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Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked rolls the dice on a release date and lands on this November
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Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked rolls the dice on a release date and lands on this November

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I could probably quite safely bet some money that many of you are still happily ticking away at Baldur’s Gate 3, but for those of you that would like newer pastures to get your TTRPG fix in video game form, there’s some good news. The board game-esque tactical RPG Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked at long last has a release date!


You won’t be waiting long for it, as it’s slated for release this coming November 20th. No pound sterling or euro pricing for the game yet, but in USD it’ll set you back $30 – it’s also cross-platform and cross-device compatible, so no biggie if your friends aren’t on PC! And if it being more Dungeons & Dragons something or other, relatively affordable, and cross-everything isn’t enough for you, when Steam Next Fest kicks off next October 13th you’ll be able to try out a demo for yourself.

Watch on YouTube


This demo lets you try out a couple of encounters, with four heroes to choose from, including Jessix, a “human ranger seeking retribution” that is apparently a new reveal alongside this release date announcement! Plus, playing the demo will unlock an exclusive cosmetic for your d20s in the full game. Free stuff! Nobody hates free stuff!


If you haven’t even heard of Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked before, well, it’s a crossover between Demeo, which is also a fantasy, board game-esque tactical RPG, albeit set in its own world, with (you guessed it) D&D! You move little figures around a board while going through different campaigns, a big selling point being that it has online multiplayer, something Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked will also have. And you’ll be able to play it in VR too if that takes your fancy!


Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked is out November 20th, later this year.



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Chess meets roguelike dungeon crawler Below the Crown gets an early access launch date and a demo that's smarter than me
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Chess meets roguelike dungeon crawler Below the Crown gets an early access launch date and a demo that’s smarter than me

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Am I good at chess? I’ll take no for $1500, Alex. But do I love a funky twist on games that are older than time itself? You bet your bottom dollar I do! Enter Below the Crown, a chess video game that is also a roguelike, ,and is also a turn-based strategy game, and is also a dungeon crawler on top of that. It’s a lot! It also works very well, and in a demo that just came out today (alongside an early access release date), there’s a suggestion of something a touch more… unsettling… going on under the hood.


In Below the Crown, you are a wizard who is working to get The Emperor the gold he knows is down in the dungeon below his castle. This wizard version of you places a single king on a chess board in each run, with a selection of other, occasionally remixed versions of classic pieces at your disposal. You slowly add pieces to the board as you try to strategise your way towards taking down opposing kings, adding abilities to your various pieces as you go room by room. Sometimes you’ll be offered the opportunity to buy certain useful cards too, like one that will freeze an enemy piece in place for five turns.


It’s chess! And it’s not chess. The important thing is that the essence of the age-old game is there, that feeling of thinking where you’re going to place which piece where, albeit in a refreshingly different way. Though, it definitely is a game that is smarter than me, at least when it comes to chess, because I really would like to stress I’m pants at actual chess. Still fun though! And then there’s the creepy bits.


In between rounds, you might get asked to do things like placing a marker on a graph that reads loneliness on the Y axis and anxiety on the X axis. Upon beating a run I was asked to rank my pieces based on how I felt about them, and was then questioned on my choices afterwards. Methinks there is a bit more than just retro, roguelike chess going on here, and I’m curious to find out more.


Which I’ll be able to do soonish! As developer Misfits Attic (who also made Duskers) shared that Below the Crown will be launching into early access next month, November 10th. Better keep practicing at regular chess in the meantime so I don’t totally suck at this twisted video game version of it.

You can wishlist Below the Crown on Steam here.



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The Cat’s Out of the Bag - CLAWPUNK Release Date Announced
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The Cat’s Out of the Bag – CLAWPUNK Release Date Announced

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Tokyo, Japan – September 28, 2025 – Chaotic cat-astrophes are right around the corner in CLAWPUNK! Exclusively revealed at the PC Gaming Show – Tokyo Direct, Megabit Publishing and Kittens in Timespace’s CLAWPUNK will launch on November 14, 2025 for PC (Steam and Epic Games Store), PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series X|S.A healthy dose of nostalgia, arcade style platforming and many, many explosions; CLAWPUNK is the purrfect playground! Players choose from nine fierce felines before entering the colorful action of Feral City. Taking down gangs in a unique world reminiscent of classic 90s arcade titles and cartoons – only with even more swords and explosions – CLAWPUNK asks players to destroy everything in their quest for peace.Each formidable kitty comes with their own unique weapons and attacks, and it's up to players to discover the combinations that work best for them as they battle through five stages, hundreds of feline foes and an entirely destructible world that’s waiting to be blown apart! 
Among the mighty selection of playable cats, discerning players may identify the voice of Greg Sestero, best known for his role in cult classic movie The Room. He takes the role of Benny, a heavy-hitting, mech-augmented feline fighter.
CLAWPUNK’s Key Features:

