Game Dev

Insanely inventive indie game merch!

Merch is always fun, having a t-shirt with your favorite game's name on it is nice, but it's all pretty generic. Shirts, mugs, stickers, maybe a mousepad?

Well the developers behind Cairn did something extremely unique and original! The game is all about climbing a mountain through whatever path you can find. And once you reach the end of the game you can order a t-shirt showing the exact path you took to reach the summit! This is so cool!

You can only order it from inside the game after you reach the top, you can't fake your way to it (at least not without cheats) so if you see someone wearing this shirt you know they finished the game!

Could you do something like this for your game? Yet another inventive marketing technique!

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The Unity Asset Store Summer Sale is live! As always this is one of the biggest sales of the year with thousands of the BEST assets on sale. As usual you got 50% off the top assets.

Check out everything on sale HERE!

Learn how to get more Wishlists and Sell more Copies with Steam Marketing Expert Chris Zukowski!

Like I mentioned at the top I’m going to be doing a video with him answering your questions, but you can already right now go watch the free videos I did with him last year to learn tons about marketing.

And if you want all that knowledge condensed into one single easy-to-follow place then check out his courses. He’s currently running a summer sale with a deep discount!

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Game Dev

The POWER of Polish!

You might have heard me say many times how polish is what separates good games from GREAT games, and this developer posted a video on exactly how much of a difference it makes.

The main thing is naturally post processing effects, but also adding more lights, both point lights and directional lights, and adding tons of decals. Decals are especially one of the most awesome tools at your disposal to polish your games. If you take a bland floor texture and just add some decals of dirt or blood or papers, then it suddenly looks so much better. I have a lecture on Decals in my Ultimate Unity Overview course.

This is also an excellent example of how you can make something look really good even while using common Low Poly assets. Some people are afraid that if they use Synty assets their game will look like many other games, but this shows how you can make the exact same assets look really different.

Gaming

Sony kills Physical Disks in 2028

Sony is officially ending physical disc production for new PlayStation games starting in January 2028!

They say this reflects consumer trends, and I get it, technically most games are bought digital nowadays. Personally I haven't bought anything physical in maybe a decade, I think the last physical thing I bought was a Tenet 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray just because I wanted to see how good it looked, beyond that I've been fully digital for ages.

But even though that's my preference I still think it sucks to see the end of physical. For a lot of players, physical discs mean ownership, collecting, lending games to friends, buying used copies, renting, libraries, preservation, and just having something real on a shelf. Going fully digital removes a lot of that and gives platform holders even more control over pricing, access, and availability, which of course can be exploited.

Everyone seems to be angry about this announcement, they even had to close some of their social media accounts temporarily (I feel for the poor intern managing those) but such a big change did not come lightly, so it seems doubtful they will reverse course.

Now the big question is what Xbox does. Do they follow Sony and kill discs too? Or do they keep physical games alive and win back some player goodwill at a time when Xbox definitely needs it?

Tech

World Cup controversial ball tech

Here is a fascinating use of technology, and also a perfect example of why VAR will probably always be controversial.

In the recent Portugal vs Croatia World Cup match, Croatia thought they had scored a dramatic game tying goal! But it was cancelled after the connected ball sensor detected the slightest touch from a defender, which then made the scorer become offside. The crazy part is that the touch was basically impossible to see with human eyes, but the ball sensor picked it up.

That right there is a very interesting question: if the sensor says it happened, should that be enough? Or since the rules of the game were created 100+ years ago when no tech existed and it was all based on human eyes, should the goal have been valid?

Technically the tech did its job. The ball has sensors, the sensors detected contact, and according to the rules that touch made it offside.

But on the other hand, if the touch is so tiny that no human can see it and it barely affects the play, should it count? Is the goal of technology to enforce the rules with absolute precision, or to help referees make decisions that match the spirit of the game?

Game Dev

Making 18 games in 18 months

I’m a big fan of the advice "make small games," and this is a great example of developers following that advice.

A team of four friends posted about how they have been releasing roughly one game per month for 18 months. They have now released 17 monthly games, plus a few bonus games, mostly for free on Itch and Steam. They are not making much money, but they have learned a massive amount.

And that is exactly one of the main benefits of making small games, the massive learning speed you get!

Making one game a month really does supercharge your learning speed. You learn how to scope, finish, polish, release, watch players get confused, fix problems, and then start again. That is so much more valuable than spending five years stuck on your first dream project without ever learning what shipping actually feels like.

Their main takeaways are:

• Steam vs Itch: How Itch is great for starting out, but the scale difference between those two is massive.

• Players misunderstand things that are obvious to you: This is something every beginner game dev learns the hard way. It is never as obvious to a player as it is to you.

• Confront your ideas often: Super important when working with a team, you need to make sure you have a shared vision so your all working towards the same goal.

• How to brainstorm effectively: Definitely a super important skill and something you can learn very quickly by making tons of small games.

• Start with small projects: This teaches you how to actually FINISH games.

• Think before you code: Pre-production will massively save you time in production. Which again is something you can test and learn with low risk by making small games.

My only advice to them would be: keep doing this, but slowly increase the scope as your skills improve.

After doing 4–6 one-month games, I would experiment with a 3-month game. Not some giant dream game, still small, but just a bit more substantial. That gives you enough time to build something with more depth, more polish, and maybe something actually worth selling on Steam. After 18 months of doing this I am sure this team is capable of building something more substantial.

So yes, make small games. Make lots of games. But as you improve, slowly raise the difficulty. That is how you turn practice into real long-term skill.

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Synty is back on HumbleBundle! Another great one with thousands of awesome Low Poly assets at 95% OFF!

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Game Dev

The MOST AWAITED Unity feature is coming!

Unity is constantly improving and constantly working on the next version. Meaning even though 6.5 just came out we already have Alpha 6.6 and that one includes one feature that people (myself included) have been asking for for years! We are finally getting dictionary serialization! Wohoo!

This might sound silly but it's genuinely a big deal. So many times I've wanted to use dictionaries (because it's an awesome data structure) but I always had to combine it with some sort of Serializable class to store data to then populate the dictionary on Awake. After 6.6 thankfully that will no longer be necessary!

Apparently it works with any type, including arrays, so this is really great news.

Tech

The Steam Machine is here (but expensive)

Valve is trying the Steam Machine idea again, and honestly I’m glad to see it, I hope it works out even though sadly I don't think it will.

The Steam Deck proved that Valve can make great hardware. They've sold millions of units, everyone loves it, and it basically created a new platform for indie devs to make handheld games. Based on that I would say a living room Steam PC could be awesome too: simple console-style experience, your Steam library, SteamOS, and another clear hardware target for PC and indie developers.

But the big problem is the timing. AI is currently swallowing every bit of memory in existence, therefore the Steam Machine, which should really cost about $700 is instead a massive $1049! If you want the 2TB version it's $1359. At this price point it is hard to imagine this being super successful like the Steam Deck which is a shame.

Apparently demand is still there, at least in some regions. It reportedly sold out quickly in various places while others are using a reservation/waitlist, so the hardcore fans are still buying them, just not the more casual fans.

Sadly at this price, it is no longer a cheap console alternative. Even though consoles have also suffered price hikes, a PS5 is still about $700 (despite yes having weaker specs). Perhaps the AI bubble will pop and memory prices will go back down and perhaps one year from now the Steam Machine might actually be affordable for most people, that would be nice.

Gaming

GTA6 out on November 19, 2026!

GTA 6 is finally definitely absolutely coming this year! Release date is confirmed for November 19, 2026 and pre-orders are open!

Although despite that, there's still no gameplay footage at all which can be a bit concerning. I mean based on their pedigree I think we can be pretty confident the game will be awesome, but still having pre-orders before anyone even sees gameplay is a bit odd.

Another thing is how the game will cost $80! Several publishers have tried bumping prices to $80 but none have really succeeded yet, GTA6 is probably big enough to get away with it.

This is probably the most awaited game of all time. GTA 5 launched back in 2013 and somehow stayed relevant for over a decade, so the hype for a real sequel is just insane. But there are still some important caveats: no PC version at launch, and GTA Online does not seem to be launching day one either.

The good news is it's definitely coming out! So if you've been waiting for it for a decade then your wait is almost over.

Now the big question is, can any game possibly live up to this much hype?

Game Dev

UE5 + UEFN = UE6

Unreal Engine 6 has finally been properly unveiled! Previously it was just a teaser but now it's a full blown announcement, and with that comes a bunch more details, along with a very controversial decision.

They defined a very clear direction, they want Unreal to become much more like a Roblox-style ecosystem.

The big idea is to merge traditional Unreal Engine with UEFN (Unreal Engine for Fornite), so developers can build powerful Unreal games but also publish into connected ecosystems like Fortnite. That means more focus on interoperability, creator economies, shared assets, and games that can live inside larger platforms instead of only being standalone releases.

They are also pushing AI much harder, with the goal of making game creation faster and cheaper. On this the vocal response has been very negative which is always a very interesting dichotomy. On the internet it seems people hate AI, but on the GDC Surveys there is quite a lot of AI usage, so they're clearly doing what folks in the AAA industry are looking for regardless of vocal public perception.

The most surprising and controversial detail of all is Epic announcing plans to eventually deprecate Blueprints! I'm not an Unreal dev but I know Blueprints are massive and its's how tons of games are made so this was very shocking to me. People have always complained about the complexity of C++ (despite being very powerful) and Blueprints was the main way lots of people were able to use Unreal.

Their hope is that developers embrace their simpler scripting language Verse instead of Blueprints which can have a lot of benefits, especially on larger games where Blueprints can become a tangled unperformant mess. But still a lot of people are not happy to see their favorite tool being deprecated. Although Epic also notes how "deprecated" does not mean removed, just not getting updates and eventually being phased out, but you can still use Blueprints for a few more years it seems.

So overall, UE6 sounds less like "UE5 but prettier" and more like a major philosophical shift. Unreal wants to become a platform, not just an engine. More Roblox, more Fortnite, more AI, more creator economy. Whether that is exciting or terrifying probably depends on what kind of developer you are.

Game Dev

Another indie makes $20 MILLION!

The world of indie game development is fascinating, most games make nothing but some games come out of nowhere, suddenly go insanely viral and make millions upon millions of dollars!

MECCHA CHAMELEON is the latest indie hit, it's already sold over 5 million copies in just 10 days!

It is a multiplayer hide-and-seek game with a VERY CLEVER mechanic. Players hide and paint themselves to blend into the environment! Basically like Prop Hunt mixed with a drawing/camouflage mechanic, super cool idea!

This is definitely one of those games that sells itself just based on idea (plus great execution). It is simple enough to understand in one sentence and funny enough to create great clips for streamers. That is exactly the kind of design that works incredibly well in the current era, where players want cheap, chaotic, easy-to-share games they can play with friends.

This is another great example of the power of great ideas, and why I advise you to prototype a dozen different ideas before you really commit to something. The difference in success between a generic idea and a genuinely interesting idea is MASSIVE. Marketing becomes much easier and the potential sales ceiling goes through the roof.

This is also another great example of something else that I say, make small games. This one was made by just 2 developers in just 2 months! Imagine you start working on a game idea today, and in late August you have a mega hit, it's crazy how that's what happened here!

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The Unity Asset Store Summer Sale is live! As always this is one of the biggest sales of the year with thousands of the BEST assets on sale. As usual it will be 50% off the top assets, and up to 90% OFF for some Daily Deals!

My own Code Monkey Toolkit is 50% OFF on this sale! It’s got over 50 Tools to help you make games BETTER and FASTER!

