Welcome back to another roundup of MMO and gaming industry news relevant to the MMO-playing audience.
Steam Game Festival: Yes, another online event! The “autumn edition” of Steam’s Game Festival kicked off this week, with streams and free games and sales. Most notably for MMO players, Wild Terra 2 is offering a free-play event ahead of its early access launch later this year.
My.Games: Russia’s Mail.ru is making some big moves, as today it has bought up 51.1% of Deus Craft, giving it a controlling stake in the mobile company known best for the wildly popular Grand Hotel Mania. My.Games, of course, is better known around these parts for its stewardship over several MMOs, including Allods Online and Skyforge.
TPS 2021: The Taipei Gameshow announced this week that it’ll run its 2021 as a hybrid experience, with both physical and online events. TPS 2021 runs January 28th through 31st in Taipei City, Taiwan; it’s expecting 350,000 visitors, though we presume most of those will be online because of, y’know, that whole pandemic thing.
Pokemon Go: Niantic has turned five years old this week. An address from the studio’s John Hanke says the company now boasts 630 employees and has begun the Niantic Local Business Recovery Initiative, which will ensure that a thousand “small and local” businesses (out of 38,000 nominated) around the world are featured as PokeStops and Gyms inside the game and permitted to “run promotion campaigns that reach players nearby.”
RazerCon: Finally, don’t forget about this weekend’s RazerCon events; the keynote begins at noon EDT on Saturday, October 10th, and will be watchable on multiple platforms.