  • These Kitties Have Claws: Master nine cats, their devastating attacks, and map-shattering abilities to unleash hell!
  • Cards to Collect: These collectible goodies help mutate each cat and permanently enhance them for the battle ahead. 
  • Aggressive Gameplay: Because hiding at the back is for scaredy cats. 
  • Destroy Everything: Enemies, platforms, the entire world – almost everything is destructible!
  • Music to Define an Era: A hard metal soundtrack, mixed with synth, accompanies players on their battle through Feral City! 
  • Risk vs Reward: Go front foot and smash through enemies or speed run through levels!

A CLAWPUNK demo will also be available to play at Steam Next Fest, so players can get their paws on this cat-tastic new adventure.
CLAWPUNK will be released for PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series X|S on November 14, 2025.



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Saros: Release Date , Platforms, And Everything We Know So Far About The Next Housemarque Game
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Saros: Release Date , Platforms, And Everything We Know So Far About The Next Housemarque Game

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One of the big upcoming first-party PlayStation Studios titles is Saros, the next game from developer Housemarque. A spiritual sequel to Returnal, Saros builds on the foundation of that roguelike action game and is described as the “ultimate evolution” of the company’s approach to gameplay-first adventures. Here’s everything we know about the game so far, ahead of its upcoming release in early 2026.

When will Saros be released?

Housemarque has set a release window of March 20, 2026, for Saros.

Preorder Saros

Preorders are not yet available for Saros.

Saros trailer

The first trailer for Saros was released during the February State of Play event–check it out below. The trailer spotlights the setting, tone, and story. We think it looks pretty great.

Saros platforms

Saros will launch on PS5, but Housemarque hasn’t mentioned a PC release yet. Its previous game, Returnal, did come to PC two years after it first arrived on PS5, and with Sony adopting a multiplatform release strategy, it’s likely that Saros will eventually find its way to this platform in the future.

Will Saros be PS5 Pro Enhanced?

Creative director Gregory Louden did confirm during State of Play that Saros will be PS5 Pro-enhanced, although what those exact enhancements are remains to be seen. Housemarque makes some of the best-looking games around, with Returnal being one of the more graphically impressive games on PS5 when it first launched. If that game is any indication, you can probably expect some terrific monster designs and particle effects for days when Saros launches.

Saros story, setting, and characters

Set on the planet Carcosa, Saros puts you in the boots of Arjun Devraj, a powerful Soltari Enforcer who ison the hunt for answers on this lost off-world colony that is currently caught in the shadow of a very ominous eclipse. Housemarque says that it has crafted a haunting story for the game, one full of nightmarish monsters judging by the teaser trailer.

The studio also added that the game will feature a grounded voice-over, cinematics, audio logs, and conversations with several non-playable characters. There are also Soltari Holograms detailing what happened on Carcosa as you explore the planet, and collecting them will reveal what exactly happened on that planet. Housemarque added that there’ll also be more surreal and mysterious storytelling sequences, but it won’t be sharing details on them just yet.

A familiar face

Your eyes are not deceiving you, that is indeed actor Rahul Kohli lending his voice and likeness to Devraj. According to Housemarque, the Midnight Mass actor delivers a “grounded” performance in Saros. “Every time the sun dies, madness reigns, then everything begins again. “But after every death, I always come back stronger,” Devraj says in the trailer.

Saros gameplay

Saros looks to be a game where aggression pays off, as Arjun wears an advanced combat suit that gives him several enhanced abilities. Every time you start a run, you can select your loadout from a mix of Soltari human weaponry and Carcosan alien weaponry. The September 2025 State of Play deep dive showed Arjun wielding the Soltari Phosphorous Shotgun, a weapon that can melt through enemies.

The other big difference between Saros and Returnal is that Arjun can charge straight into danger, thanks to the Soltari Shield. By holding R1, Arjun can absorb the energy from lethal projectiles and charge up a Carcosan Power Weapon to hit hard. Essentially, you can harvest the attacks of your enemies and throw it right back at them. The catch here is that Power Weapons also transform Arjun’s right arm into an eclipse-fueled weapon, corrupting him in the process. It’s a double-edged sword, but one that he can swing to gain an edge in combat.

