{"id":734463,"date":"2026-08-11T10:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T10:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/734463\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T10:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T10:58:12","slug":"sabers-newest-game-trailer-takes-a-shot-at-gearboxs-boss-if-you-look-closely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/734463\/","title":{"rendered":"Saber’s newest game trailer takes a shot at Gearbox’s boss, if you look closely"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Look closely at the license plate in this scene from the new trailer for Saber\u2019s Rideshare Stimulator<\/p>\n

The first hint that something might be up with the recent debut trailer for Saber Interactive\u2019s Rideshare Stimulator<\/a> is an unusual choice of words\u2014aside from that second one in the game\u2019s title.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t take your passengers too seriously,\u201d the trailer\u2019s narrator says, as he describes this upcoming game. It a car game about the gig work of driving eccentric people to their destinations, a riff on Crazy Taxi.<\/p>\n

And then, he says: \u201cWhen I think I\u2019ve met the randiest of passengers, someone even stranger gets in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRandiest\u201d?<\/p>\n

That suggests \u201crandy,\u201d which usually means having strong sexual desire. Yet none of the oddball backseat occupants featured in the trailer seem particularly lustful. One is an old man who considers his grandson a failure, another shares the theory that birds might control traffic lights, another says he\u2019s banned from an aquarium.<\/p>\n

A little later, there\u2019s a license plate, shown 63 seconds into the trailer, on the front of an SUV:<\/p>\n

USB DRV<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a Texas plate. The symbol between those letters is a cog wheel. <\/p>\n

If you know, you know.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a reference to Texas-based Borderlands game development studio Gearbox Software (their logo features a cog wheel). More specifically, it\u2019s a reference to Gearbox\u2019s co-founder and president Randy Pitchford, who in 2018 found himself explaining<\/a> the nature of video he\u2019d saved on a USB drive that was found at a Medieval Times restaurant before being returned to the studio: \u201cIt was \u2018barely legal\u2019 porn. This girl\u2019s handle was \u2018Only 18.\u2019\u201d The \u201cgirl\u201d in the video had committed a solo sex act that Pitchford, an avid practitioner of magic, found remarkable. \u201cI realized, this is not a sex worker\u2026This is a fucking magician.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back then, the USB drive was central to competing lawsuits against Gearbox by the studio\u2019s former lawyer and by Gearbox against him. A settlement in late 2019 \u201cexonerated\u201d Pitchford, per the Hollywood Reporter<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The USB story has resurfaced at times, now in a trailer from a company that not long ago was corporate brethren with Gearbox.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The head of Saber told Game File that the reference is payback.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dig is because Randy took shots at Embracer in Borderlands 4,\u201d Saber CEO Matt Karch told me when I asked him about the license plate. \u201cWithout Embracer, Randy is performing magic tricks at birthday parties for a living.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having interviewed Karch during a cross-country flight<\/a> in late 2024, I can confirm that Karch was unimpressed with Pitchford during their time both working in the Embracer group. <\/p>\n

I\u2019d approached him not out of surprise that there was animosity but that it was manifesting publicly now. <\/p>\n

Gearbox was founded in 1999, worked on a port of Halo early on, and developed hit series such as the loot-based sci-fi shooter Borderlands before it was purchased by The Embracer Group in early 2021 for $363 million<\/a> (with a possible earn-out of over $1 billion, if certain targets were hit by 2027).<\/p>\n

Saber was founded in 2001, worked on a remaster of Halo early on, had a big hit with zombie shooter World War Z and was purchased by Embracer in early 2020<\/a> for $150 million, with a potential earn-out of up to $375 million.<\/p>\n

For a few years, the Embracer group was a voracious acquirer of game studios. Then, as investment dried up, it choked. In March 2024, Embracer sold Saber<\/a> to an investment company controlled by Saber CEO Matt Karch, and it sold Gearbox<\/a> in an all-stock deal to long-time Borderlands publisher Take Two Interactive. Other studios were shut down. Hundreds of developers were laid off.<\/p>\n

