The Evolution of Gaming Law

Gregory (00:22.572)
What is up, everybody? Welcome back to another week of the GZ Chop Shop gaming podcast. I'm your host, Greg. And you know, I always have to have an amazing episode lined up for you guys. And today I am joined by the founder and managing partner of Gamma Law. With a career spanning nearly three decades, this gentleman has become a recognized authority on emerging legal issues, working with some of the world's largest corporations, including those in video games and e-sports.

Let's welcome David Hoppe to the podcast. Welcome to the podcast, David. It's an honor to have you.

David Hoppe (00:59.543)
Thank you, Greg. Likewise.

Gregory (01:01.944)
So growing up on video games, can tell you as a kid, I didn't think video games had laws. You get your game, you play your game, and you don't really think of everything that's happening behind the scenes and especially the legal intricacies that are happening behind the scenes. But how does one, how did you in particular become involved with gaming law? Like how does that even happen?

David Hoppe (01:31.261)
Yeah, so for me, it was a bit of a winding and you could say a serendipitous path. I did not set out to be a video games lawyer. really much I really initially my target was to work internationally as a lawyer, particularly in Japan. And so I was able to do that for a few years. And somehow in the course of that experience, I was able to make some connections there, working for a large law firm.

and later in New York working with Japanese clients. And one of those connections ultimately would reach out to me after I had been out to Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom, which is a term I don't know how many of your fans may be familiar with, but that was the early days of the internet and everyone was throwing money at these internet companies, Yahoo and so forth. Eventually Google, this company came along as well.

and largely dominated the space that we were in. But in any event, I did that for a couple of years and the company I had worked for out there ultimately went bankrupt, even though it was a Nasdaq-listed company, stayed around for a year and helped them take apart their operations. And then after that started the practice that I'm with now, which is called Gamma Law, as you mentioned. But initially, I envisioned this practice as a sort of a

similar to what I had been doing before with large law firms, finance, US market entry, principally working for Japanese and international companies. But then that opportunity came along when the contact that I had mentioned before reached out to me and he had since moved to one of Japan's premier video game companies. And he got my newsletter or something and reached out and said, you know, we're starting.

He was in Tokyo. He was an executive with that company and we're setting up a new business unit in LA They're gonna do license in mobile game content, which was like what an exciting concept at that time Even just mobile games was a revolutionary concept at that time. So anyway to make a a long story long as it were that was sort of my start and eventually our start as we grew our team and

Gregory (03:40.492)
Yeah, yeah, yeah

Gregory (03:51.805)
You

David Hoppe (03:56.959)
Today we represent most of the large Japanese game publishers in one way or another. everything ranging from licensing content to financing to e-sports to film and TV licensing and a bunch of other stuff.

Gregory (04:17.56)
Wow, okay. Yeah, that's pretty extensive. Now you mentioned esports. As someone who pretty much only has watched a few esports things, what are some of the legalities that happen behind the scenes for esports? Like, I'm completely unaware of what happens behind the scenes. So if you could enlighten me a little bit.

David Hoppe (04:42.877)
Yeah, yeah. So eSports is kind of its own thing in terms of legal practice. I mean, eSports are in large part, they are public performances. And the client that we were working with was participating in some very large tournaments in Las Vegas and elsewhere. And then they had their own tournament circuit as well globally. there's a whole bunch of, because it's an in-person physical performance. And so...

In some ways it's, and this is, think one of the interesting things about video games law is that, you know, here's an example. I mean, you have to touch so many areas and have some competence across everything from, you know, we had to negotiate agreements with the venue, you know, in one case, a pretty high profile sport, e-sports, a special purpose venue and other cases it could be, you know, large auditoriums. But, you know, I mean, I never.

I've never done like a venue agreement before and in the, you know, in when I was with large law firms or when I was in house. So there's that you've got media, the media agreements, which can be quite complicated. You may have agreements with talent, kind of, you know, media talent as well as the talent on stage, which is, know, the sports teams, the sports individual players, the sports organizations.

And then you got the sponsorship agreements, you know, which is the lifeblood of these of eSports. And how is their brand going to be displayed and what kind of mentions are there going to be and et cetera, et cetera. And you have media rights, you know, in addition to the live media, of course, then you have the the aftermarket and, you know, perhaps serialization or whatever it is. And then, know, I mean,

I could ramble on for a while here, but in e-sports, course, unlike conventional or traditional sports, there's an IP owner. There's no IP owner for football. There's no IP owner for baseball, even though those leagues like to maybe pretend that they do own the game. yeah, so you've got to, whether it's Activision or Sega or Capcom or whatever, the...

