In The News
Tyler R. Barriss, the man behind the fatal swatting of Andrew Finch, “has asked for 20 years in prison as his punishment for making a hoax call,” StarTribune’s Roxana Hegeman reports. He “faces sentencing Friday in federal court in Wichita for making the false report resulting in a death.”
Lightstream raised $8 million “in a series A round,” VentureBeat’s Manish Singh reports. The company “offers web-based tools to enhance livestreams and air them on several popular platforms.”
Layoffs:
ArenaNet laid off “a significant number of its staff,” GD.biz’s Amanda Farough and Mike Futter report. “Employees were notified on Friday that ArenaNet, which is owned by NCSoft, was not in a sustainable financial position. NCSoft West CEO Songyee Yoon said that a need to reduce costs to keep the company viable over the long-term would result in the merger of NCSoft and ArenaNet.”
GOG laid off “a dozen staff last week. GOG, which is owned by The Witcher 3 publisher CD Projekt, did not say why the layoffs happened, but one laid-off staffer tells Kotaku that the store has been in financial trouble,” Kotaku’s Jason Scheier reports.
Twitch is continuing to fight “an upcoming change in EU law that could see it liable for copyright infringements that happen on its site,” GI.biz’s James Batchelor writes.
Snail Games “is creating its own publishing label, Wandering Wizard,” Variety’s Stefanie Fogel reports.
Devotion, a Taiwanese game produced by Red Candles, has been removed from Steam. It initially caused backlash “because of the presence of a piece of art that appears to mock Chinese president Xi Jinping,” PC Gamer’s Andy Chalk writes. Red Candles put out a statement here.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella defended the company’s choice to work with the U.S. military on HoloLens technology. “‘We made a principled decision that we’re not going to withhold technology from institutions that we have elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy,’” Nadella told CNN.
Apex Legends came in 1st for content hours watched on Twitch in the last week at 23.12 million, TEO reports.
Interviews: Paradox’s Ebba Ljungerud (Gamasutra).
Extra Esports News:
Meek Mill tweeted he is “starting my own esports team I need the best of the best and you get a dc chain at signing!! 🏆.”
Walmart is hosting “the Wednesday Night Fights weekly tournament brand” in 5 store locations, TEO’s Trent Murray reports. “These Walmarts each have a dedicated esports space operated by Esports Arena.”
FIFA announced FIFA eNations Cup. Learn more here.
Partnerships:
Singtel and SK Telecom “signed a Memorandum of Understanding (‘MOU’). The MOU will see both companies cooperate and leverage each other’s assets to grow gaming and esports in Asia,” Esports Insider’s Oliver Ring writes.
DreamHack and 7Sports, “the business unit of ProSiebenSat.1, have agreed a licensing agreement that allows the latter to report exclusively on German TV about DreamHack festivals,” Ring writes. Your headline is awful, though. No one penned anything.