In The News
PSA: There will be no Friday or Monday newsletters while I am traveling for CWL Fort Worth.
App Annie’s list of “the top-earning publishers globally on the iOS and Google Play stores” for 2018 is out. Tencent sits in 1st, followed by NetEase, Activision Blizzard and then BANDAI NAMCO.
Take-Two Interactive settled a lawsuit with a GTA cheater, TorrentFreak’s Ernesto reports. T2 “‘won’ a consent judgment against the developer of the GTA V cheat ‘Infamous’. A New York federal court signed off on the judgment in which defendant Erik Cameron admits copyright infringement and agrees to pay an undisclosed settlement amount.”
Sega yanked Judgement, a work related to the Yakuza franchise, “in Japan after Pierre Taki, one of its actors, was arrested on suspicion of using cocaine,” Engadget’s Mariella Moon reports. “Sega has issued a statement announcing that it has decided to suspend all Judge Eyes shipments and sales while it’s ‘confirming the facts.’”
We know you’re excited about Halo: The Master Chief Collection coming to PC but please stop sending 343 Industries pizza.
Brawl Stars pulled in “$150 million in global player spending” in its first 90 days, Sensor Tower reports. “Most of the game’s revenue to date has come from players in the United States at an estimated $33 million, or 22 percent of all spending.”
Watcha up to, Verizon? It’s “currently conducting alpha testing of Verizon Gaming, a game streaming service that would represent a major new initiative for the home and mobile internet giant,” The Verge’s Chris Welch reports. “Verizon Gaming is already up and running on the Nvidia Shield set-top box and will, according to the company’s documentation, eventually make its way to Android smartphones.”
Forte and Ripple are working together “to invest $100 million in game developers who make games based on blockchain technology,” VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi reports.
Asteri Holdings is testing an analytics app for mobile games “to help smaller game and app developers to scale up their creations for broad markets,” Takahashi writes.
Minecraft boasts “over 91 million players worldwide,” Variety’s Stefanie Fogel reports. And now it’s coming “to Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft announced during an Inside Xbox broadcast on Tuesday. It will be available on the subscription-based streaming service starting on Apr. 4.”
PlayStation Now is fully available in 7 more countries: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway.
Streamers:
Michael “shroud” Grzesiek “was involved in a scooter accident on Monday and injured his left arm and shoulder,” Dot Esports’ Bhernardo Viana reports.
IRL Twitch streamer Hyphonix is unbanned from the platform. “‘I can’t believe any of this,’ he said in the first minutes of his Twitch stream. He has also confirmed he’s moving from YouTube to streaming on Twitch full-time,” Viana writes.
Don’t be this guy, folks. YouTuber Kyle Long has been arrested after traveling across the country to threaten Google, NBC’s David K. Li writes. “Kyle Long, 33, from Waterville, Maine, was taken into custody about two miles from the headquarters of Google … While in Iowa, he told a state trooper that he was mad at Google for allegedly shutting down his YouTube channel.” Fun fact: It was his wife.
The Atlantic is up with a piece on Discord, titled “How an App for Gamers Went Mainstream.”
IN: Jade Raymond joined Google.
Interviews: Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney (MCV).
Extra Esports News:
TEKKEN World Tour details can be found here.
Introducing the Collegiate Esports Championship, “a new collaboration between TeSPA, the Collegiate Star League, and ESPN that represents the first time that four Blizzard collegiate events will be run under one roof. Capcom’s Street Fighter V is also joining the festivities in one of the first major Collegiate championships for the game,” Unikrn’s Dustin Steiner reports.
Code Red Esports “is stepping into the world of gaming and esports influencers,” Esports Insider’s Adam Fitch writes. “As per the announcement, this move into representing influencers supplements the agency’s existing work and it has ‘already secured significant commercial partnerships’ for the influencers whom it represents.”
Partnerships:
RFRSH Entertainment and Spanish Komodo are partnering, Esports Insider’s Laura Byrne reports. “The partnership begins with BLAST Pro Series Madrid that will take place from 10-11 May at the Madrid Arena.”
DreamLeague and SAP are partnering, with SAP providing “statistical data during the broadcast of CORSAIR DreamLeague Season 11 through its SAP HANA platform,” TEO’s H.B. Duran reports.
IN: Nicolai “Snaski” Vistesen Andersen joined Dignitas’s Rocket League team.
OUT: OG released Igor “iLTW” Filatov from their Dota 2 team.
Interviews: Intel’s Frank Soqui (TEO), G2 Esports’ Lindsey Eckhouse and Sabrina Ratih (Esports Insider).
Happy birthday Bai “rOtK” Fan!