David Hoppe (07:03.879)
the publisher has to be behind the effort and they have to provide all the licenses you need to display their content and etc.

Gregory (07:13.602)
Because I was going to ask, was going to say, like, why is there, you know, the IP owner of home? But I guess because it's their game being played and then they have their own, you know, legal, I guess you could say, line up for the for the tournament, everything that makes sense. Now, my other question, when you were talking about all those different entities being involved, the players themselves, are they represented by like one legal person or are they able to come in with their own?

individual lawyer like how does that work per team?

David Hoppe (07:47.049)
Sure. Yeah, so when you're working for an esports org, which we did for a period of time, then you do have to deal with individual esports athletes. And, you know, that's a whole other challenge in itself because sometimes these individuals may be, you know, minors. They may need immigration support to come to the U.S. for tournaments and

Gregory (08:09.88)
Mm-hmm.

David Hoppe (08:15.967)
You know, there has been, as you certainly are aware over the last few years, kind of a backlash, I guess, against the esports organizations in terms of treatment of the athletes and the compensation and what that career path looks like for an esports athlete. yeah, there's a whole bunch of other issues. But sorry, I'd answer your question directly. Typically, we wouldn't see

you know, representation on the other side of an agreement with, you know, like a whatever it is, 16, 17 year old kid that's been invited to kind of, you know, go to the eSports house, maybe on a trial basis or whatever it is. You know, these are these are kids that first of all, they're kids. But second, they are kids that have been really, you know, probably focused on this for for many years.

but really haven't had the opportunity to make any money from it. And when that opportunity comes along, then of course there's a huge motivation to just sign whatever's presented so that you can take advantage of that opportunity.

Gregory (09:27.382)
So what would be some advice you would give to parents who might, their kid might be wanting to get into esports and aren't aware of, you know, what will potentially be coming their way?

David Hoppe (09:41.969)
Yeah, well, I don't know. mean, as a parent myself, I'm not sure that it's a course that I would necessarily kind of advocate for, certainly, at least as the kids, you know, principle or instead of, you know, you know, getting a good education and opening some other opportunities as well. But, you know, certainly as a parent, mean, I mean, you want to make sure let's say the kid does have some real talent and has some kind of stage presence and

Gregory (10:01.763)
Yeah.

David Hoppe (10:12.127)
is able to really advance and stand out. You don't want him or her to be kind of locked down for an extended period of time with terms that may not reflect their value as it grows. You don't want them to be kind of locked into a particular organization for extended period of time.

And you don't want their name, image, likeness, rights to be tied up any more than is necessary to get the deal done. So that would be principally the things I would be concerned about.

Gregory (10:50.958)
Okay, so yeah, because like I said, I'm not involved in eSports and I'm kind of with you, know, if I ever had kids, I would want them to have other options. eSports is growing, but I've heard of a lot of the complications that the players are running into and, you know, being that most of them are young, don't, most of them are not going to have the knowledge to navigate, you know, these contracts, the legal system, they're like you said, they're pretty much presented with a contract and opportunity.

at that age or like someone sees me, there's an opportunity. I want to take it. I want to hit the stage and, you know, do what I love and become famous. But yeah, I agree. Like, you know, prioritize the education first and then see what opportunities come your way. But the eSports thing could definitely be an entire episode in and of itself. But I know for the for the gaming community and myself personally, there are some questions that have been bugging

Definitely me and some of my friends for years and especially when it comes to publishers and how games are handled and IPs and terms of service. So let's dive into that a little bit. First, I would like to talk about copyrights and patents. And I know a lot of people hear those terms but don't quite understand the difference between the two or exactly what they mean.

So could you elaborate a little bit about the difference in gaming with copyrights and patents?

David Hoppe (12:21.779)
Yeah, sure. And I'll even go a bit beyond that. Basically, there's four categories of IP. As you mentioned, you could say patents is sort of the first because of the level of protection that patents provide and how hard it is to get a patent. patents protect useful inventions. And that obviously typically has meant physical

know, tools, machinery, know, devices, et cetera. But in recent years, software patents have, of course, become a very important IP aspect. so what you're protecting there is the actual implementation of a concept, not protecting the actual concept itself, but it's a method, it's a device, and so forth that...

can be either digital or can be physical means. And I think we'll probably need to discuss that a bit more here later in the episode. But copyright then, on the other hand, is typically a written work. It's artistry of some kinds, a photograph, audio visual work. And in that case, you're protecting the the actual expression against copying.