If Arjun does fall in battle, he will have a “second chance” to cheat death and get right back into the thick of things. After discovering how to use eclipse corruption energy to rise back up on first death, Arjun can come back stronger and future runs will give him the option to upgrade his Soltari advanced combat suit and abilities.

“After every death you will face a changed world, but in Saros you will be able to choose and permanently upgrade your loadout from an evolving set of weapons and suit upgrades to ‘come back stronger’ to overcome the challenges you face on Carcosa,” Housemarque explained.

Saros screenshots

Gallery



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Possessor(s), the sort of Metroidvania from the devs behind Hyper Light Drifter, gets a November release date
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Possessor(s), the sort of Metroidvania from the devs behind Hyper Light Drifter, gets a November release date

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Heart Machine have had a busy year. It was only in January that they launched Hyper Light Breaker into early access, a surprise follow-up to their beloved indie action RPG Hyper Light Drifter. That launch didn’t go amazingly due to a myriad of reasons, and even now the game hasn’t completely managed to find its footing yet. And then there’s Possessor(s), their search action (not Metroidvania) game that at long last has a release date!


That date is quite soon, too: November 11th, less than two months away. This date came with a new little gameplay overview trailer, showing off some of the tools the game’s protagonist will be able to use on her journey. I’m quite into the concept behind them, they’re all just things you’re likely to find left behind in a ruined city; a computer mouse, an electric guitar, a pair of sunglasses, all usable in combat that’s apparently partially inspired by games like Smash Bros.

Watch on YouTube


The overall concept is a tantalising one too. You play as Luca, a teenage girl caught up in the mess of a quarantined city whose body becomes so damaged she’s forced to let a demon named Rhem in to fix it. This city is in ruins because of some experiments conducted by an evil corporation (the evil being a bit moot there because when isn’t a corporation evil), with other demons having possessed everyday household objects.


Possessor(s) marks a bit of a departure for Heart Machine having transitioned to a 2D, sidescrolling plane. There’s certainly the hallmarks of the studio with its fresh concept and killer art direction, I’m just hoping they’ve managed to pull off a hit given how Hyper Light Breaker has been put through the ringer. We’ll find out in a couple of months!



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Xiaomi 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max: Specs, Release Date, Price, Features
Gaming Gear

Xiaomi 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max: Specs, Release Date, Price, Features

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Bearing in mind this is the Chinese model (there’s no word on a global edition yet), I was unable to test all of the functionality, but I have a good idea what will work here and what doesn’t. I love the time and notifications, because I don’t have to pick up my phone as much when it’s face down on the desk and I’m working.

The customizable themes and pets are fun. It’s an opportunity to add a little more personality to your phone. While the real-time updates work only with select Chinese apps right now, the utility is clear, and the music controls are very handy. The selfie preview is an obvious benefit, as the photos you can take with the main camera far surpass those taken with any front-facing camera.

Photograph: Simon Hill

I’m also excited about the pin function. You know that awkward dance you do when you’re queuing? You have the QR code that they’ll scan in a minute open on your phone, but you want to continue reading or messaging. Well, this allows you to pin it on the back display and get on with what you’re doing. While I wasn’t able to test it, I know this will be handy.

As a big retro gaming fan, I love the look and feel of the case, and it automatically connects via Bluetooth and triggers the game mode. But once I got over the novelty, I was left wondering why I would ever want to play a game on a tiny screen interrupted by camera lenses when I have one of the most gorgeous 6.7-inch phone displays I’ve ever used in my hand. I tried Angry Birds 2, and it’s totally playable on the back display, but just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

And the Rest

Naturally, the 17 Pro Max is a specs beast, and the 17 Pro isn’t far behind. Both are powered by Qualcomm’s brand-new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, and my review unit has 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage. The displays feature Xiaomi’s new M10 display technology, and it is sharp and power-efficient, and it gets very bright.



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Can you tame a medieval wilderness? City-builder Farthest Frontier gets a very close 1.0 release date
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Can you tame a medieval wilderness? City-builder Farthest Frontier gets a very close 1.0 release date

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I was really impressed by Farthest Frontier when I played it in early access a few years ago, so much so, I’ve been keeping an eye out for the full release ever since. And we now finally know when it will be: 23rd October, which isn’t far away at all.

Farthest Frontier is a city-building game spun around the idea of a group of settlers heading into a wilderness in medieval times and establishing a settlement of their own there, growing it from a handful of huts and shacks into something resembling a town.

