GamesIndustry

The Games and Online Harassment Hotline has launched a new online resource aimed at content creators so they can protect themselves from hate raids.

The guide can be found on the Hotline's website, and gives a comprehensive overview of what livestreamers can do if they're the victim of a hate raid, but also what measures they can put in place to minimise the risks of it happening, and what steps to take if it has happened already.

Talking to GamesIndustry.biz, the Games and Online Harassment Hotline director Jae Lin commented: "Hate raids have been used to target Black, women, queer, and marginalized streamers for years. With a spike in this tactic over the past year, it's the streamers and community moderators who have created and shared the most effective knowledge and tools for mitigating the harm of hate raids.

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Nintendo suffered declines in the first quarter of its financial year, with net sales dropping almost 5% to $2.3 billion – due largely to a decrease in hardware sales.

3.43 million Switch units were sold to retail during the three months ended June 30, 2022. That’s a year-on-year decline of 22.9%, which Nintendo attributed to “the effects of supply shortages in semiconductors and other components among other factors.”

Net sales: ¥307.5 billion ($2.3 billion), down 4.7% year-on-year Operating profit: ¥101.6 billion ($762.7 million), down 15.1% Ordinary profit: ¥166.7 billion ($1.3 billion), up 29.6% Gross profit: ¥184.5 billion ($1.4 billion), down 4.3%

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Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was the best-selling boxed video game in the UK last week, according to charts company GfK.

The game very narrowly beat Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to become the biggest launch in the Xeno series so far, according to data shared by GfK boss Dorian Bloch to GamesIndustry.biz.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 beat its predecessor by just a handful of units in terms of week one physical sales. In fact, all three Xenoblade games on the Nintendo Switch sold roughly the same amount of units at launch, with Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition the No.3 biggest launch.

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Despite a downturn in the financial fortunes of many publishers, Electronic Arts continues to show growth thanks in large part to its sporting efforts.

The company today reported results for the first quarter of its fiscal year (three months ended June 30), showing sales and profit growth driven by its F1 and FIFA franchises.

Revenue: $1.77 billion (up 14% year-on-year) Bookings: $1.3 billion (down 3%) Net income: $311 million (up 52%)

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Google Play has updated its developer program policies with a number of new rules that will be phased in over the coming months, including some new restrictions on how apps use ads.

Beginning September 30, unexpected full-screen interstitial ads that pop up when users have chosen to do something else will not be allowed.

On top of that, users must be able to quit out of full-screen interstitial ads within 15 seconds, unless they specifically opted into it (for an in-game reward, for example) or it doesn't interrupt normal use of the app.

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Video games have brought us an incredible range of memorable and iconic creatures over the decades, from Trico in The Last Guardian, to Creepers in Minecraft, Goombas in the Mario series, Big Daddies from BioShock, Final Fantasy's Chocobos, or Gorons in the Zelda franchise.

In a Develop:Brighton talk entitled 'Bringing Creatures to Life: How to Make Good, Emotionally Appealing Creature Designs', Sam Santala detailed the foundations for making creatures come to life in a way that makes sense for games, whether they're monstrous foes or adorable allies.

Santala has worked as a senior concept artist since 2014, working on games such as Rare's Everwild, Ubisoft's Might & Magic: Elemental Guardians, ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2, or Avatar: Pandora Rising. In 2020, he launched Songhorn, his outsourcing art studio focusing solely on creature design.

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The popularity of game downloads in Germany continued to grow last year, with 59% of all PC and console purchases made digitally.

According to the German games trade body Game, 93% of all PC titles were purchased and downloaded online, while 7% were bought physically.

On the console side however, 36% of game purchases were made digitally, with the majority still preferring to buy boxed copies of games for Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.

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Codemasters is famous the world over for developing high-quality simulation racing games.

Last month, the UK-based developer was in pole position in the charts with its latest smash hit: F1 22. However, the company continues to invest in other racing experiences, and today we turn our attention to another part of the Codemasters business: rally games.

We sit down with Ross Gowing, the senior creative director on the EA Sports Rally team, to discuss life at Codemasters and the future of off-road racing.

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Steam has updated its guidelines regarding graphical assets on the store, with the goal to make them "as clear and straightforward as possible for customers."

