Bloomberg released an article on the issues at NetEase, Obsidian Entertainment is pleased with the sales of Avowed, and Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii became the second most popular game in the series on Steam — here are the main highlights in the gaming industry from the past weekend.
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
- Employees at NetEase are worried about the situation in the company and the decisions made by their CEO William Ding, according to Bloomberg sources. Over the past few months, NetEase has reportedly laid off hundreds of employees, asked Chinese staff to work until nine in the evening, closed several studios, canceled several games, and reduced foreign investments. It is particularly noted that due to Ding's policies, NetEase might not release any major games next year. Ding believes that the company should focus on developing relatively low-cost evergreen hits like Eggy Party and not spend time on games that can't generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Interestingly, because of this approach, the blockbuster Marvel Rivals almost didn't get released — at one point, NetEase considered canceling the game. Additionally, Bloomberg reported that Ding disliked that NetEase had to pay Disney for their characters and suggested using their own characters in the game. This attempt ended up costing the company "millions of dollars."
- Avowed's game director Carrie Patel stated during an interview with Bloomberg that Obsidian Entertainment is satisfied with the game's sales. While she didn't disclose the exact sales figures, she shared some insights into the game's development. According to Patel, Avowed went through the development process three times. The first launch was back in 2018, when the studio aimed to create something between Destiny and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. By the third attempt, both the concept and leadership team of Avowed had changed. Although these changes were challenging for the developers, they ultimately benefited the game. As a result, the story and lore of Avowed doubled in size, and the open world, which risked being uninteresting due to technical and other reasons, transformed into rich and detailed open zones. The studio also removed the multiplayer feature, making Avowed a single-player project.
- Last week, SEGA and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio released the action-adventure game Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, which immediately attracted a large audience. According to SteamDB data, by Sunday, February 23, the peak concurrent players on Steam for the new release reached 22,327 people. This is the second-highest number in the series' history, with only Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth having more concurrent players at 46,161. As for reviews, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii currently holds a "very positive" rating of 92% based on 1.6 thousand reviews on Steam.