OWN Valencia, and another year of the degree done

Two things closed at once this month, so let me write them down before they blur together.

OWN Valencia

Right after Padel World Summit, we took Padel Rivals to OWN Valencia 2026, the biggest gaming and esports festival in Spain. Three days at Feria València, at the Valencia Game City stand, with the demo running nonstop.

It went really well. Honestly, better than I let myself expect. The stand was full the entire time, with actual queues to play. And here is the detail I keep telling people: matches were set to best of three sets, and people got so into it that they stayed at the controller for over an hour finishing whole matches, while a line built up behind them. So we patched the game live, on the show floor, and added a single set mode so more people could get their turn.

The part that actually fills me up is not the numbers. It is watching people play. Watching them laugh, shout, groan when the ball goes a hair wide, celebrate when a smash lands. Seeing that the game is fun, that it transmits exactly what we set out to build, is the whole reason I got into this.

On the first day I also did a pitch on one of the stages, alongside other teams from the acceleration program, and there was a networking event where I met some genuinely useful people and other founders in the space. Good contacts, some of which are already turning into conversations.

One thing I was nervous about: OWN is a general gaming festival, not a padel event. Would a non padel crowd care? Turns out a surprisingly high share of visitors actually play padel and were thrilled to finally see a game about it, and the ones who had never held a paddle loved it just as much. That is the best possible signal for an arcade game. And OWN itself was a great festival: tournaments, cosplay, dance battles, food, music, the works.

Another year of the degree

The quieter win: I finished another year of my Video Game Design and Development degree. Between running the studio, client work and a game that keeps eating my calendar, keeping the degree moving is its own small battle. Another year down.

I have said before I am not going to rush it like I did the first stretch. Slow and steady from here. But closing a course while the game is getting this kind of reaction on the show floor feels like both halves of my life are, for once, pointing the same way.

What's next

Head down. Take everything we learned at OWN back into the build, and keep pushing Padel Rivals toward early access.

If you want to help: wishlist Padel Rivals on Steam. Still the single most useful thing anyone can do for the project right now.

Back to work.