Slush talks on a side stage in a shopping mall.

The DeanBeat: Helsinki is still a hotbed for mobile games and tech

This week, I found myself at a party at Löyly, a sauna and bar at the edge of the Baltic Sea in Helsinki, Finland. A loud party was going on around me, but I found myself in a conversation with Samuli Syvähuoko, who had just come out of the sauna and was wrapped in just a white towel. It was an interesting and very odd part of Slush, the tech conference that now draws more than 25,000 people — including 2,000 global investors — to Helsinki.

The chairman of Sisu Game Ventures and founder of Remedy Entertainment talked about how he was so excited about cloud gaming and how it will sweep through the games industry in the next five years. He has started seven companies and invested in 47 of them, and he is chairman of Mainframe Industries, a new online games company.

Unlock premium content and VIP community perks with GB M A X! Join now to enjoy our free and premium perks. 

Join now →

Sign in to your account.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.