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The Questyle QCC Dongle Pro with a smartphone to denote size, on a light wooden table

Questyle QCC Dongle Pro review: the Bluetooth upgrade your phone has been waiting for

by admin September 23, 2025

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Questyle QCC Dongle Pro: Two-minute review

You may not realise it, but your phone and your wireless headphones don’t always agree on how good your music should sound. It’s a question of compatibility, and it can be a thorny issue.

Bluetooth audio codecs are the invisible lines of code that translate your music (whether streamed from a subscription service or stored locally on your phone) into something that can be transmitted wirelessly to your headphones, earbuds, or portable speakers.

All Bluetooth products support SBC, a codec that provides basic ‘vanilla’ audio quality, but when it comes to high-quality advanced codecs, like LDAC and aptX Adaptive (which preserve far more of your music’s detail), it’s the wild west out there. Some Android handsets support both. Some just support one. iPhones (in fact, all Apple devices) support neither. Support on the headphones/earbuds side of the equation can be equally messy – and it doesn’t always follow that the more you pay, the more codecs your buds (or cans) will support.

So wouldn’t it be nice if there were a tiny, simple (yet powerful) gadget you could plug into any phone, tablet, computer, or game console that would assure you’ve always got support for these codecs? Behold – the Questyle QCC Dongle Pro.

Plug it in, open the app, and pair your headphones. Done. You’re now listening wirelessly at the highest possible quality (perhaps even losslessly) and you didn’t even have to mess around in Android’s Developer Options.

All of this makes the Questyle QCC Dongle Pro a very attractive little accessory for anyone who wants to maximize their listening experience.

One of the best portable DACs around – and more specifically, one of the best wireless Bluetooth DACs we’ve tested? Let’s get to it.

Oh, it’s red and no mistake (Image credit: Future)

Questyle QCC Dongle Pro review: Price and release date

Release date: August 29, 2025
Price: $99 (around £70; AU$150)

$99 may seem like a lot for what you get. After all, it is tiny – and this device doesn’t make music or even play music; it just makes the music you already have access to sound better, with no guesswork.

I’ve also tried the $50 FiiO BT11, a nearly identical-looking product that, on paper at least, does all the same things. But it’s so maddeningly difficult to use, I’d happily pay the difference for the QCC Dongle Pro.

Still, there is another option. If you don’t need LDAC (perhaps because your Android phone already supports it), you can get the aptX-family-only QCC Dongle for $69 and save yourself some cash.

Elsewhere (and if you’ve got hard-to-drive headphones and a little more to spend), we love the FiiO BTR17 for its amplification powers on top of its codec mastery, and TR’s audio editor still uses the FiiO BTR7 – both around $200 / £175 / AU$279.

Questyle QCC Dongle Pro review: Specs

Swipe to scroll horizontallyQuestyle QCC Dongle Pro: specs

Dimensions

25mm x 10mm x 15mm

Weight

2.5 grams

Supported codecs

SBC, aptX, aptX HD, aptX Adaptive (including aptX Lossless), LDAC

Supported interfaces

USB-C, USB-A (UAC 1, UAC 2)

System compatibility

WinXP/Vista/Win7/Win8/Win10/Win11/Linux/Android/HarmonyOS/macOS/iOS/iPadOS

Bluetooth version

5.4

Power draw

37mA

Questyle QCC Dongle Pro review: Features

Excellent codec support
Easy, intuitive app
Works with almost all USB-equipped devices

A helpful app lets you control the dongle’s two main functions: getting it paired with your headphones and picking which codec and optional settings you want to use. An LED on the QCC Dongle Pro gives visual feedback on its pairing status as well as which family of codec is currently in use – a reassuring feature.

Better yet, as long as your headphones or earbuds support Bluetooth Multipoint, it’s possible to connect them to the dongle and your phone simultaneously. Doing so maintains your ability to adjust the headphones’ settings via their mobile app (if any).

Oh, and one more thing: the dongle also supports USB Audio Class 1 (UAC 1), which is a spec-speak way of saying you can use it as a wireless audio transmitter with gaming consoles like Nintendo Switch and PlayStation families – devices that don’t play nicely with run-of-the-mill USB Bluetooth dongles. Full disclosure: I didn’t test this feature.

You can use it as a transmitter for a PC or Mac, too, though with one caveat: there’s no Windows or macOS app, so you’ll need to initially pair your preferred headphones using the mobile app on a phone, then move the dongle over to your PC. It will automatically re-pair with your headphones and then you simply need to choose the Dongle Pro from your computer’s sound output menu.

