I haven't had much of a chance to watch anything from HiveFest, but what has been interesting to note is the lack of hype around it.
Few years ago I really wanted to attend HiveFest. I even made this piece as an entry for some possible contest:
At that point I believed that attending HiveFest would change my life. But now when I no longer have any intention of going to HiveFest all the hype has died out for me.
Have a look at Splinterlands as an example, where just yesterday they announced more layoffs from the team in order to cut costs.
One of my favorite game developers Bioware are also firing a lot of key people. At this point they are a shell of their former selves. I hope that this will not happen to Splinterlands.
Unfortunately, a lot of the gaming companies aren't necessarily good at managing their business model. When times are good they spend, when times are bad, they fire. They need a more healthy process, but if they are based in the US, it is cheap to fire people.