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With great excitement I am pleased to announce, that after weeks of hard work we are officially partnered with…Epoxy! Epoxy is an outlet which offers fantastic social engagement tools and offers the best quality help which will allow you to engage and entertain fans across all social media outlets. Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube, promoting your content has never been more important, and the use of these outlets is even more important in doing that. Epoxy will be there to help you analyse and engage as if all of your social media outlets were one! With Epoxy, you can: ● Control all social media from one place ● Share to Facebook and Twitter with the click of a button ● Create 15 second trailers of your YouTube videos for your loyal Instagram followers and snappy 6 second videos for Vine to grab some attention ●Find new fans and engage with old ones! ● Refine your audiences based on favorites, retweets, reach, and more ● Discover the buzz around your videos Epoxy’s subscription starts at $19.99/month—but YOU GET IT FOR FREE AS A RITUAL PARTNER. SIGN UP VIA YOUR RITUAL DASHBOARD ACCOUNT HERE - Visit the 'APPS' section

EA’s conference started with a bubbly presenter laying out the plans for the conference. But you’re here for the games. TITANFALL 2: The game presented its crystal clear graphics which aims to deliver a robust experience. The game has 6 unique Titan’s with depth and a deep progression system. One of the biggest shocks of the conference is the announcement of a Single Player mode, which the first installment was lacking. We were presented with a breath-taking array of visuals in a single player trailer which highlighted the relationship between Titan and Pilot. The game will be released on XboxOne, PS4 and PC. The game is set for release October 28th 2016. MADDEN 2017: Nothing much to say about this game. It has beautiful graphics as expected. Madden will feature balanced game play, new Franchise modes, and up to date commentary teams. The game aims to take competition to the next level. This game was presented with EA sponsored gaming events. There are three stages which allow most gamers to engage in pro tournaments from their homes. MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA: How far will we go? In the game you are part of an expedition helping humanity find a new home. You travel millions of miles into the Andromeda. This is a galaxy where you are the alien. They’re building on the amazing stories and game play, and now they’re allowing their imagination to run wild, with a new cast of memorable characters. The game runs on the new Frostbite engine. The concept art and models shown during the conference is among some of the most beautiful ever seen. The animations and face capture really seem to push gaming to its limits. They’ve created a Universe we will lose ourselves in. FE: A personal narrative about a relationship with nature. It’s a story about how the world is connected, but constantly under thread. You play as a young cub, with no knowledge of your life, where you came from, or who you are. There is a language of strange and beautiful music, each unique to a song sung by each creature and plant. Each song will open up new parts of the forest. Every step helps you discover who you are. The enemy is “the silence”. Grotesque creatures who want to destroy all life. The game sets the stage, but sets you out on your experience. Your discoveries are your own. The game is one of the most unique IP’s I have ever seen. This game represents the true magic of gaming. It has been created by a Swedish studio called Zoink who are supported by the EA Originals program.

The long awaited sequel to the highly acclaimed Civilization 5 has been revealed today! You can watch the reveal trailer here RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 21, 2016 Sid Meier’s Civilization VI is the next entry in the award-winning Civilization franchise, which has sold in nearly 33 million units worldwide, including more than 8 million units of Civilization V. Originally created by legendary game designer Sid Meier, Civilization is a turn-based strategy game in which you attempt to build an empire to stand the test of time. Become Ruler of the World by establishing and leading a civilization from the Stone Age to the Information Age. Wage war, conduct diplomacy, advance your culture, and go head-to-head with history’s greatest leaders as you attempt to build the greatest civilization the world has ever known. Civilization VI offers new ways to engage with your world: cities now physically expand across the map, active research in technology and culture unlocks new potential, and competing leaders will pursue their own agendas based on their historical traits as you race for one of five ways to achieve victory in the game. FEATURES EXPANSIVE EMPIRES: See the marvels of your empire spread across the map like never before. Each city spans multiple tiles so you can custom build your cities to take full advantage of the local terrain. ACTIVE RESEARCH: Unlock boosts that speed your civilization’s progress through history. To advance more quickly, use your units to actively explore, develop your environment, and discover new cultures. DYNAMIC DIPLOMACY: Interactions with other civilizations change over the course of the game, from primitive first interactions where conflict is a fact of life, to late game alliances and negotiations. COMBINED ARMS: Expanding on the “one unit per tile” design, support units can now be embedded with other units, like anti-tank support with infantry, or a warrior with settlers. Similar units can also be combined to form powerful “Corps” units. ENHANCED MULTIPLAYER: In addition to traditional multiplayer modes, cooperate and compete with your friends in a wide variety of situations all designed to be easily completed in a single session. A CIV FOR ALL PLAYERS: Civilization VI provides veteran players new ways to build and tune their civilization for the greatest chance of success. New tutorial systems introduce new players to the underlying concepts so they can easily get started.

