Daily Briefing: Tuesday 27th July

Activision Blizzard employees respond to handling of harassment suit

A group of Blizzard employees have penned an open letter criticising the company's "abhorrent and insulting" response to the ongoing sexual harassment suit. The letter, which has since amassed nearly 2,000 signatures from current and former Blizzard employees, calls on the studio leadership to "recognise the seriousness of these allegations and demonstrate compassion for victims of harassment and assault."

• The letter, which is worth reading in its entirety online, goes on to say that Activision Blizzard's current response to the allegations has "damaged our ongoing quest for equality inside and outside of our industry." It asks for accountability and recognition, and states “we will not be silenced, we will not stand aside, and we will not give up until the company we love is a workplace we can all feel proud to be a part of again.” We're still waiting on a response from Activision Blizzard.

Amazon's New World beta tops 200K concurrent players

After a couple of false starts and a few delays thrown in for good measure, early numbers suggest that Amazon may finally have a winner on their hands with the upcoming New World. The MMO launched in beta on July 20th and has managed to attract upwards of 148K concurrent players on Steam every day since - peaking at an impressive 200,856 simultaneous players on July 25th.

• These numbers will likely be reassuring for Amazon, who have struggled to break into the gaming space in any significant and lasting way. New World itself has already been delayed three times, but it'll all be worth it provided it turns out better than Amazon's last gaming attempt, Crucible, which completely shut down five months after release. Amazon's intriguing Lord of the Rings MMO was cancelled recently, seemingly due to a dispute with Tencent. At any rate, New World's beta is on until August 2nd and players can still get access by preordering ahead of the game's August 31st release date.

Work on World on Warcraft apparently halted during lawsuit fallout

That's according to World of Warcraft's senior system design Jeff Hamilton who, speaking on Twitter, stated that very little work is currently being done on the game as Activision Blizzard responds to the ongoing lawsuit and resultant fallout. Hamilton says that, while he doesn't have "all the answers", he can say that "almost no work is being done on World of Warcraft right now while this obscenity plays out." He also emphasises that this situation "benefits nobody."

• Hamilton's posts are strikingly critical of the way Activision Blizzard have handled the allegations. He highlights that "Activision's response to [the allegations]  is currently taking a group of world-class developers and making them so mad and traumatised they're rendered unable to keep making a great game." Hamilton ends his thread by linking out to other current and ex-Blizzard employees who have been speaking about toxic studio culture.

Team Asobi are hiring for a new project

The Astro's Playroom studio are currently advertising on LinkedIn for a game designer to create "a variety of levels for a 3D action game." The ad goes on to stipulate that the candidate should be able to "bring creativity and humour" to the project, and have "solid level design skills" that can efficiently guide players and keep a "great tempo."

• There's no word just yet on what exactly this new project is, but it could very well be a sequel to the excellent PS5-bundle title Astro's Playroom. The game went over pretty well at launch and, in December, one of the game's designers said he would consider doing a sequel provided the original was received well. The game being pre-installed on every PS5 console means we don't have sales numbers to look at, so it receiving near-universal acclaim will have to do.