"Play, Don't Pay": Meet the College-Football YouTuber Who Led a Gaming Revolt

James Bordeaux was a 23-year-old in Kentucky, playing EA Sports College Football 27 for a living. Then Electronic Arts — the $50-billion mega-developer backed by the Saudis and Jared Kushner's private-equity firm — tried to extract so-called "microtransactions" from inside his beloved video game. So the furious creator put his mouth where his money is: leading the type of organic, populist revolt that has become all too uncommon in American life. Bordeaux explains to Pablo how fans won a battle... but why consumers may never win the war. • Previously on PTFO: The "Pay-to-Play" Scheme That (Almost) Ruined Video Games, with Dan Soder https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmE1NTIzOTYyODczNjNjNmM4MmUzZjU4 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  I don't care if I never work with them. Again, I feel lied to. I feel betrayed and I don't believe in the direction the game is going in any longer.

• 0:13Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

• 0:17Speaker 02

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• 0:48Speaker 03

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• 1:14Pablo Torre?

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• 1:57Pablo Torre?

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• 2:21Pablo Torre?

  Hello, hello, hello.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  What's up?

• 2:24Pablo Torre?

  This is something that lots of people, by the way, have demanded that I do. And so, thank you, thank you for making time, man. How should I be addressing you as a human?

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Bordeaux's cool. I also go by James, but like, everyone would just know me as Bordeaux. They hear James, they're gonna be like, what?

• 2:43Pablo Torre?

  The other way I've been like, thinking of you and referring to you on the show is as the leader of a revolt.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very serious conversation because College Football 27 has already started on a very bad foot.

• 2:57Speaker 04

  If you've been on social media, been on X, you've been on YouTube, you would've heard about the hashtag #CFBPlayDon'tPay movement. Bordeaux started the movement.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  EA is bringing microtransactions to single-player modes, and it is only going to get worse from this very moment. But I believe if we act now, there is still time to make change. I just had to say my piece on something I disagreed with, that I was blindsided with. And I'm glad that my voice was able to have some power with it.

• 3:42Pablo Torre?

  So James, for people who don't know anything about video games, let alone your channel, how do you describe what it is that you do?

• 3:51Speaker 01

  I just play football games for fun. And I come up with different challenges, fun ways to make it interesting, see if you can take that small school all the way to a national championship that would never be there in real life. Hawaii is the most beautiful place in college football, but the hardest place to win a modern national championship. We will be taking over a football program located on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And how do you convince recruits at minimum to fly six hours just to get to your school? How do you operate? Maybe I put a school in Alaska. Just different fun ways to really play these games and get the best experiences out of them.

• 4:28Pablo Torre?

  The philosophy behind coming up with degrees of difficulty that you're self-imposing, that you're sort of inventing?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:34Pablo Torre?

  When did you realize, oh, that's, that's my niche in, in video game streaming?

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Even though I was getting really good at these games, it made it more fun for me as well to really challenge myself, to only recruit one stars maybe and try to win a championship. And it just continued to spiral and snowball into more and more views, success, and it's kinda how I got here. It's been a really fun journey.

• 4:59Pablo Torre?

  The question of when you started getting into this, because I think there are people who are still just sort of wrapping their minds around, okay, wait a minute. So he makes videos for YouTube in which he's playing football games. How did you get into that? Like, how old were you? How long ago was it when you first started trying to do any of this?

• 5:16Speaker 01

  I would say I was about eight whenever I started just playing the football games in general. My dad's beating up on me. I stand no chance, but forces me to get better. I'm just having fun with the games. And probably around the time I hit 16 or 17, I figured out how to get the old NCAA football game modded and on my computer. I was using NCAA Football 14, and then there was a modding team called College Football Revamped, and they put out mods that would update the game to the most recent season. And that opened up a whole other can of worms because there wasn't college football games at the time. I didn't have a PS3 ever, so I didn't get to play NCAA Football 14 when it came out.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  And that just set me from enjoying the NFL and fantasy football and all that to really falling in love with college football far more.

• 6:09Pablo Torre?

  So you're 23 years old now?

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 6:12Pablo Torre?

