GamesIndustry News, Tips, Tricks, Ideas

NetEase, the publisher of Marvel Rivals, is retracting its no negativity clause for streamers previewing the game.

Plenty of GamesIndustry.biz readers are familiar with the concept of crowdfunding, with well over a decade of Kickstarter campaigns helping to bring many a game to market. Less common, however, is equity crowdfunding.

The latest episode of the GI Microcast is now available in podcast form, delivering your weekly dive into the biggest stories of the past week. The video will be available tomorrow.

Warner Bros. Discovery is returning ownership of some titles from Adult Swim Games back to developers.

Sheffield-based studio Steel City Interactive has raised over £15 million in a funding round led by Novator Ventures.

Australia-based developer Mighty Kingdom has laid off 28% of its workforce, affecting at least 14 people.

Square Enix has released its financials for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024, with the results largely below what it had previously forecasted.

Despite the many difficulties the games industry faces around the world, Swedish developers are feeling somewhat optimistic as the local development scene continues to experience rapid growth.

Sony has reportedly formed a new studio made up of former Deviation Games employees.

Pentiment and We Are OFK were named among the 84th annual Peabody Awards winners.

Earlier this week, Steam became banned in the country of Vietnam.

Sega Sammy has released its financial report for the year ended March 31, 2023, and the company showed strong performances on a number of fronts.

Playtika has terminated the roles of chief revenue officer and chief operating officer.

WB Discovery CEO David Zaslav said the entertainment firm's Q1 financials took losses.

Xbox president Sarah Bond says that Microsoft's shuttering of four Bethesda studios is to ensure the firm's business is "healthy for the long term."

This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check every Friday for a new entry.

CI Games is implementing one last round of layoffs as part of the restructuring it began in January.

Now that Sony releasing its first-party titles on PC as well as PlayStation has become relatively commonplace, it’s easy to lose sight of what a major change in strategy this represents.

Microsoft has announced that its Xbox mobile storefront will launch in July 2024.

Lightforge Games has announced it's cutting the "majority" of its staff by the end of the month, and is pausing development on its upcoming title Project ORCS.

Fallout 4 was comfortably the best-selling game of April in the UK, according to the latest GSD data.

Capcom has released its financial results for the fiscal year, reporting a record high profit for a seventh consecutive year driven by its digital contents business.

Unity has posted its first financial results for 2024, showing a loss of nearly $300 million for the first quarter.

Indie gaming in Japan is growing, while domestic investment in indie publishing and greater investment in independent and doujin creators is uprooting the Japanese games industry.

AI start-up Yellow has secured $5 million in a seed funding round.

The user-generated content marketplace Overwolf has snapped up Nitropay.

Finding a job can be stressful and daunting. Given the wave of layoffs in the games industry, including those from Microsoft this week, it's a tall task. It can also be time-consuming and difficult during this economic downturn.

Roblox has released its first quarter financial results for 2024, demonstrating a significant boost in the company's revenue and bookings.

Nintendo has suggested that the successor to the Switch will not arrive before March 31, 2025, indicating an April release at the very earliest.

Over 100,000 people attended the 9th edition of the London Games Festival.

A new study has found that YouTube is the most popular and trusted platform for discovering new games among players.

AI startup Altera has raised $9 million in a seed round, co-led by Patron and First Spark Ventures.

A ZeniMax executive has reportedly said Xbox's closure of four studios this week was due to a lack of staff and support.

Krafton released its Q1 financials report, which says it reached $488 million in consumer spending.

Mike Wilson, founder and co-CEO of DeepWell, has left the company.

The news that Xbox was going to buy Bethesda caught me by surprise. And not just because of the sheer size of the $7.5bn acquisition.

It's been a difficult stretch for the industry, so when we speak with Devolver Digital co-founder Nigel Lowrie at the Game Developers Conference, our first question is fairly open-ended: What is happening?

Pole to Win has opened a new motion capture studio at SIDE London, an expansion of its partnership with Imaginarium Studios.

Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson spoke of how generative AI could make its development process "more efficient" and help give developers "more power."

Electronic Arts today released its earnings report for Q4 FY24 (the three months ended March 31, 2024), showing sales down during a quiet fourth quarter even as the bottom line improved year-over-year.

ByteDance and TikTok have filed a challenge to the bill banning the app in the US.

A jury has ruled that Activision Blizzard will pay tech incubator Acceleration Bay $23.4 million for patent infringement.

Microsoft is shutting down four of the studios it picked up as part of the 2020 Bethesda acquisition, as reported by IGN.

