Riot Games
Riot Games cuts 530 jobs, shuts down publishing arm Riot Forge
Riot Games is laying off about 530 employees, which represents 11% of its workforce, the Tencent-owned company announced on Monday. The League of Legends maker is also sunsetting its five-year-old…
Jess Murrey isn’t your typical founder. After 10 years working in nonprofits to train young activists, Murrey and behavioral change researcher Alicia Clifton decided that mobile gaming could be an…
‘0ktapus’ hackers are back and targeting tech and gaming companies, says leaked report
The hackers who reportedly hit more than 130 organizations last year and stole the credentials of almost 10,000 employees are still targeting several tech and video game companies, according to…
Last week, the video game giant Riot Games revealed that hackers had compromised its “development environment” — where the company stores its source code — with a social engineering attack.…
Tencent once more seeks to expand its mobile hit Honor of Kings globally
Honor of Kings, the world’s largest mobile game made by China’s internet behemoth Tencent, is rolling out a global version by the end of this year. That’s according to a…
Andreessen Horowitz debuts $600 million fund for games investments
Andreessen Horowitz is launching a new vertical fund exclusively focused on opportunities in the games industry. The new $600 million fund brings a pool of dedicated capital and a new…
Netflix adds more games, including Riot Games’ otherwise paid title ‘Hextech Mayhem’
Streaming service Netflix is expanding its gaming lineup once again with the launch of two more titles, which will begin to roll out globally starting today at 5 PM ET.…
Spectrum Labs raises $32M for AI-based content moderation that monitors billions of conversations daily for toxicity
Two years into the pandemic, online conversations are for many of us still the primary interactions that we are having every day, and we are collectively having billions of them.…
Turkey’s Spyke raises $55M in a seed round to bring a social twist to casual mobile games
Istanbul has become a city to watch when it comes to casual gaming startups, boosted by the likes of Peak (acquired by Zynga for $1.8 billion) and Dream (valued at…
Riot Games’ new esports president on NBA collaboration, its hit Netflix series and NFTs
Amid a spectacle staged during the Golden State Warriors versus Toronto Raptors game on November 21, Riot Games’ new esports president John Needham sent League of Legends T-shirts parachuting down…
Patron, a new fund from former Riot Games colleagues, locks down $90 million
If you follow tech press, you’ve probably noticed more outlets covering the blockchain-based, play-to-earn trend, wherein individuals playing crypto-powered games can ostensibly earn a living by earning assets or tokens…
Elodie Games obtains $32.5M round to make social co-op gaming better
During the darkest hours of the pandemic, millions upon millions of people turned to online gaming as a way to pass time in lockdown and connect with friends they couldn’t…
Riot Games and Konvoy Ventures back games publisher Carry1st in $6M Series A
Africa is the last frontier for basically anything. Mobile gaming is no exception. For a continent that is home to more than 1 billion millennials and Gen Zers, mobile gaming…
Riot Games updates its privacy notice to start developing voice comms moderation
Anyone who has played a video game with voice chat in the past decade knows that there is some risk involved. You might be greeted by friendly teammates, but you…
Colleges are diving into esports, with 115 different programs offering scholarships for esports and club programs are growing even faster. Certainly, it will help attract students, but monetization is really tricky.
Tencent claims record 100M daily users on mobile game Honor of Kings
At its five-year anniversary gala graced by celebrities, esports stars and orchestras, Tencent’s mobile game Honor of Kings said it has crossed 100 million daily active users. The title has…
Cloud9 adds the MAJKL Valorant roster to create Cloud9 White as its first women’s esports team
Cloud9 has brought on the all-women MAJKL Valorant squad to become its first women’s esports team. Moving forward, the team of Alexis “alexis” Guarrasi, Annie “Annie” Roberts, Jasmine “Jazzyk1ns” Manankil,…
As Blizzard sunsets StarCraft II, some of its key creators raise cash for a new gaming studio
Even as Blizzard pulls the plug on new updates for its StarCraft II game, nearly a decade after its launch, gaming investors are financing the next new thing coming from…
This Week in Apps: iOS 14’s surprise arrival, Apple’s app bundle, TikTok & WeChat banned from app stores Sunday
Welcome back to This Week in Apps,��the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is…
Gaming companies are reportedly the next targets in the US government’s potentially broader Tencent purge
Some of the biggest names in online gaming in the United States have received letters from the U.S. government requesting information about their relationship with the multibillion-dollar Chinese technology company,…
FirstMark Capital announces new funds with a fresh $650 million in investment capital
FirstMark Capital, the New York-based VC firm whose portfolio includes Shopify, Riot Games, Pinterest, Airbnb, InVision and more, has today announced the close of its two newest investment vehicles. FirstMark…
With stadiums closed, TV networks turn to live esports broadcasts
Two years from now, people will look back at 2020’s COVID-19 lockdown as a pivot point in esports’ development.
VCs see opportunities for gaming infrastructure startups and incumbents
As the infrastructure for developing games becomes more advanced, studios have turned to buying best-in-class technology from others instead of building everything from scratch (often with inferior quality). This shift…
Pragma is a back-end toolkit for gaming companies, so game developers can focus on games
These days, most of the games developed need to be social, multi-platform and extensible, but there are only a few developers with the expertise to bring those toolsets to the…
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Multiverse virtual worlds will be healthier for society than our current social networks
The basis of the classic James Bond film “Tomorrow Never Dies” is an evil media mogul who instigates war between the U.K. and China because it will be great for TV ratings. There’s been a wake-up call recently that our most popular social networks have been indirectly designed to divide…
Tencent to grow gaming empire with $148M acquisition of Conan publisher Funcom in Norway
Tencent, one of the world’s biggest video and online gaming companies by revenue, today made another move to help cement that position. The Chinese firm has made an offer to…
Twitch’s loss of top streamers impacts hours watched and streamed in Q4 2019, report says
The loss of several big-name streamers is finally taking its toll on Twitch, according to a new report from StreamLabs and Newzoo out today. In August 2019, top streamer Tyler…
China Roundup: WeChat’s new focus on monetization
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China Roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world.…
Meet VENN, the company hoping to build MTV for the gaming generation
Maybe a network will be the thing that replaces the single streaming media star. VENN, a new company launching with $17 million in funding from some of the biggest names…
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Mobile gaming is a $68.5 billion global business, and investors are buying in
By the end of 2019, the global gaming market is estimated to be worth $152 billion, with 45% of that, $68.5 billion, coming directly from mobile games.
