Welcome back for a quick roundup of some of the MMO and MMO-adjacent industry news bits from the week!
Esports: If for some reason you were super excited to see esports join the list of sports being greenwashed later this year, then your hopes are about to be dashed: International Olympic Committee has apparently delayed the debut Olympic Esports Games from 2025 to 2027 owing to “to ongoing concerns about the format and a lack of details on key aspects of the programme by game publishers,” in addition to apparent problems over funding. The 2027, 2031, and 2035 esports version of the games are expected to exhibit in Saudi Arabia.
Unity: Back in 2023, Unity’s exec decided to light the whole company on fire with new runtime fees that set the gamedev community against it so hard it forced the resignation of the CEO. But if you saw what the new boss was up to last year and figured we hadn’t heard the end of it, you were right: After laying off 25% of the company, current CEO Matthew Bromberg is continuing to jettison workers. As GameDeveloper reports, multiple workers were apparently fired via a “noreply@unity” email at 5 o’clock in the morning. Stay classy, Unity. (Cheers, Zenjitzu!)
Krafton Q4 2024: Krafton’s financials are ridiculous. The Korean company reported “year-over-year (YoY) growth of 41.8% in sales and 54.0% in [operating profit], driven by the continued expansion and sustainability of the PUBG IP, resulting in an average annual sales growth rate of 20% over the past five years.” It’s putting that success to work in PUBG but also in other games, including several we’ll be covering for their multiplayer angles: Dark and Darker Mobile, Subnautica 2, and Dinkum Together. In fact, Krafton just this week announced a global publishing deal for cozy sim Dinkum, which also features online co-op. Hey Krafton, while you’re throwing money around, how about bringing back TERA on PC?
