Court documents have revealed detailed employment statistics for Valve, the company behind ubiquitous PC storefront Steam, the Steam Deck handheld, and – still – a team dedicated to game development.
How many people work on the world’s most-used PC game store and launcher? As of 2021, just 79. Valve’s hardware team stood at just 41 people as of the same year, a fraction of its games team which employed 181 people. A further 35 staff were described as being employed in “admin” roles.
Altogether, that’s just 371 people employed by Valve in 2021, for a company believed to bring in around $6.5bn a year. EA, home to FIFA/FC, which also generates around $6.5bn annually, had 13,700 staff on the payroll this year.
Newscast: Does the loss of day one launches ma…
Read more UPDATE 16/7/24: Disney has now acknowledged the hack of its Slack channels for the first time. “Disney is investigating this matter,” a spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter.
Hacker group Nullbulge has meanwhile taken responsibility for the attack, and said it targeted Disney “due to how it handles artist contracts, its approach to AI, and its pretty blatant disregard for the consumer”.
ORIGINAL STORY 14/7/24: A number of unannounced Disney projects have leaked online after 1.1TB of internal documents – “every message and file possible”, according to the hackers – were reportedly compromised.
Whilst Disney has yet to comment formally on the alleged hack, details from various internal files – including upcoming collaborations with Epic Games’ Fortnite, and the …
Three Starfy games previously only available in Japan have been added to Nintendo Switch Online for Expansion members.
Densetsu no Starfy 1, 2 and 3 were all released on the Game Boy Advance between 2002 and 2004, but are now available globally on Switch. A fourth game came to Nintendo DS in 2006, which was followed by The Legendary Starfy on the same console – the only game in the series to be released outside of Japan, until now.
So who is Starfy? As one comment on X put it: “He’s like Kirby, but a starfish”. Makes sense.
Newscast: Does the loss of day one launches make Xbox Game Pass pointless?
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Read more80s movie favourite The Karate Kid is being turned into a 16-bit-style side-scrolling beat-’em-up, and it’s heading to PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC on 20th September this year.
The Karate Kid: Street Rumble comes from GameMill Entertainment, the publisher behind Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, and is firmly setting its sights on the 80s era of Karate Kid rather than Netflix’s Cobra Kai continuation – which has already spawned two games itself.
Street Rumble is, somewhat surprisingly, only the third game to be directly based on the 80s movie series – the first, Atlus’ NES action game The Karate Kid, arrived in 1987, and Microdeals’ The Karate Kid 2 hit the Amiga and Atari ST in 1986. This new outing, though, promises to feature a whole bunch of familiar faces…
Read moreMicrosoft has confirmed sweeping changes – including price increases – to its Xbox Game Pass subscription service in the run-up to October’s launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which will include the removal of day one releases for its overhauled basic tier.
As reported by Windows Central, which says Microsoft has now confirmed the details, the first big Game Pass change comes with the imminent closure of Xbox Game Pass for Console. While this will continue to be available to existing members until their subscription expires (notably, from 12th September, Microsoft will only allow users to stack Game Pass for Console for up to 13 months), new users looking for a basic tier package will need to subscribe to Xbox Game Pass Standard, which launches in September.
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Manor Lords’ publisher has hit back at claims the game is an “interesting case study in the pitfalls of early access”, stating that assuming games can continue “endless growth” “causes so much trouble in the games industry”.
Responding to a post on LinkedIn from Hinterland CEO Raphael van Lierop, Tim Bender – who heads up publisher Hooded Horse – responded with a lengthy post of their own, suggesting that “if this industry is to find a more sustainable path forward, we need to move away from takes like [this]”.
Newscast: With the death of Keystone, will Xbox give up its streaming console plans forever?
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Read more The latest free-to-play RPG from the Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail team has reached an impressive milestone, less than a week since it made its debut.
Zenless Zone Zero has seen 50m downloads since its release on 4th July, MiHoYo announced over the weekend.
“A city that once only existed in the hopes and dreams of the dev team has never been as buzzing with life as it is now. Your patience and support have made New Eridu what it is today,” the team wrote on social media platform X.
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Read moreMario + Rabbids director Davide Soliani has teamed up with Red Dead Redemption lead designer and writer Christian Cantamessa to found a new studio, Day 4 Night.
Day 4 Night’s first project, a new IP co-directed by Soliani and Cantamessa, is described by Xbox co-founder Ed Fries – whose 1Up Ventures is financing the studio alongside publisher Krafton – as “easily the most creative thing we have seen in quite some time”.
Beyond that, details of the team’s first game are limited, although Soliani calls the studio’s work “a reflection of everything I’ve ever wanted to experience as a player – joy, adventure, poetry, action, wonder, and the pleasure of working with friends.”
Eurogamer Newscast: When it costs £700, who exactly is the PS5 Pro for?
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Read more Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii has asked people not to “arbitrarily extract parts of comments for the purpose of reinforcing the legitimacy of your own opinion” after he was accused of blaming Western ratings board for having to put more modest clothing on characters in Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake.
Initially, it was reported that Horii was irritated at the missive to make the outfits less revealing, allegedly saying in a TGS interview that he blamed America’s “religious” and “narrow-minded” approach for the changes, adding: “Doing business with such a ridiculous country is really frustrating. Because of that, Japan also gets negatively influenced” (thanks, Time Extension).
DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake – Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase 8.27.2024
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