Steam

If you downloaded the wrong game on Steam a year ago, now the FBI is looking for you. And yes, it’s the real FBI

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By now, we have all learned to distrust a little of what we see on the internet. Alarmist messages, supposedly official warnings, stories that sound too serious to be true. Therefore, if someone tells us that the FBI could be looking for people for having downloaded a game on Steam, the normal thing is to think that it is another hoax and move on. However, in this case it is worth stopping for a second, because what we see before us does not fit into that usual pattern. The advertisement. As Mein-MMO explainswhat we know part of a clear warning from the FBI itselfwhich has launched an investigation to identify users who may have been affected after installing certain games on Steam. Specifically, the Seattle division notes that these titles included malwaresomething that would have gone unnoticed by those who downloaded them. The time frame is broad, from May 2024 to January 2026, and that is where the agency believes the activity was concentrated. When Valve has to confirm it. The curious thing about this case is that the communication itself with users has had to overcome an obvious barrier, mistrust. Several users on Reddit point out that Valve sent messages to those who may have been affected to inform them of the investigation, but added a clarification that is unusual in this type of notice. The message said: “We can confirm that the message and the linked website are, in fact, from the FBI.” It is not a minor detail, because it reflects the extent to which the context can seem suspicious even when it is legitimate. What games are reached? The FBI has been narrowing the case down to a series of games. Besides, Bitdefender describes them as indie titles with little visibility within the platform, something that could have made it easier for them to go unnoticed for longer. The games mentioned so far are the following: BlockBlasters Chemia Dashverse/DashFPS Lampy Lunara PirateFi Tokenova What were they really looking for?. At this point, it is important to understand what type of threat the cybersecurity sources that have analyzed the case describe. According to the aforementioned cybersecurity firm, we would be facing what is known as an “information stealer“, a type of program designed to collect sensitive data from the device without the user realizing it. Among the information it could extract are credentials stored in the browser, authentication cookies that keep sessions open in different services or even data linked to cryptocurrency wallets. The steps to follow. The agency is asking those who believe they may have been affected to fill out a form specific to provide information to the investigation. As detailed by the agency itself, the responses are voluntary, but they can serve to identify victims of a federal crime and, in some cases, provide access to services, restitution and rights provided for by law. The FBI also adds that the identity of the victims will be kept confidential. Images | FBI | Compagnons In Xataka | There are people earning up to $600 a week talking to strangers. The goal: teach AI to sound human

the Tajogaite volcano has become an immense steam iron

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Last Wednesday, while the storm therese discharged more than 117 liters per square meter in the Roque de los Muchachos, something striking was happening a few kilometers further down in the Tajogaite flows. Here the rainwater touched the ground and disappeared without accumulating, without forming puddles or running off. And it has an explanation: It evaporated the moment it hit the ground.turning the lava field into a kind of giant steam iron. A hot zone. But it is not that the La Palma volcano has been reactivated, but quite the opposite: it has been officially off since December 13, 2021. More than four years have passed, and yet the ground continues to burn from the inside. Because? To understand why, you have to think about how rock works as a material. The basaltic lava from Tajogaite, which is precisely what the volcano expelled during the 85 days it was erupting, came out to the outside at a temperature that could reach 1,200 degrees. This is double that of other volcanic compositions, such as andesitic, which is around 800 degrees. That 300 degree difference matters a lot when we talk about how long it takes to cool down. But the key factor in this case is not the temperature, but rather that the rock is a poor heat conducting material. In this way, the outer surface of the flow may be cold to the touch, even covered with vegetation in some places, while at a depth of 15 or 20 meters the temperatures have been exceeding 150 degrees Celsius until recently. In this way, when water falls, it is logical that it ends up evaporating. What’s underneath. What we see when it rains is actually the tip of the iceberg because beneath this there is a complex geological process. a study published in 2025 it generated for the first time a three dimensional map of the internal structure of the Tajogaite. In this way, they were able to see that under the crater there are areas with anomalies compatible with the presence of pockets and conduits where there is still trapped magma and gases. But logically this does not mean that the volcano will erupt again, but rather that the residual activity still lasts years later. When will it cool down? The most honest answer is that no one knows preciselysince it depends on too many simultaneous factors: the variable thickness of the casting at each point, the porosity of the rock or the ambient temperature are some of them. That is why each area is a different world when it comes to interpreting it. What is true is that the subsoil is going to cool little by little and the scenes that we have seen with this storm will theoretically diminish. The final result will be a completely new piece of land in Spain with a considerable extension that must continue to ‘mature’. Images | Annamarie Ursula rtvc In Xataka | Under the Canary Islands rests a 1,625 meter volcano: it has now begun to show signs of life after ten years of vigil

