God. When they came on the scene, man, you, I don't know, a lot of people said this. I mean, you weren't the only guy who was like, you know, this company is either going to be the most incredible breakthrough and, you know, advance pinball in lots of different ways. Or it's going to be a spectacular catastrophe. And it looks like an unfortunately was the latter. Yeah. The Titanic part two. Yeah. Wah, wah. You know, and I feel sorry for the people that were there. I know some people think that they're partially to blame and that they may have had knowledge of this, but I don't. I don't believe so. The people that I know that are there have more scruples than to go, oh, you're stealing money from old people to pay us? That's cool. You know, whatever. So I don't think that's necessarily the case. So while I laugh and revel at Mr. Mueller about getting slammed in the ass when he goes to jail, I do not feel happy for the people who got ripped off by him. I do not feel happy for the people that work there. It's an unfortunate situation. Another unfortunate situation caused by Mr. John Pompidou. Yeah, no, I know. For the people who are blaming guys like Barry Osler and Steve Ballard and for not speaking up sooner, I think you're kind of being unfair for a few reasons. I'm sure there were plenty of red flags and we saw it and I know that they saw it. But, you know, Robert was still dumping a ton of money every month. You know, not his money to use, of course, that we found out now into the company and its salaries. But I think it would be easy to chalk it up to, you know, growing pains or Robert's poor business decisions if you're in the company looking at this from the inside and not necessarily know that there was something criminal going on. I mean, how much does an employee of a company really know about what's happening at the highest levels of that company? Well, you know, to solidify what you said, think about this. When we got the news of what happened, everybody was surprised. Everybody was like, holy shit, we didn't expect that. Yeah, we knew it could be bad, but we didn't think it would be that bad. I had no idea something like that was coming. I thought I'd be like, well, I ran out of money and you're not getting your game. Sorry, which would have sucked. But to be like, you know, oh, we're being investigated by the government. We stole money from all, you know, I never expected any of that. Right. So why would anybody that works there, you know, have any idea what kind of personal crap, you know, was going on behind their backs? You know, they were getting paychecks and that's all they knew. You know, I mean, what was the last time you went up to your boss and said, hey, we get all this money from, you know, you just take the check and go home. Dude, I'm I'm on a five person executive committee for my practice of like 50 physicians. And I don't always have insight as to what's happening at like every level of the company. So I just think it's you're fired. Yeah, right. But I just think it's unfair to expect that someone on the staff as a game designer or anyone else would necessarily know the finer details of how bad the fraud was there. Right. And what do you I mean, if you start to smell, you know, smoke, what do you do? Run out to Pinside and go, hey, everybody, you better, you know, no, you just like you may like raise one eyebrow and go, what's going on? You may look into it, but you don't as soon as you think something ain't right. You don't just run out to the public and start because what if you're wrong? You lose your job, you get thrown out on your ass. So, yeah, it's ludicrous to blame anybody there other than Mr. Mueller for any of this bullshit. But everyone has NDAs, right? No one is going to no one is going to say anything, even if they could, because Robert was so litigious and he probably still is. But I don't know, man, having seen all of the failed pinball companies and basically outright scams over the last few years with these guys, like, can everyone in pinball just make a general pact right now? that if a new company comes out on the scene with unreasonable claims you know setting expectations that we know would be difficult to achieve maybe throwing shade at other companies we just shouldn't throw our money at them like wait until we actually seen some manufacturing a game that actually works before we you know we trust that they can do what they say they can do Right Yeah Yeah Definitely Just with new companies I mean I the same way Like when I when I do work if I never dealt with a company before I charge them a deposit and once they prove that, you know, that they make payments on time and all that, then next time we forego the deposit, we don't worry about it. But yeah, you don't automatically, you know, no one should automatically get, you know, free trust these days. When it comes to this stuff, when you're going to put your money on the line, you know, And money's getting harder and harder to come by, and you're getting a lot less for it these days. So we don't need to be throwing it away and setting it on fire with these fly-by-night charlatans who have grand illusions. That's it, though. It's the loudest, it's the most energetic, you know, the showmen, basically, that come out and they give all of these promises. It's an impressive skill. I mean, they say, you know, look at all these shiny, exciting things in one hand, and then they're taking your wallet with the other hand. um you know andrew highway j-pop skit b and now robert mueller i mean they're they're all like barnum's of pinball yeah yeah it's uh we have to be wiser to that i think as a pinball community but it is hard when they're offering all of these amazing new things that you you've been hoping for like pin pod the pin pod that thing was amazing just fucking put mueller in a pin pod that's the warehouse where the uh raiders of the lost dark thing is yeah i mean he's up in a couple of years he's in a world of hurt right now i've talked to a few people who have knowledge of how sec suits like this generally go and it looks like he's going to be hit with a massive fine on top of having to repay all the money he's stolen and you know he certainly will potentially lose his license to practice law um so you know for anyone dying to see robert unfortunately you know go to a jail cell i don't think that's going to happen because suits like this according to the people i've talked to rarely end up in jail time uh it could be a you know it could be a good thing though that he doesn't because he needs to generate money to pay these people back and he can't do that from a jail cell but yeah and if he's yeah if he's getting a fine heads up retirees in florida don't invest in deep root he's looking for more money now i gotta pay these fines uh hey i want that insurance policy there uh so yeah what a pile of crap couldn't happen a nicer guy see ya yeah buddy i mean someone on the outside of this hobby can you do you think they could believe like how much drama and how many just absolute crazy ass stories come from pinball i've told my friends some some of these stories and they get that look on their face like it's just pinball how does this happen you know exactly i mean this is like our enron this this this event this deeper thing is as close to it as we've ever gotten we need like a true crime pinball podcast there's there's a podcast out there for everything else in the pinball world let's get someone to start a uh you know cover all the crazy drama that's going on in the industry over the years there will definitely be people logging in to listen to