What’s different about this game is how up-close the action is. You get to know settlers on a personal level, seeing details about who they are and what they’re like, and the game delights in the minutiae of surviving in a period like this. For instance, you’ll assign someone to fish and then have to build a little smokehouse nearby for them to smoke and preserve the fish in, but if you build the smokehouse too near people’s houses, they’ll complain about the smell, and rightly so. But if you don’t smoke the fish, they’ll go rotten in your stores.

Expect to think a lot about crop rotations and farming, to think about water supplies and how to keep them clean and away from your town’s organic waste, lest you spread disease. And to think about making sure everyone’s wrapped up to survive the very present seasonal weather. (There are difficulty options to nudge the complexity down if you want.)

This zoomed-in approach brings a great deal of calm with it. This is a slow game about the aspects of day-to-day life we now take for granted – that are handled automatically for us – and it is very connected to nature and the land around your settlement. Bears can roam into your settlement and attack your people, brilliantly. Well, it’s not brilliant for the people living there and getting mauled, but it’s entertaining to watch. Generally, though, it’s a very peaceful and gently absorbing game, full of forgotten intricacies of a time gone by.

But enough about that! Farthest Frontier has been in early access for three years now, and the success it’s enjoyed there – 1.2 million sales – has allowed developer Crate Entertainment to significantly beef-out the game. The 1.0 release will bring a significant amount of new content as well, including revamped progression, dozens of new building types, bridges (I hope there’s some troubled water to cross), a new policy system, updated animations, and more.

Note that the game’s selling price will increase when it launches, too, to reflect it being a fully rounded game. It will rise from $30 to $35 (the price here is currently £25, which I expect means it’ll rise to £30 at launch). Those existing prices will dip again before launch in a Steam Autumn Sale, which begins 29th September. Potentially, there’s a deal to be had.



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Xbox has made its "largest investment in Game Pass" to date this year, says ID@Xbox boss
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Xbox has made its “largest investment in Game Pass” to date this year, says ID@Xbox boss

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Xbox has made its “largest investment in Game Pass to date” in 2025, ID@Xbox boss Chris Charla has revealed.

Speaking to Eurogamer at this year’s Gamescom, Charla explained that “the majority” of Xbox partners who’ve had a game featured on Game Pass “want to bring their future titles to the service.”

“As a result, we’ve signed deals with more than 150 partners to expand the catalogue,” Charla told the publication. “We continue to engage with hundreds of partners each year to review upcoming titles.”

“Last year, we worked with over 50 teams to sign their first Game Pass deal,” Charla continued. “This year marks our largest investment in Game Pass to date, and we remain focused on delivering the most exciting and diverse catalogue in gaming.”

In July 2024, Microsoft increased the price of its existing Xbox Game Pass tiers for new members, before raising prices for existing subscribers in September 2024.

In addition, Microsoft ditched its Game Pass for Console tier and introduced a new $14.99 a month Standard tier, which rolled out in September 2024, but sees subscribers waiting “up to 12 months+” for first-party games – as opposed to the day one launch access granted to subscribers of other tiers.

In response to this price hike announcement, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a letter with the U.S. Court of Appeals, criticizing Microsoft’s pricing changes and saying that the company’s actions were “inconsistent” with what it had previously said about price increases.

“Product degradation – removing the most valuable games from Microsoft’s new service – combined with price increases for existing users, is exactly the sort of consumer harm from the merger the FTC has alleged,” the FTC said in the letter, referencing Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard in October 2023.

In response, Microsoft called the FTC’s claims “misleading” and “a continuation of the agency’s attempts to reinvent its case on appeal.”

In October 2024, just a month after the price hike came into effect for existing subscribers, Microsoft revealed that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 broke records for Game Pass subscriptions and was the franchise’s biggest launch to date (as well as the first Activision Blizzard title to launch day one on the service following its acquisition).

In July 2025, Microsoft released its financial results for Q4 of its fiscal year 2025, revealing that Xbox content and services revenue had increased 13% year-on-year (YoY).

Amy Hood, executive vice president and CFO of Microsoft, said at the time that the growth was “driven by better-than-expected performance from first-party content and Xbox Game Pass.”



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Xbox has made "largest investment in Game Pass to date" this year, countering recent criticism of subscription service's value
Game Updates

Xbox has made “largest investment in Game Pass to date” this year, countering recent criticism of subscription service’s value

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This year has marked Xbox’s “largest investment in Game Pass to date”, according to ID@Xbox boss Chris Charla.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Charla discussed the current state of the subscription service in the face of recent criticism, noting positive sentiment from developers and a desire to return for future projects.

