In accordance with the new law adopted in Europe, Apple has announced a number of innovations in iOS. These include support for third—party stores and payment systems. But there were nuances. Those who want to use the new functionality will have to pay for each installation. For more information about the situation, see our analysis.

Yandex Games has published “Igrotok” in mobile stores without an official announcement. This is a game library of hyper-casual games, whose principle of operation resembles working with content on TikTok. The key difference is that the swipe does not launch a new video, but a preview of the game or the game itself (depends on the platform).

In winter, the digital video game store VK Play held a distribution of the premium game “Love, Money, Rock and Roll”. The results of the promotion exceeded the company’s forecasts. Olga Gordeeva, the head of the store, told about the downloads the event led to in her note.

From July 1, Steam disables support for “Google Analytics“. Apparently, in order to “sweeten the pill”, the platform promised to launch new tools for traffic analysis. About the upcoming innovations and the reaction of developers — in our material.

Back on August 2, Google updated the payment rules of its mobile store. Starting from this date, developers can add third-party payment systems to applications for users from Russia.

About 3 thousand applications can be removed from the App Store by next month, according to analysts from Sensor Tower. Old applications that have not been updated for several years will come under attack. To avoid their removal, developers will have to release updates within 30 days.

Developers from Russia were given back the opportunity to receive payments from Steam. Yesterday, the administration of the platform sent a system message with instructions for the updated payment system.

In January 2022, David Edery posted on Twitter a post reaction to the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. His position attracted the attention of Simon Carless, and then prompted further discussion about the future of the industry.

The Government of the Russian Federation chooses an import substitute for the App Store and Google Play. Earlier, ANO “Digital Platforms” announced the NashStore. Now its competitors can become “Sber”, “Yandex” and VK.

Voodoo has launched the online platform Voodoo Academy. Its goal is to teach the basics of hyper–casual game development to young professionals, as well as to support their projects.

The transition of CD Projekt RED to Unreal Engine 5 aroused the interest and surprise of the gaming community. We have prepared information about other studios that have also opted for UE.

After the sanctions measures, the Russian traffic of digital gaming platforms — primarily Steam and Epic Games Store — has significantly decreased. At the same time, the attendance of domestic services and torrent trackers has increased.

The Ministry of Finance plans to create a Russian equivalent of the App Store and Google Play. The decision was made at a meeting of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy.

During 2022, Google plans to introduce several key changes to the Stadia gaming cloud service. We noted the main points of the report on Stadia, announced as part of the Google Games Summit.

Steam is the most popular gaming platform of the last two years. This conclusion was reached by the PR manager of TweakTown, who compared the MAU of four large console and desktop platforms.

Twitch has announced that it will stop making payments to Russian streamers for now. The reason is sanctions against Russian banks and problems with payment methods.

Another company decided to leave Russia. Now Autodesk, the developer of 3ds Max and Maya, has announced a temporary shutdown.

Google has decided to suspend the sale of contextual advertising in Russia. The ban will affect all the company’s services, including search, YouTube and partner networks.This was reported on March 4 by Reuters with reference to the official statement of Google.

Last week, a discussion broke out on GitHub about whether to close the platform in Russia because of what is happening in Ukraine. Now the GitHub administration has put an end to this issue — they will not disable access to Russian developers.