Baldur’s Gate 3 has updated the record for peak online on Steam, Activision has withdrawn a lawsuit against a music critic who allegedly blackmailed the company, Remedy reported a quarterly loss of €4.8 million, — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.
▪️A week and a half after the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, it was possible to reach a new maximum of Steam users who were in the game at the same time. On the evening of August 13, there were 875,343 of them. The previous record was set on August 6, when there were 814,666 people in the game. However, Baldur’s Gate 3 has not yet been able to bypass the nearest competitor in the face of Hogwarts Legacy on peak online. She lacked only 4 thousand people.
At the same time, Overwatch 2 became the lowest rated game in the history of Steam. She received over 100 thousand reviews, of which only 9% were positive. It is noteworthy that two-thirds of the reviews (63 thousand) were left by Chinese users. According to analyst Daniel Ahmad, in this way, Chinese residents protested because of the closure of Blizzard games in the country, which occurred after the end of the partnership between Blizzard and NetEase.
Activision has withdrawn a lawsuit against music critic Anthony Fantano without the opportunity to file it again. It is not known on what terms the parties agreed. Recall that the cause of the conflict was a viral TikTok video in which Fantano comments on cutting pizza into extremely small pieces. According to Activision, after she used an audio track from this video in a video with sneakers in the style of the Crash Bandicoot game, Fantano began to blackmail the company. He allegedly threatened to sue Activision himself if she did not pay six-figure compensation. In its defense, Activision pointed out that its audio track was inserted into TikTok videos by “hundreds of thousands of people”, and it was on the list of content allowed for commercial use.
▪️Far Cry has changed the head of the franchise. Its development will now be handled by Drew Holmes, the former lead screenwriter of Far Cry 5, Far Cry: New Dawn, as well as BioShock Infinite. It should be noted that over the past three years, Far Cry has already had two managers. In 2021, this post was left by Dan Hay, who was replaced by Sandra Warren.
Remedy reported for the second quarter of 2023. Compared to last year, the company’s revenue decreased by 5.3% to €8.9 million, and operating losses doubled to €4.8 million. As the company explained, the increase in costs is associated with work on new projects. Although she is currently working in the negative, Remedy expects that royalties from her games will grow significantly in the coming years.