In The News
Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar are dealing with a cease and desist letter sent from Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations over Red Dead Redemption II, The Blast’s Daniel Goldblatt and Ryan Naumann report. “Pinkerton claims that Rockstar used their trademarks, featuring the Pinkerton Detective badge, without permission.”
Steam posted its “Steam – 2018 Year in Review.”
Cross-platform play in all its console glory is live for Rocket League — finally including PlayStation. “Players on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Steam PC can now randomly matchmake with or against each other in all Online match types,” a PlayStation announcement reads.
Mobile game Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire pulled in “$375 million worldwide in the game over the past 12 months, the equivalent of more than 6.2 million copies of a full-priced $60 console release,” Sensor Tower writes.
Dan Trachtenberg is joining the Uncharted movie as a director, Variety’s Justin Kroll reports.
Both Jurassic World Evolution and Planet Coaster ticked over two million sales, GI.biz’s Christopher Dring writes.
Top Twitch channels in the last week by hours watched saw gamesdonequick at 14.79 million, tfue at 2.28 million, ninja at 2.15 million and pgl_dota2 at 1.69 million, TEO reports.
Extra Esports News:
Uppercut Esports announced its founder André “Mrelic” Marden has passed away.
Investment:
Overactive Media “has closed a $22 million round of funding. This new round of funding is in addition to the initial $21.5 million in funding closed in October 2018,” Unikrn’s Dustin Steiner reports.
Mercedes-Benz and FC Köln invested in SK Gaming, TEO’s Trent Murray reports. “Both companies will have branding integrated into SK Gaming’s new jerseys.”
Partnerships:
CompLexity Gaming and Panini are partnering, Esports Insider’s Adam Fitch writes.
Esports Entertainment Group and Epsilon are partnering, Fitch reports. “The Belgium-based organisation will work with VIE.gg, the esports betting platform owned by Esports Entertainment Group.”
GameWorks is expanding its esports lounges to Norfolk, Chicago, Minneapolis and Cincinnati, Fitch reports.
100 Thieves posted “100 THIEVES CONTENT HOUSE LA TOUR.”