Here are the Games Industry Highlights | Week 30-31 | 2024

International News

• 🌍 Steam updated how demos behave on their store, making them an even more valuable marketing tool: Read more
• 🌍 241 developers, including artists, engineers, programmers, and designers, at Bethesda Game Studios have unionized. Microsoft has recognized the union. It’s likely we’ll see more unions being formed in the wake of the waves of lay-offs.
• 🌍 Axis, an animation & VFX studio that worked on trailers like Halo: Infinite and the famous Dead Island one, has closed its doors after 24 years. This put 162 people out of work.
• 🌍 The long-running sandbox game Terraria by Re-Logic has sold 58.7M copies. The company reported selling over 35M copies ahead of its 10th birthday back in 2021. Indicating just how much sales have shot up in the last 3 years.
• 🌍 Humble Games has effectively shut down, laying off all 36 of its employees. The company claims it is restructuring, but affected staff dispute the statement. This is hurting devs like Squid Shock Studios who recently released a game and relied on them for the console ports & QA support.
• 🌍 Loren Lemcke, developer behind Terror of Hemasaurus, reported that a Chinese mobile knock-off was using his game’s assets + used footage in ads. Western victims of such plagiarism are powerless as they are forced to fight it in Chinese courts.
• 🌍 Activision secretly experimented on 50% of Call of Duty players by ‘decreasing’ skill-based matchmaking, and determined players like SBMM even if they don’t know it: Read more
• 🌍 The Xbox 360 Marketplace has shut down, nearly 19 years after it launched.
• 🌍 Multiple game developers have offered mobilegamer.biz anonymous insight into what it’s like making games for Apple; late Apple Arcade payments, stonewalled studios, terrible tech support, and Vision Pro woes: Read more

Belgian Games Industry News

• 🇧🇪 Business Goose Studios‘ co-developed Break Games has released on Steam. It’s a collection of games to keep streamer’s community engaged while they take a break.
• 🇧🇪 A slow couple of weeks for Belgian games news, as most studios are prepping for #Gamescom2024. You can find a list of attending Belgian companies here.
• 🇧🇪 ForsVC is investing in micropublisher Oro Interactive, who recently helped launch Murky Divers, selling over 100K copies in the first month.

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