“The majority of partners who’ve had a game in Game Pass want to bring their future titles to the service,” said Charla. “As a result, we’ve signed deals with more than 150 partners to expand the catalogue. We continue to engage with hundreds of partners each year to review upcoming titles.

“Last year, we worked with over 50 teams to sign their first Game Pass deal. This year marks our largest investment in Game Pass to date, and we remain focused on delivering the most exciting and diverse catalogue in gaming.”

Xbox has received criticism for Game Pass in recent months. Arkane Studios founder Raphael Colantonio described the service as “an unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade”.

In a back and forth on social media on the “cannibalisation” of sales, Larian director of publishing Michael Douse added “smaller teams with new or riskier” games can benefit from Game Pass, but he prefers “Sony’s ‘lifecycle management'” method of adding games following initial sales.

Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden discussed the perceived profitability of Game Pass in a discussion with GamesIndustry.biz. “There’s a lot of debates going on,” he said. “Is Game Pass profitable? Is Game Pass not profitable? What does that mean? That’s really not the right question to ask anyway.

“You can do all kinds of financial jiggery-pokery for any sort of corporate service to make it look profitable if you wanted to. You take enough costs out and say that’s off the balance sheet and, oh look, it’s profitable now. The real issue for me on things like Game Pass is, is it healthy for the developer?”

Meanwhile, Football Manager boss Miles Jacobson recently told Eurogamer player numbers for the series have skyrocketed since being added to subscription platforms.

“We built a whole business model around it,” he said. “You can’t just turn around and do this – this was before we launched on the subscription platforms, we’d been talking about it. And we’d been working out what we were going to do for five years – it was a five-year journey before we went with the first experiment, and then we did another experiment, and then we did another experiment, and then we learned from those experiments, and that’s when the full strategy was put in place.”

In a broader interview with Eurogamer on the state of indie games on Xbox, Charla noted the breadth of games showcased by Xbox at Gamescom. “It is just really a recognition by Xbox of the absolute crucial need for diversity in our portfolio,” he said.



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Crypto Trends

Ethereum Devs Set December Date for Fusaka Upgrade

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In brief

  • Mainnet activation is set for December 3, with testnets starting in October.
  • Recent testing suggested raising blob capacity in phases.
  • Further tests will confirm those numbers before rollout.

Ethereum developers have set Dec. 3, 2025, as the mainnet activation date for the Fusaka upgrade, nudging forward a timeline that had been expected to extend well into 2026.

The decision came after testing on Fusaka Devnet-5, which highlighted some software bugs and setup errors that cut short the time developers had to measure data capacity, according to a summary from researcher Christine Kim.

During the brief period when the test network was stable, developers agreed to raise blob capacity in two steps: First to 10/15 blobs per block, then to 14/21. A blob on Ethereum is a temporary data packet that rollups, or bundling and scaling solutions on the network, use to post transaction data to the blockchain at lower costs.

Another Ethereum test network, called Devnet-6, will be launched soon to double-check those numbers before they go live on public testnets and mainnet, per the call logs.



Developers found that the Prysm client, one of Ethereum’s major validator clients, struggled under high loads, creating orphaned blocks.

Validator clients are the software running Ethereum’s proof-of-stake system, responsible for proposing and verifying blocks. A block is “orphaned” when it was produced correctly by a validator, but was rejected because the network chose a different block for the same spot in the chain.

Ethereum researcher Justin Traglia said a bug in the ckzg library, used to verify blobs, had been fixed, and added that a lighter version is being prepared to make upgrades easier for client teams.

The Ethereum Foundation did not immediately return Decrypt’s request for comments.

According to the notes from Kim, the faster timeline is aimed at giving rollups more blob space to handle transactions and keep fees low, with capacity raised step by step to reduce the risk of overloading the network. Over the call, developers also confirmed that client teams will ship bundled releases for the October testnet upgrades and run shadow forks, or copies of Ethereum’s main network,  ahead of deployment. The developers then agreed that delays remain possible if new bugs appear or if testing falls short.

The Fusaka upgrade follows Pectra, which was rolled out in May and helped make the Ethereum network easier to use, raised staking limits, and boosted data capacity to reduce costs for rollups.

At the time, industry observers touted Pectra as a turning point for Ethereum’s roadmap, but also warned that scaling pressures would persist, with rollups needing far more blob capacity to stay uncongested as usage grows.

Fusaka is designed to address that demand, phasing in higher blob limits much sooner as network activity continues to increase.

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