With the RAM market completely destroyed, Valve has a message to create the Steam Machine: “help”

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Valve is not having any luck in the hardware world. If with software it is the undisputed queen of the PC ecosystem thanks to Steamwhen they try to launch a console things don’t go so smoothly. More than a decade ago they already tried it with some first Steam Machines that they had no identity. Now they have returned to the fray with a Steam Machine that it looks very goodbut it comes at the worst time. And in the middle of the RAM memory crisisValve only has one thing to say. Aid. The crisis. At Xataka we have been covering the RAM memory news because, although it seems that it is a crisis of a specific component, it is really something that It is affecting the entire industry of semiconductors… and consumption. If in 2020 it was a perfect storm What caused the semiconductor crisis is now the enormous demand for RAM by AI companies. They are all building gigantic data centers and there is a problem: there is only three big RAM manufacturers (plus a fourth that is emerging in China) and all of them have focused on creating RAM for data center equipment. The consequence is that there is no RAM for anyone else. And this not only affects RAM as such: it affects the price of cell phones, computers, cars and even to the router. And, of course, to the Steam Machine. Hey kid, do you have RAM? Valve announced its new machine at the end of last year and they targeted early 2026 to give a release date and price. The problem is that the days were passing, the price of RAM was rising and the question arose: What about Steam Machine? Well what happens is that Valve is desperate. They have already said that it will be released this year (in principle it was going to be spring), it seems that it will be expensive and, in addition, they have pointed directly to the crisis in the supply problems they are having with his other console, the Steam Deck. With this panorama, Valve has appeared at the GDC fair to explain its vision of the console/PC and, in an environment full of manufacturers and professionals, launched a request to the public: If you have access to a large amount of RAM, we are in the market and we would like to buy it.” Complicated. It is a humorous comment, but also somewhat symptomatic. Valve has the money as punishment, but it is not even close to being a premium customer of those few foundries capable of creating RAM. If even Apple can have a bad time, being the second client of the giant TSMCValve does not even enter the annex in the memory request sheet. There are analyzes of all kinds about the consequences of this crisis. In it mobile market will feel a strong bloweven targeting manufacturers that will have to stop launching devices due to market conditions. But on PC, things are more or less the same, with global shipments forecast to be 11% less than the previous year. Captain after the fact. It’s no longer that the Steam Machine may or may not come out, it’s that if it does come out, it would be very expensive. It is something similar to what would happen with the rumored PlayStation 6 that could have seen the light this year and about which we already know that we will not have news in the short term. And here the big question may arise: why didn’t Valve release the Steam Machine when they announced it? Obviously, there were units prepared because they were shown to the press and, furthermore, it is not cutting-edge hardware, so it would have been easy to have it on the market in November 2025. But of course, the situation escalated at a dizzying pace and launching a console at X price and two months later raising it by 200 euros due to the price of RAM or, even worse, stopping selling it because you don’t have units available would have been a tremendous blow. Not so much to the coffers, which in the end with Steam they get a good pinch, but to the reputation. And it is clear that a second disastrous launch of a Steam Machine is something that Valve cannot afford. Now we just have to wait to see when they will be able to launch the machine and, above all, if the price corresponds to components that have already been available for five months. they seemed somewhat fair to us for the most demanding games. Images | DOTA2 The International In Xataka | The price of RAM has skyrocketed and the best example to see the debacle is a 100 euro PC: the Raspberry Pi

