Good news from Belarus. Minsk-based game studio Neskin has received strategic investments from the Australian gambling giant Aristocrat, whose assets include such major gaming companies as Big Fish Games and Plarium.

Against the background of the coronavirus, Playrix has established itself as a leader in the mobile games market. Only Tencent earns more than her now.

Over the past two years, Saber Interactive has been increasingly heard about. In 2019, a company with Russian roots celebrated the successful launch of World War Z and the Switch port of The Witcher 3. This year Saber joined the Embracer Group, and then became the owner of 4A Games. The news about her did not stop there. For example, the Crysis remaster she created was released just the other day. Against the background of…

The Defold game engine has a new strong partner. The Defold Foundation organization that owns it has announced the conclusion of an agreement with the Minsk-based game studio Melsoft Games.

Minsk-based Gismart is looking for more than just developers. The company has announced an affiliate program for musicians. She is ready not only to promote them through her products, but also to share the proceeds with them.

The Russian IT industry is already facing losses in the 2nd quarter of this year. According to the forecast of the Ministry of Communications, IT companies will lose 30 billion rubles due to the coronavirus.

The Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation has agreed with the Parliament additional measures to support the IT sector during the coronavirus. If they are approved by the government, IT companies will have the right to temporarily reduce employee salaries by no more than 20%.

In light of the pandemic, the Russian government felt that it should support small and medium-sized businesses. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced a moratorium on the payment of insurance premiums for small and medium-sized businesses.

Unreal Engine developer has acquired another technology startup. Epic Games has announced the purchase of Cubic Motion Studio. The latter specializes in capturing facial animation in real time and integrating it into game projects.

Embracer Group‘s second deal of the day. After the news of the acquisition of Saber Interactive, it became known that the Swedish gaming conglomerate today also agreed to purchase Voxler Studio, which develops karaoke for consoles.

In December, THQ Nordic conducted an unusual experiment for the desktop games market. To find out how great the audience’s interest in the Gothic remake is, she released a prototype on Steam. After that, the company asked gamers how much they liked the game. As a result of the experiment, THQ Nordic decided to launch the game into production.

The TikTok developer is on the verge of a serious expansion into the games market. Large-scale releases, diversification and competition with Tencent are ahead. So the gaming direction of the company will finally have its own director.

Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen summed up the results of 2019. In his post on the official website of the company, he talked about maintaining the previous principles of development and shared information about the studio’s revenue.

One of the largest banks in the UK Barclays has launched a specialized program to finance video game developers. He is ready to give a loan for tax deductions that have not yet been paid.

In early December, Playrix announced that it had spent $100 million on the purchase of game studios in 2019. One of the acquired companies was Serbian. Today it officially became known who exactly in Serbia was bought by the gaming colossus.

By 2025, Playrix intends to catch up with the annual revenue of the leaders of the American market — companies of the Activision Blizzard level.

Gismart has announced the opening of its fourth office. It will be located in the capital of Ukraine. Its focus will be the development of hyper-casual games for mobile devices.

British Codemasters is building up its asset portfolio. She is going to acquire London-based Slightly Mad Studios for $30 million.

Prague independent studio Beat Games has come under the control of Facebook. The amount of the transaction is not called.