TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Blizzard criticised for crowdfunding; AMD targetting consoles & cloud gaming; and Team17 raises revenue expectations. Blizzard criticised for crowdfunding Blizzard has attracted criticism for ‘deceptive language’ regarding a crowdfunding campaign designed to raise funds for the prize pools for the Arena World Championship and Mythic Dungeon Invitational World of Warcraft esports tournaments. In March, Blizzard stated that the minimum combined prize pool for the tournaments would total USD$500,000 [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Mainline Raises USD$6.8m (£5.26m); ACCC enforces refunds for Fallout 76 customers; and Amazon disallows non-approved third-party Nintendo sales. Mainline Raises USD$6.8m (£5.26m) Esports tournament software company Mainline has announced that it has raised USD$6.8m (£5.26m) in a Series A funding round led by Work America Capital. The funds will purportedly be used to further develop the software powering its tournament platform, as well as boosting its marketing efforts. [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Tencent gains China approval to publish Mario title; 78% of gaming preteens watch gaming videos; and Blade raises €30m (€25.9m). Tencent gains China approval to publish Mario title Tencent has gained approval from China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television to publish the updated Switch version of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe title, according to reports from Reuters. The move brings a greater likelihood [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: G/O Media in dispute with staff over ads; EA revenue increases by 4%; and Anzu.io hires Guy Ben-dov. G/O Media in dispute with staff over ads G/O Media, the owner of gaming website Kotaku along with the Gizmodo, Deadspin and Jezebel publications, is under fire from its editorial staff following the deletion of blog posts, published on Monday (28th October), criticising the sound-on autoplay video advertising units which [...]

Video game tax credits have been withdrawn in the Canadian province of Alberta after just one year. Tax credits – also known as tax breaks – have existed in the game industry for many years, but have in recent months come under increasing scrutiny from those that deem that they are sometimes equatable to tax avoidance. In Alberta, the New Democratic Party rolled out its ‘Digital Media Tax Credit’ scheme local game developers in 2019, writes CBC. However, the NDP lost the [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: MTG to review gaming portfolio; 22 million app reviews removed from Apple App Store; and Capcom profit increases by 33.2%. MTG to review gaming portfolio Modern Times Group MTG AB (MTG) has announced that it has launched a strategic review into its gaming portfolio, which could see the firm entering a joint venture partnership for its properties, or pivot to focus solely on the esports market. As part [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: EA hints at return to Steam; Sony examining sale of PlayStation Vue; and Ubisoft share price plummets following profit warning. EA hints at return to Steam EA has hinted that the company’s titles will be returning to Steam, ending an eight year period of exclusivity on the Origin storefront. The firms appear to have reached a compromise, whereby titles will be available to purchase on Steam but will [...]

Twitter isn’t a gaming platform. The social network may have seen a major uptake in gaming engagement in recent months, but while the likes of Facebook, WeChat and Kakao Talk have become homes for hyper casual, the micro-blogging platform has not. Still, there are lessons to be learned for game ad-tech providers – as well as game makers and publishers of ad-monetised games – after Twitter had a somewhat bad week. As reported by the BBC, on Thursday shares in Twitter fell by [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Ubisoft revises 2019-2020 targets downwards; Google opens first Stadia studio; and TSMC invests additional USD$4bn (£3.1bn) in semiconductor production. Ubisoft revises 2019-2020 targets downwards Ubisoft has substantially lowered its targets for the 2019-2020 financial year as a result of delayed releases and poor performance from its Ghost Recon Breakpoint title. Net revenue has now been revised downwards to €1.45bn (£1.25bn) from €2.185bn (£1.886bn), a reduction of 33.6%, with [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Microsoft gaming revenue declines by 7%; Sumo Digital opens North West studio; and Tencent becomes majority shareholder of Supercell. Microsoft gaming revenue declines by 7% Microsoft results from the first quarter of the 2020 financial year reveal that revenues generated by the company’s gaming division have fallen by USD$196m (£152m) year-on-year, which represents a decline of 7%. The decline was primarily driven by a fall in Xbox hardware [...]