Regulation

• Chinese Gaming Giants’ Overseas Revenues Skyrocket, Chinese Government Reinstates Game Approvals Freeze

  4 weeks ago News

  

  Two current game business stories together highlight the stark dichotomy at the heart of China’s games market. As revealed in a new report from business insight specialist IHS Markit, Chinese tech giants Tencent and NetEase saw extraordinary profit growth for their international mobile game releases through 2018. Simply put, combined mobile game net revenue gained in territories outside of China by Tencent and NetEase increased 500% in 2018 to USD$472m (£360m). Again, that figure relates to sales of games outside Tencent and [...]

• Analysis: Launching Apex Legends. Fortnite's greatest contender yet?

  2 months ago News

  

  A lot of businesses in the global game industry would like a slice of the ‘battle royale’ pie. And it’s no surprise. Fortnite is a battle royale game – sometimes called a ‘BR’ title – and we all know how well it has done. The shooter hit 200 million players in November last year. According to a source speaking to Tech Crunch, its creator Epic banked USD$3bn (£2.3bn) in revenue through 2018. But, more than all of that, the free-to-play competitive online [...]

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• South Korea Declares Game-Boosting Services Illegal

  3 months ago News

  

  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 [...]

• How the California Consumer Privacy Act Aims to Put an End to the Data Wild West

  7 months ago News

  

  Despite a monumental build up, the EU GDPR may not have made quite the splash the industry expected – it rather depends on who you ask. However, what it has done, is set the wheels in motion for other countries, such as Brazil, to adopt similar legislation. One in particular, which is starting to take data privacy very seriously, is the US. Multiple states have started updating their consumer privacy acts, and the state of California, the home of ad [...]