  And so, the alternate life in which, you know, maybe, maybe, let's say your dad takes it a little easier on you, and you don't end up being sort of radicalized by the, the prospect of, wait a minute, this is a job now. What's your alternate life? What are you doing instead of this?

• 6:30Speaker 01

  So, I was in college to be a statistician. I was on full scholarship. I always kind of imagined I was gonna work in sports statistics.

• 6:38Pablo Torre?

  And what, what school was it?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Northern Kentucky University. And I just decided to fire back up a YouTube channel that I had like 3,000 subs at the time. And over the summer, it just blew up immediately. So by the time I get back to school, I'm going into my second year, but I was like in my third year on credits. And I just start dropping classes.

• 7:01Pablo Torre?

  Are you playing as Northern Kentucky? Is that what you're starting off with?

• 7:06Speaker 01

  I did do a series at one point where I just put the school in the game. I thought that was really cool. I went to college at Northern Kentucky University, and although I dropped out, I spent a couple years there. I'd enjoy going to some of the basketball games, but what we were missing was a football team, so I'm starting one. But by the time I'm dropping classes, I'm starting to make good money online. I'm having to decide between, do I think I can be a gamer for work, or do I have to really focus on getting this degree? And I just couldn't do both. I was working so much, it was impossible.

• 7:40Pablo Torre?

  What did your parents think?

• 7:41Speaker 01

  They were not too happy with me. They have always believed in me, but also they had their own vision. And it's a whole foreign world to them. It's not what they grew up with. It's not what they would imagine. So now they're so happy with it. And even by the time I made the decision, they understood. But there was definitely a push more to be like, what are you doing? Keep going to class, don't drop those.

• 8:06Pablo Torre?

  And now you have a, a channel with, I think, is it over 600,000 subs now on YouTube?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  We're about there. We're getting close.

• 8:12Pablo Torre?

  Incredible. And so, at some point, EA Sports, the manufacturer of these games of college football, and Madden and all these other things, they have this relationship with you as part of their creator network. And how does that come to be? When does that happen?

• 8:33Speaker 01

  This happens going into the launch of College Football 25, the first game coming back. I get to go down to Orlando to play the game early. This game that everybody's been waiting for, for a decade. I've been playing these EA Sports games modded, but I've been playing them. This is the coolest thing that could possibly happen. So, once I heard about that, I'm like, oh yeah, let's see what happens. I had my concerns going in. I wasn't fully set on them putting out the best game possible, because I'd seen what they'd done with Madden recently. But when I got down there, they addressed a lot of those. And I was like, okay, let's see where this goes. And that was kind of the start.

• 9:10Pablo Torre?

  I want people to understand that you yourself are kind of this prospect that got recruited. And even like the schools, right? Like, the whole idea of you're gonna pick these like, uh, underdogs, and it's gonna be really hard for you to win a title with them in the single-player mode that, that you've been streaming. Some of these schools start literally recruiting you, right?

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I've talked with head coaches, I've gone on visits, I've gotten jerseys, I've got helmets behind me, like, here is a North Dakota State championship ring.

• 9:44Pablo Torre?

  You're holding up a literal...

• 9:46Speaker 01

  From when they won the FCS championship.

• 9:49Pablo Torre?

  A literal FCS Golden Championship ring.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  It's just sitting right there. I'm like, oh, perfect example.

• 9:54Pablo Torre?

  So you got that because you won with North Dakota, and they were like, we wanna make you officially a part of the program.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've played with North Dakota State in past games and then they're coming to this one. They finally decide to move up to FBS. And so they're like, let's send them a package. Show them some love.

• 10:14Pablo Torre?

  Oh my God, that was, that was to entice you to continue to stay with the program.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, to continue using them in future videos.

• 10:22Pablo Torre?

  Just the, the moment at which EA releases the college football game after a period of dormancy that is imposed because of course legally, you know, the, the whole question of name, image and likeness is caught up in the court systems and this is a federal issue and how are people going to rule on it? How is it ever going to be possible to play these games again, which had led you to of course, playing a modded, AKA basically an unofficially edited version of college football. It raises this question of like, is EA gonna do right by the fans? The fans have been waiting for this. Are they gonna deliver on it? And, and what you're telling me is that the introduction you had to EA through the lens

• 11:07Pablo Torre?

  of, oh my God, they're really doing it. It, it must've been so exciting in terms of now you're in contact with the direct manufacturer and for a kid who grew up playing this thing, like what can be better than that is to have a direct line to those folks?

