GamesIndustry

UK games companies have just one month left to enter the GamesIndustry.biz Best Places To Work Awards 2023.

The deadline for all submissions is Friday, August 25th for the UK. Those in the US have a little longer (Friday, September 8th), and Canada participants have until Friday, September 22nd.

The UK winners will be revealed at a ceremony on September 27th at BAFTA's HQ. It will be the conclusion of our HR Summit, which you can find out more about here.

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Pikmin 4 has taken the top spot in the weekly UK physical charts.

The latest mainline entry in the Pikmin franchise sold 45% more than Pikmin 3: Deluxe did in October 2020, GfK reported.

Pikmin 4 has been well received since launch, with many critics praising its quality of life improvements and new features.

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There's a regular joke in our household whenever anyone mentions eggs.

It stems from a UK TV ad from 12 years ago. In it, a man comes back from the shop and his partner says: "Good, you're back with the eggs." He looks mortified and replies: "Oh, you said eggs." The partner (played by Aisling Bea, for fans of British comedy) looks confused: "Yeah." He opens his shopping bag to reveal a video game. "I thought you said Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3."

To this day, whenever anyone in our house talks about eating eggs, someone will reply: Why would you want to eat Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3? We are nothing if not hilarious.

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Belgium's tax incentive for the games industry was officially approved by the European Commision today.

Already in place for the AV industry since 2003 and performing arts since 2017, the Belgian Tax Shelter will now include game productions as well.

The idea is to encourage games development in Belgium, with the tax incentive open to Belgian productions, and co-productions meeting the qualifying criteria.

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The ESRB has proposed that the FTC greenlight facial age estimation technology as a method of verification.

In collaboration with digital identity firm Yoti, Epic Games subsidiary and software company SuperAwesome, the proposal claims that the Privacy-Protective Facial Age Estimation is said to accurately determine a person's age.

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Tencent is poised to become a majority shareholder of games firm Techland.

In the announcement, the company said it will retain ownership of its IPs and maintain creative freedom.

Additionally, Techland CEO Pawel Marchewka said he will remain in his position.

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The recent release of Pikmin 4 has been highly awaited among fans of new and old, with many relishing in the idea of collecting trinkets and admiring cute creatures.

Since its debut on the GameCube in 2001, the Pikmin franchise has spawned four main title games and two spin-offs. Pikmin 4 has been in the works since 2015, and the wait has certainly paid off. At the time of writing, the game has a Metacritic score of 87 out of 74 reviews, matching that of its predecessor Pikmin 3, released on the Wii U in 2013.

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We've extended the deadline on the UK games industry salary benchmarking programme following a surge in demand.

Now almost 40 UK companies have signed up to the pilot programme, which is designed to help business leaders pay their teams fairly and retain talent.

The jump in participants means that the deadline is now until Friday, August 11th, to give these companies a chance to supply their data.

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Many businesses define sustainability as ecological. In 2021, we invited panellists to talk about ways in which game studios and publishers can be more sustainable, for example by reducing their carbon footprint and raising awareness for climate change among their audiences.

At gaming marketing agency Yrs Truly, sustainability takes on other forms besides, in order to show that truly every company in the gaming industry can be sustainable, whether they produce physical goods or not.

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John Gibson, a long-serving programmer in the UK games industry, has died.

Time Extension collected various Twitter tributes to Gibson from colleagues and friends, who celebrated the UK veteran's career.

Gibson began working in the games industry at Liverpool-based studio Imagine Software, working on 1983's Molar Maul. He became one of Imagine's key team members, programming titles such as Zzoom and Stonkers.

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New mobile studio Closing Theory has raised $2.3 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz.

As reported by Pocket Gamer, the Austin-based company was co-founded by CEO Ankith Harathi (formerly head of growth at Gamer Sensei) and CTO Nitin Rajinikanth (previously software engineer at virtual meeting solution Mmhmm, where Harathi was also product lead).

Powerhouse Capital and Proletariat founder Seth Sivak (now VP of development at Blizzard since the firm acquired Proletariat last year) also contributed to the funding round, among others.

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The Premier League has announced a new partnership extension with EA Sports FC.

The multi-year deal will have the association's clubs, players, stadiums, and managers represented in EA Sports FC titles.

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Borderlands' film adaptation will hit theatres on August, 9, 2024.

The release date was revealed by Deadline, which noted that the screenplay was co-written by Eli Roth (of Hostel and Cabin Fever fame) and Joe Crombie.

