Daily Briefing: Wednesday 30th March

Are Enthusiasts Being Taken For A Ride? $150 MTX And A $15 Sub

Pinball FX’s developers, Zen Studios, are releasing a new version of the game, which effectively forces Pinball FX3 players to re-purchase all their tables on a new version without any form of discount. It also isn’t done via direct purchases, but using an in-between currency named tickets, which in most cases ends up being more expensive. You can get access to most tables with a $14.99 per month subscription instead, but it excludes some of the more premium ones. Fans are generally upset at not being treated like fans, and instead feel they’re cynically being exploited by the developers.

• Enthusiasts of specific genres are often the most liable to be exploited in this way: Train Simulator DLC pricing, Gran Turismo 7’s car pricing and investment being thrown away here - everything lines up to anti-consumer moves for these targets being more and more common.

Axie Infinity, A Successful Play-To-Earn Crypto Game, Is A Victim Of $600m Heist

Axie Infinity, a Pokemon-like axolotl game, has resulted in the loss of $600m+ of ETH and USDS from the Ronin Network blockchain. The game’s explosive growth on the blockchain prompted Ronin to give the developer Sky Mavis specific access to validating transactions, but a security breach let hackers steal their private keys and sign off on fraudulent transactions. Ronin has locked down accounts, so trust in the game’s economy has taken a dive while noone can withdraw their funds.

• Money breeds this kind of behaviour, and games need to be better prepared to deal with it when we get into the realm of play-to-earn. Axie Infinity was already considered a hotbed for low-income country users farming it to earn money.

Rumours Of Sony & Konami News Abound

Certain Twitter leakers have been going crazy today, suggesting big news relating to Sony and Konami could drop at some point today - and most are expecting a major IP purchase, or outright acquisition. As to whether anything will happen... we’ll have to wait and see. It seems like most gaming news in on pause waiting for Sony to do something! In addition, Mike Bithell today tweeted “Hey, indies… maybe delay that announcement a bit.” - implying that this is large news.

• Or it could be nothing. This consistent churning of baseless rumours is starting to get genuinely tiring!