In The News
Who’s the fairest of them all? Twitch, according to Newzoo. The platform rakes in “7.1x more esports viewership than YouTube,” The Esports Observer’s Jordan Fragen writes. “Twitch earned 232M esports hours watched in Q1 2018. YouTube Gaming earned 32.8M esports hours watched in the same timeframe, less than 1/7th of Twitch’s total.”
Vision Venture Partners hired Mike Mossholder — formerly of the UFC — as its chief business officer.
Partnership news:
Konami ended its 10-year partnership with the Union of European Football Association, Venture Beat’s Mike Minotti reports. “The UEFA license was one of the few in the soccer world that Konami’s series had over Electronic Arts’ FIFA games.”
Twitch and NBA 2K League inked a partnership deal, according to a press release. It includes “live streams of all NBA 2K League games … The live streams will include various talent providing live commentary, analysis and additional league updates.”
ESPN’s Jacob Wolf reports NRG Esports “and the San Francisco Shock will partner with University of California, Berkeley to launch a new community center and several esports initiatives on the university’s flagship campus … The university will renovate and repurpose an academic center of one of its campus residence halls.”
PlayVS is the National Federation of State High School Associations’ exclusive new partner for esports content, Esports Insider’s Adam Fitch reports. “This partnership will provide students with the ability to compete in gaming titles – both locally and interstate – and also includes the NFHS Network.”
ULT “signed a deal with Zumiez which will see its wares on sale in stores across the United States,” Esports Insider’s Sam Cooke reports.
Smilegate will close its Berlin office, GamesIndustry.biz’s Haydn Taylor reports. “Opening its doors just over a year ago, Smilegate Europe’s directive was to drive growth of the Crossfire IP in western markets, with a particular focus on esports.”
Nordcurrent, a mobile developer, acquired Blam! Games Studio, Taylor writes. “Blam! Games Studio currently employs 40 staff and will be re-branded to Nordcurrent Odessa, bringing Nordcurrent’s employee count up to 170 across its three sites.”
Dontnod has “multiple unannounced games” in the works, according to PC Gamer’s Austin Wood. The studio is currently working on Vampyr.
Hearthstone is up with a new Ben Brode video titled: “Blizzard’s Ben Brode Answers Unsolved Hearthstone Mysteries | Ars Technica.”
Dota 2 news:
Dot Esports’ Patrick Bonifacio reports Paris Saint-Germain is stepping into Dota 2 and partnering with LGD Gaming. At the same time, Digital Chaos released its Dota 2 roster to focus on other esports.
Happy birthday to Dota 2 and StarCraft players Xu “Moogy” Han and Adrien “DnS” Bouet!