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PODCAST

The Dropshot

The Dropshot, LLC

The Dropshot is a weekly gaming news and culture podcast hosted by Casey, AKA Razinon, and Jakedown. Casey and Jake are long-time gaming buddies who have strong opinions they are all too happy to share with the internet. The podcast is streamed live at youtube.com/thedropshotpodcast and is also available wherever you listen to podcasts. Visit TheDropshot.com for links to all of the podcast"s varied content, including the vibrant Discord community, the Patreon for bonus content, and much more.

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All Episodes

107:01

Episode 607: The Miami Heat Are Becoming Vice City...

The Dropshot ·

2026/10/05

GTA 6 isn't even out yet and the Miami Heat are changing their name for it. On November 18th, the night before launch, the Heat become the Vice City Heat — new jerseys, a new court, a "Welcome to Vice City" sign, all on ESPN. Raz and Jake try to figure out what Rockstar paid, why the NBA said yes, and why Coca-Cola still bothers advertising at all.Then the GTA 6 ESRB rating drops, and it says more than Rockstar has: decapitation and dismemberment, strip club private dances, and cocaine you can

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113:47

Episode 606: Halo Is a Call of Duty Studio Now + GTA...

The Dropshot ·

2026/09/28

Microsoft just handed the next mainline Halo to Activision, and two guys who ran a Call of Duty show for years have thoughts. Raz has been saying for five years that Halo should have made a battle royale, and he explains why it might already be too late. Jake makes the case that Halo is in such a bad spot that new developers can't make it worse, and asks what Call of Duty's monetization playbook will do to it.Then Warzone's new operator skin toggle: MW4 lets you swap every Nicki Minaj and Squid

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104:06

Episode 605: Call of Duty Is Done With Black Ops — It...

The Dropshot ·

2026/09/21

Call of Duty is done with Black Ops, and Modern Warfare 4 is the "epic conclusion" of the Task Force 141 story. We think it's the smartest call Activision has made in years. It only matters if the next series changes the game as much as jetpacks did, and a new name and new villains won't do that.We also make a prediction: Call of Duty will copy WARDOGS. It happened with PUBG and Warzone, then with Tarkov and DMZ, and now WARDOGS has sold over 2 million copies and peaked at 428,000 concurrent

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132:09

Episode 604: WARDOGS Review Bombed: Streamers Skipped...

The Dropshot ·

2026/09/14

WARDOGS launched into Early Access on Thursday, peaked at roughly 340,000 concurrent players on Steam, went straight to the #1 seller spot — and got review bombed down to Mixed at the same time. Raz has 8.5 hours in since launch. Jake has 0.0, because Tarkov currently has him in a chokehold. So this one is a split: what WARDOGS actually plays like two days in, and what the launch looked like from the back of a 138,000-person queue.We get into whether a negative Steam review about a queue is a

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121:25

Episode 603: Tarkov's Nikita Just Changed the FPS...

The Dropshot ·

2026/09/07

The first FPS Games Show happened, and the two biggest things in it both came from the guy who's had Escape from Tarkov in beta for a decade. Nikita opened the whole showcase with Fragmentary Order — sci-fi, Unreal Engine 5, maps four to five times the size of Tarkov's, and a promise that it'll be "more complex, more punishing, more painful."Then Battlestate turned around and launched a publishing arm for hardcore games nobody else will fund, with devs keeping their full IP. We go deep on both:

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136:55

Episode 602: The MW4 Beta Broke Us — We're Done With...

The Dropshot ·

2026/08/31

We played the Modern Warfare 4 beta this weekend — including Warzone and the new Zodiac Resurgence map — and it took about fifteen minutes to know it was over. Not "this year is mid" over. Over over.This is the episode where a podcast that ran on Call of Duty for 600+ episodes says out loud that it's done. Raz makes the case that nothing else in an FPS matters if you can't see or hear the enemy, and everything else — weapon levels, perks, pipe climbing, the spawns everyone's arguing about on X —

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108:39

Episode 601: WARDOGS Beta vs Modern Warfare 4 Beta —...

