As of last year, the International Olympics Committee had publicly announced their interest and consideration of Esports as an event in the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympics. Citing Esports's impressive revenue numbers and engagement with younger audiences, the IOC are no doubt hoping to capitalize on the Esports industry's current track record of success. Fans who are hopeful of seeing some [...]
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Over the past few months, the Overwatch community has seen a continued rise in toxic behavior. Behavior which has now started to infest the Overwatch e-sports league itself prompting ESPN to call out Blizzard Entertainment due to their apparent lack of response on the matter. Especially after Overwatch League player Timo “Taimou” Kettunen of Dallas Fuel was caught using homophobic [...]
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Working an employee to death doesn’t really sit well with the public, or the government for that matter. Last year, a Netmarble employee died of a heart disease in his 20’s. According to the Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service, the disease was caused by “irregular night-time work and excess duty in the 12 weeks before he developed the symptoms.” [...]
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Brawlhalla developer Mammoth Games was acquired by French gaming giant Ubisoft this week for an undisclosed sum. Given the game's massive popularity (averages 6,300 concurrent users on Steam alone) it was a figure well into the millions. While there's no official figure just yet, I predict it was in the $50-$125M range. Brawlhalla for those that haven't heard of it [...]
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The U.S. Copyright Office is currently considering easing DMCA anti-circumvention provisions which come up for renewal every 3 years. One of the most important topics being considered this year center around the preservation of abandoned video games. Previous rulings have granted museums, libraries, and other archival organizations the right to use emulators and other tools to make old games playable. [...]
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The buy to play action MMORPG Wild Buster: Heroes of Titan was removed from Steam on February 13, 2018 for review manipulation. Multiple accounts associated with the game's publisher, Insel Games, were caught posting only positive reviews about the game, which is a clear violation of Steam's terms of service. In response, Valve removed all Insel Games titles from Steam [...]
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In Nexon's Q4 2017 Q&A call with analysts and investors, an analyst from Goldman Sachs asks Nexon CEO the following question: "...Lawbreakers, now you're going into that console business but the title is going to be terminated, but you're in the console business. So, any takeaways from that? Any perspective on the console business in the incoming years?" -Time Stamp [...]
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Once again Activision Blizzard proved to the world that they're really good at making money. They reported revenues of a bit over $2B in Q4, 2017, beating their own estimate of $1.7B by a landslide. According to Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activsion Blizzard, "This was a record quarter to cap off a record year for Activision Blizzard". For the full [...]
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Nexon reported their Q4 2017 and full year 2017 earnings report today. Full year revenues came in at 234.9B Yen ($2.16B USD), up from 183.1B Yen (~$1.7B USD) from 2016. Nexon CEO, Owen Mahoney, attributed the record annual revenue to the ongoing success of Dungeon Fighter Online and MapleStory, both of which recorded double-digit percentage growth in revenue year over [...]
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NCSoft reported Q4 2017 earnings today and it showed company wide revenues increase a whopping 79% year over year thanks to strong performance in their mobile games division. While mobile game revenues were up huge in 2017, they did fall quarter over quarter. Guild Wars 2 reported strong sales growth in the 4th quarter thanks to the launch of the [...]
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