It's unclear who Crombie is — reports emerged that it's a pseudonym used by Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin (also co-creator of the Last of Us TV adaptation), but this was debunked by Variety, who talked to Mazin directly.

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76.1 million console and PC games were sold across Europe during the first half of the year, which is marginally up over the same period in 2022.

The UK was the biggest European market for game sales, representing 15.3 million games sold, a rise of 5.5% over the same period in 2022. This is followed by Germany with 14 million games sold (down 11%) and then France with 11.1 million sales (up 8%). Spain delivered 5.4 million game sales (up 6.8%), while Italy is just behind with 4.9 million (up 2.7%).

Overall 29.1 million physical games were sold across Europe, a drop of 9% year-on-year. 47 million games were sold via digital download stores, which is a rise of 7%.

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Roblox has experienced a significant data breach, containing nearly 4,000 developer profiles.

As reported by PC Gamer, the personal information included those who attended the Roblox Developer Conference between 2017 to 2020.

According to Have I Been Pwned (a website reporting data breaches), the breach originally took place in December 2020 and the information was republished on a forum in July 2023.

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One peculiar aspect of Microsoft's battle to stave off regulatory intervention in its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard – now seemingly in its final stretch, following the slapping down of the FTC's frankly ill-conceived case for blocking the deal – is that it has required the second largest company ever to exist, a $2.7 trillion dollar behemoth that rakes in profits of over $80 billion every year, to convincingly play an underdog role.

To that end, Microsoft has done something platform holders almost never do, effectively talking down its competitive position versus rivals like Sony, and highlighting the ongoing gulf in the performance of the Xbox compared to the PlayStation.

It's not that this is anything we didn't really know before – although it's generally been de rigueur to at least pay lip-service to the notion that these platforms are equal competitors, however unrealistic that may have been at any point other than the Xbox' golden few years at the outset of the PS3/360 generation – it's just been an odd reversal to see it come directly from Microsoft itself.

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A free short webinar from GamesIndustry.biz and EGX will discuss the state of live events and their further evolution in helping games companies build, support and maintain communities.

Games companies can sign-up for the webinar here. It takes place Thursday, July 27 at 3pm BST.

The session will detail how EGX is changing. To better work with game communities, the UK's biggest games consumer show is developing new elements and creating new partnerships to engage the most dedicated fans. From cosplay to retro, live panels to meets and greets, photo opps, community meet-ups, competitions, tournaments and more, hear from the EGX and ReedPop teams to discover:

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Bandai Namco has announced that it will be shuttering the free-to-play title Gundam Evolution.

The game based on the robot media franchise will go offline on November 29.

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Organization Games for Change has announced the winners of its 2023 awards.

This year's recipients were Free Lives' Terra Nil for Most Innovative and Howard Delafield International's Go, Nisha, Go: My Life My Choice, who took home the Best Learning Game recognition.

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Ubisoft has said that its Q1 results is ahead of target while net sales are down 9% year-on-year. The Assassin's Creed maker's new financial report also highlighted that net bookings, while down 8% overall, was strong for its Tom Clancy Rainbow Six Siege during the period.

Here's what you need to know for the three months ended June 30.

Ubisoft said that Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six's net bookings and daily active users had grown due to its new seasonal content. While The Crew 2 saw an increase in its monthly active users during June.

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Shortly after Yu-Gi-Oh became a serial anime inspired by the late Kazuki Takahashi's manga, it spurred on an official card game and video game franchise. With each iteration of the animated series, the card game has seen new cards, and the video games have continued in their own way.

Now 25 years later, Konami's digital card game is one of its most popular series. GamesIndustry.biz sat down with senior Konami developers behind the Yu-Gi-Oh games to discuss their commercial success over the years.

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Games are inherently designed to be replayed, from the 'one more go' mentality of the arcades to the persistent loops of modern live service games. However, what makes a game replayable from a design perspective can often be diametrically opposed to narrative.

"As a narrative person, I'm not interested in compulsion loops," said Inkle co-founder and narrative director Jon Ingold during his Develop Brighton keynote last week. "I'm not interested in attention sinks, these are all things which make people turn their brains off, and the point of narrative is to turn your brain on."

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The Government of India has clarified that online games played without stakes will continue to be taxed at 18%.

Last week, the Indian Goods and Service Tax Council increased the tax on real money games to 28%. Several media outlets, including GamesIndustry.biz, erroneously reported that this would apply to all online games.