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Synty is back on HumbleBundle! Another great one with thousands of awesome Low Poly assets at 95% OFF!

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Gaming

June Next Fest is live!

It's that time of the year again, Steam Next Fest is live! There's over 4400 game demos for you to play!

As usual the first 2 days are pretty chaotic, but by now the charts have stabilized and you can easily find tons of awesome upcoming games.

At the top of the chart we have IRON NEST: Heavy Turret Simulator which is a very hands-on game where you're inside a giant war machine, people are loving the scale and the simulation.

BOMBANANA! is a great friendslop game where you and 2 friends play as 3 monkey, one blind, one deaf, one mute. And you need to work together to defuse a bomb! Clever idea!

Dust Front RTS is an old-school strategy game that I'm surprised to see it's finding so much success. Usually classic RTS is a niche genre but this one has almost 2000 Overwhelmingly Positive reviews!

EMPULSE is a wall-running fast paced 6v6, ReStory: Chill Electronics Repair is a chill game with a very tactile feel, and Over the Hill finally has a demo! I've been seeing gifs of this one for ages, it's finally getting close.

Go browse all the demos in the festival and I'm sure you'll find your next favorite game!

Fun

How a mechanical watch works

I am amazed whenever I see how many tiny pieces are involved in making a mechanical watch work, so many springs put in such a complex specific configuration to make it all work.

Here is a website that explains it step by step. It has nice visualizations on each step, the shape of the main spring which stores mechanical energy, then combined with several gears it can demultiply the movement, with a fork it can start going tik-tok, and on and on.

It's a fascinating website with interactive visualizations, really cool if you ever wondered how a watch works!

Game Dev

The growing yet underserved market for grey gamers

GamesIndustry.biz wrote an interesting piece about the growing market of "grey gamers," and the main point is pretty simple: there are more older players than ever, (and growing) but the games industry still mostly acts like every player is young.

This is a very interesting especially because it is likely a trend that will continue for the next few decades. Video games started getting mainstream popularity in the 80s, and the gamers of back then are growing, so soon enough we will reach a point where the majority of people alive have grown up in a time when videogames were mainstream.

Some estimates report that the UK has 6.6 million gamers aged 55+ in 2025, rising to 7.3 million by 2031, with Western Europe going from 51.89 million to 56.9 million over the same period. That's a lot of older players!

Not to mention how as those players get even older and reach retirement, they will have tons of time and tons of money, so why aren't they being served by the current gaming industry?

I think that is especially true for the AAA industry. So many big-budget games are built around fast reflexes, live-service progression, battle passes, constant updates, huge open worlds, and endless noise. That obviously works for some players, but not everyone wants that, especially older players with different tastes, priorities, or accessibility needs.

But this is also where I think indies shine.

There might not be many AAA games explicitly "for retired people," but on Steam there are indie games for every niche imaginable. I would not be surprised if a lot of the audience for games like Euro Truck Simulator, factory/automation games, management sims, city builders, and cozy simulators is older than the typical AAA target audience. Those genres are not served that well by AAA, but they are served extremely well by indies.

So the takeaway for devs, especially indie devs, is not "make games for old people" in some generic patronizing way. But rather it is: pay attention to underserved audiences. Not every market wants faster, louder, bigger, more competitive games. Sometimes the better opportunity is a clear, thoughtful, slower, deeper game for an audience that already exists but is being ignored by the biggest companies.

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My own Code Monkey Toolkit is 50% OFF on this sale! It’s got over 50 Tools to help you make games BETTER and FASTER!

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Unity AI is genuinely very useful! Importantly, it’s very useful in many use cases OTHER than generating visuals, in fact I think these other use cases are the most useful ones:

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Synty is back on HumbleBundle! Another great one with thousands of awesome Low Poly assets at 95% OFF!

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Game Dev

Femboy baiting as a marketing strategy?

This is a wild topic that I never expected to cover, a post titled: "Turns out femboy baiting is a pretty solid marketing strategy in Chinese social platform."

Apparently one dev tried to market their game the "normal" way and got 1-2k views and 10 likes. Then they promoted the same game but with themselves (male developer) dressed up as a woman, got 60k views and 3k likes! That's quite the difference!

Nowadays marketing is so difficult that crazy out-there ideas like these might be a genuinely viable strategy. Although at the same time, views don't matter, what matters are wishlists and sales. So even tough this strategy was successful at getting attention, I wonder how successful it was in gathering wishlists. Also it worked on making this post viral on Reddit.

So maybe this idea is a bit too out-there for your taste, but this is a great reminder that marketing and getting attention is difficult, so try out everything to see what works for you and your game.

Gaming

Giant List of all games announced at NOT-E3

With so many showcases (Summer Game Fest, Xbox Games Showcase, Day of the Devs, State of Play, PC Gaming Show, Nintendo Direct, and more) it's hard to keep track of everything that was announced.

If you didn't have time to watch everything, here is a great website listing everything announced at every one of those events.

I mentioned some of my own highlights in the last Game Dev Report but since then more games have been announced. Lots of awesome ones on the PC Gaming Show like Stronghold 4, 2 Fights 2 Tight Spaces, El Paso Elsewhere 2, Valheim 1.0, and more.

Check out all the showcases on the website, it's an impressive list of awesome games coming out in the future!

Fun

Join a virtual rave!

Do you feel like partying but don't feel like leaving your house? Here is an awesome virtual rave!

It's an online web-based massively multiplayer online rave!

Join, listen to music, dance, meet other people, customize your character, and stay the whole night!

It's a pretty silly idea but it makes for great second screen content! Keep in open on the side and enjoy the music while you work.

Game Dev

Steam update destroyed indie devs?

Steam just updated the store homepage, and one huge change might seriously hurt indie devs, or not.

For years, indie devs treated the Popular Upcoming as one of the most important pre-launch visibility beats. The common wisdom was that if you could get around 7k wishlists, you had a decent shot at appearing there near launch, which could then snowball into a ton more wishlists (2-20k), which in turn would lead to more launch sales, and algorithmic visibility.

However with this new update Valve says Popular Upcoming has been updated to become "more popular" by showing "the most anticipated releases of the coming month," as opposed to what it was previously where it was chronological and showed the next games released sorted by release date with over ~7k wishlists.

So in essence this list is now a lot more weighted towards "popular" than before. Right now the game on there with fewer wishlists has 80,000! If this is an example of how things will be going forward, then it seems the old 7k wishlist benchmark is basically gone.

Honestly this seems a pretty big disaster, it feels like another "rich get richer" system. The games that already have huge audiences get even more homepage visibility, while smaller indies lose one of the few places where they could get visibility if they hit a hard (but achievable) threshold.

The good news is they added one new section, Personal Calendar, and this section basically shows you recently released games and upcoming games that match your preferences, it’s unique for every player. On this list the number of wishlists required to show up does seem to be even smaller than the previous 7k, and the games are all extremely good recommendations. Looking at my own page I am interested in every single game shown there, it's all games that I would definitely want to play.

So Popular Upcoming is gone which hurts indie devs, but the new Personal Calendar might lead people to find the games they want to play. Previously you would get mass market visibility, whereas now it is more algorithmic driven. Technically this might mean fewer wishlists but better conversion numbers, so maybe just maybe this might end up being a positive change. We will have to wait a few weeks or months to get some stats to know how this update will impact indie devs.

Either way the same marketing rules that used to apply still do. You need to market your game off Steam, you need to pick a good marketable idea with an interesting fantasy and a compelling hook. All of that remains the same, only the last tier has changed somewhat.

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Tech

News from Computex 2026

Computex 2026 just happened! This is one of the big yearly tech events where lots of stuff is announced, here are the quick highlights:

• Nvidia's big push was RTX Spark which is an Arm-based PC chip! Apparently they are trying to compete on the CPU side. It has Blackwell graphics and is aimed at local AI workloads.

• Intel showed new Arc G3 / G3 Extreme chips for gaming handhelds, powering devices like the new MSI Claw and Acer Predator handhelds. AMD had smaller gaming updates, including the Radeon RX 9070 GRE going global and more X3D CPU options.

• There were also a ton of new OLED monitors, gaming laptops, AI desktops, mini PCs, cooling products, and creator hardware.

Overall the big theme is clear: gaming hardware, creator hardware, and AI hardware are all blending together. For game devs, the main things to watch are faster dev machines, and the continued rise of handheld PC gaming.

Gaming

Summer Game Fest!

It's that time of the year again, E3 is dead but Summer Game Fest is very much alive!

The event was 2 hours long and as always it was awesome filled with tons of games in every genre imaginable.

Resident Evil Veronica kicked off the show, it's a remake of the 2000 game.

Alien Isolation 2 is finally a sequel to the very unique game from years ago, Blood Message is an awesome cinematic action adventure game with intense melee combat, TMNT: The Last Ronin is made by Platinum and takes the turtles in a new direction.

Then Guild Wars 3 was announced! I remember playing the second game when it came out, that was ages ago! Star Wars Zero Company is and awesome XCOM-like in the Star Wars universe being developed by Respawn, The Blood of Dawnwalker is all about vampires, Chronicles Medieval is a brutal medieval army combat game and Virtua Fighter Crossroads is story focused and very grounded.

The Wolf Among Us 2 is also coming! Finally continuing that story. Crossfire is a mysterious sci-fi action game, and Stellar Blade: Blood Rain looks super stylish and futuristic.

And the big game that closed the show was Final Fantasy VII: Revelation, the third and final part of the remake trilogy.

All in all this was an awesome event!

After that was the Day of the Devs event, with lots of unique, strange, and interesting games.

Gaming

Factorio's FINAL update is coming

Factorio is finally reaching its "final" state, and this genuinely feels like the end of an era.

The devs have announced that Factorio 2.1 is planned to be the game's last major update. It will not add huge new content like new planets, enemies, research trees, or resource chains. Instead it is focused on quality of life, small features, fixes, polish, and modding improvements. After that, the devs say the focus will shift to long-term support like bug fixes, compatibility, and modding.

This one is personal for me because Factorio is one of my favorite games of all time. I first played it before it even came to Steam, and I loved it immediately. It is one of those games where I started playing and in 4 days I had put over 40 hours into it! The design is just unbelievably strong, simple idea, infinite depth, perfectly tuned progression, you start playing and suddenly it is 3 AM and the factory MUST grow!

It is also one of the most successful indie games of all time. The devs officially said it had passed 3.5 million sales by the end of 2022 and was still selling about 500,000 copies per year. Third-party estimates now put the base game around 5.9 million copies sold and roughly $166 million gross revenue, and that does not even fully account for the huge success of the Space Age DLC, which sold over 400,000 copies very quickly after launch.

So this is a massive milestone. Factorio has been in active development for over a decade, became one of the defining Steam indie games, inspired an entire factory-building genre, and now they are basically saying: "the game is done."

Honestly, that is kind of beautiful. So many games keep expanding forever until they lose focus, but Factorio feels like it is ending in the best possible way: polished, complete, endlessly replayable, and ready to stand as one of the greatest indie games ever made.

Game Dev

Why games cost so much to make?

We've all heard how AAA game budgets are ballooning, how games nowadays are considered a failure if they don't sell 5M+ copies. Here is a really interesting breakdown on why games are so expensive to make.

It's a very interesting blog post with a ton of data. And it has a very very interesting takeaway. Games are not necessarily more expensive because making the same game costs way more than before (in fact tanks to the awesome tools that exist nowadays game developers are massively more efficient than in the 90s) The bigger issue is that we keep making bigger and bigger games. More features, more platforms, more content, more complexity, more everything. In other words: scope!

