Mobile arms race

Happy Monday. According to Redigit, creator of the indie super hit Terraria, the best part of creating a massively successful indie game, is how much his wife loves playing Stardew Valley.

— Derek Neville, Tim Rhyne

MAIN QUEST: Steam of Mobile

According to court documents in the ongoing Epic v. Google trial, Activision had conversations with Epic CEO Tim Sweeney around working together (potentially with mobile game publisher Supercell and up to 5 other developers as well), to create their own mobile game store for Android devices, which they pitched as the “Steam of Mobile”, allowing users to download and make purchases. The plan was to charge a transaction fee significantly more appealing than the 30% fee Google takes.

Ultimately, Activision Blizzard King did not move forward with creating the store (at the time tagged “Project Boston”), because that was plan B. Plan A, which was negotiating a better deal with Google, was achieved at the beginning of 2020 in a deal worth over $100 million. Epic is arguing in court that Google’s deal with ABK was essentially a payment to stop competition.

Step Back: Now that Microsoft has completed its acquisition of ABK, it plans to move forward with its own plan to create a mobile gaming store to compete with Apple and Google according to Xbox head Phil Spencer. So while the original “Project Boston” did not come to fruition, users could have a new place to purchase mobile games as soon as 2024.

HUD

• 🐲 Payday 3 developer Starbreeze announced they will be releasing an officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons game in 2026, currently codenamed Project Baxter. D&D is having a big year with Paramount’s well-received film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and of course the massive success of Larian Studio’s Baldur’s Gate 3.

• 🧩 Puzzmo, the newspaper-style game site that launched its beta back in October, has been acquired by Hearst for an undisclosed amount. Hearst, whose publications include Cosmopolitan and the San Francisco Chronicle, moves into a spot to compete with the success of the New York Times gaming platform, which includes pop-culture hits Wordle and Connections.

MAJOR W

• 🗺️ After the massive success of Fortnite's OG season, which saw the 2018 Season 1 map return to the battle royale, Epic plans to bring the classic map back again next year.

• 👾 Last week Paramount made the entire first season of their Halo show available for free on YouTube, and now they have released the first look trailer of the second season.

F IN THE CHAT

• 🚫 Come December 31st, PlayStation will remove Discovery content from players’ video libraries — even content they have already paid for. In an email sent to users, PlayStation pointed at content licensing arrangements as the reason for the removal but did not give more details.

• ⏱️ Players logging in on launch day for Fortnite’s newest season were met with a queue of over an hour at times, even well into the launch day.

CAREER CORNER

• Growth Partnership Manager, User Acquisition — Unity (San Francisco, CA)

• Design Director, Fortnite — Epic Games (Cary, NC)

• Talent Acquisition Coordinator — Rockstar Games (Lincoln, UK)

HIVE MIND

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