GamesIndustry

Piracy is – and has always been – a game of cat and mouse.

Companies come up with new and, theoretically, more secure ways of protecting their intellectual property, such as digital rights management (DRM), games that always have to be online to verify they are legitimate or anti-tamper software like Denuvo. These might work for a bit, but then bad actors find ways around these measures, game firms have to come up with new forms of security, and the cycle begins anew.

UK video games trade body UKIE is one of the forces trying to fight piracy, both for its members (for free) and non-members (for a fee). The organisation is taking on both ‘regular’ piracy, but also non-traditional forms of piracy.

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Nintendo has announced it will drop the loot box elements of Mario Kart Tour in an upcoming update.

The mobile spin-off of the best-selling racing series currently allows players to spend virtual currency on firing 'pipes' to yield randomised rewards, including new characters and karts.

Nintendo does disclose the odds of winning the items available through the pipe, with some characters known to be as low as 0.04%. Some characters and karts are also only available for a limited time.

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Microsoft has fully released a new friends and family plan for Xbox Game Pass in two new territories - Ireland and Colombia, following a trial period.

The feature lets one user and up to four other players share one subscription to Game Pass Ultimate, each with access to their own profiles and accounts.

It's priced at €21.99 (£18.96) a month in Ireland and 49,900 pesos (£9.60) in Columbia.

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Snapchat maker Snap has laid off approximately 20% of its workforce in a bid to reduce costs, which has also resulted in the firm's games business being put on hold.

As reported by Engadget, the company has laid off around 1,300 employees, and has reprioritised several investments within the company.

In a memo to investors, Snap said that it is restructuring around three strategic priorities: community growth, revenue growth and augmented reality. It said that any projects that don't directly contribute to these pillars will be "discontinued or receive substantially reduced investment."

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The Last of Us is once again the No.1 best-selling game at UK retail, thanks to the launch of this year's Part 1 remake for PlayStation 5.

Announced earlier this year, the game is a complete rebuild of the 2013 PlayStation 3 hit, with updated contents and mechanics, additional content (including the acclaimed Left Behind DLC) and expanded accessibility options.

It sold around half the number of copies that Saints Row managed when it debuted at No.1 last week. That said, it's worth noting Volition's reboot launched on a Tuesday while The Last of Us took a more traditional Friday slot. And, as always, these are only accounting for physical sales.

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Glen Schofield, CEO of Striking Distance Studios and director of its debut title The Callisto Protocol, has walked back comments he made via Twitter that were criticised for endorsing crunch.

In a now-deleted tweet, Schofield discussed why he has not been promoting the upcoming sci-fi horror game more often and how hard the team is working.

I only talk about the game during an event. We R working 6-7 days a week, nobody's forcing us. Exhaustion, tired, COVID but we're working. Bugs, glitches, perf fixes. 1 last pass thru audio. 12-15 hours days.

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Today Splitgate developer, 1047 Games announced that its ending development on the shooter and instead will be focusing on creating a new title.

The studio made the announcement via Twitter, it said that the new game will share similar mechanics and the same universe as well.

"We are, in a way, bailing water while also trying to keep everyone who bought a ticket to board our ship happy, while also trying to turn our boat into a rocket ship," 1047 Games said.

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Meta's streak of acquisitions in the VR space continues, as the Wall Street Journal today reported that the company has acquired Berlin-based VR haptics start-up Lofelt.

"We're excited that members of the Lofelt team have joined Meta," a Meta spokesperson confirmed for the paper.

Lofelt had previously worked on tools for haptic tech in mobile and PlayStation 5 games, but announced it was ending support for those products in July.

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After a $1 billion loss in its lastest quarterly financials report, tech firm Sea is halting its game livestream service and closing projects in development, according to Reuters.

Sea is also the parent company of Singaporean game developer and publisher Garena – the studio behind Garena Free Fire.

Sources speaking with Reuters said that gaming livestream Booyah!, a business unit of Garena, and Sea's development team would be seeing staff layoffs.

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Microsoft has reiterated its intention to keep Call of Duty available on PlayStation should its acquisition of Activision Blizzard go through.

The Verge reported today that Xbox head Phil Spencer made a commitment to his PlayStation counterpart Jim Ryan in a letter earlier this year, and a comment from Microsoft confirmed the report.

"In January, we provided a signed agreement to Sony to guarantee Call of Duty on PlayStation, with feature and content parity, for at least several more years beyond the current Sony contract, an offer that goes well beyond typical gaming industry agreements," Spencer said in a statement provided to The Verge.