Thankfully on the indie side this is not exactly the case, recently the games that have found most success on Steam actually have pretty small scope. Incremental games, Co-op games, Horror games, many of those are finding success with just 3-6 hours of gameplay. But on AAA they are still chasing absolutely massive 100 hour games with giant worlds.

The post also breaks down what actually costs all that money. According to their analysis, 2D games tend to be much cheaper than comparable 3D games, multiplayer adds a serious cost, longer playtime also adds cost, and voiced audio is a huge multiplier.

Team size is still the strongest predictor of budget, but the bigger hidden cost is actually coordination. One of the most interesting graphs is on how amount of job types required to make a game nowadays. 10 years ago AAA studios mostly only had 11-30 job titles, nowadays 35% of studios have over 50! And of course with all those different people doing different jobs you need to coordinate somehow, which means lots more managers.

One piece of good news is apparently crunch has been going down, or at least part of the reason for the increased cost is people are no longer crunching for free. So crunch isn't solved but at least now it's being paid appropriately.

The lesson for indie devs is don't fall into the trap of massively expanding scope and team size. Remember how your cost directly impacts your ability to make successful games. The more you spend on your game the harder it is to turn a profit.

Also remember how the cost of a feature is not just "how long does it take to make this one thing?" It is also how that feature interacts with every other system, how much testing it needs, how much UI it needs, how many edge cases it creates, and how much complexity it adds to the whole project.

So the takeaway is very simple: if you want to actually finish your game, control your scope! Every extra feature sounds small in isolation, but complexity stacks up fast. That is true for AAA, but it is just as true for indie devs.

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Game Dev

Unreal Engine 6 revealed!

Epic has just teased Unreal Engine 6! And surprisingly the first game shown running on it is Rocket League.

The teaser was very very short, basically a "new era, new engine" reveal with a first look at Rocket League upgraded to UE6. It does look absolutely gorgeous. The lighting and reflections look insane, the cars are super shiny and extremely high poly, very impressive stuff!

There are not many technical details yet, and there is no public release date for the engine, so this is more of a teaser than a full announcement. But still, seeing the Unreal Engine 6 logo officially appear is a pretty big moment.

GameFromScratch gathered some more info on it from various sources, in terms of release date maybe 1-2 years out, and based on a Tim Sweeney tweet it is meant to be sort of a merger between UE5 and UEFN (Fortnite version) with Verse (their programming language for UEFN).

The comments on the video announcement are full of jokes/concern related to how UE5 seems unoptimized and unfinished. Compared to UE4, which basically took over the entire industry, it does seem that UE5 has been lacking somewhat. Hopefully they are learning some big lessons so UE6 will be easier for developers to work with.

Either way, this is clearly the start of the next Unreal cycle. We don't know when developers will get access to it, but Epic has officially started saying the words "Unreal Engine 6", so now everyone is going to be watching very closely.

Gaming

The Witcher 3 expansion after 11 years!

Here's some completely unexpected news, The Witcher 3 is getting a brand new expansion!

CD Projekt Red officially announced The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past, a third major expansion coming in 2027. It is being co-developed with Fool's Theory, the studio also working on The Witcher 1 remake and made up of several developers who worked on The Witcher series before.

And honestly, that is crazy! The Witcher 3 launched in 2015, Hearts of Stone in 2015, Blood and Wine released in 2016, and now over a decade later we are somehow getting another full expansion. And it's a full expansion with Geralt! They have already said how Geralt's story is over and Witcher 4 will have another protagonist so it's awesome to play as him one last time. CDPR is calling it a new adventure, not just some tiny update, they specifically say it's an Expansion and not DLC, although we still do not know much about the story or scale yet.

They have also recently unveiled how The Witcher 3 has surpassed 65 MILLION copies sold! That's insane!

Now the big question is whether it can live up to Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, because those are some very big shoes to fill!

Summer Game Fest is happening next week, I wonder if we will see more then. The Witcher has some of the best trailers, the very first one Killing Monsters is still one of my favorite game trailers of all time.

Game Dev

New Steam Tags explain what's hot!

Are you familiar with the term Vampire-Survivor-likes? That "name" is pretty wordy, some people have tried to make the term "Bullet Heaven" a reality, and now it might just become reality! Steam just updated its official store tags, Bullet Heaven is a new tag!

I also think this update is a super useful signal for developers. Tags are super important, it's how a lot of Steam visibility works so Steam adding or removing tags means they think some genres/themes are more important nowadays, it means more players are searching for games that fit these categories. When Steam adds new tags, it is basically saying: "There are now enough games like this and enough players looking for these games that we need a proper category for them."

Valve added 17 new tags, removed 28, and renamed or merged several others.

Other than Bullet Heaven, it's interesting to see new tags for Desktop Companion (these games blew up since Rusty's Retirement 2 years ago), Organizing, Cleaning, and Decorating (lots of cozy games).

Clicker has been renamed into Incremental. That makes sense since the Incremental genre is blowing up and is mostly taking over the previous clicker genre. Pool was being used by games that featured swimming pools, so they have renamed that one to Billiards.

Some removed tags are surprising too, like Kickstarter, GameMaker, and Warhammer 40K. Valve says things like Warhammer 40K are better handled through franchise tags, which makes sense in theory, although it still feels a little strange because Warhammer 40K games are made by many different developers and span tons of genres.

So my takeaway is: pay attention to Steam tags. They are NOT just random labels. They are discovery tools, expectation setters, and sometimes a quiet signal of what Steam thinks is becoming important enough to organize properly.

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Game Dev

How much money did S&box make?

A few weeks ago I wrote about the imminent release of S&box, this is the spritual successor to Garry's Mod but taken to 11. It is meant to be a fork of Source 2 that is available for every dev (whereas Source 2 is invite only).

It has potential to be a competitive game engine considering how massive Garry's Mod is, although it stumbled a bit at launch with concerns of people that expected literally Garry's Mod 2.0 (which it isn't) and concerns due to it being flooded with AI slop almost instantly. But still this is a long term project so we will see how it shakes out.

One awesome thing about this project is how the company behind it makes all their numbers public! Here is their finance page where it shows how on launch day they made $1 MILLION! And even though the launch was a bit weak compared to what it could have been, they are still raking in $10k+ per day.

Although that's gross revenue, thankfully the page also shows all their costs. From that $1mil Valve took 25% (facepunch is a massive company so they get a better deal), refunds were about 8%, and they paid $8k that day to their staff.

That page has tons more stats, like Startup Times, Game Performance, Crash Reports, and even how much money they pay out every day for their Play Fund. Neat!

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Gaming

What do Xbox players want?

Microsoft launched a new Xbox Player Voice portal where fans can vote on what they want Xbox to do next, and the answers are pretty clear: Xbox fans want exclusive games, more backward compatibility, and free online multiplayer. I guess none of these are that surprising, but it's still nice to see some confirmation of what people really want.

The biggest one is exclusives. Xbox has spent the past few years moving more and more games to PlayStation and Switch, which might sometimes make business sense if you look at Microsoft as a giant publisher, but it creates a very obvious problem for the hardware: why buy an Xbox? One highly upvoted fan post basically says Xbox was built on great exclusives, and without them there is no strong reason to pick the console over the competition.

Personally I've never been interested in the "console wars" so for me more people able to play more games seems like a win, but some people really want their console of choice to mean only they can play some specific games.

The other big requests are very understandable. Backward compatibility is one of Xbox's best features, so of course fans want more of it. And free online multiplayer is another obvious one, for me as someone who has always been a PC player where multiplayer is free, it always struck me as an odd console-tax. And now it makes even less sense considering how Xbox has so many games on PC/Steam where multiplayer is free. At the same time for them it's basically free money, so they don't have much of an incentive to make it free.

Having Xbox ask fans what they want is a great first step, but of course now the question is whether Microsoft actually listens or if this is just a marketing plan that will quickly be forgotten about. Technically there is a chance this might lead to some changes since the Xbox leadership recently swapped so the new CEO is likely wanting to make a few changes to make her mark.

Fun

How To Make Your Text Look Futuristic!

Fonts sometimes seem like something that just "exists" and you can't really innovate, you just pick "Arial" and that's it. But that's not really it! Fonts actually super important and the right font can give your game an extra visual boost.

Here is a website that tries to analyze what makes a font look futuristic.

You start with a normal sans-serif font, you make it italic to make it seem the font is stretching towards the future, you round the edges, add a dashthrough, emboss it, texture it, and welcome to the future!

Game Dev

Lessons from a hit* Incremental game

This is an excellent postmortem from a hit* incremental indie game, MMO98, and I think there are a ton of valuable lessons here for indie devs.

The short version is: the game was a success, but with a big asterisk, it could have been a lot bigger.

They made $73,886 gross revenue in about 3 weeks! With a game made by 2 people in roughly 100 days. Compared to the average indie game, that is an awesome result! Most indie games take months or years to develop, and end up returning less than $1000, so this one is clearly a hit compared to most games. But that number could have also ended up with an extra digit. In their analysis they feel like could have set expectations better, they could have balanced the late-game more, and solved issues with launch communication.

The game launched with 27,000 wishlists (very strong amount!) and the game was selling extremely well, sold over 5,000 copies in just a few hours. But then the reviews started coming in, and due to issues with mismatched player expectations they were coming in quite negative which dropped the game into Mixed review score (59%) which then tanked their momentum.

The biggest reason the game worked was the hook. Windows 98 UI + MMO studio fantasy + incremental game is just instantly clickable. Nowadays you need a strong hook and that is a very strong hook with a very strong visual identity on a very strong genre. You can look at one screenshot and immediately understand why people would be curious. This is such an important lesson in terms of marketing and idea selection.

But interestingly, that same hook also sort of hurt them.

Some players thought the game would be more like an actual MMO, others expected a deep management sim, and others were disappointed that it was a short incremental game. So the thing that made people click also made some players imagine a different game in their head. They do include at the very top of the description "this is a short incremental game" but most people don't actually read the description, they see the trailer, capsule and maybe 1-2 screenshots. That is very important when it comes to correctly talking about your game to players.

Player expectations really matter, and in this case the warm audience that followed their YouTube channel understood the game and enjoyed it, but the cold Steam audience expected something different which lead to negative reviews which killed their momentum. Steam has a ton of places where your game can show up, Popular Upcoming, More Like This, Genre/Tag page, and many more. But when a game is Mixed players are less likely to buy it which in turn leads to the game drastically losing visibility (Steam only cares about making money, so if your game starts converting less, AKA making Steam less money, it loses visibility)

There are also some really useful smaller takeaways. Supporter packs can be "free money" if your game has traction. Mac support can be worth it but only if testing cost is low. Bundles can help, but only when they make sense for the audience and it might be best to have fewer better bundles than just bundling with everyone. And also late-game matters a lot, even for a short game, because some players will push your systems way harder than you expect.

My favorite lesson though is the bigger one: keep making games.

This was not just some magical lucky hit. It was the result of them making previous games, learning lessons, building skills, understanding Steam better, and slowly improving. That is exactly why I always say "make more games." Every finished project teaches you something that makes the next one better. This was their 6th game on Steam and it is the biggest hit they've had so far, and I'm sure they will have even bigger hits in the future.

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Game Dev

John Carmack's Advice on starting Game Company

One of the absolute legends in the games industry when it comes to programming is John Carmack. One of the original founders of id Software responsible for DOOM, Quake, Wolfenstein 3D and more, not to mention the revolutionary id Tech engine.

