Pixel P&L: India's LVL Zero picks its first 10 gaming startups

Welcome to another Pixel P&L edition. This issue takes 5 minutes to read. If you only have one, here are the 5 most important things:

• LVL Zero names its first 10 startups with 8 of them building for PC and console, a break from India's mobile-first norm.

• Evil Geniuses and Couriway launch Gridlock, a competitive Minecraft tournament with a $45,000 prize pool across a 2026 season.

• The Super Mario Galaxy Movie opens to $372.5M globally in five days.

• Disney+ expands its Korean esports streaming deal with KeSPA to cover pan-Asian events through 2026.

• Samsung raises DRAM prices 30% for Q2, SK Hynix and Micron are expected to follow.

Let's get into it.

Indian Gaming Incubator LVL Zero Selects 10 Startups for Inaugural Cohort

LVL Zero, gaming incubator backed by Nazara Technologies, MIXI Global Investments, and ChimeraVC, named its first cohort of 10 startups Sunday, drawn from over 240 applications. The selected studios range from solo developers to teams of five.

Eight of the ten are building for PC and console, a departure from India's traditionally mobile-first game development scene. Each startup receives an equity-free $10,000 grant and access to a 100-day program offering mentorship from 28 global industry experts, publisher introductions, and playtesting support.

The cohort includes Xigma Games, which is building the 4X strategy title Metal Haven, and Kalp Studio, whose game Raahi is a slice-of-life auto rickshaw adventure set in a 1990s Goa-inspired town. One product is already on the market; two are in beta, and five have playable alpha builds.

LVL Zero, launched in November 2025, aims to support more than 100 startups over five years.

Evil Geniuses and Couriway Launch Gridlock, a New Competitive Minecraft Tournament

Evil Geniuses and content creator Anthony "Couriway" Salzarulo announced Gridlock, a competitive Minecraft tournament featuring a $45,000 prize pool spread across a multi-month 2026 season. The event is designed to draw together speedrunners, survival multiplayer creators, and player-versus-player athletes under a single competitive format.

Gridlock's format places duo teams on a custom 1,000-by-1,000-block map for 30-minute matches. Rather than direct elimination, teams compete to complete squares on a shared bingo card. Completed squares are locked out from the opposing team, and the duo with the most points when the timer expires wins.

The season runs from June through December, beginning with open qualifiers and advancing through bracket and circuit stages before concluding in a Grand Finals split across North American and European regions. Monthly circuit prizes run $5,000 per region; the Grand Finals carry $7,500 per region.

Players must stream their own perspective on any platform, while the main broadcast airs on the Couriway and Evil Geniuses Twitch channels. The custom game mode will not be available outside the tournament environment at launch. Minecraft has sold over 350 million copies, making it the best-selling game of all time.

⚡️Quick Bytes

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Opens to $372.5M Globally

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie grossed $372.5 million globally over its five-day opening weekend, making it Illumination's second-biggest global opening ever and the fourth-biggest for a US animated film. The $110 million production fell just short of its predecessor's $387.8 million debut. Critics gave it 42% on Rotten Tomatoes; audiences scored it 89%.

Samsung Raises DRAM Prices 30% for Q2

Samsung has raised DRAM prices roughly 30% quarter-over-quarter for Q2 2026, following a 100% year-over-year increase in Q1. The hike covers HBM for AI and commodity DRAM for servers, PCs, and smartphones. SK Hynix and Micron are expected to follow. DRAM and NAND now account for 54% of a budget smartphone's bill of materials.

Disney+ Expands Korean Esports Streaming Deal with KeSPA

Disney+ has expanded its partnership with the Korea e-Sports Association to stream Korean and pan-Asian esports events across 2026. Covered events include the Esports Championships Asia Jinju (April 24-26), the 2026 League of Legends KeSPA Cup, and Korea's national team qualifiers for the Asian Games in Japan. The original deal, signed in September 2025, was KeSPA's first with a major global streaming platform.

Sony Delists More Shovelware Titles from PlayStation Store

Sony has removed another batch of low-quality titles from the PlayStation Store, including Jesus Simulator, Urban Driver Simulator, and Racing Car Chaos: Extreme Stunt Showdown, from publishers GoGame Console Publisher, VRCForge Studios, and Welding Byte. The removals follow a separate delisting of over 1,000 games earlier this year and are believed to be part of a joint initiative with Xbox and Nintendo on safer gaming standards.

⚔️Side Quest

🤣Laugh:

📺 Watch: Proxima CEO Ron Mo on the Game Makers Notebook is one of the more grounded AI-in-gamedev conversations you'll find from someone who has actually shipped a game using it. His core argument is that AI is genuinely useful for boilerplate code but will generate architectural spaghetti the moment you let it touch anything structural, and that the studios claiming 10x productivity gains are usually either building throwaway prototypes or setting themselves up for technical debt. 

🎮 Play: The Planet Crafter is a survival crafting game where the entire point is watching a dead planet slowly come alive. You land, you build, you mine, and the atmosphere gradually fills in around you until the world looks nothing like where you started. The progression loop is relaxing enough to decompress after work. 

📚 Read: Bryant Francis for Game Developer covers a GDC talk which explains how complex, opinionated storytelling is how you keep players' attention, not shorter text or safer subjects. The stat that anchors the whole piece: more players unlocked the achievement for sitting through an unsolicited lecture on happiness in The Messenger than for actually finishing the game. The argument isn't that writing wins the attention war on its own, it's that how you present text is a design decision, and studios that default to safe, broad-appeal stories are giving up the one tool that platforms like TikTok genuinely can't replicate.

💡Did You Know

South Korea's postal service will release a commemorative stamp honoring Lee Sang-hyeok, better known as Faker, in October 2026, making him the first esports or gaming figure ever featured on such a stamp in the country. Korea Post, which operates under the Ministry of Science and ICT, announced the stamp as part of a limited series typically reserved for important cultural figures and national achievements. The announcement comes months after Faker received the Cheongnyong Medal, South Korea's highest sports honor, usually given to Olympic medalists. He has won six League of Legends World Championship titles since turning professional in 2013.

📜 Quote of the Day

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