In The News
A grouchy WoW player was just sentenced to 1 year in prison, Engadget’s Jon Fingas writes. “A US federal court has sentenced Romanian man Calin Mateias to spend a year in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to launching a distributed denial of service attack against WoW’s servers in response to being ‘angered’ by one player.”
A workload so intense it’s deadly? That’s what developer Scott Benson argued. “He talked about nearly killing himself to finish” Night in the Woods, GamesIndustry.biz’s Brendan Sinclair reports. “‘The reason we’re killing ourselves isn’t because we love what we’re doing,’ Benson says. ‘That’s the thing we tell ourselves and tell people: ‘We’re just so passionate about it.’”
Electronic Arts news:
EA reaffirmed its use of loot boxes, despite anti-gambling rulings in multiple countries. “‘We’re going to continue pushing forward [with FIFA Ultimate Team],’ EA chief executive officer Andrew Wilson said,” according to VentureBeat’s Jeff Grubb. “EA also confirmed that its Ultimate Team modes in FIFA, Madden NFL, NHL, and NBA Live on PC, consoles, and mobile are its biggest live-service moneymakers.”
VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi reports that “nearly 18 million players engaged in competitive gaming — aka esports — in FIFA 18 and Madden NFL 18, up more than 75 percent from a year ago.”
Starbreeze “significantly narrowed its losses in Q1, and boosted its quarterly revenue to its highest ever level,” GamesIndustry.biz’s Matthew Handrahan reports. “In the first quarter of the calendar year, the Swedish publisher earned SEK 110 million ($12.5 million), a 92 per cent increase over the prior year.”
Monster Hunter: World “has now shipped 7.9 million copies worldwide since its release at the end of January. This is good as of March 31, and it’s up from the 7.5 million figure announced in March,” GameSpot’s Eddie Makuch reports.
If you have to pick between a poorly designed game with no bugs or a bug-ridden game with potential, go with the latter. GamesIndustry.biz’s Haydn Taylor writes that a study “conducted by Queen’s University in Canada has revealed … Players complain more about game design than bugs.”
Jagex is shuttering FunOrb.
Dota 2’s The International Battle Pass information can be found here.
Happy birthday to StarCraft II and Smash players Kang “Solar” Min Soo and Abhishek “Prince Abu” Prabhu!