Welcome back to another quick roundup of MMO and MMO-adjacent gaming industry news!
SEGA: Sega’s issued yet another round of layoffs this week, slashing 121 jobs at Relic Entertainment. Relic was responsible for several multiplayer titles, including Company of Heroes 3 and Age of Empires 4. “This comes at a time when external factors are challenging our industry more than ever, and we made this decision to restructure our organisation to ensure maximum focus is placed on our core franchises,” SEGA says. “We’re confident that following this necessary restructuring, Relic will be in a position of strength to continue delivering outstanding experiences to players all over the world.”
Diablo Immortal: Activision-Blizzard was fined by the EU’s PEGI (Pan-European Game Information) panel over Diablo Immortal, owing to the finding that Activision-Blizzard had not disclosed the fact that the game includes paid random items (i.e., gambleboxes/lockboxes/lootboxes) to the PEGI board when it was submitted for a rating license. The fine, however, is merely 5000€, far too small a number to stop a company as large as Activision-Blizzard from doing it again next time.
MY.GAMES: MY.GAMES announced a new hub in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, aimed at serving the MENA region. MY.GAMES is probably best known to MMO audiences as the company behind Allods Online, Skyforge, Conqueror’s Blade, and Armored Warfare, to name just a few. Up until last year, it was a subsidiary of Russia’s Mail.ru, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine put an end to that, as Mail.ru sold it to a venture capital firm, whose boss repositioned its Russian holdings under one of his other companies. The current press release characterizes MY.GAMES as a “European” game publisher headquartered in Amsterdam, now angling to push further into the Middle East with this new hub.
Drop us a note if there’s a particular MMO business tidbit you want us to cover!
