Metaverse

Last February, PUBG developers announced that they were going to create their own NFT metaverse in partnership with Naver Z. A year later, it became known that its development had already cost companies 48 billion won, or about $ 36.8 million.

Metaverse projects continue to attract investment. German Flying Sheep Studios has announced that it has received $ 1.2 million to create the game Star Life. The money was given by the Federal Ministry of Economy and Climate Protection of Germany.

Epic Games is now one step closer to realizing its metaverse ambitions. The company will release the Unreal Editor for Fortnite, so players can release their own experiences directly into the world-famous battle royale game.

Last year, NetDragon Websoft appointed a new CEO who was not a human, but an AI bot. This non-trivial solution eventually helped the Chinese company increase the value of its shares.

American Senators Edward Markey and Richard Blumenthal are concerned that Meta* is rumored to want to expand the audience of Horizon Worlds and let teenagers into its metaverse. They turned to Mark Zuckerberg and called for the plans to be immediately curtailed.

Honkai: Star Rail, the upcoming game from Genshin Impact developer miHoYo, has already attracted millions of players in the months leading up to its launch. This is due to the recently launched pre-registration event.

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) has released the results of its annual survey about the current state of the games industry. Here are the key takeaways from the study, including devs’ views on the metaverse and consolidation.

The organizers of the Game Developers Conference have published an annual large-scale study on the state of the gaming industry. As part of it, over 2,300 developers were interviewed.

miHoYo’s ambitions go beyond Genshin Impact. The Shanghai-based company is aiming to build its own virtual universe with a user base of roughly 1 billion players.

Activision Blizzard has announced a change in its leadership team. Daniel Alegre, who has served as its president and COO since 2020, will leave the Call of Duty publisher in 2023.

Hong Kong-based Animoca Brands has acquired a controlling stake in Pixelynx. She did not disclose the amount and terms of the transaction.

Meta has cut around 13% of its workforce, which is the biggest round of layoffs in its history. Mark Zuckerberg took accountability for this decision and tried to explain how the company got to this point.

It is inconvenient and there are too many bugs in it.

The corresponding faculty will appear at the Nanjing University of Information Sciences and Technology, reports Modern Express. It will work on the basis of the Faculty of Information Engineering and will become part of the School of Artificial Intelligence.

The developer under the nickname Fanfaron admitted that he started trading cryptocurrency in the hope of earning more money for the game, but chose the wrong time.

Meta has announced its decision to end support of the Facebook Gaming app. It was used as a hub for players, and now much of its functionality will be migrated to the main app.

Almost the entire amount went to the games. According to Sensor Tower calculations, they accounted for 94% of user spending in such applications for the first half of 2022.

Andreessen Horowitz, Endeavour, Konvoy Ventures and a number of other companies have also invested their money in the project.

Hadean specializes in creating virtual worlds. The startup has collaborated with Microsoft, Epic Games, Minecraft and the UK Ministry of Defense.

In the period from April to June, the number of new vacancies with the word “metaverse” in their description decreased by 81%. Such data is shared by the research company Revelio Labs.

As part of the MTV Video Music Awards, a new category has appeared — “best performance in the metaverse”. The organizers decided to add it after they noticed that artists are increasingly holding concerts in virtual worlds.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a complaint to block Meta’s proposed acquisition of Within Unlimited, a studio known for its VR app Supernatural. This deal, according to the regulator, will let the company kill competition and become a monopolist in the industry.

The Hand of Midas Foundation, opened by the founder of Xsolla, supported OnlySpace, a young publisher specializing in the metaverse and NFT. He invested $2.25 million in the startup. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Dubai wants to enter the top ten largest metaverse economies in the world. According to Bloomberg, the city authorities have launched a strategy under which the number of companies engaged in the metaverse and blockchain should grow fivefold in five years.

The analytical company YouGov, with the support of Globant, decided to find out what Americans think about the metaverse. She interviewed a thousand gamers from the United States aged 18 and older who spend more than three hours a week playing games.

Shanghai continues to be seriously interested in the metaverse. The city authorities announced that they are going to create a fund for ¥ 10 billion ($ 1.49 billion), the money from which will go to the development of the metaverse direction. They hope that thanks to the financing, Shanghai companies will launch at least 100 “benchmark-level products and services” by 2025.

