In The News
Please follow @TheDailyW on Twitter for updates on unplanned Walkthrough cancellations like yesterday! (Norovirus is not fun). On that note, there will be no Walkthrough on Christmas Day.
Digital game spending was flat in November, Superdata reports. “Consumers spent $9.05 billion on digital games across all platforms in November, down 1% year-over-year. Mobile and Premium PC revenue declined roughly 5%, offsetting a 13% rise on Console, where Fortnite and Red Dead Redemption 2 made up for the weak performance of Battlefield and Fallout 76.”
Mobile:
App and game downloads grew on a global scale to “surpass 113 billion downloads in 2018, up 10 percent from 2017,” VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi reports.
Mobile spending globally shows “the biggest growth was seen in consumer spend, which rose by 20% when compared with the previous year and is on course to pass $76 billion globally,” GI.biz’s James Batchelor reports.
Acquisitions:
Zynga intends to buy 80% of Small Giant Games for $560 million, Takahashi reports. “It’s the biggest deal since Zynga acquired CSR Racing maker NaturalMotion for $527 million in 2014.”
Keywords acquired “Sunny Side Up Creative, a Canadian marketing specialist,” Batchelor reports.
Atari posted “its H1 2018-2019 financial results … for the period ending September 30, 2018, it brought in €10.8 million ($12.4 million) in revenue in the first half of its fiscal year, an increase of 27 percent year-over-year. Its current operating income was up 87 percent year-over-year to €2.2 million ($2.5 million),” GI.biz’s Rebekah Valentine reports.
Brawl Stars raked in an impressive “$10 million worldwide in its first seven days, 30 percent more than its total player spending in soft launch,” Sensor Tower reports.
Cloud Imperium Games has raised “$46 million in venture capital, in addition to the $211 million in crowdfunding it has brought in over the past five years from 2.2 million fans,” Takahashi writes.
Looks like China is back to licensing games, according to Niko Partners.
Define Human Studios is closing shop, according to its blog post on Steam.
11 bit studios’ “charity DLC for This War of Mine raised a total of $500,000 for War Child UK,” Valentine reports.
Niantic started “The Niantic Beyond Reality Developer Contest,” according to its site.
Unikrn launched its betting platform, UMode.
Limbitless Solutions, Riot Games and 343 Industries are partnering for themed prosthetic arms for kids. (Riot announcement, 343 announcement).
Looks like Respawn is recruiting for another Titanfall game.
The final season of The Walking Dead series will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store.
Shawn Levy is no longer director the Uncharted film, according to The Hollywood Reporter’s Ryan Parker.
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:
StarCraft esports posted “Introducing WCS Winter 2019.”
Hearthstone posted “Show Your Claws in 2019’s Wild Open!”
Introducing Popdog, “a new eSports technology and services company which will develop products aimed at optimizing live streaming for tournaments, talent, and publishers,” Variety’s Emily Gera writes. It’s “starting things out with a $9 million Series A funding round led by Makers Fund and Korea Investment Partners.”
Allied Esports International and World Poker Tour Enterprises are being merged together in an acquisition by Black Ridge Acquisition Corp., TEO’s Max Miceli reports. The merged company will be called Allied Esports Entertainment.
Wonder who the top 10 highest paid Call of Duty players are? Well here you go.
Movistar’s esports channel is closing down, TEO’s Ferguson Mitchell writes. “The brand will continue operating its other esports initiatives, including the competitive organization Movistar Riders, and its esports center in Madrid.”
Partnerships:
DreamHack and BenQ ZOWIE are partnering “for the rest of the 2018 season,” Esports Insider’s Adam Fitch reports. Additionally, DreamHack is also partnering with “team management platform Esport-Management,” Fitch reports.
Turtle Beach is EStars’ “headset partner for the upcoming EStars featuring Fortnite,” Esports Insider’s Melany Moncav writes.
HyperX expanded its partnership with Allied Esports “by entering a multi-year naming rights deal for its mobile esport arena,” Fitch writes.
OUT: FlyQuest is quitting Rocket League esports.
Splyce is quitting Paladins esports.
Interviews: Razer’s David Tse (TEO) and APX’s Henric Hungerhoff (TEO).