In theory, copyright only protects against copying. you know, if I were to independently conceive of the whole, you know, World of Warcraft universe without ever having, you know, referenced the actual World of Warcraft game, then in theory, that would not be copyright infringement. In reality, of course, in most cases, the rights holder is able to show that there's been some connection between the, you know, infringing creator and the original work.

So then the third category we have is trade secrets and trade secrets are interesting because they're not actually registered with any government agency like patents and copyrights are. Trade secrets are just, you know, confidential, proprietary, useful information that companies, typically companies, could be individuals, just keep internally, protect them from being disclosed, and then, you know, have some value in their business and...

David Hoppe (14:42.291)
The example that's always given of trade secrets is the recipe for Coca-Cola. It's never been copyrighted. If it was copyrighted, they would need to disclose it, and the protection would run out after a certain period of time. So at some point in the distant past, someone made the strategic decision not to copyright that recipe and just to maintain it as a trade secret.

And then finally you have trademarks, of course trademarks protect branding, they protect logos, company names, video game titles in some cases, and characters as well. Characters can be covered, and all kinds of IP can be covered by multiple of these four categories. Characters is an example, character could be covered by copyright, it's the unique design of the character.

It can be covered by trademark as well if that character is used to basically sell a product or service.

Gregory (15:44.715)
Kind of like Mario for Nintendo and and you know that they're they're mascots well so many games coming out and you know so many developers coming up in creating original concepts and these established publishers like Nintendo Microsoft and Sony having their own products how our developers supposed to be able to navigate knowing if they're gonna wind up

copyright infringing on something that they thought was an original idea.

David Hoppe (16:16.595)
Yeah, it's a great question. this has been, you know, copyright infringement in video game content has been sort of evolving space legally. And it's been somewhat controversial because, you know, rights owners in some cases believe that the creative content that, you know, that they believe they ought to be have exclusive rights to that they've developed.

should be protected and courts may say no it's not protected under copyright. We don't find that it's original. We find that it's perhaps kind of what they call Sain's affair, French term, which essentially means if it's something kind of like a stock character, a stock scene, something like, you know, example that's often given is, you know, a dungeon and a, you know, damsel in distress or whatever.

Gregory (17:15.33)
Mm-hmm.

David Hoppe (17:16.159)
and or a horde of zombies in a post-apocalyptic landscape. These are considered to be concepts that are not protectable because they're really just kind of standard for a particular genre. And then on the other hand, you have developers that don't believe they should be constrained if they're building, let's say, some kind of a match three game or a game involving blocks.

falling from the top of the screen as an example. They may feel that just because there's some other game existing out there that has similar game mechanics doesn't mean that I shouldn't be able to build a new interesting game with my own sort of embellishments on that concept.

Gregory (18:05.87)
Okay, that explains too like why so many battle Royals are able to constantly be churned out every year. So talking about patents, one of the things that I know has been a hot topic recently was an example, the patent that Warner Brothers had for the Nemesis system, which basically, if I'm understanding this correctly, and correct me if I'm wrong,

I believe it was for 10 years, it prevents developers from creating anything like that system because nothing before it existed, I guess in a way.

Gregory (18:50.412)
What would make a developer decide to go, in your opinion, with a patent route for something that they could probably easily market out to other companies and make revenue off of, especially if they're not gonna use it, like Warner Brothers, because they used it, I think, twice and then they ceased to use it.

David Hoppe (19:11.625)
Yeah, I think, you know, this is a really controversial area, I would say, in games and just in software generally. And we've seen this over the last kind of we've seen it play out largely over the last 20 years, where we had this period of time where the patent office was granting patents just like crazy in the early days of the internet and computer graphics and computer games. And

I'm sure you've seen the examples. There was a patent granted for, I don't recall the publisher, but a driving game in which there was an arrow hovering at the top of the screen that tells you which way to turn. mean, how could that... Does it really make sense that that could be tied up for 20 years that no one else could... And in theory, the technology and the UI has kind of moved on since then, so it's not really an issue. And think that particular patent's expired anyway.