its new Project Helix is ​​a direct torpedo to Valve’s Steam Machine

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Microsoft has revealed the code name of its next-generation console, a hybrid system between console and PC that will be able to run games from both ecosystems. Project Helix arrives at a turbulent time for the industry: global RAM memory crisis, Valve fighting to launch its own Steam Machine and PlayStation rethinking its presence on PC. Helix Project. Asha Sharma, new CEO of Xboxhas announced that the next Microsoft console receives the internal name of Project Helix. Sharma assured that the device will be a leader in performance and will allow you to play both Xbox and PC titles, thus confirming the rumors that have been circulating for months about hardware that blurs the line between both platforms. The next Game Developers Conference, between March 9 and 13, will be the scene of the first conversations with partners and developers. What does it have? Beyond Sharma’s statements we can scratch some more information: the heart of the system is a semi-custom SoC from AMD whose internal code name is Magnus. According to AMD CEO Lisa Su, during the presentation of fourth quarter results As of 2025, development of the chip is progressing well to support a 2027 launch. Leaks point to a combination of Zen 6 CPU cores and an RDNA 5-based GPU, with up to 48GB of GDDR7 memory. These are specifications that, if the estimates so far are correct, would exceed those of the future. PlayStation 6. How it works. The device will essentially function as a gaming PC whose main interface will be the Xbox Full Screen Experience, already released on the ASUS Xbox Ally laptop. From this interface, designed to replicate the simplicity of a console, the user can choose to jump to the Windows 11 desktop and install Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, Battle.net or any other software from the Microsoft ecosystem. PCs of a lifetime. That Xbox is a PC at its core is not a new idea. The original 2001 console already had an Intel Pentium III and an Nvidia GPU, a configuration much closer to the computer world than to the proprietary chip that defined Sony or Nintendo consoles at that time. All subsequent generations have maintained the x86 architecture, and both Xbox One as Xbox Series X They use AMD SoC with architecture shared with Ryzen and Radeon. What changes with Helix is ​​the software layer: where before the operating system was a closed environment, now there is a complete Windows under the shell. Listen, Valve. The comparison with this console that immediately comes to mind is Valve’s Steam Machine, announced in November as a compact desktop PC powered by SteamOS, the Linux-based operating system that already powers the Steam Deck. Valve works in the opposite direction than Helix: part of the Steam catalog, it works on Linux and offers the possibility of installing Windows as a secondary option. The destiny of both machines is the same: to dynamite the boundaries between console and desktop PC. Valve suffers. The Steam Machine is going through its own ordeals. Valve announced in February a delay in its release schedule (originally, first quarter of the year) and the need to review the price, citing the global shortage of memory and storage as the cause. The analysts They project a price of between $400 and $500 as the optimal range, although the most recent estimates raise the range above $750, a territory that distances it from direct competition with Sony and Microsoft consoles. Valve, which has ruled out selling hardware at a loss, is at the mercy of the components market. The memory crisis Due to the demands of the AIs, it is the great backdrop of this battle. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron have turned their production lines towards high-margin HBM memory consumed by artificial intelligence data centers, leaving DRAM and NAND Flash destined for the consumer market in the background. The consequences are already being felt: manufacturers such as Lenovo, Dell, HP and ASUS have warned of increases of between 15% and 20% in the price of their equipment for this year. Exclusive worlds. The franchises that for decades defined Xbox’s identity have begun to come to PlayStation, a decision that Sharma herself has acknowledged wanting to review. Meanwhile, Sony abandons publishing games on PCwith the intention of reinforcing the attractiveness of its exclusives. But Xbox is betting on the opposite. It seems clear that Sharma (who has no experience in the video game industry) does not conceive Helix as a traditional console, but as a platform whose success will depend on alliances with digital stores and the integration of services such as Game Pass. In Xataka | There is brutal competition for our attention. And there is someone losing that battle in a bloody way: the consoles