Worried about the Dongle Pro sapping your phone’s battery life? Don’t be. With a 37mA draw, Questyle estimates that even if you used it intensively (e.g., with LDAC) for 10 hours straight, you’d only dent an iPhone 16’s full battery capacity by about 10%. Using aptX Adaptive would consume less juice. I didn’t notice any impact on my day-to-day use of my iPhone.

The bulk of my testing was done with the Sennheiser IE900 or the Austrian Audio ‘The Composer’ (Image credit: Questyle)

The QCC Dongle Pro is so easy and effective that it’s hard to find flaws. But if I were to nitpick, I’d point to the fact that the Questyle app doesn’t give audio nerds as much control over codec behavior as, say, Android’s Developer Options, or the uber-handy Bluetooth Codec Changer app.

For instance, purists often want to avoid additional resampling between their source of digital music and the output that gets to their headphones. With the apps/settings I mentioned above, you can set LDAC’s bit-depth and sampling rate to match that of your source. The QCC Dongle Pro doesn’t provide this level of control. The same goes for LDAC’s bitrate; however, you can nonetheless choose to favour sound quality over connection stability, which should accomplish the same thing.

I might also note that the dongle can’t support simultaneous Bluetooth connections. So if you were hoping to connect a set of wireless earbuds using LDAC and a set of headphones using aptX HD so you can hear the difference, I’m afraid you’ll have to find another way of satisfying your inner scientist.

Features score: 4.5 / 5

Note the ‘wings’ (Image credit: Future)

Questyle QCC Dongle Pro review: Design

Tiny and featherweight
Fits most phone cases
Might block adjacent ports

The QCC Dongle Pro can plug directly into any device that can output audio over USB. At 2.5 grams, it weighs less than half as much as a single AirPods Pro earpiece. On its own, it will snap into USB-C ports, and a small ledge lets it protrude about two millimeters, making it compatible with many 3rd-party protective phone cases. It also comes with an adapter for gadgets that are still rocking USB-A ports. The only devices it can’t support are older iPhones/iPads with Lightning ports.

It’s a phone-friendly design, as long as you don’t mind using wireless charging while it’s plugged in. For laptops, especially those like the Apple MacBook Air with just two, closely spaced USB-C ports, the Dongle Pro forces the same choice, but without the fallback of wireless charging: You can have better Bluetooth audio or you can charge your computer, but not both.

Design score: 4.5 / 5

Everything in its right place… (Image credit: Future)

Questyle QCC Dongle Pro review: Sound quality

Perfect match for LDAC/aptX devices
Lets you choose which codec to use when more than one will work

How does it perform? Brilliantly. Which is to say, when I use it on an iPhone 16 in either LDAC or aptX Lossless mode, with a compatible set of headphones, and then compare it to a phone with these codecs built in (e.g., Motorola ThinkPhone), they sound the same to me. I’m not sure I could ask for anything more.

Sony’s WH-1000XM6 (LDAC) revealed the subtle details in Dire Straits’ You And Your Friend that tend to go missing when listening via AAC. Similarly, Sennheiser’s aptX Lossless compatible Momentum True Wireless 4 Earbuds were able to tame the blurry bass notes and crunchy highs that I typically hear when playing Bob Dylan’s Man in the Long Black Coat.

Given how convenient it is to pop the Dongle Pro into the bottom of my iPhone, I can easily see it becoming a permanent fixture in my daily listening life.

Sound quality score: 5 / 5

This white light (for aptX Lossless) was oddly hard to come by when using sources able to handle it… (Image credit: Future)

Questyle QCC Dongle Pro review: Value

Pricey compared to other transmitters
Unmatched codec support
Perfect size/shape for mobile use

Though a pricey little device, you need to look at the QCC Dongle Pro in the context of your other options.

Most companies that make USB-C Bluetooth transmitters that sell for between $25-$55 on Amazon come with one or more compromises. They’re primarily intended for PC use, so they’re often equipped with a USB-A interface. Even the ones with USB-C tend to stick out too far and could easily snap off during portable use. The Dongle Pro’s one direct competitor, the $50 FiiO BT11, is a bargain by comparison – but I found it much harder to use.

Value score: 4/5

Note the new ‘rails’ on the casework to help with cooling (Image credit: Future)

Should you buy the Questyle QCC Dongle Pro?

