Daily Briefing: Wednesday 27th January

EA Accused Of 'Stealing' Indie Character Design

Indie developer NOWWA have accused EA and Respawn of plagiarising their character design from upcoming title Bulletville. Their character 'Hunter' was shown to EA in early 2020 during publishing talks and in a playtest in October. Respawn's next Apex Legend, Fuse, shares a significant amount of design elements. There's almost no way to be certain, but NOWWA are mostly concerned their game will be labelled an Apex copycat.

• The similarities are many Hair, facial hair, jacket, eyepatch, grenade/ammo belt adornments, abilities and more. Fuse's design was first revealed in September of 2020, long after EA saw Bulletville's Hunter, so the timeline adds up but it's almost impossible to distinguish between plagiarism, similar inspirations, coincidence, etc. Also, would a Respawn character designer be involved in publisher talks or a playtest? Probably not, but we can't say. Full video on this coming up soon(TM) exploring the complicated parts and some other fun things on the topic!

Single-player Cheat Code Platform Raises $1.9m

Cheats might be about to make their way back into popularity in gaming - MegaDev raised $1.9m in Series A funding for their Plitch platform, which is premium trainer software. Currently supporting over 2,600 games, it promises a premium cheating experience in single-player PC games while ensuring none of its capability will work online. Their premium offering is  $4.99 a month, and bills itself as a time-saver and assistant for single-player games but also a way to make games harder to improve as a player.

• Cheats, but entirely legit for $4.99 from a reputable site, rather than having to find a 'dodgy' trainer elsewhere. Not sure if it'll ultimately land well, but some investors have been sold on it, at least. Honestly, it reminds me of calling a cheat code hotline as a kid for some games... but times change. Many single-player games are always online and charge for 'timesavers' themselves, so perhaps this spotlight will just draw publisher ire to MegaDev.

Game Pass Hits 18m Subscribers

Microsoft's recent financial results reveal that the Series S and X launch brought in record revenue for the Xbox platform. Most importantly, their Game Pass plan seems to be working - it's now over 18 million subscribers. That's a decent portion of their over 100m MAUs on Xbox Live, and given its consumer value, it's going to only grow from here out.

• Game Pass is still amazing value for people who are happy to have limited access to a lot of games, which matches accepted models for other content like music, movies and TV. Eventually, Xbox will have to ratchet up the profitability, but having 18m people paying $10 a month is a good start.

The Whole Gamestop Thing

Gamestop's value is heading to the moon as part of a particular financial manoeuvre. To explain it briefly, r/WallStreetBets and their allies are in a war with hedge funds who were trying to 'short' Gamestop - i.e. make a quick buck off it and crush its value. A 'short squeeze' is basically outmuscling short sellers. So far, it's resulted in at least one hedge fund needing to be bailed out to the tune of billions, thanks to major liquidity issues. More on this as it develops, because it's an insane story.

• This story is bonkers - Gamestop being the stock it's happening to is just the icing on the cake, but might be the reason it's such a talking point. These short-sellers chose the wrong target, and now the entire system that is the stock market is under massive scrutiny.