Niki's live from London, Ontario this week at Tennocon while John's getting up at the crack to podcast. What a show, too! We're absolutely loving Donkey Kong Bananza and John might be obsessed with the Horse Girl Game????

Also, we discuss the rise of fascism as expressed via:

• Roblox verifying the identities of children via AI
• Financial transaction companies cracking down on Steam's adult content
• The 24/7 amateur surveillance state

Also, books! Ever heard of them? We answer your burning HIVE QUESTIONS directly from our Discord.

Niki is IN JOHN'S HOUSE this weekend. Wild stuff. They grabbed lunch at Hurtado BBQ and ate a truly irresponsible amount and then decided to podcast! Smart? Not really. But here we are! Discussion points:

• AEW All In Texas
• The Steam Summer Sale
• Peak
• Rematch
• Songs/games of the summer
• Seasonal/weather-specific games

We also answer your HIVE QUESTIONS from Discord.

On a very special public bonus of the show, John is joined by fellow disabled games media person Grant Stoner (IGN, Polygon, VGBees) to celebrate Disability Pride Month! How do they celebrate? By regaling each other with tales of crippledom from yesterday and today! Also:

• The importance of sources in investigative journalism
• Advice for disabled writers working in the field
• The most out of pocket interactions we've had as disabled people (oops, all Christian mysticism!)
• The joy of breaking outside of accessibility coverage (to some extent)
• The excitement of community reporting
• How layoffs disproportionately affect disabled workers
• And much more!

We also answer some of your HIVE QUESTIONS from our Discord. We also compare head and torso sizes/shapes. You're welcome!

This week, Niki and John are joined by perhaps the greatest games media talent scout in the industry's history, Endless Mode's Editor-in-Chief Garrett Martin. He hung out to tell us about the new site, what to expect from its amazing writers, and, of course, theme parks! Also:

• nearly half an hour of AEW All In Texas preview discussion (sorry non-wrestling fans)
• Kotaku's sale to Keleops
• Microsoft's astonishing layoff round of 9,100 employees
• Perfect Dark reboot canceled and studio shuttered
• EA's bonkers 100,000,000 player expectation for Battlefield
• Bonk!
• Shmups!
• Half Sword
• SGDQ 2025

Also, we answer your burning HIVE QUESTIONS from our Discord.

This week, Niki and John go deep (again) on Mario Kart World and its most head-scratching design choices. Tired of us talking about that? Okay! We also talked about:

• Andrew Wilson's obscene pay bump at EA
• Microsoft's upcoming massive layoff
• Peak sells 2m copies
• Nintendo "fixes" something everyone thought was fine in Mario Kart World
• the dark corners of Cyberpunk 2077
• and much more!

Also, we answer your burning HIVE QUESTIONS from our Discord!

John returns to the podcast after spending last week in the hospital and joins Niki to talk about the second full week of Switch 2 as well as:

• the indefinite Marathon delay
• 3rd party titles apparently lagging on Switch 2
• historic sales figures for Switch 2
• Xbox's core strategy
• Mario Kart World
• Donkey Kong Bananza
• Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2
• Poxel
• FBC: Firebreak
• Deltarune

Also, we answer your burning HIVE QUESTIONS from our lovely Discord community.

This week, John was zooted in the hospital recovering from surgery (he's fine!), so Niki and Lotus took the reins and delivered a banger of an episode, featuring:

• Summer Game Fest swag
• Sonic Racing: Crossworlds
• Lumines Arise
• MindsEye
• Mario Kart World
• the rise of fascism and incompetence of our oppressors
• Nintendo Switch 2 first week sales figures
• and much, much more

Also, we answer your burning HIVE QUESTIONS straight from our lovely Discord.

John broke his ankle in a car accident so couldn't make it out to SGF this year, so instead Niki attended the planned VGBees Mixer and we decided to set up a little area for John to digitally greet guests. And then we decided to make it into an episode. Smart? Not really! Jordan Mallory, our intrepid producer, did a marvelous job making this at least listenable, but conceptually it was not smart. But we did it anyway!

The VGBees Way.

Is it a fun episode? Yes. John tackles the Sony State of Play and thoughts on Elden Ring: Nightreign while we get lots of really fun cameos from folks across games media!

Video version recommended on this one, but the audio is definitely worse there. We'll record more "normal" eps during SGF.

Thanks for your patience and support! Hive Questions will be called upon this weekend!