On July 16, the WN Academy platform hosted the monthly deconstruction show “What’s Up with the Game?” focused on the main survival hit of the season, Dune: Awakening. Experts analyzed the core mechanics and peculiarities of working with franchises, as well as provided an evaluation of the project’s budget.

Details continue to emerge about the conflict between KRAFTON and the former leaders of Unknown Worlds studio. This time, the details have become known from a lawsuit filed against the company by the dismissed developers.

We continue our series of publications about games seeking investments or a publisher. Today, the team from St. Petersburg, TeZee.art, shares about their project. They are developing a vibrant web version of “The Settlers”—the LandLords project.

These figures were mentioned by the Mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin, in his blog. He did not specify how much revenue was generated directly by game developers and publishers, excluding other IT professionals.

More and more games in Steam are being created by developers who utilize artificial intelligence during development, reports Ichiro Lambe, head of Totally Human Media and one of the creators of the “Steam Labs.” He noted that their share among new releases in 2025 was about 20%.

In 2022, the Russian subsidiary of Game Insight found itself at the center of a scandal: it decided to close, leaving several hundred employees without pay. This led to a legal proceeding seeking the company’s bankruptcy declaration. Three years later, the chairman of the board of directors of Game Insight, Igor Matsanyuk, claimed that the insolvency practitioner handling the case attempted to illegally enrich himself — “with the active participation or connivance” of the judges.

At the beginning of autumn, one of the largest cities in Cyprus will host a new session of the conference for developers and publishers by WN Media Group. The conference expects guests from Epic Games, Sandsoft, Chibi Phoenix, and many other companies.

While Counter-Strike 2 continues to lead the list of top-grossing products on Steam for the sixth consecutive week, other changes are happening in the chart. Below are the most notable shifts from July 8-15.

In recent years, production budgets for mobile games in Japan have significantly increased, according to a study by the Japan Online Game Association (JOGA). In 2024, the average cost of creating such a title in the country reached 492 million yen ($3.3 million).

Developers from GFA Games announced on the official social media pages of the game that the MMO shooter PIONER has reached a significant new milestone in wishlists.

The MobileGamer portal has obtained details about the layoffs at King, which are part of the major reductions at Microsoft. To gather this information, they spoke with sources close to the company.

The company GDEV continues to highlight the successes of its games. Just three weeks ago, it announced that the mobile game Hero Wars earned $1.7 billion, and now it has shared data regarding the desktop version of the title — Hero Wars: Dominion Era.

The portfolio of the Everplay Group of companies (formerly Team17 Group) has expanded. It announced the acquisition of “all rights and assets” related to the Hammerwatch franchise from the Swedish indie studio Crackshell.

The GOG team announced that on July 17, the games Limbo and Inside will disappear from its store. The official reason has not been disclosed, but there are speculations online that this could be due to legal disputes between Playdead’s founders Dino Patti and Arnt Jensen, which have recently escalated to the courts.

The Buzz Around Grow a Garden, along with the summer holidays, has led to an increase in online activity for games on Roblox. As noted by Creator Games founder David Taylor, currently, 24 titles have an average of over 50,000 concurrent players.

The FBI shut down seven pirate gaming websites, the audience for Lords of the Fallen reached 5.5 million people, and RimWorld broke its record for peak online players on Steam almost 12 years after its release. Here’s a recap of the major events in the gaming industry over the past weekend.

We wrap up the week with a comprehensive article on the most successful game releases of the past six months. Today, we will discuss the top-grossing new releases, sales leaders, and major indie games on PC and consoles. If we haven’t devoted a separate block to a particular title, it is surely featured on one of the many charts.

A temporary manager has been appointed for the “Lesta Games” group of companies. According to data from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, it is JSC “IT Technologies,” which was established quite recently—on July 1, 2025.

Sultan’s Game is a card-based RPG inspired by the tales from “One Thousand and One Nights.” In just three and a half months since its release, it has been purchased over a million times worldwide.