GamesIndustry

Twitch has introduced a new tool that lets streamers share and ban malicious users from more than one community at a time.

The new Shared Ban Info feature lets streamers at Partner, Affiliate or mutual follows share their ban information with one another, which includes users that have been banned from chatting in streams.

This means if a streamer sees a banned user on a peer's information, they can flag that username in case said user appears in their stream. They won't be banned, but will be marked as a preventive measure so that moderators can keep an eye out for any potential bad behaviour.

Read more

China has seen the first decline in gaming revenues in over a decade, according to new data shared by the Game Publishing Committee of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association.

Combined revenue for the country's gaming market fell by 1.8%, with the total number of active game users falling from 666.5 million in December 2021 to 665.6 million by June 2022, as reported by South China Morning Post.

The outlet also posted that domestic revenue from Chinese companies dropped by 4.25% in the first half of the year, compared to growth of 8.3% the same period in 2021, and a 30.4% increase in the first half of 2020.

Read more

Opera and YoYo Games, the company behind the popular GameMaker engine, have launched a new platform that enables developers to release games on mobile for free.

The two companies have added new functionality to GX.games, their platform for distributing titles to the games-centric Opera GX browser, to ensure titles work on both the iOS and Android versions of the app.

The mobile version of GX.games enters beta today, with the first games expected to be released after the upcoming GX.games mobile game jam.

Read more

Say what you like about NFTs -- and with the market around most of them currently in what might charitably be described as a catastrophic collapse, everyone else is certainly saying what they like -- but the technology has, in its short and sordid time in the limelight, achieved at least one quite remarkable thing.

Never before have I seen a technology inspire game companies to scramble to announce that they will absolutely not be using it; this industry is usually relentlessly neophiliac and willing to give a shot to just about every idea that comes down the technological pike, be it good, bad, or indifferent, which makes the growing roster of companies who have made statements publicly distancing themselves from NFTs into an especially unusual occurrence.

At a glance, the statement from Minecraft creator and Microsoft subsidiary Mojang this week belongs broadly in that category. It is, however, a bit more firmly-worded than many other companies' statements, taking the time to make specific arguments against the use of NFTs in Minecraft rather than just briefly reassuring players that there are no plans to implement them, as other companies have done.

Read more

The Entertainment Software Association saw a big drop in revenue when the coronavirus pandemic cancelled E3 2020.

Axios has published a review of the trade body's tax filings for the year ended March 31, 2021, which shows the organisation's revenues reached $40 million. That's a year-on-year decline of $10 million or 25%.

The ESA is funded by membership fees -- with 30 members, including giants such as Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, Tencent and Electronic Arts -- as well as charges for game ratings by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, which the trade body operates.

Read more

Original story, July 21, 2022: Ubisoft has released its financial report for the first quarter of the fiscal year, reporting a year-over-year decline in revenues.

For the three months ended March 31, the publisher posted sales of €318.2 million, a 9.8% decrease on the €353 million generated the same period last year.

Net bookings reached €293.3 million, which was slightly ahead of the firm's forecasted target of approximately €280 million, but down by 10% on the €326 reported in Q1 2021.

Read more

Activision Blizzard employees are protesting today in response to the US Supreme Court's reversal of Roe vs Wade.

As reported by The Washington Post, currently 450 employees at the Call of Duty maker are participating in person and online.

The walkout is taking place across the states of Texas, California, Minnesota, and New York.

Read more

Mattel announced today that it's hired Mike DeLaet as global head of digital gaming.

In his new role, he will oversee Mattel163, the company's partnership with NetEase which focuses on publishing games based on Mattel's intellectual property.

The publisher also said that he will be responsible for accelerating its digital gaming product offerings.

Read more

Apex Legends publisher EA confirmed today that FIFA 23 will not feature any Russian clubs or team.

As reported to Eurogamer, the decision was attributed to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"EA Sports stands in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and like so many voices across the world of football, calls for peace and an end to the invasion of Ukraine," the company said in a statement.

Read more

UK-based developer Jagex has acquired long-running US games company Pipeworks Studios.

Situated Eugene, Oregon, Pipeworks was actually acquired just two years ago by Sumo Group for $100 million. The group has now sold the company to Jagex for an undisclosed sum.

And it's Jagex's first ever acquisition.

Read more

Gearbox today announced that it will be sunsetting its forums at the start of next month.

In a message posted on its boards, the forums admin team said it's "noticed many of [the] community members prefer to engage on other social platforms" over the past year. The post indicated that the "team will continue to receive feedback and concerns" on its dedicated support website, but that the forums themselves would be shut down on August 1.