Gearbox didn\u2019t say much about their Embracer experience, nothing too direct, at least. In the summer 2024, Pitchford told<\/a> reporter and occasional Game File contributor Nicole Carpenter that Borderlands 4\u2019s story was in some way thematically connected to Gearbox\u2019s experience at Embracer: \u201cThere\u2019s this cultural and emotional shift in me, personally, and at the studio. What does it mean to trade some autonomy for organization?\u201d<\/p>\n

When Borderlands 4 came out, there was something stranger: the matter of \u201cEmbracer\u2019s Bluff,\u201d a location in the game featuring an AI-powered toilet and a large trash dump, according to a detailed Kotaku account<\/a> of the place. Gearbox never commented on it; Take Two never got back to me about it when I asked them last year.<\/p>\n

By contrast, since Saber exited Embracer, Karch has been one of Embracer\u2019s biggest defenders<\/a>, casting their management as well-meaning<\/a> and supportive despite the layoffs and studio closures that resulted from their excessive expansion.<\/p>\n

Like others, Saber\u2019s Karch saw Embracer\u2019s as a shot. With Rideshare Stimulator\u2019s trailer, he\u2019s returned fire. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing to me how fast people forget those who went above and beyond for them,\u201d Karch told Game File.<\/p>\n

A rep for Gearbox did not comment by press time. <\/p>\n

Game File is a reader-supported publication. Your backing makes my reporting\u2014including any coverage of trailer-based beefs\u2014possible. Good news! I\u2019m currently running Game File\u2019s first big sale of 2026. You can get a one-year subscription for 23% off. Click here to take advantage of the limited-time offer<\/a>. And thank you for your support!<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udeab Wal-Mart has laid off the staff of Restart, a games media outlet launched in 2024, Aftermath reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udfe5 A GTA VI preview is on the way, at last, via an \u201cextended look\u201d that will premiere, unusually, on Netflix<\/a> at 3pm ET on August 27, then officially go live elsewhere six hours later.<\/p>\n

Last week, Game File noted<\/a> that Take Two label Rockstar Games is overdue for showing off GTA VI, based on the timing of the initial hands-off previews of GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2.<\/p>\n

During a call with investors, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said pre-orders for GTA VI were \u201cunprecedented and astonishing,\u201d but added the company can\u2019t predict how many of those pre-orders represent bonus sales vs. sales that otherwise would have been made at launch.<\/p>\n

During the same call, Zelnick was noticeably bullish on the future of playing games over streaming cloud connections (predicting wider adoption in three or so years). He sounded unbothered by Sony\u2019s plans to stop making discs for new games (he said the business is 90% digital already and predicted<\/a> that there could still be limited edition physical editions of games \u201cin the same way there\u2019s still vinyl in the recorded music business.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc40 Take Two wrote off<\/a> $43 million in their spring quarter after deciding \u201cnot to proceed with further development of an unannounced title in its pipeline from a third-party developer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\ud83e\udd14 Some rare age-demographics from a big publisher: Capcom recently told investors<\/a> that \u201cusers in their 20s account for approximately half of the users of both Pragamata and Resident Evil Requiem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Game releases: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered<\/a> (Switch 2; already out for PC, PS5, Xbox) continues the Bethesda strategy of putting Elder Scrolls games on everything; Royalty Free-For-All<\/a> is a Smash Bros.-style fighting game featuring public domain characters such as Mother Goose brawling with Oliver Twist in a stage based on the original Little Shop of Horrors movie.<\/p>\n

Game release: Pro Jank Footy<\/a> (PC, console) is an arcade-style Australian Rules Football game with increasingly ridiculous rules, the more you play (I enjoyed the Steam demo)<\/p>\n

Game release: Super Mario Sunshine<\/a> (Switch 2, originally released in 2002 on the GameCube) is released for Switch 2\u2019s Nintendo Switch Online service. This game is the black sheep of 3D Mario games. It\u2019s the successor to the breakthrough Super Mario 64 and the rare Mario game built around a single (vacation resort) theme. Mario\u2019s got a water-spraying backpack, a Yoshi pal and a lot<\/a> of blue coins to collect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Look closely at the license plate in this scene from the new trailer for Saber\u2019s Rideshare Stimulator The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-734463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gb","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}