Laws Force Games to Stay Playable
Europe and California are moving to force game makers to keep titles playable after servers close — or refund buyers. Our estimate: $1.8 billion a year. The market still prices it as a lobbying fight.
Latest
Steam's 30% Cut Under Siege
Valve keeps up to 30 cents of every dollar spent on Steam — over $3bn in 2024. A class-action lawsuit, European rules, and a Google courtroom loss are now all pressing on that cut at once.
Loot Boxes Ruled Illegal Gambling
Belgium called paid loot boxes illegal gambling. Now Europe and America are following. FASTMaster puts $6.3bn a year in game revenue at risk if the ruling spreads.
Blindside Weekly
5 structural threats the market isn't pricing — and where each one sits on the scale.
China's Cheap Blockbusters Take Premium Games
China can now build $1 billion blockbuster games for $70 million. Black Myth proved it. FASTMaster sees $4.9 billion of Western game revenue a year now open to Chinese rivals — and the market hasn't priced it.
Big Games Lose Their Young Players
The biggest online games are graying. League of Legends lost 55 million monthly players; Fortnite's US-teen reach fell to 37 percent. The original fans are aging out, and new ones cost 30 percent more to win.
Creator-as-Asset: How to Value an Influencer Like a Security
MrBeast 75, Hawk Tuah 3. A four-component composite valuation index for creator-economy brands — built from hype, risk, backlog, mobility.
Roblox's Broken Pay Promise
Half of Roblox's developers earned $1,575 last year. The top ten averaged $33.9 million. The platform keeps 70% of every dollar — and builders now have somewhere else to go.
Game Pass Hides Its Losses
Microsoft says Game Pass earns $5 billion a year, but has never shown a standalone profit — and the costs it leaves out could be enormous. Our model puts $668 million a year at risk if the real numbers surface.
Blockbuster Games Cost More Than They Earn
Top games now cost $300M-plus to build while the price stays at $70. Only five franchises can earn that back, leaving $7.7bn of yearly revenue at risk. The market calls it a dip — our index says it's permanent.
Blindside Weekly
5 structural threats the market isn't pricing — and where each one sits on the scale.
Big Studios Bleed Cash Chasing Online Games
Big publishers are destroying an estimated $4.7 billion a year launching online games that mostly flop — a money pit the market still mistakes for a run of bad luck.
Gaming
Gamers Lose the Chip Fight
AI buyers outbid gamers for every chip. NVIDIA cut gaming card output 40%, memory is up 172%, the PlayStation 5 jumped $100 — a $9.4bn yearly hit to gaming hardware that won't fix itself.
Gaming
Regulators Move to Kill Game Gambling
New York is suing Valve, eight states are suing Roblox, and regulators already fined a prize-box maker. The billions games earn from random loot and item-betting just stopped being safe money.
The Soccer Brief
Most Relegated Clubs Keep Shooting Like Premier League Sides. It Doesn't Get Them Back.
Two-thirds of relegated clubs keep shooting like a top flight in the Championship, and most assume that's the road home. It isn't. Burnley came back twice with opposite plans — Dyche below average, Kompany well above — and across all 40 drops since 2009-10, the escape isn't the shots. It's whether t
Gaming
AI Voices Replace Game Actors
AI voices cost over ninety percent less, and ninety percent of studios already use AI. About $1.8 billion in yearly game voice and motion-capture pay is draining away — and the cheapest work goes first.
Gaming
Indie Games Vanish in the Crowd
Steam's record sales hide a brutal squeeze: the typical game now earns $249, the top 1% of titles take 90% of indie revenue, and barely 0.5% of 2024 releases are viable businesses.
Blindside
Blindside Weekly
4 structural threats the market isn't pricing — and where each one sits on the scale.
Fast Food
Fast food's growth model is eating itself alive
Fast food overbuilt, overtrained customers to hunt discounts, and over-leveraged its operators. The brand names still look fine. The structure underneath them does not.
Fast Food
The Drive-thru Lots Stop Paying
Drive-thru visits are falling 5 to 8% a year and have dropped from 83% to 63% of fast-food sales since 2020 — yet the land still trades like it's scarce. About $5.1 billion of sales a year is at risk.
Fast Food
New Franchise Rules Hit Royalties
New 2026 federal franchise rules hit renewals and transfers first, pushing cost and legal risk back onto fast-food brand owners. FASTMaster models a $2.5 billion yearly drag — and a 57% chance it sticks.
Premier League
How Championship Teams Survive or Die in the Premier League
Shoot well in the Championship and you survive at 58%. Shoot badly and you survive at 57%. It's a coin flip. Across 40 promotions since 2009-10, survivors concede 0.52 more goals per game in the Premier League and the relegated concede 1.09. The wall is defensive.
Fast Food
Burgers Get Pricier, Margins Get Thinner
Fast-food chains are pushing protein-heavy menus exactly as beef hits record prices and the US cattle herd falls to a 75-year low. The gap between soaring costs and slower menu increases could cost the sector $4.2 billion a year.
Fast Food
Delivery Apps Skim Fast Food's Profit
Three apps holding 93% of US delivery skim 15–30% on nearly a quarter of fast-food orders — draining an estimated $8.8 billion a year in profit. Chains' own apps are fighting back, but reliance is a permanent leak.