In The News
The gaming community overflowed with love for Dennis “INTERNETHULK” Hawelka after news of his passing. Here are a few links to tributes and tales from his friends and those inspired by him:
Nate Nanzer: “We will make you proud brother Hulk. Words can’t express my thanks for your effort and energy as we started to build OW esports.”
Yang Liu: “Rarely does someone captivate you with so much passion and enthusiasm for life the way Dennis does. For those who were…”
Harsha Bandi: “The legacy of INTERNETHULK.”
Timo “Taimou” Kettunen: “Dennis is the reason I am in the position I am. He was the one who gave me a chance to play DPS for this team back when I mained support. He told people to trust in me that I do not cheat so that I got a chance to prove myself in EnVyUs. I’ll buy you beers in heaven friend.”
FreshNuts: “In Memory Of Internethulk – RIP Dennis Hawelka.”
Reddit is also brainstorming ideas for ways to pay tribute to INTERNETHULK and sharing favorite memories.
Nintendo intends to “ship almost 50 million Switch units by April 2019,” The Wall Street Journal’s Takashi Mochizuki reports. “The Kyoto-based company is sketching out a plan to make 25 million to 30 million units of the Switch in its next fiscal year, which begins April 2018, and has begun informing business partners about it, the people said. They said the plan is still in its early stages and Nintendo could aim higher depending.”
Respawn, the studio behind Titanfall, was acquired by EA. Kotaku’s Jason Schreier reports that “EA said in a press release that the deal is worth $455 million, a number that includes cash, equity, and performance milestone payments.”
“What are some of the biggest upsides to the growing industry and where esports are heading[?]” Venture Beat’s Lucas Wiseman asked that of CHARGE president Ken Ungar, Team Envy marketing head Mark Coughlin and Agency for Professional Esports CEO Jason Moore.
Here’s a snippet: “It’s still very wild west. The lines between different business models are very blurry, so it’s unclear where opportunities for the leagues and teams begin and end and what the opportunities are…”
Discord received a new update “for developers to make it easier for players to jump into games with friends, spectate during matches and send party invites,” Polygon’s Julia Alexander writes. “The feature, dubbed Rich Presence by the Discord team, is a software development kit (SDK) that will allow for easier integration of games and Discord users.”
Blizzard’s game director Ion Hazzikostas and creative director Alex Afrasiabi spoke with PC Gamer’s Steven Messner and Bo Moore about World of Warcraft’s new expansion, Battle of Azeroth. “We feel the Alliance-Horde divide is foundational and fundamental to World of Warcraft as a franchise and as a story, but we danced around it for a very long time … In terms of a threat, one of the things we talk about is, in Warcraft, do you…”
More pictures of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ desert map are up. Check them out here.
Armistice’s second year of charity fundraising for War Child already has sponsors like “BlackMill Games, M2H, Wargaming.net, Positech Games, Big Huge Games, Flaregames, 11 Bit Studios, Focus Home Interactive, XSplit, and Extra Credits,” Haydn Taylor at GamesIndustry.biz reports. “Armistice, one of the biggest sources of charity fundraising in the games industry, is a special campaign that runs for a number of weeks with support from developers, publishers, and the wider community.”
Some 6,000 games have cropped up on Steam in 2017, according to GamesIndustry.biz’s James Batchelor. “A significant chunk of these games come via Valve’s new Steam Direct system, which launched in June. Within three months, more than 1,300 games were published.”