In The News
Infinity Ward was evacuated due to a bomb threat, Kotaku’s Jason Schreier reports. “Police showed up at the studio this morning [Thursday] telling employees to leave, according to one person who was there. Staff were able to evacuate without a problem.”
Heroes of the Storm developers are being shifted “to other teams,” Blizzard announced yesterday. That also means all HoTS esports is dead. “We’ve also evaluated our plans around Heroes esports—after looking at all of our priorities and options in light of the change with the game, the Heroes Global Championship and Heroes of the Dorm will not return in 2019.”
Half of ALL Switch owners purchased “Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe,” IGN’s Andrew Goldfarb reports.
Twitch:
Twitch acquired Pursuit, according to Pursuit co-founder James Sun. “While the team is moving to Twitch, the Pursuit analytics product will not. So, it’s with a heavy heart that we announce we’ll be shutting down all services effective December 17, 2018.”
It’s also selling Curse Media to Fandom, Gamasutra’s Emma Kidwell reports.
Minecraft modders founded Hypixel Studio, a new game studio. “The developer was founded with the help of an investor group thast includes Riot Games, ex-Blizzard exec Rob Pardo, Pardo’s fellow Bonfire co-founder Min Kim, pro-gamer Dennis ‘Thresh’ Fong, university professor Anthony Borquez, and investors Peter Levin and Jeff Lo,” GI.biz’s James Batchelor reports.
Promotions:
Heidi Eaves is Relic Entertainment’s new COO.
Michael Shaffer is Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s new senior vice president of business development.
Rocket League is partnering with Travis Pastrana and Nitro Circus for “IRL 3v3 Soccar action in the first of four Nitro Circus ‘Rocket League IRL’ videos,” a press release reads.
Game Workers Unite has become The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain’s game worker union, GI.biz’s Haydn Taylor reports.
Razer’s trying to get you to mine cryptocurrency, Motherboard’s Jordan Pearson writes. “Users won’t get to keep the digital coins they generate with their machines, and neither will Razer.”
Players’ Lounge – Sponsored News:
Players’ Lounge redesigned its product, resulting in a 25% increase in week-over-week matches played for four weeks running.
Investors continue to assault our inboxes. Including a few billionaires. We’re holding strong.
Players’ Lounge is hiring a Senior Vice President of Engineering! Know a brilliant, competitive senior developer with PHP and AAA/F2P development experience? Slide into our DMs.
Extra Esports News:
Congratulations Ari Segal on becoming Immortals’ new CEO. He is replacing Noah Whinston, who “has left his job as CEO to become executive chairman,” TEO’s Ben Fischer reports. “Whinston said the change will allow him to spend all of his time building the Immortals brand, communicating with fans, evangelizing for the industry and helping develop the broader esports ecosystem, while letting Segal run the shop.”
A whopping 60% of esports fans told Nielsen “they have followed competitive gaming for more than four years,” VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi reports. “90 percent of Twitch esports fans can recall at least one nongaming related sponsor within esports.”
University of Missouri launched an esports program.
Partnerships:
FanAI, Hi-Rez Studios and Skillshot Media are partnering t0 “enrich the audience data of the 70 million players of Hi-Rez Studios’ games, including SMITE, Paladins and Realm Royale with FanAI’s proprietary AI driven analytics,” a press release reads.
Rocket League and ELEAGUE are partnering “to showcase highlights from arcade-style vehicular soccer game in a three-part TBS series,” Variety’s Brittany Vincent reports.
Greater Western Sydney Giants and High School Esports League are partnering, Esports Insider’s Adam Fitch reports.
Gfinity and EA SPORTS are partnering “to become part of the FIFA 19 Global Series. Gfinity will host four events as part of the series,” Fitch writes.
Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beahm and Gillette are doing a $1 million partnership.
Happy birthday Vladimir “RodjER” Nikogosyan, Grzegorz “MaNa” Komincz, Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn and Radoslaw “DaNa” Danowski!