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Attribute

Notes

Rating

Features

Gives any phone or PC the most popular hi-res Bluetooth audio codecs.

4 / 5

Sound quality

Works as well as any phone with these codecs built in.

5 / 5

Design

Tiny, lightweight, and elegant. If only it were a tad narrower, it would be perfect.

4.5 / 5

Value

Pricey, but worth it.

4 / 5

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Questyle QCC Dongle Pro review: Also consider

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Product

Questyle QCC Dongle Pro

FiiO BTR11

Dimensions

25mm x 10mm x 15mm

28mm x 9mm x 21mm

Weight

2.5 grams

3 grams

Supported codecs

SBC, aptX, aptX HD, aptX Adaptive (including aptX Lossless), LDAC

Supported interfaces

USB-C, USB-A (UAC 1, UAC 2)

System compatibility

WinXP/Vista/Win7/Win8/Win10/Win11/Linux/Android/HarmonyOS/macOS/iOS/iPadOS

Bluetooth version

5.4

Power draw

37mA (LDAC)

22mA (static)

iFi makes strong design choices and you love to see it (Image credit: Future)

How I tested the Questyle QCC Dongle Pro

Tested for 2 weeks
Used it at home and while at the gym
Predominantly tested using Apple Music on an Apple iPhone 16, but also: Google Pixel 7 Pro, Apple MacBook Air M1

Testing the Questyle QCC Dongle Pro was primarily a case of comparisons. In other words, how easy was it to use, and how did the sound quality compare to a smartphone with the same Bluetooth Codecs built in?

To do this, I paired the Dongle Pro first with the Sony WH-1000XM6 (to test LDAC performance) and then with the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4 Earbuds (to test aptX Adaptive/Lossless), with the Dongle Pro plugged into an iPhone 16.

Since both devices support Bluetooth Multipoint, I was able to pair them simultaneously with a Motorola ThinkPhone, which supports both codec families.

While using the same Apple Music Playlist on both the iPhone and the ThinkPhone, I swapped back and forth between these two sources, listening for any perceptible differences. I couldn’t detect any.

For additional testing, I swapped the dongle over to my MacBook Air and a Google Pixel 7 Pro. Both performed without issue.

First reviewed September 2025

Questyle QCC Dongle Pro: Price Comparison

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September 23, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

The adaptation you’ve been waiting for since 1996 is finally here: Bop It! is now a videogame

by admin September 19, 2025

Videogames are great but don’t you wish they had more bopping? And not just more bopping, but also more twisting and pulling, perhaps of… I don’t know, some sort of nebulous… it? And most importantly, a loud voice telling you exactly when you should bop it, twist it, and/or pull it?

Your oddly specific prayers have finally been answered, because nearly 30 years after the discovery of the cursed Pandora’s Box-like artifact known as Bop It!—which demanded its user perform ritualistic bopping, twisting, and pulling of its button, knob, and handle in the precise pattern needed to finally release the prophesied Loud One, known as Bophomet, upon the world to reign for all time—is now a videogame.

It’s called Bop It! The Video Game and it’s on Steam. Check out the trailer below, which goes a little something like this:

“Bop it! Twist it! Pull it! Twist it! Bop it! Pull it! Twist it! Pull it! Bop it! Twist it! Pull it! Twist it! Bop it! Twist it! Pull it! Twist it! Bop it! Pull it!”

The Steam page promises (or threatens) “Hot Bop It! Action!” for one or two players (in local co-op), plus a global leaderboard to see how you stack up against other hot boppers. And there’s not just classic mode but an “EXTREME” mode (caps theirs) where you can also be yelled at to “Spin it!” and “Flick it!” on an evolved version of the Bop It! that has grown two appendages. Chilling.

I unfortunately have never had the pleasure of playing or even seeing an actual Bop It!, which crossed over into our dimension back in 1996. Yet I somehow know all about it, as if it revealed itself to me in a dream or some troubling vision. This is my chance, I suppose, to finally bop, twist, and pull the Bop It! for myself, if only virtually.

Wish me luck. According to the Steam page, “the best part of Bop It! The Video Game is that the levels never end: as long as you can stay in, the game will keep going.” If you never hear from me again, it may be because I now bop eternal.