He just wrote a very interesting post on Twitter talking about his advice on starting a game company.

The market is extremely difficult, it is extremely crowded with extremely high quality games. Finding success requires excellent execution. (plus a little bit of luck)

He says how if you still want to go ahead with it then absolutely make sure you identify your target players BEFORE you start. Build the smallest version of your game you can, and when you find something that works, keep pushing on it.

This is excellent advice, not just with regards to Game Development but really any company or any commercial product you want to create.

The first step is the audience. If you're making games with the goal of making it a successful business then you need players to buy your games, so you can't make something no one wants.

And how do you know that someone wants your game? You make something SMALL like I always say. Make more games, make smaller games, and over time you will develop a sense for what kinds of games people want to play. Every time you actually ship something, you learn about scope, production, marketing, player expectations, pricing, Steam, and all the boring business stuff that you cannot learn just by planning your mega dream project forever.

So if your goal is success, I highly recommend you follow this advice.

Gaming

Fight against your unplayed Steam library!

Here is such a fun, dumb idea in the best possible way. One developer is working on an indie game that turns your neglected Steam library into actual enemies! It is called Game Quest: The Backlog Battler

The basic joke is perfect: the games you never played come back to punish you, and the more money you spent on them, the more damage they do. While at the same time your most played games become your allies. The whole thing pulls data from the Steam API so it's all super accurate.

This is so silly and so fun. Everyone has a pile of shame in their Steam library, I definitely have thousands of games I've never played (plenty I bought a bundle to play one game and got a dozen extra games) and I'm definitely not the only one. Maybe this will cause people to remember "oh right I did buy that game ages ago and never played it! Maybe now I will!"

I really like ideas like this because they feel so obviously clever in hindsight. This is not some huge technical breakthrough, just a very strong concept built around a behavior almost every Steam user understands. There is already a demo on Steam, and the game is currently listed for release in 2026, so now the funniest possible outcome would be for a bunch of people to wishlist it, and then never actually play it.

Fun

The Steam Controller screams if you drop it!

Valve is finally releasing hardware again! The Steam Controller launched last week and it sold out instantly (despite the $99 pricepoint)

And somehow someone discovered that if you drop the Steam Controller from a certain height, it actually screams! It plays the famous Wilhelm scream as it falls down.

This is pretty silly but also a genius way to get a ton of free organic marketing! They definitely got tens of millions of dollars worth of advertising by adding a feature that likely took them 5 minutes to implement.

Game Dev

Unity AI is genuinely useful!

Unity AI has just entered into Open Beta, meaning anyone who wants to try it can, no need to request access, you can try it out here.

I'm currently researching Unity AI for a super detailed tutorial and so far in my research I am finding the tool is actually genuinely helpful! This is not mindless AI hype, and it's not even focused on AI generation, but rather is capable of building genuinely useful things like custom editor tools, helping you analyze the profiler, taking actions in your project, it can see your project visually, it can do basic level design, helps you organize your codebase, fix bugs (with context of your project) and a bunch more.

Like I said I'm still in the research phase but thankfully Unity actually invited me to be a guest of their Unity AI livestream showcase which was quite educational to me. They showed how they built a really nice demo and included a ton of useful hints for how to get the most out of these tools.

The demo is a vehicle combat game in an arena where the player controls a car and the NPC trucks spawn and try to destroy the player. The demo was built with a handful of the developers WITH AI, not replaced by it. Meaning in order for this AI to be useful it required actually developers who know how to get the most out of the AI.

You can watch the full livestream but here are the main useful takeaways that I got myself:

• Build systems and learn. At 13:00 they showcase terrain deformation which I personally found really nice. And they describe how they used AI to help come up with that system. Personally this is something that I've wanted to research for ages and I think AI is super useful in this process, you can ask it to help you build such a system like they did, and then importantly ask it to help you understand WHY it works. The fact that this AI exists inside Unity means it has context of Unity itself and game development, so it's much better at building systems like these that rely on shaders and rendering as opposed to a generic LLM.

• Use it for editor tools. At 18:00 they showcase a simple editor tool made with AI that helps position all the modular pieces to make an arena of any size. Super important takeaway: Ask AI to give you tons of sliders and settings so you can manually make it perfect, because the AI output will not be perfect.

• Great for research. At 26:00 they wanted to have some robots cheering, but did not know which approach would be best, so they just asked AI and it gave them 3 possible options with their pros and cons, another great learning example. And after picking an option (in this case Vertex Animated Textures) the AI helped implement that system (with another custom tool)

• Profiler Analysis. At 33:20 the game was having performance issues, so they asked AI what could be the cause and it identified a very niche issue, one ProBuilder mesh had super insanely long triangles which apparently tanks performance. This is one of those things that is hard to find and easy to fix, and "finding" things is where AI excels.

There's a lot more uses they showed in the livestream, like making a Hexagon shader to protect the robots, generating the UI and the code behind it, generating the statue and vehicles and more.

Some general best practices:

• Break problems down. Don't ask "build me an entire game", instead ask "help me with this tiny specific task", then ask for another one, etc. Many tiny tasks instead of huge ones.

• Be as descriptive as possible, the more detail the better

• Ask it to ask you questions for further clarification.

• Generate characters in T-pose to make them easier to animate.

• When generating sprites, ask for a solid color background (like green) to make it easier to remove later.

• Ask for editor tools with tons of fine-tuning sliders

• Ask it brainstorming questions instead of asking for a specific output. "I have some robots in the stands and I want a shield to protect them, give me 5 possible approaches for solving this problem"

• Use screenshots and images to visually guide the AI if you want a visual task (like level design or particle effects)

• Drag related prefabs and assets to give more context to the AI

• Use Plan mode to come up with a plan before you attempt any changes

• For level design, ask it to use ProBuilder to make a grey box prototype, then replace with proper assets

• For Editor Tools ask it to include parameters so you can fine tune the result yourself.

• For generating Code, give it your code style and clean code rules so it generates code in the same style as your own.

Again the main thing here is this is NOT "AI will make the game for you" but rather "your skills + AI will help you make better games faster". As always it's a tool meant to help you, not replace you. So give it a try here and see how it helps you in your workflow.

In terms of pricing, here is their page. On the Free Unity Personal plan you get 1000 free credits you can try out, and after that you can pay $10 per month. If you're on the Unity Pro tier you get 2000 credits per month. Then you can buy more separately if you need them. Different tasks require different credits, for example generating a sprite is 5-10 credits, and a quick query is 2-5 credits, so it feels like 1000 is actually a pretty decent amount. Example: This demo which had very heavy usage of AI (with lots of trial and error) was built with around 1800 credits.

At the end of the livestream I asked if this demo would be available for download so we could inspect all of it and they mentioned how they hadn't considered it but maybe.

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Tech

Make your own Steam Controller!

Valve is such a weird company, but usually weird in the good way. (although I do wish they would lower their 30% cut for indie games)

They just released their latest piece of hardware, the Steam Controller, and pretty much instantly it went out of stock. You can't buy it on the official site for $99 (although there are already scalpers on ebay selling them for $300)

While you wait for more official stock, you can actually build one yourself! By that I mean that Valve has just released the CAD files for the Steam Controller and its Puck under a slightly restrictive Creative Commons license, which means people can now freely download the official shell files, modify them, 3D print accessories, and make all sorts of weird custom creations, as long as it is non-commercial.

They also included engineering drawings and "keep out" zones so people do not accidentally block things like the antenna or other critical areas.

Now technically you can't really build your own complete Steam Controller, these files are for the external shell and not the internals, but still this is pretty fun for them to do! Usually things like console shells are proprietary so it's nice to see a big company just put them out for anyone to build third party accessories for. There's a nice Valve-like message on the GitLab page: "Your Steam Controller is yours, and you have the right to do with it what you want."

Fun

Glue THIS to THAT!

Glue (or more technically, adhesives) is a fascinating thing. How do you connect one thing to another thing? It is also a surprisingly complex topic since you need different glue types to glue different objects. Gluing a Hat to a piece of Wood? You need something different than if you were gluing Metal to Plastic.

Here is a fun website that shows you what you need to glue THIS to THAT. You just pick the this and that from the dropdown menu and it tells you what works best, neat!

Plus there's a Trivia page! Did you know that "The Aztec Indians in Central America used animal blood mixed with cement as a mortar for their buildings"?

Game Dev

What is Gamescom Latam like? Is it for indie devs?

Gamescom Latam has just happened (or actually it's still happening today) and it was a massive event! Hundreds of games being showcased from developers of all sizes.

Over the years I have managed to attend a few events, I have been to half a dozen Unites and two GDCs, but I had never attended just a normal non-game-dev event, until now! It was definitely a more casual event, lots more people in cosplay and fewer people in suits.

Over 150 games were at the event, with lots of booths to play them. For me this was fun since normally I'm so busy that I don't have time to play games, here I enjoyed myself quite a bit.

I played a game from a dev that recognized me, Apogea, awesome super complex MMO made by a 4 person indie team! Another one where the dev came up to me was Bloodfang, also super well polished, nice action game with meaty combat and powerful animations. Played Islets Defense which is a very unique take on tower defense. Tellyport is a complex puzzle game, and Retail Hell was unique and interesting.

There is a page on Steam with the games shown there, lost of awesome stuff!

All in all it was a very interesting event, obviously focused on playing games instead of developing them. Players all over the place trying out the latest games and what's coming in the future.

On the game dev side I would say these events are probably great for getting playtesters and feedback. There are tons of players walking around that mostly only play AAA games, they likely only try indie games in these events where they are right next to the AAA games, so if you want exposure to playtesters from that specific audience then these events can be good.

However in terms of indie game marketing, these events are usually not worth it. It's unlikely you will get a massive amount of wishlists or press coverage, so if the event requires payment (which at least it usually requires you pay for your own flight and hotel) then usually you have other better places to spend your marketing dollars.

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Spring Sale!

The Unity Asset Store is currently running their Spring Sale!

As always you can get most of the top assets at 50% OFF, and along with Flash Deals up to 95% OFF! 

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Gaming

Tomb Raider in 2D by fans for fans!

Are you a fan of the original 1996 classic Tomb Raider? I am! I loved dueling pistols, doing all kinds of acrobatic maneuvers, and shooting dinosaurs!

Well some fans are reimagining the classic game as a 2D side-scroller! That's pretty fun!

They have converted the mechanics really well, it's not just a lazy port but it actually looks like it has the vibe of the original game. All the levels with the same assets, the starting level, the traps with lava, the underwater level. Plus all the sliding on platforms, the traps coming from behind, the lava, and more!

Now of course the question when it comes to these projects is what about the original IP owner? Will they come after the developers and kill this project? Or will they leave them be? I hope they leave them be, I don't think this is killing sales of the original game at all. The goal is to release in May 2026 so pretty soon!

Fun

Chess in 1D!

Chess is a game that has existed for millennia, and in all that time it hasn't really had "updates"

But now one developer tried to update it, instead of the usual 2D grid, now it works in just 1 dimension!

There are only 3 pieces on the board. I don't know much about chess, and it seems this makes the game way too simplistic with only a few possible moves, but still this is a fun experiment!

Game Dev

Why Vibe Coding crashes and burns every time

This is a great postmortem of what I constantly warn people about. How AI is great if you work WITH it, but not if you use it to REPLACE you.

