Attend GDC for a postmortem look at the making of Candy Crush Friends Saga! Come to GDC 2019 in March to get a postmortem look at the game design, art vision, and strategy behind the making of the new Candy Crush game, as well as the goals and challenges of expanding the world of this successful IP.

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  Q&A;: The appeal of building a natural world in Equilinox Equilinox dev Karl Wimble put a deep love for the nurturing, calming power of nature into this sandbox title, using his own happy experiences with plants to create a more relaxed game.

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  Video Game Deep Cuts: The Best Of The Best Of The Year This week's highlights include a multitude of 'best of' lists of the top games of the year - from video through group round-ups to individual highlights.

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  Discord raises another $150M after opening its own games store The folks Discord snuck in here today at the end of 2018 to announce they've raised $150 million in another round of funding led by Greenoaks Capital. 

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Video: How Valve uses biofeedback to make better games Valve's Mike Ambinder explores how the company is making use of biofeedback to both explore new avenues of gameplay and improve in-house playtesting processes.

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5 100 support staff take cash offer and voluntarily leave Blizzard Over 100 staff at Blizzard Entertainment's Cork office in Ireland, which houses the company's main European customer service operation, will be leaving by the end of 2018.

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1 G2A's payment service is charging users for inactivity G2A Pay is charging a recurring service fee for members who are inactive for over 180 days, justifying the charge because it costs money to upkeep their services.

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  Weekly Jobs Roundup: Ubiquity6, Skydance, and more are hiring now! Here are just some of the many, many positions in art, programming, and more being advertised right now on the Gamasutra Job Board!

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  Darksiders III introduces new 'classic' combat mode Gunfire Games, developer behind Darksiders III, put out a patch yesterday which allows players to switch to a new "classic" combat mode.

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  Slack cites US sanctions as it rolls out mass account deactivations Slack, a popular team-based communication tool in tech spaces, has issued a wave of sudden bans to users and servers it says have ties to countries sanctioned by the United States.

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  Best of 2018: Devs weigh in on the best ways to write and design characters Game devs Chris Avellone, Obsidian's Carrie Patel, and Guerrilla's Dan Calvert chat with Gamasutra about how they and their teams write and design characters -- from start to finish.

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  Magic Leap will share cutting-edge spatial audio techniques at GDC 2019! Attend GDC in March and get the inside scoop on spatial audio techniques, designing for a wearable experience, and more from the talented folks at augmented reality headset maker Magic Leap!

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  Gamasutra's Best of 2018: Kris Graft's top 7 games From mechs to dinos to a derelict ship, Gamasutra editor-in-chief Kris Graft lays out his top games of 2018.

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4 China is once again issuing game licenses after a months-long freeze Chinese regulators are once again reviewing games submitted for license consideration in China, putting an end to the licensing freeze that had halted game approvals for the bulk of 2018.

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  Thatgamecompany will deconstruct Sky's emotional storytelling at GDC Using examples from Sky, a game of "connection & altruism", thatgamecompany's Jennie Kong will present the studio's unique re-iterative method to finding emotional engines for story/player narrative.

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  Zynga to acquire Empires & Puzzles dev Small Giant for initial $560M "We've been impressed by the quality and momentum of Empires & Puzzles as we add another forever franchise into Zynga's portfolio."

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  Gris has turned a profit after one week on sale The title launched on December 13 for Switch, Windows and Mac, and has been met with largely positive reviews.

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  Blog: 5 signs you're compromising your approach to QA Does the game you're working on have that general buggy feeling, or does it already ooze quality? Read on for the signs that show you're compromising your approach to QA.

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  Marvel Avengers Academy shutting down at the end of 2018 An in-game announcement has revealed Marvel Avengers Academy is being shut down by developer TinyCo at the end of 2018.

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3 Developing the stylish indie hit fighting game Lethal League Blaze Indie success story and gonzo projectile beatdown sensation Lethal League recently got a sequel in Lethal League Blaze. We talk to developer Team Reptile about this strikingly unique fighter.

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  Video: How some early MUDs compare to today's games Richard Bartle, co-creator of MUD, explains the concept behind its original design and corrects some of the misconceptions about what it must have been like to play.

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  Gamasutra's Best of 2018: Emma Kidwell's top 5 games Here are the 5 games (yes, only 5) I played in 2018 that were actually released this year and not from either 1998 or 2016.

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  Niantic launches $1M AR game dev contest Niantic announced its Beyond Reality Developer Contest earlier today and is encouraging AR devs to enter to create a game using the studio's Real World Platform for a chance at a prize pool of $1M.

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  Child advocates call for FTC investigation over inappropriate Google Play games The complaint alleges that many of the apps in Google Play's Family section are advertised as safe for children despite the inappropriate advertising and content found within several games.

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  FBI removes top offending 'DDoS for-hire' sites The FBI announced earlier today that it took action against 15 domains that reportedly helped take down other people’s websites, game servers and other online services through DDoS attacks.

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