At the end of March, CarX Technologies announced CarX Drift Racing Online 2, and recently it got a page on Steam. App2Top spoke with Vladimir Berezhny, the project PM, about how long the game has been in development and how many wishlists the team plans to gather by release.

On Monday, March 3rd, Astrum Entertainment unveiled the beta version of their proprietary launcher — Astrum Play. The company positions it as a gaming platform of its own development. App2Top spoke with Sergey Efremov, Chief Operating Officer of Astrum Entertainment, about the reasons behind the service’s launch and its immediate future.

Especially for App2Top, former owner of “Kanobu” and “Igromania,” Gadzhi Makhtiev commented on the sale and discussed the significant challenges currently facing the industry, in his opinion.

This morning, February 28, it was officially announced that ownership of two popular Russian gaming resources has changed hands. Media manager Gadji Makhtiev transferred the general management of “Kanobu” and “Igromania” to Vasily Ovchinnikov, co-founder of the Organization for the Development of the Video Game Industry (RVI). The App2Top editorial team discussed the deal with him.

In January, the company “1С” (not to be confused with 1C Game Studios) released the mobile battler “The Three Heroes: Adventure Arena,” created with the support of the animation studio “Melnitsa” and the Internet Development Institute (IRI). The editorial team of App2Top spoke with Timur Musin, the project manager, about the game’s history and development plans.

In early February, it became known that Yandex acquired the rights to the trademarks “IgroMir” and Comic Con Russia. Accordingly, App2Top spoke with a representative of the corporation about the reasons for this deal and why they didn’t buy KRI.

Recently, “Buka” presented a list of amendments and recommendations for the draft law “On the Activities of Developing and Distributing Video Games in the Russian Federation,” which was submitted for consideration to the State Duma on December 12 by a group of deputies and senators led by Anton Gorelkin. The App2Top editorial team spoke with Alexander Tebuev, CEO of “Buka,” about why the company prepared comments and whether they will be considered by lawmakers.

On January 24, the crowdfunding campaign for the visual horror novel “Horror Filmoscope: Green Eyes” concluded. We discussed the results, challenges, and the future of the game with the creative director of the project and co-founder of Fishnauts Studio, Vladimir Malyshev (aka Vova Rybonavt).

The game “Laryok on Lenin Street” has been added to wishlists by almost 35,000 people. It took less than a week for the game to reach this milestone, with the announcement made on January 22. The editorial team at App2Top spoke with the founder of indie studio perelesoq, Artem Koblov, about what contributed to the game’s early boost.

Gamelight is a mobile UA platform for game developers and publishers. We spoke with its founder, Günay Azer, about the startup’s approach to data handling, its proprietary AI algorithm, rewarding ads, and much more.

Recently, a new mobile game by Strategy Park and HeroCraft, Strategy & Tactics: Blitz, was released. We spoke with the game developers about monetizing hardcore projects and specific production features.

Is there a difference between the state of affairs in the video game market and the gambling industry? This was discussed by Vladimir Nikolsky and Alexander Riddick at the recent WN Conference Cyprus’24.

In light of the upcoming release of the MMORPG Gran Saga, we had the chance to speak with the game developer — the South Korean team NPIXEL — about the country’s domestic market and what’s currently happening there.

About how the team, previously engaged in hyper-casual games, took on the development of “Sparta 2035”, a turn-based tactical game in the style of XCOM for PC — the editorial board of App2Top spoke with Gleb Durnovo, one of the founders of the Lipsar studio.

About how profitable the business of topping up Steam accounts in Russia is, whether it’s possible to enter this market today, as well as the size of the Russian gaming market and how much foreign AAA and indie titles can earn in it — we spoke with Anton Chernov, CEO of the platform KupiKod.

This is the second time this month we are addressing the topic of adult games. This time, in an interview format. We discuss the niche of “for adults” projects with Andrey Postnikov, Senior Business Developer at Nutaku.

In March, Slavania, the debut game by FrostLeaf Games studio, published by Game Art Pioneers, was released on Steam. We talked with Vladimir Averyanov, the game designer of the project, about how the metroidvania was developed based on Russian fairy tales.

On April 11, the global strategy Revival: Recolonization was released on PC in full. App2Top talked with Sergey Ulankin, head of console and PC publishing at HeroCraft, about how development was going, how successful early access was, about working with VK Play, and much more.

There is little talk about games in the Telegram messenger. We decided to fix the situation by talking with Daria Novikova, product director at PlayDeck startup. The latter launched a gaming marketplace for Telegram. In a conversation with Daria, we touched on topics such as user engagement, earnings from leading projects, monetization and, of course, PlayDeck itself.