One developer shared how they spent about 40 hours over a couple of months trying to "vibe code" a metroidvania in Godot, hoping AI could handle the technical side while they acted as the creative director. At first it looked promising, they got some basic movement and systems working quickly, AI nowadays is absolutely excellent at making good small code snippets, but once the project started getting more complex and systems needed to be connected with one another then everything began falling apart.

The AI struggled with enemies, combat, refactors, and broader architecture, and every fix seemed to create more problems. Eventually they gave up and concluded that full-project vibe coding is basically a myth, at least for something as complex as a real game.

And yes, that is what I am constantly saying. AI is excellent if you use it as a tutor to help you understand something. If you ask it to explain some piece of code line by line so you can understand then that's awesome!

But the problem is when people ask it to generate something and just blindly copy paste code. If you do that then you don't understand what the code is doing. And if you don't understand it then when something breaks (inevitable) you will not know how to fix it. If you're making something simple like Flappy Bird then it's possible you can build that whole game using AI without anything breaking, but for making any game even slightly more complex than that then it will break guaranteed.

When you're vibe coding you're not actually building the game, you are just stacking mystery boxes on top of each other until the whole thing collapses.

The developer asked the AI to generate a bunch of stuff and it successfully generated a working character controller that could run, jump, climb ladders, read tablets, use a scanner and more. All that done in just a few hours, impressive. But then when they ran into issues they tried solving them with more AI which didn't work, for example trying to refactor some code into a state machine just made a massive mess of global data. Since the developer did not understand the code they had no other choice but keep asking the AI to fix things and hope that it worked, and over time it worked less and less.

So the takeaway here is not "never use AI." It is: AI is not a replacement for understanding. Use it to brainstorm, speed up small tasks, maybe help debug something specific, but do not expect it to magically make up for not knowing the engine, the language, or the fundamentals of programming. If you want to build a real game, eventually you need real understanding, so use AI to help you understand.

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Tech

Robot beats humans at Half-Marathon!

This is one of those stories that feels completely sci-fi.

At the Beijing E-Town humanoid half-marathon, a robot called Lightning ran the 21km course in 50:26! Faster than the human half-marathon world record! Several robot frontrunners were faster than the professional athletes in the event.

It is insanely impressive how fast this tech is moving. Not that long ago the viral clips were robots struggling to stand up, and now suddenly they are running absurd times without falling or tripping on anything.

Now technically this is still far from "terminator" level. These are still very specific benchmarks, the race happened on a premapped, rehearsed course with support crews behind the robots. It would not have gone well on any other track, and of course all it can do is run, it is not generalized intelligence. But still super impressive!

Also recently, Sony AI's robot Ace made headlines for beating elite human table tennis players! Not all the time but some times. Impressive to see the tech being used here.

The pace at which robot development has been going these past few years has been fascinating, how long until robots beat humans in ALL physical tasks?

Gaming

Black Flag is FINALLY coming back!

After literally years of rumors it has finally happened, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is announced! This is the remake of the awesome 2013 game and it's coming out on July 9, 2026. Ubisoft is positioning it as a full on remake rebuilt in the latest Anvil engine, not just a quick remaster.

This is pretty big news!

For a lot of people, Black Flag is one of the best Assassin's Creed games ever made. It came from that era before the series fully transformed into the giant RPG-style structure of Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla. It was a more focused single-player adventure, and Ubisoft is very clearly leaning into that nostalgia because they have explicitly said Resynced is NOT an RPG and is staying a solo, character-driven experience.

That is probably the smart move, especially right now. Ubisoft has been having a rough time lately, with a major restructurings, canceled projects and studio closures. Meaning there's a lot of pressure on this release to do well. I'm hoping that means they are making the absolute best game they can make it. It would be a win-win if they make an awesome game players love, and sell millions of copies to help their financial situation.

So yes, after all the leaks and rumors, one of the most loved Assassin’s Creed games is finally being remade. Now the big question is whether Ubisoft can actually deliver the version that people have been imagining in their heads for years.

Fun

Who is this scary weird guy?

Have you ever looked at the animation preview in Unity and seen this guy? Do you think he looks very strange? A lot of people think so.

Who made him? Why is he so strange? Such a slender figure with big eyes and a shaved head, very weird design.

If you put him in a dark place this is a perfect character for a horror game, which makes it a strange character for an official Game Engine character.

Game Dev

How to spend $38k on a Visual Novel

If you're a fan of numbers and costs, then this post is excellent. It's a post mortem from a developer detailing how they spent $38,000 making a Visual Novel (which then netted $3,279) and importantly defining which costs were worth it or not.

This is also a curious example because the developer/post writer seems like it was mostly the “ideas guy” with money and spent that money hiring people to make a game rather than doing it all themselves. This is very different from the usual “I made the game all by myself” and also very different from “I have lots of game ideas, I just need someone to make them but I have no money to pay you”, so let’s see where those $38k went.

Some spending was clearly worth it, like the writer and artist, but the dev found out that a lot of it was not.

In terms of hiring developers, this was the biggest cost at $9800 where the dev thinks the big mistake was using Agile instead of Waterfall. Agile works great when working by yourself or with a fully owned team, but with freelancers that you're paying by the hour going for Agile means lots of revisions which means lots of extra cost.

The composer was also described as basically unnecessary since original music doesn't necessarily add much to this type of game as opposed to stock music which would be a lot cheaper (or free).

Translations is an interesting one, the developer said it's mostly wasted since it was expensive and even ended up with some errors. They think the proper approach for the future is AI translation + native speaker proofreading. I guess this one depends if the game has a lot of context or nuance. If not, if the text is mostly normal talking, then I can see AI + proofreading work.

In terms of the hired marketer, the analysis is how it was expensive for the results. $2300 for 700 wishlists. Reddit ads were also slightly expensive, costing about $1.48 per wishlist.

The things that did work were the free things: Steam festivals and manually reaching out to streamers ended up being way more valuable than a lot of the paid promotion, especially because the streams also functioned as real playtesting. Watching players get bored, confused, or engaged gave the developer a ton of insight into how to improve the game.

There's a ton of detailed information in the post so I recommend you read through the whole thing, and the conclusion on the post is filled with great takeaways:

And I love the very last line: "One publisher later told me about a dev who spent 4 years on a 10k-wishlist game, then made a massive hit in 6 months using everything he'd learned. You need the first game to make the second one.", so make your first game!

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Game Dev

Ludum Dare dying in 2028?

One of the long-standing institutions in indie game dev has been Ludum Dare. The twice-yearly game jam that has been running for almost 25 years!

But there's some sad news. In the post talking about Ludum Dare 59 the caretaker behind it, Mike Kasprzak, has announced that Ludum Dare 64 on October 2028 will the the final one. Meaning there are six more events left, so this is not an immediate shutdown, but it is very much the beginning of the end.

I think this is an interesting reminder of something important: communities and events like this do not just exist automatically forever. They survive because someone is carrying a massive amount of work behind the scenes, and eventually that catches up with people. So if you have ever benefited from a game jam, or a community, or any kind of shared dev space, remember there is usually someone holding that thing together with a ton of invisible effort.

It will be interesting to see what fills that gap. Maybe nothing replaces Ludum Dare exactly and maybe the community simply splinters into smaller jams. Based on the Itch page there is no lack of scheduled game jams so they will continue to happen as a concept, but it really does feel like the end of an era to see the main one go.

Fun

Why waste AI token when few word do trick?

Here is an ingenious project!

When it comes to AI, pricing is usually based on tokens/words, both input and output. If you manage to ask the AI to do the same thing using fewer tokens then it's cheaper, same thing for output.

This awesome project takes a cue from the famous The Office Kevin scene "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?" and teaches AI to speak like a caveman drastically cutting down output token usage by 75%!

A simple output like:

Becomes

This isn't just fun, it's genuine cost savings!

Game Dev

Is Game Dev Advice Contradictory?

If you're looking for advice on Game dev (or literally anything) then you can find tons of it on the internet. And if you attempt to apply all of it you might discover some things are contradictory, except that's not exactly right.

One developer on Reddit posted about exactly this. Things like "TikTok is amazing for marketing" versus "TikTok does not convert into wishlists", also "launch a demo as soon as possible" versus "time your demo for festivals", or "publishers are useless" versus "my publisher was essential."

And the truth is quite simply: ALL of those can be correct!

What is missing is simply nuance, advice in Game Dev is extremely situational. It depends on the genre, the visuals, the platform, the current market, your budget, your goals, your audience, and just the specific game you're making. A tactic that works amazingly well for one game might completely fail for another. There is no one-size-fits-all checklist for success.

But more importantly, that advice is actually NOT contradictory. TikTok is indeed excellent for marketing, you can have a video go viral and get millions of views. While at the same time it is true TikTok views don't convert too well into wishlists. 10k views on a YouTube video will likely convert into wishlists better than 100k on TikTok, although even if they convert less it is still quite valuable to have those 100k eyeballs on your game, maybe next time they are randomly browsing Steam they see your game and then they wishlist. Both are true.

On Demos, you DO want to publish your demo as soon as possible, as soon as you have your game idea in a good playable state. At the same time launching a demo when it's just a grey box prototype might harm your initial wishlist velocity, that's the nuance behind "as soon as possible". And you ALSO want to time Next Fest to get into it with a hot demo planned just before your release date.

Same thing for publishers, you have good and bad publishers. A good one will massively help your game reach the next level of success, and a bad one will ruin you so you might as well self-publish. That's not conflicting, that's just analyzing what is a good publisher vs a bad one, that's the nuance.

So these are actually pretty much all great advices, but you have to adapt them to your own situation and what specific stage you are in the development process.

Meaning that the real skill is NOT memorizing universal rules. It is learning how to judge context. What type of game are you making? Who is the audience? What is your actual goal? Are you trying to maximize wishlists, get funding, grow a community, or just finish and ship something small?

That is also why two successful developers can give seemingly opposite advice and both be right. If you regularly listen to successful devs (like on the Jonas Tyroller podcast) you will see how everyone finds different paths to success.

So yes, definitely listen to advice, but learn to analyze the nuance behind it and adapt it to your specific situation.

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The Unity Asset Store is starting their Spring Sale tomorrow!

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Tech

This AI is too dangerous to release!

Anthropic just announced Claude Mythos Preview, a new model it says is especially strong at cybersecurity tasks. So strong that they say it is actually dangerous! They think if they released it publicly then bad actors would use it to find vulnerability flaws in all kinds of software and cause tons of damage. Therefore they are not releasing it broadly. Instead, it is being offered as an invitation-only research preview where selected partners use it for defensive security work. They say the model has already helped find thousands of serious vulnerabilities.

Is this reality or just hype? It's hard to know. Back in 2019 OpenAI said ChatGPT 2 was too dangerous to release, but eventually was released. Then same thing when they first worked on Sora, it was too good at creating deepfakes and misinformation which meant they didn't want to release it. But eventually they did (and eventually killed it)

So is this new model really that good? Is it genuinely dangerous? Or it is just boosting the hype machine even further? These AI companies are looking to go public this year, so it pays them to over exaggerate just how good their tools are.

But if it is genuinely true then this could be quite interesting, it could genuinely be dangerous if AI's like these can suddenly find zero-day exploits in all manner of software. And at the same time when used for good they could also be very powerful.

Gaming

Awesome Indie Games Event!

The Triple-I initiative just had their 2026 event! This is an awesome yearly event, it might be my favorite showcase all year since I'm always so interested in every game shown. And this year was no different!

