News Digest 46: Top Gaming News This Week
9 July, 2020 | By Anzu
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More impressive stats and all-time highs, promising partnerships, and projects! And all within the world of esports and video gaming. Get ahold of this week’s updates in our news digest.
Mobile apps and games surged to the highest levels ever recorded, with the latter in particular scoring 14 billion downloads in the second quarter of 2020, according to research from App Annie, the mobile data and analytics researcher. During the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers spent $35 billion in Q2 2020 with monthly time spent in all mobile apps reaching a monthly all-time high of over 200 billion hours during the month of April 2020. The strong success is no surprise, but App Annie believes that even as lockdown restrictions are lifted, the habits we are forming now will carry over, so it seems like a good bet and a sign for game companies to stay reasonably confident. Find more impressive stats and predictions for the rest of 2020 on VentureBeat.
Dignitas has signed a partnership deal with ExpressVPN, a British Virgin Islands-based virtual private network service. Express is now the official team sponsor and exclusive VPN provider for the esports organization and will engage in content creation surrounding the brands that will focus on cybersecurity, live streaming, and gaming. The companies plan to use YouTube as their distribution platform, reports the Esports Observer.
Manticore Games launches $1 million creator fund for proprietary game dev platform. The Core's Creator Payout Pilot Program promises to make game development accessible by allowing content creators to build and publish games and make a living through the platform. Creators will be rewarded based on the popularity of their games, receiving $3 per daily average player, calculated by the average number of unique logins per month, reports GamesIndustry.biz.
Australian organization Chiefs Esports Club has welcomed global skincare brand L’Oréal Paris Men Expert as a major partner for the remainder of 2020. This deal isn’t L’Oreal Men Expert’s first involvement in esports, having previously sponsored China’s premier competition for League of Legends. Chiefs Esports Club, on the other hand, has also partnered with such names as Marvel, HyperX, and Red Bull. Esports Insider assures, with so many male fans in esports, it makes sense for skincare and grooming brands to invest and partner with teams and tournaments - excited to see the content that comes out of this partnership!
With no E3 this year, publishers have taken to holding their own online events. The latest in this long line of streams comes from Ubisoft, with its Ubisoft Forward event slated for July 12. But aside from just seeing the company’s new games, Ubisoft is also throwing in another incentive to watch -- a free copy of Watch Dogs 2. Unfortunately for console players, only the PC version of the game will be offered through this promotion. Find all the instructions to get your copy on Polygon.
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