GamesIndustry

Jobs Roundup: November 2022 | Rovio alum Sophie Vo joins Savage Game Studios as general manager

1 year 6 months ago

It can be difficult keeping track of the various comings and goings in the games industry, which is why we compile them in semi-regular round-ups.

If you have new appointments or transitions in your company that belong here, please send the names of the appointees, new role and company, and prior role and company to newhires@gamesindustry.biz.

Games industry investor and developer Sophie Vo has joined Savage Game Studios as general manager.

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Author
GamesIndustry Staff

Modern Warfare 2 marks biggest opening weekend for Call of Duty at $800m

1 year 6 months ago

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the fastest-selling game in the decades-old franchise to date.

Activision has announced that worldwide sell-through for the first three days passed $800 million – more than the previous record holder, 2011's Modern Warfare 3, managed in five days.

It's the biggest opening weekend in the series' history, and even surpassed two of the year's most successful films. Citing figures from Box Office Mojo, Activision claimed that Modern Warfare 2 outperformed the opening weekends of both Top Gun: Maverick and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness combined.

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Author
James Batchelor

Sam Barlow's guide to making narrative games

1 year 6 months ago

At our recent GI Academy Live event, Sam Barlow of Her Story, Telling Lies and Immortality fame laid out his thoughts on creating narrative-centric video games.

In his talk, which was aimed at inspiring and giving advice to students, Barlow first explained the specificities of narrative in games, exploring why the medium differs from other forms of entertainment, before sharing his own core ideas for building stories.

To start with, the developer explained why he felt telling stories in the medium of video games was a more exciting proposition than other forms of art. The first is that there is challenge, inherent obstacles that players have to overcome.

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Author
Alex Calvin

Epic Games investigating contractor accused of using access for profit

1 year 6 months ago

An Epic Games contractor has been accused of using system resources for financial gain.

The allegations include selling Fortnite weapon codes on the black market, and boosting the discoverability of maps made by his friends in the battle royale.

News of these alleged actions was brought to Epic's attention on Twitter by fan-run channel FN News. The account highlighted that Epic had already pulled down multiple videos regarding the situation.

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Author
Jeffrey Rousseau

PlayStation H1 revenues rise to $8.8bn

1 year 6 months ago

Sony has released its financial results for the three months ended September 30, 2022, with sales growing across the board, but operating income going down in the games segment.

Q2 revenue: ¥2.75 trillion ($18.6 billion, up 16% year-on-year) Q2 operating income: ¥344 billion ($2.3 billion, up 8%) Q2 net income: ¥264 billion ($1.7 billion, up 24%)

H1 revenue: ¥5.1 trillion ($34.5 billion, up 9% year-on-year) H1 operating income: ¥651 billion ($4.4 billion, up 9%) H1 net income: ¥482 billion ($3.2 billion, up 13%)

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Author
Marie Dealessandri

Netflix acquires Spry Fox as sixth internal studio

1 year 6 months ago

Netflix has announced yet another studio acquisition, bringing Cozy Grove and Alphabear developer Spry Fox into the fold.

The Seattle-based indie becomes Netflix's sixth internal studio, and its fourth acquisition since September 2021.

The streaming firm announced the purchase via its website, in which vice president of game studios Amir Rahimi wrote that Spry Fox will "help accelerate our creative development in another beloved genre and add to the growing variety of Netflix's games catalog that will have something for everyone."

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Author
James Batchelor

EA has "at least" two more Marvel games in the works

1 year 6 months ago

The recently announced EA Motive game based on Iron Man is just the beginning of Electronic Arts' partnership with Marvel, the publisher announced today.

EA said it has a long-term deal with Marvel "to develop at least three new action-adventure games that will be available for consoles and PC."

Like Iron Man, the other games will be original stories set within the Marvel Universe.