Steam Deck is out of stock, and PS6 and Switch 2 are already shaking

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Considerable tension in the video game industry at a point in which it is perhaps not going through its healthiest moment. The last slap that shakes a sector that already balances in a moment of perfect storm is the shortage of DRAM chips, driven primarily by the demands of the artificial intelligence industry and its demands regarding data centers. Valve has already announced that hard times are coming for its warehouses and stocks, and rumors about changes in stock, prices and launches of Switch 2 and Playstation 6 are constant. The first, the Steam Deck. If you tried to buy a Steam Deck from the United States last week, you would see the ‘Out of stock’ message. Was a disappearance without warning and that affected the 512 GB and 1 TB OLED models (the 256 LCD has not been available for several months). It is something that, at the moment, only affects to Valve’s home country and Canada: In most European countries and some Asian markets it is still available. With a brief note, Valve has confirmed it from the website: The component crisis due to the demands of the AI ​​market has left the console models that were still available out of stock. And remember that when the LCD 256GB stock runs out, that will be all for that model. At the moment there are no clues about when the missing consoles will be back on sale or if prices will increase. Delays at Valve. There is another consequence of this component crisis: the delay of the company’s next releases, the Steam Machine, the Steam Frame and the new Steam Controller. In it steam hardware blog The company acknowledged that it was not able to offer prices or launch dates, despite the initial intention to launch them in the first quarter of the year. The launch window was moved from “beginning of 2026″ to “first half of 2026”. As for the price, which remains unknown, the analysts’ first intuitions set it for the Steam Machine between 700 and 800 dollars. Since then, subsequent calculations have skyrocketed beyond a thousand dollars. Could be, As some analysts commentthat Valve is prioritizing the available memory stock towards the Steam Machine, leaving its laptop on a secondary level, and hence the lack of stock? In any case, the second-hand market rubs his ditto. The devastating DRAM crisis. The problem behind this shortage is the supply crisis of DRAM, a type of memory present in computers, consoles or smartphones. The three manufacturers that control 90% of production (Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron) have been overwhelmed by demand for artificial intelligence data centers. Some reports speak of something that goes beyond a conventional cyclical shortagewhich points to a necessary reformulation of needs and prices. The problem is that manufacturing HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), the high-density and extremely high-performance variant that powers the AI ​​centers, makes Samsung and company have to limit DRAM production, and LPDDR5 production, the standard used by devices like the Steam Deck, plummets. Consequence: DRAM prices increased by around 50% throughout 2025, with another 30% increase in the fourth quarter of the year, followed by a further increase of around 20% so far this year. The situation does not seem to be going well finish in the next few months. Collateral damage 1: PS6. Bloomberg was the one who gave the alarm voice: Citing sources close to Sony, he revealed that the company was thinking of delaying the launch of PS6 until 2028 or 2029. If this last possibility happens, we would be in the longest interval between Playstation generations in history: nine years. Beyond the wait it entails for the players, it also disrupts developers’ plans and projects which, according to most sources, would have planned their launches around 2027. Technically, and although with PS6 we are in rumor territorythe console would arrive equipped with 30 GB of GDDR7 RAM, fourteen gigabytes more than PS5. At a time when Samsung has sold all its production capacity by 2026 and Micron has confirmed which does not have the capacity for new contracts until 2027, mass manufacturing PS6 is unfeasible. At least with PS5 there is no need to worry: Sony has confirmed which has enough memory to cover its needs for 2026 and 2027, which also guarantees that there will be no price increases. Collateral Damage 2: Switch 2. The ballot that Nintendo has in its hands is even more problematic, because Switch 2 It is already on the market, but it may have no choice but to raise the price in 2026. Bloomberg reported it in the same PS6 article, also citing people familiar with the crisis. Significantly, Nintendo was one of those responsible for the memory supply during 2025 being strained: its splendid launch and sales are, in part, responsible for the current situation. According to different sourcesNintendo would currently be paying 41% more for the 12 GB of RAM that is in each Switch 2 unit, compared to the cost anticipated in its original projections. Maintain current price would suppose a loss of $50 per unit sold during 2026: a drain (the console has already sold almost 18 million units) that not even the Japanese giant can afford. At the moment there are no official decisions, but the president of Nintendo recognized that “the current memory market is very volatile”: in the presentation of results admitted that the increase in component prices “exceeds our expectations”, although also that the company has accumulated inventory and closed long-term supply agreements. Nobody escapes. We have before us the three great sectors of the world gaming: PC, home console and hybrid consoles. All three have the same problem, and it cuts across the most powerful companies, which tells us not about a specific crisis, but about one that has structural overtones, and that goes beyond the video game sector. For example, PC users are already facing price increases or manufacturers like Dell and Lenovo considering reducing the RAM of your laptops mid-range. … Read more

