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In a keynote address at the annual Google for Game Developers Summit, Google said its Google Play Games for PC service, which brings Android games to Windows users, will roll out to Japan and other European markets, and gain new titles and tools for game developers. Of note, the service over the next couple of months will add several popular games, including Garena Free Fire, Ludo King (a popular board game in India), and MapleStory M. Meanwhile, Google Play is introducing early access to Machine Translation in the Play Console that will allow game developers to translate their game in more than eight languages within minutes for free, the company said.

Launched into beta testing in January 2022, Google Play Games is designed to expand the reach of Android gaming by allowing consumers to play the mobile titles on their Windows computers, in addition to supported platforms like Android mobile and tablet and ChromeOS. With the service, gamers can pick up where they left off on one device when switching to another — something many Apple-focused game titles already offer when users switch between iPhone, iPad and Mac devices, for instance.

Initially available in overseas markets like Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, the service expanded into the U.S. and other countries in November and is now live in 13 markets, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Now, Google says the service will come to Japan and several European countries over the new couple of months.

It’s also introducing a range of features aimed at game developers, including an emulator offering a developer-focused build of
Google Play Games that’s designed for the debug and build process. This tool allows developers to deploy games directly, including by sideloading APKs via ADB command, and lets them use Android Studio to adjust graphics and hardware settings to validate different player configurations. (Developers will have to sign up here by first expressing interest in the service.)

Explains Google, its partnership with Intel enables it to make it easier for developers to join Google Play Games on PC with their existing mobile builds. If the mobile game already plays well on the desktop, they can now apply to join the service.

The company is also publishing a new release checklist to help game developers verify that they’ve completed all the necessary steps
before submitting their build for approval, and it added more metrics for games in Android vitals. The latter includes recently launched frame rate metrics in Play Console — or through the Developer Reporting API — that allow developers to check if their games offer at least 30 frames per second — the technical quality required for the Google Play Games for PC service. Other technical upgrades aimed at performance and user acquisition were also rolled out, in addition to the new Machine Translation feature that will use Google Translate and transformer-based language models to translate games in over eight languages, including Simplified Chinese and Japanese.

Google additionally teased the coming release of Next Generation Player IDs which will keep a user’s Player ID consistent across platforms for any given games, while still allowing them to be unique across different games. This feature, powered by Play Games Services, will arrive later this year.

Still considered a beta, Google Play Games on PC requires users to run Windows 10 on a PC with 10 GB of available storage on a solid state drive (SSD), with an Intel UHD Graphics 630 GPU or comparable, 4 CPU physical cores, and 8 GB of RAM. The company has not yet shared an official release date for a public launch.

Google Play Games for PC to roll out to Europe and Japan, add new titles including Garena Free Fire by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

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On Monday’s Pokémon Presents livestream, the company behind the hit megafranchise announced an integration between its latest main series games, Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, and the Niantic-produced mobile hit Pokémon GO. The Pokémon Company also shared a long-awaited update on its sleep-tracking app, Pokémon Sleep.

Already in Pokémon GO, players can obtain regional variants of the butterfly Pokémon Vivillon by collecting in-game postcards from other trainers around the world. Now, Pokémon GO players can send those postcards into their Pokémon Scarlet & Violet games on the Nintendo Switch, which will cause that specific Vivillon variant to spawn. Then, on the Pokémon GO side, this will trigger the Pokémon Gimmighoul to appear in its roaming form. Normally, Gimmighoul can be caught as a Pokémon that lives inside of a treasure chest, which is also part of its body (yes, it’s weird, don’t ask), but in roaming form, it’s just a silly little grey guy with a golden coin. The Pokémon can evolve into Gholdengo after trainers collect 999 Gimmighoul coins.

This integration is similar to the link between Pokémon GO and the Nintendo Switch games Let’s Go Pikachu & Eevee. Like Gimmighoul, the only way to catch a Meltan in Pokémon GO is to connect the game to your console, which triggers a mystery box event. Meltan evolves into Melmetal, a very useful and powerful Pokémon for PvP battling.

Pokémon Scarlet & Violet will also soon be compatible with Pokémon Home, a subscription-based mobile app that allows players to transfer Pokémon across games. Once that integration is up and running, players will be able to transfer their roaming form Gimmighoul to their Scarlet & Violet games, making it the only way to use the Pokémon in that form.

Speaking of Pokémon Scarlet & Violet: Yes, we now know for sure that there will be a DLC. However, the first part of the expansion content “The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero” won’t be available until fall, with a second part following in winter. When Scarlet & Violet was released, riddled with glitches, we saw how bad things can get when Pokémon staff are rushed to churn out new games — so as far as I’m concerned, they can take all the time they want.

