Highlights

Crucible moves back into ‘closed beta’ (link)

• Amazon is making a drastic move on its path toward reviving the team-based shooter. Starting July 1, at 9 a.m. Pacific time, Crucible will move back into “closed beta.” This is coming after the game already released on Steam
• Crucible hit a peak of less than 200 concurrent players daily as of June 29. That is down from 25,145 concurrents at its peak a month ago

Mike DeLaet, Ex-CEO at Rogue Games, to be an exec at Scopely (link)

• DeLaet fills a role left open by Henry Lowenfels, who left Scopely recently, and will handle developer partnerships, platform relationships, licensing, and business development for the Los Angeles-based company

Fallout TV project coming from the creators of HBO’s ‘Westworld’ (link)

• Fallout is heading to Amazon. Bethesda Softworks used its official Fallout Twitter account today to tease an upcoming Fallout television project
• Bethesda has since posted a blog post that reiterates the details. Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the creators of HBO’s Westworld, are producing Fallout as an Amazon Original

Ubisoft’s Hyper Scape is a sci-fi battle royale with audience participation (link)

• Ubisoft is unveiling its new science fiction battle royale game called Hyper Scape, where 100 players battle each other in first-person combat to be the last one standing while the audience tries to influence the outcome

Supercell co-founder Mikko Kodisoja leaves the company (link)

• Kodisoja revealed his plans on his personal Facebook account, stating that June 26th 2020 was his last day at the developer. He has not revealed what his exact plans are for the future, but notes that he will not be joining a new games company

Tencent starts US studio to make AAA games for next-gen consoles (link)

• Tencent Games is opening a new studio in Orange County, which is working on a AAA console game for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X
• The new developer falls under Tencent’s existing Lightspeed & Quantum subsidiary, which was founded in 2008 as one of the four studios within the Chinese publisher
• LightSpeed LA will be based in Orange County, and led by Rockstar veteran Steve Martin, who held leadership roles on Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, among others

Twitch breaks records again in Q2, topping 5B total hours watched (link)

• According to a new report from Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet, Twitch saw a massive 62.7% increase in hours watched from Q1 2020 to reach 5 billion hours watched in the second quarter

Apple reportedly cancels contracts with Arcade developers as it shakes up its strategy (link)

• Apple has chosen to cancel some contracts for games that were set to be part of Apple Arcade in a strategy shift
• As reported by Bloomberg, the tech giant got rid of agreements with a variety of developers earlier this year. The reason given was that they did not hit the levels of “engagement” that the company is looking for

M&A and Capital Raising

Discord raises $100 million to expand beyond games at a $3.5 Billion Valuation (link)

• Communication platform Discord has secured $100 million in funding to help it expand beyond the games audience
• In a blog post, the company said that it wanted to make its service useful for just more than just playing games. Forbes reports that this round of investment valued the company at $3.5 billion

Koji raises $10 million so you can remix games and interactive content for social media (link)

• Koji has raised $10 million for its platform for creating interactive social media posts. It’s a remix tool that anyone can use to make and share interactive selfies, memes, and games
• TikTok popularized “remix” culture (taking one piece of content and modifying it for another purpose) and has grown to 800 million active users, but Koji wants to go one step further with its own broadly available, standards-based social platform that can bridge many other platforms by making it easier to share social content like minigames. During the beta period, the company claims that people made 150,000 Kojis and played them 10 million times

Spiketrap raises $3 million for AI-based social media intelligence platform (link)

• Spiketrap has raised $3 million for its AI platform that helps brands understand how they are engaging with consumers on social media. The San Francisco-based company processes tons of text-based social data — like Twitter posts — to discern how consumers view a brand or a game in real time

Voicemod raises $8 million for silly or serious voice filters in games (link)

• Voicemod has raised $8 million to expand its business of offering voice filters. People use these filters to change their voices in video games or in virtual worlds, where animated avatars can make your words sound silly

ControlZee raises $3 million for ‘massively interactive swarm games’ (link)

• ControlZee has raised $3 million to bring instantly playable multiplayer worlds to life. The company refers to its titles — which are controlled by masses of players at the same time — as “massively interactive swarm games.”

With $5.7 million, One More Game comes out of the shadows (link)

• The company is revealing for the first time that the funding came from some all-star investors: Andreessen Horowitz, the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund, former Blizzard president Mike Morhaime, Twitch cofounder Kevin Lin, Super Evil Megacorp CEO Kristian Segerstrale, early Riot employee Jason Yeh, and En Masse Entertainment cofounder Chris Lee

Paradox Interactive acquires Playrion Game Studio (link)

• Publisher and developer Paradox Interactive has acquired French firm Playrion Game Studio for an undisclosed sum
• The Paris-based developer has become Paradox’s eighth internal studio. Founded in 2010, Playrion is best known for Airlines Manager, which has accumulated over 10 million players since coming to mobile in 2014

Others

Microsoft plans to reveal Xbox Lockhart model in August (link)

• Microsoft has two next-gen Xbox systems in the works. It has spent months detailing the powerful Xbox Series X, but it isn’t talking about the second system at all
• As more next-gen Xbox hardware and software gets out into the hands of developers, however, more evidence is building to support the existence of the second system, which has the codename Xbox Lockhart

PUBG Mobile shoots through $3 billion in lifetime revenue (link)

• Tencent’s PUBG Mobile has doubled its lifetime revenue to $3 billion over the past seven months, according to Sensor Tower
• The combined earnings of Game For Peace – China’s localized version – and the standard battle royale have accumulated $1.3 billion so far this year. It was at $1.5 billion in December 2019. In March, at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, revenue hit an all time high of $270 million

My Talking Tom Friends hits 60 million downloads in two weeks (link)

• After being launched on June 12th, the game hit 22 million installs – of which 9.5 million were on day one – in six days across both the App Store and Google Play. The virtual pet title was always going to prove popular after it racked up seven million pre-registrations in under a week

Niantic teams up with theater company Punchdrunk for games that will “reinvent storytelling” (link)

• Together, the companies hope to place players at the center of their own story as they develop “multiple projects that will reinvent storytelling for a 21st-century audience and further expand the horizon of interactive entertainment.”

Tencent Games teams up with SNK for a Metal Slug mobile title (link)

• Tencent Games-owned developer TiMi Studios has teamed up with SNK Corporation to work on an unnamed Metal Slug mobile title

Gaming Public Multiples