Games studio Digital Confectioners has received an investment from conglomerate Tencent.
Founded in 2007 and based out of New Zealand, the company has developed titles such as Dread Hunger, Last Tide, and Depth.
Director at Digital Confectioners, James Tan, explained that the new funding will go towards expansion of the company and its development of two new titles.
Former Rocksteady scriptwriter Kim MacAskill says the studio offered to pay her to resolve complaints stemming from her time with the studio, but refused to apologize for any wrongdoing.
In 2018, 10 of the 16 women working at Rocksteady reportedly co-signed a letter detailing unacceptable behavior at the studio, including sexual harassment, slurs about transgendered people, and talking about women in derogatory or sexual ways.
After the letter's existence was made public in 2020, MacAskill came forward as the author of that letter, saying she lost her job in retaliation for her role in it. She also asked for her name to be left off the credits for Rocksteady's upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by 'how people find your game' expert and GameDiscoverCo founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.
So, GameDiscoverCo newsletter subscribers may remember we ran a 2020 interview with Pawel Lekki of EXOR Studios on how The Riftbreaker managed to get 250,000 wishlists up to that point, thanks to a combination of great-looking tech, unique selling proposition, and dogged marketing.
After the game came out in October 2021, we noted to our Plus subscribers: "14,000 CCUs right now for the hack & slash/tower defense hybrid, and 92% Positive rating (855 reviews) bodes well for the medium term. Should sell hundreds of thousands of units over time."
At GI Live: London today, head of PlayStation Indies Shuhei Yoshida talked about Sony's approach to its revamped PS Plus service and in particular its top tier, Extra.
Unlike Microsoft's approach with its Game Pass service, where most first party Xbox titles come out day-and-date on the subscription service, Sony still believes in the "premium release of a title at launch," Yoshida said.
The previous version of PS Plus had some games going live day-and-date such as Rocket League and Fall Guys, and Yoshida said it did contribute to their success as it helped give these online multiplayer games quick access to a large audience.
Outsourcing firm Keywords Studios has entered an agreement to acquire game developer Smoking Gun.
Established in 2007 and based out of Vancouver, Canada, the company has released titles such as Age of Empires: Castle Siege, Phobies, and Freefall Racers.
The company was founded by games industry veterans John Johnson, Drew Dunlop and Angie Pytlewski.
2K's customer support platform has been accessed by an "unauthorised third party," the company revealed.
As reported by PC Gamer, 2K warned customers via a message on Twitter that the unauthorised party sent a malicious link to some players, and invited them to reset their passwords if they did click on the link.
"Earlier today, we became aware that an unauthorised third party illegally accessed the credentials of one of our vendors to the help desk platform that 2K uses to provide support to our customers," the message read.
Cheat maker AimJunkies has filed a countersuit against Destiny 2 developer Bungie.
This is the latest development in a legal battle that started last year when Bungie filed a copyright infringement claim against AimJunkies. The case was dismissed in April as a judge ruled Bungie failed to prove the cheat seller infringed upon the studio's copyrights and trademarks.
Bungie re-filed its lawsuit, with AimJunkies issuing several subpoenas in an effort to take action against the developer in August, and then asking for the judge to dismiss the lawsuit – a demand which was rejected last month.
Saints Row has spent much of its life living in the shadow of the GTA series, so it's somewhat inevitable that the latest game in the series -- simply titled Saints Row -- narrowly lost out to GTA 5 in the European August charts.
Despite the arrival of Saints Row, plus a number of other titles such as Sony's Spider-Man Remastered on PC (No.6) and Sega's Two Point Campus (No.16), game sales were down 12.4% compared with the same period in 2021.
The biggest game of August 2021 was also Grand Theft Auto 5.
A YouTuber has been exposed as the source of leaks around Ubisoft Forward after replying from the wrong Twitter account.
Ahead of Ubisoft's presentation last week, a Twitter account under the name 'The Real Insider' shared details of the Assassin's Creed games that were due to be announced.
The same account had previously been used to leak information around the rebooted Saints Row and Metal: Hellsinger, among other titles.
Twitch will be changing its stance on gambling content next month, following outcry over a scam involving a prominent streamer.
The company shared a statement via Twitter, acknowledging that gambling has been "a big topic of discussion in the community" and stating that it has been actively reviewing its policies since the last time it updated them.
