TheGamingEconomy’s Daily Digest brings you the prevalent business stories in gaming. In today’s news: Scopely raises USD$200m (£173.1m) for M&A; The Sandbox secures USD$2.01m (£1.74m); Robin Games secures USD$7m (£6.05m) seed funding; and Mainframe Industries raises €7.6m (£7.1m). Scopely raises USD$200m (£173.1m) for M&A Los Angeles-based mobile publisher Scopely has secured USD$200m (£173.1m) in Series D funding, with investment primarily coming from media group Advance and consumer investment firm The Chernin Group. The latest haul, which takes Scopely’s total funding to USD$658.7m [...]

TheGamingEconomy’s Daily Digest brings you the trending stories in gaming. In today’s news: 55% of UK dev jobs are outside of London and the South East; Atari to open gaming hotels; and USD$10m-plus (£7.68m-plus) contracts for top streamers departing Twitch 55% of UK dev jobs are outside of London and the South East UK games industry trade body Ukie and cultural charity the BFI have released a new report that reveals that 55% of game developers were based outside London and the [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Adobe acquires Facebook’s VR sculpting tool Medium; Epic Game Store enables third-parties to offer in-game purchases; Bethesda puts The Elder Scrolls Legends development on hold. Adobe acquires Facebook’s VR sculpting tool Medium Creative software provider Adobe has acquired the VR sculpting tool Medium from Facebook for an undisclosed sum. Launched by the social media giant in December 2016, the art tool previously let users of VR systems paint, sculpt [...]

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: Mario Kart Tour reaches 90 million downloads; Ustwo Games accused of union busting; and PS4 cross-play moves out of beta. Mario Kart Tour reaches 90 million downloads Mario Kart Tour has reached 90.1 million downloads in its first week of release according to data from Sensor Tower, making it the fastest mobile game launch for Nintendo, surpassing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp which saw 14.3 million unique downloads in [...]

The vast  expo Gamescom kicks off tomorrow, starting its 11th year. Likely to attract hundreds of thousands of consumer and trade attendees, the event is now a giant of the gaming sector. And as is something of a tradition, the day before Gamescom launches proper was marked by major press conferences. It being 2019, of course, they were predominantly streamed entities. Nintendo, Google and Microsoft all broadcast events gearing up their Gamescom activity, and this year the emphasis was on game releases [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]