Meet some of the indie devs quietly pushing the JRPG genre forward "There’s a big problem in indie games where everybody is just trying to remake their favorite games," says YIIK dev Andrew Allanson in this look at modern indie JRPGs. "We try to fight against that."

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  Video: How Riot partners with players to positively impact the world In this GDC 2018 talk, Riot Games' Jeffrey Burrell and Tash Elliott discuss the extensive research Riot Games has done to understand the underlying social values their players have across the world.

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1 Amazon removes its 20 percent preorder discount on games Two years after the perk was introduced to Amazon Prime members, Amazon has announced that it will be discontinuing its 20 percent preorder discount on physical copies of video games on August 28.

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1 Despite millions of downloads, publishers won't sign the sequel to Velocity 2X FuturLab, the studio behind 2D shoot-em-up game Velocity 2X, details the struggle of trying to find a publisher to sign a sequel despite millions of players having enjoyed the first game.

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  Get a job: The Game Band is hiring a Platform/Build Engineer LA-based The Game Band is looking for a Platform/Build Engineer to create tools and systems to advance its in-development builds toward a polished, technical release across multiple platforms.

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5 Don't Miss: Creating dynamic audio in the destructible levels of Rainbow Six: Siege In this deep dive, audio director Louis Philippe Dion explores how the Siege dev team used strategically placed nodes to calculate the flow of sound in ever-changing, destructible battlegrounds.

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  Citing 'Sony's plans to discontinue the Vita,' Bloodstained dev cancels port Kickstarter darling Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night has been delayed into 2019 and is no longer coming to Sony’s neglected handheld system.

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  Speaker Q&A: Iman Mostafavi and Zombie Gunship Revenant AR's life on mobile At XRDC 2018, learn more about how the developers of Zombie Gunship Revenant AR overcame a slow launch on the Google Play store.

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1 Valve's nearly $25M The International prize pool sets esports-wide record Once again, Valve has beat out its own record-setting numbers from the previous year’s event to launch its annual Dota 2 tournament with a record-breaking prize pool.

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1 Capcom has shipped 10M copies of Monster Hunter: World Between digital sales and units shipped, Capcom says that its most recent Monster Hunter game has moved 10 million copies across all platforms. 

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  Keywords acquires Gobo game studios for $33M The deal means Keywords now owns the company's Brighton-based studios, Electric Square and Studio Gobo, which are spread across three offices in the coastal town.

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  The Witcher creator CD Projekt has opened a new mobile studio "We want to expand our business with innovative concepts and solutions, and the vision presented to us by the Spokko team represents an entirely novel creative angle."

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1 Valve accidentally unveils Steam.tv broadcasting platform Valve unwittingly made a behind-closed-doors test feed public on the website Steam.tv, showcasing its new broadcasting platform to the world.

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4 Blog: Making the first game containing Nazi symbols in Germany Battling the Nazis in World War II is a frequently-used setting in video games. Yet, in Germany, the homeland of the Nazis, video games were not allowed to show any of their symbols. Until now.

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  Designing omnidirectional tracks for parkour-esque racing game Lightfield Lost in the Garden cofounder Julia Murczek digs into the challenges the team had to overcome when designing the race tracks for their omnidirectional racing game, in which players can drive on walls.

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  Video Game Deep Cuts: A PICO Double Walking Dead This week's highlights include articles about new Walking Dead narrative & AR games, a talk on PICO-8's playfulness, and lots more besides.

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18 Don't Miss: The undying allure of the Metroidvania In this, the month of Metroidvanias, enjoy this timeless look at the pillars of the genre, featuring devs from around the industry weighing in on what makes a good Metroidvania and why.

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  Weekly Jobs Roundup: Remedy Entertainment, Atlus USA, and more are hiring now! These studios and many many more are looking for developers across multiple disciplines right now on the Gamasutra Job Board!

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  Sebastien Benard breaks down the fine details of Dead Cells' design Motion Twin game designer Sebastien Benard took some time to break down the fine design details of Dead Cells over on the Gamasutra Twitch channel.

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  Blog: How we made a stealth-em-up arena brawler We recently released Black & White Bushido on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, so we thought it was time to take a look at what we've learned on our journey so far.

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1 EA, Unity, Epic, and others unite to promote best practices for HDR A number of key game industry players have teamed up under the HDR Gaming Interest Group with the goal of streamlining high dynamic range practices across game development as a whole.

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  Dontnod's Vampyr picked up for TV adaptation by Fox21 Fox21 has snatched up the rights for a television series based on Dontnod’s 2018 game Vampyr.

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  We're talking to one the devs behind Dead Cells at 12PM EDT Join us for a conversation with one of the brains behind Dead Cells starting at 12PM EDT.

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  U.S. judge blocks sale of GTA Online cheat programs A U.S. federal judge has sided with Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two by issuing a preliminary injunction to prevent a Georgia resident from selling cheat programs for GTA Online.

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  Tekken and Yakuza voice actor Unsho Ishizuka has passed away Ishizuka voiced a variety of characters in a number of notable video games, including Heihachi Mishima in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Tekken 7.

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