Activision Blizzard employees push back against leadership's lawsuit response Over 1,000 current and former Activision Blizzard employees have penned an open letter condemning the company's response to a lawsuit filed by California Department of Equal Housing and Employment.

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  Get a job: NPD Group is hiring a Data Engineer Lead The NPD Group is looking for a Data Engineer Lead. Apply today!

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1 Jam City changes course, no longer going public via $1.2B merger The now-canceled deal would've also included the acquisition of Montreal-based mobile publisher Ludia.

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1 Valve says every game it has tested on the Steam Deck is hitting at least 30fps Valve says the Steam Deck is capable of playing every piece of software the company has tested on it at 30fps or more.

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  Mortal Kombat 11 has topped 12 million sales in just over two years Publisher Warner Bros. Games broke the news in a short press release, and said the entire franchise has now sold more than 73 million copies to date.

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1 Amazon's New World beta has passed 200,000 concurrent users on Steam The closed beta for Amazon Games' upcoming MMO, New World, pulled in more than 200,000 concurrent players over the weekend.

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  Death Stranding has reached 5 million sales across PS4 and PC Death Stranding had sold 5 million copies worldwide across PS4 and PC as of March 2021, according to developer Kojima Productions.

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1 Washing the worries away: Inside the surprisingly relaxing design of PowerWash Simulator "Video games don't need to be antagonistic in order to find an audience, and I think this game and other sims show there is still a huge gap in the market for games that simply offer relaxing escapism."

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1 Balancing art and production needs to create Valorant's cosmetics Riot's Preeti Khanolkar and Sean Marino shared how Riot Games produces the high-tier cosmetics driving revenue for Valorant at GDC 2021.

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  Facebook relents, launches Instant Games hub as web app After numerous failures to launch its cloud gaming Instant Games portal on the iOS App Store, Facebook has launched web-only version of Instant Games.

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6 Blog: Getting excellent voice acting into your indie game - Part 4 The actors have auditioned and you've made hard choices. In this final part of my series, I go over the last steps for bringing voice acting into your game.

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1 How the painful process of cutting ideas almost sank Sea of Solitude "Calculating the timeframe and the scope for development so poorly is what nearly caused the whole production to fail."

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1 Using vorticles to simulate wind in Ghost of Tsushima "We're doing the most basic approximation of fluid dynamics by taking several height map samples out in front of each particle and giving it an upwards velocity in advance so they float over things nicely."

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  Blog: A step-by-step guide to game localization Modern game developers understand that it's not enough just to create an awesome game -- you have to make it accessible to the broader public. That's where localization comes in.

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5 Activision exec tells team that lawsuit is actually what's hurting company An internal e-mail to Activision Blizzard employees from executive Fran Townsend blames California’s lawsuit for damaging the company culture, rather than alleged incidents of sexual harassment.

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  Get a job: Egosoft is hiring a Senior Game Programmer Egosoft, the creators of the popular X space simulation game series, are looking for an experienced Game Programmer.

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  It’s the final day of GDC 2021. Let’s finish strong! It’s time to finish up GDC 2021 with a bang. Join us for the final day of this year’s all-digital conference!

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  Blizzard president internally comments on 'troubling' harassment lawsuit An internal email from Blizzard president J. Allen Brack calls the actions described in the lawsuit unacceptable and tells employees that the company is taking those claims seriously.

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  Sports Interactive is bringing women's football to Football Manager Football Manager developer Sports Interactive is bringing the women's game to the popular soccer simulator for the first time.

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1 Report: Blizzard's misfiring Warcraft III remake was the result of cost-cutting and mismanagement "We have developers who have dealt with exhaustion, anxiety, depression and more for a year now. Many have lost trust in the team and this company."

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  Epic Games acquires Sketchfab asset store, reduces platform fees to 12 percent Epic Games has acquired the Sketchfab asset store for an undisclosed fee, and has pledged to immediately lower platform fees to 12 percent.

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  How Naughty Dog prototyped the interactive guitar in The Last of Us Part II "[We decided] the simplest affordance is probably going to be a wheel menu on the analog stick. That way the player can deflect in a corresponding direction without having them look down."

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  Get a job: Legends of Learning is looking for a Senior Systems Designer The team at Legends of Learning is looking for a Senior Systems Designer to help build fun educational games.

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  Eight tools for creating chilling horror from the maker of FAITH FAITH creator Mason Smith dropped by GDC 2021 with insights on how developers can scare the pants off players even when they’re only working with a handful of pixels.

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  A taxonomy of Weenies: the landmarks that define Ghost of Tsushima Here's a breakdown of the different landmark types Sucker Punch used to make Ghost of Tsushima's virtual world compelling and navigable.

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