Last week, the European rating agency PEGI announced plans to make changes to its game rating system — specifically, it will begin assigning higher ratings to titles with loot boxes. However, their American counterparts at the ESRB are not planning to do the same.

On March 19, Crimson Desert, the most anticipated game of the first quarter of 2026, was released. In today’s in-depth article, we’ll analyze the pre-release metrics of this ambitious project, discuss its budget and marketing campaign, and explore its commercial prospects in light of the controversial launch.

The rumors have been confirmed. ByteDance has indeed agreed to sell the Chinese gaming studio Moonton to Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group.

We are publishing with a delay the first of two premium long-reads for this week (the one scheduled for Wednesday). This article compares the financial performance of nearly 20 publicly traded gaming companies for the fourth calendar quarter of last year.

On the night of March 20, Crimson Desert was released—a hack-and-slash adventure game from the creators of Black Desert at the South Korean company Pearl Abyss. On Steam, the game received a mixed start.

The year 2025 turned out to be one of the best for CD PROJEKT financially. In a recent report, the company revealed that it achieved the second-largest net profit in its history — surpassed only by 2020.

The studio Trioskaz and the publisher Critical Reflex shared new achievements of the project.

The founder of WN Media Group and gaming industry veteran, Pavel Ryakhkonen, has announced work on launching an investment syndicate called GameXCap, which is focused on funding promising gaming projects.

Tencent has released its financial report for the past year. In the document, the Chinese company boasted about the growth of key metrics.

On the morning of March 19, the stock price of the South Korean company Pearl Abyss plummeted. As of the time of writing, each share is priced at 46,000 won (30.7 dollars) on the exchange—this is 29.88% less than the previous evening.

The court proceedings in Moscow between the group of companies “Lesta Games” and LLC “News IT”—the organizer of the canceled gaming exhibition “RED EXPO 2025″—have concluded. The court established that the previous management of “Lesta Games” secured the support of the event organizers to illicitly transfer a significant amount of money.

The studio Crystal Dynamics has conducted another round of layoffs. It reported that it has now reduced its workforce by 20 people, including both developers and operations team members.

GDEV announced that its co-founder Boris Gertsovsky is no longer among its shareholders.

Last year, the group of companies “Lesta Games” faced a series of problems: first, its head, along with the head of Wargaming, was found guilty of creating an extremist organization, and then it came under state control. It turned out that following this, several top managers left “Lesta Games” and founded a new studio.

Currently, they are only available in the PC store version.

Steam users are massively pre-ordering Crimson Desert, report analysts from Alinea Analytics.

Wildlight Entertainment may have ceased to exist, according to MP1st.

The announcement of native support was made by James Stone, Unity’s Technical Director for Platform Products, during the GDC conference.

Currently, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires all companies whose stocks are traded on American exchanges to publish financial reports every quarter. As reported by sources from The Wall Street Journal, this rule may soon be abolished.