Industry

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Make My MMO: Starship Simulator has pulled in $350K on Kickstarter so far

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It's only April and we might just have our biggest MMO Kickstarter of the year in the form of the new sci-fi multiplayer sandbox...
verizon

V Rising has sold a whopping 4 million copies during its two-year early access

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With V Rising poised for launch on May 8th - just over a month away, for those of you who are not so good...

Blizzard starts hiring high-level positions for a new mystery game

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Just because Blizzard has canceled quite a few promising projects over the years and suffered shocking layoffs in 2024 doesn't mean that the studio...

NASA teams up with Epic’s Fortnite and Microsoft’s Minecraft to stream the April 8 solar eclipse

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If you somehow don't know about the solar eclipse this coming Monday, then you're probably not in the US since that's all anyone here...
Hey guy.

Vague Patch Notes: Game preservation is way more complicated than it seems

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Before I say anything with this week's article, I want to make something very, very clear right from the premise: As you have probably...

Stop Killing Games is a modern games preservation initiative prompted by The Crew’s cynical sunset

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The words "game preservation" are holy words here on MOP and in the MMORPG genre beyond, as few gaming communities understand the pain of...
Night sleep.

Blizzard’s John Hight on using AI to support World of Warcraft’s artists, not replace them

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Franchise director John Hight might have spent some of his GDC time last month drawing a mystery line for World of Warcraft subscriber numbers,...

MMO Business Roundup: Embracer finishes restructure, Riot settles lawsuit, Ubisoft continues layoffs

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Welcome back to another brief roundup of MMO and MMO-adjacent industry news. Business business business! Embracer: Embracer has been a dumpster fire of epic proportions...

MMO Business Roundup: The Gearbox sale, GDC 2024, and layoffs for SEGA and Smilegate

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Welcome back to another quick roundup of some MMO and MMO-adjacent industry news! Embracer - The ailing games giant announced this morning that the rumored...

Microsoft’s Phil Spencer admits massive layoffs were due in part to gaming’s ‘lack of growth’

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Ever since Microsoft announced a wave of layoffs that would affect 1,900 people - over 800 of whom work for Activision-Blizzard - the officially...

Hostile NCsoft shareholder meeting reveals ArenaNet is working on Guild Wars 3

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The topic of Guild Wars 3 has been a common one over the last few years; when I dredged our articles, the first one...

New World’s buffed cross-world expeditions LFG helped players suck less at Empyrean Forge (nice)

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If you're recovered from this week's Forged in Aeternum video, in which New World's devs explained that they still can't tell you what exactly...

Jeff Strain’s Crop Circle Games studio shuts down abruptly following employee furloughs

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Over the past couple of years we've been keeping a general eye on the opening of Crop Circle Games, a new indie studio formed...

Playable World’s Raph Koster refutes claim that his book Theory of Fun espouses a regressive agenda

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Reading comprehension is an important skill that one could argue is being lost to the flood of hot takes and those who absorb only...

Wayfinder says disentangling from Digital Extremes caused its lapse in updates and communication

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Airship Syndicate's multiplayer RPG Wayfinder continues to stay live, though you'd be forgiven for assuming that might not be the case since it hasn't...

World of Warcraft GDC presentation claims ‘record post-launch stability and growth’ for Dragonflight

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The World of Warcraft community is abuzz about a new Blizzard GDC 2024 presentation that relays some trends -- if not specific numbers --...

MMO Business Roundup: Jagex dinged by UK government, Roblox AI tools, and Epic v Apple plods on

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Do you hear that? It's the rhythmic tinkling bells of Business Cat's collar as she merrily skips forth with another round of industry stories...

Tencent’s multiplayer zombie survival RPG Undawn ‘flopped spectacularly,’ according to Reuters

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Last June, Tencent introduced the world to Undawn, a mulitplayer survival RPG for PC and mobile that tasked players with trying to make it...

The cast list for Wildcard’s surprise ARK Animated Series on Paramount+ is bananas

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I don't know who asked for this, but I'm also not upset about it as this might be the most amusing thing the ARK...

Elder Scrolls Online crosses $2B in customer spending, revives Jester’s Festival for April Fools’ day

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When you look at the high risk of making and running MMORPG, a reasonable question arises: Why would any studio undertake such a project?...