A Way Out finds its way into release

This game from some of the people that brought you Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a unique co-op experience that requires two players to complete. Depicting two fugitives with very different temperaments on the run from the law, A Way Out can be experienced with a friend, family member or loved one either on the couch or online using a ‘friend pass.’

Steam made $4.3 billion in revenue in 2017, its biggest year

Read more at Gamasutra

It’s no secret that Steam, the online video game retail and services platform, holds a de facto monopoly on PC gaming. So it’s no surprise that 2017 was the platform’s biggest year with revenues of $4.3 billion, according to Sergey Galyonkin founder of Steam tracking site SteamSpy. Galyonkin credits the massive popularity of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds with facilitating these numbers.

Galyonkin also said that only the top 100 games out of the 21,406 presently on Steam make the majority of that revenue. While Steam isn’t as saturated as mobile app marketplaces, Galyonkin said that “discoverability” is becoming a major issue, with 30 games launching each day, making it not only “impossible for a user to buy them all; it’s impossible for a user to even scroll through them all.”

Telltale Games hit by expose, reveals toxic work environment

Read more at The Verge

According to a thorough report by Megan Farokhmanesh, the unexpected success of The Walking Dead led to constant overwork, toxic management, and creative stagnation at publisher/developer Telltale Games. The success led to a desire to expand and scale the company rapidly, and the working culture never adapted and bad habits such as overtime crunch and creative inflexibility persisted.

Game developers are finally talking unionization

Read more at Waypoint

Last week, developers from all around the world flew into San Francisco, California for the Game Developers Conference (GDC). It’s that time of the year when developers get together to pool their knowledge and talk about the future of the games as an industry and as a medium. But there was one group that got everyone talking: Game Workers Unite, a grassroots organization that hopes to grease the wheels.

“Passion is the perfect medium for employers to exploit us,” said one organizer. “We’ll do anything to work in games and make games, and they know we’re desperate. [But you] can be passionate about games and also be fairly represented.” That’s what Game Workers Unite is hoping to offer to everyone in game development, especially those who have felt disempowered by long hours and brutal crunch periods.

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