Multiplayer

• Analysis: Grand Theft Auto Online's New 'Real Money Casino'

  3 weeks ago News

  

  If you’ve browsed the mainstream press recently – and read beyond the news of the new UK Prime Minister – you may have noticed a story ripe with controversy. The perennially popular Grand Theft Auto Online has recently enabled the ability to spend real money in a fictional casino. Grand Theft Auto, of course, has always courted controversy. Many will even tell you it does so deliberately. Gambling, rightly so, is a pastime that is closely regulated. And through recent scandals [...]

• SkyWeaver dev Horizon Blockchain Games secures USD$3.74m (£2.97m) seed round

  4 weeks ago News

  

  Canadian game dev and blockchain infrastructure outfit Horizon Blockchain Games has completed a USD$3.75m (£2.97m) seed round. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s venture fund Initialized Capital led the round, which was also supported by Golden Ventures, Polychain, Coinbase, Digital Currency Group and Inovia Capital. The seed round is likely to be a significant boon to bringing Horizon’s game SkyWeaver to market, and to the further development of the company’s blockchain video game network Arcadeum, which is pitched as a ‘crypto arcade’. Backing by [...]

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• Cuphead to Be Made Into Netflix Show; Nintendo Debuts Switch Lite

  1 month ago News

  

  TheGamingEconomy’s Daily Digest brings you the trending stories in gaming. In today’s news: Cuphead to be made into Netflix show; Nintendo debuts Switch Lite; and Amazon is developing a Lord of the Rings MMO. Cuphead to be made into Netflix show Cuphead, the beloved indie 2D shooter from Studio MDHR, is to be made into a comedy series on Netflix. Itself based on classic 1940’s animated TV shows, Cuphead has been a huge success since its launch in 2017, having shifted over [...]

• Snap Games details real-time multiplayer focus for hyper causal Snapchat games

  2 months ago News

  

  As one of the dominant social platforms for teenage and young adult users, Snapchat is an obvious home for hyper casual instant games. That’s something the platform’s team are keenly aware of, it would seem, as a number of games have recently become available for Snapchat, each playable directly within the messaging service. Yesterday, for example, the internal Snapchat games division Snap Games released its seventh titlefor the platform, Bitmoji Tennis. The launch coincided neatly with Wimbledon, and continues the platform’s Bitmoji [...]

• Industry Veterans Release Game Development Platform; Cuphead Launching for Tesla Cars

  2 months ago News

  

  TheGamingEconomy’s Daily Digest brings you the latest news from the world of gaming. In today’s edition: Industry veterans release new game development platform, Coherence; Shoot ’em up, Cuphead, is launching for Tesla cars; and Apple releases iOS 13. Industry veterans release coherence Playdead co-founder, Dino Patti, and Unity co-founder, David Helgason, aim to democratise the creation of online games with the launch of Coherence, a cloud-based, open-source development platform. Coherence will bring the development of multiplayer games to the masses, where technical [...]

• Epic Removes Problematic Player-Created Content from Fortnite

  4 months ago News

  

  Gaming giant Epic has removed a player-created scene from the Fortnite gameplay map after the game’s fans reported that it depicted seriously problematic content. TheGamingEconomy will offer a brief warning here; this article will necessarily make very occasional and passing references to suicide. Back in 2018, Epic revealed that an area of the Fortnite map would be given over to a region called The Block. The idea is that Epic uses The Block to showcase some of the best player-made Fortnite environments, rotating [...]

• GDC Day Four Roundup: Microsoft's Stadia Response, Steam Store Redesign & Overwatch's Well-Behaved Players

  5 months ago News

  

  As the Game Developers Conference 2019 nears its end, the news continues to flow. The most interesting story related to the show in this roundup doesn’t come from the GDC floor itself, though. Instead, it’s from within a reported internal Microsoft email. Specifically, in an email handed to tech site Thurrott (thanks GamesIndustry.biz), Microsoft’s head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, apparently contacted colleagues to assure them that the reveal of Google’s game-streaming platform Stadia validated Microsoft’s efforts in the same space. The Google [...]

• GDC Day Three Roundup: Epic's USD$100m 'MegaGrants', Oculus' New VR Headset & Keyword's €100m Acquisitions Pot

  5 months ago News

  

  As GDC continues to thunder forward, Fortnite and Unreal outfit Engine Epic has revealed a USD$100m (£76.6m) fund for developers that use its tech. The MegaGrants initiative has been launched alongside a new suite of online multiplayer dev tools; but the funding pot isn’t reserved purely for games makers. As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, studios can apply for grants that range from USD$5,000-to-USD$500,000 (£3,800-to-£383,000) – and here ‘studios’ refers to game makers, TV and film production firms, enterprise developers, education specialists, and even [...]

• GDC Day Two Roundup: Google Enters Gaming Market with Stadia

  5 months ago News

  

  Google has made its move on gaming with the announcement of streaming platform Stadia.  The news came on the second day of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco; and it surely stands as one of the most significant gaming reveals in the industry’s history. Such a major player moving in with such an ambitious platform could radically impact the broad ecosystem of the industry, the makeup of audiences playing games, and the way the medium is consumed and designed. However, Stadia’s [...]

• GDC Day One Roundup: Unity Partners with Tencent, Call of Duty Goes Mobile & How to Catch that Google Keynote

  5 months ago News

  

  With the first day of the huge Game Developers Conference 2019 behind us, it’s a chance to reflect on key news from the show. Here we’ll bring you quick spotlights on key stories; something TheGamingEconomy will do every day of the show. The sheer volume of stories can make it hard to keep up, and separating the wheat from the chaff is a time-consuming business. That’s why we’re here with quick reads that bring you the stories that matter. So [...]