. You really have to do the marketing because if you don't, like you games. And um sure, like if you have like a
[31:14] truly industry-defining uh game that's just just that's just beautiful, like Expedition 33 or something, uh you can you can do it. But a fair amount of marketing. That was it was it was it was good. Um and the
[31:27] number one reason I think that that that just really is driven home by the High Guard story is you let the audience define the narrative. This is is is what I've been thinking about basically nonstop. Um it
[31:40] is true in content creation, it is true in video game marketing, it is true in marketing in general, that like if you don't respond to the narrative, especially like during the three to four weeks silence, if I was on like the High
[31:55] Guard marketing team, I would be having a a a freak out, a crash out as you Zoomers would say. I I I would be losing my mind because I would be seeing that the narrative is turning against us, that that that people are hyping
[32:10] expectations. And like I might organize like a dev Q&A, or I might petition to delay the game by a little bit to do a playtest or anything, right? Um because
[32:22] you can see within like that three to four month build-up period that um you may be on the road to uh destruction. destruction. Diablo II: Lord of Destruction.
[32:35] Destruction is 400 people playing at any given time. And I I I I I think letting the audience derive the narrative that they want to derive is one of the biggest mistakes you can
[32:48] make in marketing. It because um conversation the the more even if the if the argument is ridiculous
[33:03] the more voices that are in a conversation the more chance you have of like a solid protection organism of people pooling around that one opinion and defending it. And you had a situation
[33:18] with High Guard where there was literally no defenders of this game other side. It was literally just the one decision to go through. How many in in modern media today, how many dumb opinions do you see? But just because
[33:33] they're out there, there's a certain base of people that support it no matter few. And and so like the worst decision in a climate like this in an attention economy like this
[33:47] I used every buzzword I can. Um the worst decision you can possibly make is to have no voice. I just don't get shadow drops. I don't. Like if they had had any sort of narrative, you would have at least got like the
[34:01] like this game is great and I'm going to play it no matter what and nobody is going to just because they want to be like the hipsters. But nobody even was allowed to be a hipster cuz there was just literally a gameplay trailer 3
[34:15] Like oh my god. It is is is so bad. And and like that's on a game that has pretty good the map and like everybody talked about it. So and like all the streamers
[34:30] TGA and so the Game Awards and so everybody like talks about it. Thing about games that like Diablo II, which which really has a dedicated community ARPG community, you might not have even known that it came out. Um but despite
[34:44] that, this game should have been huge. It should have brought back every 40-year-old wizard like me that that that ever played ARPGs. And like I heard about it like I don't know. I was like on the
[34:56] was like, "Wait, what? Diablo II is coming back?" Like that it should never be the case when I am literally like as you can see from my example of my completely modest and reasonable amount of time played on Path of Exile I, you
[35:09] can see that I am literally that target audience. So like if I'm hearing about going to think? It's like, "Well, I'm really excited about Diablo II, but also I have things to do and I didn't plan to take work off for 3 weeks to play this
[35:23] game like I normally do when a Path of Exile league comes out, right?" So so >> [laughter] >> That's what it is. And and I and I and I >> That's what it is. And and I and I and I and I hope we don't see many more shadow
[35:35] drops. It's cuz it ultimately it's just unfortunate for the whole for for the whole industry. Because I am I I feel like every game should be given a chance and when a game fails like this
[35:50] at this level, it it it it it's it's actually bad for everybody. Um because and we don't get like more opportunities like this. And I I I I think what's >> the takeaway from this is going to be like, "Ooh, gamer is bad. They have the
[36:04] power to destroy and um we made a great game and people should have paid attention." But the takeaway really should be do some freaking marketing, guys. Like like like actually run through it. Do the work. Okay?
[36:19] for coming to watch. Uh yeah, support the Patreon if you want. I appreciate you all. I will see you all again next time.