Alexander Agapitov gave an interview to Medusa about the scandal with the reduction of 150 people. The founder of Xsolla told how the employee performance assessment system works, and what he thinks about criticism of himself. He also explained why he does not consider the incident to be dismissals and is not afraid of inspections against the company.How does the employee evaluation system work?

The second quarter of 2021 was the most profitable in the history of Zynga. During this time, the company earned $720 million. This result was achieved thanks to the purchased studios and flagship games like Toon Blast and Toy Blast.

Rollic Games has announced a new achievement. The total number of downloads of all games in the portfolio of the hyper-casual publisher exceeded 1 billion. Some of the titles of the Turkish company have also passed the 100 million downloads mark.In total, there are 15 mobile titles in the Rollic Games portfolio.

French publisher Focus Home Interactive has announced a new takeover. He was joined by Dotemu, which was one of the developers and publishers of Streets of Rage 4. The size of the deal is €53.5 million.

Zynga has announced a major new deal. The company bought the Chinese studio StarLark, which was previously owned by Betta Games. Now the publisher also has the rights to the mobile hit Golf Rival. The deal cost Zynga $525 million.Of this amount, $315 million will be paid in cash, and the remaining $210 million in Zynga shares.

Which Russian-speaking gaming companies have the best HR teams will become known this September as a result of the Game Dev HR Awards, which is held by the job search service and the Talents In Games recruiting agency.

Fullbright is a small indie studio, mainly known for the title Gone Home. Despite initial successes, the team literally collapsed during the development of a new project. Because of the actions of the co-founder, almost all women have left it over the past couple of years. There are less than 10 people left in the studio.Open Roads

The Chinese authorities should stop providing tax incentives to gaming companies, according to one of the local state media. The newspaper explains this by saying that Tencent and other major players have successfully entered the global market and no longer need state support.On August 5, the relevant material was published on the website of the Securities Times newspaper.

The investment division of MY.GAMES and Google have launched a short-term business accelerator Game Drive 2021 for mobile developers. The companies promised to bring the best projects to foreign markets. The event fund may amount to $30 million.

In August 2019, Epic Games predicted losses from the first wave of exclusive games released in its store. Two years later, an internal document got online. It turned out that the company expected to lose about $130 million.Game expert Simon Carless drew attention to the document.

At the end of June, Unity updated the licensing rules for its engine without public announcements. The changes affected the developers of games for closed platforms. Now it will be impossible to create projects for Xbox without a Pro subscription.The rules came into force on June 30.

The Swedish Embracer Group is getting bigger. This time, eight companies joined the ranks of the holding, among them 3D Realms, CrazyLabs and Ghost Ship Games. All purchases cost the Swedes $213.8 million.

Alexander Agapitov, CEO and founder of Xsolla, held a press conference related to the dismissal of 150 employees. He explained the layoffs by the fact that the company stopped showing 40% growth.

Sony has prepared a report for the first fiscal quarter of 2021. In April-June, the company’s gaming direction earned over $5.5 billion. This was achieved largely thanks to the PlayStation 5 — the console stopped being sold at a loss.

Against the background of changes in tax policy in some countries, Apple has revised pricing in the App Store. Apps will become cheaper in the UK and South Africa. And in Georgia, on the contrary, they will cost more.Apple announced this to developers on August 3.

The media controlled by the Chinese authorities have softened criticism of video games. They no longer call them an “electronic drug”, but still urge society to fight gambling addiction. Against this background, Tencent shares managed to recoup almost half of yesterday’s fall.

Activision Blizzard is facing a class action lawsuit from investors who have suffered losses due to falling shares amid the harassment scandal. Bobby Kotick, meanwhile, assured that the company will soon change and become an example for the entire industry. And the employees talked about how the HR department systematically hushed up the problems.

A letter from the founder and CEO of Xsolla Alexander Agapitov to employees leaked to social networks. In it, he abruptly announced the dismissal of a large number of employees. As can be understood from the letter, the company monitored their activity and made a decision to dismiss them based on the collected data.

Activision Blizzard shared the results of the second quarter of 2021 (ended June 30). Although the company’s overall revenue grew, its only division that earned more than a year ago was King. Also in the report there was a place for measures that the publisher is going to take because of the current scandal.