In The News
The president held his video game meeting yesterday with members of the industry and those hostile toward games. The Daily Walkthrough’s Katie Frates responded to Brent Bozell, an anti-gaming attendee of the meeting, on Fox Business that evening.
Check out all the news that dropped in yesterday’s Nintendo Direct, courtesy of VentureBeat’s Stephanie Chan. Games include Dark Souls: Remastered and Super Smash Bros.
“The myth of the lonely gamer playing in solitude is dead,” The Washington Post’s Avi Selk and Emily Guskin report. WaPo conducted a poll with the University of Massachusetts Lowell and just released the results, which you can find here. The breakdown of those results can be found here.
Tiny Mob was acquired by DoubleJump Games.
Fogbank Entertainment is FoxNext’s new “San Francisco-based studio focused on building narrative game experiences,” GamesIndustry.biz’s Brendan Sinclair reports.
Tencent “made separate investments in two of China’s key streaming platforms … Huya raised $461.6 million … Douyu TV received $632 million,” The Esports Observer’s Graham Ashton reports.
Investment site Fig added “Randy Pitchford, president of Borderlands development studio Gearbox Software” to its advisory board, Sinclair writes.
Steam news:
Gabe Newell said PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ “‘gross revenue over all time is already number three [on Steam] in fairly short order,’” PC Gamer’s Tyler Wilde reports.
Newell also said “‘Artifact is the first of several games that are going to be coming from us. So that’s sort of good news. Hooray! Valve’s going to start shipping games again,’” according to PC Gamer.
On the topic of Artifact, Wykrhm Reddy tweeted yesterday that “Artifact will have its own $1 Million Dollar tournament in 2019.”
That update you were expected for your favorite iOS game could be delayed thanks to Apple’s new app store guidelines on loot boxes, Chan writes.
Toby “TobiWan” Dawson “announced that he is signing with the Code Red Esports agency and is looking to further his career by moving into the world of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds casting,” Forbes’ Mike Stubbs reports.
Team Liquid’s Victor Goossens spoke with The Esports Observer’s Trent Murray about the recently-finished Alienware facility in Los Angeles. Here’s a snippet: “‘If you ask me as one of the owners of the company, something like the Alienware deal and the training facility are massive, massive accomplishments.’”
H1Z1’s first season teams were announced, according to Esports Insider’s Sam Cooke. Familiar names include Cloud9 and Team SoloMid. Additionally, “It will be working with Facebook to exclusively broadcast all digital content. Notably too, Caesars Entertainment will be the official venue and entertainment partner.”
PUBG news:
The new roadmap for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is out. Check it out here.
A new patch (PC 1.0 Update #7) is out now
OpTic Gaming’s 2nd place finish IEM Katowice was stripped, Dot Esports’ Nicole Carpenter reports, “after Ian ‘Bahawaka’ Crowe was caught abusing a bug during the livestreamed event.”
Flash Wolves picked up a PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds team.
Team Liquid added Naoki “Nemo” Nemoto and John Takeuchi to their new Street Fighter V team, Dot Esports’ Adam Newell reports.
OpTic Gaming dropped their Halo team, Dexerto’s Mike Kent reports.