In a blog post detailing the new rules, Valve explained that going forward banner images should be restricted to "game artwork, the game name, and any official subtitle" and should not feature:

This applies to any store graphical assets which Steam said "are the banner images (called ‘Capsules’ in Steamworks) that represent your game throughout the store.”

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Our Machinery has pulled the plug on its game engine just over a year after it launched.

The company emailed developers to let them know development on its toolset, called The Machinery, has ceased and is even asking them to delete any copies they have installed.

In a message shared with GamesIndustry.biz, the company wrote:

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Valve and ID@Xbox are the first major companies who will deliver talks at GI Live: London in September.

Valve will be streaming in from Seattle to answer indie dev questions live at the show, while Xbox will be talking about its ID programme on stage.

The talks will take place over the event's two physical days on Wednesday, September 21st and Thursday, September 22nd. A digital-only meeting day will also take place on Tuesday, September 20th.

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The June launch of Diablo Immortal was not enough to pull Activision Blizzard out of its recent malaise, as the publisher posted its second quarter results today, showing double-digit declines to revenues, net income, and players.

Revenue: $1.64 billion (down 28% year-on-year) Bookings: $1.64 billion (down 15%) Net income: $280 million (down 68%) Monthly active users: 361 million (down 12% year-over-year and 3% quarter-over-quarter)

The Activision division continued to show declines with revenues down 38% year-over-year to $490 million, and engagement continuing to slide.

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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.

Nicolas 'Sparth' Bouvier has been hired as senior art director for games publisher Timi Studio Group and its subsidary development studio Team Kaiju.

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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.

Tom Enoki has been appointed as senior managing director and head of corporate planning office at Nintendo of Europe.

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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.

Video game retailer Kinguin announced that games industry veteran David Yarnton has been hired as partner and chief of business development.

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A new report reveals that Sony believes that Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard may influence future console purchases.

As reported by VGC, the platform holder responded to questions about the acquisition from the Brazilian government alongside other gaming and tech firms.

"[Call of Duty] is synonymous with first-person shooter games and essentially defines that category," it said to regulators.

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Google AdMob's app publishers can now access Pangle's exclusive TikTok for Business ad demand.

Pangle, the ad network of TikTok for Business, has joined Google AdMob as a bidding partner, which means mobile app developers and publishers can boost their revenue with exclusive ad demand from TikTok for Business advertisers. Google AdMob is Pangle's newest mediation partner, and joins the likes of MAX, ironSource, DT FairBid, Appodeal, AdMost, Nimbus, TradPlus, and TopOn.

Following a successful beta, the product integration is available to all app publishers from today. Mobile publishers and developers that integrate Pangle with Google AdMob will be able to display ads in various non-intrusive formats, including banner ads, interstitial ads, and rewarded video ads that give app users a choice to watch advertising content in return for in-app incentives.

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Despite being an accomplished programmer with credits at renowned studios like Insomniac Games and Media Molecule, Moo Yu feels like he’s still finding his feet.

Yu is something of a veteran in the games industry, having started his game development career in Southern California, before relocating to the UK and working on a multitude of mobile and indie projects including the crowdfunded Knights and Bikes.

But his current position – creative director at his own studio, Team Artichoke, working on an unannounced game -- he took up with reluctance.

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The movie rights for Tomb Raider are currently up for grabs, after MGM failed to greenlight a sequel.

TheWrap reports that the Hollywood giant had until May 2022 to approve a new Tomb Raider film, but its failure to do so means it has lost the rights to the IP.

Multiple anonymous sources have told the site there are several movie studios now bidding for the property.

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How much employees are being paid is something that is generally shrouded in mystery.

Much of the time staff are discouraged from discussing their compensation, which – among other things – often hides pay disparity based on gender and race.

As a result, there have been calls for greater transparency when it comes to pay. Not everyone is on board with this, but one company which can clearly see which way the wind is blowing is German mobile games firm InnoGames, which published the salary bands for a number of its departments last month.

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PlayStation hopes that its recently expanded subscription service and getting more PS5 units into the market will counter the decline in player engagement it’s experiencing this year.

During its latest earnings call, transcribed by Seeking Alpha, Sony’s executive deputy president and chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki said total gameplay time among PlayStation users was down 15% year-on-year in the three months ended June 30, 2022.