The whole idea behind this event is 40 announcements in 45 minutes, no hosts, no ads, just games! The full video is here (it's longer because after the event they showcased more of some games)

Honestly I think about 70% of the games shown looked super awesome to me, I wish I had time to play them all!

Graveyard Keeper 2! The original is one of my favorite games of all time, it's one of those games where I couldn't stop playing and in just a few days I spent over 40 hours on it, super awesome. If you haven't played it and you like Stardew Valley but wanted it to be a bit more like a dark comedy then I highly recommend. The sequel seems to be more of the same which to me is awesome!

Thick as Thieves is another one looking great, this is the game by Warren Spector which has been in development for quite some time. It's an Immersive Stealth Action game where you team up or go alone into a mansion to steal all kinds of valuables.

Romestead is another one for Stardew-like fans, but this time set in Ancient Rome! Awesome theme for this type of game. Or check out Crop which is a spooky and creepy Stardew-like.

Solarpunk is an awesome colony building game in the sky with lots of green tech.

Dead as Disco is all about rhythm fighting action to the beat with an impressive visual style. Valor Mortis is another one with insanely impressive visuals where you fight with a sword and pistol in Victorian? French? times.

Warhammer Survivors puts Space Marines in pixel art against endless hordes. Windrose is for pirate fans and Shift at Midnight is a horror-papers please-supermarket sim inspired game.

Also lots of updates for games that are already out. Oxygen Not Included, Brotato, Clover Pit, Rift of the Necrodancer, and more.

Finally the show ended with the announcement of Don't Starve Elsewhere which is a full on sequel! I played the original years ago when it came out and loved it! Haven't touched it since then even though they have massively expanded it. Maybe this sequel is just what I need for a fresh start.

Just for fun I also read my own Game Dev Report of last year where I covered the 2025 Triple-I initiative. Most of the ones I mentioned are actually not out yet. Star Birds and Shapez 2 are out and huge hits! While Timberborn (showed an update last year) just hit 1.0!

Fun

Humans return from the moon!

The NASA Artemis 2 mission was a huge success! Humans left Earth, went to the Moon, flew around it and returned home safely.

It's been over 50 years since humans last went to the Moon on Apollo 17, and almost 60 since famously Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin (and Michael Collins) stepped on the Moon. Buzz Aldrin is still alive to witness this mission!

Thankfully nowadays in 2026 we have much better tech than 50 years ago, so this mission comes full of gorgeous images and videos that you can see. Plus a fun bonus, the web app they made to showcase the capsule as it was travelling was made with Unity!

This is just the start of the Artemis program!

• Artemis 1 (2022) was uncrewed.

• Artemis 2 (2026) took humans around the moon.

• Artemis 3 (2027) will test docking and commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin.

• Artemis 4 (2028) will land on the moon!

• Artemis 5 (late 2028) and beyond will begin the process of establishing a human Moon colony!

Game Dev

Top 10 Mistakes that playtesting reveals

One of the most valuable things in game development is simply watching players interact with your game and seeing where they struggle. Not guessing, not assuming, actually watching. That's why playtesting is so CRUCIAL!

One dev on Reddit wrote about what they learned from playtesting over 22 indie games, and the interesting part is how the same issues kept showing up over and over again across completely different games.

Some of the biggest ones were exactly the sort of things that are very easy to overlook when you're deep in development. Static menus that make the game feel unfinished which gives a bad first impression, tutorials that only show keyboard controls even though the game also supports controller is another classic beginner mistake.

Demos that include broken levels, mechanics that sound interesting on paper but just are not actually fun, and of course the classic one: the developer assumes something is obvious when it is not. I made an entire video on this very common mistake.

One that is a problem in either extreme is just in terms of game content. Too little or too much is a problem. Either players get bored or overwhelmed.

And a very simple lesson: "Wall of text tutorials are as bad as no tutorial". I highly recommend you to make more interactive tutorials, and use the VideoPlayer component to SHOW not TELL.

These are the kind of lessons that showcase why playtesting is so insanely valuable. After working on a game for months, or years, you are way too familiar with your own game, so your brain cannot comprehend what a completely fresh look into your game looks like. You know where everything is, you know what every button does, you know what the player is "supposed" to understand. But the player does not have that context, so they will get confused by things that seem to you impossible to miss.

So use this as a reminder to get fresh eyes on your game as early as possible. Not just once, but constantly. Watch people play, see where they hesitate, see what they ignore, see what they misunderstand. Because very often you can massively improve how much the player likes your game by just not making these mistakes.

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Game Dev

Source 2 is FREE! (with S&box)

Here's a super interesting game engine story. You might know about S&box, it's an interesting sort of game engine being made by the team behind Garry's Mod and Rust. It's a fork of the Source 2 engine that they've been building for a while.

But until now it has worked sort of like Roblox or Fortnite, in that you build a game that exists inside the S&box platform. However they recently announced that coming soon you will be able to export standalone games and ship them on Steam as if it were made with anything else.

Even more important than that, they have made a deal with Valve to allow those developers to publish those standalone games completely Royalty FREE! Meaning you don't owe anything to either Facepunch or Valve for using this engine.

And that is kind of a huge deal, because it basically means indie devs now have a real path to building games on top of Source 2 tech without having to give up a cut of their revenue. It is not the same thing as Valve directly opening Source 2 to everyone, you still need direct contacts with Valve to get that, but in practice this is almost the same thing since S&box is built on top of Source 2.

A lot of people love Source 1 and a lot of people have been looking for a broad release of Source 2, and this is basically it! Not only that but being Royalty Free is an excellent bonus!

As to why they are doing this? Gary, the owner of Facepunch, basically said how he already has infinite money (Garry's Mod and Rust have both made hundreds of millions) and he wants to give an opportunity to someone today just like he had the opportunity for this to become his job 20 years ago. That's a great sentiment!

S&box itself will be launching on Steam on April 28th. I'm looking forward to seeing what the reception to this engine is. One year from now will we see a mega hit made with this engine? Will all games share that Source 2 look? We shall see!

Tech

Claude Code Leaked!

The big news in the AI world this week is how Claude Code source code got leaked! This wasn't a hack, someone accidentally pushed an update that included a link to a .zip file that contained the entire source code.

By looking at this leak anyone (competitors) can see how they built it, and importantly, what they're planning to build in the future. They're working on the ability for Claude to review what was done in the last session to study improvements for the future, making a "persistent assistant" that keeps running even while the user is idle, how they are focused on long autonomous tasks, deeper memory and multi-agent collaboration.

The source code is pretty massive, 2000 files and 500,000 lines of code. One person quickly built a nice website that has an interactive visualization of how it actually works which is quite neat!

How the user writes their message, it gets packaged into their format, then pushed into the history conversation array, sent to their servers, uses whatever tools it has access to, returns the output, and saves some logic to its internal memory.

It's quite fascinating how it all works, and the website is beautiful!

Fun

April Fools!

It's that time of the year again, April 1st or April Fools! This is always such a fun day, I love it. It's awesome to see all the jokes that everyone makes.

This year one of my favorites is the Payday NPC Game Mode! heh it's so funny to play as a mundane boring NPC, they really went above and beyond in making the trailer. Perfect ending "Don't be a hero!"

Another hilarious one was CKSS which pokes fun at the recent DLSS controversy. It's hilarious to see the dagger at 00:30 turn into something else heh.

The Witcher 3 made Project R.O.A.C.H. which features a physical hobby horse controller.

In terms of general tech, Elgato made a fun lever you add to your Stream Deck. MSI made a Monitor Arm for your cat (which actually looks useful!) or if you want you can make sure you never lose a sock again!

Game Dev

What do YOU consider success?

I talk often about how to find success with your games. How to pick a good marketable game idea in a well performing genre that allows your marketing to be effective in order to have the best odds of finding success. However I also try to constantly say how it's up to YOU to define what success means to YOU!

Maybe making 6 figures is your definition of success. Maybe it's just $10k. Maybe it's just releasing a game. Maybe it's just making something playable to have fun with friends. Maybe it's building something personal just for yourself and no one else. All of those are perfectly valid definitions of success!

One developer on Reddit posted and excellent image showcasing 10 levels of success. They range from "1. I made a video game!" to "5. I have a modest income from my game" to "10. My game is a cultural phenomenon with a long lasting legacy."

Which one best matches YOUR definition of success?

Personally my goal has always been "6. I made enough money to keep being a full time game dev", I just want to keep doing this for the rest of my life. I have no interest in making a phenomenon, I'm happy with making small niche games that only a few people even know about. I also have no interest in making a game with an enduring fanbase or turning a game into a multi-media IP (like FNAF). And I also certainly never want to retire! If I ever have a mega hit, something that makes $10mil, then I would still keep making games. I would definitely take it easier and work fewer hours, but I don't imagine I will ever completely stop.

Looking at the comments it seems the most common answer is 6 (make games for a living) and 1 (publish a game).

In order to achieve a goal, any goal, it's imperative that you are very specific on what the goal is, so do take some time to clearly define what is YOUR goal with game dev.

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Game Dev

Reminder that Experimental means EXPERIMENTAL!

Cities: Skylines is one of the most beloved games of all time. It sits with 92% very positive rating with 100,000 reviews, it has made over $100,000,000!

Then in 2023 came Cities: Skylines 2 and it was a disaster, currently with Mixed reviews just 55% positive.

How did this happen?

In a recent interview to PC Gamer the CEO mentions how part of the problem was Unity, or more specifically it was them basing their design and the core tech of the game on Unity DOTS which was very early, very experimental at the time. They thought they were future-proofing their game, when in reality they were just signing up for an extremely difficult development process since the tools were simply not ready at the time. It lead to a lot of engineering problems which in turn were reflected in the final game.

So use this story as a reminder to NOT use Experimental tools/packages in Production!

Nowadays Unity DOTS is an awesome Production-Ready tool! If you want to use it now, you can! There's also awesome games already out that are using DOTS, example Diplomacy is Not an Option. I have an entire full-length 17 hour course on making an awesome RTS game with DOTS. But I only went through the massive months-long effort of making that course AFTER Unity DOTS hit 1.0, not before.

Gaming

Fortnite is dying?

For years now Fortnite has been the juggernaut of the industry making seemingly infinite amounts of money! It's the cited reason why some other AAA games have failed, everyone is just playing Fortnite and no one has time to play any other game.

However apparently they have finally reached the peak in 2025 and have been downhill from there. Epic games has just laid off 1000 employees which is 20% of the company. In the announcement Tim Sweeney (CEO) talks about how they're spending more than they're making, how the industry as a whole is slowing down, and how recent Fortnite updates haven't managed to bring the magic like previous years. The only good news in this situation is that at least they got severance (4 months pay), but still it sucks to lose your job.

How is it possible to have the #1 game in the world that literally prints money, and yet end up with layoffs? How much are they spending on all those weird IP deals? Or is it their expensive legal battle with Google and Apple? Or is it them trying to make the Epic Game Store work by giving away free games?

If Fortnite is on a downtrend, who is on an uptrend? I believe Roblox is doing quite well but I have trouble imagining people going from Fortnite to Roblox. So perhaps those players are moving on to other games which could be a positive for the industry? The fact that Fortnite has massively dominated in the past few years isn't a good thing, it's not a sign of a healthy industry to have one massive title making all the money and everyone else fight for scraps, so if those players move on to other games we might have a more broad sustainable industry, but perhaps they just stopped playing altogether.

Tim Sweeney posted something on Twitter that I'm guessing he intended to be a positive message but really just comes across as incredibly tone deaf: "In the coming days, employers will see a stream of resumes of once-in-a-lifetime quality folks."