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Games company Lockwood Publishing is poised to lay off 15% of its staff by the end of the day, according to The Gamer.

Current and former employees speaking with the publication said that 34 positions are at risk of redundancy.

These firings come nine months after the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB) called Lockwood's redundancies of 33 staffers unlawful.

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Games have a love/hate relationship with war. While many of the most popular titles have long glorified war – or paid lip service to it being bad while trying to make it as awesome and fun as possible – many of the actual people making games have personal politics that run counter to it.

That can cause friction, as we saw this week when defense contractor Raytheon announced a new partnership with Girls Who Code for a program where college students grow their networks in STEM fields and receive guidance from GWC advisors and Raytheon "mentors."

QUOTE | "At Girls Who Code, we understand that to prepare our students for the workforce; we must not only equip them with the resources they need to build on their technical skills. To help them thrive, we also need hands-on engagement that will teach them the fundamentals of growing their networks through leadership." - Girls Who Code CEO Tarika Barrett celebrates the partnership in Raytheon's press release.

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There's just two weeks left to complete your entry for the GamesIndustry.biz Canada Best Places To Work Awards 2022.

The awards can take a while to complete, so if you're interested, sign up as soon as possible.

The awards are open to all Canada games companies, including developers, publishers, service companies, retailers and media. Over 50 companies have already signed up. The judging period ends on Friday, September 16th.

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Content warning: Transphobia

Management simulator Domina has been delisted from Steam after developer Dolphin Barn Interactive used the platform to share a transphobic outburst.

In a news post on its Steam page, the studio claimed that the game’s name had been changed to Dominus, and referred to Domina as its "deadname," before mocking the trans community in a long paragraph mentioning the "sex change" of the title.

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Riot Games has announced a partnership with charity Take This to support the mental health of players and content creators.

Riot provided Take This with a grant back in May, the announcement said, leading to the creation of a program designed to "meet the needs of casual and professional streamers," giving them practical tools to support their own wellbeing as well as the "mental health needs of their communities."

Several modules will be released, developed by Take This’ clinical experts Dr. Kelli Dunlap and Dr. Raffael Boccamazzo, with the first already available on Take This' website and focusing on the topic of burnout in content creation.

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Data.ai reports that League of Legends: Wild Rift has amassed over $750 million in global player spending.

The MOBA title has generated this amount of revenue in nearly two years after launching across Apple App Store and Google Play.

In terms of lifetime consumer spending by country, China ranks as the top revenue generator for the game.

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Update Wednesday, September 7:

Corecell has responded to PQube's comments with further allegations, disputing the publisher's defence.

"Despite what PQube said in the statement, the fact remains unchanged that: PQube has not yet paid us the agreed amount," the team wrote. "We have not received any revenue from PQube sales in EU stores. PQube did not return the publishing control in [Europe] back to us. There is consistency in the truth and confusion in lies."

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The Pokémon Company is suing a half dozen Chinese companies over a mobile game it says is infringing on its copyrights, according to the South China Morning Post.

One of the defendants, Jiangyin Zhongnan Heavy Industries Co, included news of the suit in a stock exchange filing this week.

The company informed investors that The Pokémon Company has gone to the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court seeking an order to keep the Chinese firms from working on or distributing their game Pocket Monster Reissue, also known as Koudaiyaoguai Fuke.

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Playtropic Videogame Services, the first QA company in the Caribbean, has opened for business.

The firm will provide game testing for home consoles, PC, and mobile devices. Its services will also include focus group testing.

Playtropic was established by games industry veteran Joel Benton.

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Gerda: A Flame in Winter is launching today. Developed by Danish studio PortaPlay, it's also the first ever third-party title published by Don't Nod.

The French company (which recently overhauled its visual identity) has been experimenting with different business models in recent years, with every step seemingly paving the way for the studio to become a publisher.

Don't Not went from being a dedicated developer to self-publishing with Twin Mirror, to being a third-party publisher in the span of a few years. And at Gamescom last week, CEO and founder Oskar Guilbert and CMO Sophie Filip's excitement ahead of Gerda's launch was palpable.

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The Competition and Markets Authority has decided that Microsoft's record-breaking acquisition of Activision Blizzard may affect competition within the UK.

The phase one ruling, issued September 1, said that the merger "may be expected to result in a substantial lessening of competition within a market or markets in the United Kingdom."

