Leading French esports organization Team Vitality has announced the signing of Neia, one of the most promising young talents in Tekken 8, as part of its Fighting Games division.

Following a breakthrough 2025 season and a standout showing at EVO Nice, the 16-year-old phenom has committed to representing Team Vitality for the next two competitive seasons.

Neia now joins an elite lineup within Team Vitality, training alongside renowned Tekken players Jeondding and KingReyJr, as well as the H-DOPE and K-TOPE duo CientifiKOF in Fatal Fury. The signing underlines Team Vitality’s continued ambition to nurture emerging talent while strengthening its presence across the fighting game ecosystem.

A breakout year for a rising Tekken star

Despite her young age, Neia has rapidly established herself as one of France’s most exciting Tekken prospects. Known for her mastery of Lili, she stands out for her aggressive playstyle, creative decision-making, and strong technical execution.

Her rise began on June 8, 2025, during a Kayane Session hosted at V.Hive, Team Vitality’s Paris headquarters. Spotted by French champion and content creator Kayane, Neia impressed immediately by defeating several high-level players, including a professional competitor — a performance that sparked widespread attention within the community.

Strong results on the international stage

Neia’s momentum continued throughout 2025:

• 13th place at Ultimate Fighting Arena (UFA) Paris in September
• 17th place at EVO Nice in October while representing French club BMS, eliminating top international players such as Tibetano
• 4th place at Galaxian Explosion in December, defeating Jodd in the top eight — her best result to date

These performances confirmed her status as a breakout Tekken 8 talent with significant international potential.

The next chapter in yellow and black

For the 2026 season, Neia has chosen to continue her competitive journey with Team Vitality, benefitting from world-class coaching, infrastructure, and performance support. Her next major milestones include Tekken World Tour Sweden (January 2026) and EVO Japan (May 2026).

Team Vitality’s commitment to talent development

As a major force in European esports, Team Vitality places player development at the heart of its strategy. By joining the organization, Neia will train in a high-performance environment alongside seasoned professionals, accelerating her growth on the international fighting game circuit.

Fabien “Neo” Devide, President and Co-Founder of Team Vitality, commented: “We are delighted to welcome Neia to Team Vitality. Her potential, seriousness, and determination fully reflect the club’s mindset. Alongside her mentor Kayane, we are proud to support her in this new phase and confident she will find the ideal conditions to thrive with our fighting game players.”

With Neia’s arrival, Team Vitality strengthens its Fighting Games roster while reinforcing its role in shaping the next generation of esports champions.

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QTech Games, the leading game aggregator for emerging markets, has announced another progressive partnership with emerging force supplier, Orbital Gaming – a cutting-edge casino game development studio, focused on delivering innovative content that blends creativity, fairness, and technical precision.

Integrating content from such a forward-thinking studio, whose portfolio already boasts over 20 games, adds yet more creative muscle to QTech Games’ burgeoning platform, which is taking the widest range of online games to emerging territories with established names, such as Evolution and Blueprint Gaming, sitting alongside the industry’s most exciting up-and-coming providers. The games made available to QTech partners via the deal are comprised of Orbital’s trademark Original PF (Provably Fair) content, with all games designed in-house from the ground up. Every game features custom-built math models, modern mechanics, and striking visual styles that keep players engaged and entertained across crash games, slots, and fast-paced instant-win formats. All titles are lightweight, and optimized for seamless performance across emerging markets, guarding against technological barriers to engagement, such as handset-quality limitations, restricted access to fast networks, or high data costs.

Valerian Chanchibadze, CEO of Orbital Gaming: “Teaming up with QTech represents a fantastic opportunity to strengthen our product distribution across emerging territories and deliver our great games to a range of top-tier partners. This deal immediately improves our reach across emerging territories, and we can’t wait to watch how our titles capture the imaginations of a swathe of new players across emerging markets.”

Philip Doftvik, QTech Games’ CEO, said: “Orbital Gaming instantly took our eye, thanks to their flair for crafting simplicity out of complexity, alongside elevating top-class game design. These are values we share. We look forward to seeing how these games perform across a spread of new markets for Orbital – showcasing their fresh, engaging content to a growing network of players, and generating more revenues for our partners.”

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The global results of the Blask Awards 2025 mark a decisive shift in how leadership is defined in the iGaming industry. Instead of juries, submissions or sponsorship packages, the awards rely entirely on data, measuring real demand, competitive strength and scalable performance across regulated markets worldwide.

At the center of this year’s global rankings stands Betano, which emerged as the most consistently dominant licensed operator across multiple continents. But the broader picture is more complex: a market where leadership fragments by region, speed of growth matters as much as scale, and games increasingly outperform brands in cross-border reach.

“Data is the jury,” said Max Tesla, co-founder and CEO of Blask. “In Blask Awards, brands don’t compete with those who submitted a form, they compete with the entire market”

Global operator rankings

Across worldwide categories, Betano claimed a commanding share of top honors:

• Leader of the Blask Year, awarded to the operator with the highest total number of Blask Awards in 2025
• Top CEB Performer, recognizing the strongest aggregate revenue baseline across regulated markets
• Blask Index Leader, reflecting the highest cumulative demand across licensed geographies
• Demand Surge of the Year, for the single largest 30-day demand increase recorded globally

Other global distinctions highlight how varied leadership has become:

• Fastest-Growing Brand: MrQ, posting the strongest year-over-year growth in demand
• Baseline Breakout: LakiWin, delivering the fastest increase in revenue baseline
• Top #1 Footprint: betPawa, holding the largest number of #1 market positions globally
• The Monopolist: Singapore Pools, achieving the single highest market power concentration in a regulated market

Together, the results show that global leadership is no longer defined by size alone. Momentum, efficiency and consistency increasingly matter as much as footprint.

Games and providers: global reach beats local borders

If operator leadership fragments by geography, games tell a different story.

In provider and game categories, Pragmatic Play dominated the global rankings, driven by the extraordinary reach of Gates of Olympus 1000, which won: Operator Footprint Champion, Lobby Legend, Slot of the Year

Pragmatic Play also secured Largest Catalog Provider and Full-Shelf Takeover, reflecting unmatched breadth and distribution.

Other game-level winners highlight emerging dynamics:

• Game Demand Leader: Chicken Road by InOut Games
• Breakout Game of the Year: Roulette European by 7777 gaming
  Crash Game of the Year: Aviator by Spribe

Unlike operators, games increasingly scale globally, with player preferences converging across continents.

A different kind of award — and a long-term play

Blask Awards operate without applications, fees, sponsorships or jury voting. Winners are identified algorithmically, using Blask’s proprietary metrics — including Blask Index, BAP and CEB — across regulated markets only.

“This isn’t about trophies,” Tesla said. “It’s about creating a shared, verifiable language for the industry: one where anyone can open the data and see why a brand won. We’re not stopping here. Each year, the coverage gets wider, the benchmarks sharper, and the comparison fairer.”

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