Esports
Arena of Valor 2018 International Championship sports a $600,000 prize pool
Grand finals will take place in Thailand on December 15th to 16th
Staff
Natalie Clayton
About Natalie Clayton is an Edinburgh-based freelance writer and game developer. Besides PCGamesInsider and Pocketgamer.biz, she's written across the games media landscape and was named in the 2018 GamesIndustry.biz 100 Rising Star list.
Articles by Natalie Clayton
Fight
Huawei wants to take on the Switch with a $1,000 phone
Chinese manufacturer wants its new gaming phone to compete with the hybrid console
Nope-mon
Former US president Barack Obama doesn't care for Pokemon
I’d honestly always figured him more of a Digimon fan anyway
Crunch
Minit developer encourages developers to share games made without crunch
Indies take to Twitter to share games developed without excessive overtime
Winner Winner
PUBG Mobile has scored over 100m downloads on Google Play
Tencent's mobile battle royale reaches Android milestone two months after hitting it across platforms
New Pad
Lords Mobile developer I Got Games has opened a new office in Indonesia
Company celebrates opening of branch with grand ceremony and orchestral performances
Legal Rift
John Carmack's legal dispute with Zenimax Media ends
But the fight for Oculus isn’t over yet
Tech Support
Ubisoft after developers to participate in its third Station F incubator program
AI and Blockchain startups encouraged to take part in the six-month program in Paris
Ar
Truly Social Games acquires Vancouver AR studio Cooper’s New Reality Garage
Augmented reality specialist will rebrand as Truly Social Games Vancouver
Audio
Gismart’s Piano Crush becomes No.1 music App on the US App Store
Virtual keyboard beat out Spotify to top charts in multiple regions worldwide
Offline
Marmalade SDK shuts down citing increased pressure from Unity and Unreal
Unpredictable iOS changes are also stated as causing Marmalade’s developers to close up shop
Service
Epic Games acquires security and service provider Kamu
Kamu brings its speciality in game security and community building to Fortnite and Unreal developers
New-school
Subscribers can now access the RuneScape Mobile Beta
Mobile beta headlines a string of announcements made during this weekend’s Runefest event
Monster Adaptation
Production begins on live-action Monster Hunter movie
Resident Evil director Paul W.S. Anderson will write, direct and produce the adaptation
Dead On
The Walking Dead: Our World will feature time-limited in-game events during season nine of the AMC series
New challenges will drop every Monday with each new episode
Zombie
FTX Games to publish new The Walking Dead match-three and social casino mobile games
Publisher seals deal with AMC to create multiple flesh-eating licensed titles
Dirt
Pokemon Go celebrates the 50th anniversary of the US’s National Rivers & Trails systems
Pokemon Go studio wants to get players out and about across America’s National Parks
Undead
The Walking Dead co-creator Robert Kirkman wants to make sure Telltale Games' Clementine story is told
But right now there are no plans to bring her into the ongoing comic book series
Invested
Tencent invests $318 million in Chinese video-sharing company Bilibili
Publisher acquires 12.3 per cent of shares in a company that dabbles in running League of Legends and Overwatch esports teams
Report
Facebook dominates AppsFlyer Performance Index rankings, but Google is catching up
Apple Search Ads establishes itself as a mainstream player
Craft
Fortnite isn't top dog yet - Minecraft is now pushing 90 million monthly active users
The second-highest selling game of all time found an extra 20 million monthly users in 2018
Stellar
Hugo Games picks up Dawn of the Dragons dev 5th Planet for $737,000
An extra $160,000 will go towards funding a sequel to the studio's Dawn of the Dragons sequel.