At present, the site's policy bans the sharing of links or referral codes to any websites featuring slots, roulette or dice games. But Twitch recognises that some users have managed to "circumvent those roles and expose our community to potential harm."
On the final day of the 2022 Game Devs of Color Expo, the event revealed its grant award winners.
The expo began securing and offering marginalized developers funds in 2019.
In speaking with GamesIndustry.biz Game Devs of Color Expo co-organizer, Catt Small, explained that the event has helped the industry shift to more no-strings-attached grants for creators from overlooked communities.
The person allegedly behind Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto 6 leak is being investigated by the FBI.
The action is being taken by Uber, which said that a number of its employee accounts and tools were recently compromised.
It went on to say that there are reports that link this same cyberattacker to the Rockstar leak.
Back when Square Enix’s The Avengers was unveiled at E3, a few of us were wondering: could this be the start of the Marvel Interactive Universe?
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has dominated cinema (and now TV) for nearly 15 years, with its huge comic book universe of interconnecting stories, characters and franchises. Following the success of the PlayStation Spider-Man games, and now with big partnerships with major AAA studios, were we about to see the company try and repeat the trick in video games?
The answer was no. And according to Bill Rosemann, the VP and creative director of Marvel Games, such a move would be detrimental to the company’s overall ambition.
Gaming startup Sceneri announced that it's raised $1.5 million in funding.
Established in 2020 by Filip Lundgren and Collin Bishop, the company is currently creating a no-code gaming development platform for desktop and mobile devices.
With the new investment from SNÖ Ventures, Sceneri said that the funding will go towards its development.
US consumers spent just over $4 billion on video games products in August – a slight dip on the year before, despite a handful of big releases.
The NPD Group reported that the month was also boosted by growth in hardware sales, thanks to improved supply of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Here's what you need to know:
A Twitch streamer has admitted he lied to fans and fellow influencers when asking for money, raising at least $200,000 to fund his gambling habit.
In a confession video spotted by Kotaku, Abraham 'Sliker' Mohammed said he would tell followers and peers that his bank account was locked and needed money to prevent any impact to his credit score, or that his payments from Twitch hadn't been processed.
However, he was actually using this money to gamble on the outcome of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive matches.
If you can't make our in-person event at EGX this week (or even if you can), then students and job seekers can simply join us in Discord -- for free -- between October 26th - 28th, for a special event in partnership with Total War developer Creative Assembly.
Industry professionals from some of the UK's biggest games developers, plus a few famous faces, will be dropping into the Discord to take part in roundtables, to advise students on pathways into video games, to review portfolios, and to share insight into what they do.
We have some exciting keynotes that we will announce next week, who will join a line-up of programmmers, artists, producers, musicians, journalists, voice actors and many more for three days of exper advice. Students can sign-up for free right here.
The UK Government recently weighed the question of whether to regulate loot boxes in games, and decided that the video game industry should first be allowed an opportunity to self-regulate and mitigate the potential harms of loot boxes. Legislation will only be brought if industry self-regulation fails to provide tangible improvements to consumer protection.
A technical working group of industry members convened by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has already begun work. I, alongside other academic researchers, have been invited to provide our input (which may or may not be taken onboard).
For transparency, I share my current views and my advice on loot box regulation based on my interpretation of the existing academic literature and my empirical research results in this guest post.
Zynga has announced the opening of its new headquarters in San Mateo, California.
The new office, which is 62,000 square feet, will be officially opened on September 22 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Located in San Mateo's Bay Meadow neighbourhood, the headquarters will welcome around 300 employees.
Apple will raise prices for all iOS apps and in-app purchases in two weeks from today.
The company announced via a developer blog post that new prices will be introduced on October 5, 2022, although they will only affect certain markets.
Specifically, it will impact all territories using the Euro currency, as well as Chile, Egypt, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Poland, South Korea, Sweden, and Vietnam. Additional changes will also be made in Vietnam to reflect tax regulations for Apple.
Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden has joined Tencent as strategic advisor.
Announcing the move on Linkedin, Layden said he is to "advise, assist, and support the team at Tencent as they deepen their activities and commitments within the industry."