Our article was removed after the misinformation was brought to our attention.

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Gaming moderation platform GGWP has raised $10 million in funding towards its AI tools.

This new funding round was led by Samsung Ventures and SK Telecom Ventures.

GGWP's platform just launched, after a year of testing with a dozen developers.

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Screen Australia has announced the latest beneficiaries of its funds, amounting to AU$3 million (over $2 million) in funding for 23 studios.

The body's First Nations Games Studio fund awarded AU$600,000 (over $400,000) to two studios.

Half of the amount will go to Guck, a Victoria-based, First Peoples-led studio currently working on Aboriginal-led mobile game Future Folklore. The other half will go to Awesome Black, which describes itself as a "creative social enterprise developing original First Nations talent and unique storytelling content," working on games, but also on music, literature, digital art, and more.

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Roblox announced plans to build tools for developers to create subscriptions within their experiences.

In a blog post from VP of economy Enrico D’Angelo published on July 18, he outlined that subscriptions "would help creators establish a recurring economic relationship with their users and potentially increase the predictability of their earnings."

These tools "will ensure users have a steady flow of content that's relevant to them," he added, though the company didn't provide further details about its plans at this stage.

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Update, July 21, 2023: The FTC has withdrawn its internal administrative challenge that was seeking to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

As reported by The Verge, the Commission announced it was suspending its in-house challenge yesterday, which was initially due to have its hearing on August 2.

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Blizzard Entertainment has announced that hero shooter Overwatch 2 is heading to Steam.

The game's PC version was previously only available via Battle.net and will go live on Valve's platform on August 10.

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The GamesIndustry.biz team continues to grow as we are this week joined by Tanya Machinjike.

Marking her games industry debut, Machinjike has previously held sales roles at various engineering firms, as well as in Higher Education marketing at The Student Room. She takes on the role of account manager, and will report to Christopher Dring.

She will work alongside George Corner, who has been promoted after less than two years as a trade event account manager for ReedPop, now taking on the role of sales manager for GamesIndustry.biz.

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Industry veterans from Robot Teddy and Foampunch have formed a new games company focusing on mixed-reality experiences, called Creature.

The indie firm was established in January 2023 by former Robot Teddy VP Doug North Cook, and will act both as a developer and as a publishing label providing "business development support, production consulting, and release strategy," the announcement said.

Doug North Cook is joined by Chris Hanney, Abbey Cooper, and Rose Gerber.

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Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard saw its revenue bump by 34%, reaching $4.6 billion during its first six months of the year. Mobile revenue for the firm also pulled in the most consumer spending at $2 billion during the period.

Here's what you need to know for from the firm's latest financial report.

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How do you improve your creative process? Make lots of mistakes and create a bunch of problems.

Whether you're right at the beginning of your creative career or experienced as heck, I hope there's something for everyone to learn here. We'll go through the philosophy of creative management, identify the key stages in creative ideation, setting a clear process, helping your team get the best from themselves and finally, principles that can guide you. There's actionable takeaways and simple tips throughout.

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Gamescom Asia will have a physical, in-person consumer area for the first time.

Hosted in Singapore this October, Gamescom Asia will host a new physical B2C space that will feature a showcase of games.

There will also be areas dedicated to indies, esports, cosplay, boardgames, and group play zones.

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A new gaming hub is set to blossom in Senegal following a €300,000 investment announced last month.

It's the result of a partnership between Toulouse-based games studio Masseka, the French Embassy in Senegal, the DER (General Delegation for Rapid Entrepreneurship in Senegal), and Dakar-based studio Kayfo Games.

The funding will see the creation of a hybrid structure – part incubator, part development studio – in the Senegalese capital. The aim is to boost the local industry, and put Senegal on the West African gaming map, with developers invited (and paid) to train in the new hub from September.

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Microsoft and Activision have agreed to extend the deadline for the platform holder's acquisition.

The deal, first announced in January 2022, was due to be completed by July 18, 2023. However, regulatory hurdles have slowed the process and it was reported earlier this week that the two companies were negotiating an extension while they worked to address the remaining issues.

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FIFA 23 has once again returned to the No. 1 spot in the UK physical charts, and there's also a surprise return from another EA title.

EA Sports' final FIFA saw a 6% increase in sales last week, having received a 21% boost in last week's charts, GfK reported.

Meanwhile, Battlefield 2042 has re-entered the charts at No.5, with a large increase in sales due to a price promotion on consoles. Game sales overall rose 22% last week.

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