You can now download or watch the latest episode of the GI Microcast, our weekly quick dive into the biggest stories of the past week.

Nintendo has released its latest financial results, showing a strong year in terms of net sales and profits thanks to the success of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Bros Wonder and The Super Mario Bros Movie.

Brazil has officially adopted a new law redefining video games in the country and establishing guidelines to guarantee and regulate its industry's future growth.

Remedy has announced the cancellation of its multiplayer title codenamed Kestrel in order to focus on its existing franchises.

Nintendo has given the first indications on when we can expect news on its next console, revealing that the device will be announced "within this fiscal year."

Sony has burned a bit of good will with the Helldivers 2 player base, as the company announced plans on Thursday that would require PC players of the game to link a PlayStation Network account to continue playing the title.

This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check every Friday for a new entry.

Nintendo has issued a DMCA takedown notice against 8,535 GitHub repositories that contain code from the Yuzu emulator for Switch.

GamesIndustry.biz has hired Hannah Potter as senior account manager, expanding its commercial capabilities.

Google has filed its objections against Epic Games' recent call for the courts to enforce a variety of changes to policies regarding the Google Play store and its associated payment system.

2024 hasn't exactly gotten off to the best start for the game industry: mass layoffs loom over large publishers like Epic and Riot Games, and it's becoming harder and all the more expensive to develop and deliver breakthrough games. While the growth outlook for mobile is much more optimistic than it has been in years – with Data.ai projecting up to 4% year over year growth – Epic and Google's court proceedings and Apple's response to Digital Markets Act legislation have cast a shadow over this promising growth and the future of the mobile games industry.

It can be difficult keeping track of the various comings and goings in the games industry, which is why we compile them in semi-regular round-ups.

Mobile and indie game developer Paladin Studios has ceased its operations.

Games are rated by regulatory organizations such as the ESRB and PEGI, evaluating titles based on their content and subject matter. These ratings aim to inform buyers, especially parents, about what their children could encounter while playing a game.

The International Game Developers Association released its 2023 Developer Satisfaction Survey today, which saw developers highlight numerous issues including equity, diversity, and inclusion, layoffs, and crunch.

More details have emerged about the ongoing layoffs at Take-Two Interactive, with reports suggesting the publisher has shut down two indie-size studios.

Matthew Bromberg has been named as Unity's new CEO, the company announced today.

Game Workers Unite Montreal has teamed up with Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux (CSN) for better labor conditions.

Business social media site LinkedIn has officially rolled out game offerings.

Digital Development Management (DDM) says gaming investments hit $2.2 billion in Q1.

Sony Interactive Entertainment's Shuhei Yoshida and Greg Rice have been announced as the second keynote speakers for this year's Develop:Brighton conference.

Earlier this month, the International Game Developers Association published a call to action urging leaders across the games industry to consider the consequences of layoffs, and prompting them to embrace sustainability.

Circana today released its sales report for US spending on games in March, showing growth for the fourth consecutive month.

Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto 5 and a trio of Call of Duty titles were consistently the most played games across consoles in the US last month.

Mobile game maker Belka Games has laid off 33 staffers.

Take-Two appears to be preparing to close its Seattle office this summer, likely as part of the recently announced layoffs across the company.

Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism has said it intends to grow the country's console market by 2028 in order to revitalise its games industry.

Over the last five years there's been tremendous change across console gaming driven by the growth in live service games, the increase in free-to-play titles, and the burgeoning influence of multi-game subscription services.

Microsoft has announced that its Xbox Games Showcase will take place on June 9

Deliver Us Mars developer Keoken Interactive has laid off the majority of its staff after struggling to secure funding or future work during GDC 2024.

Square Enix today warned investors that its next earnings report will include a significant hit due to a number of cancelled projects.

Last year was a massive one for Hasbro's video game business, with Monopoly Go and Baldur's Gate 3 providing the toy maker with two of its biggest hits in games to date.

It's been a fascinating journey for the developers behind indie game studio Evening Star. Much of the crew got their humble starts working together on Sonic the Hedgehog fan games. Their work was so highly regarded that they would eventually be recruited by Sega to develop Sonic Mania, a throwback to the franchise's 2D heyday that would go on to become the highest rated Sonic game in over 25 years.

Last week, GamesIndustry.biz presented a webinar with TikTok and the National Research Group on modern mobile gaming. And you can watch the whole thing back below.

Discord has banned an unknown number of accounts that were using bots to scrape messages from up to 620 million users and sold them to other companies.

Amazon's Fallout TV program hit 65 million viewers 16 days after release.