🚨📢BREAKING NEWS: Block Blast blasted off the Android store, Steam deck price goes to the moon

And economic trends have created severe disruptions in the component part supply chain for mega yachts. So, why mega yachts? Because, you know, there's the CEO of Valve called Gabe Newell, and he just had his new 500 million super yacht.
Two and a half gamers exclusive.
Breaking news.
Literally [music] breaking.
Hello, hello, and welcome back to another one of our new segments where we look at all the news throughout the week and bring you the latest and this time it's really going to be a blast. Let's get to it. So, let's start with the first story, which is Block Blast that has disappeared yesterday, Thursday, 28th from the store, and nobody knew why. It was the Android version that became unavailable.

I need to stress that Block Blast has 60 or 70 million DAU, daily active users. You heard that right. So, it's the fifth biggest mobile game on the market basically by these numbers, and it just vanished. And suddenly, it's Friday and it's back, and nobody is pretty much saying nothing. So, yeah, we'll maybe get a little bit more somewhere later or maybe we don't, I don't know. But, it was quite the roller coaster, and I guess the guys really had a blast with it because I cannot imagine the panic at Angry Studios office. But, yeah, it's back there. Nothing happened on iOS. iOS still stays as it is. So, just the Android went down and up back again. So, we'll be monitoring this and see if we can get some more news on top of this. Okay, next one. There were layoffs at SciPlay as the company said that the casino market is getting tougher and

tougher. Uh there wasn't specifically a number shared. It was just limited number of roles. Uh after the company posted a 7% year-on-year revenue drop. Uh yeah, I guess that's what happens, uh especially if you're in the original social casino market because again, coin looters are the way to go, stuff like Monopoly Go, Coin Master, Dice Dreams, and so on and so forth. Uh next up, Scopely's Monopoly Go earned Hasbro, its licensor, 41 million in the last quarter. And this number, if I understand correctly, it's actually a little bit down, but still very, very stable. Um Hasbro disclosed that in previous earnings, Monopoly Go had earned them something like 168 million for the financial year 2025, which roughly goes around 42 million per quarter. So, it's still kind of a very,

very stable. Monopoly Go keeps on like rocking. Uh yeah, uh Scopely said in January that it roughly generates something like 200 million per month. Again, we don't really see the D2C revenue and all these other revenue streams, so we take them at their word. Continuing there, uh Epic Games unveils Unreal Engine 6 in a new Rocket League teaser. Uh yeah, I watched it. [music] It was just really a teaser. No details, no release date, no nothing. It's just like, yeah, it will Unreal Engine 6. Yeah, that's it. So, as you know, uh NetEase reported something around 7% increase in its games revenue to 3.7 billion dollars during Q quarter one of this year. So, yeah, these guys keep on growing. Uh some notable titles that they have, Fantasy Westward Journey, where Windswept, Identity V, Eggy Party, Sword of Justice, and so on and so on. So, giant Chinese company, still growing, of course. The growth is there

in China, Turkey, and Vietnam. Uh then, The Witcher 3 surpasses 65 million lifetime sales, not revenue, sale numbers. That's the old one, the one that was released in 2015. And the guys at CD Projekt Red during their financials have revealed a new expansion, actually, called Songs of the Past, which they will [music] be developing together with Fool's Theory Studio, and they'll release it somewhere in 2027. Uh as I was reading into this, it seems that it's going to be on a scale of the last uh expansion that they that they announced. Uh don't remember. Not the Blood and Wine, yeah, the two-sun one with the wine and all these all these things, vampires. So, uh yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. Uh they still said that uh some more content for The Witcher 3 is going to be released by the end of the year. I don't know. I guess their like uh main team is still

uh kind of very focused developing The Witcher 4, which they shared like multiple trailers and like tech demos already. You can look them up. Uh there's like really really nice stuff. You see that how uh because they switched to Unreal Engine, and it's just like beautiful what they can do with it. And they're working directly with Epic on the technicals there. And yeah, we'll see what what happens uh next.
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Then, First Light, the new James Bond game from IO Interactive, already sold 1 and 1/2 million copies. And this number was achieved in the first 24 hours of release, which again, it released this week. So, a James Bond shooter, if you want to give it a try, go. It's everywhere on consoles, PC, and yeah, I guess that's

it. Consoles and PC, there we go. Um GDC trend report of 2026. Of course, what's the main topic is generative AI. So, some of the highlights are adoption of generative AI, growth in code development, increased monetization in mobile gaming, challenges in securing funding and publishing partnership. No Nobody wants to fund this anymore. It's like market is declining and evolving advocacy policies and accessibility concerns. Yeah, so yeah, generative AI, I guess that's the main theme. Everybody should know how to use it and should be able to use it and be going to be efficient with their stuff because if you're not using it, you're pretty much being left behind. That's how the market goes. Fortnite's global iOS return makes 3.4 million downloads marking [music] an 8-year high. Of course, it's 8-year high because Fortnite was not here on the stores from 2020 as it was removed. So,

yeah, let's see how this goes. Um Fortnite and again, you could see it that Epic was pretty much laying off 1,000 employees 2 months ago. So, yeah, these guys are not really in that good of a shape especially because of this whole giant battle with Epic and with Apple and Google took a lot of their effort and actually especially took that a lot of their revenue especially from mobile. So, let's see how this goes because yeah, engine business isn't really big business and Epic is living because of Fortnite, not because of Unreal Engine. So, let's see how it goes. Yeah, we don't really see that much data here on Sensor Tower yet as for like what what's happening there. We'll need to wait, I guess, a little bit more. Um yeah, this is an eye-opener. Valve raises Steam Deck OLED prices by over 40%. Why not? Because 1 TB model now costs $949 and previously it was advertised for

$649 because of higher component cost and logistical challenges. So, yeah, um again, because we can make now AI cat images and all these other neat things with AI, the components went like completely out of the out of the moon and they they just ramp prices and like all these other, you know, important components that you need to do pretty much in like Steam Deck is basically a custom PC uh like alternative. Yeah, it just costs much more. So, yeah, everything went out and this seems then to me it seems like it's breaking this my main thesis that this was built on because it was Steam Deck was supposed to be an alternative to gaming PC and now it's costing even more than like the full cost of a gaming PC. So, I don't know what's happening here, but it's going to be fun. And speaking of fun, Tim Sweeney already took a jab at this

because he literally wrote there "Everyone's being too harsh here. There has been a significant rise in cost of components, the Steam customer spending ultimately funds, and economic trends have created severe disruptions in the component part supply chain for mega yachts." So, why mega yachts? Because, you know, there's the CEO of Valve called Gabe Newell and he just had his new 500 million super yacht ordered for him cuz he loves diving and all these things and you can read some entries online about him as he kind of goes there and lives on on his yacht and just goes scuba diving every day or snorkeling.
[snorts]
So, yeah, that's what happens when these CEOs don't have anything else to do. So, yeah, Steam Deck I'm like for now it seems to me this will be a train wreck because I can't imagine for these these price points this will kind of get some major adoption. Yeah, and that's it for this week. Not that big of a week except the

shocker with BlockBlast again. We'll see what happens next. Stay tuned, subscribe to the channel, and see you next time. Ciao.