In The News
Square Enix Montreal creative director Teddy Diefenbach left the company. Read his blog post about why, here.
Sega and Interior Night have a new publishing deal, Game Informer’s Imran Khan writes. “The studio which has a mission statement of delivering narrative-driven games for mature audiences, is not discussing the new IP yet, nor is Sega.”
Microsoft news:
Polygon’s Colin Campbell reports that Microsoft is potentially looking at acquiring Electronic Arts. “The most recent one we heard (from a reliable source close to Microsoft) was, in fact, Electronic Arts. We also heard a whisper about Valve and about Korean outfit PUBG Corp.”
PlayFab was acquired by Microsoft, VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi reports. It “accelerates game development by handling live operations and other tasks so developers can concentrate on making their games.”
Russian venture capitalists are pumping almost $9 million into esports startups. “Russia’s Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF), in collaboration with esports organization M19, has announced the launch of a 500 million rubles (nearly $8.9 million) accelerator program,” Angelos Anastasopoulos at The Esports Observer reports.
Sony may be changing its Move controllers, according to GamesIndustry.biz’s James Batchelor. “New patent filings indicate PlayStation is in the process of revamping its motion-sensitive Move controllers … Filed earlier this month, one patent shows the new device itself.”
FIFA 18 esports viewership saw a huge rise over the weekend, The Esports Observer’s Jordan Fragen writes. “Over three days, the official EA Sports FIFA channel accrued 2.1 million hours watched, nearly triple the 788,000 hours watched on the channel in 2017.”
ReKTGlobal is now State Farm’s Agency of Record for esports, Esports Insider’s Oliver Ring reports.
Daemen College joined the growing amount of universities and colleges with esports teams, WKBW Buffalo reports.
Todd Rogers, who held a Dragster record for 35 years, has been stripped of his title and banned from the leaderboards, Engadget’s Rob LeFebvre reports. “Twin Galaxies has now decided to remove all of Rogers’ score and ban him from future participation in any of its competitive leaderboards.”
If you want it badly enough, Bandai Namco is considering allowing Monster Hunter: World players to redesign themselves, Khan reports.
Congratulations to eRa Eternity, who defeated OpTic Gaming to win the first CWL Pro League Challenge.
Upcoming Hearthstone update changes can be found here.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds esports news:
Finalized PUBG teams for IEM Katowice 2018 can be found here.
Ring writes that “Global Loot League (‘GLL’) and production company PGL have announced a partnership” for a $50,000 PUBG tournament.