that and this will be one of the best shows right yeah yeah it's midnight in the city my name's kaneda j-pop his name was j-pop well you know one of the good things that came from this was if there are any good things that came from this, where all of them... Pin pod! Well, the pin pod, of course. But all of the memes that came out of this, I mean, I was laughing pretty much nonstop at some of the shit. I mean, you made at least three of them and posted them on our site, but go on the Deep Root thread and read through the last maybe 20 pages and you'll see some pretty funny stuff in there. People have turned this around to make it some comedy. My favorite is the one I did with Andrew Highway in the background on his hydrofoil pulling up, saying hop in and robert's like well gotta go my ride's here and there's money flying out the back of the boat and shit oh man so good man let's get on let's get on to some good news all right stern announced something that people have been waiting for for a long time would you care to explain to our listeners who i'm sure haven't heard by now yeah right no you know we've talked about internet connectivity with uh with gary stern and george gomez on the show in the past and we finally have some idea of what they've been hinting at when they've said something big is coming and that is their stern's insider connected program it seems pretty freaking cool man and this is a a system they've set up that is going to be uh throughout all of their new games coming out and also retroactive to the games the lcd games they've put out in the past we've just heard a little bit about what it is. Gomez says this is just a small glimpse of what's coming, but let's talk about it because there's some really cool things in the mix. Well, first of all, keep in mind that we are going to have George Gomez on in the coming weeks to talk more about this and explain how it works and everything else. So I look forward to that because we're almost as in the dark as everybody else is right now, so we haven't got a whole lot to cover. But I got to say i gotta say right up front the funniest thing i heard was that i mean how long have people been going you know you know we need internet connector blah blah blah you know they've been begging for this and they finally get it and some guy goes oh man now we gotta sacrifice our artwork on the right apron plastic it's like are you kidding me i know there's always something you complain about right you're never gonna make everyone happy but this is this is cool man they're they're late to the party a little bit i mean jersey jack has already had internet connectivity for a while but they're doing it sounds like stern is doing a lot more than just you know code updates and leaderboards they're trying to make it go like way beyond that into a system that that adds depth to the game so both the player and i guess the operator as well has a lot of you know perks that will really enhance things yeah they're even the designers are going back and you know creating special awards and things like that yeah yeah so you're talking about achievements right so now you can pull up your your stats you can collect trophies or achievements for doing certain challenges, which is very similar to video games. So PlayStation and Xbox have had this capability for a long time. And what's cool about it is that it just adds a new layer to the game. So it extends the shelf life of that game. So if you own the game at home and you've gotten to the wizard mode, which takes most of us, you know, most of us never get there, but if you have, you might not sell it now because there are tons of achievements to get. There are game specific achievements. So, you know, getting to different modes or scoring a certain score or, you know, all of these things are now points that you can try and go for. Yeah, now the only bummer in this, if you want to look at it that way, is that there may be two casualties, and that is one would be score bit, which is like a high score leaderboard sort of thing. And this really, at least for Stern Games, does kind of take that away. And let's face it, Stern Games is a pretty big chunk of the marketplace. So there might be a conflict of interest as far as score bit's concerned there, but there's another one. Yeah, yeah. So you can also have these quests, right, that are either location specific or, you know, you can do them at home and potentially win swag through Stern or you can win badges and that sort of thing online. But it's basically a, you know, here's an objective, try to achieve it. If you achieve it, then you'll get, you know, maybe a beer at a bar or maybe Stern will send you a free t-shirt. And that's almost exactly what PinQuest has been trying to do and trying to get off the ground. And now that is completely all over every Stern game. And, you know, most location games are Stern. So that is going to be definitely a loss for them, too. Yeah. And I have a friend who owns a bar. So I'm going to tell you right now, Stern and PinQuest, do not offer free beer as a prize. You will get in trouble by the liquor commission. That's right. Maybe some free wings or something. Five cent beer. Let's do that. Yeah. I think this is cool, right? Because you're looking at bringing a different layer of gameplay to a Stern pinball machine. And they're incorporating a lot of things from video games that have been really popular. And they're trying to kind of make them relevant to pinball, which will only bring more people to the table. You know, pun intended. So, you know, experience points are another thing that you might be able to get. So as you achieve these badges, video game players know what experience points are. As you get more points, you level up and you get to higher levels and you get more, you know, you get more stuff. And I think that Stern Pinball is trying to do that as well. And what's interesting is that at locations, you will get full experience points for doing certain things. But then at home play, you won't get quite as many for doing the same things. And that's because they're trying to discourage people from cheating and taking the class off and just hitting all the targets. Right. And so there will be verified scores that they know are being played on games that are at location play. And it seems like a relatively complicated system, but I think they're going about it the right way. Like we've talked about how do you avoid cheating in a system where, you know, there's leaderboards and that sort of thing. And now if you get a score at a known location where they know you're not taking the glass off, now you have a verified checkmark by that score. And you can believe, you know, a little bit better that that was achieved legally with no cheats. Unless it's after hours and people who work there are pulling the glass off. Yeah. And every game is set up differently, right? Like, you know, some games might be on an eight degree grade. Other games might be at six. So in every game plays differently. You're going to have it's impossible to standardize everything, but they're trying, which I respect. Well, and on top of that, you know, if someone was at let's say you're playing at Logan Arcade and you get this high score, anybody else can go to Logan Arcade and play that same machine if they want. Right. If you can say if there's unfair advantage, go to the same arcade and play it. Yeah, no, absolutely. And when you when you log in and you show your little QR code to the scanner, it's going to pull up all of your stats. So it will show where you play the most, what your scores have been.