In The News
The Daily Walkthrough will be live from E3 starting Sunday! Stay tuned for interviews, updates and shenanigans. Per the latter noun, you may notice the newsletter delayed by an hour.
Tyler Carpenter’s weekend is off to a crappy start. The Harebrained Schemes designer resigned after admitting to sexual harassment allegations against him. “At least six women came forward over social media to share stories about Tyler Carpenter, who said people should ‘believe every accusation,’” Waypoint’s Patrick Kiepek reports. “Carpenter has been at Harebrained for more than three years, according to Linkedin.”
Congratulations to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on selling 1 million copies in Japan.
In a bid to further entice content creators to its platform, Facebook showed off “Fb.gg website for its Gaming Creator program, allowing users to browse through gaming content … The new ‘Level Up’ option will let viewers tip streamers with virtual currency,” TEO’s Graham Ashton reports.
Bad Robot is opening a gaming branch called Bad Robot Games, Game Informer’s Imran Khan writes. “Bad Robot, which is founded and headed by producer J.J. Abrams, has entered a strategic partnership with Chinese conglomerate Tencent for the new venture. The partnership makes room for Abrams to work with Tencent on games made and published by Bad Robot Games, with WB Games also involved as a minority stakeholder.”
Supercell invested “$5 million … on mobile game studio Redemption Games. The Carlsbad, California-based studio deal represents Helsinki-based Supercell’s first investment in a U.S. operation,” VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi writes.
Dauntless, a Monster Hunter meets Sea of Thieves-style game, “attracted over 1 million players during to its open beta. The testing for the action role-playing game began on May 24,” VentureBeat’s Mike Minotti reports.
Partnership News:
Syracuse Newhouse School of Public Communications and Twitch are partnering for an esports class, TEO’s Max Miceli reports. “The course will include the history, technologies and business models of esports.”
Ikea and “American 3D design company Unyq … will produce a line of furniture designed specifically for esports,” Esports Insider’s David Hollingsworth reports. “The company has used its esports expertise to assemble a panel of esports people from older pros to young future stars to advise Unyq and Ikea about how to create the furniture.”
Monolith Soft has a new studio opening “in the Iidabashi neighborhood of Tokyo. Operation began this month, though it is unknown as of yet what the studio will be working on,” GI.biz’s Rebekah Valentine reports.
“Former Premier League champion and current Leicester City left-back Christian Fuchs will become the first ever Premier League footballer to have his own video games team,” DailyMail’s Jack Stewart writes. “The team will have professional video game players in FIFA and other games.”
Hearhstone News:
In response to community displeasure, Hearthstone reverted Tess Greymane changes, Dot Esports’ Callum Leslie reports.
Hearthstone Global Games voting is open through Wednesday.