#game-monetization

#game-monetization

Sharma wrote that Microsoft "will invent new business models and new ways to play" and said that "monetization and AI" will both "evolve and influence this future."

Making games requires testing them. For microtransaction-fueled gacha games, that means putting your own money on the line to sample the merchandise. That's apparently what led Street Fighter 2 producer Yoshiki Okamoto to spend over $500,000 of his own money on his own game's loot boxes. Monster Strike is one of Japan's most lucrative gacha games and it's one Okamoto helped create after leaving Capcom in the early aughts.

Anzu - which counts among its backers WPP, Sony Innovation Fund, NBCUniversal, HTC and Bitkraft - has been on a mission since 2017 to make advertising in games better. Recently, it has been making waves as studios cross a once-dreaded line to create ads in 3D games. As the only licensed in-game ad provider for Xbox, it has made headway on a product that will ease marketer concerns about the viability of in-game advertising.

Most games that disclose using generative AI on Steam don't go into much detail. Let it Die: Inferno was different. "AI-generated content has been used and then edited by our team for certain parts of the in-game voices, music, and graphics," it wrote. The AI content included "some parts of the background signboard textures," "some parts of the Records images," "some parts of the InfoCast videos," and "some parts of the voices and music."

Valve benefits from any panicked trading in the short term, with every Steam Marketplace sale carrying a 5 percent "Steam Transaction Fee" on top of a 10 percent " Counter-Strike 2 fee... that is determined and collected by the game publisher" (read: Valve). In the long term, though, making some of the rarest items in the game easier to obtain will likely depress overall spending among the whales that dominate the market.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 has been through a hell of a journey to reach us. At last night's Opening Night Live from Gamescom, Paradox revealed the long-delayed game finally has a release date, October 21. What the publisher didn't boast about was is that it is locking two out of the six playable clans behind paid day-one DLC, and it'll cost you an extra $30 to unlock them. A third of the ways to play the game.