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Author
Brendan Sinclair

"Nothing is a barrier to being a developer – except maybe yourself"

1 year 6 months ago

At last week's GI Academy Online – our annual event aimed at students – keynote speaker Louise O'Connor of Rare fame shared what she felt had changed the most during her time working in games, as well as the opportunities facing new generations seeking a career in the industry.

O'Connor joined Rare back in 1999 as an animator, having trained at Dublin's Ballyfermot Senior College. She has contributed to nearly all of the developer's subsequent projects, and is perhaps best known amongst the studio's ardent fanbase for her animation and voice work on Nintendo 64 title Conker's Bad Fur Day. Since being hired over 23 years ago, she has risen to the position of executive producer on one of the studio's current projects, multiplayer fantasy adventure Everwild.

The first significant change that O'Connor has noticed during her career in games is how the audience has broadened. Not only that but how publishers and developers measure their success is dramatically different.

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Author
Alex Calvin

One week left to nominate for GamesIndustry.biz Game Changers

1 year 6 months ago

There's just one week left to nominate your choices for the next wave of Game Changers.

This is our ongoing series of articles profiling people working hard to make the games industry a better place – and this year we'll be diving even deeper into their work.

While the Game Changers of 2020 and 2021 were compiled into lists of short profiles highlighting their accomplishments, this time we'll be running full in-depth interviews that explore the work they do and how the industry can better support their efforts.

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Author
GamesIndustry Staff

Chromatic Games accused of toxic work culture

1 year 6 months ago

Chromatic Games, formerly known as Trendy Entertainment, is reportedly still grappling with toxic work culture issues.

Back in 2013, the Dungeon Defenders studio was the object of a Kotaku investigation, exposing accusations of mismanagement, institutional sexism and permanent crunch.

Now, a new report from Polygon highlighted similar issues persisting, with one source saying that the studio allegedly "wears people down and takes advantage of new game developers eager to work in the industry," the publication wrote.

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Author
Marie Dealessandri

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 physical sales up over 40% compared with Vanguard | UK Boxed Charts

1 year 6 months ago

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has posted a far better week at physical retail than last year's disappointing Call of Duty: Vanguard.

Sales of the new title are 42% up compared with Vanguard, and nearly 9% up over Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War from 2020.

Sales are down 61% compared with 2019's Modern Warfare, although downloads have since become dominant and digital sales data will be available later in the week. 53% of boxed sales were on PS5, 29% on Xbox and 18% on PS4, although do note that Xbox tends to perform more strongly when it comes to digital market share.

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Author
Christopher Dring

Ikea issues cease and desist against indie developer

1 year 6 months ago

Swedish retail giant Ikea has threatened legal action against a solo developer over the setting of his upcoming horror title.

Developed by Jacob Shaw, The Store Is Closed is a co-operative survival game that's currently in development and seeking funding on Kickstarter.

The title is set in an "infinite furniture store" where players will need to "craft weapons and build fortifications to survive the night" while they "build towers to the sky to find a way out."

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Author
James Batchelor

ForeVR raises $10m to create the "Wii Sports of VR"

1 year 6 months ago

ForeVR Games has raised $10 million in a series A round led by Lobby Capital.

The funding round also included participation from existing investors, namely VC funds Bessemer Venture Partners and Galaxy Interactive.

The company, created in 2020 by Zynga veterans Marcus Segal and Mike Pagano Doom, aims to use the funding to create the "Wii Sports of VR," continuing to focus on family-friendly games.

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Author
Marie Dealessandri

Retailer breaks God of War Ragnarök street date

1 year 6 months ago

An unknown retailer has started selling Sony Santa Monica's highly awaited God of War Ragnarök two weeks before its release date, leading the studio to release a statement trying to control the damage.

Over the weekend, significant spoilers for the title started to appear online, with creative director Cory Barlog initially being the one expressing his frustration on Twitter, saying: "A retailer selling the game nearly TWO WEEKS before release. Just so disappointing." (emphasis original)

He later added: "Sorry to everyone that you have to dodge the spoilers if you want to play the game fresh. Completely fucking stupid you have to do this."

