Less than a month ago, an application appeared in the Epic Games Store Itch.io — stora for indie games without DRM. As Apple noted, the standards of this site are very different from the standards of the Epic Games Store. In particular in Itch.io there is a Sisterly Lust game that includes “a list of fetishes with words that should not be uttered in federal court.” Although Epic Games itself does not encourage such content.

According to internal documents, Epic Games negotiated the purchase of 4-6 titles. Moreover, it is not completely clear from the wording: is $200 million the price tag for all the games or for each of them separately? If this is the price for one game, then in total the company was ready to spend up to $1.2 billion on Sony PC exclusives.

The owners of the Epic Games Store planned to earn about $500 million if 80 of the best-selling Steam games appeared in their store. The company developed the plan in 2019. In it, Epic Games also explained that without these bestsellers, it would be problematic for her to get a large share of the PC market. However, we note that by the end of the year, the company had agreed only with the developers of…

Epic Games has revealed data on the distribution of games from December 2018 to October 2020. In the graph, the company showed how many newcomers came to the Epic Games Store after these promotions. The distribution of GTA V was the most profitable — over 7 million new users. In second place was Sid Meier’s Civilization VI — 2.5 million people.

By the spring of 2020, there were five sales in the Epic Games Store. The largest was during the winter holidays in 2019, when gamers left $21.8 million in the store. But a few months later, the most “unsuccessful” sale took place in the store — $ 5.7 million. Later, Epic Games held another sale, but it also collected several times less than the Christmas one — $ 9.9 million.

Indie developers are required to agree to support the xCloud streaming service if they want to publish games on Xbox. Epic Games‘ internal documents state that this is a matter of principle for Microsoft, and the company uses “harsh expressions regarding the requirement.” All unsuitable games are not allowed by Microsoft or removed from the Xbox ecosystem.

Zynga has decided to diversify its portfolio with marketing assets. It includes the Chartboost platform, specializing in mobile advertising and monetization. It cost $250 million.

Indie studio Metacore has again received a large tranche from Supercell. This time, the Finns opened a credit line for her for $ 180 million. The money will be used to scale Merge Mansion, a project combining merge mechanics with meta in the spirit of Homescapes.

By the end of 2021, the total revenue of the gaming industry will be $175.8 billion, according to Newzoo analysts. This is 1.1% less than it was last year. Among the main reasons for the decline: lack of equipment due to supply problems, postponement of game releases and restriction of IDFA on iOS.

Apple‘s lawyers asked the court to invalidate the testimony of Lori Wright, vice president of Xbox. She appeared in court as a witness on the part of Epic Games and, among other things, said that Microsoft does not receive any profit from the sale of consoles.

On July 27, 2020 — two and a half weeks before Fortnite was removed from the App Store — Epic Games sent the Project Liberty roadmap to the board of directors. This is a plan that described the company’s actions to combat the 30% commission in the App Store and Google Play.

Yesterday, Lori Wright, vice president of Xbox, appeared as a witness in the trial of Epic Games and Apple. She revealed several details from the business model of Microsoft‘s gaming division and stated that the company has never really made a profit from the sale of consoles.

One of the fundamental points that Epic Games defends is the permission to use third—party payment systems in the App Store. According to the company, this will “put an end to Apple‘s monopoly”, and users will receive more convenient and cheaper payment methods inside applications. That’s just such an innovation will affect all iOS applications, not just games like Fortnite.

Last year, Microsoft fought for the appearance on iOS of the service for “playing in the cloud” xCloud. From the letters published during the trial between Epic Games and Apple, it became known that a similar Shadow Cloud Computing service suffered because of this struggle.

China’s Tencent is suing DD373.com — a platform for trading in-game items. The corporation claims that all virtual content in games (resources, weapons, skins, etc.) belong exclusively to it. Even if gamers spend real money on it. The giant’s statement immediately caused a lot of indignation among the players.

Activision Blizzard has reported a record first quarter. In January-March 2021, the company earned $2.28 billion — more than in any other first quarter in the history of the publishing house. Call of Duty played an important role in this.

African mobile publisher Carry1st received $6 million in investments, including from Riot Games. With this money, the company hopes to attract developers from all over the world to the local market.

This proposal was made by Phil Schiller, the head of Apple‘s marketing department, who was also responsible for the App Store. In his letter to Steve Jobs and Eddy Cue he stressed that someday “the company will face a sufficient number of problems that will force it to adjust the 70/30 model.” Therefore, as soon as the App Store revenue exceeds $1 billion, it is desirable for Apple to reduce the commission itself.