Daily Briefing: Tuesday 30th March

Activision Blizzard name new CFO

Activision Blizzard have apparently made the decision to promote from within in order to replace the outgoing Dennis Durkin. Zerza will take over at the beginning of the next fiscal quarter (April 1st) when Durkin retires from his second stint in the CFO role - he took it back two years ago when his then-successor Spencer Neumann jumped to Netflix and kicked off a hearty lawsuit.

• Zerza has been with the company for just over five years, joining as the CFO of Blizzard Entertainment in 2015. He currently serves as both the Chief Operating Officer of Blizzard and the Chief Commercial Officer of Activision Blizzard. Hopefully, a bit of longstanding, experienced talent will do the company some good.

Sega's lawyers have apparently accused SteamDB of piracy

So it looks like Sega have a team of lawyers tasked with identifying sites that are illegally distributing their games, which makes sense, but the latest site to be so accused is SteamDB, which makes much less sense. Surely everyone in the games industry knows that SteamDB isn't a piracy site?

• Site creator Pavel Djundik confirmed via Twitter that he has had to temporarily take down the SteamDB page for Yakuza: Like A Dragon but he doesn't appear to be too worried. Apparently, SteamDB receive similar DMCA takedown warnings "at least once a year" but things are usually able to be sorted quite quickly.

Sony officially confirm PS3 and PS Vita stores will close this summer

Following a spate of rumours last week, Sony have confirmed that the online marketplaces for a number of their legacy consoles will close over the summer. The PSP Store will close on July 2nd, while the PS3 and PS Vita stores will close a little later on August 27th.

• Sony also confirmed that any PS3, PSP, or PS Vita owners will still be able to re-download any games they've purchased through the relevant store. They will still be able to redeem voucher codes for games and PlayStation Plus, and multi-platform cross-buy purchases will also still be possible.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1&2 Remaster is crashing on Xbox Series X|S, Microsoft blame Activision

The next-gen update for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1&2 Remaster dropped recently but Xbox Series X|S users have reported a spate of problems ranging from freezes and crashes to being unable to even play the game outside of offline mode. Even more frustrating is the fact that Activision charged players $10 for the upgrade.

• Activision haven't been forthcoming with fixes since these issues emerge, but a recent statement from Microsoft points the finger squarely at Activision. The statement reads that "Smart Delivery is available to all Xbox developers and publishers" and so it was Activision's choice not to offer it, and as such it's on them to fix it.