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Author
Marie Dealessandri

YouTube game streaming viewership jumps in September

1 year 6 months ago

YouTube saw a spike in gaming viewership for last month, as StreamElements today released its monthly State of the Stream report, with live streaming game content hours watched on the site jumping 42% to 434 million for the month.

Other streaming services didn't far as well, with Twitch hours watched dipping from 1.87 billion to 1.8 billion, while Facebook Gaming sank 18% month-over-month to finish September with 328 million hours watched.

Facebook has been shedding viewers all year, having peaked in January with over 600 million hours watched and declining almost every month since then.

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Author
Brendan Sinclair

HoloLens and hollow promises | This Week in Business

1 year 6 months ago

Remember HoloLens?

Just in case you don't, it was Microsoft's augmented reality headset, announced in 2015 and shown off at that year's E3 with an interactive Halo experience, a stage demo of Minecraft, and a whole lot of talk about revolutionary potential.

The Wall Street Journal certainly remembers it, as this week it published what amounts to a "Whatever happened to…" feature detailing the product's pivot from gaming gadget to enterprise productivity asset to "lethality increasing" military equipment, and how it struggled at each step to validate its effectiveness in any of those roles.

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Author
Brendan Sinclair

Three wins for Cloudpunk at inaugural Scottish Games Awards

1 year 6 months ago

The first ever Scottish Games Awards took place night, as part of the inaugural Scottish Games Week.

A panel of industry judges decided the winners for the evening, which was chaired by VGC features editor and author Chris Scullion.

Ion Lands' Cloudpunk was the big winner, picking up three awards for Art and Animation, Best Large-Budget Game, and Creativity. While the studio is German, Cloudpunk's lead writer Tom Welsh is from Scotland.

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Author
Danielle Partis

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 | Critical Consensus

1 year 6 months ago

'Tis the season! It's not really Q4 until Call of Duty has released, and today happens to mark the launch of Modern Warfare 2.

Infinity Ward is at the helm of this year’s entry in the Activision-published franchise, a sequel to 2019's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which itself was a reboot of the original title of the same name.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which releases today on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC, will soon be joined by Warzone 2.0. The follow up to 2020's Warzone is still a free-to-play battle royale, and will actually roll out a bit later, on November 16.

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Author
Marie Dealessandri

Rovio to open new office in Barcelona

1 year 6 months ago

Angry Birds studio Rovio is set to open a new office in Barcelona, Spain, to work on some of its existing titles.

The studio will work in tandem with the firm's HQ in Finland, and will provide development support for games including Angry Birds Friends and Dream Blast.

In an announcement, Rovio called Barcelona "a bustling hub of mobile gaming talent," but did not disclose an exact location for the new space.

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Author
Danielle Partis

Deathloop wins big at 2022 IGDA Global Industry Game Awards

1 year 6 months ago

The 2022 Global Industry Game Awards took place last night, hosted annually by the International Game Develoepers Association.

Arkane was the big winner of the night with Deathloop, which secured 13 different awards spanning the art, audio, design, technology and support categories.

It Takes Two from EA's Hazelight Studios also picked up ten awards, one for engineering, two for art, design and support, and three in the writing category.

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Author
Danielle Partis

The Callisto Protocol cancelled in Japan

1 year 6 months ago

The release of the upcoming horror game The Callisto Protocol has been cancelled in Japan.

According to an announcement made via the game's Japanese Twitter account, the title was unable to secure an age rating from the Japanese Computer Entertainment Rating Organisation.

"The Callisto Protocol has decided to stop the release of the Japanese version," the statement said, a translation of which has been verified by our sister site Eurogamer.

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Author
Danielle Partis

Microsoft Game Pass figures fall short of targets

1 year 6 months ago

Subscriber numbers for Microsoft's Game Pass have failed to reach growth targets laid out by the firm for the second year in a row.

