Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast · Kinda Funny

Is This It For Highguard? - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.17.26

·1 hr 15 min·4 clips

Blessing starts the show in weekday-news mode and Mike comes in ready to keep things moving. They set out the day’s stories and then jump straight into High Guard’s website going down. That shutdown has players worried, and the hosts treat that worry as real. From there, the discussion widens into what it means when a multiplayer game loses momentum or support. Mike keeps coming back to the idea that some games build small homes for the people who like them. He points to the kind of players who stick around long after the broader internet has moved on. The conversation gets more personal when they compare High Guard to games like Concord. They do not pretend those games were for everybody, but they do make room for the people who genuinely loved them. That leads into a bigger point about live-service dependence and the pressure to keep money and players coming in. They argue that some multiplayer games should exist without having to live or die as a constant service. Rematch comes up as an example of a paid online game that still exists on its own terms. Knockout City shows up as the painful counterexample, the one that was too fun to vanish. The hosts are blunt about how much it stings when a game you like simply goes away. From there, they shift to Valve addressing Steam Deck stock issues. The tone stays conversational, but the point lands: hardware availability still matters to real people trying to buy the thing. They also hit Hasbro shutting down the Snake Eyes game studio, which keeps the episode’s larger mood on instability in games business news. Even with all the churn, the show keeps its energy up through jokes, side comments, and the hosts’ easy back-and-forth. The result is a compact news episode that still finds room for real sympathy. It ends up feeling like a hangout about industry fragility as much as a headline rundown. If you care about how games survive, disappear, or keep a small loyal audience, the episode stays on that beat the whole way through.

As heard by us

A sharp, lively news roundtable that treats game shutdowns as losses, not just headlines.

Kinda Funny Games Daily makes the business side of games feel less like churn and more like a real consequence. It moves from High Guard's uncertainty to Concord and Knockout City's failure without forcing the joke, then lands the Valve Steam Deck stock comments and the Hasbro…

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Why you'd press play

Want a weekday games-news fix about High Guard, Steam Deck stock issues, and a studio shutdown?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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