 So Phil Spencer, yes, that Phil Spencer of Microsoft and Xbox was asked about the original victory pose for Steve in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Now, for those who don't know, the victory pose has been changed for pretty obvious reasons. In fact, let me show you the victory pose right now. As you could tell, it's, you know, on the surface, I guess innocent, maybe to a kid, because it's just, you know, Minecraft Steve sitting there holding a piece of meat, holding some steak or whatever it might be, just like he does in the game, but because of the position and the angle and all that, it looks like he's holding his nether region out. It is something that has been kind of hilarious since the launch of Steve in Smash, but it's it's been since changed and now there's no meat present at all. The victory pose is actually kind of lame-er, to be honest. I was kind of hoping that Nintendo would leave it in there, but obviously, you know, with the clear reference to something unto wards in the game, it was not going to last. But what's interesting here, and this is something that I actually wonder who enacted this change is that Phil Spencer was shown an image of this by Stefan Totillo from Kotaku in a conversation they had on, I think it was Microsoft TeamSpeak or whatever. And it turns out that Phil Spencer not only wasn't aware of that victory pose, he didn't seem extremely pleased about it. In fact, he might have been the one after that conversation to give Nintendo a call and be like, hey, you really should change this. We don't think this is okay. And in terms of not thinking it's okay, that would be in regards to, hey, Minecraft is this game that Microsoft does specifically seem to be targeting towards children. And this depiction, as innocent as it might be, is obviously sending the wrong vibes for that character. This is Microsoft's character. This is the bestselling IP of all time. Clearly, Phil Spencer is going to care a lot about how their number one character, you can argue, this is basically the mascot for Microsoft at this point, that how this character is treated. So here is how the exchange went down. So Stefan Totillo on Teams was like, hey, have you seen Steve's image that's making its rounds now, his victory image? Phil Spencer says, no. He goes, me, let's dig this up and share this with you. You can put it in the chat. I'll look at it. So he looks for link to his post like a taco. Where is it? Where is it? Spencer says, is it bad? And he goes, I'll get I'll get your live reaction to it in a second. You know, Phil Spencer laughs, I know I've got to be really worried now. Where is chat? I'm new to teams here. So here, here it is. Okay. So long pause, like just a pause, not a laugh, a long pause from Phil Spencer. Yeah, who did that? And then Stefan Totillo goes, that's the real image. I'm not like trolling you right now or something like that. It's weird. And it's people started talking about it last night, that this is what Steve looks at when he when you win a match, I guess that's a piece of meat. Some people thought it was the pickaxe and it just kind of hovers there. So and then Phil Spencer responds and says, I assume it will be fixed. So they fixed it yesterday, which is which is fine. It was inevitable. I think we all knew that it would get fixed. It was just a matter of who was going to say something to Nintendo to get them to do it. And with Phil Spencer being shown this, clearly, like he did not seem, you know, when you have that long pause, you know, he's not even laughing about it, right? Like he laughed before he knew what it was because, hey, you know, what's silly thing that Nintendo do now to Minecraft Steve, who cares? Like, it can't be that bad. Then he sees it and he has that long pause that lets you know, Phil Spencer wasn't exactly okay with this depiction of Steve in Super Smash Bros. It's interesting too, because you would figure that Microsoft had to approve of everything regarding Steve and Steve from Minecraft in Smash, right? But maybe just maybe Microsoft signed off on this game, you know, art assets and all that to Sakurai's team. And then that was it. They just kind of trusted Sakurai and Nintendo to do right by the character. It's possible that Microsoft didn't actually approve of the stuff that happens with Steve in this game. If Phil Spencer didn't even know about the victory pose, you have to wonder, like, did they really know about much of anything with this character or do they just trust Nintendo that much? Now, obviously, I don't think that this was done intentionally. I mean, it's possible that there is some member on Sakurai's team that kind of did this as a joke, hoping that they could get away with it just because, hey, he's just holding the piece of meat, what's the big deal? But the way he's holding it, the position he's holding it, it almost looks like it was possibly intentional. I think that, you know, Phil Spencer likely after this conversation with Tatilla probably quickly got on the phone and said, hey, Nintendo, like, what gives? You know what that looks like, right? Like, you can't have our kid-friendly character looking like he's holding the phallus. Yeah, everyone knows it's a piece of meat from Minecraft, but it doesn't matter the location, the angle, the way the position the arm is at, it looks like the thing is holding, you know, a dick for lack of a better word. I guess you call it phallus earlier, but whatever. Like, it's funny, but it's also something that we need to be mindful of here. So, yeah, I don't know who caused it to get removed. Obviously, Phil Spencer saw it before it was removed and quickly after Phil saw it, it was removed. It's been around since launch. Like, if it was, if Nintendo thought it was so bad or was brought to their attention is so bad, they likely could have removed it literally the next day. But, because it's just a victory pose. We're not talking about like changing a mood set here or something. It's just a file swap change to a different pose. But, yeah, they clearly probably might not have been planning to do anything about it until obviously the owner of that IP is like, yeah, okay, we can't have Steve looking like that. So, yeah, it is what it is. You know, it was far well lasted, of course. I always find things like this to be, you know, mildly amusing when stuff like this slips in the games. And then, you know, we're in an era now where games are updated all the time. So, stuff like this isn't going to last. And I don't think anyone was actually offended. At least, I didn't see anyone offended. I see some people mostly making jokes about it and laughing about it. I didn't really, you know, nobody was sitting there thinking that, you know, that this is some big offensive thing, at least from what I could tell, maybe there were some people offended. I don't know, people get offended over anything these days. But I think this is just kind of a funny piece of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate lore now that can come up in, you know, say, future trivia sessions in the future like, hey, what was Steve's original pose in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate when he won a match? It's going to be a really nice little trivia piece that's forever captured now, right? It's hit the internet. We have videos of it. We have screenshots of it. It's never going to go away. Anyways, you guys, let me know what you think about this down in the comments below. Do you like that it was changed? Obviously, you know, I think we all can agree it needed to be changed. But do you like that it was changed? Are you surprised about Phil Spencer's reaction? I mean, after all, this is the head of Xbox. And, you know, they do a lot of M-rated stuff. And, you know, they make jokes and inappropriate jokes at times. But, you know, this is Phil Spencer. He wasn't, he didn't seem like he was too happy about the way Steve was depicted in the victory pose.