The authors of “League of Legends” have replenished their portfolio. Yesterday, Riot Games announced the purchase of indie developer Hypixel Studios, which is now creating the Hytale sandbox.

The positive impact of the coronavirus on the metrics of mobile games was revealed by Sensor Tower. Last March was recognized as the best month in terms of installations and user expenses in Europe in history.

The largest retailers have run out of Switch. Nintendo will not be able to return the consoles to the shelves until the summer. This is reported by Business Insider with reference to a representative of the gaming company.

All major events in Germany will be postponed until August 31, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday. This means that one of the main gaming exhibitions of the year — Gamescom 2020 — will not take place.

New details about the PlayStation 5 release were revealed by Bloomberg. According to him, the Sony console will be released on time, but in a limited edition. COVID-19 should be blamed for the latter.

The “For the whole family” category will disappear from Google Play. It will be replaced with a new section “For children”. This section will include games and applications approved by teachers.

The coronavirus forced Newzoo to adjust the forecast for the esports market for 2020: this year, many esports events were postponed.

The authors of the mobile game Clothes Forever are suing pop star Selena Gomez. Gomez accuses LoveCrunch studio of illegally using her image to promote the title. She demands that the developers close the game and pay her compensation.

Russian Forbes has published the top 200 richest businessmen in Russia. The 34th and 35th positions in it are for the Buchman brothers, the founders of the Playrix gaming company. The publication estimates the state of each of them at $ 3.1 billion.

The Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation has agreed with the Parliament additional measures to support the IT sector during the coronavirus. If they are approved by the government, IT companies will have the right to temporarily reduce employee salaries by no more than 20%.

And more about investments. The studio of Ubisoft natives, Breaking Walls, raised $ 1.75 million to develop the debut game. It will be an adventure game about animals Away: The Survival Series.

Rival Games studio, which created Alien: Blackout, has closed in Finland. Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the developer’s partnership agreements and negotiations with publishers broke down.

Japanese giant Sony will support indie developers during the pandemic. The corporation will create a special fund for $10 million. The funds from it will go to help independent studios that are suffering losses due to the coronavirus.

Danish film company Nordisk Film is investing in games again. Its gaming division has invested $4.5 million in mobile Nitro Games. Now Nordisk Film is the largest shareholder of the Finnish studio.

How much has been invested in gaming companies? Which countries accounted for the bulk of the transactions? Has the coronavirus greatly affected the plans of gaming companies to expand their investment portfolio? About this and much more — in the financial report on the market for the first quarter of 2020.

Wanted: ASO is a specialist at ZiMAD, a leading brand manager at MY.GAMES and a leading game designer at Melsoft Games.

Sony presented the tops of the most downloaded games in the USA for March of this year. There are separate charts for paid PS4 titles, freeplay, DLC and PS VR. The console top and the frituplay top were headed by the games of the Call of Duty series.

Valve has announced the Steam Summer online games festival. From June 9 to June 14, free demos of future new products will be presented in the store. Developers wishing to participate must submit applications by April 24.

In the USA and Canada, a separate labeling was introduced for games with loot boxes. Prior to that, all games with IAP, including those containing loot boxes, were labeled the same: “Contains in-game purchases”.