Gregory (19:56.31)
Yeah.

David Hoppe (20:08.895)
Yeah, you see how that and you have, know, like another famous one in the game space is the patent that applied to mini games during the loading screens. Loading screens used to be a thing. So there's another example where the development of technology basically made previous patents kind of, you know, not relevant so much. We don't really have loading screens now.

That patent has expired and you can now go ahead and have a mini-game while the main game is loading. yeah, patents, in theory, the Nemesis patent protects a series of several patent claims and includes a hierarchy of the NPCs and includes the ability of those NPCs to learn from previous interactions and a variety of other things. In theory,

you as an independent developer could go out and you could use portions of that concept and you could create your own kind of version of that. And in theory, again, you should be fine. But in reality, and this is one reason why these large companies, Nintendo, Sony, et cetera, why they have so many hundreds, thousands of patents, is that patent provides you with a real sort of a big tool.

in the form of patent litigation. it could take, maybe you go out and you build your own version of Nemesis and your patent lawyer says, you know what, think this is different enough from WB's technology that you should be safe. But in the meantime, it could take a year, two year, three years of litigation to get to...

a resolution there. Maybe that resolution is in your favor, but it could be millions of dollars in legal fees to get to that point. So that is a real kind of, you know, that's the club of having a patent. You you protect what what IP is legitimately or is under the patent law, but you also have this sort of inter-orum ability to kind of scare other people potentially who may be sort of stepping close to that line.

Gregory (22:29.382)
That's what I was gonna I was gonna say. It's it's a good competitor suppression in a sense, you know, because you it winds up becoming more of a headache to try to get your different version of something out there than it's probably worth in the end. And it might cost you way more money than your entire project and probably just to wind up in court anyway.

at the at end of the day. So, yeah, I was also wondering, do you think that patents were getting approved left and right? Because I'll say probably in the last 20 years and a little before video games weren't taken as seriously until recent years, I'll say like the last 20 years, people have realized, and especially post covid, just how impactful the video game industry is. So do you think that patents were getting approved because the people

You know, they were thinking, it's just a video game. It's not that serious. No one's going to really care.

David Hoppe (23:32.923)
Absolutely. No, I think that's a great point. You know, the video games industry, despite being, you know, even 20 years ago, being, you know, pretty big and pretty influential. It's just for whatever reason, it's taken a while. And even today, you know, it doesn't really have the recognition that it has. You know, this is a form of entertainment that's significantly larger than Hollywood at this point in the United States.

And some of the brands that have originated within the video games environment, the context of video games, obviously have gone on to produce some of Hollywood's greatest hits in recent decades, as well as to expand in all different forms of media and to really become part of the kind of cultural landscape in the US and globally. So it's an industry that still does not have the kind of respect that it deserves.

I would say among different sectors within the broader business and government community.

Gregory (24:34.542)
I definitely agree. I feel that a lot of people don't realize not only, you know, video games has gone beyond just being a hobby these days. You know, it's not only impacting its its own growth, but other media as well. Movies, television, music, you know, it's creating inspiration across the world. So, yeah, definitely a lot more respected to the video game ecosystem.

Okay, now moving on to something that does affect gamers directly, let's talk about terms of service. Wonderful thing that everyone gets now before they can even boot up their games. One of the first questions, and I know it's been a hot topic for the last couple of years, was coming down to do us as consumers and players own

the games that we buy. And I've been a firm believer, and I'm also guilty of not fully reading the Terms of Service. It's a lot of print, but I do try to read certain sections of it to try to get an understanding of it. But can you elaborate just how important the Terms of Service in video games today is?

David Hoppe (25:55.185)
Yeah, well, so, you know, especially now with with so much content and so much, you know, so many products and services now being offered on the Internet. mean, we're just besieged as consumers in the US. We're just besieged by legal verbiage. We're buried in it. And, you know, it's kind of a fiction. This just kind of my personal opinion here. But it's kind of a fiction to say that, hey, we put, you know,

in the six, eight, 10 pages of text that you agreed to by clicking that box, know, whatever's in there, you're responsible for. And we actually had not too long ago a US Supreme Court justice who admitted that he had not read the documents that I'm sure he didn't read the terms of service for whatever game he was playing.

