TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: USD$680m (£523m) spent in Epic Games Store; Valve Index sold out globally; and Asian gaming market to generate over USD$65bn (£50bn) in 2020. USD$680m (£523m) spent in Epic Games Store Since launching in December 2018, player spending on Epic Games Store has reached USD$680m (£523m), with 108 million PC having used the platform. A total of 36% of this revenue, USD$251m (£193m), was generated from third-party titles, although [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Team17 picks up Yippee Entertainment; Worldwide Christmas spend on apps tops USD$277m (£209.6m); and Nexon sells off mobile development subsidiary for JPN¥1 (£0.007). Team17 picks up Yippee Entertainment Long-standing UK developer and publisher Team17 has acquired Yippee Entertainment for close to £1.4m. Founded in 2011, Yippee develops own IP alongside end-to-end creation of games on a third-party basis. The company has also served as a digital publisher. Now wholly owned [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: NetEase revenue up 11.2%; Dream Games raises USD$7.5m (£5.8m); and Mythical Games secures USD$19m (£14.7m) in funding. NetEase revenue up 11.2% Chinese internet and online games provider NetEase has realised revenue of CN¥14.636bn (£1.611bn) in the third quarter of 2019, representing a year-on-year increase of 11.2%, according to the company’s unaudited financial results. Gross profit also increased by 8.9% to reach CN¥7.87bn (£866m) The Guangzhou-based firm’s gaming division [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Valve to launch VR Half-Life title; Skydance Media to form new studio; and PC & Mobile gaming revenue to pass USD$8.3bn (£6.4bn) in Greater Southeast Asia. Valve to launch VR Half-Life title Valve has announced that it is revealing its new VR title, Half-Life: Alyx, on Thursday 21st November at 10am PT. The move is significant given the popularity of the Half-Life franchise, with the first title in [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Tencent integrates live-streaming e-commerce functions in WeChat, Scopely expands into APAC, and PlayStation 4 sells thirty million units in the US. Tencent integrates live-streaming e-commerce functions in WeChat Chinese internet giant Tencent has integrated live streaming functions into its WeChat platform, which has been designed to facilitate e-commerce capabilities, according Weixin (translation provided by KrASIA). The functions on the platform, which has 1.1 billion monthly active users will [...]

That figure – and Niko’s other findings – point to rapid growth in China’s games market, despite state involvement stifling game releases in the country through 2018 and into this year. Niko’s in-depth report points to the fact that China presently accounts for 25% of the world’s mobile games market. As home to 18.4% of the world’s population, China is clearly punching above its significant weight when it comes to mobile. China is currently home to 1.4 billion people. Niko’s figures [...]

Social Networking giant Facebook saw its mobile app downloaded more times than those of any other publisher globally in the closing months of 2018, according to a new report. The Facebook app was downloaded 800 million times through October to December last year, putting it a significant way ahead of the next best performing publisher, Google, which counted over 650 million downloads through the period. The numbers come from insights by enterprise-level data outfit Sensor Tower, which looked at downloads across both [...]

More games are to be released in China. Under normal circumstances, that statement would be far from newsworthy. But for nine months in 2018, the world’s largest games market had been significantly stifled by new Government regulation. In March last year, following a restructuring of the state institutions, China’s Government declined to approve a single new video game for release. Many titles were simply stopped in their tracks, while numerous others hand their monetisation potential stifled. Updates and new content, after [...]

China may be the world’s biggest game market, with regard to user numbers and revenues, but for many months the nation’s Government had declined to approve a single new game. That all changed in recent days. As reported by the South China Morning Post, a new body, the State Administration of Radio and Television (SART), was formed in March 2018, with a view to monitoring media content intended for public consumption. From 28 March 2018, no new game titles were approved [...]

If you’re caught offering ‘boosting’ services to video game players in South Korea, you may now face a USD$17,800 (£14,000) fine, or two-years jail time. Boosting sees less-experienced users of a given game grant accomplished players access to their account for that title. The high-level player then ‘boosts’ the accessed account, deploying their skills to rapidly progress a player-character through a game. ‘Levelling up’ the player account typically opens access to higher levels of game competition, increased powers, and new weapons [...]