Articles by Dean
ZeniMax Online Studios cutting 200 developers and lead Jo Burba is not a standard corporate restructuring. It is a loud, unavoidable signal that The Elder Scrolls Online is entering its twilight maintenance era.
Factory Town 2: Paradise rejects the exhausting spreadsheet math of modern automation games. By trading alien planets for a sentient volcano, it proves logistics simulators don't need to be a second job.
The AIUB eSports Club hosted an official corporate delegation from RealMe Bangladesh and Southeast Asia on June 23, 2026. The meeting aims to establish collegiate tournament structures and mobile gaming infrastructure in the region.
The summer release drought is packed with Dreamcast-style train games and K-Pop simulators. Ignoring them is a financial mistake for the industry.
Microsoft is raising Xbox hardware prices by $150 while cutting 3,200 jobs and reaping corporate tax breaks. The move shatters the illusion of the player-first brand, exposing a strategy focused entirely on margin extraction.
Gamers are mourning an Obsidian Entertainment that never actually died, projecting their anger over Microsoft's layoff bloodbath onto the developers who survived it. The studio's creative identity remains completely intact, but its independence has been traded for the safety of a guaranteed franchise hit.
Palworld's massive 1.0 update silently redesigns its most blatant Pokémon copies to dodge Nintendo's lawyers. This retroactive editing proves the survival hit was built on imitation, not innovation.
Pocketpair's survival crafting hit has surged back to massive concurrent numbers on Steam. The 1.0 launch shows that letting players walk away is the best way to bring them back.
IO Interactive is closing its Istanbul studio after Microsoft abruptly pulled funding for their online RPG. Retaining the IP does not change the reality that Xbox partnerships are becoming a massive liability.
MapleStory is shutting down for 5 hours for a minor patch, but players know the reality often stretches to 7 hours. Nexon is forcing players to pay the time cost for a decades-old server architecture they refuse to modernize.
Obsidian Entertainment is reportedly canceling an Avowed sequel to clear the runway for a new Fallout game led by Josh Sawyer. The studio is finally admitting that chasing generic fantasy scale is a losing battle against their own history.
CCP Games claims everything is canon in EVE Frontier to excuse goofy mod tools, but abandoning moderation will destroy the MMO's dark sci-fi universe.
Hideo Kojima is mourning the end of the PlayStation disc, but his real fear is the cloud gaming future. When the servers dictate access, the player owns nothing.
GAM Esports has officially joined the 2026 Esports Foundation Club Partner Programme as the sole representative from Vietnam. The club is set to receive up to 1 million USD in funding to scale its operations and brand reach.
Consoles are losing their primary value proposition as digital ecosystems become walled gardens filled with recurring fees. The PC is now the only rational long-term investment for a dedicated player.
CS:GO's separated legacy client is still pulling 57,000 concurrent players years after Valve pushed the shift to CS2, which now draws nearly 1 million of its own.
Microsoft publishes a weekly list of upcoming Xbox and PC releases to aid discovery. In reality, it is a glaring admission that their digital storefront no longer functions for players or developers.
The Nintendo Switch has officially become the company's best-selling console, hitting 155.37 million units. Its massive success exposes the fatal flaw in the industry's obsession with graphical power.
Bandai Namco's $40 standalone price for the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC effectively forces early adopters to pay double the rate offered to new players. The math reveals a hostile strategy masked by high review scores.
ConcernedApe is trapped by his own success. Juggling the demands of a massive farming simulator alongside a new release exposes the harsh reality of maintaining an indie mega-hit.
The Nintendo Switch has become the ultimate machine for massive role-playing games. But celebrating these titles as addictive masks a deliberate design shift that prioritizes endless grinding over narrative resolution.
Rhell: Warped Worlds and Troubled Times throws out the safety rails of traditional puzzle design. By handing players a volatile 100-million-combination magic system, developer SlugGlove effectively dares you to break their game.
Former QA tester Jack Hoxley says playing the game he spent years building will probably bring back too much. His firing alongside 29 other organizing developers exposes the cold math of AAA labor.
Leviatán defeated Paper Rex 3-2 in a five-map thriller to win the VCT Masters London trophy on June 21, 2026. The Latin American organization secured the historic victory with a rookie-heavy roster led by veteran Francisco "kiNgg" Aravena.
Seven retro handhelds from $44 to $339, each the right pick for a specific use case. From the pocketable Miyoo Mini Plus to the Retroid Pocket 6's PS2 and GameCube capability.
Handheld PCs like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally are marketed as premium, all-in-one devices. The reality is that players must spend hundreds on mandatory accessories just to fix missing features and glaring hardware flaws.
EA FC 26’s Greats of the Game campaign is live, adding new ICONs, SBCs, objectives and rewards after the World’s Game Update introduced a 48-team international tournament
Ten Southeast Asian squads compete in a double-elimination bracket for the region's sole slot at TI15 in Shanghai. Heavyweights OG and REKONIX lead the invited teams.
Mega Crit is using its monthly developer updates to address the hardest design problem in roguelike deckbuilders. The solution requires rewriting the late-game rules entirely.
Sony is officially pulling its narrative single-player games back from the PC market. The internal math failed, and PlayStation is retreating to protect its console sales.
