Daily Briefing: Tuesday 20th July

Ubisoft's new Tom Clancy game is really colourful

Tom Clancy's XDefiant was revealed yesterday as a "high-octane" 6v6 arena shooter where "fast-paced firefights meet punk-rock moshpit." Despite surely being one of the most bizarre descriptions ever for a Tom Clancy game, XDefiant promises a mixture of realistic gunplay and special abilities split across different factions. These factions are inspired by other Tom Clancy titles - so you have Echelon, Outcasts, Cleaners, and Wolves.

• XDefiant actually made a bit of an appearance back in June when details leaked of a big Tom Clancy crossover title called Battlecat. The game, which is currently in early development at Ubisoft's San Francisco studio, is set to release an early gameplay test around August 5th - and players can register for that via the official XDefiant website. Ubisoft have stated that "your feedback is essential to make this game great" so XDefiant could be one to watch for a little bit at least. Battlecat was a better name, though. 

New details emerge on Activision's Call of Duty hiring spree

Newly published analysis from VGC has suggested that Raven Software, one of the studios behind Call of Duty Warzone, has grown by nearly 50% in a year. The studio have hired over 100 new staff in the last twelve months and still have over 40 more roles still to be filled. Filling these roles would take the studio up to 400 total staff, effectively tripling its size from 2015. Raven have been hiring some serious talent as well, with a great deal of experience split across Ubisoft, Respawn, and Epic Games.

• Raven's creative director said in April that the studio have been "hiring like crazy" in order to keep up with the runaway success of Warzone and the rest of their standard Call of Duty workload. It has been a pretty drastic expansion, though it does fit in with Activision's recently-revealed plans to triple the size of "certain franchise teams." Looks like Raven are one of those teams.

GDC 2022 will be an in-person event

The all-digital GCD 2021 officially going rolling this week and to start off the conference organisers Informa Tech confirmed that the show will return to an in-person event from next year. GDC 2021 was initially announced as a "hybrid" experience that would combine certain in-person elements with a "robust virtual offering." Those in-person elements were dropped in February this year.

• Tellingly, there has been no mention so far as to whether these virtual offerings will reappear next year when the format returns to being a physical show, which would be a shame considering the virtual side of things was great for accessibility. At any rate, GDC 2021 is well underway with a mix of lectures, tutorials, and roundtable discussions. The Game Developers Choice Awards are also coming up.

Tencent chalk their second acquisition of the week

The Chinese tech conglomerate confirmed yesterday that they have acquired a majority stake in Swedish developer Stunlock Studios - the team behind games like Bloodline Champions and Battlerite Royale. The two companies have had a working relationship since 2016 when Battlerite released in China, and Tencent have actually held a minority stake in Stunlock since 2019.

• This is Tencent's second confirmed acquisition of the week after word broke of their $1.3bn acquisition of UK-based Sumo Group. What's interesting about these two acquisitions is that Tencent previously held minority stakes in both, so could expanding their existing ownership stakes been an active strategy for Tencent? They hold a lot of minority stakes in Western studios like Activision Blizzard, Epic Games, and Paradox Interactive - how often are they willing to open the ol' wallet?