BuildKit Brief — Gaming & Tech — July 31, 2026

Path of Exile 2 ExileCon Qualifiers Begin Next Week

It's finally happening! The ExileCon Path of Exile 2 Qualifiers kick off next week, culminating in a live final where the top racers from all four qualifier events will compete for the championship title in New Zealand.

• Qualifier One - August 6 2PM PDT
• Qualifier Two - August 13 2PM PDT
• Qualifier Three - August 20 2PM PDT
• Qualifier Four - August 27 2PM PDT
• Flights to Auckland, New Zealand for the weekend of ExileCon
• Accommodation in Auckland for the weekend of ExileCon

New Unique - The Draugur’s Lantern

If setting things alight is your specialty, The Draugur’s Lantern has you covered. Check out this new unique item coming in 3.29.1.[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5193306/213a933dcd5b7bd2bdfc5a0f66e3960fa251a2bc.png"]

What We're Working On - Curse of the Allflame

Over the weekend, we launched Path of Exile 1: Curse of the Allflame, and it's been fantastic to see so many of you plunging in to explore everything the expansion has to offer.As with any major launch, we've been closely monitoring your feedback and the game's performance.

• You will no longer need to collect upgrade pieces for Vesper to enable Diviner, Arcanist or Operative strongboxes spawning in Charts and Voyages; they will n…
• Various lower value objects will no longer be pointed to by Allflame Lantern indicators, such as soothing coral and crab nests.
• Crab nests will be made far less common.
• Currency, Scarab, Stacked Deck and Map chests will be made much more common as scattered objects in Charts and Voyages, more so than just the comparative gai…
• Golden Lanterns will also grant increased Quantity of items dropped by slain monsters.Dead End and Straight Line charts will be made less common than other t…
• There will be between 20 and 40% more scattered lootable objects for Lanterns to point to in Charts and Voyages, depending on the specific Charts used.Quanti…

League check: Allflame is live

Current PoE1 challenge league: **Allflame**. Started Jul 24, 2026.

Introducing the Path of Exile 1: Curse of the Allflame Mystery Box

We've just released the Curse of the Allflame Mystery Box, a new mystery box with no duplicate microtransactions! There are 56 microtransactions (including variations) that you can find in the Curse of the Allflame Mystery Box.

Counter-Strike 2 Update

The Ranked Series stickers are now available for purchase. 50% of royalties are shared with players, teams, and the tournament organizer. Items in the the Cologne 2026 Shop will be available for purchase until September 29th.

• The Ranked Series stickers are now available for purchase. 50% of royalties are shared with players, teams, and the tournament organizer.
• Items in the the Cologne 2026 Shop will be available for purchase until September 29th.
• Fixed a bug where scripts would fail to load in tools mode until a manual recompile.
• Updated to the latest version from the Community Workshop (Update Notes)
• Updated to the latest version from the Community Workshop (Update Notes)
• Updated to the latest version from the Community Workshop (Update Notes)

Cologne 2026: Ranked Series

Today we're shipping the Ranked Series of Cologne 2026 Major stickers--new stickers that indicate a team's final standing in the design. As with all items in the Cologne 2026 Shop, 50% of the royalties support the teams, players and tournament organizer.

Matchmaking Update

This update includes a revamp to how the matchmaking system works, as well as the introduction of a new matchmaking mode. You can now choose to play in Standard Mode (unranked), or the new Ranked Mode introduced in this update.

Minor Update - 07-28-2026

- Stamina bucket 3 heroes (slowest) have their ground dash time increased from 0.7s to 0.72s and air dash time from 0.49s to 0.51s- The Orb Spawners in base that give 10 souls on hit now split to nearby players on expire- Fixed the party member / team mate audio volume slider for voice…

Valve finally gives Deadlock a proper ranked mode, warns that matches will be 'very rocky' to start

fter much anticipation, Valve has finally given Deadlock a proper ranked mode , and with it comes a major overhaul to how the game balances each match—a substantial enough change that might make playing it a little chaotic for the next few weeks... Read more.

Beta Patch Notes - v0.110.0

Another beta patch just dropped! This one contains a host of balance changes and reworks. Notably, Mirage and Pillar of Creation have been reverted back to their pre-0.109.0 versions and have also been slightly buffed and nerfed, respectively.

• Buffed Neow's Abundance card:
• Now always creates Upgraded powers
• Upgrade changed to lower Energy cost by 1
• Reworked Tezcatara's Toasty Mittens relic: "At the start of your turn, Exhaust the top card of your Draw Pile and gain 1 Strength." -> "At the start of your…
• Buffed Tezcatara's Seal of Gold relic: Gold loss decreased from 5 -> 3
• Changed Nonupeipe's Beautiful Bracelet relic:

Beta Hotfix Patch Notes - v0.109.1

Got a tiny patch today with one important hotfix for players playing in Traditional Chinese! BUG FIXES: Synced corrected Traditional Chinese translations to fix broken plural evaluation

• Synced corrected Traditional Chinese translations to fix broken plural evaluation

The Neowsletter - July 2026

The July Neowsletter is here, Slayers! Last month we bid farewell to the Doormaker, but you know what they say: when one door closes... a giant floating hourglass creature appears!

HOI IV Dev Corner - Military Production

Hello, I am Zwirbaum, Game Designer for Hearts of Iron, and it is once again the unfortunate for you my time in the dev corner spotlight. Anyways, without further ado, let’s get started with today’s topic - Military Production.

• Military Production operates on an abstracted pool of the factories, which means that you can always re-assign your factories to produce something that you n…
• All Factories are pretty much equal to each other, and they can build whatever they want and whatever they like. - Do you like that universal system of produ…
• How does physical location influence your decision of building the factories? Does it matter whether you place them closer to your enemies or are you trying…

HOI IV Dev Corner | Civilian Economy & Consumer Goods

Hello, I am Zwirbaum, Game Designer for Hearts of Iron, and uncharacteristically for me, instead of writing an entire wall of text, I am just going to ask a couple of questions that are very much tied to the ‘Economy’ side of the gameplay.

• How do you feel about the ‘Civilian Economy’ that currently exists within the game - as in anything that relates to the building construction, using civilian…
• What and how do you feel about the Consumer Goods as they are right now? - Do you think it does fulfill its role, narratively, and in gameplay terms? - Do yo…
• What do you think about current Economic Laws? - Do you like them,and their effects? - Do you like the fact that higher mobilization is (ALMOST) always a bet…
• Start appearing closer to release
• Give you more detailed insight into content that’s more or less finished and is being polished
• Will generally include a plethora of images and screenshots

HOI IV Creator Interviews with Leadership

Generals! High Command is aware that certain war correspondents have, in recent days, taken it upon themselves to question senior staff.