Phil Spencer of Microsoft has confirmed that Microsoft games will be coming to Steam once again. This comes in partnership with the new Microsoft “ Play Anywhere” scheme which involves buying a game once and being able to play cross platform. The app stores on windows computers have proven to not be the most popular platforms for buying and playing games. Most gamers are often confused as to where to get games from, as the Microsoft app store isn’t a very intuitive place to find a game and just expect releases to appear on Steam, or perhaps Origin. Phil Spencer talked about this in detail; "I look at Steam today, it's on an incredible growth trajectory. It's a massive force in gaming; a positive force. I think it will be bigger a year from now than it is today. And five years later it will still be bigger again," Outlined Spencer. "I look at Valve as an important independent software vendor for us on Windows. They are a critical part of gaming's success on Windows. I don't think Valve's hurt by not having our first-party games in their store right now. They're doing incredibly well. We will ship games on Steam again." He discussed how the Microsoft stores haven’t been as successful as they would have hoped. However, they hope to work on the popularity of their store and don’t promise all games to be released on steam. He said “I think they're doing fine without Quantum Break in their store,”. You could expect the big games such as Halo and Gears to appear on Steam, as it would make sense from a business point of view to get their biggest games on the biggest platforms where they would gain the most popularity and exposure, and in turn, sales. Are you pleased about Microsoft games coming to Steam? What previous Microsoft Studios games would you like to see?

This week has seen some fantastic advancements in gaming. Here's our top 3 picks of the week. 1. Pokemon GO has finally been released in select countries to critical praise! In the mobile game you can become a real life Pokemon trainer. The app sees Pokemon tied to regions, meaning you will have to get up and explore to catch em all! The pokemon can be found in thousand of unique real world locations, but don't worry! The Dev team have promised you won't find any rare Pokemon inside a volcano or in the middle of a busy road. 2. Red Dead Redemption has been opened up for backward compatibility play. Red Dead is a fan fave and was one of the most requested games to be brought back along with early call of duty games and Skyrim. The game is available to download and some of the critically acclaimed expansions are free of charge. 3. The eagerly anticipated and often delayed No Man's Sky has finally and officially been completed by Hello Games. The game takes place inside an entire procedurally generated Universe, allowing you to explore literally trillions of planets and leave your own mark for every other player to explore alongside with you. If you discover a planet, you get to name it. The game will launch for PC and PS4 in August. We all hope the delays were worth it. We'll see you all next week!

As we theorised last week with the leak, it's official, INFINITE WARFARE IS THE NEXT CALL OF DUTY INSTALMENT. The trailer has JUST dropped and the game looks incredible. The trailer was smashed onto YouTube via the official Call of Duty page The day of release is the 4th of November. The game is being developed by one of our all time favourites, Infinity Ward, who created the original games as well as Ghosts. A lot of people are going to be divided about the shown Single Player gameplay, but we think the space battles and general mechanics look AWESOME! The graphics are also pretty sweet. CEO of Activision stated - "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is a bold, new vision from the studio that created the original Call of Duty and Modern Warfare, and an adventure on an insanely epic scale that only Call of Duty could deliver. And Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered is one of the most beloved games of all-time, reborn for a new generation." This gives us a glaring hope for the next Call of Duty and we hope it can do what the previous CoD's missed.