Valve has just announced a delay and price increase for the Steam Machine

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Valve’s plans to revolutionize desktop video games face the reality of the component market. The company has confirmed the postponement of Steam Machine, Steam Frame and Steam Controller, initially planned for the first quarter of 2026, due to the global shortage of RAM and storage. The announcement comes accompanied by a warning: the initially announced prices will be revised upwards, which puts at risk the strategy of competing directly with traditional consoles. What we believed. The official presentation of Valve’s hardware took place in November 2025when the company simultaneously unveiled three devices aimed at expanding its ecosystem beyond the traditional PC: the Steam Machine console, the Steam Frame virtual reality headset, and a new iteration of the Steam Controller. At that time, information provided to media It targeted a launch in the first quarter of 2026. Our love broke. However, Valve has had to recalibrate its expectations. According to the statement, the company acknowledges that it hoped to announce definitive prices and specific release dates at this point, but circumstances in the component market have prevented this. “The limited availability and rising prices of these critical components mean we must review our exact shipping schedule and pricing,” they admit. A little later. The new time frame now extends to the first half of 2026, a deliberately vague formulation that contrasts with the initial precision. Valve emphasizes that it maintains its goal of distributing the three products within that period, but warns about the volatility of the scenario: they need to establish prices and dates that they can announce with confidence, aware of how quickly circumstances can change. The RAM crisis. The problem affects the entire technology industry. Memory manufacturers have experienced a unprecedented price increase: according to data from the component market, the cost of RAM modules has multiplied by three or even four from the beginning of 2026. This escalation responds to a strategic reorientation of the major producers such as SamsungSK Hynix and Micron, which prioritize the manufacture of high-performance memory for artificial intelligence servers, a segment that offers higher profit margins. It was seen coming. Already in November, when Valve presented its hardware, the warning signs were evident. By then, the company recognized that setting prices was complex because “the market is a little strange” and “memory prices are going up as we speak.” What seemed like temporary turbulence has been consolidated as a structural trend. It is a crisis that evokes the semiconductor shortage that shook the industry between 2020 and 2022, causing delays in the launch of consoles and widespread price increases in graphics cards. The current phenomenon presents, however, a peculiarity: it is not about interruptions in the supply chain, but rather a deliberate decision by manufacturers to redirect productive capacity towards the lucrative AI market, leaving the gaming industry in the background. What is known about the machine’s hardware. The Steam Machine, the star product of this trilogy, will be powered by an AMD processor, as confirmed by the semiconductor company’s CEO, Lisa Su, during the presentation of quarterly results: “From a product perspective, Valve is on track to begin shipping its AMD-powered Steam Machine early this year.” That statement, which sounded reassuring then, now takes on an ironic tone: the hardware is ready, but the economic context is not. During previous sessions with specialized media, the company indicated that the Steam Machine would be placed “close to the entry level of the PC space”, a formulation that suggested that it would compete directly with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in terms of price, rather than with high-end PC configurations. This approach clashes head-on with the current reality of the components market: competing with consoles means achieving very tight margins in a closed ecosystem where Sony and Microsoft can assume initial losses. Valve lacks that flexibility, and the increase in memory and storage costs threatens to place its products in a price range that would distance them from the average consumer. In Xataka | Panic of a ridiculous death among RAM manufacturers: they fear that technology companies will “monopolize” and they are already putting controls

Valve has been charging a 30% commission on Steam for twenty years. Now it’s your turn to explain why before a judge.

