GameSquare Holdings Inc.

Today, we announce the formation of FaZe Media, a creator-led IP and media company, backed by $11 Million investment from Matt Kalish. This new company combines the FaZe Clan creator talent roster and non-esports assets into a creator-led IP and internet media company under the leadership of CEO FaZe Banks, an original FaZe Clan founder. FaZe Media is a new, operating subsidiary of GameSquare with the Company owning 51% of FaZe Media and Kalish owning the remaining 49%. FaZe Media will focus on developing a creator-led internet media company. FaZe Banks is the CEO of FaZe Media, with Kalish and GameSquare CEO Justin Kenna serving on the board and in governance roles. GameSquare will continue to own 100% of the esports competition assets under FaZe Esports. Full Story: https://hubs.ly/Q02xnrgn0

Our analytics and business intelligence platform, Stream Hatchet, has released its 2024 Q1 Live-Streaming Report. Download for FREE in the link below! Key takeaways from the report include: 1) Live-streaming viewership is up 10% from Q1 2023 to 8.2 billion hours watched, indicating a resurgence in the industry since the post-pandemic dip. Most notably, the hours of Live-Streaming watched since the 2019 first quarter is up 128%. 2) 7 of the top 10 games grew in hours watched this quarter with an average growth of 31%. 3) While many of the smaller platforms in the market are losing viewership, big players like Twitch, and YouTube Gaming continue to grow. Steam was a breakout star in Q1, doubling its hours watched. New South Korean platform, Chzzk, helped AfreecaTV to overtake Twitch's influence in the country. 4) Palword was the top Q1 game launch by a mile - with 95 million hours watched in its first 30 days, it outperformed mega-popular Hohwarts Legacy (Q1 2023's big star) by 25 million hours watched. Download the free report here: https://hubs.ly/Q02w9hgq0

We are proud to announce another Level Unlocked campaign from our team at ZONED and their partner, Dairy MAX Inc., to launch the UEFN World Building Map in Fortnite's Farm Tycoon. The Farm Tycoon experience allows players to step into the shoes of a dairy farmer, building and managing their own farm for success. From claiming plots to upgrading infrastructure, players will engage in activities that simulate real-world farm operations. Through strategic gameplay, they will earn in-game currency and experience points to enhance their farm's productivity. A big thank you also goes to our team at Moonlight Studios and our partners at Alliance Studios for bringing another great campaign to life. Full story: https://hubs.ly/Q02vBtQ80

We're thrilled to announce the promotion of Carlos Tovar to the leadership position of President at Zoned Gaming - GameSquare's marketing agency dedicated to bridging the gap between gaming and pop-culture! Formerly the Managing Director at Zoned, Carlos has been a driving force behind many of our recent successes. He has played a pivotal role in leading several groundbreaking GameSquare campaigns, with clients like Converse, Jack in the Box, and Epic Games. Most notably is his spearheading of the launch of Moonlight Studios, our rapidly expanding World Building marketing business where we have recently partnered with Mastercard and Samsung, amongst other leading global brands. Carlos brings invaluable experience to his new position, with a rich background that includes Wieden + Kennedy, Envy Gaming (now Optic), along with running socials for multiple NBA and NFL athletes through his own company. With his visionary leadership and proven track record, we're excited to see the innovative directions he will steer Zoned towards in the coming years!

Our CEO, Justin Kenna, recently joined Ryan Dhillon on The Market Online from The Capital Compass, offering updates and background around Gamesquare's recent wins and milestones. Highlighting pivotal developments such as the FaZe Clan acquisition and the introduction of Moonlight, our new world-building offering, Justin tells the story of GameSquare's path from an emerging influencer agency to an industry-leading, NASDAQ-listed entity, driving growth for brands and publishers in the video game industry. Watch the whole interview: https://hubs.ly/Q02rWHRh0

With the support of GameSquare, Sogeti and Intel Corporation partnered this year to bring the 2024 Sogeti Global Gaming Hackathon to life. The Hackathon emerged as an innovative event for Sogeti, challenging the brightest tech minds to push the boundaries of AI in gaming. The hackathon provided a platform for Sogeti teams to explore and expand the possibilities of gaming technology, emphasizing creativity, and practical implementation. The teams had a choice of three challenges to create game-changing solutions that could redefine gaming experiences, whilst leveraging Intel’s advanced AI toolkits. The themes were: harnessing AI's potential to innovate the gaming industry, enhance player engagement & experiences through building communities, and supporting game studios and developers with AI. Intel provided entrants with two pivotal AI-based tools: the Intel® AI Game Dev Toolkit and Intel® Xe Super Sampling (XeSS), each offering distinct advantages and new avenues for gaming development. The Intel® AI Game Dev Toolkit served as a cornerstone for participants, equipping them with a resource of AI-driven capabilities. With its powerful object detection and immersive world creation features, this toolkit allowed developers to push the envelope of real-time game-object style transfer visualizations and game-enhancement variations. At its core, the Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit’s inference engine supercharged the performance for machine-learning gaming workloads, ensuring AI tasks could efficiently run on Intel’s CPUs, GPUs, and VPUs. In addition, Intel® Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) offered a leap forward in gaming performance optimization. By rendering frames at a lower resolution and then intelligently upscaling them to a higher resolution, XeSS enhances the gaming experience, especially in GPU-intensive tasks like ray tracing and ultra-high-resolution gaming. Intel's AI-based algorithm reconstructs high-quality images that surpass traditional spatial solutions in handling motion, by sampling across multiple frames and analyzing depth, motion, color, and lighting, thus, elevating the visual fidelity of games. The judging panel, invited to score the entrants' presentations, included many figureheads from the gaming industry, such as the world-renowned Twitch streamer (+163k Followers) Perrikaryal, known for integrating EEG technology with gaming. Click the following link to learn more about the ideas and the winning teams: https://hubs.ly/Q02r3jsM0 #LifeAtSogeti #GamingHackathon2024 #BecomeYourBest #ItStartsWithIntel

Last week, Stream Hatchet announced the launch of its AI-powered news platform. Stream Hatchet's website now provides users with a unique, timely and informed perspective on industry trends by analyzing billions of data points daily from Stream Hatchet's business intelligence software to recommend the most important news. Full story: https://hubs.ly/Q02q25nj0

Join us today at 1pm ET for Stream Hatchet's first webinar of 2024. Hosted by Stream Hatchet CRO, Jake Phillips 🔜 GDC, the discussions will revolve around the state of video game live streaming, esports, and creator marketing. Don't miss out on this opportunity to stay ahead of the curve and engage in insightful discussions with industry experts. For more details: https://lnkd.in/gYKgFRXU #webinar #gamingtrends #livestreaming #creatormarketing #esports

The first live discussion about today's FaZe Clan news will happen at #sxsw. Jennifer Maas from Variety will interview our CEO, Justin Kenna, about the deal and building a next gen media company. If you're heading to SXSW, this will be a session you will not want to miss.  #sxsw2024 #gamingnews #gamingindustry

Today, we start a new era for our company. We welcome FaZe Clan, one of the world's most prominent and influential gaming brands, to GameSquare. As a combined company, GameSquare has become one of the largest gaming and esports organizations in the world based on our audience reach of one billion. In addition, we are focused on revolutionizing the way brands and game publishers connect with hard-to-reach Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and Millennial audiences through our purpose-built next generation media platform that includes award winning marketing and creative services, data and analytics solutions, and now Faze Clan. Full announcement: https://lnkd.in/dPAS9UaN