He added: "We are at an epoch defining moment in gaming and interactive entertainment. There are many possible roads ahead but only a few are profound, broadening, inclusive, edifying, inspiring, and/or sustainable. I am thrilled to continue this journey of discovery and thank Tencent for the opportunity."
Content warning: The following story contains descriptions of misogyny.
G2 Esports will be without the services of its CEO Carlos Rodriguez for a little while as he has agreed to take eight weeks of unpaid leave from the company over a video on Twitter of himself partying with Andrew Tate, an influencer banned last month by YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram for various violations of their terms of service, including hate speech and misogyny.
Rodriguez posted the eight-second-long video featuring himself and Tate Saturday morning, saying, "Yesterday we celebrated G2's world championship." (G2 won the 2022 League of Legends European Championship spring season and was runner-up in the summer season.)
A new Sensor Tower report says that the top 1% of global game publishers generated $27 billion during H1 2022.
The 460 companies made up 93% of consumer spending during the first six months of the year.
Whereas the remaining 7% of mobile gaming market earnings totaled $2 billion within the same period.
Rockstar Games suffered a major leak this weekend, as a user on GTA forums posted links to 90 in-development video clips of Grand Theft Auto 6.
The authenticity of the clips was apparently confirmed when YouTube videos were taken down by copyright claims from Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive.
The clips varied greatly in level of completion, from monochrome dummies walking around gray box environments to more completed scenarios like a hold-up in a diner and subsequent escape.
Towards the end of last year, EA made a small, seemingly insignificant, change to its executive team.
It made the firm’s group general managers -- the execs in charge of groups of EA’s various studios – report directly to CEO Andrew Wilson. And it was a move made for one purpose: to bring the company’s leader a step closer to those who are actually making the games.
“The goal is to give a stronger voice to studio leadership,” explains Samantha Ryan, who is the group GM for BioWare, Full Circle, Maxis, Motive and a new studio in Seattle. “The knowledge that folks like myself have from being in the thick of it with studios over 20 years is hard earned. Ideally that knowledge helps EA leadership to stay in closer touch with the needs of their studios.”
GI Live: London 2022 takes place this week and we have a wealth of big name talks and roundtables, plus drinks, lunch and numerous networking opportunities.
And of course, we have an array of interesting indie developers in the room (and online) who are looking to connect with publishers, investors and more, plus learn about all the options on getting their next game to market.
We have seen a selection of the games that are being pitched and there are some truly fascinating ones that we think you should check out over the next three days. So below is our list of the ten games to keep an eye on at GI Live: London 2022.
In a new interview CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer, confirmed that Xbox is still open to more mergers and acquisitions.
This came after news that the firm's $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard is expected to be investigated by both UK and EU regulators.
In speaking with CNBC, the executive explained that acquisitions within the games industry are quite active and Xbox will continue M&A activity to remain competitive as well.
EVGA will stop making video cards, as reported first by YouTube channel Gamers Nexus.
The video card manufacturer told the channel that it has no desire to continue working with NVIDIA after a lengthy partnership, saying it was not a financial decision but a principled decision.
It also has not considered working with rival chip makers AMD or Intel, has no interest in selling to another company, and will not be expanding into new product categories.
The PlayStation VR 2 headset won't work with original PlayStation VR games, Sony confirmed today.
PlayStation senior VP of platform experience Hideaki Nashino said the new headset would not be backwards compatible in an appearance on the Official PlayStation Podcast.
"PSVR games are not compatible with PSVR 2 because PSVR 2 is designed to deliver a truly next-generation experience," Nashino said, mentioning new features like the inside-out hand-tracking, eye-tracking, new controllers, and 3D audio support.
During August, Twitch got over its two month hump of 1.7 billion hours viewed, according to StreamElements and Rainmaker.gg's monthly State of the Stream report.
The streaming service posted 1.9 billion hours watched in the month of July.
The figure places Twitch close to getting over 2 billion hours watched, which it hasn't done since the month of January.
Microsoft this week announced some changes to the PC Xbox app, including integration with the crowd-sourced HowLongToBeat website that includes information on the average time it takes players to finish a game, whether they just want to go through the main campaign, see all the extra side quest-style content as well, or take a completionist approach and do every last thing possible.
The HowLongToBeat section will be added to "most" games included on the store pages for most Game Pass for PC titles.