If they were so talented why did you fire them? You couldn't figure out a way to monetize all that talent? I wish all the best to the people affected, hopefully they can put their talent to work at a better company.

Fun

Cat Desk!

Do you have a cat? Do they jump on top of your keyboard and make it hard for you to work?

Here is a solution! Cat Desk! It's a desk with dedicated shelves and holes for your cats! Obviously it's made by Japan.

Although knowing cats I imagine they actually just ignore the places intended for them and will still just lie on top of your keyboard.

Game Dev

Indie Dev cries (of happiness!)

Indie Game Development is a very tough industry, success is hard to come by, so here is a nice positive story!

One developer had been working on his Tower Defense game for 4 years now, released it last week and since then the game has already made over $500k!

There is a YouTube channel with some devlogs and importantly some livestreams. He checked the Steam stats live and it made for a nice happy moment. It's pretty emotional to spend 4 years just barely scraping by, and suddenly you know you won't have to worry about "how to pay rent" anytime soon.

During yesterday's Private Livestream that I do every Saturday we were actually talking about this story and trying to figure out how this game was so successful. Personally I was pretty surprised because it's a Tower Defense game which isn't usually a very good genre on Steam, there are lots of players that like it but it's also oversaturated and it's really hard to stand out.

So I was surprised to see this game find so much success, then I figured it found success during the recent Next Fest but upon looking at the Wishlist graph that is not the case, it had only about 3k wishlists after Next Fest and then suddenly gained 40k wishlists in one week! This was a pretty big mystery but on the stream we finally figured out the source, there was a Tower Defense Fest where this game managed to get to the top of the charts (by being extremely good) which gave it an insane amount of wishlists, and launching right after made the game really successful.

I guess the main takeaway here is do not neglect the non-Next Fest festivals because these more niche/themed ones can still give you a ton of success!

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Tech

NVIDIA does an Oopsie!

DLSS, Deep Learning Super Sampling, is a genuinely impressive piece of technology. It allows your game to render at a lower resolution (which gives you tons of FPS) and then using specialized hardware in the GPU it upscales the image without losing much fidelity.

The tech has always been pretty great (personally I'm always a fan of FPS over fidelity so anything that gives me extra FPS is a good thing), for many gamers it's the only way to play games in 4k without a $5k GPU, and on every iteration it seems to get better, but this time they pushed it over the edge.

The concept of "fake frames" is always a bit contentious because if you fake it too much then it suddenly becomes a negative, and NVIDIA just found out where that edge is. DLSS 5 got a very negative response from almost everyone because they pushed it too far. The demos they showcased look like they're applying an AI filter to every single image.

Characters that are supposed to look normal, all of a sudden look like they have a ton of make up on them. Scenes that should be intentionally desaturated suddenly become super bright as if the game was Fortnite.

Basically they just pushed the frame generation so far that it eliminates the artistic vision of the developers. There's no art direction any more, it turns every game into a generic AI-filter-looking game.

The good news is how the tech is adaptable with lots of parameters, all they have to do is tone it down a bit and it goes back to being the generally positive DLSS that people have come to know.

Gaming

Two Games, Two Devs, Same Name!

Another positive story this week!

Imagine this scenario: You have been working on your game for years, you have made lots of progress, it's close to release, you have a Steam page and everything works correctly. Then you suddenly realize the name you used for your game is already in use! That can be a nightmare scenario! Do you have to rename? Will they sue you? Are you vulnerable to a lawsuit and losing a ton of money? Will you have to hire a lawyer? When all you want to do is just make games!

That horrendous nightmare is what is likely to happen if you choose a name that matches a AAA game (have you heard about "Scrolls"?) but thankfully in this particular case this story is all about 2 indie devs that ended up with the exact same name, Piece by Piece, therefore instead of antagonizing each other and getting lawyers involved they just worked together!

Piece by Piece is a Puzzle Platformer where each level is segmented into pieces, you drag them around to make the levels, nice fun game!

Piece by Piece is a Shop Keeper Simulation game where you manage your family's repair shop and get busy fixing stuff for all the forest folks.

Like I said they just decided to work together, they made the Piece by Piece Double Bundle that contains both games. They describe it as "Two games. One name. Welcome to the Piece by Piece Bundle. This bundle brings both interpretations of the name together — a cozy, repair shopkeeping sim and a mind-bending puzzle platformer — united by both the name and a shared love of puzzles."

Looking on SteamDB the charts are so similar that it's quite funny. Both games were announced in April 2025, both games had a smooth increase in wishlists without spikes until they both launched just days apart.

Nice fun story of indies working together!

Hello and Welcome, I’m your Code Monkey!

VR is awesome technology! It is amazing to be fully immersed in a world, using your actual hands and body to take actions or just live in that world.

GDC was last week, Meta invited me over as part of their Horizon Insiders program so I spent a lot of time watching talks and researching the current state of the VR industry and development which was something I was very unfamiliar with.

The quick summary is how VR development is easier than ever before thanks to awesome tools, and the industry (while still being niche) has a lot of potential for growth in the coming years.

_{Also quick note, Meta Horizon and Meta Horizon Worlds are two different things! Horizon Worlds is their Roblox-like UGC platform, whereas Horizon is simply their OS that supports their Quest devices and all VR games. Recently they announced Horizon Worlds is switching focus from VR to Mobile, but Horizon OS itself is still VR-focused as always. They are NOT dropping VR! (in fact they announced they're working on new devices) This part was quite confusing to me at first since the branding is all mixed up so I will be making a quick video explaining this.}

In terms of tools, they have actually worked very hard to make things as easy as possible to get started. I remember years ago I did some very light research into it and it required a ton of game objects and all sorts of components just to get a camera working in an empty scene. And nowadays, while it still does require tons of components and game objects, thanks to something called Building Blocks it really is as simple as Drag and Drop to get started.

You just pick something from the list like a CameraRig, drag and drop onto the scene and it automatically adds every game object and every component needed to get it to work. Same thing if you want to add Hand Tracking, or Passthrough, or a Teleport, or a Grab Interaction, all of those are just drag and drop. Press on Play and it just works.

However at GDC they announced an even easier way to get started, using Meta AI you can just describe what you want the scene to be like, and it takes actions on your project to set it all up as you want it. All just using natural language.

Then for testing your VR game, you can test it in editor with the Meta XR Simulator for super fast iteration speed, or of course you can test on device, Unity has an actual Meta Quest build target.

The entire Hello World VR tutorial seems pretty straightforward, then you can easily build your game from there. I will be making a bunch of VR tutorials in the near future, starting with a basic "Getting Started with VR development" which should be fun, I've always wanted to try out VR development!

Market Size, Audience and Future Prospects

Then in terms of the state of the VR industry itself, I attended a talk titled: The State of the VR Ecosystem, which was full of interesting stats from the past and estimates for the future. There is a detailed blog post here and the talk video will be published soon.

2025 actually saw record usage for Quest VR despite it being a year with no new hardware launches, that's pretty big news, revenue was flat which matches the rest of the industry. Premium games are still king while IAP and F2P is growing.

Over 100 titles have generated $1M+ in gross revenue in 2025, that's a pretty nice amount! However that's not necessarily just games published in 2025 but rather all games for all time, for example Beat Saber is definitely within those 100. For context, on Steam that number is 363 games published just in 2025, and possibly thousands for all time. Naturally that's a lot higher but for VR which is a pretty niche sub-genre of the games industry it seems to me that 100 games crossing that threshold is a pretty decent amount. It definitely means the industry is NOT dead.

I did try to find out is how viable is VR as an indie game business, and sadly I couldn't really get much of an answer since Meta is very secretive about numbers. Technically a lot of VR games are available on both Meta Quest Store and Steam so we can look at Steam numbers. Something like Gun Club VR has 700 reviews with an estimated revenue of $650k. The leader in this space is definitely the Quest but by how much? Are Quest Store sales 2x that of Steam? 10x? No one knows so it's hard to get an estimate for just how viable VR might be as a business.

Meta Horizon+ is a service that I did not know existed, basically a sort of Netflix for games where you pay a monthly subscription and get access to 2 games per month plus access to a back catalog. This service is also much bigger than I thought with over 1 million active subscribers. Developers are paid out based on usage and minimum guarantees, and they state how the goal with this program is to make it sustainable and profitable for developers, unlike something like Game Pass where some developers have voiced concerns over how viable it is to give out hundreds of games to millions of people for $1 per month. And the fact that Game Pass is now much more expensive kind of proves this point where it is unsustainable.

If you're already a VR developer there is an option to submit your game, although it is an intentionally small curated service so the requirements are relatively high, you can see them in this page where they mention for example requiring average $15,000 monthly revenue and at least one year old.

So in general, the state of VR this past year and in the present is actually pretty solid. VR is not growing by leaps and bounds but it is definitely not dying. Slow but steady growth.

As for the future, this is where things get interesting! It's no surprise that Meta has VR devices in development, nothing officially announced yet but there have been rumors about a Quest 4 alongside a lighter version.

And of course there is a potentially huge event happening in the VR world soon, the Steam Frame will be released! Considering how the Valve Index sold millions of units and the Steam Deck sold even more, there is potential for this new device to open up VR to an even bigger audience.

In terms of audiences they see 3 distinct groups of VR users that each want different things.

• VR Elites: These are the hardcore VR players that have bought every device on day one, they want serious games to play with controllers and lots of activity. This audience has been pretty static over the years.

• Teens: These are the most active audience currently using the Quest, many of them playing games like Gorilla Tag which has at one point reached over 3 million monthly active users, that's an insane amount in general but even more insane for VR! These Teens enjoy fun games to play with friends, and they are mostly VR-native therefore don't have many issues with locomotion or controls. This is the audience that will grow in age over time, and might become VR Elites who will one day consume more R rated games.

• Mainstream Adults: This is the audience that is currently tiny but Meta thinks will grow massively in the coming years. These are people who buy a headset mainly as a virtual TV just to watch some football game or movie. They just want to chill and sit around (no standing VR for them) and importantly they do not want controllers, instead they prefer Hand Tracking (because it’s simpler). This is the audience that is expected to increase massively as VR goes more and more mainstream. Which means for you as a developer you need to consider if you should be designing your games more for Hand Tracking and Sitting than Controllers and Standing.

In terms of marketing, most users who come to the Quest Store already come with the intent to buy something they saw on social media, they do not browse the store. TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are the most important marketing platforms.

So all in all it seems VR is in a decent place right now. It is not growing like crazy but it's also not dying. Meta is still invested in VR and Valve is about to give it another push (maybe Apple will try out as well in the future). There aren't many numbers on what the average game makes so I don't know just how viable it is for an indie developer to make VR games. Technically you have less competition than on Steam, but also much smaller install base, do those numbers end up being a net positive or not? Maybe I need to do some more research on the viability of VR as a platform.

But regardless of financial results, VR is still magical! It's been a few years since I touched VR but when Meta sent me a Quest 3S I went back to it and there really is nothing like it. Beat Saber continues to be one of the most impressive experiences I've ever had, it's fun and physical. SUPER HOT is just straight up "cool", and just browsing the store I can see tons of awesome stuff that I never heard about but definitely want to explore! (the headset came with Batman Arkham VR, I need to play it!)

Are you doing VR development? Are you interested in it? Let me know in the comments or reply to this email!

I'm definitely curious to see the reaction when I publish some VR videos, will the views be 1/10th the usual because it's a very niche area? Or will they actually be higher because a lot of people are interested in VR? I guess we shall see!

