In The News
Twitch News:
Twitch’s streaming football. “Thursday Night Football will debut for free on Amazon-owned livestreaming platform Twitch” with yesterday’s game “between the Minnesota Vikings and the Los Angeles Rams,” ESPN’s Jacob Wolf reports. “The move to Twitch is a part of Amazon’s renewal of its two-year, $130 million broadcasting deal with the NFL for the 2018 and 2019 seasons of Thursday Night Football, which is also broadcast on Fox’s linear network.”
Twitch introduced new labels. “IRL” is gone, Dot Esports’ Nicole Carpenter reports. “The company found IRL and Creative to be a bit too broad.” Users are, however, a bit perturbed “esports” is not an available option. Folks like Scott “SirScoots” Smith, Ben “Fishstix” Goldhaber and Brandon Brathwaite were lukewarm about its absence.
Nintendo News:
Lawsuits! Nintendo won a copyright suit against MariCar “and has forced the company to pay 10 million yen to the gaming giant,” Game Informer’s Imran Khan writes.
Switch Online crossed 5 million downloads in its first week live, SensorTower reports. “Japan and the United States have driven the majority of Nintendo Switch Online companion app installs at 33 and 30 percent of the total, respectively.”
Polygon’s Allegra Frank interviewed Game Freak’s Junichi Masuda about the early days of Pokémon.
Discord’s first “First On Discord” Games include Last Year: The Nightmare and King of the Hat.
Vivendi will finish divesting from Ubisoft in the next 6 months, Gamasutra’s Alex Wawro reports. “It does seem to end the years-long saga that was Ubisoft’s increasingly desperate, increasingly public battle to remain independent under threat of a takeover by Vivendi.”
ClanPlay raised $2 million “in venture funding for a platform that serves as a social hub for gamers who play in clans in games such as Clash Royale and also rewards gamers for their play,” VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi reports.
Bethesda’s trying to calm down angry The Elder Scrolls: Legends players. We’ll see how it goes.
Liquid Media acquired the rights to “65 Retro Gaming Titles” in a $1 million acquisition, Globe Newswire reports.
The bajillion videos from yesterday’s Oculus Connect are here.
Extra Esports News:
DreamHack’s gearing up to host 2 festivals: one in Mumbai and one in the Netherlands.
Vodafone and ESL Italia are partnering, Esports Insider’s Sean Carr reports.
Team VGJ ended their partnership with Vici Gaming and rebranded to J.Storm, Esports Insider’s Adam Fitch writes.