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September 19, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

The Smart Glasses You Were Waiting For

by admin September 18, 2025

There’s one thing people want to know when they see my first-gen Ray-Ban smart glasses, and it’s got nothing to do with AI, or cameras, or the surprisingly great open-ear audio they put out. They want to know what’s probably front-of-mind right now as you’re reading this: Do they have a screen in them? The answer? Sadly, no… until now.

At Meta Connect 2025, Meta finally unveiled its Ray-Ban Display smart glasses that, as you may have gathered from the name, have a screen in them. It doesn’t sound like much on the surface—we have screens everywhere, all the time. Too many of them, in fact. But I’m here to tell you that after using them in advance of the unveil, I regret to inform you that you will most likely want another screen in your life, whether you know it or not. But first, you probably want to know exactly what’s going on in this screen I speak of.

The answer? Apps, of course. The display, which is actually full-color and not monochrome like previous reporting suggested, acts as a heads-up display (HUD) for things like notifications, navigation, and even pictures and videos. For the full specs of that display, you can read the news companion to my hands-on here. For now, though, I want to focus on what that screen feels like. The answer? A little jarring at first.

While the Ray-Ban Display, which weigh 69g (about 10 more grams than the first-gen glasses without a screen) do their best not to shove a screen in front of your face, it’s still genuinely there, hovering like a real-life Clippy, waiting to distract you with a notification at a moment’s notice. And, no matter what your feelings are about smart glasses that have a screen, that’s a good thing, since the display is the whole reason you might spend $800 to own a pair. Once your eyes adjust to the screen (it took me a minute or so), you can get cracking on doing stuff. That’s where the Meta Neural Band comes in.

The Neural Band is Meta’s sEMG wristband, a piece of tech it’s been showing off for years now that’s been shrunk down into the size of a Whoop fitness band. It reads the electrical signals in your hand to register pinches, swipes, taps, and wrist turns as inputs in the glasses. I was worried at first that its wristband might feel clunky or too conspicuous on my body, but I can inform you that it’s not the case—this is about as lightweight as it gets. The smart glasses also felt light and comfortable on my face despite being noticeably thicker than the first-gen Ray-Bans.

More importantly than being lightweight and subtle, it’s very responsive. Once the Neural Band was tight on my wrist (it was a little loose at first, but better after I adjusted), using it to navigate the UI was fairly intuitive. An index finger and thumb pinch is the equivalent of “select,” a middle-finger and thumb pinch is “back,” and for scrolling, you make a fist and then use your thumb like it’s a mouse made of flesh and bone over the top of said fist. It’s a bit of Vision Pro and a bit of Quest 3, but with no hand-tracking needed. I won’t lie to you, it feels like a bit of magic when it works fluidly.

Personally, I still had some variability on inputs—you may have to try to input something once or twice before it registers—but I would say that it works well most of the time (at least much better than you’d expect for a literal first-of-its-kind device). I suspect the experience will only get more fluid over time, though, and even better once you really train yourself to navigate the UI properly. Not to mention the applications for the future! Meta is already planning to launch a handwriting feature, though it’s not available at launch. I got a firsthand look… kind of. I wasn’t able to use handwriting myself, but I watched a Meta rep use it, and it seemed to work, though I have no way of knowing how well until I use it for myself.

But enough about controls; let’s get to what you’re actually doing with them. I got to briefly experience pretty much everything that the Meta Ray-Ban Display have to offer, and that includes the gamut of phone-adjacent features. One of my favorites is taking pictures in a POV mode, which imposes a window on the glasses display that shows you what you’re taking a picture of right in the lens—finally, no guess and check when you’re snapping pics. Another “wow” moment here is the ability to pinch your fingers and tweak your wrist (like you’re turning a dial) to zoom in. It’s a subtle thing, but you feel like a wizard when you can control a camera by just waving your hands around.

Another standout feature is navigation, which imposes a map on the glasses display to show you where you’re going. Obviously, I was limited in testing how that feature works since I couldn’t wander off with the glasses in my demo, but the map was quite sharp and bright enough to be used outdoors (I did test this stuff in sunlight, and the 5,000 nits brightness was sufficient). Meta is leaving it up to you whether you use navigation while you’re in a vehicle or on a bike, but it will warn you of the dangers of looking at a screen if it detects that you’re moving quickly. It’s hard to say how distracting a HUD would be if you’re biking, and it’s something that I plan to eventually test in full.

Another interesting feature you might actually use is video calling, which pulls up a video of the person you’re calling in the bottom-right corner. The interesting part about this feature is that it’s POV for the person you’re calling, so they can see what you’re looking at. It’s not something that I’d do in any situation, since usually the person you’re calling wants to see you and not just what you’re looking at, but I can confirm that it works at least.

