This Week In The Business: Always Bet On Black (Ops) 

4 million — Number of digital copies Red Dead Redemption 2 sold worldwide in its first week of release, according to Superdata. It came in second for the month, behind Call of Duty: Black Ops 4‘s digital sales of 4.2 million.

STAT | 73 per cent — Year-over-year increase in US gaming sales for October, according to the NPD Group. The $US1.5 ($2) billion total was a new record for the month, greatly boosted by Red Dead Redemption 2 and Activision’s decision to move Call of Duty up from its traditional November launch.

QUOTE | “I just want someone to look at the game… good or bad, I’d rather have bad reviews than no reviews.” — Conker’s Bad Fur Day project leader discusses the struggles to get press coverage for The Unlikely Legend of Rusty Pup, which launched the week before Red Dead Redemption 2.

QUOTE | “I don’t get no money. That’s what y’all are thinking, right? Somebody got paid? No. No. I did not. Somebody stole that shit, and it’s not mine any more.” — Scrubs actor Donald Faison isn’t happy about Fortnite turning a dance he did on the show into an emote without credit or compensation.

QUOTE | “I’m not talking about going crazy, ramping up to these huge triple-A projects, that’s not what we’re trying to do. But we want to step it up a bit because there’s this uncanny valley between the double-A and the triple-A.” — inXile Entertainment founder Brian Fargo says the company’s recent sale to Microsoft will let it not just keep up with the escalating cost of AA development, but push it higher.

QUOTE | “We’ve not in anyway, in the survey, referred to [loot boxes] as exposure to gambling.” — A UK Gambling Commission spokeswoman clarifies the group’s stance after a survey question in a report released this week led to headlines the commission felt mischaracterised its position.

QUOTE | “While there’s no industry standard for subtitles, the studio and Activision care about the fans’ experience especially with respect to accessibility for people with different abilities, and will evaluate going forward.” — An Activision spokesperson explains why the newly released Spyro Reignited Collection shipped without subtitle options.

QUOTE | “In our DNA, it must have burned something that’s going to play out in how we think about things, but not as overtly or directly as you might think.” — Kevin Shrapnell, senior development director on 2013’s always-online SimCity, talks about how that game’s troubles prepared him and his co-founders at Magic Fuel Games for free-to-play mobile development.

QUOTE | “Ubisoft had very high standards in terms of what they wanted on the Switch platform. Basically the mandate for us was, ‘We need parity between all three consoles’.” — Virtuos senior technical director Jonathan Boldiga talks about the “extremely technically challenging” task of bringing Starlink to the Switch.

STAT | 50 per cent — Percentage of the H1Z1 Pro League’s inaugural season that was completed before the entire league folded.

QUOTE | “We found that people have very strong feelings about how to unpack things and how a house should be laid out.” — Witch Beam developer Wren Brier talks about a problem discovered in playtesting for the studio’s Unpacking, a PC puzzle game exploring the zen-like qualities of unpacking things.