June was reported as a stronger month, up 3% over May but still down 10% when compared to June 2021.

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Four months after leaving Ubisoft, David Polfeldt has resurfaced at PlayerUnknown Productions.

The former Massive MD joins as senior advisor, with founder Brendan 'PlayerUnknown' Greene saying he felt Polfeldt "would be a great fit to come and advise [him] on creating a successful studio culture," after meeting last month at a conference.

Polfeldt confirmed in a statement that he will "help guide Brendan's hand in creating an authentic studio and a successful brand."

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Update, August 4, 2022: Steam has now been restored in Indonesia, but the Epic Games Store is still blocked.

As reported by Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad on Twitter, "Valve has registered with Kominfo and Steam is now officially unblocked and accessible in Indonesia."

Outside of games, Paypal has also been restored, Reuters reported.

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CD Projekt Red alumni have announced the creation of new Polish studio Dark Passenger.

As reported by Eurogamer, the Warsaw-based developer was co-created by Jakub Ben, former assistant director and cinematic artist at CDP and most recently creative director and co-founder of cinematics studio RealTime Warriors, and Marcin Michalski, former senior environment artist at CDP.

Dark Passenger's debut project will be an online multiplayer title built in Unreal Engine 5, set in Feudal Japan. The studio didn't announce any release window for the game, which is due to release on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.

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May's growth in hours watched on Twitch may have been an aberration as the streaming service resumed its downward trend in June, according to StreamElements and Rainmaker.gg's monthly State of the Stream report.

Twitch posted 1.7 billion hours watched in June, down about 6% from 1.81 billion in May.

Twitch started the year with more than 2 billion hours watched on the service in January, but aside from May's performance, that number has been sliding since.

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The Steam Deck reservation queue will be taken care of quicker than expected, Valve announced today.

"Many of the supply chain shortfalls that affect Steam Deck are gradually clearing up, and we're continuing to ramp production, so we're able to produce more Decks faster than ever before," the company said.

As a result, Valve expects to have filled all existing reservations by the end of this year, with "many" orders that had been pegged for the fourth quarter moving up to the third quarter.

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A key manufacturing partner for Nintendo Switch revealed it is having issues procuring components.

Bloomberg reported that Osaka-based Hosiden Corp retracted its previously issued fiscal year sales forecast via a filing sent to the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday.

The company said a mix of currency volatility and uncertaining over the procurement of semiconductors means it is now unable to offer a reasonable projection for the full financial year.

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Perhaps the biggest news this week -- besides the lovely new version of this very website launching -- is that the US government is taking another swing at Meta on anti-trust issues.

QUOTE | "Instead of competing on the merits, Meta is trying to buy its way to the top. Meta already owns a best-selling virtual reality fitness app, and it had the capabilities to compete even more closely with Within's popular Supernatural app. But Meta chose to buy market position instead of earning it on the merits. This is an illegal acquisition, and we will pursue all appropriate relief." - Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Competition deputy director John Newman explains why the US regulator is suing to stop Meta's acquisition of Within.

Now, this is not the first time the FTC has tried to rain on Meta's parade. In 2020 it filed suit in cooperation with a number of states against Meta (then Facebook) over its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, but that complaint was tossed with a judge ruling that it waited too long to challenge the 2012 and 2014 deals on anti-trust grounds.

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No company ever wants to report a year-on-year decline in revenues in what’s meant to be one of their growth businesses – and when the company in question is a major platform holder and one of the pillars of the whole industry, such a decline is sure to make people nervous.

Microsoft’s announcement this week that its Xbox numbers in the past quarter were down 7% year-on-year, with declines in revenue from both hardware (down 11%) and content and services (down 6%), is by no means in “the sky is falling” territory. Nonetheless, there will be plenty of speculation and concern over the extent to which the issues causing this decline are localised – both in terms of being localised to Microsoft specifically, and to this quarter specifically – versus being a warning sign for the industry’s broader performance in the months to come.

There’s no simple answer to that question because there’s no single factor that can be blamed for the entirety of Microsoft’s growth backtrack in this quarter. Rather, there’s a combination of factors at work here – some of which are indeed localised to one company and one time period, but others of which are a legitimate source of concern for the industry as a whole.

