Yesterday it became known that Zynga intends to reduce its staff by 18%. Thus, at least 520 people will be laid off.

The exclusive release of the game Plants vs. Zombies 2 for iOS devices will take place on July 18, according to the developer company Popcap Games.

Like many of the “pioneers” of the social gaming industry, Crowdstar has long been reoriented to the mobile market, but has not been able to make money on it. An investment of $12 million may fix the situation.

The latest information on the leaders of the American iPhone games market for the week (May 20-26) from Distimo: tops of free, paid and cash applications in one material.

Last week the company Mail.Ru Group has announced a new mobile strategy game – “Evolution”. We contacted the general producer of IT Territory Alexander Enin and asked him about the project. 

According to 505 Games, the two-dimensional sandbox platformer Terraria, which was released on PC in 2011, will be available for mobile devices this summer.

According to a study conducted by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the world leader in telecommunications market analysis, more than 50% of all smartphones in China run on Google’s operating system.

Big Fish has clearly demonstrated how experience affects the average salary of game developers in the States, and at the same time, where it is best to study for them, and where to go to work after that.

The German startup AppLift, which provides services to attract users, received investments of $13 million from the Dutch venture capital firm Prime Ventures.

Applicier proved that the main source of information about games is word of mouth; Playnomics discovered how few people spend money on free-to-play; Millennial Media told in detail about the American OS market. About this and much more in our digest.

The end of last week was marked by several high-profile iOS releases, against the background of which, surprisingly, the simple puzzle Marbly was not lost. One of its creators is the legendary Alexey Pajitnov, the author of “Tetris”.

The other day, App Annie published its traditional review of the mobile gaming market for the month. This time for April. No surprises or discoveries: Clash of Clans, Puzzles & Dragons and Candy Crush Saga are still in the lead.

The open source project One Platform Foundation (OPF) together with Yandex, whose developers are involved in its creation, announced the AppDF format, designed to seriously facilitate the publication of Android applications.

The Signs is a new game from Tooflya Inc. undoubtedly will appeal to fans of puzzle-style toys.

The game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic took third place in the box office top of iPad US in a few hours, overtaking Hay Day, Big Fish Casino, Injustice: Gods Among Us and many other titles. 

Glu Mobile will enable American users to win real money in their non-gambling games. Yesterday, the company announced the beginning of cooperation with the Californian startup Skillz, whose service allows you to do this.

AppData, a well-known provider of social and mobile application analytics, announced that now it will also regularly post data on the approximate profitability of applications and developers.

Representatives of companies such as Samsung, Google, Microsoft, SAP, Intel, Qualcomm and BlackBerry will take part in the Mdday#MoCO conference for mobile developers taking place on June 4-5 in Moscow. 

The worldwide release of the free version of Running with Friends took place in mid-May. Just yesterday, a soft launch of the paid version of the game started in Canada. So it’s time to sum up the preliminary results.