Svetlana Gordey, a leading attorney at REVERA, discussed the variety of tax incentives, strong legal protections, and a developed business environment that make the UK an almost ideal location for gaming studios in her column for App2Top.

Last week in Busan, one of the largest cities in South Korea, the WN Connect event took place. Here are the highlights.

At the G-Star 2024 exhibition in South Korea, the founder and CEO of Koei Tecmo, Yoichi Erikawa, shared that all executive directors at his company also hold producer positions. He believes this is beneficial both for the games and for the top managers themselves.

On November 21, Star Wars Outlaws officially launched on the Steam store. Within the first 24 hours, the game’s peak online player count did not even reach a thousand.

The number of copies sold of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has surpassed one million, GSC Game World announced. This milestone was reached on the second day after release, even though the shooter is available through the Game Pass subscription.

Sabotage Studio has shared updated player numbers for Sea of Stars. According to the studio, the audience for the turn-based retro RPG has reached 6 million players.

Black Tabby Games announced that Slay the Princess has surpassed the half-million mark in copies sold worldwide. It took the game just over a year to reach this milestone.

The American indie studio Heart Machine has conducted layoffs, as reported by the portal Game Developer.

At the 2024 Golden Joystick Awards ceremony, Sony and Arrowhead announced that Helldivers 2 has been played by over 15 million people across all platforms since its release.

On November 21, Dream Games globally released Royal Kingdom. This is the sequel to the highly successful mobile puzzle game Royal Match, whose revenue exceeds $3 billion.

Gamescom is one of the most prominent exhibitions in the gaming industry, and participating in it becomes increasingly expensive every year. Journalists from GamesWirtschaft have learned how much it will cost to show a trailer during the main broadcast at the Opening Night Live ceremony in 2025.

Ju Heng, an associate professor at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics Business School, investigated the App Store’s revenue in China. The figures were astronomical.

EA’s Chief Operating Officer, Arjun Balaram, shared key principles that help the company maintain user interest in its service games.

Steam has introduced support for season passes—not for service games, but as bundles of already released and upcoming DLCs for games. This update was highlighted by SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik.

In the German version of Steam, games without an age rating have stopped being displayed for users.

In the digital store itch.io, not only indie games are sold, but also game assets. The platform’s administration has introduced a new requirement for creators of the latter — all assets created using generative AI must be tagged accordingly.

Supercell has announced plans to develop Clash Royale as a gaming platform for mobile strategies. This was reported by the portal MobileGamer, citing the general manager of Clash Royale, Aleksandar Markovic.

On the evening of November 20, the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl took place. The game was launched on PC and Xbox Series, including Game Pass. Judging by the numbers, its debut on Steam was successful at the very least.

The third news of the day about layoffs. Next in line is the studio Reflector Entertainment, which developed the action-adventure Unknown 9: Awakening.