Triplepoints of Interest: Jan.22

In this week’s TPoI, Tencent takes $100 million minority stake in Skydance Media, Twitch wins $1.3m lawsuit against a view bot maker, and GPU prices skyrocket due to a swell in cryptocurrency popularity.

Tencent Acquires Minority Stake in Skydance Media

Shenzhen-based social media giant Tencent Holdings announced on Thursday morning that the company has acquired a minority stake in Skydance Media, a Los Angeles-based production company best known for their work on Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. The Los Angeles Times speculates that this move will help Tencent break into the Chinese movie industry, which is the second largest cinema market in the world. The Hollywood Reporter notes that the stake, while just under a 10% share of the company, is still a huge transaction worth over $100 million. Gamesindustry.biz featured a statement from Tencent chief strategy officer James Mitchell noting that the partnership should help both companies expand in their respective markets.

Twitch Wins Lawsuit Against View Bot Makers

Since early 2016, the livestreaming platform Twitch has been fighting legal battles against seven of the most popular distributors of view bots, software that artificially inflate the view counts of Twitch channels, which has finally led a California judge to rule in their favor. According to Kotaku, a California judge has ordered bot makers Michael and Katherine Anjomi to shutter their view bot service and pay Twitch a total of $1,371,139 in damages. Gamesindustry.biz notes that this case will give the company legal precedence to fight off competing services in upcoming legal battles. PC Gamer speculates that this legal win will help the company legitimize the industry of professional livestreaming.

Graphics Card Prices Skyrocket due to Cryptocurrency

While cryptocurrencies have been steadily gaining popularity in recent years, a swell in value has caused consumers to start buying up high end gaming equipment in hopes to generate more of the virtual money, making it harder for gamers to buy the video cards they need to run games at high refresh rates. GameSpot reports that this surge in interest has led high end GPUs to either go out of stock or rise in prices With the surge, cards that typically cost $200 now cost over $500 at respected retail stores. Forbes notes that many online retailers are trying to offer deals or added value bundles to offset the inflated prices, but that these do not fully make up for the price increase . Gamesindustry.biz speculates that this increased market for video cards may not last, with more companies like Steam cutting support for cryptocurrencies due to their unstable value.