Game industry business news

ESL releases matchmaking devkit to debut in WipEout spiritual successor

The biggest eSports league in the world, ESL, has released a white label development toolkit called ESL Matchmaking. The tool, to be first used in UK indie developer R8 Games’ upcoming anti-gravity racer, Formula Fusion, will allow competitive-grade ranked multiplayer matchmaking. The game, hailed as a spiritual successor to the …

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Nintendo ‘still in denial about Wii U failure’, analyst claims

Analyst Michael Pachter has continued his long-running criticism of Nintendo with another scathing attack against the platform holder. I think that they are still in denial about the Wii U failure,” he told Game Informer. You keep seeing this stat so we’re up 82 per cent – yeah, 40,000 units …

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Top 100 Women in Games: Gabrielle Kent

Kent is deputy head of the games department at Teesside University, as well as director of the Animex Festival. While studying Illustration in 1997, Kent undertook a placement working on Shadowman at Acclaim and realised her future lay in games. After graduating, she joined the Pitbull Syndicate, going on to …

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Layoffs hit Daybreak Game Company (formerly known as SOE)

Rebranded developer Daybreak Game Company has cjob losses at its San Diego and Austin studios. It was announced last week that Daybreak was the new name for Sony Online Entertainment, following its acquisition by Columbus Nova. To better position our newly independent studio for future growth opportunities and to deliver …

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Minecraft beats out GTA for top gaming franchise on Youtube

A new study on YouTube gaming franchises draws one inevitable conclusion: There’s Minecraft, and there’s everyone else. NewZoo and Octoly’s infographic (shown below) ranks the top 20 gaming franchises on the popular video-sharing website, and it’s little surprise to see Mojang’s title out in front. Research also shows that 96.6 …

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World Zombination studio nets $6m from Oculus, Riot investors

Mobile studio Proletariat has raised $6m in a Series A funding round, led by Oculus investor Spark Capital. FirstMark Capital and Atlas Ventures make up the other major investment companies in the round – Firstmark is notable for having backed League of Legends developer Riot Games since the studios’ early …

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Awesome Games Done Quick raises $1.58m for charity

January’s live streaming charity event Awesome Games Done Quick raised $1.58m for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, organizers have announced. Awesome Games Done Quick is a Twitch-based marathon run of top gamers attempting record-breaking speedruns of classics such as Mario and Zelda games, along with other amazing feats like playing through …

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Workshop in London next week examines how to recruit and retain a gender-balanced workforce

A workshop in London next week will focus on how to recruit and retain a gender-balanced workforce. The event is hosted by Next Gen Skills Academy and follows up on its Gender Balanced Workforce Survey, the results of which were published last month. Key areas of discussion include analysing the …

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