Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds takes Steam No.1 during sale week – despite not being discounted

Battle royale title takes the top spot again

Discord reportedly valued at $725 million after quietly raising $50 million funding round

Also hires former Twitch veteran Andy Swanson as Head of Publisher Relations

• Investment
• Funding
• Chat apps

Former Chillingo Marketing Director opens new consultancy

HeyStephenHey to offer marketing services throughout a game's lifecycle

• Marketing

QA and localisation outfit Pole To Win opens Tapei office

Branch will focus on QA, translation, localisation and customer experience

• Localisation
• Taiwan
• Quality Assurance
• New Studio

SpatialOS developer Improbable hires ex-Disney and GitHub execs as CCO and CMO

Bill Roper and Jason Jhonson join the team

• Jobs
• London

Abertay University picks first six teams for new Dare Academy prototyping competition

Students given less than a month to finish prototypes on a £1,000 budget

• Students
• Competition
• Dare Academy

Square Enix may let Hitman series go with IO Interactive sale

Future likely away from publisher with sale or licensing deal

• Intellectual Property

Raspberry Pi merges with CoderDojo to get more children coding

Aims to quadruple number of CoderDojo clubs around the world to 5,000 by the end of 2020

• Education
• Charity
• Merger

Microsoft launches Mixer Create to livestream games from mobile devices

Offers co-streaming and viewer interactivity

• Streaming
• Mixer

Develop:Brighton releases full schedule for its 2017 conference

Leanne Bayley and Tony Yang will be in attendance

• Develop Brighton

Softbank reportedly picks up $4 billion stake in Nvidia

Japanese firm acquires 4.9% of shares

• Japan
• Investment
• Funding
• Vision Fund

YoYo Games aims to make development more accessible with GameMaker 2 education edition

Free trial version available for schools and students

• Education
• GameMaker Studio 2

Atari renews Rollercoaster Tycoon license until 2022 as mobile game clears 6.5 million downloads

Extends previous agreement by three years

• Licensing
• Downloads

Ukie calls on UK government to work closer with games industry in 2017 manifesto

Voices concerns around Brexit and funding in the UK

• Jobs
• England
• Brexit

Gamer messaging app Discord hits 45 million users in two years

A lot of "notice me, Senpai"s sent every day

• Mobile Messaging
• San Francisco
• DAUs