As per a new filing spotted by Axios, the company set a 73% growth rate for the subscription service for the fiscal year 2022 ended June 30, but only saw an increase of 28%.

The targets also served as a performance incentive for CEO Saya Nadella's pay, as well as other executives at the firm.

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Author
Danielle Partis

Can Microsoft find its next big thing in China? | Opinion

1 year 6 months ago

The success of Xbox Series X/S has been an absolutely staggering turnaround for Microsoft's fortunes in the console market, putting the company back on something approaching an even footing with Sony despite the (largely self-inflicted) drubbing it suffered in the previous generation.

Nonetheless, when we discuss Microsoft's success in this generation there's always an elephant in the room, and every now and then, the elephant gets a little restless and a little harder to ignore. The Xbox Series consoles have fantastic hardware. Moreover, the company has gone back to its winning playbook from the Xbox 360 era with a brilliant services ecosystem. For all that, though, its software line-up remains weak – incredibly so, in fact, for a console that's approaching its second anniversary.

In the normal course of things, a console which failed to deliver a solid line-up of exclusive titles by its second birthday would be dead in the water, but we're not dealing with the normal course of things. Microsoft is maintaining consumer goodwill and enthusiasm on the back of a promise: that the games are coming, and while it may take a while, it'll be worth the wait.

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Author
Rob Fahey

Ubisoft sales dip in first half, but Q2 beat guidance handily

1 year 6 months ago

Ubisoft reported its first half sales results today, posting revenues down slightly but still handily beating its guidance issued after the first quarter thanks to back-catalog sales.

Despite the revenue dip and operating losses, Ubisoft was upbeat in reporting its first-half sales results for a handful of reasons.

On the revenue front, the single-digit dip was actually significantly better than Ubisoft had told investors to expect.

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Author
Brendan Sinclair

Meta profits dive sharply in Q3

1 year 6 months ago

During Q3, Meta's net and operating income saw notable decreases year-over-year, while its revenue fared better but also came in at a decline.

The tech giant released its financial results for the three months ended September 30 yesterday. Here's what you need to know:

During the three-month period, daily active users grew by 3% year-on-year to 2 billion, whereas monthly users increased by 2%.

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Author
Jeffrey Rousseau

4J Studios on its pivot into publishing

1 year 6 months ago

This week, Scottish developer 4J Studios announced a move into the publishing business, with aims to release independent titles from partners it has been supporting.

For the last decade, 4J Studios' focus has been primarily on Minecraft – the team was responsible for bringing the Microsoft-owned title to multiple PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo consoles, boosting the game's popularity outside of PC.

In addition to its Minecraft ties, 4J is also linked to Chroma Ventures, a VC fund led by studio co-founders Paddy Burns and Chris van der Kuyl. Now, the developer is seeking to use its own status as a game maker and investor to fuel and launch independent titles as a publisher, with the simple yet effective vision of making games that are for everyone.

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Author
Danielle Partis

Fine-tuning Tunic's marketing message

1 year 6 months ago

Tunic was announced to the world with a splash at Microsoft's E3 2018 press conference. And while it gave the game an enviably high profile right off the bat, it also set expectations and created some challenges for the game's publisher, Finji.

In a presentation at Megamigs last week, Finji co-founder and CEO Bekah Saltsman went into detail about how the publisher spent the last 19 months up to the game's release trying to manage expectations and communicate to prospective customers just what sort of experience they were in for.

"Tunic an isometric action adventure where you play a tiny fox in a big world and explore the wilderness, fight monsters, and discover secrets," Saltsman said, encapsulating the basic pitch of the game. "And that's all we ever told you, you're welcome. And all of those are true statements about the game. However, people filled in all the stuff we didn't say about Tunic with their own ideas, and as the internet is wont to do, not entirely based on anything we said."