It has been reported that YouTube are working on a paid subscription service (Something similar to HBO) where customers can pay monthly to have cable TV channels streamed directly to them. This means our predictions of YouTube taking over normal household TV's might soon become a reality as Online streaming is much cheaper than regular cable. The project which will be undertaken by YouTube is rumored to start as early as 2017 (Next year!) YouTube have rumored partnerships with all the major media companies, such as everyone under the Comcast umbrella (NBC, Viacom, Fox, and CBS) but the contracts are yet to be finalized. YouTube already has a premium payment service known as YouTube Red which allows viewers to watch without advertisements, but this new feature will bring the most popular and current TV shows to your PC or Laptop seamlessly. Who else is excited?

Battlefield 1 has just been announced for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. The game takes place within a divergent timeline of WW1, involving automatic and bolt weapons, clavary combat, tank combat, air combat, and special combat which we all love and crave for! The reveal trailer was completely mind-blowing and shows how a game doesn't have to be futuristic to be good! You can watch the still love steam here; https://www.twitch.tv/battlefield Stay tuned for more news and highlights.

Sponsored content is a hugely attractive option for advertisers looking to communicate their industry expertise through the means of influencers. By telling your brand’s story through a creator, brands are able to stand out and receive additional benefits that traditional advertising does not offer. Through the various means of connecting with your consumer through the voice of an influencer, you are more likely to achieve a higher performance and have a stronger voice in the online conversation while also delivering high quality content. The main issue with branded/sponsored content is that sometimes it is all to obvious and does not give the authenticity needed to reflect the brand in a positive light. When it is blatantly obvious that creators are promoting a product, consumers don’t want to engage with these types of posts because they recognize they are seeing an ad. Sponsored content can still be massively beneficial for advertisers and creators, if it is done in the right way. Consumers follow certain influencers because they feel like they have a personal connection with them and when you are showcasing a brand, this authenticity should still follow. Following studies, it turns out that sponsored content has just as much engagement as normal content on an influencers channel if it is done in the correct way. Here are a few tips to help you out next time you are representing a brand. Make The Product Placement Fit Into Your Style. There is nothing worse than scrolling through the feed of one of your favourite creators, watching their awesome videos, for you to then come across a video blatantly endorsing a particular brand and showcasing all of their products. While it may seem like a good idea to heavily feature the product, this is highly unnatural. You want to remain authentic at all times and remain true to yourself and the types of videos you upload. When showcasing products do it in a way that reflects you and your own brand. Tell A Story You should aim to create a story about the brand, product or service that you are helping to promote. Let your followers know about your experiences with the product or service, instead of directly telling them about the benefits they provide. Don't change your usual video format, you want your audience to feel like it's a normal video as that way they will watch until the end. Honesty Is Key! You always want to be open and honest with your audience - They trust you! Let your audience know about the kind of sponsorship you are delivering and ask them for their views on it. The more open you are with your audience, the more likely they are to engage with sponsored videos and they will react in a more positive way. Summary; Create open, honest and natural branded content for the best results. If the branded content you're creating is similar to your normal content you will keep your audience happy and engaged while also delivering the best results for the brand. Get Inspired To keep up with all things #InfluencerMarketing, including tips, tricks and interesting articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to start crafting your influencer campaigns. You can also join our world leading FREE academy where you will receive industry leading training and material on everything influencer marketing. Influencer discovery can be a long and tiring process if you have to manually search for the right talent. You can use a company like us to help you with the correct software to find the right talent and ensure your campaign goals are achieved.

