In The News
Weekend in review:
A “dirty, dirty secret”? PC Gamer’s Samuel Horti writes that “Devolver Digital co-founder Mike Wilson … called developers’ workloads ‘shameful’, and said that the amount of hours people put in during crunch time was damaging both their mental health and their relationship with their families.”
The Entertainment Software Association put out a press release supporting “the … (USTR) for the release of its annual Special 301 Report on Intellectual Property Rights, which calls out trading partners who fall short in their efforts to protect, enforce, and provide open market access to US intellectual property rights holders.”
A patent between Nintendo and Game Freak “last year has surfaced, hinting at what could very well be a new Pokemon card game for Switch or mobile devices,” Pocket Gamer’s Jessica Famularo reports.
Frostpunk came out blazing with “a quarter of a million copies [sold] in 66 hours,” Eurogamer’s Robert Purchese reports.
Steam Spy is back, and slightly worse than ever. “Instead of automatically scraping all Steam users’ data to see what games people are playing (and for how long), Steam Spy is slowly switching to a machine learning model,” Engadget’s David Lumb reports. “Using ‘coincidental data’ produced somewhat accurate results.”
“Konami appears to be doubling down on new official licensing deals for its next iteration of Pro Evolution Soccer,” Eurogamer’s Wesley Yin-Poole reports. “The store description listed new features, including ‘authentic leagues’ with the blurb: ‘Huge addition of licensed leagues.’”
Don’t hold your breath for battle royale Spartans. Phil Spencer tweeted this out yesterday: “Millions are playing BR games right now. I don’t want to just build one because others have built them. FNBR is massive, PUBG is huge, new BR variants being built by some very quality devs, I’d rather support unless we find something special in 1P that’s a different take.”
Partnership news:
The Esports Observer’s Jordan Fragen reports that “the Utah Jazz announced a deal with Spacestation Gaming. The Utah-based esports organization will become the NBA team’s official esports partner.”
Unikrn’s Dustin Steiner writes that Team Vitality and Gaming Campus in France “launched a new training facility … with the aim of training students and aspiring pros for careers in esports.”
Immortals announced they’re partnering with K.SWISS for “black and teal” kicks.
Blizzard is looking to hire a “Senior / Principal Game Designer” for an “unannounced project.”
Harrisburg University jumped into esports with “a 35-player tryout for players from around the world Friday, with full-ride scholarships to the university for League of Legends, Hearthstone and Overwatch,” ESPN’s Jacob Wolf reports.
Happy birthday to Heroes of the Storm players Johan “Lauber” Lauber and Joshua “Snitch” Bennett!