Solo board game developer Sam Greszes says Debate and Switch, a game in the recently launched Jackbox Party Pack 12 bears a startlingly close resemblance to his game Die On This Hill, that he sent to Jackbox Games as part of a pitch to turn his board game into a video game. Both Die On This Hill and Debate and Switch are social party games in which players assemble then argue for or against silly debate topics. Both have a audience voting component and both feature the ability to swap out words in the topic to change its meaning. Greszes says that in early 2025, after some back-and-forth communication with Jackbox Games in which they expressed interest in the project, they requested demo of Die On This Hill. After receiving a copy, Greszes said communication with Jackbox petered out only to see a YouTube video announcing Debate and Switch over a year later.

“It feels like a betrayal,” Greszes said, speaking with Kotaku. “Especially of someone who’s grown up with [Jackbox] games and plays them every year.”

Greszes said that Die On This Hill came to him out of a desire to make something after getting laid off in 2024. '” He said. In Die On This Hill , player s use word cards to put together phrases mad-lib style like, “math paved the way for ketchup” and two participants go head-to-head arguing for or against the topic while the non-arguing players vote for their favorite.

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