• 11:22Speaker 01

  I'm just like, this is gonna be awesome. There's only so much you can get to in the first game when they're trying to start the series up. So I understood that even where things were lacking, needs to get there. And so this third year was really supposed to be like that year. And it was starting to feel like it. And then all of a sudden, it wasn't.

• 11:45Pablo Torre?

  The subject of the microtransaction. I, I need you to explain, um, what is a microtransaction as you see it?

• 11:55Speaker 01

  I see it as a way to buy something in a game. You have to spend a little bit of extra money to get something. And how you build that into the game is very important because there's different ways you can go about it and trying to extract more money out of your consumer base.

• 12:11Pablo Torre?

  So historically, you could, uh, microtransact, meaning pay real American dollars for, uh, you know, uh, pieces of, basically like pieces of flair for a uniform like NBA 2K. And that's been familiar. We talked about how, uh, in the last episode, there's a virtual durag you could buy in NBA 2K. That was actually more expensive than a real life durag you could buy on Amazon, uh, which says so much to me. But college football, the, the institution of the microtransaction in which you spend real money to get virtual currency.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  So basically, as you have success in these modes, you gain experience and that'll allow you to level up your player or coach faster and you're able to make him a lot better. What EA did in previous games was they allowed you to control this. They allowed you to go at whatever speed that you wanted to make that experience however you wanted to feel it. In 27, they decided to remove all of the faster options. And now they give you an option to pay them if you want to reach those levels faster. And they said nothing about it. Let's just see how expensive it could be to upgrade your player. I started as a two-star. I was curious what would happen. Our max overall is only 80 for the time being, but

• 13:29Speaker 01

  we could potentially spend 6,500 points just getting our player from a 55 to an 80 overall in a single player mode. That is like 50 bucks.

• 13:38Pablo Torre?

  Oh no, I accidentally clicked it. I accidentally clicked it. I hate myself. So in other words, you need to pay to level up as quickly as you used to be able to by virtue of like the time and effort and, and the skill that you would put into this thing that was of course, like more than just at this point, a game, but also a world and a community and a thing that people really cared about.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  I want to add to this. It allows you to create your own experience inside these modes and fixes the mistakes that they might make on the development side. If they don't tune certain things properly, it's really beneficial to be able to tune it how you want. And they've even said this. They've said that's why those sliders are there.

• 14:24Pablo Torre?

  Hmm.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  And now they're kind of going back on it and hiding that option to stand behind their own gameplay mechanics.

• 14:33Pablo Torre?

  What was your reaction to realizing that in year three, the all-important year, microtransactions were now a part of your life?

• 14:42Speaker 01

  I was not happy with it. I don't care if I never work with them. Again, I feel lied to. I feel betrayed and I don't believe in the direction the game is going in any longer. You can hate me. I'd then been playing this game for almost a month. Off and on, of course, because there were different like periods where we were able to film, but I had seen this game for a month prior to this at this point. And I never saw any of it.

• 15:08Pablo Torre?

  Hmm.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  You see a lot of stuff in early access where it could be a bug. It might not be there. So on the road to glory side, you might wonder, oh, how do you not catch it? There were Smithers, like little hints where you're like, that's where it could be, but you didn't know if it functioned that way. Dynasty side, didn't even know there were settings. So it kind of just caught me all off guard. When it was actually there and you're asking these devs every question about what is in the game, they tell you every little detail about the new little things that they've put in. Nothing about this. Nobody on marketing briefs us. It was a whole 180 because no one ever made it sound like they were going in this direction.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  In fact, another creator said that one of the devs specifically told him there wasn't going to be microtransactions. So a lot of us were just caught so off guard that this is how it actually came out. And oh, it was really frustrating. Once you realize that they took sliders out too. They took sliders out to push you towards these microtransactions that were there in the previous games. I think that just really lit even more people on fire.