In other mobile Pokémon news, the Pokémon Company finally shared an update about Pokémon Sleep, an app that the company has been teasing since 2019.

“The idea behind Pokémon Sleep is to be a game that makes you look forward to waking up in the morning,” said Pokémon Company COO Takato Utsunomiya. That sounds a little bleak!

The game takes place on a small island, where we encounter a big Snorlax, along with Pokémon sleep researcher Professor Neroli (how do I get that job?). If you leave your phone by your pillow as you sleep, the game will record your sleep and analyze it — of course, we don’t know yet whether or not this data is actually accurate or useful.

Image Credits: The Pokémon Company

Your sleep will be characterized as dozing, snoozing or slumbering, and Pokémon that sleep the same way you do (… according to this sleep researcher fellow) will gather around your Snorlax. The app will be available on iOS and Android this summer.

To tie Pokémon GO and Pokémon Sleep together, the Pokémon announced the Pokémon GO Plus + accessory (no, that’s not a typo, and yes, it is pronounced “plus plus”). Like the existing Pokémon GO Plus, the gadget can spin Pokéstops and catch Pokémon for you in Pokémon GO. The new device also tracks your sleep and can sing you lullabies in a Pikachu voice, if that’s your thing. This device, available for purchase on July 14, will later allow players to bring their sleep data into Pokémon GO for special bonuses.

We don’t know yet if Pokémon Sleep will be a paid app, or if it will have in-app purchases. But Pokémon GO has been hugely successful, even if it doesn’t feel as culturally ubiquitous as it was in 2016. In June, the game surpassed $6 billion in all-time revenue.

Pokémon GO gets integration with Scarlet & Violet, plus Pokémon Sleep update by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

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It looks like the metaverse is doing okay. No, not the one Meta is trying to make happen in VR — the gaming platform Roblox is where the kids are still spending their money, apparently. After reporting its fourth-quarter results on Wednesday, Roblox shares popped 25%, as investors reacted to the company’s better-than-expected earnings.

Made popular through games like MeepCity, Jailbreak, Adopt Me!, Royale High, Murder Mystery, and others, Roblox appeals to a younger demographic who go online not only to play games, but to chat and socialize with other players.

The platform’s growth, alongside other games like Fortnite where players also attend concerts and hang out with friends, concerned Facebook so much that it rebranded itself Meta and began spending billions on its metaverse project, afraid of missing the next trend in online socializing.

But for the time being, Roblox is still where the action is for today’s young gamers or “metaverse” participants if you want to call them that. (Technically, the metaverse doesn’t exist yet. It’s only a buzzword.)

The gaming platform company today reported it had 58.8 million average daily active users (DAUs), up 19% year-over-year, as of the fourth quarter. For the full year 2022, average DAUs were 56 million, up 23% year-over-year. Plus, the company provided more recent metrics, noting that January’s average DAUs had climbed to 65 million, or up 19% year-over-year.

Wall Street investors were particularly happy with Roblox’s bookings figures, however, which represent the in-game purchases made using the company’s own virtual currency Robux. In the fourth quarter, bookings grew 17% year-over-year to reach $899.4 million (or up 21% on a constant currency basis), when investors had been anticipating $884.71 million, per a consensus estimate. For the full year, bookings were up 5% to $2.9 billion (or up 9% on a constant currency basis).

In today’s earnings release, the company also estimated its January bookings were in the range of $267 million to $271 million, up 19% year-over-year.

“Bookings accelerated meaningfully in December and January, with year-over-year growth exceeding 20% in both months. Growth was strong across all geographies and age groups with particular strength among users above 17 years old,” said Roblox CFO Michael Guthrie, in the earnings press release — an indication that Roblox is growing its user base with teens and young adults, not just kids. That’s good news for the company, if so, as the demographic would have more money to drop on Robux.

At its developer conference last fall, Roblox had noted that half of its user base was 13 or older, suggesting it was successfully retaining at least some of the users that many had expected would age out of the Roblox experience.

In addition, Roblox reported today its players were engaged with the games on the platform for longer periods, both in the fourth quarter and in 2022 overall. Engaged hours grew 18% year-over-year in Q4 to 12.8 billion, and were up 19% year-over-year to 49.3 billion last year.

Though investors are more concerned with bookings, Roblox revenue was also up 2% year-over-year to $579.0 million in Q4, and up 16% year-over-year to $2.2 billion in 2022.

Also helping boost the stock was the fact that Roblox reported a smaller loss of 48 cents per share, compared with the 52 cents per share loss investors anticipated.

There’s been some anticipation around where Roblox would land in the post-Covid era.