The companies organized the Metaverse Standards Forum. Within the framework of this forum, they will try to form standards for the open metaverse and develop a common terminology. The giants are also going to discuss project prototypes, hackathons, plugins and open source tools.

An unusual initiative from Azur Games. A developer and publisher of mobile games has announced a competition to create a concept for a new game mode for the Axes metaverse. The winning team will receive a grant for its implementation in the amount of $ 100 thousand, as well as 15% of all its future profits.

McKinsey & Co., a consulting company, believes that the concept of the metaverse has great potential. She predicts that in eight years the metaverse market will be valued at $5 trillion. However, only 2.5% of this amount will be spent on games.

The administration of St. Petersburg became interested in the metaverse. According to the vice-governor of the city Stanislav Kazarin, she wants to use metaverse technologies for state platforms.

Meta* together with the French company Simplon decided to independently train specialists who will be able to work in the metaverse. According to Agence France-Presse, they plan to open a so-called “metaverse academy” and train about 100 future professionals in the first year.

Over the past year, the concept of the metaverse has become one of the most discussed. And for a reason. Citigroup analyst Andre Lin believes that by the end of this decade, the turnover of the metaverse market could reach $8-13 trillion.

Unity is ready to work together with Gala Games to create a metaverse. She signed a contract under which she will provide $20 million worth of services to the blockchain platform.

The South Korean government is seriously interested in the concept of the metaverse. It announced that it will continue to support the authors of metaverse projects and create special jobs for them. All this will be done within the framework of the state Digital New Deal program.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick shared his opinion about the metaverse. In conversation with GamesIndustry.He told biz that he does not share the hype around this concept, especially when it comes to blockchain-based projects.

The head of Epic Games gave a big interview to the Financial Times, in which he also touched on the topic of the metaverse. Tim Sweeney indicated that he doubts the potential of metaverse projects designed exclusively for business meetings.

The startup is called BUD. It was launched in 2019 and is known primarily for the eponymous social sandbox with 3D avatars.

Private VC firm Andreessen Horowitz has established Games Fund One, a $600 million fund aimed solely at video games. The company will invest in developers to contribute to building the future around the metaverse.

According to Reuters, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida touched on this topic during a strategic briefing. He said that the company wants to play a leading role in the upcoming metaverse.

Sony might be the next tech giant to offer its own approach to the metaverse. The company plans to evolve its gaming business and adopt a cross-platform strategy ahead of potential changes in the market.

Epic Games has no plans to slow down its metaverse ambitions. The company will release the Unreal Editor for Fortnite later this year, letting everyone build their own content for the game.

The Chinese authorities are strengthening control over metaverse projects. The SCMP business portal reports that recently “several” companies have failed to register trademarks containing the phrase “yuan yuzhou” (translated as “metaverse”).

Tim Berners-Lee, known as inventor of the World Wide Web, has shared his thoughts on the concepts of VR and the metaverse. He expects these technologies to have an impact on the way people interact online.

Tim Berners-Lee shared his opinion in an interview with Bloomberg. He clarified that the metaverse and virtual reality in general are unlikely to replace the Internet in its modern form, but they will become part of its future.

Naoki Yoshida told about this in an interview with Weekly Bunshun. He admitted that he was not very interested in the idea of a metaverse. Although some players compare the metaverse with his MMORPG, the developer does not see much in common between them.

The amount of the investment was not disclosed, but it is known that Jump Crypto, Tribe Capital and Republic Crypto participated in the financing round. All of them also promised to help the messenger with the support and promotion of the title.

Animoca Brands became a key investor. She also announced that, together with her sister studio Nway, she will help Untamed Planet create an NFT game.

Sony has already stated that it has plans for more M&A deals after announcing the Bungie acquisition. According to a new rumor, Elden Ring developer FromSoftware might be the company’s next acquisition candidate.

Bandai Namco has established 021 Fund aimed at creating partnerships with technology startups. This move should accelerate the company’s metaverse ambitions.

WN Media Group has shared details about the upcoming WN Conference in Turkey. WN Conference Istanbul’22 will take place on June 7-8.