• 16:19Pablo Torre?

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• 17:01Speaker 02

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• 17:32Speaker 03

  With the Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.

• 18:03Pablo Torre?

  As a business story, I do need to remind people that, um, EA Sports was purchased famously amid all of the success for college football. They were purchased by a consortium that involves, and I will just read this out again, the Saudi Private Investment Fund, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, inside of which is Jared Kushner, this character from of course, the world of politics. But I say that to say that what a microtransaction does is create new ways for the video game manufacturer to make money individually off of these transactions from all of these users in ways that they were not able to before. And so in terms of the unpopularity of this that, that EA should have been aware of, you're

• 18:48Pablo Torre?

  saying that you suspect it was obviously unpopular and that it was obviously going to be a way to get money, to extract money from its fans, its customers. And that's why they were, they were doing this so shadily.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  They were a bit silent on it. Like they put out these deep dives that have everything new coming to the game and there was not really a mention. They put out these deep dives where I would expect, they say, yeah, we're going to remove some of the sliders and features y'all have gotten accustomed to. Why not talk about it? So that was where it really hit home for me is it's just there all of a sudden. And we have to either deal with this and we have to understand this is just year one. They're going to continue to try and extract more and more money if no one says anything? And from that point, I just didn't care. That's not the future I want to see with these games.

• 19:43Pablo Torre?

  Well, part of why I'm so delighted to talk to you is that there is a world in which someone who has direct access to the manufacturer of their favorite thing, which can give them money and attention and distribution of, of all of these, these, these things that you have built your business on, that you have gone all in on yourself, right? Leaving college to do it. There's a world in which that person goes along with this because that's the deal. That's the implicit deal. And instead, what you do is you create effectively a hashtag and a movement.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Over the next couple of weeks, starting today, you will see hashtag CFB play don't pay across all social medias. I will be putting this under every single post until they address the issue. You can't just.

• 20:34Pablo Torre?

  How does hashtag CFB play don't pay? How does, how does that first develop in your mind?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  We're actually sitting in a Discord call, playing another EA game, a bunch of us creators, FIFA, and we're just talking about how awful this is. A couple of us have already put out tweets on it. We're very frustrated. And it kind of just all starts to click. Well, this is the only time to push back. If we're three years down the line, there is no way that they remove it then.

• 21:08Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  So I'm starting like, okay, I'm gonna put out this video. What's a good hashtag we can come up with? My original hashtag horrendous.

• 21:14Pablo Torre?

  What was it?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  If I didn't have these other guys on my side, it was bring back fast XP.

• 21:21Pablo Torre?

  Not as catchy.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  And it's like, Bring Back Fast XP is not gonna get anybody movement at all. But hashtag CFP brings in the game and then play, don't pay, cuz it was still a fun game, but don't pay them for this extra crap that they're trying to put in there. And so, one by one, after my video comes out, everyone starts to put out there. So it's not just a one day thing.

• 21:44Speaker 05

  Microtransactions are a disease and EA has brought them to Dynasty and Road to Glory in College Football 27. EA's greed truly knows no bounds.

• 21:56Speaker 06

  People are already spending money on this and it's ridiculous that it's no longer a free feature in the game. We had it last year. It's like, how much do you need? Ultimate Team doesn't pay enough, the sales of the game don't pay enough, you now need to squeeze the 1% of the player base for just a little bit extra and not...

• 22:16Speaker 01

  We got days of content coming, more people start to talk about it, the hashtag continues to get bigger every day. And EA, by the time that they finally backed down a little bit, they'd already put out two other responses. They're on their third response on a Friday, we start on a Tuesday. To respond once every day, there was a lot of pressure.

• 22:36Pablo Torre?

  It's when it caught my attention, is like, wait a minute, like, here we have a fan movement, a movement by creators who are normally compromised in all these other analogous scenarios throughout American life, frankly, in business. And I'm like, these 20-somethings are causing a multi-billion dollar enterprise to have to answer to them. I mean, the first couple of statements, how would you explain first, like, what their initial response was? And then what you thought of it as they tried two times to put a sort of stop to all of it?