The company saw incredible growth during the Covid-19 pandemic when schools were closed and kids were locked down at home, but its earnings took a hit last year as the trends from the pandemic normalized. A year ago, in its first full-year report after going public, Roblox CEO David Baszucki admitted to investors that while the company’s absolute numbers were still growing, its growth rates had declined because it was being forced to compare its numbers to double or even triple growth seen during the pandemic.

The company has also weathered a few storms, including those related to moderation issues, inappropriate content, and concerns over the exploitation of young developers who build games for its platform. The latter plays into the larger issues bubbling up in tech around app and game marketplaces, and what sort of revenue share — if any — should be applied. Apple and Google’s app stores are in the center of this spotlight for the time being, but ultimately regulations could impact any platform where game makers have to pay commissions.

Though not a factor in this earnings period, Roblox hosted a free virtual Super Bowl concert featuring Saweetie and announced the NFL had created a new experience on its platform that allowed football fans to draft their own NFL team and build a stadium. Recently, reports said Roblox may compete more directly with Meta’s Horizon Worlds by launching on Meta’s own Quest platform.

In a boost for the ‘metaverse,’ Roblox stock pops 25% after strong Q4 earnings by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

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Over the past decade, China’s games industry has seen explosive growth, overtaken the U.S. in market size and given rise to global publishing giants like Tencent and NetEase. The boom is in part driven by a population that was quickly coming online and gaining purchasing power. But the heyday has come to an end as the market nears saturation and consumers tighten their wallets during economic headwinds.

China’s video games sector posted a decline in sales for the first time since at least 2005, according to past reports (attached below) from the country’s top gaming industry association. The market grossed 265.9 billion yuan ($39 billion) from video gaming sales in 2022, a 10.33% drop year-over-year, according to a new report released by the association on Tuesday. The overall user size shrank to 664 million, 0.33% fewer than the year before.

The declines aggravated pressure on an industry that was already struggling. In recent years, China has launched a slew of crackdowns on video games, clamping down on content that is ideologically objectional and limiting playtime among underage users. Amid the industry shakeup, regulators stopped issuing new game permits for months; the process has resumed but now takes longer and costs companies more to be compliant.

To carve out new growth opportunities, developers from scrappy studios to behemoths like Tencent are going abroad. Chinese games have been exported for years, but in recent times, they started to make a dent in the West. Toward the end of 2020, China-made titles accounted for as much as 20% of mobile gaming revenues in the U.S., according to market research firm Sensor Tower. Last July, 39 of the top 100 mobile games by revenue worldwide were from Chinese firms.

The ratio might even be higher in reality as Chinese game developers, like other types of internet services, are increasingly trying to obscure their origins to avoid the backlash of being labeled “Chinese.” India, for instance, has banned hundreds of Chinese apps in recent years, including the global hit PUBG Mobile, as its relations with China soured.

Made-in-China games recorded another rosy year in 2022 regardless, racking up $17.3 billion in overseas sales, according to the industry report. Though the figure slid 3.7% YoY, the decline was much less substantial than that of domestic sales.

China has a reputation for making lucrative, addictive mobile games, but its games giants are now ambitious about developing high-budget, global hits that will stand the test of time. Tencent, the world’s biggest games company by revenue, has a AAA console game in the works at its Lightspeed outpost in Los Angeles (Lightspeed is most famous for devising the mobile version of PUBG). Tencent’s nemesis NetEase is also busy setting up shop overseas. Having announced its first U.S. office in Austen last May, the firm recently teased another new studio.

China’s game sales from 2005-2008, published by the country’s top games industry association. Link to report. Image Credits: Game Industry

China’s game sales from 2008-2014, published by the country’s top games industry association. Link to report. Image Credits: Game Industry

China’s game sales from 20014-2022, published by the country’s top games industry association. Link to report. Image Credits: Game Industry

China’s games industry shrinks for the first time in years by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

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The mobile game Valiant Hearts: Coming Home by Ubisoft will launch exclusively on Netflix Games on January 31.

Previously announced in September 2022, Netflix and Ubisoft announced the official release date of Valiant Hearts: Coming Home yesterday. As part of a recent partnership, this is the first of three mobile games from Netflix and Ubisoft. Also coming to Netflix Games in 2023 are Ubisoft’s The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot and an Assassin’s Creed mobile game.

Valiant Hearts: Coming Home is a narrative game set during World War I. It blends puzzle games, adventure and action as players follow the story of four war heroes who are trying to survive. According to Netflix and Ubisoft, Valiant Hearts: Coming Home takes inspiration from the Harlem Hellfighters, one of the first African American infantry regiments during WWI and WWII.

