Jesus, people need to cut Stern a break. All they have done is be the keeper of the flame for a decade and a half of terrible times for the hobby, and produce a buttload of games, on time and with consistent reliability. How many times do the old ops have to remind us that even the gold standard of Bally/Williams released machines with unfinished code regularly?

$8000 for anything is absurd. We all deserve dick kicks for what we pay - whether it be $7K for a CV or $5K for a TZ or $6300 for ACDC. $9000 for Wizard of Oz? $9000 for TBL? Burning $16K on Magic Girl? It's all relative. But Stern does not deserve the shit they get. In all honesty. Is releasing a game with unfinished code that takes a year to complete worse than taking money for a game and being 3 years late? Or being forever late? Or stealing money on lies? Or having your company leadership fall apart and refunds randomly fired out? Or folding up shop and locking the doors? Because that has happened, literally, with every other producer of games, in some form or another. But the pitchforks aren't nearly as sharp and numerous for anyone else. Something about low hanging fruit, I guess

Until the next recession.

I am a podcast junkie, and Nate consistently delivers one of the most solid pods of all that I listen to. He isn't the hard hitting question guy. He's Nate. Ball busting isn't his style (except for the deserved raking of Kevin and Pop over the coals).