Introducing the TriplePoint Video Game Index: GAMER

How is the video game industry doing? This is a common question that underlies much of the business and trade industry press. Individual stocks’ quarterly reports give meaningful anecdotes, but there is not one good benchmark to provide the capital markets’ answer to that question over time. Until now.

Introducing the TriplePoint Video Game Index. It launched today, April 26th, 2021 for investing professionals on the Bloomberg Terminal (ticker: GAMER). Within a few weeks the data should be commonly available on public investing information sites such as Yahoo! Finance and Google Finance under the same ticker. (EDIT 4/27/21: GAMER is now available on Google Finance.)

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TRIPLEPOINTS OF INTEREST – July 31

In this week’s TPoI, Steam gained over 27 million new paying users in the past 18 months, developers at the Games for Change Festival talk U.S. policy effects on the industry, and Electronic Arts merges Mass Effect: Andromeda developer with Motive Studios.

Steam Gains Over 27 Million New Customers in the Last 18 Months

Valve’s PC gaming platform Steam is widely regarded as the premier PC game distribution platform. GeekWire reports that Steam has gained 27 million new paying users since the start of 2016, a statistic that was announced during Valve’s panel at Casual Connect in Seattle. Matthew Wilson from Kitguru speculates that Steam’s continuous growth could be related to popular multiplayer titles such Dota 2, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS being available exclusively through Steam. Due to the rapid growth in user base, Steam now has over 67 million active users a month, a number that Polygon highlights is tracking well above Xbox Live’s 53 million average users. PC Gamer notes that Steam continues to grow with over 1.5 million new users every month and estimates that the platform will continue to dominate the PC gaming industry.

EA and Take-Two Say U.S. Government is Bad For Business

Representatives from Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive spoke on how recent U.S. government policy changes are directly affecting the industry during a panel at the 2017 Games for Change Festival. According to Polygon, the speakers argued that policy changes made to topics such as immigration, education, and trade directly affect the U.S games industry and its future growth. Green Man Gaming Newsroom covered the effect of the H-1B visa program and how a lack of qualified, high-skilled labor will lead to less American innovation as a whole. GamesIndustry.Biz mentions that many other companies including Activision-Blizzard, Harmonix, Insomniac Games and Unity have spoken out about these issues in the past and hope that the current issues can be resolved.

EA Merges Canadian Games Studios BioWare Montreal with Motive Studios

After being designated as a “support studio” by Electronic Arts back in May, BioWare Montreal is now being folded into the also Montreal-based EA Motive, with their staff moving into Motive’s office. A Forbes contributor notes that none of the staff has been laid off and that the team will transition into the new office over the next few weeks. Shack News reports that the team responsible for the ill-reviewed Mass Effect: Andromeda will be helping to develop a new IP while the rest of Motive is focused on Star Wars: Battlefront 2. TechRaptor covered a statement made by Electronic Arts’ CFO Blake Jorgensen that an additional 100 employees have been hired to help develop this new project.

TRIPLEPOINTS OF INTEREST – JUNE 19

In this week’s TPoI, GTA 5’s shutdown of modding tools sparks anger amongst users, Capcom and Bandai Namco enter a cross-licensing agreement related to online matchmaking, and Project Rap Rabbit fails to meet its Kickstarter goal.

GTA 5’s Mod Shutdown Upsets and Frustrates Players

Developers of modding tool OpenIV revealed last week that they would be shutting down after receiving a legal notice from Grand Theft Auto developer Take-Two Interactive. PCGamer reports that OpenIV’s shutdown was not taken well by users of the mod, who took to Steam to write negative reviews. In addition to written reviews, VG 24/7 states that users down-voted GTA 5 in the Steam store, resulting in the customer reviews to be “overwhelmingly negative”. According to Gamepur, distraught fans started a petition on Change.org, calling for Take-Two to allow OpenIV to continue. Despite the impressive 50,000 signatures already collected, GameRant doesn’t believe that Take-Two will revert their decision, but presumes that it may impact sales on their upcoming title Red Dead Redemption 2 if gamers are still upset by GTA V.

Capcom and Bandai Namco to Improve Online Multiplayer

Capcom and Bandai Namco announced that they have begun a cross-licensing agreement to improve online matching in Street Fighter and other fighting games. GamingBolt disclosed that Street Fighter will be one of the first games to leverage the agreement, and with Bandai Namco’s help, Capcom should be able to release new content faster. PVP Live isn’t surprised that Capcom would band forces with Bandai Namco, as the outlet feels that Street Fighter V’s online experience has been struggling, whereas Tekken 7’s has been pretty successful. VG 24/7 agrees, hoping that Street Fighter V’s online matchmaking will be immensely better with the assistance from Bandai Namco. Forbes hopes that the collaboration with Bandai Namco will also refine Capcom’s upcoming fighter game Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite, and looks forward to seeing the upgraded multiplayer servers.

Project Rap Rabbit Falls Short of Production

PaRappa the Rapper creator Masaya Matsura and Giratoo Man creator Keiichi Yano’s “Project Rap Rabbit” ended in failure as the game did not reach its Kickstarter goal. Polygon states that the project had asked for approximately $1 million, with backers only contributing $204K thousand within the deadline. Comicbook.com theorizes that part of its collapse was due to fans wanting sequels for the titles already made, and suggests that the developers focus on that possibility. As for plans to release the title in the future, DualShockers reports that Matsura and Yano aren’t able to fund further production to relaunch crowd funding, so work on the title can’t continue at this time. The outlet further details that the game will potentially be released in the future, but it’s hard to say when that can be accomplished.