The release of Phantom Blade Zero provides an opportunity not only to examine the impressive metrics of the new Chinese blockbuster but also to discuss the two decades leading up to this project. From RPG Maker, mobile platforms, investments from Tencent, financial discipline, and creative compromises.

WN Media Group announced the next WN C-Level Summit — an event for owners, founders, and top managers of gaming companies. This year, the summit will take place on December 10 in the capital of Georgia.

Indie studios should finance game development gradually, increasing expenditure as demand is confirmed. This is the opinion of Nicholas Lovell, the Product and Strategy Director at Britain’s Spilt Milk Studios, known for Trash Goblin.

The Chinese action RPG, Phantom Blade Zero, developed by the studio S-GAME, showcased one of the largest launches in Steam history. On its release day, October 29, the game reached a peak online count of 723,876 players. This achievement placed the game at 15th in the platform’s historical rankings.

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has released a study on illegal gambling in the country, questioning the notion that the use of unlicensed operators directly displaces activity from licensed companies.

Playgama has introduced the AI Game Index—a service that compares AI models and game development tools based on actual player behavior. Unlike traditional AI benchmarks that assess specific task performance, this index considers user engagement in published projects.

The shooter Gears of War: E-Day, released by Microsoft on October 6, sold over 400,000 copies on PC and Xbox. This was reported by The Verge journalist Tom Warren, citing his own source.

Xsolla announced the acquisition of the Italian platform GamePix, which is involved in the publishing and distribution of browser games.

Google has manually restricted the rankings in search results for several publications associated with Clickout Media.

The developers of the action-platformer Heart Abyss revealed that the publisher decided to keep an AI-generated image on the main page of the game in Steam, even though the team had an alternative drawn by an artist. The decision was due to advertising results: the AI art proved to be more clickable.

Valve acknowledges that the rise of generative AI has exacerbated the issue of game cloning on Steam. However, the company does not plan to combat this by banning specific tools or tightening publication rules.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has once again taken aim at Valve. This time, he claimed that the creators of Steam have been stifling the growth of the entire gaming industry for years.

Microsoft reported a decline in its gaming business revenue for the third calendar quarter of 2026. Xbox revenues decreased by 2% year-over-year, down to $5.38 billion. Both console sales and content with services showed negative trends.

The digital store GOG has announced the launch of its own publishing division. It has been named Retrovibe by GOG and was created in collaboration with the independent Polish publisher Retrovibe.

BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk believes that the studio’s fate was ultimately sealed by the change in ownership at Electronic Arts. In his opinion, the new EA investors are primarily interested in commercially predictable projects, whereas the development of large-scale role-playing games, for which BioWare is renowned, requires too much time and resources.

The cyberpunk shop owner simulator Probably Stolen sold more than 200,000 copies just a few hours after its release on Steam. This was reported by Questing Goose Studio, the developer of the game, with the support of publisher tinyBuild.

In this respect, the country ranks third in South America, following Brazil and Chile.

This time, the Steam demo festival kicked off with alarmist statements about the overwhelming presence of AI-created projects. However, the results paint a far more interesting and complex picture. We delve into this, as well as the winners in terms of wishlists, subscribers, and other metrics, in our comprehensive report.

Playrix has shared Homescapes statistics in celebration of the game’s ninth anniversary. Since its release in September 2017, the puzzle game has been installed 773.5 million times.