#63 Weekly Gaming News Industry Trends Round Up

Xai Play brings blockchain rewards to Steam achievements. Lawsuit freezes 450 million PLAY tokens in legal dispute. Royal Rampage brings true assest ownership to mobile gaming. Olderfall partners up with Moonbeam for upcoming tournaments. GTA 6 is planning Fortnite/Roblox-style UGC push with custom experiences. Rainbow Six Siege X announced massive improvements set to dominate esports for next 10 years. PlayStation Plus is finally offering day one releases. Avowed skips Xbox Cloud Gaming in favor of NVIDIA GeForce Now. Epic Games Store has more PC players than ever - 295 million, Street Fighter vs Mortal Kombat will finally be possible in Fortnite and Switch 2 units are selling on the black market for $40,000. All this and much more!

Also in our weekly round-up:

• Ubisoft CEO plans to focus on open world and live service games

• Need a gaming coach? There's an AI agent for that

• PS5 State of Play February 2025 the best trailers and biggest reveals

• Epic Games Store year in review released - players spend 2.68 billion hours playing third-party PC titles

Web3 Games 🎯

• Xai Play brings blockchain rewards to Steam achievements

• Everreach Labs on its spectator-driven FPS Revenge stands out

• Karel Vuong on how Treasure stands out in 2025

• Why Sky Mavis CEO Trung Nguyen wants you to build on open Ronin

• TON adds LayerZero's cross-chain protocol to its network

• The Game Company partners with BytePlus for development

• Somnia and Uprising Labs launch $10 million game accelerator

• Will gaming take crypto mainstream in gaming

• Lawsuit freezes 450 million PLAY tokens in legal dispute

• Autonomous AI agents are coming to Blocklords metaverse

• Top 50 blockchain game companies of 2025 revealed

• Sugarverse partners with social questing platform Ludo Labs

• Move-to-earn FSL Game Hub launches on Telegram platform

• The Sandbox allows builders to access brands like The Smurfs, Care Bears and Atari

• B3 Ethereum Gaming Token on Base jumps to new high price after airdrop

• Ethereum NFT Project Goblintown reveals 'really hard driving game'

• Ethereum Gaming Network Ronin opens up to all builders following curated start

The Blockchain Game Alliance Round-Up

• Olderfall's Open Alpha hit 1k players in 2 months, introducing NFT weapons on Arbitrum Nova and partnering with Moonbeam for upcoming tournaments on February 24th

• BGA is hosting a new member reveal event today at 4:00 PM CET, showcasing fresh additions to their community and discussing the future of Web3 gaming.

• Royal Rampage, a new PvP mobile game by Kepithor Studios, offers both traditional gaming and blockchain-integrated servers with true asset ownership

• Industry research shows 52.5% of blockchain gaming professionals have gaming backgrounds rather than crypto experience, according to the BGA State of the Industry Report

Gaming News 🕹️

• Rainbow Six Siege X announced with graphical audio and gameplay improvements; showcase set for March 13

• Street Fighter vs Mortal Kombat will finally be possible, in Fortnite

• Avowed skips Xbox Cloud Gaming in favor of NVIDIA GeForce Now

• Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 has sold 2 million units in 2 weeks

• Ubisoft CEO plans to focus on open world and live service games

• Borderlands 4 to release on September 23rd on PC and consoles; new gameplay trailer released

• PS5 State of Play February 2025 the best trailers and biggest reveals

• Obsidian has quietly become Xbox's secret weapon

• PlayStation Plus is finally offering day one releases

• GTA creator's MindsEye game slated to launch this summer

• Mystery Tony Hawk remaster now mentioned by pro skater involved in the game, even though Activision hasn't announced it yet

• Epic Games Store has more PC players than ever - 295 million, in fact

• N64 cult classic platformer Glover gets console release date

• Assassin's Creed Shadows pre-orders "solid", in line with series' second-biggest launch

• Xbox currently has more first-party games coming to PlayStation 5 this year than Sony

Trends 📈

• Need a gaming coach? There's an AI agent for that

• GTA VI reportedly planning Fortnite/Roblox-style UGC push with custom experiences

• Obsidian Entertainment won't chase huge profits or grow aggressively, plans to last 100 years in the RPG business

• Epic Games Store year in review released - players spend 2.68 billion hours playing third-party PC titles

• Video Game History Foundation: we need more internal champions within studio structures

• Ubisoft cost-cutting ahead of schedule after studio closures with plans to go beyond goal in FY26

• Epic Games sues Fortnite cheater, takes back winnings and forces them to post humiliating public apology video as a stark warning to others

• Sony fans upset Days Gone Remastered $10 PS5 upgrade offer doesn't work if you only played via PS Plus

• Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida says he had no choice but to take a job overseeing indie games

• Elden Ring Nightreign's first network test suffers server issues due to congestion

Industry News 🛡️

• Liquid Sword makes "deeply regrettable" job cuts for the studio's long-term sustainability

• Nexon posts record-breaking revenue in 2024 despite The First Descendant performing below expectations

• Infinity Nikki studio Papergames generates almost $1 billion in 2024

• PC game sales hit $1.09bn on Epic Games Store in 2024

• 10:10 Games reportedly affected by staff cuts in development

• Astro Bot and Helldivers 2 win big at DICE Awards 2025

• Embracer sales drop 22% to 1.5bn, $298m debt remains

• Ubisoft revenues decline 31.4% to €990m

• PS5 experiences record sales during holiday period, PlayStation revenues reach $11bn

• Microsoft Gaming VP Kayleen Walters appointed head of Mojang

• Relic Entertainment outlines new business strategy

• Just Cause Creator's Studio Liquid Swords announces layoffs for sustainability

• Sony keen to bolster first-party earnings as PS5 nears 75 million lifetime sales

• Marvel Rivals developers laid off as NetEase guts entire team

Level Up Your Hardware 🎧

• Nintendo Switch 2 units are reportedly being sold on the black market for $40,000

• NVIDIA Game Ready Driver 572.42 is optimized for Avowed, Indiana Jones DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation Update

• Nvidia delays the RTX 5070 till after AMD's reveal

• Sony has now sold 75m PS5 consoles and has record monthly users

Esports Players & Teams News 🏆

• Ubisoft announces Rainbow Six Siege X at Six Invitational 2025

• How Rainbow Six Siege remains a top esports game 10 years later and will be around for another ten years with Siege X

• Ubisoft's VP of Esports: Without new talent games will die

• VCT Masters Bangkok 2025: Schedule, format, and more

• Former CoD pro leaks 2019 salaries of 'sh*t' CDL players, and the number will shock you

• Zeus takes revenge as T1 crumble out of LCK Cup 2025

• Esports World Cup adds VALORANT for 2025 competition but it's courting more controversy with fans

• Inaugural Olympic Esports Games in Saudi Arabia postponed to 2027

• Tricked Esport returns with new owners and Valde-led Danish Counter-Strike 2 roster

• LCK Cup 2025 playoffs: Schedule, format, teams, where to watch

• VALORANT almost caught Counter-Strike in viewership, but the gap is widening

• FaZe Clan wins Six Invitational 2025 after a dominant performance

• OpTic Texas fails to win a map as Pred steps back up

• Cloud9 announces step back from Counter-Strike 2 esports

Gaming On Screen 🎬

• New Witcher on Netflix, Flow, and every movie new to streaming this week

• HBO expects The Last of Us to run for four seasons

• What is PlayStation doing? — Insider Gaming Weekly Podcast

• Game Scoop 798: Ghosted by Yotei

• IGN UK Podcast 787: Are we wowed by Avowed?

• Blockchain gaming weekly roundup: 14th February

• The Pocket Gamer Podcast Episode 20 - Dungeon Crawlers, Point & Clicks and the News

• Week in Mobile Games E42: Brawl Stars' highs, Squad Busters' struggle, & AppLovin's $900m games sale

…Gaming News Continued 🕹️

• The best game of 2024 keeps getting more free levels

• GTA Online could get updates after GTA 6 if people are still playing, suggests Take-Two CEO

• Most Civilization players don't finish a single game going by Civ 6 data, and perhaps that's the best way to play

• Saros is the next shooter from the Returnal developers, and it wants to be less punishing

• Tides of Annihilation brings Devil May Cry's speed and God of War's scale to post-apocalyptic Arthurian London

• Marvel Rivals plan to reset ranks mid season hastily abandoned in the face of player revolt

• Overwatch 2 brings loot boxes back from the grave

• Counter-Strike 2 hits highest player count since 2023

• Exoborne preview – an extraction shooter action that could go down a storm

• The Promise Mascot Agency demo is live on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S

• Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds announced by Sega

• Shinobi: Art of Vengeance is coming out in August

• Xbox Game Pass latest February titles announced

• Life is Strange and Resident Evil games leaving PS Plus next month

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is calling on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Guides, Tips and Tricks 🗝️

• How to unlock the best Metal Slug Tactics weapon mods

• How to unlock every Metal Slug Tactics weapon and loadout

• How to catch all Ashfall fish in Fisch: the complete bestiary

Follow us on Twitter to stay up to date with the latest news and announcements!

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We are reloading our ammo with gaming, industry, esports, news and trends intel for the next newsletter..

See you same time next week!
gmgames.