GamesIndustry

A lawsuit that seeks to win compensation for almost nine million UK consumers was filed against Sony last week, accusing the PlayStation maker of abusing its status to overcharge players, developers and publishers.

According to consumer rights expert Alex Neill, who filed the suit with the Competition Appeal Tribunal, Sony is in breach of competition law by "abusing its market power to improve unfair terms and conditions on game developers and publishers," which in turn has forced prices up for players.

The filing also accuses the platform holder of "ripping people off" by charging commission on every digital game and in-game item sold via the PlayStation Store, which allows it to take a 30% cut of all purchases.

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A judge has denied AimJunkies' request to dismiss Bungie's lawsuit against the cheat maker.

As reported by Axios' Stephen Totilo on Twitter, the decision was made by US District Judge Thomas S. Zilly.

Earlier this month, AimJunkies issued several subpoenas in an effort to strike back at Bungie. The cheat maker argued that a Bungie employee violated the cheat software’s terms of service by purchasing and giving it to their employer, adding that it intended to "prosecute individuals or companies who violated our copyrights and terms of service to the fullest extent of the law."

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As part of our ongoing celebration of GamesIndustry.biz's 20th anniversary this year, we explored the biggest lessons learned during the site's life so far in a talk delivered at last month's Develop:Brighton conference.

We invited a range of prominent developers, indies and other industry professionals to share the most important insights they have gathered over the last two decades – and for those who were unable to make it to the talk, we've provided the highlights below.

Dinga Bakaba, studio and co-creative director, Arkane Lyon

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Today, Warner Bros. Games has announced that MultiVersus has had more than 20 million players since its release.

The free-to-play multiplatform title developed by Player First Games launched in open beta on July 26.

With a roster of characters from across various media, players can select fighters such as Garnet from Steven Universe, Harley Quinn, and Lebron James.

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Another PlayStation IP is being adapted for film as PlayStation Productions and Scott Free Productions have begun development of a movie based on Gravity Rush.

Gravity Rush is a 2012 adventure title developed by Japan Studio's Team Gravity, as players stepped into the role of the gravity-controlling Kat.

As reported by Deadline, Emily Jerome, producer of Panopticon, is working on the script. Anna Mastro, who has worked on Shameless and The Bold Type is set to direct the film.

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Sony's PlayStation Productions is reportedly working on a live-action adaptation of the 2019 survival horror game, Days Gone.

According to Deadline, Sheldon Turner, who has written X-Men: First Class and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, has been tapped to develop the project.

Sam Heughan from Starz's Outlander series is set to play Deacon St. John, the lead character of Days Gone.

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At first, Saints Row may have seemed like a Grand Theft Auto wannabe, hoping to tap into the huge success Rockstar had seen with the PS2 era trilogy. But as GTA 4 veered into grittier, more realistic territory, it became clear that Saints Row was heading in a very different direction.

By the end of the series, Saints Row fans had been given superpowers, massacred enemies to the epic sound of Bonnie Tyler's 'Holding out for a Hero,' thrown themselves in front of vehicles to claim on the insurance money, sprayed sewage over unsuspecting pedestrians, and wielded weaponry ranging from the dubstep gun to a fart in a jar – and, yes, those purple phallic melee weapons.

The rebooted Saints Row, which arrives on PC and consoles tomorrow, has a considerably different tone.

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Mario maker Nintendo will be shrinking the size of its Nintendo Switch packaging, to help increase the console's availability at retailers.

As reported and translated by Siliconera, the platform holder has already begun to reduce the boxed packaging.

It adds that the reduction will shrink the console's packaging by 20%.

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At Devcom today, game UX strategist and cognitive science expert Celia Hodent gave a talk about ethics in games, highlighting shady practices and grey areas of game development, and emphasising the need for the industry to better define limits when it comes to monetisation practices.

"It's hard in games to determine where that line is," Hodent said. "But my point is we should start defining those lines, defining when we are crossing one, so that we can make sure we offer games that are going to be accessible, inclusive, and that are going to be respectful to players."

Her talk highlighted good UX practices, focusing in part on loot boxes and at what point they start being problematic.

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Sega is looking to follow up the successful Sonic the Hedgehog films with two more movie adaptations from its catalog.

The company has announced that it is partnering with PictureStart, the company behind the upcoming Borderlands film, to make movies based on Space Channel 5 and Comix Zone.