Speaking of just working, there’s also a live transcription feature that can listen in on your environment and superimpose what the other person is saying onto the display of the smart glasses. I had two thoughts when using this feature: the first one is that it could be a game-changer for accessibility. If your hearing is impaired, being able to actually see a live transcript could be hugely helpful. Secondly, such a feature could be great for translation, which is something that Meta has already thought of in this case. I didn’t get a chance to use the smart glasses for translating another language, but the potential is there.

One problem I foresee here, though, is that the smart glasses may pick up other conversations happening nearby. Meta thought of this too and said that the microphones in the Ray-Ban Display actually beamform to focus just on who you’re looking at, and I did get a chance to test that out. While one Meta rep spoke to me in the room, others had their own conversations at a fairly normal volume. The results? Kind of mixed. While the transcription focused mostly on the person I was looking at, it still picked up stray words here and there. This feels like a bit of an inevitability in loud scenarios, but who knows? Maybe beamforming and AI can fill in the gaps.

If you’re looking for a killer feature of Meta’s Ray-Ban Display smart glasses, I’m not sure there necessarily is one, but one thing I do know is that the coupling of the glasses with its Neural Band should be nothing short of a game-changer. Navigating the UI in smart glasses has been a constant issue in the space, and until now, I haven’t seen what I thought was a killer solution, but based on my early demos, I’d say that Meta’s “brain-reading” wristband could be the breakthrough we were waiting for—at least until hand or eye tracking at this scale becomes possible.

I’ll know more about how everything works when I get a chance to use Meta Ray-Ban Display on my own, but for now I’d say Meta is still clearly the frontrunner in the smart glasses race, and its head start just got pretty massive.

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September 18, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

How ‘Hollow Knight: Silksong’ Fans Turned Waiting for Its Release Into a Game

by admin September 3, 2025

Initially, Silksong was planned as downloadable content for the original game, before its creators expanded it into a full-fledged sequel. In August, when developers surprise announced that the game would launch in just two weeks, at least half a dozen other indie developers immediately delayed their own games to clear the way. “Dropping the GTA of indie games with 2 weeks notice makes everyone freak out,” wrote Demonschool developer Necrosoft on Bluesky on its delay.

Despite a seven-year development cycle, excitement for the game never died down. Reddit user The_Real_Kingsmould tells WIRED the community has “largely kept itself afloat with its insanity and the occasional crumb of news.” The posts, the jokes—it’s all “that feeling of being a part of something,” he says.

“When [there’s no news], everyone’s sad, and then everyone goes insane and starts spouting misinformation without batting an eye,” he says. “When there’s news it’s the happiest day of your life. There’s hype posts EVERYWHERE. All your hope in Team Cherry is restored.”

Over the years, the community has passed the time by role-playing with the game’s lore. There was the sacrifice era, where a handful of prominent users were chosen as “dreamers,” a nod to characters in Hollow Knight who traded the waking world for eternal sleep, and a Hollow Knight. These community members were then “sealed away”—banned from the subreddit, as it were—and are only allowed to return after the game launches.

Other memorable moments in the subreddit include a play on shapeshifter Nosk, one of the original game’s hidden bosses. Fans began pretending they’d encountered fake copies of Silksong around the world, granted to them by “Snosk,” a version of the bug with a copy of Silksong for a head. “Pretty fast there were a lot of PSA’s going around: do not approach or attempt to pick up any copy of Silksong outdoors, or one that isn’t yours,” The_Real_Kingsmould tells WIRED of the in-joke. “But there were also users trying to deny the existence of Snosks (having been “overtaken”), claiming the copies are safe and all you have to do is go outside.”

This particular campaign came to a head after moderators called for anti-snosk fan art to “banish the Snosks for good,” he says. People began pumping out art of the subreddit specifically, not the game, he says, until it was enough: “After a short while the Snosks were gone.”

The subreddit has built its own lore over the years. Even today, users in the subreddit have flair that gives them faction labels like doubter, denier, or “beleiver,” which is purposefully misspelled because “”there is no lie in be[lie]ving.”

Stark says Silksong is fertile ground for role-playing fans because the game’s lore is so deep. “Hollow Knight on the surface kind of reads like a [Dark Souls] game, because the lore is a bit inscrutable until you get really deep into it,” she says. “It sometimes talks in riddles. It takes a long time to get to all of the pieces, and sometimes the pieces really rely on the player’s interpretation.”