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Valve will have to defend its business model before the British courts after the Competition Appeal Court of London authorized on January 26 a class action lawsuit that could cost £656 million, about $900 million. The accusation: the American company abuses its dominant position in the PC games market with commercial practices that keep prices artificially high and limit competition between digital distributors. The demand. Vicki Shotbolt, activist specializing in digital rights and CEO of Parent Zonefiled the legal action in June 2024. It represents approximately 14 million British users who have purchased video games or additional content through Steam since 2018. The case is based on three arguments: first, it questions the 30% commission that Valve charges on each transaction on Steam. The prosecution considers this fee excessive and maintains that it has a direct impact on the final price. The second argument attacks “price parity obligations”: contractual restrictions that would prevent studios and distributors from offering their titles at more competitive prices on other platforms. Valve would have intervened in specific cases when detecting more aggressive discounts outside of Steam. The third point points out a retention mechanism: whoever purchases a base game on Steam must purchase all subsequent downloadable content exclusively on that platform. Other cases. The British case is not an isolated episode. In the United States, independent studios Wolfire Games and Dark Catt Studios filed antitrust lawsuits against Valve in 2021. They were initially dismissed, but the plaintiffs reformulated their arguments and resubmitted them in 2022. A court ordered the two cases to be merged. Since then, any developer, publisher or individual who has paid commissions to Valve on sales since January 28, 2017 can join. David Rosen, founder of Wolfire Games, explained which took legal action after Valve’s direct intervention when it tried to offer lower prices on other platforms. In August 2024, four players from California, Florida, and Missouri filed a separate lawsuit accusing Steam of “strangling competition with blatantly anti-competitive pricing restrictions.” Antitrust. The lawsuits against Valve are part of a broader pattern of antitrust litigation. The most relevant precedent is the confrontation between Epic Games and Apple: the developer of ‘Fortnite’ implemented an alternative payment system that avoided the 30% commission of the App Store. Apple won most points in the litigation, but had problems in certain states such as California. The case against Google had a more forceful outcome: Epic demonstrated that the company had illegally monopolized the Android ecosystem, which will force Google to allow competing app stores on its devices until November 2027. Antitrust. The lawsuits against Valve fit into a broader pattern of antitrust litigation. The most relevant precedent is the confrontation between Epic Games and Apple: The developer of ‘Fortnite’ implemented an alternative payment system that avoided the 30% commission from the App Store. In May 2025Fortnite returned to the Apple store. The case against Google had a stronger outcome: Epic managed to prove that the company had illegally monopolized the Android ecosystem, which will force Google to allow competing app stores on its devices until November 2027. The magnitude of Valve. Steam hosted more than 19,000 video games during 2025, generating total revenues of $11.7 billion. The income that Valve obtains exclusively from its commissions on sales increased from 1.1 billion dollars in 2015 to an estimated 3.2 billion in 2024, tripling in less than a decade. Additionally, Valve produces approximately $50 million in revenue per employee, an exceptional figure even in the technology sector. The London court has not yet set a date for the trial, which will determine whether these practices constitute abuse of a dominant position. If the lawsuit is successful, the affected British users could receive compensation for the extra costs that, according to the accusation, they have been paying for years. In Xataka | Amazon wanted to surpass Steam and spent 15 years spending 250 times more. It has only served them to enter into crisis

The first video game made entirely with AI comes to Steam. The players’ rejection has been almost unanimous.

