Welcome back to our semi-regular roundup of MMO and MMO-adjacent gaming industry news.
Chicken Drumstick: Yes, I’m afraid this is a real thing. Vice’s Motherboard blog has a massive piece of reporting up on the video games cheat empire dubbed Chicken Drumstick that apparently made as much as $70M ruining PUBG Mobile. The news itself was already known (we covered it ourselves a while back), but the Motherboard piece actually talked to one of the cheat devs and chronicles how the bust went down from his end as the police closed in on them. It’s wild.
Improbable: Improbable – they’re the folks working on SpatialOS – co-founder Rob Whitehead has a piece up examining a recent playtest event that put 9000 AI bots on a battlefield alongside over 4000 players. If you’ve ever wondered why more MMOs don’t do this (and why those that do seem to struggle with making it work well), the blog might give you a clue, as Whitehead explains the technical issues in play and how to build gaming architecture to handle density.
Riot Games: Valorant is a year old, it shocks me to report today, and Riot is celebrating the occasion by announcing it’s managed to rope in a total of 14M players on PC. That number will be increasing, we expect, as the game pushes to new platforms, starting with Valorant Mobile, just announced today.
Pantheon is hiring: Visionary Realms put out a call for a full-time remote environment artist and worldbuilder to work on the late Brad McQuaid’s MMORPG.
Secret World novels: Finally, if you’ve enjoyed Blodwedd Mallory’s Secret World books, then you should note that book six in her sanctioned series – A Grim, Odd Arcane Sky – is on deck now!
The book promo for A Grim, Odd Arcane Sky (Book 6) is up! #SecretWorldLegends #TheSecretWorld Thanks to @HolloPointSWL, @jamiegael, and Sophie Claussen for their wonderful contributions! https://t.co/Xgn6xDcec7
— Blodwedd Mallory (@BlodweddMallory) May 26, 2021
Got more MMO business bits in mind? We welcome tips from our readers on what you want to see covered!