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Battlegrounds Mobile India, the country's version of PUBG, has been blocked by the Indian government.

As reported by Reuters, citing an Indian government source, the ban came from "national security concerns" around data sharing and mining from China as PUBG's developer, Krafton, is owned at 13.6% by Chinese tech giant Tencent.

The government invoked section 69A of its Information Technology Act to enforce the ban, which allows the government "to block public access to content in the interest of national security," Reuters said.

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Ashraf Ismail, the Assassin’s Creed creative director previously fired from Ubisoft Montreal following an investigation into misconduct, has resurfaced at Tencent.

Axios reported he is now serving as “a consulting creative director” for the Tencent-owned Timi Studios group, with the Chinese giant vouching for Ismail as he seeks a second chance.

“During our work with Ash, he has carried himself in a professional manner and has consistently shown an eagerness to learn and grow as both a team member and person,” a Timi spokesperson told Axios.

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Sony has released its first quarter results for the new financial year, showing a slight decline in gaming revenues.

The platform holder generated ¥604.1 billion ($4.5 billion) from its Game & Network Services division during the three months ended June 30, 2022, but rising costs and declining sales mean this was a 2% drop compared to the same quarter last year.

However, the company reported a rise in the number of PlayStation 5 units shipped and PlayStation Plus subscribers.

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Vox Media has laid off 39 staffers across the company due to economic uncertainty.

As reported by Variety, the media company's cuts included departments suchs as recruiting, sales, and publications such as games website Polygon.

In a memo obtained by Variety, Vox Media chief Jim Bankoff said that the decision to cut staff was caused by supply-chain issues reducing budgets for marketing and advertising.

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Loaded, a talent management and marketing company, announced that it will be opening a new studio, Open World.

As reported by Business Insider, the expansion will serve as a gaming consultancy business, Open World Solutions, to help marketers unfamiliar with games industry.

"So many non-endemic brands look at gaming and don't have that Rosetta Stone to really understand where their brand can fit into the milieu," said Niles Heron, Loaded's chief communications and culture officer.

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Bungie has cut back on communications with players through social channels, claiming employees at the firm have faced harassment and threats.

In a Reddit post, community manager dmg04 said that the harassment goes beyond "rude replies on Twitter or vague comments," and stated that there has been "real threats" towards the studio and people working within it.

As a result, employees at the Destiny 2 maker are temporarily pulling back from online conversations with players as the team plans ways to protect itself from such things in the future.

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Lisa Opie chose an interesting time to take the reins of Ubisoft Reflections and Ubisoft Leamington.

The former BBC exec joined last year in the wake of the 2020 allegations of abuse, discrimination and harassment, and amid Ubisoft’s many efforts to rectify the issues with its workplace culture and repair the damage to its reputation.

Moving from one industry to another is already a formidable task, but to do so when your new employer is undergoing intense scrutiny – a prominent example for an industry-wide crisis – is even more so.

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The games industry moves pretty fast, and there's a tendency for all involved to look constantly to what's next without so much worrying about what came before. That said, even an industry so entrenched in the now can learn from its past.

So to refresh our collective memory and perhaps offer some perspective on our field's history, GamesIndustry.biz runs this monthly feature highlighting happenings in gaming from exactly a decade ago.

A decade ago, the console industry was desperate for a shake-up.

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Diablo Immortal has surpassed $100 million in global player spending across the App Store and Google Play, two months after its release.

According to Sensor Tower, the title, which launched on June 1, hit the milestone in eight weeks, becoming one of the fastest mobile titles to do so.

Data from the firm revealed that Niantic’s Pokémon GO took around two weeks to hit the same figure, while Nintendo’s Fire Emblem Heroes took ten weeks.

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Concept Ventures announced today that it's launched a $60 million (£50 million) pre-seed fund known as The Fund.

Backed by the British Business Bank, the fund is one of the few pre-seed investments in the UK dedicated to gaming.

The Fund will also include a $36 million (£30 million) commitment from the British Business Bank's Enterprise Capital Funds program

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The development of Aspyr Media's remake of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic has been delayed indefinitely.

As reported by Bloomberg, the pause comes after the publisher fired both its art director Jason Minor and design director Brad Prince.

The remake was announced last year and has been in development for three years so far.

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