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Author
Brendan Sinclair

Why PlayStation London Studio is leaving VR to create a fantasy online combat game

1 year 6 months ago

PlayStation's London Studio has always been one of Sony's most experimental teams

From SingStar to EyeToy, Wonderbook to PlayStation Home, and most recently VR, London Studio has a reputation for working with and often defining new technologies.

Not all those projects succeeded, but the ones that did would go on to inspire the entire industry.

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Author
Christopher Dring

Hiro Capital invests in new studio from Mythic veterans

1 year 6 months ago

VC fund Hiro Capital has announced that it has become the main investor in Loric Games, a studio recently created by former Mythic Entertainment veterans.

Loric Games was founded in March by Brian Johnson, Ray Soto, and Rob Denton, who was the co-founder of Mythic. Johnson and Soto are both veterans of the Dark Age of Camelot developer as well, having worked on the likes of Ultima Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Hiro's investment will go towards Loric's debut title, which will be announced in 2023, with the studio due to specialise in co-op survival RPGs.

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Author
Marie Dealessandri

See the game platforms and genres generating the highest user spending

1 year 6 months ago

We recently added US revenue data for console and PC games to Newzoo Expert, so we thought we’d share some high-level data and insights, focusing on in-game ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) and ARPU (average revenue per user) per title for PlayStation, Xbox and PC.

As readers of Newzoo's Global Games Market Report will know, game companies have diversified their revenue streams via an array of monetization tactics. This includes not only full-priced premium games, but also DLC, free-to-play monetization and subscriptions.

Luckily, our revenue data for the US includes metrics like total revenues, ARPU and ARPPU. We even split out revenue streams like DLC, microtransactions and subscriptions. All this data is available by game, platform (PlayStation, Xbox and PC) and genre in our Newzoo Expert platform.

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Author
Sponsored Article

Jagex hit record £125m revenue in 2021

1 year 6 months ago

Jagex has released its financials highlights for 2021, reporting record revenue just shy of £125 million.

This represented a 4% growth compared to 2020, and the seventh year of growth for the company.

The announcement said that it was driven by flagship franchise RuneScape, which reached its highest number of paying members in 2021.

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Author
Marie Dealessandri

Marvel Snap pulls in $2m a week after launch - AppMagic

1 year 6 months ago

Second Dinner Studios' Marvel Snap has amassed more than $2 million in revenue a week since its release.

As reported by mobilegamer.biz from data sourced from AppMagic, the Apple App Store made up $1.3 million of the game's revenue, while Android devices accounted for $737,000.

In terms of the top five countries by consumer spending, the US held the lion's share with $1.2 million.

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Author
Jeffrey Rousseau

Capcom first-half down sharply on tough comparison

1 year 6 months ago

Capcom today reported its financial results for the first half of its fiscal year (April 1 through September 30), showing steep declines attributed to a difficult comparison against a strong first half in 2021.

Revenue: ¥49.1 billion (down 30% year-on-year) Operating income: ¥21.9 billion (down 24%) Net income: ¥16.1 billion (down 27%)

Capcom blamed its declines on a tough comparison to the previous year's first half, when it launched Resident Evil Village and Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin.

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Author
Brendan Sinclair

Virtuos open Virtuos Labs – Montpellier

1 year 6 months ago

Creative services firm Virtuous unveiled its newest subsidiary, Virtuos Labs – Montpellier.

The Montpellier team joins Virtuous Labs – Lyon, which was founded in 2021, as the division's second studio.

It will provide various support to partners such as creating new tools for proprietary engines and shifting to new engines.

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Author
Jeffrey Rousseau

Rocksteady co-founders leaving studio

1 year 6 months ago

Rocksteady has announced that studio co-founders Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker are set to leave the studio at the end of the year.

The news was shared in an announcement by WB Games president David Haddad, who said that the pair will begin "a new adventure in gaming" together.

Following their departure, Rocksteady founding member and director of production Nathan Burlow will become studio director, and Darius Sadeghian will become studio production director.

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Author
Danielle Partis