But he admitted he not read the documentation that he signed to purchase this house. I mean, who does? How can you make it through all that? certainly, it's fundamentally a disconnect between the expectation of the consumer and the providers of these services and products, including games. So that's my own personal soapbox. But speaking as a video games lawyer,

You know, these terms generally have been held in the US to be enforceable. In the EU, we have kind of a different situation where, you know, there's restrictions and there's further requirements on what has to be or what can't be in those terms of service and, you know, a broader range of situations in which a court will say, you know, you as the user are not responsible for...

what was put in the terms of service by the game publisher. But in the US, those cases have been pretty infrequent. And usually, they've involved really bad factual situations where someone was seriously injured or whatever it is. And the court doesn't want to hold against them. And the court says it's unconscionable that these terms of service should be applied to you in this way. But yeah, as a general matter and as a gamer,

David Hoppe (28:17.021)
we are responsible for what's there in that terms of service.

Gregory (28:23.598)
So what, and now that you've mentioned that they can be different based on countries, what are some, I guess you could say standard things in the terms of service that us as the consumer should, we should at least read for our own knowledge and protection.

David Hoppe (28:46.355)
Yeah, I think the vast bulk of this legal stuff is going to be the same as generic from game to game. And I suspect that most or virtually all of these terms of service, even for AAA games, started as a copy of someone else's terms of service. So they have a lot of similarities. But I would say that you want to look at refund policy.

Probably I can offer a newsflash here, which is that it's going to be very difficult to get your money back. But let's say you're banned for some reason. What are those policies? What sorts of things could get you banned? Again, pretty predictable what the terms of service will say. There's broad discretion that the publisher has. But what happens in that situation? Are you entitled to a refund, let's say? Are you entitled to port your

your data or whatever it is. So I would say looking at those terms, one big one that actually where there is some variation among different games is user generated content or UGC. And that's just increasingly important in terms of an entertainment medium. And we still live in a world and my firm, do quite a lot of blockchain games and some of these.

these games, these creators, they're really trying to push the envelope on ownership of UGC. Obviously, that's one of the big advantages of blockchain games, or theoretical, at least at this stage, that you can own what you create, or you can be entitled to some compensation for that. But yeah, UGC, mean, you know, most games today, admittedly, are going to say whatever you create within our environment, we own.

Gregory (30:27.852)
Hmm.

David Hoppe (30:42.507)
and you have no rights to that whatsoever. But of course, we are seeing in Fortnite. Of course, Roblox was built on this concept of allowing users to create their own content and then to share in the value of that content within certain constraints. So that's certainly another area that I would want to look at.

Gregory (31:05.782)
OK, yeah, because I do remember I know like when you mentioned the user created content, Nintendo comes to mind because they're very they're usually very tight knit about their IPs and, you know, people just creating content off of it. And that could be an entirely fit whole different conversation in itself. So still in the same vein of terms of service, one of the developers that has recently made waves is Ubisoft.

and implementing in their terms of service that if they cease to provide services or cut servers, that players are obligated to destroy all copies of their game, digital and physical. What kind of implications could that have on collectors who have physical copies that they paid for? Will they really?

Would you be soft if somehow through the grapevine they found this random collector and said, you still have a copy of our game, the crew on your shelf. Could they actually take that legal action against them?

David Hoppe (32:12.703)
So theoretically, I think the answer would be yes. As a practical matter, it seems quite unlikely it would do that. But it just highlights what we were talking about, which is sort of the kind of fiction that often results from these terms of service. I mean, think whoever wrote that, and it's a really standard language, which, if I'm correct, has been in their terms of service for a couple of years at least.

It says, if we modify these terms of service and you choose not to accept the changes, then you must immediately stop playing the game and destroy all copies of the game. I'm sure that that just went right past whoever was writing or reviewing that language, because it's very standard. Well, of course, if you... And I think they're probably usually thinking of, if you made copies...

Gregory (33:10.862)
Mm-hmm.

David Hoppe (33:11.647)
don't know how you could really do that today, but certainly you could in the past. We don't want you to be able to say, but the Terms of Service didn't apply to this copy that I made a year ago. So yeah, so I think that this is just really generic language. I think what you ask is an excellent question. You're a collector, and this is increasingly, of course, an important kind of thing.

people's interest and affection for these retro games. you know, really, you're expected. you know, I don't accept your change to your terms of service. And so then I have to go back and find these CDs, DVDs, and I have to destroy them.

