There was a discussion among developers about the dominance of indie games, which are released on Steam by the thousands every year. Two polar points of view collided. First, most of these titles are not needed by the market, because they have zero value. The second is that people should not be forbidden to express themselves through creativity and consider games only as a business.

Android developers will soon have another option on how to attract users to their applications. Google has announced plans to add the “Offers” tab to the Google Play navigation bar — among other things, it will display discounts on in-game items.

The Russian government is considering new ways to regulate the gaming industry. First of all, we are talking about controlling the market of in-game items and skins, which they want to bring out of the gray zone. The authorities do not like that such purchases are not taxed and can be used for money laundering.CS:GO

Epic Games has gained new allies in the proceedings with Apple. The attorneys general of 35 American states sided with Tim Sweeney‘s company. They demanded that the court reconsider the verdict in the case and recognize Apple as a monopolist.

The official blog of Epic Games Store has information about the store’s business results for the past year. The user base has reached 194 million people. The total spending of users for twelve months amounted to $840 million.

Roblox has been growing rapidly over the past year, and now the company has decided to sum up the results of 2021. She published a report in which she told a little about the audience of the platform, the genre preferences of users and the geography of developers.

Epic Games has a new development studio in Poland. The backbone of the team will be made up of employees of Plastic, which specializes in games for the demo stage.

Nexters has announced the acquisition of three gaming assets at once. Its portfolio will include Cubic Games, RJ Games and Royal Ark. The total investment amount is $100 million.

Game marketing consultant Chris Zukowski explained why developers need to get the first 10 reviews on Steam as soon as possible. This is the key bar, after which the store’s algorithms notice any game and can significantly increase its visibility in the store.Zhukovsky told about this in a small thread on his Twitter page.

The Sandbox platform, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, together with the venture firm Brinc launched an accelerator for developers of metaverse projects. Promises to invest a total of $50 million in participants. That’s just for the participation itself, you have to pay — $ 50 thousand for each startup.

Virtuos gaming outsourcing developer is getting bigger. He announced the takeover of Kiev-based Volmi Games, which worked on art for Diablo II: Resurrected, The Elder Scrolls: Legends and Metro Exodus. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed.

Increasingly, mobile companies are announcing the transfer of their libraries to the PC. The next step is the American developer and publisher of Tilting Point. He released the Tilting Point Launcher, with which you can play the company’s mobile titles on a PC.

The developers of Godot have presented the “alpha” of the fourth version of their open source engine. It has been in development for two years. Among the key features are new rendering and lighting systems, changes to the physics engine, an improved import system and an updated editor.In a post on the official website, Godot developers invited everyone to take part in alpha testing.

After 10 years, the creators of the Russian UNIGINE engine decided to return to game development. As part of the anniversary of the Oil Rush strategy, the company announced work on its new title.Oil Rush

Since November, a little more than a dozen mobile games have appeared in the Netflix catalog. According to the Apptopia analytical platform, during this time their total downloads reached only 8.1 million.The most popular game for Netflix was the physical puzzle Teeter (Up), in which you need to control the platform and bring the ball into the hole in this way.

Microsoft has reported on the results of the second fiscal quarter of 2022, which ended on December 31. It also became known how the entire calendar year 2021 passed for the company — it turned out to be a record for the gaming direction.

It became known about the massive cuts in Skillbox and GeekBrains. They lost 300 people in November-December alone. The number of people dismissed in a year can be many times more (almost more than one and a half thousand). We talked to his former employees about what is happening in the educational holding.

A clone of the indie puzzle Unpacking got into the tops of the most downloaded games on iOS and Android. Some even accepted the Unpacking Master project from the Belarusian SayGames as the official mobile version of the original game. We talked to the publisher about the project, cloning and removing the game from the stores.

AppMagic analysts told which hyper-casual games were the most popular in the fourth quarter of 2021. At the top of the list is the race simulator Race Master 3D, published by the Belarusian SayGames.