The Dropshot ·

2026/08/24

Two shooter betas dropped on the same weekend, so we played both and came back with very different verdicts. WARDOGS is Bulkhead's 100-player, three-team tactical shooter with a real money economy — you buy your loadout every respawn, you lose money when you die, and it turns out that changes how a match actually feels. Modern Warfare 4 finally dumps omnimovement, removes bloom from hipfire, and put a campaign mission in the beta for the first time ever.We get into the WARDOGS recon grind and

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131:57

Episode 600: Modern Warfare 4 Beta vs WARDOGS — Both...

The Dropshot ·

2026/08/17

Episode 600. On August 21st the Modern Warfare 4 early access beta, the WARDOGS closed beta, and Call of Duty NEXT all land on the same day — and the two games are asking for wildly different amounts of money.We go through everything Activision is cramming into the MW4 beta: a playable campaign mission called Entrenched, six multiplayer maps, the return of Ground War, and a brand new Warzone Resurgence map called Zodiac. Then we put odds on whether any of it actually works over a single weekend

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141:46

Episode 599: WARDOGS Alpha Review: Battlefield But...

The Dropshot ·

2026/08/10

Imagine Battlefield, but dying matters. That's the WARDOGS closed alpha in one sentence — and after a weekend in it, we're calling it the most polished alpha we've ever played.WARDOGS is Bulkhead and Team17's 100-player tactical shooter: three factions, one randomized control zone, first side to 100 points wins. You start with $10,000, you buy your loadout from in-game vendors, and when you die you lose the gear AND the money you spent on it. The money carries between matches. You can loot the

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127:45

Episode 598: Saudi Arabia Bought EA — And Gamers Are...

The Dropshot ·

2026/08/03

On Tuesday, Electronic Arts stops being a public company. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners are closing a $55 billion all-cash buyout — the largest leveraged buyout of a public company in history — and PIF walks away with 93.4% of Madden, FIFA, Apex, The Sims, Battlefield and BioWare. So we spent half the episode on what that actually means: what going private does to a publisher, the $20 billion in debt that lands on EA itself, whether

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105:32

Episode 597: WARDOGS Looks Incredible... Then They...

The Dropshot ·

2026/07/27

WARDOGS ran its first ever gameplay livestream this week and it went about as well as you'd expect from a studio full of guys in their late twenties: the alpha codes were a QR-code disaster, the stream started two hours late, and it ended with a Twitch ban for throwing a sex toy across the room. And yet — the actual gameplay looked incredible. We break down everything we saw: the enormous map, the three-team control zone loop, the destructible environments, the buy menu, and why Bulkhead's 60 FPS

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106:06

Episode 596: MW4 Gameplay Reveal: Kill Block, Recoil...

The Dropshot ·

2026/07/20

Infinity Ward just had its biggest Modern Warfare 4 reveal week yet — and the community immediately found the flaws. We break down everything shown at the MW4 creator event and Fanatics Fest: the Kill Block modular map with 500+ configurations, the gunplay reveal and the instant visual recoil backlash, VFX masking, no-bloom hipfire, doors, takedowns, proximity chat, and the Aston Martin Dreadnought that quietly confirmed Warzone isn't dead yet.Then the real question: MW4 looks like MW19 2.0 —

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112:36

Episode 595: Bethesda Layoffs, Black Flag Resynced &...

The Dropshot ·

2026/07/13

Black Flag Resynced just became the biggest Assassin's Creed launch in history — and it's a remake of a 13-year-old game with mixed Steam reviews. The boys break down the day-one microtransaction backlash, whether the remake gold rush is good for gaming, and which classics deserve the full ground-up treatment next. Then it gets heavier: Microsoft's July layoff wave hit Bethesda and ZeniMax hard, and Raz makes the case that AI is a top-three reason why. Plus the office memorial HR forced down, 14

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106:40

Episode 594: The Steam Machine Is Weaker Than a PS5...