Based on the 1999 Dreamcast dancing game, Space Channel 5 will follow a fast food employee enlisted by a reporter from the future to save the world from aliens "using the one thing that unites all people on the planet: our love of silly viral dances."

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Starbreeze has posted its financial results for the three months ended June 30th, 2021, with the studio continuing to make a loss as development on Payday 3 continues.

Looking further into Starbreeze's Q2 financials, a large majority of sales were driven by the Payday franchise, which accounted for SEK 30 million ($2.8 million) during the three months, 96.5% of the total net sales figure.

During the quarter, PC sales saw a 9% decrease to SEK 24.7 million ($2.3 million), while console sales saw a 19% increase to SEK 5.5 million ($500,000).

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Spider-Man Remastered is PlayStation's fastest selling PC launch yet in the UK, according to the latest GSD data.

The game's opening week sales are 26% higher than the previous major PlayStation PC title: God of War, which was relesaed in January.

It’s the fourth biggest PC game launch of the year in the UK, behind Elden Ring, Total War: Warhammer 3 and LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.

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GamesIndustry.biz relaunched its website last month with the sleeker, cleaner design you now see, but did you know we overhauled our newsletters as well?

If you haven't already, you can subscribe via gamesindustry.biz/newsletters to see what we mean.

Signing up is simple and free. Head to the signup page, enter your email address and tick which newsletters you want to receive. That's it.

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Women in Games has released a new booklet with eyes to tackle underrepresentation in the games industry, particularly opportunities for women.

Titled 'Building a Fair Playing Field', the guide seeks to "address wide scale issues of gender inequality," as well as "highlight the role of leadership in achieving fairness," and "encourage and enable change."

It contains 150 pages of "information, inspiration, resources, first-hand accounts, case studies, recommendations and more," for those "interested in engaging with, and advancing, gender equality and wider diversity and inclusion."

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The UK games industry continues to thrive, with an estimated 39.1 million Britons reported to be video games consumers, according to Newzoo's Global Games Market Report 2022.

As trade body UKIE rightly notes "the industry is an economic powerhouse… providing £2.87 billion in gross value add to the UK economy." Notably it is also one of the UK’s most international workforces with nearly 30% of employees holding a nationality other than British (compared to just 11% of the UK working-age population), according to the latest UKIE's UK Games Industry Census.

The industry has continued to grow despite difficult headwinds, not least the impact of the ending of free movement of workers from the EU (an estimated 20% of the current workforce holds an EU nationality, the UK Games Industry Census reported).

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The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has accused Activision Blizzard of illegally surveilling employees while protesting and cutting off chat channels as staff discussed labor issues.

As reported by Fortune, the filing says that the firm also threatened to remove employee access to other internal message channels where pay and working conditions were discussed.

Discussing pay and going to protests without being surveilled is legally protected under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

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During July, Twitch amassed the same viewership numbers that it accumulated during the month of June, according to StreamElements and Rainmaker.gg's monthly State of the Stream report.

The streaming service posted 1.7 billion hours watched in the month of July.

Thus far, Twitch has yet to reach January's monthly viewership of over 2 billion hours watched again.

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Chicago-based studio Atom Switch has raised $3.4 million from Hiro Capital and 1Up Ventures.

The investment will go towards the development of its debut PC and console title, InfestStation, a multiplayer FPS made in Unreal Engine 5.

Atom Switch was created in 2013 by CEO and creative director Dan Sandberg, as a consultancy and freelance studio, and currently employs six staff. The studio wants to focus on quality of life for its employees and its players, the announcement said, adding that "crunch is not a scheduling tool, toxic work culture is not a consequence of growth, and micro-transactions are not the sole foundation for success."

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Once upon a time, a brand was a pretty much permanent thing, something to say who owned livestock, or where goods had been made.

These days – and especially on this site – we use it to talk about intellectual property more than physical property, a popular franchise of games or the nebulous connotations consumers hold in their head about an actual product line.

And in that sense, a brand is very much impermanent. Hard to kill certainly, as Atari's continued existence reminds us. But not burned in flesh or set in stone. Brands adapt to the times, they are routinely refreshed, reinvigorated, and re-sold to audiences in a variety of guises, some paying wonderful homage to their origins, and others less so.