The fan communities are no different. “Subreddit users together have created their own interpretations from these pieces of lore that are strange and playing in layers,” Stark says.

With Silksong’s global release imminent across Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, PS4/PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC the communities will soon shift their attention from waiting to playing.

If the game is as dense as Hollow Knight, there will be months, if not years, of discoveries and theories for fans to tear through on Reddit. Others will enter new chapters of their own lives.

Araraura’s time tracking Silksong news with YouTube updates is coming to an end. He’ll shut down the YouTube channel: “nothing to look forward to anymore, so no new videos,” he says. He feels wistful at times about that, after getting so used to uploading videos to the channel, but ready. “I think I’ve finally made peace with that,” he says. “Now I’m just really really excited for Silksong.”

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September 3, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

77 suitors pile into Hong Kong’s stablecoin waiting game

by admin September 1, 2025

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s call for stablecoin issuers has triggered a modern-day gold rush, with 77 diverse firms staking a claim. However, the regulator has embarked on a deliberate winnowing process designed to separate truly viable projects from mere aspirants in a bid to ensure market stability.

Summary

Hong Kong Monetary Authority received 77 expressions of interest for stablecoin licenses by August 31.
Applicants include banks, fintech firms, asset managers, Web3 startups, and state-owned enterprises.
No licenses will be issued until 2025 as regulators carefully vet submissions.

According to a September 1 local report by The Standard, the HKMA confirmed it received 77 expressions of interest for its upcoming stablecoin issuer licensing regime by the August 31 deadline.

The applicant pool is not just the usual crypto suspects; it is a broad consortium of traditional banks, major payment processors, asset managers, and even Web3 startups, all vying for a seat at the table.

In a move that underscores the sensitivity of the process, the regulator immediately clamped down on speculation, refusing to name any applicants and bluntly stating that an expression of interest is merely a first step, far from a guarantee of approval.

Big names circle the stablecoin gate

While the HKMA maintains a tight lid on the official list of applicants, previous reporting points to a roster of heavy hitters. The interest ranges from global banking institutions like Standard Chartered to fintech behemoths such as Ant Group.

Perhaps most telling is the involvement of state-owned enterprises like the energy giant PetroChina, which has publicly disclosed feasibility studies on using stablecoins for cross-border settlements. This diverse field underscores a critical point: the race is not just about crypto-native firms; it is about who will control the next evolution of digital payment infrastructure for international trade.

Despite this rush of interest, Hong Kong’s licensing pipeline has been effectively frozen. The Stablecoin Ordinance took effect on Aug. 1, yet the HKMA has already cautioned that approvals are unlikely until sometime in 2025.

Deputy CEO Darryl Chan Wai-man has publicly attributed this timeline to the “heavy workload” of vetting the complex applications, a task he described as requiring immense due diligence.

The authority appears to be methodically sifting through the 77 expressions of interest, a process designed to be a stringent filter, with the goal being to ensure that the first entities to receive a license are not only technically proficient but also possess bulletproof reserve backing, impeccable anti-money laundering protocols, and operational resilience.

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September 1, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Vietnam Is The Jungle Military Sim Fans Have Been Waiting For

by admin August 22, 2025

Hell Let Loose: Vietnam was on at least one fan’s Gamescom 2025 bingo card. “Hear me out: ‘Hell let loose Vietnam,’” they wrote on the Hell Let Loose subreddit at the start of 2025. Now that fan has fished their wish, as the game’s announcement trailer delivers the sequel that Battlefield players are still waiting for.

Set during the years of the Vietnam War, between 1965 and 1973, the next Hell Let Loose will be a big departure from the first game’s WWII battlefields in Europe. In addition to the shift to dense jungle terrain, Vietnam will also feature aerial vehicles with players ferrying supplies by helicopter between camps, as well as river patrols by boat. North Vietnamese forces, meanwhile, will have access to sprawling networks of tunnels for bypassing enemy patrols and launching ambushes.

It’s set to come to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC sometime in 2026, with the publisher promising that both the new and existing games will continue to be maintained and updated alongside one another. Here’s the trailer:

Hell Let Loose blew up on Steam when it launched in 2021 despite being borne of a Kickstarter project years earlier by Australian studio Black Matter. Unlike recent battle royale free-for-alls or modern Call of Duty-style deathmatches, Hell Let Loose leans into the military simulation genre with 50v50 battles, in which players designated as officers share commands over priority voice channels and victory requires prioritizing communication and coordination over individual KDA ratio heroics.