The Dropshot ·

2026/07/06

Valve's Steam Machine reviews are in — and the verdict is brutal: by most measures it's slightly less powerful than a base PS5 while costing more than double. We break down the benchmarks, why Valve went semi-custom on the chips, and whether "access to the entire Steam library" is worth the price of admission. Before that, we go deep on Escape from Tarkov's first-ever season, Cord Breach — the new seasonal character system, the Path of Exile-style trait modifiers, the Kappa protocol, and whether

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100:39

Episode 593: GTA 6 Is $100 For a Code in a Box (And...

The Dropshot ·

2026/06/29

GTA 6 pre-orders are live, the price is confirmed, and the internet is melting down — so naturally that's the whole episode. Raz and Jake break down the $80 standard / $100 Ultimate pricing, the "physical copy" that's really just a download code in a box with no disc, and whether you're actually losing anything (spoiler: lending to your buddies, and not much else). Then it's the free-market case for why $80 is eminently fair, the cost-per-hour argument that makes GTA the cheapest entertainment on

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94:43

Episode 592: Halo on PlayStation, GTA 6 Pre-Orders &...

The Dropshot ·

2026/06/22

Halo is on PlayStation. Let that sink in. On this one we get into Halo: Campaign Evolved — the full Unreal Engine 5 remake landing on PS5, Xbox and PC on July 28 — and why cutting the multiplayer to protect the "next mainline Halo" might be the dumbest part of the whole thing. Plus the AI controversy Halo Studios can't stop being squirrely about.Then it's GTA 6: pre-orders go live June 25, November 19 release, no PC version, and the $100 price question nobody wants to answer honestly. Spoiler:

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114:11

Episode 591: Warzone Is an Abusive Ex & Other Truths

The Dropshot ·

2026/06/15

Jake's sick, Raz is recovered, and karma is real — so we kept it loose and answered your questions from the Discord this week. We get into whether Apex hitting all-time-high player counts means anything for a Warzone comeback (short version: Warzone is the abusive ex who shows up with roses), why Zelda is a children's game, the most overrated franchises in gaming, when a game stops being a game and becomes a simulator (Tarkov vs. Squad vs. Hell Let Loose), whether AI will let you build GTA 6 in

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89:31

Episode 590: This is not God of War

The Dropshot ·

2026/06/08

It's the summer of the delay. This week Raz and Jake break down two tactical shooters moving in opposite directions — Hell Let Loose: Vietnam getting pushed back to August after a rough beta, and Wardogs pulling its early access UP (something you basically never see) — and what each move says about a studio's confidence. Then it's Summer Game Fest: the turn-based Star Wars Zero Company that's right up Raz's alley, the surprisingly good-looking Lords of the Fallen 2, and the story everyone's

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107:26

Episode 589: Modern Warfare 4 Looks Good — We Still...

The Dropshot ·

2026/06/01

Modern Warfare 4 got revealed, 007 First Light is finally out, and the Hell Let Loose: Vietnam beta dropped — so naturally we spent an episode on the franchise we swore off, a Bond game that isn't quite Hitman, and a beta that can't hold a frame rate.We get into the HLL: Vietnam open beta (the rubber-banding, the keybinds that won't stick, the studio's track record) and whether it's worth grabbing at the June 18 launch. Then 007 First Light: it's sitting at 88 on Metacritic and "best Bond since

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114:55

Episode 588: We Put 27 Hours Into Forza Horizon 6...

The Dropshot ·

2026/05/25

Forza Horizon 6 dropped in Japan and we both went deep — Raz put in 27 hours, Jake is still learning. This week we break down everything: who this game is actually for, whether you need to be a car guy to enjoy it, and whether the critics are right about the Metacritic 92. We go hard on the manual vs. automatic debate (Jake is on manual with clutch, Raz is on automatic — and Jake has opinions about that). We talk tuning depth vs. accessibility, the "same loop new map" criticism, and why Japan is

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