Jobs
Sega of America’s Ian Curran and Tatsuyuki Miyazaki take on additional roles as COO and CEO of Atlus USA
Former CEO Naoto Hiraoka bcomes brand owner to promote company's titles worldwide
Off Course
Nintendo successfully sues Tokyo’s unofficial Mario Kart tours for $89,000
Real-life Mario Kart operator MariCar ordered to stop using Nintendo's property immediately
Revenue
Lords Mobile plunders over $825 million in revenue worldwide
IGG's massively-multiplayer strategy game raked in $7 million in one week alone earlier this month
Charity
Words With Friends 2 launches tile styles alongside breast cancer charity event
Zynga will donate up to $100,000 to Susan G Komen as part of breast cancer awareness month
Vr Versus Switch
Carmack on the Oculus Quest: "Realistically, we're going to end up competing with the Nintendo Switch"
The veteran engineer sees the standalone VR headset as a secondary device for console or PC owners
Draw
Flaregames resurrects Games Workshop’s Citadel Combat Cards with Well Played Games
The 1990s Warhammer 40,000 card came to be brought to mobile on November 22nd
Sold
Vivendi aims to sell all shares in Ubisoft by March 2019
Fears of a hostile takeover come to an end as Vivendi pulls out of Ubisoft entirely
Revenue
Toy Blast collects over $440 million in worldwide revenue
With Toon Blast making rapid gains, Peak Games’ previous outing continues to find success
Trivial
Etermax reveals Trivia Crack 2 launch date as original quiz app passes 500 million downloads
Trivia Crack 2 will launch on iOS and Android devices on October 25th
Data
Tencent maintains a firm grasp on SuperData’s top 10 grossing mobile games chart in August
Publisher dominates a chart virtually unchanged over the last two months
Drop In
PUBG Mobile’s first Star Challenge Champions series launches with a $600,000 prize pool
Mobile esports series kicks off with a focus on putting big names centre-stage
Saved
Nintendo Switch Online cloud saves will remain 180 days after subscription ends
Fan fears that saves may vanish immediately on a subscription ending are unfounded
Legal
Former employee hits Telltale Games with a class action lawsuit
Redundancies made “without cause” may have broken state and federal labour laws
Infectious
The Walking Dead: Our World consumes $8 million in revenue over 55 days
Augmented reality survival shooter has been installed almost 1.7 million times
Pow
Dragon Ball Legends strikes up $65 million in revenue worldwide
Mobile brawler saw 1.9 million new players join the fight last month
Telltale Signs
Failure to finalise new funding round the catalyst for mass Telltale Games layoffs
Sources claim Lionsgate stopped funding Telltale to refocus on its own business
Dare
Thunder Lime wins this year’s Dare Academy design competition
2018’s winners of the annual Abertay University student event announced at EGX last Friday
Opening
Shop Heroes developer Cloudcade opens 50-person studio in Pakistan
Cloudcade hopes the new South Asia location will help the studio develop 4 games simultaneously
Jobs
Games industry opens its doors to laid off Telltale employees with #telltalejobs
Online support and a California-based Meet the Dev event hope to transition stranded developers into new roles
Lay-off Woes
Game Workers Unite issues scathing response to Telltale Games layoffs
“The system for creating games is broken, and it will result in the collapse of many other beloved studios”
Pokemon Go
Pokemon Go saw a 35 per cent increase in activity over the last 4 months
Niantic also announced a scheme to tie Pokemon Go to civic engagement events
Super Cells
Supercell’s Ilkka Paananen explains why its cell structure puts developers before management
“The less the management had to do with their games, the better their chances of success”
Super
The first mobile Spider-man game almost made its creator bankrupt on day one of development
Indiagames reflects on creating the web-slinging mobile title on a low budget with four developers
Fated
Former Fate/Grand Order and Zero Escape devs launch new indie studio
Four titles are currently in the works, one anime and three games
China
It could take another four-to-six months for China to start approving new games again
Governmental restructure may see the region’s normally-booming market frozen for another half year.
Switch
Nintendo cites cheaters for the decision to restrict cloud saves on Switch
Switch Online cloud saves won’t be enabled on a number of titles
Spend
Report: Industry less reliant on "whales" than it used to be
Less stigma on in-game spending is creating a market less reliant on big-spenders.
Social
Former Zynga director Kate Gorman's Fort Mason Games reveals first project
The women-led startup hopes to make a name in casino gaming through better representation of women