In The News
Ari Segal, formerly of the Arizona Coyotes hockey team, is the new president and chief operating officer for Immortals. He’s “in charge of all business operations as the group enters the new Overwatch League and vies for a spot in Riot Games’ reconstituted League Championship Series,” SportsBusiness Daily’s Ben Fischer reports.
Minnesota Twins pitcher Trevor May talked about his recent investment in Winston’s Lab in an interview with The Game Haus’s Robert Hanes. Here’s a snippet of another traditional athlete getting involved in esports: “‘If you are going to put any real time into something then you want to be good,’ May said. ‘Otherwise you’re just wasting your time and I hate to waste time.’”
Project X. One thousand players, MMO and potential PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds rival. Automaton Games’ upcoming title “has not been officially announced yet, nor does it have a name,” PC Gamer’s Samuel Roberts reports. “The promise of a 400-player competitive mode within that is Project X’s biggest draw.”
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is getting an ESL and Intel Extreme Masters-hosted $200,000 tournament “at the Intel Extreme Masters Oakland event on Nov. 18-19 at the Oracle Arena,” ESPN’s Jacob Wolf reports.
Fortnite hit 7 million total players. “The total was announced a week after a new game mode [Battle Royale] was spun off as a free-to-play, standalone game on PC and console,” Polygon’s Charlie Hall reports.
A new Hearthstone card was leaked via a voice actor. PC Gamer’s Andy Chalk reports that Pierre-Alain De Garrigues, the French version of the innkeeper, “posted video of himself recording a character called Tunnel Rodent.”
Gears of War’s tournament prize pools got a serious upgrade. Gears Pro Circuit’s second season has a $2 million prize pool, Dot Esports’ Justin Binkowski writes.
Press X acquired Prime Talent “as their internal division to represent professional esports players around the world,” the press release reads. Press X is a marketing agency and Prime Talent is a talent agency.
D&D Beyond is “a website and platform that fully digitizes all the classic role-playing game’s rules, modules and tools,” and apparently the reception has been warm. AListDaily’s Steven Wong interviewed Curse senior product manager Adam Bradford about Curse’s partnership with Wizards of the Coast. Here’s a snippet:
“‘We’ve gotten off to a solid start so far by partnering closely with Wizards of the Coast in broadcasting the message through their official channels and relying on the organic reach of our early adopters,’ said Bradford. ‘Going forward…’”
In the latest struggle between Guillemot vs. Vivendi, Ubisoft “will repurchase up to 4m of its own shares in order to delay a potential takeover,” GamesIndustry.biz’s James Batchelor reports. “Vivendi currently holds 27% of Ubisoft’s capital share and will be required by French law to make an offer it it gains 30%.”
Ever wonder what the thought process was behind a game’s name? Mike Rose, the founder of No More Robots, tweeted out that question and compiled all the responses. You can read them here, courtesy of Gamasutra’s Alex Wawro.
“Rock Band was a…”
Street Fighter V will get an arcade mode in 2018, Eurogamer’s Wesley Yin-Poole writes. “According to Amazon, the Arcade Edition gets an arcade mode in which you ‘choose from six different paths themed after classic Street Fighter games.’”