Kabam secures massive $120 million investment from China's Alibaba Free-to-play studio Kabam has secured a massive investment from Chinese internet giant Alibaba -- $120 million, which gives Alibaba rights to publish its games in China on its mobile platforms.

---

1 Gearbox steps up to defend itself in Aliens: Colonial Marines case Developer responds to class action suit brought on behalf of consumers who argued that the game substantially differed from the version promoted by its publisher, Sega, by saying "why are we involved?"

---

2 Crunching the numbers behind an indie game studio "In three years, I personally went from having $20,000 in savings to $35,000 in debt." - Guillaume Boucher-Vidal, founder of independent studio Nine Dots

---

1 Rayman creator helps launch new studio -- while still at Ubisoft Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil creator Michel Ancel is helping to launch Wild Sheep, a new French indie studio.

---

  Get a job: Volition is hiring a Visual Effects Artist Handy with 3ds Max or Maya? Deep Silver Volition, known for the Saints Row franchise, is looking to hire a visual effects artist to join them in their Champaign, Illinois offices.

---

54 Don't Miss: Keeping up with mobile hit Kim Kardashian: Hollywood Kim Kardashian has conquered everything from cable TV to bottled water with some stupendous branding tactics. Now, the branding maven can add the iOS App Store to her list of conquests.

---

3 Big Data, big problems: A Mathematician’s take on the state of game analytics "There are many constraints on the quality of an analytics investigation: time and money are extremely scarce, but developers still want insight into data. The problem is that a bad report is a very dangerous thing."

---

1 Startup puts YouTubers at its center, and that changes everything 3BlackDot was co-founded by ex-Machinima staffers and two very popular YouTubers, Syndicate and SeaNanners. But with promotion at its heart, what's authentic and what's not?

---

  Your Amazon Appstore games are now available in Southeast Asia Android game makers, take note: Amazon has expanded its Appstore to support 41 more countries and territories, including parts of Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

---

  RockYou nets $10M in funding to continue buying up moribund games The social game publisher cum advertising network plans to use the money to acquire more social and mobile games it can integrate into its network of ad-supported titles.

---

9 One dev, three iOS games, no success - sharing the numbers "Here are the numbers for the 3 iOS games I published in the last year. Spoiler alert: they are bad."

---

1 TV star's new superhero game takes cues from improv acting Heroes and Hawaii Five-0 actor Masi Oka has started an independent game company. We spoke with him about his new project, and how he was inspired to create it by teaching improv in Japan.

---

  GDC 2015 announces call for papers, new advisory board members GDC 2015 organizers have opened the Call for Papers, running until August 28th and added advisory board members Brenda Romero and Penka Kouneva.

---

  From the idea to the final product: Developing Toto Temple Deluxe This blog post takes you through the design evolution of multiplayer indie game Toto Temple Deluxe -- walking you through the process of making an initial design compelling as a real game.

---

  PlayStation's streaming game service enters open beta PlayStation Now, Sony's cloud-based streaming service for PlayStation consoles, will launch as an open beta today in the U.S. and Canada, with more than 100 games to rent and stream.

---

  GDC Europe reveals talks on Dead Island 2 and Angry Birds Senior staff from Yager Interactive and Rovio join the roster of speakers sharing knowledge about the art and business of games at GDC Europe 2014 this August in Cologne.

---

9 DieselStormers hit with trademark dispute from clothing company Diesel A game called DieselStormers that just launched on Steam Early Access has been hit with a trademark dispute from Italian clothing company Diesel.

---

  Early Access game Maia makes $1 million Back in 2012, UK developer Simon Roth raised arond $237,000 through Kickstarter for his game Maia. Now the dev has made more than $1 million from the in-development game, and is opening a new studio.

---

  With no new major releases, Capcom sees profits drop Capcom's revenues and profits were down during the first quarter of the current fiscal year, mainly due to a lack of major releases from the Japanese publisher.

---

2 The puzzle generation workflow in VR game Darknet "Every time the player goes through a level, they’ll have to complete at least a couple of puzzles to win. That’s why it’s so critical to make the puzzles unique and challenging."

---

  UK publisher Mastertronic closes Cambridgeshire HQ, lays off 40% of staff In the midst of liquidation threats, UK games publisher Mastertronic has been forced to make nearly half of its staff redundant, and close its Cambridgeshire headquarters.

---

4 Leaderboards: The original and best social feature A look at why leaderboards are so commonly implemented, what they gain you as a developer, and how players react to them.

---

1 PlayStation swings to profits, thanks to strong PS4 performance Sony saw a notable rise in profits during the first quarter of the current fiscal year, as the company's PlayStation business swung back from losses to income.

---

11 Gamasutra Explains: The YouTuber Phenomenon What do YouTubers do? Who are they? Why does it matter to you? Gamasutra looked into the phenomenon and created a handy guide so you can get up-to-speed on it.

---

1 Glu revenues up, and thanks to Kardashian, it's raising guidance Still, the company makes a loss for the quarter -- though it expects "record" performance for next quarter. It's also picked up Racing Rivals dev Cie Games.

---

[Read More]