Daily Briefing: Thursday 28th April

Yuji Naka Took Square Enix To Court Over Balan Wonderworld

According to a series of tweets from Balan’s Director, he was ousted from the project by the developer Arzest and Square Enix 6 months before the game was released, due to using a YouTuber’s piano cover instead of the game’s score, and complaining to Arzest for not fixing various issues. He claims the tight schedule for Balan was set by Square Enix’s producer, and that he’s sorry he released the “unfinished work” Balan Wonderworld. He also said "I think Square Enix and Arzest are companies that don't care about games and game fans.”

• It’s been pointed out that Yuji Naka doesn’t have the strongest reputation, and people have brought up a story from the Dreamcast days, in which he walked into a room of Sega of America devs working on a much-anticipated Star Fox-like game and said in Japanese to ‘fire everyone, but keep one engineer who knows their systems and put them on the Sonic Team’ - not knowing that many of the engineers understood Japanese, which resulted in those devs quitting in protest and the game, named Geist Force, dying before completion.

Twitch Plan On Dropping Exclusivity & Taking More Revenue From Partners

In a move thought to be very daring, plans indicate that Twitch may remove the exclusivity clause from their partner agreement in Summer 2022, while also changing their revenue cut for partners’ higher-tier subscriptions - from 40% for tier 2 and 30% for tier 3 30% to 50% across the board, which the same as for tier 1 subscriptions. This is the same deal Twitch affiliates get, a lower level of streamer. They’ll also be pushing more financial incentives for streamers to run advertisements, which is going to be disruptive to users.

• Effectively, Twitch may try to squeeze more profit out of their existing users and streamers, but also without exclusivity and by making the viewing experience worse, which seems like they’re going to hit themselves with a fantastic 1-2 punch, especially following some big-name creators’ recent departures from Twitch to Youtube, like Ludwig, Dr Disrespect and TimTheTatman.

Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase On June 12

Xbox announced today a showcase for games from Xbox Games Studios, Bethesda and their partners - slap bang in the middle of what would have been E3 season. Set for 10am PT, it will “include everything you need to know about the diverse lineup of games coming soon to the Xbox ecosystem, including upcoming releases to Game Pass on Xbox and PC.”

• Starfield’s a given... but what else? Avowed? Maybe an update on Fable? Indiana Jones? At any rate, it’s time for them to show off what they’ve been working on - and hopefully, they can avoid a reveal like Halo Infinite’s first showing again.