Employed
Ukraine plays host to over 80 games development companies
82 per cent of them are working on mobile games titles
Digital Sports
Chinese esports market set to reach 350 million users by 2020
Experts also expect the scene to value at $1.5 billion
Job News
Kabam co-founder Holly Liu joins the Animoca Brands board of directors
Leading games entrepreneur sees potential in Animoca’s AI and blockchain endeavours
Cloned
Indie dev lambasts recently flush publisher Voodoo for ‘clone’ Hole.io
Hole.io is currently sitting at the top of the free-to-play charts on iOS
Blockchain Competition
One week left to enter $150,000 blockchain developer competition
Could you win the Alto Cryptogame Challenge powered by BlockchainGamer.Biz?
Android Stars
Supercell’s Brawl Stars arrives on Android
Enters soft launch countries
About Time
Report: Telltale Games to ditch its own its own tech for Unity game engine
Follows 15 years of using Telltale Tool
Monumental
Premium isn’t dead yet: Monument Valley 2 makes over $10 million in first year
A year on from the puzzling sequel’s launch, Ustwo releases an impressive infographic
Heading For Ipo
King of Fighters creator SNK and RPG dev Vespa set for South Korea flotations
Vespa joins the Japanese giant in going public in 2018
Market Data
Turkey’s mobile games industry brought in $372.4 million in 2017
Highlights from the Turkey Game Market 2017 report
Big Pull
King enters the social casino space with Royal Charm Slots
The title had been in soft-launch since August 2017
Going Public
Xiaomi heads for $6bn Hong Kong IPO but shelves mainland China listing
Smartphone manufacturer rolls back reported plans to raise $10 billion
Android Stars
Supercell teases Brawl Stars Android release
Could it suggest the MOBA-esque shooter is on its way to a full global launch?
Fallout World
Fallout Shelter publisher Bethesda sues Warner Bros over “blatant rip-off” Westworld
Lawsuit claims "highly similar" game design, art style, animations and features
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner
Steel Media wins SpecialEffect’s #ChickenForCharity PUBG tournament as event raises over £10k
Incredible scenes
Hoppin’
No Yetis Allowed picks up licence for Peter Rabbit mobile game
Pocket Shrek developer partners with brand owner Penguin Ventures
Tweeted
Nintendo the most talked about games company on Twitter during E3 2018
Super Smash Bros also received the most tweets out of the games on show
Chart Check
Top 50 US App Store games take 76% of the revenue
Apptopia research finds iOS games peak quickly, with harsh falloff
Lovestruck
Intel CEO steps down after breaching "non-fraternisation" policy
Brian Krzanich resigned from the tech giant after five years
Building Blocks
Roblox set to raise up to $150 million
PitchBook estimates funding would value the company at $2.4 billion
Arrr
Nintendo bans Switch consoles with pirated games
Reddit post warns against pirating games to the handheld
Beef
Nintendo and Microsoft dunk Sony on Twitter over Minecraft cross-play
Sony’s cross-play policy has been under public scrutiny since Fortnite launched on Switch
Winner
Report: PUBG developer Bluehole snaps up mobile studio Delusion Studio
The terms of the deal are currently unknown
To Infinity
Sign up for next week's Beyond Games networking mixer in London
The mini-summit and mixer will also feature Game Insight’s Tanks of Boom
Takeover
Americans will soon be spending more time on mobile than their telly
Time spent on mobile may be reaching a peak, however
Charity Dinner
Steel Media on the hunt for chicken dinners in SpecialEffect #ChickenForCharity PUBG tournament
Your favourite b2b journos are entering the fray to raise money for charity
It's Snow Joke
Cuphead developer Studio MDHR signs up former Alto’s Odyssey producer Eli Cymet
The former mobile games journalist served a producer on Alto’s Odyssey
Tapped Up
TinyTap raises $5 million to fund accessible learning platform
The platform currently has over 150,000 educational games, digital books and interactive activities
Wallets Away
Tencent trialling a new feature to halt high-spending by underage users
“Underage User Game Spending Reminder” to prevent kids from splashing too much cash
Troubled Times
Ukie opens consultation to see how post-Brexit UK games industry can still flourish
"Last year’s State of Play EU report showed that 61 per cent of games businesses in the UK rely on international talent"
Catch Em All
Pokémon Quest snags 2.5 million downloads on Nintendo Switch
The RPG is also set to launch on mobile on June 27th
Fine Lineage
Lineage M breaks $1.2 billion in revenue a year after release
The popular MMO is also aiming for a global release
Mighty
Singapore dev Mighty Bear Games fetches several million dollars in seed funding round
Developer founded by King, Ubisoft, Jagex and Disney alumni
Big Indie Pitch
Spellfast crowned champion at the Big Indie Pitch in Los Angeles
Check out the champions for our recent Big Indie Pitch, as we arrived in LA for E3 week
Event
What’s on at next month's Big Indie Fest @ ReVersed
Four-day event features 100 exhibitors, 500 trade visitors, a public audience of 4,000, a Big Indie Pitch, awards, game jam and four tracks of seminars
Taking The Reins
German games distributor Libredia launches publishing business
Outfit plans to release half a dozen titles by the end of this year
Realer Than Real
Unity drives deeper into augmented reality with Project MARS
“Reality is our build target”
Smooth
Unity showcases machine learning powered animation with Kinematika
New pipeline hopes to make high-quality animation easier
Job News
Two Owlchemy Labs bosses are leaving to co-found a new venture
VR studio CEO and studio director depart for projects unknown
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner
Playerunknown's Battlegrounds breaks 400 million players
PUBG also draws a crowd of 87 million players each and every single day
Not Bad
Fortnite bags $100 million in its first 90 days on iOS
And it still has not launched in China or on Android
Android Odyssey
Snowman team up with Noodlecake to bring Alto's Odyssey to Android
The next instalment in the Alto series will launch next month
Funded
Walking Dead: Road to Survival publisher Scopely raise additional $100 million to fund acquisitions and investments
The Los Angeles-based publisher originally raised $60 million last year
Quick Switch
“It only took two days to get Shadowgun Legends on Nintendo Switch”
Madfinger CEO Marek Rabas takes to the stage at Unite Berlin 2018
Nested Prefabs People
Nested prefabs come to Unity preview at long last
Along with an entirely new prefab workflow
Big Deal
Unity migrating entire infrastructure to Google Cloud
Tech firms also reveal open source matchmaking project set to go live in summer 2018
Augmented
Report: Microsoft plans to unveil Hololens 2 in late 2018
“Sydney” set to launch next year with a significantly lower price tag
Switch It Over
Nintendo and Disney team up to put Switch on the telly
Two entertainment giants collaborate to create a game show based on the popular console
Unlocked
Tencent takes on Fortnite’s battle pass with the PUBG Mobile Royale Pass
Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds’ battle pass looks rather familiar
Gaming Disorder
Gaming Disorder included in WHO’s latest draft of International Compendium of Diseases
Members of WHO aren’t expected to report using the ICD-11 until 2022