Ritual Network, a certified YouTube Partner is already a leading MCN and has a well established and fast growing partner base. Ritual Network partners have approximately 75 million video views a month across all video platforms and they're celebrating 300% growth for the third consecutive month. The company's focus is on offering exciting tools which are specifically tailored for their content creators. This enables Ritual Network to attract a core demographic, and it has already delivered successful campaigns for popular brands in various verticals. Their content creators cover various verticals from music, sport, tech, fashion, beauty, gaming, vlogs and podcasts. Ritual Network's large partner base shows the fantastic job they have done, "we look forward to helping our partners accelerate their development even further. We have a proven track record of offering tools that video content creators love to use, combined with the ability to support successful influencer marketing campaigns and protect and monetize the creators assets" said Lewis Walker, Chief Executive Officer of Ritual Network. "Together with our partners we offer viewers a better and more varied entertainment experience than ever before, and I look forward to new creators joining us and working together with them on expanding their audience and revenue. The future stars of TV are made on YouTube." About Ritual Network Ritual Network is a company that specializes in helping content creators to earn revenue through advertising and brand deals. The company works with many different content creators on various platforms from YouTube to Facebook and offer content creators paid brand deals, and other revenue streams away from content creation, such as merchandising. Since launching in September 2014 the company has had over 10,000 content creators sign up to their service. For Media Contact: Thorsten Schauer Ritual Network Ltd Chancery Lane DN17 4HN United Kingdom Phone: 0044 (0)7841 534737 Email: thorsten@ritualnetwork.com Website: http://www.ritualnetwork.com

It has come to light that many of the top YouTuber's have been reviewing and promoting games on behalf of Warner Bros, and are being paid huge sums of cash to do so. Warner Bros have just battled against a suit which saw them charged with hiding sponsorship payments. The studio and big business are now banned from anything but full disclosure, as to not mislead viewers and potential consumers. "Consumers have the right to know if reviewers are providing their own opinions or paid sales pitches," said Jessica Rich from the FTC. "Companies like Warner Bros need to be straight with consumers in their online ad campaigns." Warner Bros spent tens of thousands of dollars on individually YouTuber's to promote its popular and well received game Shadow or Mordor. Involved in this were clear instructions on how to promote and essentially sell the game. How do you feel about the situation? Should there be full disclosure on all sponsorship's? Let us know.

Many of us are familiar with the "trolls" who tend to go around spamming and abusing the copyright claim system. People have had their worries about the system, as anyone can put in a copyright claim. Often these claims are never properly looked into and investigated and the channel loses all rights to the video immediately, with no chance to gain AdSense from the efforts and tend to sometimes lose the video all together. This system has been abused from day 1 and it seems like it took some of the biggest channels to be target for YouTube to take any action, whereas small channels have been suffering from this style of internet trolling or grief for years. A member of YouTube’s policy team released the following statement: "Recently, there's been a lot of discussion about the enforcement of our policies, from video takedowns to channel demonetization. We want you to know that we monitor video takedowns very closely, and while we haven't seen a big change in the overall rate of removals, it's true that we do make mistakes. For this, we're sorry and we strive to do better by you, our community,". "The good news is that the feedback you've raised in comments and videos on YouTube and beyond is having an impact. It's caused us to look closely at our policies and helped us identify areas where we can get better. It's led us to create a team dedicated to minimizing mistakes and improving the quality of our actions. And it's encouraged us to roll out some initiatives in the coming months that will help strengthen communications between creators and YouTube support. We'll also make improvements to increase transparency into the status of monetization claims. And of course, as we work to implement these improvements as quickly as we can, we'll continue to take your feedback seriously." A copyright claim can be filed by anybody. But it seems we may see progress with a policy team closely investigating new matters of copyright claims. Hopefully we will see reforms in the future which protect people from Trolls but also enforce the Copyright standards efficiently. YouTube policy teams have also promised more changes in the coming months.