TYFP

Limit Break Radio was started by Nate Bender and Robbie Landis as a Final Fantasy XI podcast in 2006. As this was the early days of popular MMOs and gaming content creators, it didn’t take long for them to gain a sizable following and devoted fans. Over the years, Nate especially, thanks to his background in communications and radio, polished the podcast into the smoothest sounding final fantasy podcast, if not gaming podcast period. Fans enjoyed their rowdy nature, risque humor, and a general fearlessness to say what was on their minds, whether it was critical of Square Enix, or even the fans themselves. 

When FFXIV was reborn as ARR, they brought their show back and picked up again, with some different hosts from their origins, including part time or guest hosts; Nika, who became a regular host, and Eskalia, now Kali, being more or less regular, and with their former intern Juxta returning as well. 

Over the years they hosted after-parties in Las Vegas for the fan fests, held contests, and remained the one of the biggest FFXIV podcasts online. Despite this, the hosts became increasingly critical of FFXIV’s development team for providing mostly the same safe content over and over again over the years, and not taking any risks. This somewhat divided their listeners, but they generally stayed popular, as the repetitive content cycle of FFXIV is a complaint by many of the game’s community, casual player and hardcore player alike.

As their interest in FFXIV waned and they came to dislike the game more and more Nate began working on other projects, other podcasts that covered wider subjects than just a single game. 

Over the course of Final Encounter Cast and Checkpoint Radio it became very apparent that they no longer even remotely liked FFXIV. On social media Nate would be called out for his terrible DPS in instances, they would be mocked for not knowing what was going on in the game; and would defend themselves by stating they barely play; and hosts like Kali would leave and be absent for significant amounts of time between appearances. 

During the fan fest leading into Shadowbringers, they held a show announcing their departure as they had successfully sold themselves and their show, Checkpoint Radio, to Beesley Broadcasting, after building it up into a nationally broadcasted radio show. This was, like their parties and events in the past, largely made possible by the selfless and hardworking Christine “Kooky Persona”, who had joined the crew in the early days by basically showing up and managing their shows, and fan events for them, without instruction. She was a creative force in the crew as well; helping produce content for shows, and their social media presence. The hosts all exclaimed over the interim that they were going to have regular paychecks, health benefits, and all the trappings of the steady job, doing what they loved, and the show would be left to Nika and Juxta. However, they failed to do much of anything with it.

After being purchased by Beesely, they now had corporate oversight. Their once free opinions seemed to be lacking their previous edge. The crew was significantly silent during every single Fallout 76 blunder by Bethesda, which was especially painful to observe as it was already known that part of their show was supported by the game. The hosts were also relatively silent during the Blitzchung incident in China, as their Overwatch League coverage was one of their biggest segments and financially supported by Blizzard. The hard driving nature of their original appeal was now mostly lost for the sake of a paycheck. It is unlikely that the silence signaled consent, and more likely that because Beesley ordered it, and they made just mild cursory acknowledgement of the incident. Where Nate and once screamed into his microphone that an anonymous poster on Reddit should get infected with AIDS and die for questioning a charity in the FFXIV community, and doubled down on it when challenged by his co-hosts; there is now a single tweet from the CheckpointXP twitter stating that Blizzard had made a new statement on Blitzchung’s ban.

As of today the only members of the crew still working for checkpoint are Robby and Norris. Norris was a rare guest on the Limit Break Radio show, but a regular in other projects with Nate and Robbie. Beesley fired Christine first, but only after claiming all of her creative work she had made during her time with checkpoint, leaving her with nothing more than the experience gained from helping Nate, Robby, and Kali build the Checkpoint show. 

Nate drew criticism for his stance on game journalists, which he considered himself, receiving payment from developers for covering certain games. He claimed that payment would skew the journalists’ views in favor of the developer, and that it was dishonest; and he used the Rock Paper Shotgun article on the fanfest he was snubbed by Square Enix at as an example. The fanfest article was written in a neutral tone, but was ill received by the community for its lack of awareness and general cluelessness as to how MMORPG communities, or even general fandoms, interacted and celebrated. Nate’s rants on social media for this were ironic considering that he was running a segment under the Checkpoint title called “Checkpoint 76” that focused on Fallout 76, and that was sponsored by Bethesda.

Beelsley would go on to fire Nate in early 2020, the original creator, claiming they no longer needed him during the early months of the Covid-19 quarantine. Nate more or less remained silent about the circumstances, likely in respect to agreements made in severance. Despite his vocal support of the remaining crew, among which other hosts had been hired to host segments created by the original crew, like Esports and college sections of the shows, it was apparent that he was very unhappy with this outcome, his creation bought from him; and then being forced to leave it as he was fired from it. He skirted with the idea of returning to LBR in several twitter posts, but it was no secret to the community that he did not enjoy the game and was likely contemplating a return to the watering hole for a sense of safety. Afterall, they had once been the biggest FFXIV podcast online.

In mid 2021 Kali was fired as well, leaving only Robby and Norris. Like Nate and Christine before, she was forced from something she helped create and build by the corporate entity that had purchased them. 

The fired creators now intermittently attempt to stream on twitch, host LBR shows, and chatter on twitter about possible futures. Nate is significant in this respect, as he was often the most critical of Final Fantasy and square, especially when they were not included in the content creator interviews conducted during the 2018 fan festival. So upset was he, that he went on a multi-day, multi-account twitter rampage, calling out the company and, oddly enough Matt Hilton, one of the North American community moderators. These tweets are all deleted now, but the flurry of responses from the community was largely critical of them, and was seen as an angry good bye, akin to storming out of a job with middle fingers raised high. 

While some looked forward to a return of LBR, some did not. Nate’s desperation became apparent especially on social media as he made posts complaining about not having enough followers or views on his twitch streams, often seen as a rookie move in beginner content creation circles.

The fate of LBR as a show is uncertain. Nate occasionally streams to the channel playing various games, and a ‘reunion’ show. Christine has largely moved on to her own show (ironically using her own show to help prop up Nate and Kali after they were shafted by Beesley), and Kali’s fate is still uncertain. Robby and Norris continue on working for Checkpoint radio, but at this rate no one knows how long they will remain employed on the show they created. You have to dig through internet history and the wayback machine to find evidence that they were once liked, in forum posts on the official final fantasy forums or on reddit. Their website is a broken link, and their archives are in pieces. 

Once a week or more, Nate can still be seen making posts on twitter, criticizing his fans for not watching his Fallout 76 stream on his Final Fantasy channel, lambasting Square Enix for not including him in their twitch partner event, and liking his own tweets using his own various accounts. And on special occasions they are dragged for the time they told members of the community to get AIDS and die.

LBR’s youtube videos draw only a fraction of the views they once did, falling from thousands of views to sometimes less than 100 per video.

For now, LBR and especially Nate, serve as a warning more than anything else; a lesson in burning bridges, creative integrity, and the value of intellectual property. 

EDIT: It was recently announced that due to Patreon support the archives of their old recordings were back up. Their website remains down however you can follow a link in a singular tweet to the index of audio recordings.