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Throughout the month of July US video game revenue reached $4.2 billion, a 9% drop year-over-year according to the latest NPD data.

Consumer spending for the month on hardware increased by 12% year-on-year to $362 million when compared to 2021.

Video game software sales during the month reached $3.7 billion, down 10% year-over-year.

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What are the most important companies in the games industry? The answer depends heavily on your interpretation of the question.

One might be tempted to look to the companies with the largest market capitalisation or the largest sales numbers, or perhaps those with the largest active user numbers. Certainly, you could also look to the hardware companies whose innovations underpin the industry’s efforts – the NVIDIAs and AMDs of the world, or perhaps to a lesser extent, the console platform holders.

One other category of company, however, stands out as being vitally important even if not always all that high profile, and that’s the companies which provide the software tools and platforms upon which almost all modern games are now built. In essence, there are two key players here (along with an interesting ecosystem of other players who serve more specific niches) – Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, and Unity’s eponymous engine.

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Blizzard has confirmed that there won't be any form of loot boxes or pay-to-win elements in upcoming RPG title Diablo IV, as part of an in-depth look at its live service and monetisation plans.

In a recent document, the company shared that the title will be a full-price game that will also include a premium battle pass and a cosmetics shop at launch. The items available in both of these will not offer any "pay-for-power" options according to the studio.

While the premium battle pass will focus solely on aesthetic items, a free tier will allow players to unlock items organically without buying the premium upgrade. It'll also include gameplay boosts that all players can unlock, that can be used to level up new characters, for example.

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Video game firm Aonic Group announced that it's acquired marketing platform Exmox for nearly $100 million.

Founded in 2015 and based out of Germany, Exmox has created marketing campaigns and advertised for various game companies over the years.

With this addition Aonic said that it intends to strengthen its advertising operations.

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Today, development services provider Room 8 Group announced its new mobile game development division, Solid Bash.

The newly established team will operate across Room 8's locations in Canada, Poland, Romania, and Ukraine.

Solid Bash will be helmed by Matthew Zoern, vice president of games and Benjamin Troy Drysdale, who will serve as head of technology.

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Chinese giant Tencent released its financial earnings for the period ending on June 30, reporting declines in revenue among its international and domestic game divisions.

The firm explained its international games revenue decline by saying the entire industry "experienced a post-pandemic digestion period" as players started to resume outdoor and offline pursuits.

While its titles PUBG Mobile and Brawl Stars saw decreases in their earnings, Valorant grew revenues and posted a record-high for monthly active users during the quarter.

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Nexus Mods this week banned a user who posted a mod for Spider-Man Remastered that removed Pride flags from the game's version of New York City.

In a post explaining the move, site owner Robin Scott said the mod had been uploaded by a user of the site who created a second account to upload the anti-Pride mod.

"The fact the user needed to make a sock puppet like a coward to upload the mod showed their intent to troll and that they knew it would not be allowed," Scott said.

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Embracer Group has released its financial results for Q1 of the fiscal year, reporting a 107% increase in sales revenue as its acquisitions spree continues.

For the quarter ended June 31, the Swedish giant reported net sales of SEK 7.1 billion ($682 million) up from SEK 3.4 billion ($298 million) during the same period last year. It noted that this growth was predominantly driven by inorganic growth via subsidaries bought in the last year.

Embracer's mobile games segment saw the most significant increase, sales for the quarter were up by 104% to SEK 1.4 billion ($134 million). This was driven by subsidiary Easybrain as well the acquisition of hypercasual outfit CrazyLabs in August 2021.

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Since its inception, The Sims franchise has been a beacon of inclusivity for gaming, a space that has let players create and simulate their own characters in great detail.

As the series has evolved, the choices on offer have become more and more granular, not just giving players ways to change hairstyles, clothes and personalities, but allowing them to form open-ended relationships with characters without boundaries.

But while The Sims 4 gives players this unrivalled freedom, expression cannot happen if everyone is a blank canvas. The latest update seeks to address this, giving users the tools to give their Sims preferred pronouns and specific sexual orientations.

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At a glance:

Embracer has announced a number of major acquisitions, including the IP rights to the Lord of the Rings and Maneater developer Tripwire Interactive.

The company announced five acquisitions early this morning, plus "one unannounced acquisition," for an aggregated upfront purchase price of SEK 6 billion ($576 million).

