Publishers News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Ubisoft and MiHoYo, the developers behind Assassin's Creed and Genshin Impact, are among the first studios to sign up for Nvidia Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE), a new AI-driven tech platform said to create more lifelike video game characters.

CEO Sam Altman-led OpenAI said it's talking to dozens of publishers about striking deals to license their articles, a broader effort than was previously known as the startup looks for content to train its artificial intelligence models. 

Apple has opened negotiations in recent weeks with major news and publishing organizations, seeking permission to use their material in the company's development of generative artificial intelligence systems, the New York Times reported on Friday.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) has been the buzzword of 2023, with developments taking place at the speed of light, seemingly. From AI chatbots to AI tools that can be used for various purposes including image generation, code interpretation, multi-modal search, and more, the incorporation of AI has been quite expeditious. However, it has not been all smooth sailing so far. Various debates have taken place about the ills of AI, with deepfakes rising at an alarming rate. As such, the need for its regulation is necessary. Thus, the passing of the EU AI Act could not have come at a better time. But it is not just deepfakes where AI is posing a danger. A new report has shed light on its implications in the news sector, with publishers saying that Google's new AI Search tool, Search Generative Experience, could potentially be at the forefront of the top traffic-destroying elements.

The CEO of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) Stanley Pierre-Louis, has said that the industry didn't need E3 to reach their audiences.

After more than a decade working with Image Comics, Mark Millar's Millarworld imprint is moving to a new home. Dark Horse will be picking up the full portfolio of Millarworld titles including the likes of Kick-Ass, Kingsman, and The Magic Order, starting in 2024.

Marvel Snap developers Second Dinner have reassured players of the digital card game that it will continue to “operate and flourish in the future”, in the wake of reports that publishers Nuverse are set to step away from the mainstream games space.

Humble Games, the Humble Bundle-owned label responsible for publishing indie hits including Slay the Spire, Signalis, Unpacking, Temtem and this year’s recently Grammy-nominated RPG musical Stray Gods, have confirmed a number of layoffs.

In what turned out to be another interesting day in the artificial intelligence universe, this emerging technology touched diverse areas from policy making to medtech. The UK's AI Summit might be in trouble. After German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, US President Joe Biden too may skip UK PM Rishi Sunak's AI meet. In other news, three music publishers have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic AI for using their copyrighted lyrics to train its Claude chatbot. This and more in today's AI roundup. Let us take a closer look.

When I first saw Slow Living with Princess on Steam, I thought the title sounded rather roughly translated. It also sounded an awful lot like one of the trope-y, light novel-derived fantasy shows that have dominated the anime industry's output for years now. Turns out I was right on the money: it's a farming sim based on the trope-y, light novel-derived anime Banished from the Hero's Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside. The kicker here is that, like its source material, it seems to be surprisingly good despite its silly name.

Yesterday, Epic Games unveiled a new program to entice publishers and developers to bring their catalog games to the Epic Games Store.

The developer of new indie hit Cocoon says it was difficult to pitch at first because it's a Zelda, Portal, Hyper Light Drifter-like whilst also not being like any of those games at all. 

Google has unveiled a new feature, Google-Extended, offering website publishers the ability to exclude their data from contributing to the development of Google's AI models. While websites will still remain accessible through Google Search, this tool provides publishers with greater control over the use of their content for AI training purposes. In effect, Google will stop using the data of those publishers who opt out.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has inadvertently shared his opinion on the issues modern AAA games are dealing with - revealing he thinks publishers are "milking" their successful IPs and "struggling" to find new ones. 

SAG-AFTRA members have voted to authorise a new strike against the video game industry, with an overwhelming 98.32 percent in favour. The union claims that 34,687 members cast ballots, representing 24.49 percent of eligible voters. Bear in mind that this authorisation does not guarantee the strike will happen, but that the union members are serious about stopping work if the unions fail to reach a fair agreement with the companies. The voting period began on September 5 and ended on Monday, September 25, ahead of new negotiations that kickstart on September 26 (PT). If it goes through, this would mark the second video game strike since a similar action took place in 2016 — lasting nearly a year.

A whole lot of interesting (and occasionally awkward) secrets were revealed by the big Microsoft document leak that occurred last week. One of the most notable bits was a brutally frank analysis by Xbox boss Phil Spencer on the current state of major videogame publishers like Activision and Electronic Arts, who Spencer said are struggling to find relevance in an industry that just doesn't need them like it used to.

Among the chunkier morsels from yesterday's leak of Microsoft documents is an extended email from Xbox CEO Phil Spencer, dating from 2020, in which he argues that today's largest AAA videogame publishers remain dogged by their "failure" to adapt to the shift from physical to digital videogame distribution, and especially, subscription models such as Microsoft's own Game Pass. This inability to move with the times, Spencer suggests, has created a situation whereby the largest publishers rely on sheer "production scale" to attract and retain customers.

The national board of actors' union SAG-AFTRA has sent a strike authorization vote to members over the renegotiation of its Interactive Media Agreement. The potential strike would affect voice acting and motion capture work for major publishers in the industry.

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Dozens of websites are using AI chatbots to copy and repurpose articles from top publishers, according to a report from the news-rating group NewsGuard, offering a glimpse into how artificial intelligence tools risk undermining media companies and muddying the online news industry.

The era of the Epic Games Store PC exclusive has tailed off recently, but it seems Epic hasn’t given up on the concept. Initially, Epic tried to entice publishers with an attractive revenue split that saw them only take 12 percent of sales on their platform (Steam takes 30 percent) as well as some additional financial incentives. For a while, it worked pretty well for Epic – a number of games, including ones from major publishers like Ubisoft and Square Enix, signed exclusivity deals (most of which lasted a year). Ultimately though, the Epic Games Store didn’t quite take off the way the Fortnite publisher hoped and the audience a game gave up by not being on Steam was too much of a sacrifice for most publishers.

The reboot of the mid-'90s cult classic Little Big Adventure games that was announced in early 2022 has been cancelled. Ben Limare, CEO of developer 2.21, said work on the game was halted after the studio was unable to come up with a publishing deal for the new game.

Top news publishers to sue AI firms; China's e-commerce platforms to introduce AI hosts for sales; AI utilised for forecasting solar events; Kerala Police's AI face recognition system identifies suspect- this and more in our daily AI roundup. Let us take a look.