Hot Five: HoYoverse’s next game, Monster Hunter Now’s multiplayer mindset, and three years of Pokémon Unite

• All in one place… We’ve curated the biggest stories you need to know from the last seven days

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Start your week right with our quick take on the stories that are impacting the mobile industry right now.

To help get you primed and ready for another week in mobile gaming, we’ve curated the biggest stories you need to know from the last seven days.

1) HoYoverse’s next game Astaweave Haven among 105 Chinese approvals this July

HoYoverse has been granted a Chinese licence approval for its next new game, Astaweave Haven. While little is currently known about the title, the approval confirms the continuation of HoYoverse’s multiplatform trend with PC and mobile versions both approved for release.

Astaweave Haven is among 105 video games approved for Chinese licences this month, at a marginal incline from June’s 104 approvals and May’s 96. Altogether, 628 licences have been granted so far this year.

2) Monster Hunter Now’s Dimensional Links show a conscious effort to include rural players

Niantic’s Monster Hunter Now has introduced a new multiplayer feature called Dimensional Links, in a huge win for rural players that’s designed to boost multiplayer accessibility. Through this feature, random monsters are linked to other players’ spawns around the world and provided those monsters match, can be hunted together.

This brings more opportunities for online play as opposed to local, with vague spawn rates of “above 1% and below 100%” creating an air of mystery around the new feature.

3) Pokémon Unite catches $83 million on mobile as it celebrates first three years

The Pokémon Company’s MOBA Pokémon Unite has generated $82.7 million in gross mobile revenue ($57.9 million net) as the game celebrates its third anniversary, according to AppMagic estimates.

The US market has spent the most in-game at 29% of total mobile revenue, followed by Japan at 25% and South Korea at 7%. But there are still two months to play for before the mobile version technically hits three years old.

4) Early-stage VC games funding hits 12-month high but growth and later stage investments still “very depressed”

Early-stage funding from VCs hit a 12-month high of $492 million during Q2 2024, according to Konvoy Ventures’ new report, but that wasn’t enough to pull the industry out of an investment slump.

In fact, this was the lowest level of VC investment in games since Q4 2023, and Q2 2020 prior to that.

5) Roblox claims to be “overwhelmingly positive experience” despite over 13,000 child exploitation incidents in 2023

Roblox reported 13,316 incidents of child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2023, but claims that its platform is an “overwhelmingly positive experience”.

The company stated that new strategies are implemented regularly to improve its moderation systems and that internal metrics are continuously measured by humans and AI. Of the total reports made to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children last year, Roblox’s comprised less than 0.04%.