TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Adobe acquires Facebook's VR sculpting tool Medium; Epic Game Store enables third-parties to offer in-game purchases; Bethesda puts The Elder Scrolls Legends development on hold.

Adobe acquires Facebook's VR sculpting tool Medium

Creative software provider Adobe has acquired the VR sculpting tool Medium from Facebook for an undisclosed sum.

Launched by the social media giant in December 2016, the art tool previously let users of VR systems paint, sculpt and model 3D forms from within a virtual environment. The Oculus-focused technology has been employed across a spectrum of amateur and professional users, seeing use in big-budget video games, concept work by film makers, artful VR projects, VFX  services and more.

"This is an important milestone for the entire VR community as it demonstrates VR’s maturation and value in the realms of productivity and non-gaming use cases," read an Oculus statement on the acquisition. "We look forward to Medium’s continued evolution in the years to come as Adobe works to advance the field of 3D modelling."

According to a tweet by Substance - another creative toolset acquired by Adobe - Medium staffers will join Adobe as part of the acquisition.

Several members of the Medium team are moving to Adobe. They will be part of the broader 3D&I team, which is led by Sebastien Deguy, former CEO of Allegorithmic and Adobe VP of 3D&I.

— Adobe Substance 3D (@Substance3D) December 6, 2019

The move may see Medium's role as a professional creative tool bolstered, in line with the audience that makes up a significant part of the Adobe user-base. Of course, tools like Photoshop  are also popular with consumers, meaning Medium may equally continue to serve that audience.

Epic Game Store enables third-party in-game purchasing

Epic Game Store will now let third-party developers and publishers implement or harness their own choice of payment platform when offering in-game purchasing on games made available through the store.

Epic - the veteran developer, game tech, publishing and distribution company behind Fortnite - will still offer its own payment platform. However, developers who chose to go with their own or another alternative option will not have to share revenue with Epic on those purchases made in-game.

“We support developers’ right to choose among the best stores, in-app payment processors, online services, and engines, and to mix and match these components as they wish,” said Tim Sweeney, Epic's co-founder and CEO. “In addition to the generous 88/12% revenue share, we’re excited to offer developers and publishers more options that allow them to keep more of what they earn, so that they can continue to invest in making bigger, better games.”

Bethesda puts The Elder Scrolls Legends development on hold

Bethesda has placed all new content development for its free-to-play card game The Elder Scrolls Legends on hold.

As announced over Reddit, the game will still be available to download and play in both online and single-player modes. Equally, the Asia-specific version of the game - which runs as a separate production - will be unaffected by the news.

"We will also continue to support the game with monthly reward cards and regular in-game events," read the statement from Bethesda. "New expansions and other future content, however, are no longer under active development. We will continue to provide ongoing maintenance support.

"To thank you all for supporting Legends these past few years, and for continuing to play with us, we are giving away The Tamriel Collection – an assortment of new, three-attribute cards and more – to all players for free upon their next login. We are immensely grateful to work on The Elder Scrolls: Legends, to have you as a community, and we sincerely appreciate the love and support you’ve given us."

While the game has not enjoyed the phenomenal success of Hearthstone - the free-to-pay card game that made the genre mainstream - Legends had enjoyed a bounty of praise from players and critics. Many of those observers were keen to state the game is much more than anything like a simple Hearthstone clone.

It was expected that the game would see additional content this year. The fate of the unreleased PS4, Xbox One and Switch versions is now unclear.