The benefit for players is obvious.
A bug in Apple's new iOS 16 update is affecting gameplay in some rhythm games available on iPhone, according to several developers.
Apple rolled out the recent software version earlier this week, which includes a bug that affects a triple-tap gesture featured in a number of rhythm games.
As such, developers are advising players to not update their devices to iOS16 until the issue has been patched.
In the past few years, the consumer VR market – which is in itself something of a niche within a niche – has divided into three distinct strands.
There are tethered PC headsets, essentially continuing the legacy that goes back to the earliest devices of the current VR wave; there are standalone headsets like Meta's Quest, which trade off graphical performance for wireless simplicity in a way that has proved pretty popular with consumers; and then there is PlayStation VR.
Sony's VR headset is a category all of its own, occupying unique territory within the market – which doesn't necessarily make Sony a winner in this contest, but certainly makes it very interesting.
The GamesIndustry.biz team gather around their mics to discuss the biggest stories from the business of video games.
This week, we focus on Ubisoft - starting with our interview with CEO Yves Guillemot. The company has faced years of scrutiny following the wave of abuse allegations in 2020, but is it doing enough to address the issues within its workplace?
We also talk about the accountability of leadership at AAA firms, as well as Ubisoft's plans for its flagship franchises - especially Assassin's Creed - and the implications for its business going forward.
GamesIndustry.biz returns to EGX next week with the GI Academy stage, promising four days of live content, advice and insight on how to get into games or level up your existing position.
Between September 22 - 25, speakers from big name companies including Ubisoft, Rare, Remedy, nDreams and Media Molecule will appear to share insight on a range of topics, from kickstaring your career, growing a successful studio, managing communities and more.
Students can also pick up a free copy of our 100+ page GI Academy magazine, filled with insight into careers in the games industry.
Ruckus Games has raised 5.5 million in a round of seeding funding to fuel development of a new cross-platform, co-op title.
The studio was founded last year by developers from Gearbox Software and Riot Games. It's led by CEO and game director Paul Sage, formerly creative director on Borderlands 3.
Other founders include CTO and technical director Jesse McIntyre, whose career spans MMO titles such as Warhammer Online and The Elder Scrolls Online, and principal concept artist Paul Richards, who has shaped design on titles such as Halo and Overwatch and Fortnite.
Update, September 23, 2022: A Better Ubisoft has reached out to GamesIndustry.biz with additional claims against Ubisoft.
In comments originally sent to Axios, members of the group say management has now stopped answering questions, anonymous or otherwise, about issues not directly related to the agenda of town hall meetings "which means many burning topics can't be publicly discussed."
"Reporting occurrences of abuse anonymously can still end in victim shaming or asking who the victim was again and again when they asked not to be named, or be treated quickly and acted on accordingly, protecting the victim and sanctioning the perpetrator," said one developer.
Sega is changing the name and marketing of the long-running Yakuza series back to its original Japanese branding.
Moving forward, games in the series will now be known outside of Japan as 'Like A Dragon.' In a statement to Kotaku, Sega said that this branding is to "more closely align with the Japanese name."
In Japan, the games and the studio that makes them have always been titled Ryu Ga Gotoku, which translates to Like A Dragon. In the west however, releases were renamed to Yakuza to better illustrate the theme of the games.
Mordhau developer Triternion is the latest developer to secure investment from Tencent Holdings, with the Chinese tech firm taking a minority stake in the studio.
The percentage taken and amount invested have not been disclosed. However, Triternion CEO Marko Grguorvic gave some insight into how the new funds will be used.
“Tencent’s investment will allow us to keep building on the success of Mordhau and grow the game across other platforms," he said. "On top of this, it will help expand our team and accelerate the development and launch of new IP.”
GI Live: London is next week, and here is the final schedule of speakers and roundtable sessions.
GI Live is the UK industry's premier publishing, investment and business development event, and will take place Wednesday, September 21st - Thursday, September 22nd at London Excel, with a digital meeting day on Tuesday, September 20th. Tickets are on sale now and include access to the EGX consumer show, which runs from Thursday - Sunday.
Major platform holders PlayStation (Shuhei Yoshida), Xbox (Ben Robinson) and Valve (Alden Kroll and Erik Peterson) will all be answering questions and providing updates to games studios at the event.