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The video game industry receives a controversial experiment that some already describe as dystopian, although in reality it has much of a privileged look at a reality that is, potentially, around the corner. ‘Codex Mortis‘ is a title that is openly presented as the first video game developed entirely using artificial intelligence, which has released its demo version on Steam and has immediately unleashed a divided (but mostly hostile) response among the gamer community. What did you sew? The project, signed by a developer who signs with the pseudonym Grolaf, has generated controversy for its shameless proposal (a clone of the acclaimed indie hit ‘Vampire Survivors’, one of the great surprises of recent years, but replacing the delicious retropixelated aesthetic with the blurry and rough aesthetic typical of generative systems). But also, as it could not be otherwise, it has reopened the debate about the ethical and creative limits of AI in video game development. It comes at a time when major studios are facing similar accusations and sectors such as voice actors are organizing strikes against these technologies. I don’t like it. In the Steam community reviewsthe demo registers only 60% positive ratings among around thirty reviews, with comments that range between technical curiosity and, above all, outright rejection. The press has not been much more generous, and some means gives it the dubious honor of being “a foundational milestone of poorer AI.” Various websites They have collected opinions from players as strong as “games are ART. They need soul, life, virtue. Something that AI will never be able to capture”, which define the game as “machine-generated garbage.” How it was born. ‘Codex Mortis’ was developed over three months in which Grolaf exclusively used artificial intelligence tools to build all elements of the game. The developer used ChatGPT to generate the images and Claude Code to write the code. As a programming language it used TypeScript, instead of traditional engines such as Unity or Unreal Engine. The technical architecture is supported by libraries such as PIXI.js for graphics and Electron for desktop execution, a decision that apparently makes it difficult to correct errors, since the developer does not fully understand, by his own admission, how the systems generated by the AI ​​interact. The lightning that does not stop. The negative reaction to ‘Codex Mortis’ is not isolated, but the latest episode in a battle that has been shaking the industry for months. In November, for example, ‘Arc Raiders‘, Embark Studios’ extraction shooter, received a score of 2 out of 5 from Eurogamer exclusively due to its use of AI-generated voices. This rating sank the title’s Metacritic from an impressive 94 to 86, sparking a debate on whether the use of AI should be considered in critical assessments. Controversy escalated when the game received a single nomination at the Game Awards, leading many gamers to accuse the awards of deliberately punishing the title for its technology. Another case: ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 7’ included clearly AI-generated assets (with characters with the typical six fingers, among other visual irregularities characteristic of AI). The scandal forced Activision to issue supporting statements given the disclosure policy on the use of artificial intelligence that Valve requires to include in games sold on Steam. Rejection among professionals. The State of the Game Industry 2025 survey from the Game Developers Conference reveals a drastic change in the perception of AI by professionals: just 13% of developers consider that generative AI will have a positive impact on the industry, falling from 21% the previous year. The percentage of those who see it negatively shot up from 18% to 30%. The most revealing part of the study is who adopts these tools: 50% of the professionals are from Business and Finance, followed by 40% in Production and Marketing. However, among programmers and artists, the true creators, adoption is significantly lower. 87% of developers surveyed expressed concern on the impact of AI on the industry. In Xataka | Someone put ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and other AIs to play a kind of Risk. The results could not be more different.

BYD CEO is clear about why the company is losing steam in China

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Wang Chuanfu, president and CEO of BYD, has publicly acknowledged for the first time the reason behind the company’s sales decline in the Chinese market. During an extraordinary shareholders meeting held on December 5 in Shenzhen, the CEO bluntly admitted that the manufacturer has lost the technological advantage that differentiated it from the competition. According to local media, Wang said that they had lost that ‘wow factor’ in the domestic market, in reference to the impact that their innovations previously generated. The underlying problem. The local media China Securities Journal collected the statements of the head of BYD, who stated that the drop responds to two main factors. On the one hand, he admits that BYD’s technological advantage is no longer as pronounced as in previous years, which has reduced the surprise effect of its products in the market. On the other hand, the CEO acknowledged that unresolved practical problems persist, such as the slow charging speed of its vehicles in low temperature environments, a critical aspect for users in certain regions of China. The numbers confirm the trend. In November 2025, BYD sold 480,186 new energy vehiclesthe highest monthly figure of the year, but which represented a decrease of 5.25% compared to the same month in 2024. It is the third consecutive month of year-on-year decline. Domestic sales were particularly weak, at 348,300 units, a drop of 26.81% year-on-year. In contrast, exports exceeded 100,000 units per month for the first time, reaching 131,700an increase of 297% that has become the company’s main growth engine. We have already seen how they have broken into Europe. For BYD and the rest of the Chinese manufacturers, it is important to continue consolidating their foreign business for two main reasons: to continue feeding their factories and to increase their profit margins in the face of a China that seems to live in a constant price war. The competition tightens. Chinese manufacturers such as Geely, Changan and Chery They have intensified their offensive with efficient hybrid and more affordable electric models, eroding their market share. Furthermore, the homogenization of products in the industry has made it difficult for BYD to stand out like before. In September 2025, SAIC Motor even temporarily surpassed BYD in monthly sales, according to they counted from CarNewsChina. BYD’s response. Wang Chuanfu hinted that the company is preparing “heavy technologies” that will be announced soon, although it did not offer details. The CEO stressed that BYD’s strength lies in its team of approximately 120,000 engineers, who will be key to regaining technological leadership. The company plans to intensify its investment in electrification and smart technologies over the next two to three years. Self-criticism included. Wang also made an exercise in self-criticism by admitting that favorable market conditions in previous years generated a certain complacency in the areas of marketing and merchandising, as they point out from CnEVPost. And now what. BYD revised its global sales target for 2025 downward, from 5.5 million vehicles to approximately 4.6 million. Between January and November, the company accumulated 4,182 million units soldwhich represents 90.9% of the adjusted objective and a growth of 11.3% year-on-year. Figures that contrast with the spectacular expansion rates of previous years: 218% in 2021, 209% in 2022, 62% in 2023 and 41% in 2024. Stella Li, its vice president, already warned us during the Xataka Awards gala We will soon have very interesting news from the manufacturer. So we can only wait to see what the firm’s strategy will be to alleviate the effect of competition. In Xataka | The world’s rare earth reserves, laid out in this graph showing the brutal dominance of a single country