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Asmodee Digital has announced a name change to Twin Sails Interactive, as well as a change in its business strategy.

The publisher is best known for putting out digital versions of classic board games, including Gloomhaven, Terraforming Mars, and multiple Catan titles.

Moving forward, it’ll focus more on "original experiences, combining indie and AA titles on premium platforms alongside industry leading partners."

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Participating in game jams is a common way for developers to cut their professional teeth, and in some cases these projects made in a few hours or days turn into very successful fully-fledged games.

Baba is You, Goat Simulator, Celeste, Inscryption, Snake Pass, Donut County, Superhot… The list of games resulting from game jams (either internal or external) is long. Eyes in the Dark: The Curious Case of One Victoria Bloom is also one of them.

The striking black and white roguelite from Croatian developer Under the Stairs – its debut title – released last month, courtesy of Gearbox Publishing.

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In 2003, the release of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time attracted an unusual amount of attention from Iranians.

The early 2000s was a time when digital games were becoming increasingly popular in Iran. The first video game publication, Bazi Rayane, was released in 2001, and more magazines and video game studios were founded in the following years.

Therefore, it was inevitable for Iranians to respond to a game that was supposedly about them.

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Paradox Interactive has announced its new indie publishing branch, Paradox Arc.

Announcing the initiative on Twitter, it said the label will focus on "publishing efforts to bring deep, endless, and replayable games from smaller development teams to our existing audience and the world."

Paradox Arc has already unveiled its debut title, a deck-building game called Across the Obelisk. The title, developed by Dreamsite Games, was in Early Access on Steam for a year and is out now.

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The PC and console version of Little Orpheus has been been given a new release date following its delay earlier this year.

Publisher Secret Mode announced the platformer will now be released for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch and via Steam and Epic Games Store on September 13.

The game was originally due in March, but was pushed back to avoid causing offence around Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

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Former contractors allege that Nintendo of America (NoA) was a discriminatory workplace for female contractors, according to an exposé by Kotaku.

In one of the report's accounts, a former temporary staffer explained that she reported incidents of sexual harassment and in response, the external staffing company she technically worked for, Aerotek, "warned her to be less outspoken."

Kotaku spoke with 10 people who worked for Nintendo at various points of the past decade who detailed various stories of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at a company they said limited career advancement opportunities for women.

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Valorant maker Riot Games released its 2021 annual diversity and inclusion report which shows that the company has seen a mix of gains and decreases in the representation of its workforce.

Underrepresented minority (URM) = Black or African American, Hispanic, Latinx or Spanish origin, Native American or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and Two or More Races in the U.S

Looking at new hires, the number of women increased year-on-year, with 30.4% of new hires globally versus 28% in 2020.

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You have just one month left to enter 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 now.

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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Astro's Playroom was quite the surprise package at the launch of PS5.

It was easy to dismiss the game before release as a short 3D platformer that acts as a tech showcase for Sony's new DualSense controller. We've seen plenty of these things before: a mildly diverting demo of the new hardware you've just bought.

But Astro's Playroom turned out to be a genuinely delightful little game that was crammed with nostalgic references to PlayStation's past, while representing what we might get from its future. The Verge dubbed it 'PS5's Wii Sports' and Eurogamer said it is one of the best launch titles of all time. I have to agree.

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This article is part of our Games Industry Goes Green series, in partnership with Playing for the Planet

When the Riders Republic team attended the Green Game Jam in 2021, we had no idea it would lead to the creation of Riders Republic Rebirth, an in-game event featuring a reforestation activity and a virtual climate march – the first ever to take place in a video game.

The Jam, hosted by the UN Environmental Programme’s Playing for the Planet Alliance, is an annual event aiming to bring together video game creatives to brainstorm new ways to inspire players to take action for the planet. Each year’s Green Game Jam has a theme, and 2021’s event was centered around conserving and restoring forests and oceans. As the Riders Republic gameplay director, I instantly knew we had a unique opportunity to bring the topic of reforestation to life for our players in a fun, yet meaningful way.

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German gamers spent more on video games, hardware and accessories in 2021 than in any previous year, with total spending reaching €9.8 billion.

This figure was revealed by the 2022 annual report from Game, the trade body for Germany's games industry, which showed revenues for games products rose 17% over the already-breaking levels seen in 2020.

As such, Germany remains the largest video games market in Europe and the fifth largest in the world.

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