In The News
It’s that time of the week again! The Weekly Talkthrough is back with the biggest news in gaming and esports from this week.
A sad week just got worse. Daniel Licht, the composer behind the Dishonored series, “Dexter” and “Children of the Corn,” has passed away at 60. Variety’s Jon Burlingame writes that he died from cancer.
“He had also branched out into the videogame arena, scoring two in the ‘Silent Hill’ PlayStation series (“Downpour” and “Book of Memories”) and the first two games in the ‘Dishonored’ series … He is survived by his wife Hilary Kimblin Licht; a son, Kian; his mother, two brothers, a sister and several nieces and nephews.”
Streamers are encountering a few snags with the Destiny 2 PC beta, namely that “Bungie announced today [Thursday] that it’s blocking certain features of common game capture and communication apps,” GameSpot’s Alex Newhouse reports. “The most notable apps affected by these restrictions are capture programs like OBS and XSplit. These are the most popular programs used by streamers, but they won’t be able to fully function while Destiny 2 is running, as the Game Capture mode in these apps will be blocked.”
Seven months after BEAST 7 in Sweden, a Super Smash Bros. tournament, it’s looking like winners may not get paid at all. BEAST 7’s organizers “expressed skepticism that the winners would be paid at all,” Game Informer’s Imran Khan reports.
Overwatch and Hearthstone combined have pushed Blizzard’s active monthly users to a staggering 46 million. That’s a new record, too. Mike Minotti at Venture Beat reports that “That is up 38 percent year-over-year … Both Overwatch and Hearthstone have content plans that should keep players busy for the future. Hearthstone’s next expansion, Knights of the Frozen Throne, releases later this month. Overwatch just released its 25th hero, Doomfist, and the shooter is also planning its second Summer Games event, which will offer unique character skins and a soccer-based game mode.”
Twenty-seven million new paying users have flocked to Steam in the last 18 months. GamesIndustry.biz’s James Batchelor reported on the figures Valve released. “That’s an average of 1.5m new users every month … Overall, Steam’s monthly active player count has risen to 67m – considerably ahead of the 53m Xbox Live users Microsoft recently reported, although only around half the 125m active users Valve has recorded over Steam’s lifetime.”
Because WHY NOT?! Japanese politicians are cosplaying, Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft writes. “The mayor of Nagoya and the governor of Aichi Prefecture both recently suited up as famous anime characters … Mayor Takashi Kawamura and Governor Hideaki Omura cosplay at least once a year for the World Cosplay Summit.”