We continue our weekly series of YouTube interviews. The guest of the new episode is Anastasia Smirnova, a narrative designer with many years of experience. She has worked on games such as Mystery Manor, Paradise Island 2, Familyscapes, and Wildscapes: New Acres.

Every week, we release interviews on YouTube with gaming experts discussing various aspects of their work. We will also now post separate text-based blitz interviews with our speakers, but these will be “locked.” For instance, today we released a one-hour conversation on YouTube with Anastasia Smirnova on the topic “How to Create a Good Narrative for a Casual Game?” The accompanying content for this video is this article where we’ve already discussed the challenges facing…

The steampunk PvP action game featuring walking fortresses, SAND: Raiders of Sophie, has made a confident launch. It took precisely a week to reach the milestone of 200,000 copies sold.

This is reported by TASS, citing the head of the Agency for Creative Industries (ACI), Gulnara Agamova.

It’s possible that Microsoft hasn’t been signing contracts with third-party developers who wish to add games to the Game Pass subscription for some time. At least, that’s what claims Fernando Rizo, former sales director at Raw Fury and now a partner at Caboodle Games.

How many times console owners have pre-ordered the game, the corporation did not specify.

A total of fines were issued to 11 companies, including Valve, Sony, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Riot Games, and Ubisoft.

Member of the European Parliament from Malta, Peter Agius, stated at recent hearings that a ban on online gambling advertising in the EU could foster the development of the black market. According to him, such measures would only weaken consumer protection rather than strengthen it.

A year and a half ago, the Russian-speaking team Studio Rassvet announced their debut game — “No Change”, about a vendor in a night kiosk engaging in philosophical conversations with customers on New Year’s Eve. Since then, the project has found its way onto several hundred wishlists on Steam.

Employees of Quantic Dream and Ubisoft Barcelona went on strike, Sony announced plans to continue working on live-service games, and The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth hit a new record peak in Steam’s concurrent users. Here’s a recap of the main events in the gaming industry over the past weekend.

Circana analyst Mat Piscatella continues to share data on the U.S. gaming market. He published detailed statistics for May, which include information on revenue and top blockbusters.

A group of 48 Chinese developers has expressed dissatisfaction with the commission in the App Store. They submitted a complaint against Apple to the State Administration for Market Regulation in China.

In recent years, gamers have increasingly purchased games in digital form, leading to a decline in physical edition sales. However, there was recently a slight rise in the popularity of discs and cartridges in the U.S.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney gave a comprehensive interview to PC Gamer. During the conversation, he shared his opinion on Steam’s requirement to label games created using artificial intelligence.

Games from Russian and generally Russian-speaking teams rarely make it to consoles. We discussed why this is the case with Fair Games, Sobaka Studio, Odd Meter, DANGEN Entertainment, and many others.

The Czech studio Bohemia Interactive has unexpectedly decided to open the source code of one of its games. It uploaded the source code of the military simulator Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, now known as Arma: Cold War Assault, on GitHub.

The Japanese developer lemorion_1224, the creator of the “friendslop” hit Meccha Chameleon, quickly shared fresh sales information about their game.

The game managed to reach a new milestone 16 months after its release: it launched in February 2025 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series.

Recently, Reuters sources reported that the gambling holding Entain is considering selling its business in Central and Eastern Europe. A few days later, the company itself confirmed this information.