Five new faces at Sumo Digital

Developer expands its Sheffield and Nottingham locations

• expansion
• appointments

Keywords Studios has acquired d3t for £3m

“With increasing demand in the video games industry for reliable, high-quality outsourced software engineering services, we are building a strong offering to support our clients globally.”

Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds now most popular game in Korean LAN cafés

Battle royale title boasts 24.28 per cent slice of the market at time of writing

• international
• playerunknown's battlegrounds
• korea
• lan cafés

Report: Dead Space 2 cost 'close to $47m' to make and sold 4m copies

Follows news of developer Visceral's closure

• dead space 2
• development costs
• triple-A
• single player

Unreal Engine functionality comes to Improbable's SpatialOS

Launched in open beta

Activision patent shows matchmaking to encourage microtransaction purchase

Only approved this week, and is yet to be used

• patent
• microtransactions
• in-game spending

EA shuts Dead Space maker Visceral Games

Vancouver studio handling Star Wars title, now set for FY19 release

• games as a service
• star wars
• studio closures
• this industry is garbage

UK Government responds to loot box gambling query

In-games items only take on monetary value when they can be traded or exchanged outside of the game, apparently

• loot boxes
• gambling
• government

Overwatch surpasses 35m players

Unclear if this is copies sold or accounts registered; either way, big news for Blizzard

• overwatch

Sony Music launches Unties games publishing label, PlayStation seemingly not involved

“At Unties, we dig up the masterpieces buried in those situations, and support them so that more users notice and pick them up"

• indie games
• unties
• sony
• playstation
• indie publishers

Witcher maker CD Projekt RED responds to negative Glassdoor reviews

"This approach to making games is not for everyone"

• cd projekt red
• development
• glassdoor
• working conditions

Report: Sumo Digital eying £150m valuation for upcoming IPO

Sources point to the Sheffield game maker recruiting investment bank Zeus Capital to assist in the process

• IPO
• sumo digital

RuneScape launches zombie survival mode for ten days only

Culminates in 'last man standing' competition

• runescape
• zombies
• survival

PUBG’s anti-cheat partners ban 20k players in 24 hours

BattlEye “banning at a rate of 6K-13K per day”

• playerunknown's battlegrounds
• cheating
• battleye

IGN has bought 'pay-what-you-want' games retailer Humble Bundle

I can’t think of a better partner than IGN to help Humble Bundle continue our quest"

• deal
• games media
• games retail
• humble bundle
• ign