DBrand (a famous accessories company) announced their companion cube mod for Steam Machines. And it received the best preorders ever... to be taken down in a few hours when Valve figured out.

They are not against the accessories but DBrand never warned them about Companion Cube usage and it's their IP. Its design, name, and such are Valve's property.

DBrand tried to negotiate and Valve insisted that due to the initial illegal usage they now can't allow it even if certain deal would be proposed.

#Valve@GameDEV
#Hardware@GameDEV
#Fail@GameDEV

The overview of the mod:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl22MeYX1D8

Microsoft is losing 18% of its market value this month. The reason: AI spendings are not even remotely paying off and despite that going to grow even further. Investors don't believe that the revenue in that area as sustainable and so they are mostly focused on the upcoming loss.

All major tech giants will spend over $700B on AI infrastructure in 2026 alone, their available cash and dividends are shrinking radically.

#AI@GameDEV
#Microsoft@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV

Undead Labs (State of Decay) is also set for sale or closure, apparently. The workers of XBOX are unionized in many cases but it seemingly not helping much.

At the least, hundreds of jobs are at stake. Double Fine Productions could lose 100 jobs if it is shut down. Undead Labs could lose 110 jobs. Compulsion could lose 90 jobs, and Ninja Theory could lose 135 jobs. All told, that’s about 435 jobs that could be lost.

It's expected that the total number across XBOX will be over 1000 people this time in addition to thousands fired in the last couple of years.

#XBOX@GameDEV
#Microsoft@GameDEV
#LayOffs@GameDEV

PlayStation plans (🇯🇵) to continue its investment into Live-Service Games. They don't care that all the previous ones failed, if just one will not, it will pay off. What kind of copium is that?

Marathon now sits at 2800-8300 CCU on Steam and continue to decline. And Helldivers 2 was the only successful multiplayer they released as the publisher. And it didn't cover the spendings on the remaining 15 games that were closed.

#PlayStation@GameDEV
#Multiplayer@GameDEV
#Business@GameDEV

The security has been simplified, some restrictions are lifted (since bots no longer attack the channel)

😌

Supergirl failed commercially: $62m in box office during the first week, the upcoming competitors (Minions, Odyssey, Moana, Spiderman) will leave it no chance to keep up. It was about $170m to make, $120m on marketing, and only $400K for the main actress. The studio will lose $80-100m at best if the picture will get to 200m eventually.

#Movies@GameDEV

Google just discontinued the biggest GIF storage API keys. Of course, "to focus on stuff that makes the most $$$". And they propose developers to go fuck themselves or something...

Smaller apps that don't have the storage were often using it as their source of GIFs. Telegram has their own storage though, but the official @GIF bot is also Tenor based.

#Google@GameDEV
#WTF@GameDEV

And each time you think "how can they be that dumb?" keep in mind that FORD bought the narrative too.

#AI@GameDEV

That kind of day, yeah

🔥 Take your time!

DreamWorld sandbox MMO, which was crowdfunded on Kickstarter, is now being closed... after 3.5 months of early access!

The game was apparently a slightly twisted scam: Kickstarter + tons of free assets + cheap workers with zero experience + early access in a barely playable state and no servers protection. Not a pure scam, they didn't simply ran away with the money but a complete mismanagement.

It peaked at 56 CCU on Steam and the number of reviews was also about that number. Then online plummeted to just a couple of people.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/3103280/eventcomments/572668060971995750
#Sandbox@GameDEV
#MMO@GameDEV
#WTF@GameDEV

Stop giving money to all these "best MMO ever" on Kickstarter. It's a scam every single time!

The cringiest premiere of the recent months was supposed to be made for XBOX, but they abandoned the deal. Wise move! 😉

- When everything was ready as Agnes requested, she came out of the bathroom!

A narrative game with exceptionally odd writing. Not even like a whole plot and characters but rather moment to moment choice of words and such. Then mix it with poor animations, odd and not very engaging story, and well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LWupmlgnlo

The demo if you want to is available on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3949550/1666_Amsterdam/

It seems that XBOX placed most of the new Game Pass deals on hold for now.

#XBOX@GameDEV
#Microsoft@GameDEV

Godot Foundation has to adjust to the new AI-reality where thousands of vibe coders flood their GitHub:

- They need more hands
- They need more minds
- AI shall not pass

https://godotengine.org/article/contribution-policy-2026/
#GodotEngine@GameDEV
#AI@GameDEV