GamesBeat weekly roundup: Hearthstone’s big changes, and Pokémon Go gets more monsters

So long, Kraken.

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Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, we got to go inside Valve, PewDiePie causes controversy, and we went hands-on with Halo Wars 2.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

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Pieces of flair and opinion

• The DeanBeat: The esports scene keeps gaining momentum

• Hearthstone’s big changes soothe players worries while padding Blizzard’s wallet

• Nexon’s Owen Mahoney will tell how to craft a culture of inspiration at GamesBeat Summit

• Overwatch with a GoldenEye 64 skin looks crazy fun

• How Valve is taking a Nintendo-like approach to virtual reality

• Is E3 2017 opening to the public a good idea? GamesBeat Decides

• How to play Nintendo 3DS games on an Xbox One

• Where in the world are the game jobs?

• PewDiePie’s anti-Semitic jokes show the peril of backing unpredictable influencers

• Vivid Helix launches Semispheres 2D puzzle game on PS4 and Steam

• Inside the home of top-ranked Dota 2 esports team Evil Geniuses

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Crash Bandicoot is back.

Above: Crash Bandicoot is back.

Image Credit: Activision

News

• Ark: Survival Evolved hits 1 million copies sold on PS4; 7 million on all platforms

• NPD: Nintendo’s NES Classic was January’s third best-selling console

• January 2017 NPD: Resident Evil 7 offsets slumping hardware sales

• Check out Nintendo Switch’s interface in this leaked video

• Electronic Arts now offers annual membership to Origin Access for $30

• Crash Bandicoot remaster trilogy launches in June with a jorts problem

• Hearthstone’s Year of the Mammoth: Classic cards going to Wild, and no more Adventures

• 49ers, NBA’s Jeremy Lin part of $15 million Series A for Plays.tv and its game-recording service

• Former Marvel CEO Peter Cuneo named chairman of VR startup Uncorporeal

• Game trade group ESA takes a shot at Trump’s ‘reckless’ immigration policy

• Grand Theft Auto luminary Leslie ‘The Benz’ Benzies drives investment in Krotos audio tech

• YouPorn’s Team YP esports squad is back — and hitting Overwatch

• Unreal Engine gets native Nintendo Switch support

• Twitch viewers watched 292 billion minutes of livestreams in 2016

• Ex-Sony Online chief John Smedley starts Amazon game studio after Kickstarter failure

• Let It Die slashes its way past 2 million downloads on PlayStation 4

• Everest VR now represents the most epic mountain climb on Oculus Rift

• Apocalypse Now game Kickstarter canceled as fundraising shifts to website

• Hearthstone targets fast metagame by weakening Shaman and pirate decks

• The U.S. game industry has 2,457 companies supporting 220,000 jobs

• Newzoo: Esports will generate $696 million in revenues in 2017

• Humble Bundle hits goal to help ACLU, Doctors without Borders in less than 1 day

• Gabe Newell admits ‘childish’ Valve employees egg on Half-Life 3 rumors

• Magic Leap said to be ‘doing 1,000 things badly’ after raising $1.4 billion

• 8i raises $27 million round for augmented reality holograms

• Valve won’t manually curate Steam because it dominates PC gaming

• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive league Esports Championship Series announces third season

• Modop partners with talent agency to expand esports sponsorships

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild gets its own Game Developers Conference panel

• Razer updates 14-inch gamer laptop with new Intel CPU, faster memory

• Valve: Wireless high-end VR is a solved problem

• Valve boss Gabe Newell still thinks you should pay for game mods

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Pokémon Go isn't far from its first anniversary, and it's finally getting a new batch of non-egg pocket monsters.

Above: Pokémon Go isn’t far from its first anniversary, and it’s finally getting a new batch of non-egg pocket monsters.

Image Credit: Niantic

Mobile and social

• Storm8 lays off about 130 from its social mobile gaming studio

• Futurefly’s EatMessage app turns your face into a game controller

• Former Wooga developers launch mobile game studio in Berlin

• Supercell’s Clash Royale reaps $1 billion in its first year

• HTC is working on a new kind of mobile VR headset

• Clash Royale, Clash of Clans push Supercell to $2.3 billion in 2016 revenue

• Plarium makes match-3 mobile game with Fox’s Rio animated characters

• Pokémon Go gets 80 Gen 2 monsters from Gold and Silver in massive update

• AppsFlyer says retaining users is still a challenge for app marketers

• How Hatch aims to transform the way you play mobile games

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Previews, reviews, and interviews

• Hands-on with Halo Wars 2’s grueling Lights Out mission

• Hands-on with the Halo Wars 2 single-player campaign on Xbox One