As a result, the deal is expected to be referred for an in-depth phase two investigation unless both Microsoft and Activision "offer acceptable undertakings to address these competition concerns."

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Major investment group Hiro Capital will be sharing its insight with developers at GI Live London.

The firm is the latest speaker to sign-up for the event, which takes place from September 20 to 22 online and in-person. Tickets are on sale here.

During this session, industry veteran and co-founder Sir Ian Livingstone CBE will be speaking with Hiro Capital partner about angel investment and the differences when compared to venture capital – helping developers understand which type of funding they should seek for their project.

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Mount & Blade developer Taleworlds has acquired Udo Games shares from WePlay Ventures and Lima Ventures.

The Ankara-based mobile studio raised $420,000 from the two firms last year, with WePlay and Lima now exiting the investment, saying that their mission at Udo has been completed.

"[Udo Games] accomplished very successful works by using the investment they received correctly," said WePlay's chairman Bora Koçyiğit. "However, to be frank, we did not expect such an early exit. The exit of a start-up that we invested in a year before completing our second year as WePlay proved to us how well we did. Likewise, we will continue to support the pre-seed game venture with all our strength and create new exit stories."

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Today, Riot Games has announced that it's officially appointed Andrei Van Roon as head of League (League of Legends) studios.

Van Roon will oversee development for League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, and League of Legends: Wild Rift. He will report to Marc Merrill, president of games and co-founder of Riot.

His new role responsibilities will also include developing narratives for champion characters and world lore for the title Runeterra.

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A team of Riot Games veterans have launched Sprocket Games, which today announced that it has landed $5 million in seed funding.

The founding team includes CEO Josiah Kiehl (with previous stints at Google and Riot), chief creative officer Jo Graylock (Riot and before that Obsidian Entertainment), chief technical officer Nicolas Tittley (Riot and before that CCP), and Reina Sweet (Riot).

The studio said it is making a cross-platform social adventure game that will make use of the team's prior experience with online multiplayer titles like League of Legends, Valorant, and Eve Online.

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Earlier this year, developer Jeffrey Janssen released Nobelia, a new game for Phillips CD-i, a hardware platform from the early '90s that may be most remembered for hosting a handful of poorly regarded Zelda and Mario games.

Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Janssen answers the most pressing question: Why?

"My dad worked at Phillips when I was a kid and he brought back a CD-i player," Janssen explains. "We didn't have any other game consoles, so we had a lot of fun with it."

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Brace Yourself Games announced that it's launched a new publishing division, Brace Yourself Publishing.

As reported by PocketGamer.biz, the company said that its priority will be games created by independent studios.

"After nearly a decade of developing games, we now want to use the resources and knowledge we've gained to help smaller indie developers make their own dream projects a reality," the company said.

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Strategy studio Dire Wolf Digital has acquired Cortex, a tabletop roleplaying games business owned by Fandom.

Cortex is made by the creators of D&D Beyond, and gives players the tools to build their own customised stories, worlds and characters with a set of rules, similar to Dungeons & Dragons.

As part of the deal, Dire Wolf Digital will also acquire Tales of Xadia: The Dragon Prince Roleplaying Game, based on the Netflix series, The Dragon Prince.

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Today, Quantic Dream embarks on a new chapter as it is brought into the fold of NetEase – the Chinese publisher's first European acquisition.

Over the past quarter of a century, the French studio has built a reputation for itself on the back of cinematic titles such as Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human. While these games may divide opinion among individual gamers, generally speaking they have been well received by critics and praised for attempting something different when it comes to interactive storytelling.

The high profile of these games, and the studio's long-running partnership with PlayStation, put Quantic Dream on the map – to the point where co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumière (pictured above left) tells GamesIndustry.biz the company has engaged in acquisition discussions with several potential buyers over its lifetime.

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Sony Interactive Entertainment and Sixjoy Hong Kong, a subsidiary of Tencent, have acquired new shares in Japanese studio FromSoftware by way of a third party allotment.

In a document shared by FromSoftare's parent company Kadokawa Corporation, as spotted by VGC, Sixjoy has bought 16.25% of shares in the Dark Souls developer, while Sony has taken a 14.09% stake.

Kadokawa will retain the remaining 69.66% of shares. In the notice, the firm stated it "recognises the enhancement of capabilities for the creation, development and deployment of game IP as one of the Group's highest priorities."

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China-based publisher NetEase has acquired French developer Quantic Dream for an undisclosed sum.

The studio will operate independently and continue to be led by David Cage and Guillaume de Fondaumière.