Hell Let Loose: Vietnam won’t replace the original

The new game will introduce six maps at the start focusing on key moments in the war like Operation Starlite and Operation Piranha. It will also transition the franchise to Unreal Engine 5, hopefully with all of the visual bells-and-whistles that allows and none of the PC performance issues we’ve seen so frequently in other games. But even while this entirely new campaign is being built out across multiple game modes, the developers swear post-launch support for the original Hell Let Loose will continue.

“Our World War Two-based Hell Let Loose is incredibly important to us and our players. We can reassure you all that Team17 remains fully committed to the franchise,” they write in an FAQ. “To bring Hell Let Loose: Vietnam to life, Expression have built a second team in order to support both titles simultaneously. One game will never come at the expense of the other. Our focus remains on growing and improving both experiences for our players.”

Black Matter sold the franchise to Team17 a year after it came out and is currently working on an extraction RPG set in the plague-ravaged Napoleonic era called Hunger, so Hell Let Loose: Vietnam will be developed from the ground up by a completely separate team. We’ll see how the formula fairs and whether the sequel can live up to its premise. If you’re interested in checking out Hell Let Loose for yourself, it’s currently available on Game Pass on both console and PC. The game continues to get new updates with a March road map pointing to additional maps, vehicles, and cosmetics coming in the future.

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August 22, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Billions in Ethereum Waiting to Be Unstaked Could Add Sell Pressure to ETH: Analyst

by admin August 17, 2025

In brief

A growing queue to unstake ETH could put sell pressure on Ethereum, according to a Bitwise analyst.
Ethereum’s validator exit queue hit 855,158 ETH worth roughly $3.7 billion on Friday.
Ethereum’s price dipped more than 3% on Friday, shortly after the token nearly hit a new all-time high.

Ethereum holders are increasingly lining up to unstake their tokens, a trend that could put significant sell pressure on the cryptocurrency, according to one crypto expert.

The Ethereum blockchain’s validator exit queue hit 855,158 ETH on Friday—the highest it’s ever been, according to validatorqueue.com. The tokens were worth a combined $3.7 billion as of late Friday, according to data provider CoinGecko.

Staking is a process by which digital asset holders lock up their tokens to secure a blockchain network and earn rewards. Stakers may choose to unlock and reclaim their crypto amid uncertain market conditions, transferring them to comparatively risk-off assets or cashing out.

The Ethereum networks limits the amount of ETH that can be unstaked at a given time. The limit is designed to maintain network stability by preventing mass validator exits, which could disrupt the blockchain’s consensus mechanism. Currently, the queue is expected to take 15 days to clear.

The mounting queue of soon-to-be-unstaked ETH could be driving the asset’s recent retracement, Bitwise Senior Investment Strategist Juan Leon told Decrypt. The second-largest crypto asset by market cap has shed hundreds of dollars in recent days after coming close to setting a new all-time high mark.

The unstaked Ethereum queue could negatively affect ETH’s price, particularly if staked ETH trades at a discount to ETH, he explained.

“Tokens like stETH can trade at a discount. That discount reduces their value as collateral, triggering risk cuts, hedges, or even liquidations that lead to spot ETH selling,” Leon said.

He added that some trades may unwind as the unstaking queue grows, particularly if the cost to borrow ETH spikes.

When that occurs, “leveraged ‘stETH loop’ trades via liquidity pools on DeFi protocols stop being profitable,” Leon said. “Traders unwind by exiting positions and selling ETH to repay loans, creating synchronized sell pressure.”

Growing efforts to unstake ETH came shortly after the token on Thursday came within striking distance of its record price of $4,878 hit in November 2021, per data from CoinGecko. Since then, the altcoin has retraced its gains, weighed down by growing geopolitical uncertainty and a hotter-than-expected producer-price-index report from the U.S.

Despite concerns about Ethereum’s validator exit queue, Leon cautioned that a rise in ETH waiting to be unstaked doesn’t necessarily signal that the token’s price will continue to edge down.

“Unstaking doesn’t usually cause a sudden crash, but under stress it can act like a steady tap of new supply,” he said, “pressuring prices lower if it overwhelms new demand for ETH.”

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August 17, 2025 0 comments