The upcoming game is the sequel to Valiant Hearts: The Great War, the puzzle adventure game that was released in 2014 on Android and iOS devices, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 3 and 4, Xbox One, and other platforms.

Valiant Hearts: The Great War won multiple awards, so the upcoming mobile game sequel is a smart addition to Netflix’s gaming lineup. The company has launched other popular games in order to boost its audience, such as Oxenfree, Into the Breach, Lucky Luna, and more.

Netflix’s gaming division is known to use popular IP as a way to entice gamers. For instance, Netflix recently launched its latest mobile game, Narcos: Cartel Wars Unlimited based on the hit TV series “Narcos.” The strategy game lets players take on the role of a cartel kingpin, build their own empire and destroy enemies.

The company is also planning on releasing more games this year, including Vikings: Valhalla and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge.

To access Netflix mobile games, you need a Netflix subscription. Subscribers can go to the Netflix app under the “Netflix Games” tab or download titles directly through the Google Play Store or Apple Store. There are over 50 games available on the platform.

Valiant Hearts mobile game sequel is set to launch on Netflix Games on Jan 31 by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

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It looks like Dungeons & Dragons just succeeded on a death-saving throw. After weeks of backlash and protests from fans and content creators, Wizards of the Coast — the Hasbro-owned publisher of Dungeons & Dragons — announced that it will now license the tabletop role-playing game’s core mechanics under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This gives the community “a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license” to publish and sell works based on Dungeons & Dragons.

“Overall, what we’re going for here is giving good-faith creators the same level of freedom (or greater, for the things in Creative Commons) to create TTRPG content that’s been so great for everyone, while giving us the tools to ensure the game continues to become ever more inclusive and welcoming,” wrote Dungeons & Dragons executive producer Kyle Brink in a blog post.

This is a massive change of heart for the gaming giant. Earlier this month, Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) sent a document with a new open gaming license (OGL) to top Dungeons & Dragons content creators, asking them to sign what they called “OGL 1.1.” Some creators leaked the document in protest, exposing its predatory terms that would suffocate the prolific fan community and collapse some creators’ businesses. The now-retracted OGL 1.1 would have required any Dungeons & Dragons creator earning over $50,000 to write reports to WoTC, and any making over $750,000 to start paying a 25% royalty. These numbers might seem high, but these figures refer to gross revenue, not income — and the industry of third-party Dungeons & Dragons content is so large that the impact would be severe. Other creators worried about a clause in the contract that would allow WoTC to publish their work, potentially without credit or payment.

Over 77,000 creators and fans signed an open letter against these changes, and some went as far as canceling their subscriptions to D&D Beyond, an online platform for the game. Finally, WoTC admitted that they “rolled a 1” — for those uninitiated in TTRPG-speak, that means they screwed up really, really bad.

“There’s no royalty payment, no financial reporting, no license-back, no registration, no distinction between commercial and non-commercial. Nothing will impact any content you have already published under OGL 1.0a. That will always be licensed under OGL 1.0a. Your stuff is your stuff,” Brink wrote in today’s blog post. Later in the post, he affirms again, “You own your content. You don’t give Wizards any license-back, and for any ownership disputes, you can sue for breach of contract and money damages.”

The draft of the new OGL under Creative Commons — known as OGL 1.2 — is a big improvement from the last document. But some fans remain worried about terms that impact virtual tabletops and works already licensed under the original OGL, which dates back to 2000. Virtual tabletop (VTT) software helps people play games like Dungeons & Dragons when they’re not in the same room, and of course, these products exploded during the pandemic. Dungeons & Dragons does not currently have its own VTT, though. As part of the new OGL, WoTC wrote a draft of a brand-new VTT policy.

According to the VTT policy, it’s okay for developers to display content from the Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks. But WoTC is wary of content that is “more like a video game” than a TTRPG.

“What isn’t permitted are features that don’t replicate your dining room table storytelling,” the document says. “If you replace your imagination with an animation of the Magic Missile streaking across the board to strike your target, or your VTT integrates our content into an NFT, that’s not the tabletop experience.”

As far as content published under the original OGL goes, WoTC says that content already published will remain licensed, but moving forward, the old license will be deauthorized.

Tomorrow, WoTC will update the blog post with a link for fans to provide feedback — this survey will remain open until February 3. Then, within the following two weeks, WoTC will issue another update.

“The process will extend as long as it needs to. We’ll keep iterating and getting your feedback until we get it right,” Brink wrote.

This is a promising first step for Dungeons & Dragons to regain its fans’ trust. But when you make a death-saving roll, you have to succeed three times before your character can get back into the fray. Hopefully WoTC leadership keeps making good dice rolls.

Dungeons & Dragons’ publisher will put the game under a Creative Commons license by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

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