NetEase previously invested in Quantic Dream, taking a minority stake back in 2019. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz at the time, the studio discussed how this enabled it to branch beyond making PlayStation exclusives and targeting a wider variety of platforms.

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Facebook Gaming has announced that its app will no longer be active on October 28, the change will affect both the iOS and Android versions of the program.

As reported by Eurogamer, the news of its closure comes two years after it launched on mobile devices.

Within the announcement regarding the app shutting down, the company said that the gaming division will continue to operate.

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(Note: this piece was originally written on August 8th, any data shared is only accurate up to that point in time.)

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m one of the two developers at Black Tabby Games, an indie game studio I run with my wife, Abby Howard. You might know us from our first game, Scarlet Hollow or you might know us from our recently announced second game – and the subject of this article – Slay the Princess.

Scarlet Hollow is an episodic horror visual novel. We started development on the seven-episode game in March of 2020 and launched the first of those chapters for free in late September of the same year, before driving that launch into a successful Kickstarter the following month.

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Games publisher Super.com has changed its name to Super Good Games, and its website to SuperGG.com.

The company, formed in 2018, is best known as the publisher of games including Raji: An Ancient Epic from Nodding Head Games, Retro Machina by Orgbit Studio, and Alchemist Adventure by Bad Minions.

In a statement, Super Good Games said that it is "empowered by new owners," and that the rebrand is "putting a title to the new step of our growth and ambition."

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Rocksteady Studios, the team behind the acclaimed Batman: Arkham games and the upcoming Suicide Squad, is launching a new training program to help underrepresented folks find a career in games development.

Warner Bros – or Warner Bros Discovery, as it's now known following the spin-off from AT&T and merger with Discover earlier this year – announced the program today, stating that it will offer selected participants a free 12-week course in various disciplines.

Known as the Warner Bros Discover Access x Rocksteady Studios Games Academy, the program will offer hybrid training to help people prepare for roles in games design, art, audio, and quality assurance testing.

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PowerWash Simulator is the ultimate ‘Why hasn’t this been done before?’ game. It takes a mundane task that usually leads to a satisfying outcome and gamifies it, removing all of the hurdles of actually doing it in real life.

Futurlab founder James Marsden says that the idea for PowerWash Simulator came from that very ideal: taking something that is calm and soothing to watch, and giving players the tools to do it themselves. But, while the game itself is peaceful and free from antagonism, FuturLab's journey to release an indie hit was much more arduous.

The concept initially came about roughly four years ago, and it was Marsden's wife and business partner Kirsty Rigden that tapped into the core idea first.

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A lawsuit that accuses Epic Games of including a copyrighted dance in Fortnite without the creator's permission has been dismissed.

The suit was filed by YouTuber and choreographer Kyle Hanagami, which alleged that an emote in the game copies the hook of Hanagami's own copyrighted dance routine.

The ruling, given by a judge for the Central District of California, said that while entire choreographies can be copyrighted, individual moves and steps alone cannot. As a result, the court has said that Hanagami's routine and the Fortnite emote don't share enough creative similarities for the suit to stand up, as spotted by PCGamesN.

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The new Saints Row was the biggest selling boxed game at UK retail last week, launching at No.1 in the weekly charts.

The game launched last Tuesday to mixed reviews, and marks the first new entry in the series since 2015's Gat Out Of Hell.

According to GfK data, Saints Row sold more than five times the number of units in its first week as 2017's Agents of Mayhem, a multiplayer spin-off of the series. Comparisons with earlier Saints Row titles are somewhat tougher due to the shift towards digital sales; the last full entry was 2015's Saints Row: Gat out of Hell.

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Over 265,000 people from more than 100 countries attended Gamescom 2022 last week, the organisers announced.

After a two-year hiatus, over 1,100 exhibitors from 53 countries were at Cologne's Koelnmesse for the event, with the organiser noting that "at 75%, the number of foreign exhibitors was even higher than usual."

25,000 trade visitors attended the show, 50% of them from abroad, which is on a par with 2019's figures.

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Neowiz has come out on top of this year's Gamescom Awards, taking more awards than any other publisher.

The South Korean firm won three categories, thanks to its Pinocchio inspired RPG the Lies of P. The dark fantasy took home Best Action Adventure Game, Best RPG, and Most Wanted Sony PlayStation Game.

Meanwhile indie title Inkulinati and the shooter Metal: Hellsinger tied with two category wins each.

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