Pixel P&:L: Valve Fights Memory Shortage, Nintendo Fights the U.S. Government

Welcome to another Pixel P&L edition. This issue takes 6 minutes to read. If you only have one, here are the 5 most important things:

• Valve commits to shipping Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Controller in 2026; but memory shortages loom.

• Nintendo sues the U.S. government over Trump tariffs, joins 1,000+ companies seeking refunds.

• ARC Raiders exposed players' private Discord messages through a logging bug.

• NetEase pulls funding from Nagoshi Studio, leaving the Yakuza creator scrambling for $44M.

• Slay the Spire 2 breaks Steam records with 526K concurrent players becoming the biggest launch of 2026.

Let's get into it.

Valve Commits to 2026 Steam Machine Launch After Months of Uncertainty

Valve said Friday that its Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller will all ship this year, walking back what appeared to be a quiet delay. An earlier blog post stating the company "hopes to ship in 2026" alarmed observers who had watched Valve slide its target from "Q1 2026" to "first half of the year" in recent months. Valve PR representative Kaci Aitchison Boyle told The Verge that "nothing has actually changed on our end," and Valve updated the post to confirm all three products will ship in 2026.

The company is navigating the same memory shortage squeezing hardware makers across the industry, driven by AI firms buying up chip supply. Valve has already said the RAM crunch will constrain stock of the Steam Deck OLED, which has been largely out of stock since mid-February. Whether it affects launch quantities for the new lineup remains unclear.

Nintendo Sues U.S. Government Over Trump Tariffs, Seeks Refund

Nintendo of America filed a complaint in the U.S. Court of International Trade, seeking refunds on tariffs it paid after the Supreme Court struck down President Trump's sweeping import duties in February. The court found Trump lacked authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to impose the tariffs.

Nintendo, which manufactures its consoles and accessories primarily in Vietnam and China, was caught in the crossfire when tariffs spiked above 125% on Chinese goods before settling at 34% in May. The company delayed U.S. preorders for the Nintendo Switch 2 following the initial tariff announcement, though it held the console's $449.99 price by routing Vietnam-made units stateside. Accessories still received a price hike.

Nintendo joins more than 1,000 companies — including Costco and FedEx — that have sued over what plaintiffs call illegal tariff implementation. The government collected over $200 billion in duties during the period in question. A federal judge ordered refunds Wednesday; Customs and Border Protection said Friday it cannot yet comply.

⚡️Quick Bytes

ARC Raiders' Discord Bug Exposed Private Messages

Embark Studios patched ARC Raiders after engineer Timothy Meadows found the game was storing players' private Discord messages and authentication tokens locally on their machines. The studio attributed the issue to its Discord SDK logging excessive data, denied any server-side collection, and announced a broader security audit.

NetEase Pulls Funding From Nagoshi Studio

NetEase will stop financing Nagoshi Studio in May, according to Bloomberg, after the Chinese gaming firm determined Gang of Dragon would require an additional $44.4 million to complete. The studio, founded by Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi, is now seeking outside funding to continue development. NetEase has shuttered two other studios since November.

Slay the Spire 2 Sets Steam Record at Launch

Slay the Spire 2 hit 526,793 concurrent players on Steam, making it the most-played roguelike in the platform's history and the biggest game launch of 2026. Developer Mega Crit priced the early access title at $25. The original game peaked at 57,025 concurrent players.

⚔️Side Quest

🤣Laugh:

📺 Watch: This Avalanche Software deep-dive reveals Disney's billion-dollar mistake: shutting down the studio that made them a fortune on Disney Infinity because spreadsheets said so. Former lead designer Troy explains fighting executives who wanted Hogwarts castle as a menu system, why treating IP like a fan matters more than corporate safety, and how the discarded team built Hogwarts Legacy, the game that broke Call of Duty's 14-year sales reign. Essential viewing on creative resilience.  

🎮 Play: Marathon is the sci-fi extraction shooter that doesn't eat 200GB of your drive. Bungie nails atmosphere again: dark, weird world-building that feels part visual novel, part high-stakes teamplay. Sound design hits different, art direction stands out in a sea of generic shooters, and the faction lore actually pulls you in. 

📚 Read: Newzoo crunched the numbers on Sony's PC port strategy and found the obvious: staggered releases kill PC audience share. PlayStation ports average 13% PC players versus 44% for simultaneous launches, and it's getting worse. Essential explainer on why Sony is reportedly abandoning PC.

💡Did You Know

The National Videogame Museum just acquired the oldest known Nintendo PlayStation — a prototype from the early 1990s partnership between Sony and Nintendo to build a CD-ROM attachment for the Super Nintendo. Only a few hundred were ever made before Nintendo's simultaneous deal with Philips created enough tension to kill the collaboration. Sony salvaged its work and eventually built the PlayStation 1. Most surviving units look like finished hardware. This one doesn't — it's raw development equipment, the only one of its kind, built before designers had gotten around to making it look like a product.

📜 Quote of the Day

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