Thanks to Meta for flying me out to GDC and sending me a Quest 3S so I can start developing in this magical area!

Thanks for reading! Best of luck in your game dev journey!

Game Dev

The State of the Game Dev Industry

The Game Developer Conference happened this week in San Francisco, I was there and wrote about my experience in the last post. This is an awesome yearly event meant for professionals in the industry, not gamers, so it's mostly focused on tools and business.

As part of GDC they released their State of the Game Industry report it's a very detailed report with 52 pages full of information and stats. This is awesome to get a sense of the current state of the industry and where things are going in the future.

The survey went out to 2300 developers, that's a big enough sample to get some good results. On questions about AI, platforms, jobs and more.

The industry is still mostly male (64%) and 70% between 25 and 44. Interestingly more than half (54%) had less than 10 years of experience in the industry, in terms of studios it's a mix of AAA (31%), AA (18%) and 55% indies. 8% are solo devs and 57% work at companies with 50+ people.

The sad reality of the industry is still pretty rough with 1 in 4 people having been laid off in the past 24 months, and more than half (53%) expect layoffs to continue in the next 12 months. This also makes it so that both students and educators are concerned about their future in the industry.

Then comes the section everyone is waiting for, AI and how developers feels about it. 52% of companies report using GenAI for work, mostly using LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, followed by tools like Midjourney and Sora. The great majority (81%) uses these tools for brainstorming (which is also one of my own primary use cases), then for writing emails and code assistance (47%) while only 5% use it for player facing features, likely due to wanting to avoid backlash from players. For the most part usage of these tools is optional with only 6% mandating their usage and 16% forbidding them.

Despite all this usage, 52% feel GenAI is a negative for the industry, and this is a sentiment that has been growing, back in 2024 only 18% felt negative about it. For the most part developers are ok with using it for non-creative tasks but are heavily against using it in player facing ways.

In less controversial stats, Unreal is used by 42% of devs while Unity sits at 30% and Godot at a respectable 5%. Unreal dominates the AAA and AA space while Unity is mainly used by Indies. The top platforms are PC at 80%, PS5 at 40% while Xbox sits at 20%. Mobile at 16% and VR at 12%.

As for serious business stats, Premium games are king at 74% compared to just 26% on Free to Play, which honestly surprises me. Perhaps the free to play live service gold rush has finally truly died, especially after many recent high profile flops (like Highguard). As for marketing, social media is at the top at 65% with Streamers right behind it at 39% which honestly seems a bit low, I would have expected a higher number from Streamers since they are so important in marketing nowadays.

One big problem in the industry has always been crunch time, in this survey over half of developers had a 50+ hour workweek in the past 12 months. Perhaps related to that is the sentiment that 82% support unionization efforts in the games industry.

All in all lots of stats that show the trends in the industry. Things are still rough and expected to stay rough for the near future, AI will continue being a contentious topic with some developers using it while others refuse to, and the industry remains mostly male although nicely balanced between indies and everyone else.

In terms of GDC news, Xbox recently unveiled their upcoming Project Helix console. Still not many details but apparently there will be dev kits out in 2027. It will play Xbox and PC games with their goal being making the publishing process as simple as possible for developers. They also say how "indies have never been more important" which is a great message. Google is working on AI stuff, as are many other companies. There were tons of booths dedicated to Motion capture, Face capture, Haptics, Server hosting, AI mesh generation, AI analysis tools, and tons more.

Oh and the IGF awards also happened during GDC. Titanium Court took home the grand prize, it's a very very strange game coming out soon. Baby Steps got "Excellence in Audio", Wednesdays got the audience award, and more winners.

Hello and Welcome, I’m your Code Monkey!

I'm currently in San Francisco attending GDC, it's only my second time here, it's an awesome, huge (and expensive) event!

There's a ton of people all over the place, although it feels less crowded compared to last time I was here, and the energy is definitely quite positive despite the fact that the industry as a whole is still going through a slightly rough time.

So far I've been to a few talks, mainly on the topic of VR development. One talk on choosing the right input method (hand tracking vs controllers), one on using the recently unveiled Unity AI MCP + Meta AI to quickly prototype a VR game idea by having the AI handle all the setup for you, and a talk on how to find success on the Meta Store and how their algorithm works.

Meta invited me over here as part of their brand new Meta Horizon Insiders program to push VR forward so I'm required to attend their talks and will be doing a video summary on what I'm learning here. I've always been interested in VR and now this is the perfect excuse for me to start actually making some tutorials on that topic.

Then I also went to Unity's Indie Celebration event, which was a nice mini-event and a nice talk by Chris Zukowski and Xalavier Nelson Jr on the topic of how to find success in games nowadays. It's a quick 30 minute event so give it a watch if you haven't seen it. I finally met Chris in real life! In case you don't know Chris is a Steam Marketing expert, I've worked with him previously on some videos but I had never met him in the flesh until now, nice guy!

Next I went to a meetup of Asset Store publishers (free food and drinks!) then off to Unity's Indie Arcade party which had music, playable games, and some talks. I did a mini-fireside chat with Genies which was a pretty fun event, chatting about indie game development in general, what are the biggest challenges nowadays, the best ways to use the current tools, and answered a bunch of questions from the audience.

Today is the day the show floor is opening, I'm very much looking forward to going in there to check out all the booths and see all the awesome stuff people are building in this incredible industry. I remember last time seeing booths dedicated to some countries (like Germany developers, Polish developers, etc) so I'm especially curious to see if there is one for Portuguese developers. At least I've heard there is a booth for developers from Brazil so I'm looking forward to going there.

Then on Thursday I will be going to a Unity talk all about their updated AI tools, I'm very very curious to see a real time demo to see if those tools genuinely work as well as in the video from last week or not.

If you're here at GDC and you see me walking around come say hi! I've already met about 30 people and it's always awesome to meet people in real life! It makes my job feel quite a bit more real to know there are actual humans watching the videos or reading this newsletter and it's not just numbers behind a screen. If you're at home I hope you're enjoying watching the various livestreams and stay tuned for a summary video from me when I get back next week!

Thanks for reading! Best of luck in your game dev journey!

Game Dev

Unity's FUTURE in 2026!

GDC is happening this week and usually that means tons of news and announcements. Unity normally does some kind of GDC roadmap but this time they're doing things differently, they're trying to NOT overpromise and instead just deliver on the things they already talked about, so instead of a Roadmap we have a Product Update that they just published this week. The Roadmap from last year's Unite is still the goal, here they just talked about how they're going to achieve it.

They reiterated their release schedule, version 6.4 is coming out next week and 6.7 (the next LTS) is out before the end of the year. The Render Pipeline merging is proceeding according to plan, recently they talked about how HDRP is no longer getting new features and instead all their graphics developers are working on URP to push it to the next level. Real Time Global Illumination is coming sometime in the future!

One surprisingly awesome part about this product update was the section on AI tools. Personally I'm tired of hearing AI being pushed into everything, usually it's useless and really just a buzzword, but not this time! The Unity AI that was shown seems genuinely useful! Use it to populate an environment using assets in your project. Use it to help you debug the profiler. Use it to generate UI based on a sketch. Use MCP in case you prefer different AI models. And save checkpoints just in case something goes wrong.

All of these use cases seem genuinely useful and not just empty buzzwords. You can join the Beta right now. After I get back from GDC I want to try out all these tools to see if they genuinely work as well as shown in the videos.

Then on CoreCLR they talked about how they are making progress bit by bit. They showcased a slide with a timeline of how they will implement it step by step. It will still take at least one year until it is fully done but progress is being made, you will soon be able to get the 6.8 Alpha if you really want to try it out ahead of time. Same thing for DOTS x Game Objects, that integration is also on track and hopefully will be completed within a year.

All in all this Product Update (not Roadmap) seems great, they're on track to achieving everything they talked about making all these awesome tools for developers to make awesome games!

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Game Dev

Steam 2025 Year Recap

A few years ago Steam started doing a year recap talking about everything they do in the entire year, I made a video covering it last year.

They just published the Steam 2025 Year in Review, and it contains a ton of stuff that I didn't even know about!

First they mention hardware, which they surprised the world when they announced 3 devices just last year. The new Steam Controller, new Steam Machine, and the awesome upcoming Steam Frame (I can't wait to get one!). Still no news on when those will be out, but they're still planning H1 2026.

Then on the store updates they did a mountain of stuff! Some things I did know about but others I had no idea.

One big thing is the expansion of Daily Deal slots. Now there are more slots and they're available to more developers which in turn learn to a revenue increase of 274%! While only lowering the median revenue amount by -8%. So more developers are getting this opportunity and finding tons of success.

They also continued doing their Top Monhtly New Releases page which I totally forgot existed. You can easily see the big winners of every single month. It's fun to browse the months and see all the variety of games coming out, and how all those are finding tons of success.

One big addition this past year was their Themed Events which they started doing more and more often. In a previous report I wrote about the Typing Fest that was happening, and I wrote how it was awesome how Steam was doing events for such niche topics which gives more games visibility. You can see all the upcoming ones in this page, there's a House and Home Fest, Ocean Fest, Train Fest, Cooking Fest and more.

The Discovery queue apparently changed quite a bit! I didn't know since I haven't checked it out in a few years. There's a Personal Calendar that I never knew existed, "The Community Recommends" can use a Positive review to put your game on the front page, Trailer and Screenshot viewer was updates, User Reviews by language, Discoverability also continues improving with better more targeted recommendations for each individual user.

And the store page became wider! Going from 940px to 1200px.

That was a productive 2025!

Tech

Apple's latest devices

Apple has always been synonymous with high-end, so it's a pretty big deal how they just announced a new device targeting the low end. It's the Apple MacBook Neo starting at just $599. This looks to be competing with things like Chromebooks for people who use their computers mainly for word processing and browsing.

Or if you're interested in the usual more high-end stuff they also announced a new MacBook Air and a new MacBook Pro.

There is also a new iPad Air, update to the Studio Display monitor and the new Studio Display XDR for professionals. And they also unveiled the iPhone 17e, a smaller cheaper addition to the iPhone lineup.

Fun

Dog vibe coded a game!

Vibe Coding is all the rage nowadays, personally I think it has a lot of negatives in that you don't understand what the code is doing so you can't fix it when something breaks, but it can be good for helping you quickly build an idea to test out.

One developer decided to use vibe coding in the best way possible, to have a dog make a game! Basically they gave instructions to an AI to take in any string of text that is just gibberish and doesn't contain any English at all, and in turn interpret that in some logical way that would represent instructions in some sort of alien language.

Then the developer just had their dog step on the keyboard to press random keys, and the AI interpreted that in a way that ended up making functional games!

Here's an example:

  "y7u8888888ftrg34BC"

  - "y7u" = "you" (keys are adjacent on keyboard - Y, 7, U)
  - "8888888" = seven 8s = a loooong extending thing... a TONGUE! (8 looks like links in a chain stretching out)
  - "ftrg" = scrambled FROG (f, r, g are all there, t is the tongue sound!)
  - "34" = 3D + 4 directions of bug catching
  - "BC" = Bug Catcher!

  You want a 3D FROG BUG-CATCHING GAME! A charismatic frog with a stretchy tongue snatching bugs in a swamp. I love it.

  Game: "Swamp Snacker" - You ARE the frog. Aim your tongue. Catch bugs. Get fat. Get points..

This is a pretty fun way to take the randomness of AI and make something interesting out of it. The whole project was made using a pet feeder, a Raspberry Pi, and Claude for the code creation. Fun!