Welcome back to another quick roundup of MMO- and MMO-adjacent games industry news! First, let’s talk about Clyde. He’s got a bit of a makeover.
Discord: The platform that pretty much everyone in the western world uses for organized gaming is seeing a birthday and a branding overhaul this week. The company has changed up its logo, font, colorway, and even its cute little icon, Clyde, which Sam insists still looks like Mickey Mouse’s butt. I mean, he’s not wrong.
Twitch: Amazon doesn’t have a cute new logo for Twitch, but it’s fixing its price situation. According to the company’s recent blog post, Twitch will be evening out subscription prices “adjusted for where viewers live,” starting with Mexico and Turkey later this week, so they won’t be paying through the nose relative to users here in the US. “The most important thing to take away here is that subscription prices in the vast majority of countries outside of the US will be lowered,” Amazon writes.
Microsoft: Microsoft is already throwing its might around when it comes to the buyout of Bethsoft, as GamesBeat reports that the upcoming space RPG Starfield won’t be getting a PlayStation release – basically, exactly the exact exclusivity thing everyone was worried about when the Bethsoft buyout happened. This is it. Here it be. “And I would predict that Xbox would make this call for The Elder Scrolls VI and beyond,” GamesBeat opines.
WB Games: This one’s adjacent-adjacent, but worth a RIP, as WB Games was once the entity that controlled the Turbine MMOs before half were sold and the other half sunsetted. AT&T, which owns WB, is apparently breaking apart the company in order to merge WarnerMedia into Discovery. The game studios themselves – VG247 notes there are 11 in total – will apparently be split across AT&T and the new company.
Ubisoft: GIbiz reports on an investigation by French publication Le Télégramme, which suggests that in spite of the massive blow-up at Ubisoft last year – when multiple executives were accused of sexual harassment in the workplace and were ousted – very little has actually improved for workers and very few changes have actually been made across the corporation. The articles point out that some of the toppled execs merely moved to other positions within the company, new harassment cases have been reported but are being “sidelined,” and management continues to fail to address employee groups’ concerns.
IGN: Finally, there’s a growing storm over on IGN and Game Informer, where management apparently unilaterally removed articles posted by editorial staff in support of Palestinian civillians – and in IGN’s case, replaced them with a tweeted statement crafted by the C-suite. The staffers themselves have continued speaking up in support of victims and against Ziff Davis and the assorted ownership congloms.
