Newzoo: Top 25 publicly-traded games firms earned $50bn in H1 2018, lowest level of growth since 2014

Rise of 12 per cent year-on-year

• Revenue
• data
• publishers
• publicly-traded companies
• earnings

Twitch viewers watched 34 million hours of Call of Duty Black Ops 4 during launch week

Blackout drove the latest entry in the franchise to streaming success

• Streaming
• twitch

SuperData: Top games subscription services generated $273m in Q3 2018

EA behind almost a third of revenue from this sector but PlayStation takes the lion's share

• data
• research
• subscription service

Report: Piracy could cost developers $21m in lost revenue in first fortnight

Research published by Denuvo parent firm Irdeto based on one game

• piracy

Endnight’s survival game The Forest climbs to over 5.3 million copies

Milestone announcement comes ahead of the game’s release on Playstation 4

• early access
• survival
• The Forest

Hearthstone has attracted 30m new players in the last year

Blizzard’s Warcraft card game spinoff hits the milestone over four years after launch

• Hearthstone
• player figures

Football Manager 2019 tops the league in this week’s Steam Top Ten

Sports spreadsheet launches out of a strong pre-order run in the past two weeks

• steam charts
• football manager

Newzoo's prediction for 2018 global games revenue drops by $3bn

Mobile dip by $8bn, PC and console forecasts lower overall decline

• Revenue
• 2018
• global games market

ID@Xbox has helped launch 1,000 games in five years

"We're getting closer and closer to the point where the only gating factor in the success of a video game is the vision of the creator and the willingness to make that happen"

• indie games
• id@xbox

World War 3 sold over 100k units in first two days in Early Access

"This success is truly humbling, and gives us even greater motivation to continue extensive development of the game"

• world war 3
• unit sales

Total video games investment stands at over $5bn for 2018

$3.8bn for the first nine months of the year with Epic's latest round taking the market to new heights

• Investment
• M&As
• IPOs

World War 3 breaks out at the top of this week’s Steam Top Ten

Despite launch day issues, the military shooter has hit the bullseye in its second week

Steam has gained 23 million monthly active users in under a year

Valve’s platform has also hit a peak concurrent user record of 18.5 million

• Steam
• player stats

More than one million people have played Nexon's MapleStory 2

MMO attracted this audience in just one week

• data
• MMO
• south korea
• one million
• maplestory 2

Call of Duty opening weekend revenue flat year-on-year

Black Ops IIII makes $500m in its first weekend; same as 2017's WWII

• call of duty
• call of duty: black ops IIII