In The News
EA news:
Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett reports that Star Wars: Battlefront II and Overwatch loot boxes are under investigation by Belgium’s Gaming Commission. “Peter Naessens, General Director of the commission, says that the practice of buying the add-on boxes—where you don’t know what you’re paying for until you open it—may constitute gambling.”
Reddit AMA: Three DICE developers held an AMA about Battlefront II yesterday. One answer of note is that the devs said “Nothing is too late” when asked if loot crates could be changed from giving out gameplay-enhancing items to cosmetic ones.
VentureBeat’s Jeff Grubb reports that Wall Street analysts are also concerned with the impact the microtransaction controversy will have on Battlefront II’s performance. “‘Management highlighted game depth and quality, but did not provide an update on unit expectations,’ Post wrote in a note to Merill Lynch clients … ‘We see recent controversies as a potential risk for unit sales vs buyside expectations, although EA has conservative estimates for Battlefront’s live services.’”
Engadget’s Saqib Shah writes that “the company’s Montreal-based studio Motive is building an original franchise with Assassin’s Creed producer Jade Raymond, which features ‘a lot of new interesting gameplay that I don’t think anyone’s ever seen before.’” It’s expected out in 2021.
NetEase released its financials “for the three months ended September 30th, 2017, posting net revenues of 12.5bn yuan ($1.9bn) – an increase of 35.5% when compared to the same period last year,” GamesIndustry.biz’s James Batchelor reports. “While these revenues may be an improvement on 2016, they show a continued decline since the start of the year.”
Disney broke up with Gazillion Entertainment, which means Marvel Heroes is dead.
Streamer, the developer behind Twitch Plays Pokemon (TPP), “is stepping down from the Twitch account following an incident involving the alleged attempt to release a TPP community member’s personal information,” Kotaku’s Gita Jackson writes.
You can now gift 1-month subscriptions on Twitch.
Another 100,000 PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds accounts have been banned, Dot Esports’ Scott Duwe reports. “The total number of bans in PUBG has reached over 700,000, more than doubling the total, which was announced to be 320,000 just one month ago.”