The discussion boards are already in read-only mode, before they disappear entirely "later this summer." The team said they would provide 30 days' notice to users, and invited them to join their various Discord servers.

Read more

76.1 million games were sold across Europe during the first six months of the year, a rise of 13.5% over the same period in 2021 (GSD Market Data).

32 million of these games were physical titles, while 44 million were sold via digital stores. The physical data covers all games sold in a box, while the digital data covers games from mainly AAA game developers (with Nintendo the notable absentee).

The biggest European market for game sales was Germany, with nearly 15.4 million games sold over the first six months of the year (sales up 13.6% compared with the same period in 2021). Followed by the UK with 14.3 million sales (up 2%), then France with 10.2 million (up 12.1%).

Read more

Last week we revealed the winners of the UK 2022 Best Places To Work Awards.

There were 17 badge winners, and six special award winners... including our 2022 UK Best Boss. You can read all about those right here. For those interested in how the awards are decided, check out this article here.

We revealed the winners at a special presentation in Brighton last week, with over 100 industry guests in the room.

Read more

GamesIndustry.biz is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and the highlight (so far) has been our special anniversary party in Brighton.

Taking place alongside Develop:Brighton last week, the event was held at Horatio's Bar on the city's famous pleasure pier, with hundreds of developers and industry professionals joining us for the evening.

There were video games from 2002 (yes, TimeSplitters is still great), music from 2002 (remember when music was good?), fish and chips, and (of course) cake.

Read more

Build A Rocket Boy has made three senior hires, appointing veterans Mick Hocking as chief development officer, Murray Pannell as SVP of global marketing, and Randall Price as chief publishing officer.

Hocking was the co-founder of the late Evolution Studios where he worked until its closure in 2016. He most recently was VP of product development at Codemasters, which had rescued the Evolution team. He also previously worked as vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

Pannell joined Build A Rocket Boy from 2K where he had been VP of publishing for Europe for five years, having previously worked as marketing director for the UK and Ireland at PlayStation, and marketing director at Ubisoft.

Read more

Minecraft creator Mojang Studios has announced that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain won't be supported or allowed on the platform going forward.

The decision for rejecting the technology was attributed to the concern that they would created disparities between Minecraft players.

"We have these rules to ensure that Minecraft remains a community where everyone has access to the same content," the statement said. "NFTs, however, can create models of scarcity and exclusion that conflict with our guidelines and the spirit of Minecraft."

Read more

Today the director of Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us, Bruce Straley, announced the formation of Wildflower Interactive.

He introduced the new studio on Twitter and noted that after he left the games industry in 2017, he wasn't sure if he'd create games again.

Throughout his career, Straley has worked at developer Naughty Dog for nearly 20 years before his departure.

Read more

Google has announced that app developers will offer consumers in the EEA (European Economic Area) alternative payment options for non-gaming apps.

The change follows after the tech giant complied with the European Parliament's Digital Markets Act (DMA), which was passed earlier this month.

The DMA is a set of rules and regulations specifically targeted at large online platforms the EU considers to be a 'gatekeeper.'

Read more

Discord has partnered up with Xbox to bring voice chat functionality to Series X|S and Xbox One consoles.

Using the Xbox mobile app, users will be able to set up voice chats and transfer them to the platform by connecting Discord to their Xbox accounts.

It also allows cross-platform communication, so users playing on PC and mobile can also join a chat hosted on any of the three platforms.

Read more

About two and a half years ago, Zachtronics founder Zach Barth and the studio's audio and narrative director, Matthew Burns, went for a walk.

During the course of their conversation, Barth said that he wanted to shut down the developer. In short, he had become tired of working there.

"I would say over the years game after game it started to feel samey. I felt like my job started to become more boring every day," he tells GamesIndustry.biz. "Every day we explored the same space more thoroughly and we didn't like exploring new spaces."

Read more

At Develop:Brighton last week, Rebellion's Cari Watterton and Lowtek's Alastair Low shared a talk on the topic of accessibility.

Watterton, who joined the Sniper Elite developer as senior designer of accessibility this March, gave a crash course in making games more accessible, while Low -- founder and director of indie dev Lowtek -- focused on sharing advice about designing for dyslexic players.

In this article we'll cover Watterton's portion of the talk, but stay tuned for more from Alastair Low and designing with dyslexia in mind in the coming weeks.

Read more

Chinese studio Nekcom has raised $8 million in a round of Series A funding in order to fuel game development, R&D and international expansion.

The round was led by Galaxy Interactive, and firm partner and co-head Ryan You will join Nekcom's board of directors.

Nekcom is best known as the maker of the Dying: 1883 and Dying: Reborn, and is currently working on a post apocalyptic title for PlayStation and PC, Showa American Story.

Read more