Gregory (33:59.567)
Yeah, I have to destroy my collection to agree to these to these updated terms. It just it seems, you know, for it to me personally, it seems ridiculous. But it's good to know that a lot of people hopefully were just misunderstanding because the Internet is like a huge telephone game. One person gets it. And then by the time it gets to the masses, it's been, you know, misinterpreted 100 times over. So by the time we get it, we're like, wait a minute.

what's happening? You mean I have to go back and destroy all of my gift video game copies. And it's like, no, no, no, go read it for yourself. There's probably a misunderstanding. So yeah, guys, please read your terms of service for as long as you can handle. Try to find those critical sections and try to try to get some understanding for yourself. And if you aren't sure, you know, please.

David Hoppe (34:30.974)
Right.

Gregory (34:54.834)
Reach out to David, know? Get the information directly from those that know what it all means. David, I really appreciate you coming on the show. There's so many things that we could go in depth with, and this could be like an entire series of itself. I was doing a little research trying to educate myself a bit on

gaming law, patents, IPs, and I was like, wow, I had no idea how far it spreads and everything that is involved. But before I let you go, what would be your advice to indie developers stepping into the scene that are going to be, you know, pretty much putting their game out there? What are some pitfalls that you've seen that you would like to try to help them avoid some

things they need to know before they get out there.

David Hoppe (35:55.699)
Hmm. Yeah, well, it's tough. mean, you know, particularly if you don't have some credentials, some, you know, work with a large studio in the past and some kind of involvement with some IPs that, you know, potential investors in your game or publishers would be interested to see. But, you know, we do see

All the time we see people come from nowhere in this space. The most important thing I would say is relationships. you you got to have someone that hopefully, you know, can get excited about your kind of demo and maybe, you know, talk to their friends and maybe you get some angel investment to help complete a larger, more developed version.

eventually connect you with the right people at a game publisher who might be interested in your game. So I would say that's super important, but there's a whole range of things. Like we were discussing earlier, copyright, you certainly don't want to be in a situation where any potential...

Publishers concerned that what you've created is too similar to something else. And you also don't want to be in a situation where your first investors come and take a look at the books. And they're like, who are these? I see the names of some individuals that look like they were creating some content or came up with some ideas, the title or the characters or whatever.

who were they? And you're like, yeah, there's some people that were working for me a couple years ago and we never formalized an IP agreement or anything. mean, that's a bad situation because then there's gonna be a real concern that you're gonna be able to A, track those people down, B, that they're gonna be amenable to signing retroactively, signing away their rights, particularly because they're gonna be.

David Hoppe (38:11.839)
a little bit, their antenna are going to be up because they're like, why is he coming to me now? He's got like a publishing deal potentially. Maybe I should get a share of that, et cetera, et So IP in terms of the inputs to the game is something that we often see as overlooked by, you know, early stage indie developers. You really got to have that documentation just like really, you know, airtight from the start because, you know, there's a million reasons why a publisher might reject your game.

or why angel investors may choose to pass and look at something else. And the quickest way to do that is for them to see, hey, here's an IP risk.

Gregory (38:53.772)
Well, David, thank you so much for your time. know you're a busy man, but if anyone wanted to reach out to you, how could they contact you?

David Hoppe (39:02.623)
Yeah, thanks for asking. So our firm is Gamma Law. And we came up with that as GAM was games. The next M was media. And then the A, we weren't really sure of. But these days, we're doing quite lot of AI work. So we decided that should be AI. But we're at gammalaw.com. And we have quite a lot of content there that I think could be helpful for developers. And we also have a monthly newsletter that's been pretty well kind of

I think pretty successful and people have told me they find a lot of value from it. feel free to reach out through our website and I'm also on LinkedIn, David Hoppe, H-O-P-P-E.

Gregory (39:46.19)
Thank you so much. And guys, if you have any questions, please do not be afraid to reach out. There's so much information in gaming law. And if you're a gamer, it does affect you. I know it's easy to just sit down and want to just relax and play the game. But this will help you understand why certain publishers are doing the things they are, why certain companies are going in different directions. There's a whole lot of things that happen behind the scenes. And it would help if we

got a better understanding of what was going on. I definitely say go check it out. Join that newsletter, get the information and, and educate yourself on it a little bit. But, anyway, thank you guys so much for tuning in. You guys have been amazing. Take care of yourself and each other. Go check this out and leave your thoughts. GZ chopchop podcast.com. We'll catch all you wonderful people on the next episode later.