I had to laugh a little today. There was a thread about „English words/phrases that Germans made up“ on the /r/Germany subreddit and a bunch of them are just normal non-US English terms.

Well that's a rough start to the week. Rest in peace Sam Neill.

One of the most galling things about the renewed reporting going around about my Barcelona colleagues being laid off, is the people claiming (without evidence) that they're "just" contractors being laid off with the end of a project, or just unneeded second-class devs.

Rest in peace Bonnie Tyler, here's a metal af version of her singing "Holding out for a Hero" www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhrb...

Oh boy, I almost screamed "yes" out loud in the office reading this. There's a persistent belief in the lack of craft in games programming, and that has even been internalised by a lot of game programmers. I'm so vocally stubborn about not being a "wedge" that it's causing friction.

I've tried to describe my job in German before and the literal translation of "gameplay" does not work at all. Spielspiel. It's the way the Spiel spielt.

One way you can show Microsoft your concern is here through the XBOX Player Voice feedback platform: feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/ide...

Games Done Quick is one of the few points of positivity in the games industry at the moment. I appreciate it a lot.

For me one of the saddest things as a game dev about the death of physical copies of games (apart from the erosion of consumer rights of course) is that I won't have anything tangible at the end of a project anymore.

It would be a nightmare if they did this at work, not because I don't play our games, but there's no way I retain all the details of multiple 100+ hour open-worlds automaton-media.com/en/news/leve...

I wonder - if Xbox and Sony are going digital-only, will that put them in the sights of the EU DMA regulators? Seems like it could backfire for them if so.

I really try not to get depressed about the state of things in tech but I just discovered a phenomenon where someone is producing LLM-generated spam web pages for successful open-source projects. They'll look official (if a little out of place for random CLI tools) but every link is spam.

I saw The Backrooms on the weekend in order to escape the heat and I’d say it had some high highs, and low lows. The worst thing about it was that it was incredibly afraid of you missing any of its themes, so it beat you over the head with them. Immaculate tension at times though.

40€ for a replacement lightning cable is such a grift. This is definitely my last iPhone.

To give some context to those outside Germany/Europe as to why we're not all running out to buy Klimaanlage - there's only really one brand of "split unit" air conditioning available that doesn't require wall mounting - Midea PortaSplit. It is sold out everywhere or is marked up over 500€ above norm

If Merz actually cared about productivity and not just making our quality of life worse, the Bundestag would be passing emergency legislation allowing renters to install (non-destructive) A/C units on building facades. Neither myself nor my colleagues have slept more than a few hours this week.

It’d be nice if we can start to admit that 4K resolution was always a mostly pointless idea and drop asset fidelity by ignoring it. The RAM/VRAM and disk savings need to happen.

With the way game announcements are going this year, I'm waiting for an announcement that GTA VI is delayed to avoid the GTA VI release.

This Youtuber @jasonschreier.bsky.social should become a writer or something, he has a way with words www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBwu...

My prediction is that the Steam Machine is going to instantly sell out because the retail market is increasingly driven by high earners. A limited stylish thing like this is appealing to them, even if the specs aren’t great.

Manifesting Starmer energy for Merz.

I dragged my feet too long on ordering an AC unit and now they‘re sold out everywhere. This week is going to be very rough.

New Horse Game out today! 🎉🎉🎉 Barbie Horse Ride & Rescue is now available on iOS and Android globally! I'm thrilled I got to do consulting work on this, and I'm excited to see what people think 🥰

What an incredible and unique piece of art this is.

I want an arthouse film with a female director on this stat www.thepinknews.com/2026/06/09/e...

You know that XKCD comic about the tiny piece of open source software holding up an entire industry? I'm pretty sure for gamedev it's Dear ImGui.

I already loved Samara Weaving, this is just too much www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHri...

Am I weird for thinking that employees deserve to know news that affects them before the public?

If it doesn’t work out, I’m gone from software forever I think. I hated making websites, love making games and no one wants to hire a late 30s trans woman who vehemently hates genAI for either in the current market. Absolutely no clue where that’ll leave me, which is pretty scary.

One of the more frustrating things about living under the Sword of Damocles that is my employer, and the games industry in general, is that I could leave (and do what?) but I don’t want to… my team is the best I’ve ever worked with. I don’t want to leave Germany either but would probably have to.

Nintendo only showing a brief clip of the new Atelier game 😭 I'm pretty sure that's its first announcement too.

I'm all aboard for the new God of War, except for the kiwi accent. I just get intense cultural cringe every time my country-people show up in media.

Jason nails it as usual.

One thing that jumped out at me in this article is that they're using converted jet engines due to a shortage of gas turbine power plants (which slop enthusiasts tell me they totally aren't doing). Just complete moral and environmental bankruptcy. znetwork.org/znetarticle/...

Hard not to doom spiral a bit watching this. I shudder at the thought of trying to do game development on a cloud environment - because believe it or not, most (even AAA) developers are not able to afford high end hardware even before these surges. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyQw...

What's with ALDI not having any of their SIM cards anywhere? Tried multiple trying to get one for my parents who are visiting but ended up having to go to a random kiosk for some other pre-pay card.

"Oh nice, a European-led initiative to challenge the Unreal Engine hegemony" > Looks inside. It's slop made to rely on agentic generative AI controlled by US companies Can we please be serious. www.videogameschronicle.com/news/guerill...

Finally! (TL: SPD (centre left), Green Party, and The Left party are collectively leaving X/Twitter) www.spiegel.de/politik/deut...

The guy I saw watering some trees on the Rheinuferpromenade this morning must feel very silly right now (it's raining cats and dogs)

Over 250,000 copies sold in less than 24 hours. 91% positive reviews on Steam. Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era has had an incredible launch. We're so thrilled that players are loving this game as much as we've loved publishing it. 💛 Congratulations to the @unfrozenofficial.bsky.social team!

One of the hazards of working for a AAA developer is sometimes you inadvertently end up paying for your own publisher's games through bundles. I think I own AC: Valhalla four times over at this point.

Went to pull out a weed today without gloves and discovered what European stinging nettle looks like. Ow. NZ by comparison has an endemic species called Urtica ferox which you definitely can’t mistake for anything benign.

And they say Germans don't have a sense of humour (from Shapez 2)

"I'm not a game developer but I am a software developer and I think this game-specific domain problem is actually easy" No. Stop. Dunning–Kruger wants a word.

This reddit thread is a great example of why game devs rarely speak to the general public about their work. A lot of armchair expert opinions to be found www.reddit.com/r/Games/comm...

Today seems like a good day to eat some Ungarisch crisps in celebration.

Every time someone says "BB" in Death Stranding I'm reminded of Moira Rose. RIP Catherine O'Hara.

Been catching up on Resident Evil games since 9 came out. Got up to 8/Village and I'm not vibing much with it. Parts of it are great but it tries to take RE4:R's formula and redo it in another setting but unfortunately doesn't live up to it. Runs beautifully with my 6950XT on Proton though.

I have absolutely no time for any attempt at whimsy from US tech companies tomorrow.