In The News
A moment of mourning for the loss of one wonderful intern, Evan. Just kidding, he’s still around, but he had to go back to Boston. Thankfully, that didn’t stop us from our regular Weekly Talkthrough!
TwitchCon 2018: Washington D.C.? That’s what EventsDC is hoping for in its continued push to be the “LA” of East Coast esports.
“We’ve been having conversations…”
Check out The Daily Walkthrough’s interview with EventsDC, in which Max Brown teased TwitchCon news, potential Overwatch League involvement, new sponsorships and much more!
Blizzard’s planning a busy week. GameSpot’s Alex Newhouse is reporting that Blizzard will announce “reveals of a new Overwatch map, a Hearthstone group raid, and a Heroes of the Storm hero” at Gamescom. “Blizzard will show off a new animated short and reveal the next map. The company will give a glimpse of the map in a preview video that’ll go live on August 21, and the animated short will be released on August 23 … New Fireside Gathering features for Hearthstone will be shown off … World of Warcraft, meanwhile, will soon get a new patch.”
Additionally, Blizzard is also planning changes to StarCraft II now that the tournament season is over, Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett reports. “Blizzard are looking to make some ‘major design changes’ to StarCraft II’s units and economy … Those changes have been implemented in a “design patch” which is live now on the Testing server.”
TheDW is doing a giveaway! Enter and you have a chance at winning a $100 Blizzard Balance Card.
Team Liquid posted a video showing off their under-construction NA facilities.
RPGs are doin’ alright. “‘Role-playing games are experiencing a market resurgence,’ NPD analyst Mat Piscatella said. ‘Driven by titles such as Horizon: Zero Dawn, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Nier: Automata, Nioh, and Persona 5, year-to-date dollar sales of RPGs has grown more than 50 percent when compared to the same period a year ago,’” according to VentureBeat’s Jeff Grubb.
Twitch has added “a hero sort option” to its Overwatch, League of Legends and Hearthstone browsing pages, according to redditor redditman6.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds undeniably has had a global impact on gaming. According to Newzoo, it’s the #1 game in Japan and #6 world-wide while still in Steam Early Access.
“’It’s quite a unique game, even within its genre,’ Newzoo senior data analyst Gijs Holleman told AlistDaily’s H.B. Duran. ‘The gameplay goes much deeper than similar titles [such as H1Z1] by focusing much more on strategy, ultimately boosting the competitiveness, and having a wider diversity of weapons and items. This attracts a lot of players who are looking for a different shooter experience, different from Overwatch and CS:GO for instance—which is where we see that most [Battlegrounds] players originate from.’”
PUBG has now sold over 7 million copies, SteamSpy reports.
Deep Silver and Ys Net have agreed to a publishing deal for Shenmue 3. Deep Silver is known for Saints Row. Series mastermind Yu Suzuki “said this via a statement: ‘I am very pleased to secure this global partnership with Deep Silver, which is comprised of incredible men and women who have a deep passion for bringing Japanese titles to the rest of the world. Throughout this process, Deep Silver has expressed a deep passion for Japanese games, the Shenmue franchise and its fans—this gives me further confidence in Shenmue 3 and that we have found the best partner possible.’” PC Gamer’s Joe Donnelly reports.
Looks like Quake Champions is doing a Friday news dump. Bethesda’s official account posted early today saying, “Join our special livestream today at 1pm ET as @idSoftware reveals more about the future of #Quake Champions. https://www.twitch.tv/quakechampions.”
Twenty percent of all Germans are esports fans, according to a Nielsen survey. Thiemo Brautigam at Dot Esports reports that “In terms of its popularity, esports even pulls ahead of cross-country-skiing, snowboarding (both 22 percent), and table-tennis (19 percent), results from leading statistics website, statista show. Both pale in comparison to the 34 percent scored by soccer, however … From those polled, 62 percent are planning to attend an esports event in the future, and another 62 percent agreed with the statement that sponsoring esports events makes brands more attractive.”
Valve is clarifying concerns that it’s restricting bulk Steam key purchases, Gamasutra’s Alissa McAloon writes. Here’s what a Valve representative told McAloon, in part:
“…over the last few years, new features and additions to Steam have changed the way Steam keys were being used, for instance as a means for game-shaped objects to monetize on Steam through methods other than actually selling fun games to customers. Most notably, this meant farming Steam Trading Cards…”
Destiny Hearthstone cards (Credit: thelegoman0)
Redditor thelegoman0 has wed Destiny and Hearthstone. They posted a series of pretty cool Destiny-themed Hearthstone cards on Imgur, Dot Esports’ Scott Duwe explains, and posted about it on Reddit. “Idk why I did this but one day I started making a bunch of Hearthstone cards based around Destiny enemies and concepts. If you’re a destiny AND hearthstone fan you might get a kick out of it. If not… well, you might still enjoy it,” Thelegoman0 said.
PlayStation 4’s next firmware update is available and being tested in a closed beta. Version 5.0 “is an overhaul of the way that Sony handles parental controls. Under the current system, a parent can use their own ‘master account’ to create “sub accounts” for up to six family members under 18,” Polygon’s Samit Sarkar writes. “Sony is looking to replace that system in PS4 v5.0 with ‘Family on PlayStation Network.’ With the new setup, the PSN will allow multiple adults to be part of the same ‘family.’ The original account holder, the ‘family manager,’ will be able to promote another adult in the family to the position of ‘parent/guardian,’ and then both individuals will be able to adjust parental controls.”