Welcome back to another quick roundup of MMO and MMO-adjacent industry news!
Electronic Arts is still awful: Remember how EA shareholders voted against its compensation plan – by a large majority – in 2020? It’s responded with a new compensation plan, which lowers pay for some executives, though not for CEO Andrew Wilson, who will actually make almost $40M this year, almost twice what he made last year. This is why we can’t have nice things. EA shareholders – who, again, supported last year’s excesses at only a 26% rate – will vote on this proposal in August. Good luck with that.
Facebook is also still awful: Facebook announced this week that it’s testing in-headset ads in its VR devices based on users’ data, basically exactly what everyone said would happen when it began forcing Oculus customers to use Facebook accounts. It was set to partner with Resolution Games and its shooter Blaston, but after the blowback, Resolution Games pulled Blaston out of the test, offering a different free-to-play title instead.
MY.GAMES and mental health: MY.GAMES has announced partnership with mental health charity Safe In Our World. “MY.GAMES was keen to pitch in to help the charity with its long-term objective; eliminating the stigma surrounding mental health to make it a natural topic of discussion and to promote the dialogue surrounding mental health so people are not afraid to reach out for help if they need to.”
Tencent owns everything: Tencent picked up a majority stake in German studio YAGER, which our readers will recall is the company behind the PvPvE shooter The Cycle. Tencent says YAGER will maintain its independence and structure.
Battlefield 4 burgeoning: Well, E3 2021 wasn’t a total dud for one game. Battlefield 4 is apparently experiencing such an influx of players thanks to the reveal of Battlefield 2042 that the game is getting expanded server capacity to help with the new queues.
KRAFTON is weird and rich: Finally, we come to KRAFTON, whose founder, Chang Byung-gyu, is apparently set to be worth almost $3.5B US thanks to the planned IPO debut in July. That’s largely thanks to PUBG, which just released another game promotional episode of Mysteries Unknown – that’s the bizarre faux-documentary starring Star Trek’s Jonathan Frakes.