• 23:09Speaker 01

  See, here's what I did after this whole thing. I went and I spent a few days out at Yosemite in San Francisco. I'm off a 72 hours of relaxation, being in the real world.

• 23:19Pablo Torre?

  Part of your response to all of this, when this was sort of gaining steam and this was going viral, was, I need to, I need to touch grass. You literally needed to touch grass.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  I need to just get away from this cuz I am furious and it was the best thing I could have done. So now I'm coming here Monday morning, trying to refresh. I'm pretty sure their first response was they're not changing anything. Their second response was, we'll change one thing with Dynasty. We'll give you one setting back that makes the XP gain a little bit faster, but not as fast as it had been. And then, on the Road to Glory, your player career mode, they touched nothing. So, twice already, they've said to the players that wanna play as their own player, to have a career in Road to Glory offline, we're not gonna let you customize your experience at all. We're not gonna give you the features that were there in the previous games, but you can still pay us money to upgrade faster.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  And the last thing I'd like to say about these statements was, they continued to say that their vision throughout this is tied to how they built the game, that the microtransactions are there to enhance the player experience. We don't wanna give players a gameplay advantage with the sliders, but the microtransactions are cool. And I think that was what caused people to get even more outraged, was it's cool to have an advantage if you pay EA money, but you can't have the advantage on your own in your offline game. You have to pay them money to get it now. And it was just the wrong way to go about it.

• 24:51Pablo Torre?

  I mean, were you yourself surprised by what apparently, in the minds of all of these people on the internet, yourself, of course, helping lead the way, were you surprised by the level of greed that this company seemed to be exhibiting?

• 25:12Speaker 01

  I'm not naive. I understand that each game has their own budget, their own revenues that come in. And so, they probably have specific goals they need to continue to hit. And normally, these games lean on their Ultimate Team mode, where you can pay for packs, you can pay for players. And the college base is a very offline community. A lot of us don't touch Ultimate Team, ever. We don't care to play that mode. And so, I think they're looking for other ways to make revenue. And I think they implemented it in possibly the worst way they could've. Whoever made that decision, if you just had a conversation with a few of us for 60 seconds, we could've told you immediately, this is not gonna go over well.

• 25:56Pablo Torre?

  Right, right, right. I mean, the thing that I'm realizing is that when you say that in single player mode, the offline mode, which you do, that was what we were just describing, that you fell in love with, and lots of the other creators do, I wasn't really connecting the dots on, that is the mode that is most sort of viral and consistently popular for consumers. It's also the one that doesn't make them the most money. It's sort of like, you guys all fell in love with the game that is the dream, on some level, of the manufacturer. They love our game, but it's not the kind that we can extract money from in ways that are already normalized. And so, what you're saying is, they had to figure out a way to transition it.

• 26:38Pablo Torre?

  And by statement number three, it felt like there was optimism, that your revolt, this whole like creator-led revolt, in which you were, I can imagine that they're thinking, wait a minute, like, they are biting the hand that feeds them, and the hand in response is like, is backing off. Because what is the message now by statement number three? This is July 11th, we're getting to now.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Their message at that point was, we're gonna take out microtransactions. If you read through the message, it's just some of the most, it's corporate speak, it makes you wanna throw up. They say how they're trying to enhance the user experience and they missed the mark. They missed the mark by trying to just screw over the consumer. But they did back down on microtransactions and they said they're gonna make future statements where they address everything else. So in my mind, if they're gonna back down on microtransactions, they're also probably gonna back down on limiting the user experience that everybody plays these games for, where they can do whatever they want. They're gonna put the sliders back in that they took out, and that was where I was at when they put out that statement. I was thrilled.

• 27:46Pablo Torre?

