Tony Gascon

Game industry fellow.

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

AdHoc Studio’s Dispatch is winning for all of us. BAFTA wins for Animation and Audio Achievement, plus Supporting Performer for Jeffrey Wright. Small team, tight scope, smart pipeline, premium result. #GameDevelopment #Animation #NarrativeGames

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

100 Quest titles grossed over $1M and usage hit record highs in 2025.

That cuts against a lot of the doom around VR.

Tough part is some of the people who helped build that momentum may not even still be there.

Still, something to be proud of.

#vr #metaquest #gamedev

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

#Supercell talked publicly about #Titan, the internal engine behind all of its games.

Less a tech flex and more a team saying general-purpose tools stopped fitting the job.

Not every studio needs this.

#gamedev #mobilegames #gametech

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

Unity is currently undervalued, says investors.

This after Unity’s restructuring and its extended VR partnership with Meta.

With Quest usage hitting an all-time high in '25 and 100+ titles maiking $1M, despite layoffs at both companies.

#gamedev #unity #vr

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

I love this, mostly. Five studios forming Nova Assembly. Not a merger, more like a shared backbone.

Centralized ops, decentralized studios. Scale without losing identity.

Close to how we think at Artchop. Modular, not monolithic.

#gamedev #gameindustry #codev #indiedev

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

S&box = ZERO royalties on Steam. No engine tax!

Facepunch just secured a license with Valve letting devs ship standalone games without engine fees.

Direct path to Steam. Less overhead. More options for smaller teams.

#gamedev

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

Humans > AI at games.

AI dominates narrow, trained tasks.
Drop it into a new game and it struggles.

Humans adapt. We rely on unscripted intuition.

Does that loop back into game design? Only if we don’t let AI drive too much.

GG, Computo.

#gamedev #ai

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

AI is into #gamedev pipelines like #raccoons in a buffet line.

#PrometheanAI, #ScenarioAI, #LeonardoAI, #Inworld, #UnityMuse, #Ludo, #Cascadeur, #DeepMotion, #Rosebud, #Modl, #Tripo, #Meshy, #AssetHub.

Stripping out repetitive work so teams can move faster.

#gamedev #ai

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

Meta + Alexandr Wang: new AI models. Mostly free/open-source.

Creatives are feasting. Meta AI has me hooked w/ what could be Midjourney-tech under the hood.

Google Labs pace is brutal → more free tech. What happens to paid subs?

#ai #gamedev #meta #alexanderwang #googlelabs

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

Skydance’s Borja Rama dropped #OpenLight, a free procedural HDR tool for #Unreal.

Generates HDR gobos on the fly. No more hunting textures or licensing headaches.

Another step closing the gap between film lighting and real-time.

#UnrealEngine #gamedev

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

NVIDIA introduced DLSS 4.5 using engine data to improve static UI in frame gen.

Fixes a real headache for tech art. Less HUD tweaking, less shimmer/ghosting.

More stability handled in hardware.

#gamedev #technicalart #nvidia

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

LVL Zero kicked off 10 gaming startups with equity-free grants, mentorship, and publisher access.

~80% focused on PC/console. Strong signal for “Made in India.”

For co-dev, this is pipeline.

ATTN: India region outsourcing teams.

#gamedev #outsourcing

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

Saudi fund just raised its stake in #Capcom to 6.04%.

EGDC already owns #SNK and holds stakes in #Nintendo, #Nexon, & #BandaiNamco.

Part of a broader push to build a global gaming hub by 2030.

Less about control here, more about financial positioning.

#gamedev #gamingindustry

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

#Web3 gaming investment up 94% to $60M.

Capital shifting from tokenomics to real IP and proven teams.

“Fun-first” is back. Product over concept.

Teams staying lean, bringing in external partners to deliver.

#gamedev #web3

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

#Unity and #Unreal aren’t really competing anymore.

Unity: mobile, XR, lean builds.
Unreal: high-end, PC/console, heavy lifting.

Not about “better” anymore.

You’re not just picking software. You’re making a hardware bet.

#gamedev #unity #unrealengine

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

Take-Two is cutting its dedicated AI team.

Is this a shift from building in-house to using standardized tools?

AI is expensive. Keeping a custom pipeline current adds friction.

Most studios don’t need to own the engine. They need to get the work through the pipe.

#gamedev #ai

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

@GG_Observatory @resolveai Fair. Few ways to look at it:
- On brand with AI moving deeper into production pipelines
- Compresses the gap between QA and Dev QA
- Makes debugging less about digging, more about interpretation

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

@resolveai isn’t replacing QA. It’s taking on debugging and triage.

They raised $125M to put AI agents into production.

Scale is outrunning manual debugging. Logs are the bottleneck.

Less digging. Faster signal.

#ai #gamedev #devops

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

No #NBA player that gets more than 20% of their PPG by selling fouls should ever be #MVP. Thank you for your attention on this matter.

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

Midsummer Studios secured a $2M lifeline after preparing to shut down.

VC is tight. This is what survival looks like.

Less about growth, more about proving the core.

From “shutting down” to “fighting on.”

How deep is your love?

#gamedev #indiedev

[Tony Gascon @Relaxenberg]

Autodesk is getting serious with AI. Wonder 3D is text/image to 3D inside Flow Studio for faster prototyping.

This pushes AI deeper into creation, not just automation. It will hit artists. Some evolve, some won’t.

Sketch to mesh keeps getting thinner.

#gamedev #3dart #ai