4Stack #15 — answers & breakdown
Tuesday, July 28, 2026
A board about who owns what, with a purple group about where things came from instead. The two ideas fight each other on purpose.
The sixteen cards in this puzzle were: Portal, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Half-Life: Alyx, Warcraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Fall Guys, Rocket League, Unreal Tournament, Infinity Blade, Counter-Strike, Dota, DayZ, Garry's Mod.
The four stacks
Valve games
Portal, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Half-Life: Alyx
Valve's own catalogue. Half-Life: Alyx is the 2020 VR entry and still the most expensive argument anyone has made for the format.
Blizzard games
Warcraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm
Blizzard. Heroes of the Storm is the one that quietly wound down rather than shut down outright.
Owned by Epic Games
Fall Guys, Rocket League, Unreal Tournament, Infinity Blade
Owned by Epic Games, though only two were made there — Fall Guys and Rocket League arrived by acquisition, in 2021 and 2019 respectively.
Started as mods
Counter-Strike, Dota, DayZ, Garry's Mod
Started life as mods. This is the group that breaks a publisher-based sort: Counter-Strike and Dota are both Valve properties now, and Garry's Mod runs on Valve's Source engine, so three of these four would scatter into yellow if you sorted by owner.
Want to try it yourself? Play puzzle #15 — archive plays don't affect your streak. Or jump into today's puzzle.