  I'll read, by the way, the statement in front of us again. This is the one with the big red text at the top, "Happy College Football 27 launch week." And then in tiny text, they thank you for your continued passion and incredible response. And they say, "We love the game and the sport." The line that you cited was, "However, your feedback on Road to Glory and Dynasty is that we've missed the mark with the introduction of paid progression options." And then they go on to say that they're gonna remove all paid progression options from said modes. "They're moving fast to respond to your feedback in-game, so stay tuned for follow-up communications next week." And at this point, I will say, you kinda spiked the football. Like, this is a huge moment in the history, and I'm not overstating this, in the history

• 28:26Pablo Torre?

  of collective action in the era in which we live on the internet, this is a win amid a desert of people who are thirsting for wins.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  It's nice in the moment to be like, yeah, we took a little bit of a win, but if they're being stubborn on adding back the features they removed that were in previous games, and they're still saying that they're gonna bring back all of this in 28 potentially, they're gonna have to really hit the mark and I don't trust them to. That's the truth. They're just, there's no way they're gonna do it right.

• 29:00Pablo Torre?

  Well, now we're into your follow-up video. This takes us to last week, you know, it's July 15th. And your video is now, you know, it's pretty blunt, EA lied.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  EA thinks that you're stupid and I think they're lying to the community about listening to our feedback. It just blows my mind the way they have responded. We have a new response, we have a new update on what could be coming to the game, and I feel like they just don't care at all. It was basically a big F you to the community for speaking out. Of course, it was very clear on what we were asking for, and then they just conveniently are like, yeah, but those sliders, we can't put those things back in the game that were in the last two because we designed this whole game around our experience that we want you to have, to play one specific way. The only way to bypass it would've been to buy microtransactions. Then you can upgrade your things faster, then it's cool to progress faster in our game modes.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  But now that they're not there, it's like they're being a petty kid. No, we're upset that you were pushing back, so now we're not gonna give you your toys back. The college football-specific community is more offline than anyone else. They would play a 10-year-old game that is modded 10 years after it released and be fully happy with it. And now that we can mod on PC this year, there might be no incentive to get the new games, especially if you're gonna destroy those offline game modes. Don't ruin the actual core game mode, thinking that people are gonna pay to beat up on the computer. That's just the most brain-dead thing I've ever heard.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  You get off work, you enjoy your experience, and you pay to beat the computer? What are we doing?

• 30:46Pablo Torre?

  They are creating places that you have to give them more money to do the stuff that you used to do by virtue of paying the 70 bucks for the game.

• 31:05Speaker 07

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• 33:27Pablo Torre?

  What is the reaction from EA to you directly? Have they tried to reach out and sort of, you're smiling as I ask this question?

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Uh huh. Well, to keep it as simple as possible, they have never punished creators for speaking out. All of my buddies, all of the other guys in the space, they have, I'm very confident they'll be working with them in the future. There was probably a path forward early on where I could have continued to work with them. And it would have all been fine. And I could have spoke my voice a little bit. We're good. I didn't believe in that path. I don't believe in the direction the games are going. And with every statement they put out, I felt more and more justified in that decision. Because they just continue to basically double down and say, we don't care.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  And I don't want to be tied into anything if they continue to make things worse. Those guys are still going to be able to be vocal, but you probably hinder yourself a little bit because you still have that partnership. So I'll be able to speak my full mind if they mess up, and I'm hoping that they don't. I really hope that they learn from this. It's just how often do big companies do that these days?

• 34:42Pablo Torre?

  You're now saying something that makes me wonder if you're concerned at all about whether this will affect your business. This is your job, right?

• 34:52Speaker 01

  It will. I will take a hit, obviously, because now I won't have the early videos with them. I won't be paid to go out to something like the cover shoot and make content around it. All of my work with them was always like paid for a deliverable. So that one specific piece of content, sponsored, like any other sponsor. You read off whatever's required with them. There was nothing really required. It was just say it's sponsored. But then all other media I put out throughout the year, it's my video. They have no way of controlling what I say. I get to speak my mind on anything. So I am losing out on a decent bit not working with them. But I also know that my community's rocked with me long before EA.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  They supported me long before these games came back. They were watching me play the old games. And they'll continue to be there for me. So I feel like it's only right that I use my voice for what I believe in and not whatever they decide to go in the direction of. One of my friends likes to joke, I'm launching like my 2036 Kentucky governor campaign or whatever. I'm like, dude, I don't think I could ever get into that. This is just one specific thing I am very passionate on. I didn't intend for it to go the way that it did. I was hoping that they'd hear us out, but I didn't realize how many people were going to rally behind. I, I kinda had the expectation. I told my thumbnail guy, this is going to hit like 100,000 views and be dead.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  I can't put up a video this short on my main channel. No one's going to care. Partnership burned. That's that. But at least I got to speak my piece. And instead it turned into this whole movement. And I'm just so proud of the community for how they all use their voices and rallied behind.

