I will say that they noted this came out of DreamHack which is a fairly massive conference that happens one town over from Huskvarna in Jönköping. I do think it’s cool that they get involved in the DreamHack festivities. I haven’t been to any DreamHacks but from talking to my Swedish friends who have been to the Jönköping one and my brothers who help run the American ones every year it seems like the festivities at the Jönköping one have decidedly more hackery stuff like this vs the American ones which seem to focus more on the gaming aspect. Maybe someone who has been to the events can confirm though.
I actually were there for the last summer edition (DreamHack Summer 2023) as I just happened to be visiting Sweden at that time, so we went there with my younger niece who enjoyed it a lot. Although he mostly played games he already had at home, he just wanted to show how good he was at those games, but for him and his generation DreamHack is 100% about the gaming.
Compared to how I remember it was when I was younger (first DreamHack must have been 2006 I think), I felt like it was very commercialized already with almost zero non-gaming booths or companies there, besides some state organizations like the police and military. DreamHack always had a huge focus on gaming, it is mostly a gaming event after all, but I seem to recall more hackery and nerdery outside of gaming back then compared to now.
Not sure how the situation is now at DreamHack, but when we were there as teenagers the best part was the huge DC++ hubs with unheard amount of bandwidth as it's all local. It was at DreamHack I first got exposed to the world of 3D animation and graphics, as I came across a cracked version of 3DS Max 9 from some user. Rest of my time at the party was spent trying to figure out how it worked.
Buying and selling hardware was also a common theme for some of my friends, starting with something like a mousepad and competing who can have the coolest thing at the end of the event, after trading up from the mousepad.
But then I don't know how the US edition is, so hard to compare really.
(By the way, I think "fairly massive" is an understatement, as far as I know, it's still the world's largest bring-your-own-computer LAN party)
