Hello everyone!
Welcome to the Festive Edition of the Digest! It’s a slow news week as everyone is winding down for a well-deserved break and we hope you are too.
From all of us at The Iterative Collective, happy holidays and thank you for sticking with us.
So without further ado, sit back, relax, and enjoy this week’s latest - curated by yours truly! If you like what you see, don’t forget to share and subscribe, your support means a lot to us.
🎬 Last week Nintendo held a surprise Indie World Showcase, wrapping up a year full of indie goodness with even more exciting reveals and announcements including River City Girls 2, Sea of Stars, and Loco Motive.
⛔ Even more blowbacks this week as STALKER’s devs GSC Game World plan to introduce NFT in the sequel backfired with the community. Just like Ubisoft last week, they acted fast and announced a cancellation right after. The highly anticipated Star Wars: Eclipse is also being boycotted via a #BlackOutStarWarsEclipse hashtag due to Quantic Dreams’ history of accusations revolving around sexism, racism, and homophobia.
🤝 More acquisitions this week: Tencent has just acquired Back 4 Blood developers, Turtle Rock Studios, who will retain their independent operations. Embracer Group has once again expanded their arsenal with an acquisition of French board game publisher Asmodee for $2.75B. Outriders’ creator People Can Fly has just acquired Incuvo to strengthen their VR offerings.
📊 Impressive numbers for wholesome indie titles this week: Spiritfarer has just passed their 1 millionth copy sold, and Unpacking reached 100k units sold only 10 days after release.
🏆 Another impressive milestone for Supergiant: Hades is now the first ever recipient of the Hugo Awards for Best Video Game. What a way to end an eventful year!
Seasonal events
🎄 Christmas is drawing near, and one of our favorite activities is exploring the festive events that various games have to offer. Here are some that got us pumped for the upcoming week 🎄
Rainbow Six Siege’s Snow Brawl lets you bring a snowball to a gunfight - get equipped with unlimited snowballs and brawl your way through to help your team capture the flag;
Overwatch’s Winter Wonderland marks the return of festive game modes including Yeti Hunt and Snowball Deathmatch, with lots of adorable new skins for your favorite heroes;
Apex Legends’ Raiders Collection Event brings back the fan-favorite mode, the Winter Express, plus a pirate-themed Raiders Collection Event to earn legendary skins.
Elder Scrolls Online’s New Life Festival is a jam packed event full of festive quests (and rewards to match!) to spread the holiday spirit in Tamriel;
Pokémon Unite’s Holiday Festivities introduces a Snowball battle in Shivre City that will transforms your pokémon into adorable little snowmen;
Rust’s Rustmas Event lets you blast your own tastefully designed fireworks to the whole server and earns festive rewards with a craftable Advent Calendar.
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We are The Iterative Collective - an indie games incubator & publisher! Each week, we shed light on the latest gaming trends for all folks interested in the scene by going through a summary of the latest news from the industry as well as promising upcoming game releases! Click to learn more about us below!