a years-long plan to bring Steam to all devices

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Valve is executing one of the most ambitious strategies in recent software history. While Microsoft tries to convince the world that Windows on ARM is ready and Qualcomm promises raw powerGabe Newell’s company has taken a shortcut: Instead of waiting for developers to port its games, it’s funding the technology that makes that unnecessary. You want your Steam library to work on any device without anyone having to lift a finger. The precedent: Proton. To understand the magnitude of the movement, we must look back. A decade ago, playing on Linux was almost utopian. Few developers ported their titles to the Penguin OS, Microsoft has been cornering the PC gaming market for a long time. However, Valve changed this forever from the software side. It was thanks to Proton, a compatibility layer derived from the old Wine that translates Windows instructions so that Linux understands them. This was the cornerstone of the success of the Steam Deck– Proved that you don’t need Windows to run titles of all types, including many AAA. Now, Valve wants to repeat the move, but changing the objective: from desktop PCs to mobile chips. The architect in the shadows. It was Pierre-Loup Griffais, leader of SteamOS, who confirmed to The Verge in an interview that Valve has been “secretly” financing several projects since 2016. The most important currently is «FEX-Emu». What is it? FEX is an emulator which translates the instructions of the x86 processor (the language of traditional Intel and AMD chips for PCs) to ARM64 (that of current mobile phones). The combination: Valve is integrating it into a specific version of Proton for ARM. The goal, according to Steam’s Linux OS boss, is to “remove barriers so users don’t have to worry about which games work.” Obsession with efficiency. Obviously, these investments are not philanthropy, but pure industrial necessity. The company prepares hardware that needs this technology to exist, such as the future Steam Frame viewer. But there’s more: Griffais explains that ARM chips are superior in efficiency for low-power devices, something that has opened the door to speculations of all kinds. An ultraportable with Steam smaller than the Deck? Who knows. Without the compatibility layer of FEX and Proton, these devices would be born without a catalog. With it, they could run thousands of PC games from day one, also adding Android games through another protagonist of recent days: “Lepton”. Yes, multiplayer titles with anti-cheats deep, like ‘Fortnite’. The democratization of gaming. The revolutionary thing about these emulators is that, as they are open source tools, the benefit is universal. It already allows run recent games like ‘Hollow Knight: Silksong’ on an Android mobile without an official version existing. Even manufacturers like Xiaomi have gone ahead with initiatives like “WinPlay” that allows Play Steam titles on your HyperOS devices. Valve is paving the way so that any powerful device, whether tablet, mobile phone or ARM laptop, can be a potential Steam Machine. This contrasts with the efforts of companies like Microsoft, whose emulation layer, Prism on Windowscontinues fighting with the game compatibility. The master plan. It is none other than running SteamOS everywhere. Valve wants SteamOS to be the default operating system for gaming, regardless of the silicon underneath. We have already seen the first steps with the arrival of SteamOS to third-party consoles and the announcement of the Steam Machine desktop By eliminating the barrier of chip architecture (x86 vs ARM) and operating system (Windows vs Linux/Android), the firm ensures that its store is the only constant in a fragmented hardware future. And that only implies one thing: that users spend money on it. A win-win in every rule. Cover image | Valve In Xataka | The video game industry seems to be clear about where its next boom is: in games “for couples”

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