In The News
Steam News:
User numbers are going down, Gamasutra’s Emma Kidwell reports. “This year’s summer decline sees numbers going down by 17 percent, compared with 9 percent last year … If there’s a much larger decline this summer, it could imply Steam’s usual rate of growth is slowing down.”
Valve just added features to protect against trading scams, Gamasutra’s Alissa McAloon writes. “The changes affect Steam users on both the developer and player side of the fence, and a Valve employee says that more protections to address this sort of issue are still in the works.”
Sales News:
PlayStation 4 has sold 82.2 million units since its release in 2013.
Nintendo sold 1.39 million Labo kits since April.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf has sold almost 12 million units as of the end of June.
MapleStory M’s first week on mobile pulled in 3 million downloads.
Frankie, the Twitch-emote dog, passed away.
CNBC did an interview with London Spitfire owner Jack Etienne and host Alex “Goldenboy” Mendez.
Huya now has “the Chinese livestreaming rights to the entire 2018/19 WESG season,” TEO’s Graham Ashton reports.
Bethesda is using Andrew Hulshult to compose Quake Champions music, PC Gamer’s Andy Chalk reports. “The music in the ‘Gore’ preview video from May is, according to this Steam thread, one example of new, previously-unattributed music that doesn’t appear in the game.”
Microsoft touted strong Sea of Thieves numbers yesterday during the Cursed Sails launch. “Our community has reached a new milestone of five million pirates that have played Sea of Thieves thus far on Xbox One and Windows 10 PC.”
Esports Bar Association is now accepting applications.
Kratos and Atreus are getting novelized by J.M. Barlog, game director Cory Barlog’s dad.
More information on Magic Leap One has apparently leaked out. “It’s only a little better than Microsoft’s HoloLens, not the great leap forward people have been expecting,” VentureBeat’s Jeremy Horwitz reports.
Partnership/Sponsorship News:
Manchester City eSports and Turtle Beach are partnering, according to a press release. “The new partnership will see all Manchester City pro players using Turtle Beach’s Elite Pro line of professional gaming audio equipment.”
Esports Ecosystem is sponsoring Evo, TEO’s Brandon Brathwaite reports. “Esports Ecosystem joins Cygames and NISSIN Cup Noodles as the events sponsors.”
Reality Clash is sponsoring Sørby, Esports Insider’s David Hollingsworth reports. “Reality Clash will sponsor the team shirts, the Sørby academy and sponsor the team’s participation at the Supreme Masters Counter-Strike tournament.”
OpTic Gaming joined Epics.gg’s “digital trading card platform,” Brathwaite writes.
Streamer News:
Ninja continues to sit on top for most hours watched on Twitch last week at 2.6 million, TEO reports. Tfue came in 2nd at 2.3 million, tsm_daequan in 3rd at 1.4 million and tsm_myth in 4th at 1.3 million.
Twitch banned Jason “jasonR” Ruchelski, Dexerto’s Ross Deason reports. “The link to the Canadian’s popular channel now sends users to the dreaded “Sorry. Unless you’ve got a time machine, that content is unavailable.” message, and no explanation has been given.”
100 Thieves added a Clash Royale team.