united kingdom
UK regulator finds Microsoft’s Activision-Blizzard buyout won’t harm competition or Call of Duty on PlayStation
The see-saw ride of findings and statements from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority continues, as the governing body has now put forth an...
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...
FTC and Microsoft confirm a lack of ‘substantive’ settlement talks as UK regulatory body extends its investigation
There have been a couple of small but no less important steps in the continuing story of Microsoft's buyout of Activision-Blizzard. We begin with...
Activision-Blizzard’s Bobby Kotick downplays regulatory scrutiny, says Microsoft deal is on track for 2023
Skepticism over Microsoft's takeover and buyout of the beleaguered Activision-Blizzard group is mounting across the industry, as multiple of news outlets have pushed stories...
Sony hit with $5.9B UK class action lawsuit alleging PlayStation’s store overcharged people for games
It would appear that consumers of the Sony PlayStation in the UK are feeling ripped off by the console's digital storefront. A £5B class...
UK government will ‘consider legislation’ unless game companies add parental controls to lootboxes
The UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) has seen enough evidence related to the harm that lootboxes have on children and...
Disney has quashed another Club Penguin emulator, this time with arrests in the UK
Remember way back in 2017, when Disney shut down the long-running Club Penguin MMO in order to replace it with Club Penguin Island? And...
Regulators in China and the UK turn their eyes toward streaming, gaming currency
China isn't content to bulldoze its own local gaming industry by freezing game approvals, blocking kids from gaming outside of tiny windows, and freaking...
Congress asks publishers to self-regulate lootboxes via a UK regulation that has nothing to do with lootboxes
There are some Democrats in the US Congress that are hoping to do something about lootboxes in the country. That's good. They even went...
New UK research finds opening lootboxes is ‘structurally and psychologically akin’ to gambling
The mountain of research-based evidence against lootboxes has had another leaflet added to the pile. A recent report from researchers at the universities of...
Epic Games brings Fortnite complaint against Apple and Google to the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal
While understandably most of the attention in the Epic vs. Google and Apple legal scuffle has been focused on the suit being heard in...
For science: New UK study finds that video games improve the mental health, reading, and writing skills of kids
So this one's fun. The results of a study performed in the UK between November and December of 2019 have just been released. The...
New UK parliament report recommends regulation of lockboxes as gambling
Remember last month when UK lawmakers started making fresh noise about classifying lockboxes/lootboxes as gambling to protect children following multiple reports and surveys on...
MMO Business Roundup: Tencent, Ubisoft, Rockstar, energy, Creativerse, and Cold Iron Studios
Welcome back to another roundup of MMO (and MMO-adjacent) industry news!
Tencent: Just before Funcom and Tencent announced the Chinese gaming giant was angling to...
UK’s children’s commissioner calls for tighter legislation on lootboxes
A report from UK children's commissioner Anne Longfield is calling for stricter laws on lootboxes and to amend current gambling laws to include lootboxes,...
Mavericks’ abrupt July sunset was preceded by a revoked SpatialOS loan
Remember back in July, when Automaton Games announced it was shutting down Mavericks, a "massive" battle royal that was aiming to put 1000 people...
Predictably, the ESA rebuffs UK call to ban lockboxes, citing nebulous transparent lockbox plan
Yesterday, we covered the UK government’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee panel report on addictive technologies: Readers will recall that the lengthy...
UK parliament committee calls for ban on selling lockboxes to kids, deems games industry ‘wilfully obtuse’
As gamers will recall, the UK government's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee panel has been investigating addictive technologies for the better part...
UK’s Gambling Commission considers prosecuting video game companies that facilitate gambling
It sounds as if the UK is preparing for a bit of a crackdown on video game gambling of the third-party kind. According to...
Video game journalist infects hundreds of EVE nerds with insidious virus
A gaming convention turned into the banal opening scene of a zombie outbreak movie this week as a number of players who attended EVE...
