industry news
Pokemon Go pushes back against ‘incorrect’ estimates that its revenue has dropped this year
Pokemon Go developer Niantic is a private company, which means that it doesn't share its quarterly financial reports with anyone since it's not being...
Idea Fabrik, the company behind Hero Engine and The Repopulation, disappears from the internet
The beginning of this year saw a sad but perhaps unsurprising development for the Kickstarted sci-fi sandbox MMO The Repopulation when the workers contracted...
Appellate court reaffirms Apple’s store is not monopolist but must still allow third-party purchasing options
The three year-long legal fight between Apple and Epic finally made another step forward yesterday, but since it has been that long, allow us...
World of Warcraft producer claims Blizzard is bleeding talent and creating ‘crisis maps’ for feature releases
It would appear that another bout of brain drain is afflicting Blizzard as a whole and World of Warcraft in specific. One of the...
Nexon formally files a copyright infringement lawsuit against Dark and Darker studio Ironmace
Considering the very public back-and-forth between Nexon and Dark and Darker developer Ironmace, this development seems like a foregone conclusion, but it is now...
MUD Aetolia used ChatGPT to generate NPC dialogue and grant a fake quest
Some game developers continue to laud AI generation tools like ChatGPT as the future of many frontiers, including NPC behavior in MMORPGs and gaming...
Ubisoft Paris is accused of developer crunch and poor project management by French game workers union
Solidaires Informatique, the French game workers union that has been working with employees at Ubisoft Paris since the developer's widespread sexual harassment claims came...
Disney axes its fledgling metaverse division as part of a 7,000 employee layoff round
How long does it take for the House of Mouse to decide the metaverse isn't worth it? Roughly a year, apparently, as Disney has...
FTC finalizes fine for Fortnite’s dark patterns as Epic talks up NFT ‘games’ on EGS
Usually when people says things are going "pretty well," your first sympathetic instinct is to ask about what might be troubling them; those words...
Roblox confirms that it had $150M in Silicon Valley Bank, now shut down by regulators
We would love to be in the kind of position where seeing millions of dollars disappear registers an "everything is fine" response. That looks...
E3 2023 unveils plans for a week-long series of digital pre-event showcases starting June 11
Most gamers are now familiar that E3 is coming back this June in two flavors - one for industry pros, press, and influencers, and...
Congress is very disappointed in gaming’s response to extremism in games as the ESA downplays the problem
In mid-December, members of the US Congress sent signed letters to major game companies about what they're doing to combat the rise of online...
Sega plans to raise the salaries of its Japanese workforce starting in July, but they still fall short of national averages
At first blush, there's some good news coming out of Sega for its Japanese workforce, as the company announced plans to raise pay rates...
UK regulators suggest Microsoft choked Google Stadia out of the cloud gaming market
The findings shared by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) related to Microsoft's buyout of Activision-Blizzard already had a few things to say...
Microsoft and Unity collectively shed over 10,000 employees in latest round of tech layoffs
Another round of layoffs are coming to both Microsoft and Unity. Both tech companies are dropping more employees from their respective workforces, with Unity...
Germany’s games ratings board creates new labels with warnings about lootboxes, MTX, and online chat
The physical and digital packaging of video games in Germany is going to have a lot more granular detail thanks to updates being applied...
Odin Valhalla Rising’s Lionheart Studio retracts IPO listing plans over valuation issues and market fatigue
Earlier this month we reported on Odin: Valhalla Rising developer Lionheart Studio's plans to list its IPO on the Korean KOSDAQ stock exchange, which...
No, Amazon is not trying to buy EA, probably
If your gaming-related social media feeds were full of breathless hot takes and panicked concern over rumors that Amazon was looking to buy up...
China’s restrictions on game time sees a drop in minors’ gaming engagement in the country
Last year, the Chinese government tightened the screws on minors' gaming access, limiting play time to only three hours a week at specific times...
US Federal Trade Commission outlines the agenda for a lootbox-related workshop on August 7
Conversations, studies, and outright rancor over video game lockbox practices have caught the notice of several world governments as readers of MOP already know,...