• 36:38Pablo Torre?

  Oh, man. I mean, that's the thing about all of this is that this is not coded, this issue that you're describing and have been fighting. It's not coded politically, left or right in any particular way. This is not a Republican or Democrat thing. This is not something that has at all attention from Washington DC. Or at the very least, not nearly enough, I would say. And so it feels like this organic Petri dish that emerged on YouTube, on Reddit, on that Discord channel where you started this. And it just feels like an actual version of what politics should probably look more like. Which is people realizing that if we organize our community against this giant corporation that has every advantage

• 37:21Pablo Torre?

  and has all of the money in the world, it seems, uh, maybe we can actually do something. Maybe we can make them worry. There's a concept that I'm curious if you've heard of it before. And, and the, the concept is in shittification.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  I have, I have.

• 37:42Pablo Torre?

  So, so we, we sort of attribute this to Cory Doctorow, who wrote about this and has spoken about it at length incredibly eloquently. But it's just the basic idea that once a company or a manufacturer, a video game maker in this case, has you. Once they've gotten your buy-in as a customer, what ends up happening is often they start making the product worse because they're not worried about retaining your loyalty anymore. They're too big, they're too popular, they're not worried about, about losing you to the point where they begin to paywall and construct obstacles in front of things that you used to get for free or were better

• 38:25Pablo Torre?

  when you didn't have to pay for them. And now suddenly, surprise, it's worse and more expensive.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  I've seen it my whole life. Like, I was so excited for the world when I was younger. And then you become an adult and then you see how things have progressively gotten worse. Houses have become more expensive. And you're just like, what, what is happening? How is everything getting worse all at once? Why is everything getting so much more expensive? If I was not blessed doing something like this as a job, I don't know where I would be.

• 38:58Pablo Torre?

  What is then the future of the thing you know the best, uh, which is video games? And does the community that you are helping to lead, do you think they have a say in it at this rate?

• 39:13Speaker 01

  I think they do. I really do believe that if EA had any little bit of common sense up there on how do we continue to maintain this strong, small, but very strong and loud community base? That's what the college football community is, whether it's video games or just the sport they love. How do we continue to put out games that they're going to want to get? I really do believe they need to listen because people like me, I'll still play the game. But they are going to have a very hard battle to face anytime they try to slip stuff in like this. When even their own creators that still decide to work with them are going to speak out against it.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  If they're doing this in year one, kind of goes back to in shittification that you're talking about. What is this going to look like three to five years down the line? When they continue to add more ways to get you to spend money in the offline modes? Where does that put the game? Because three to five years from now, it's not going to be recognizable to where it was once at. And so that was what really set in is, yeah, I can never work with them again if this is what they're doing. No shot.

• 40:22Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah. It does occur to me at the end here that the life you've chosen for yourself with all of these developments in it. You are now actually putting self-imposed degree of difficulties

• 40:41Pablo Torre?

  on your life in a way that say a guy who dropped out of Northern Kentucky to, to do the same in a video game might appreciate.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess that is it. I'm trying to give myself a little bit more of a challenge. Can I still wrap in a bunch of viewers on a game that I'm no longer working with directly? And I believe I will because they all stood by me before any of this came by. And I'm just EA. I know there are people from EA that have seen this, that are going to be watching this. Listen to the community. Just listen. We want what's best for the game. There are better ways to do what you're doing. Just do that.

• 41:20Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, James, I hope your, I hope your former professors are proud of you.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  I, I hope so too.

• 41:35Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.

• 42:02Speaker 05

  State Fair food is getting smaller and pricier. We'll have room for fried cookies. Okay, you never overspend on food. What's your deal?

• 42:10Speaker 02

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• 42:32Speaker 03

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