Seven members of the US Congress have written a letter to Microsoft, Sony, Tencent, Valve, Activision Blizzard and a number of other major gaming companies. They are interested in what exactly they are doing to combat extremism, harassment and other harassment in video games.

On the eve of the New Year, App2Top continues to publish interviews from the “Results” series, in which it interviews top managers of the gaming industry (and related ones) about how the year has passed for their company and the market. Next up is an interview with Konstantin Ivanov, brand director of AdQuantum.

We are publishing a new list with gaming vacancies. This week they are wanted: a leading business development manager at Playkot, a level designer at GFA Games and a VFX artist at ExoGenesis.

MY.GAMES company is no longer going to work in Russia. She announced that she would transfer the entire Russian business to Astrum Entertainment, a publisher that organizes a joint venture with Innova.

Recently, artists have been actively expressing dissatisfaction with the situation on ArtStation. They are not satisfied that due to the popularity of neural networks like Midjourney, the site was flooded with generated AI art. Yesterday, ArtStation reacted to what was happening, but its response only added fuel to the fire.

Maksut Shadaev at a meeting with journalists said that the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation is preparing a bill similar to the European DMA (Digital Markets Act). If it is accepted, Apple will have to allow Russians to install apps on the iPhone and iPad bypassing the App Store.

French Voodoo has decided on serious changes. The company, which has been publishing mainly hyper-casual games for many years, will now also work with casual and hybrid projects.

The Jarvi Games studio registered in Cyprus has closed the seed round of financing. The main investor was the Play Ventures fund, along with Velo Partners and The Games Fund invested in the developers.

Cyberpunk 2077 is in great demand in “M.Video-Eldorado”. It surpassed all other multiplatform games in sales, including Red Dead Redemption 2, Death Stranding and The Last of Us Part II.

Take-Two‘s “daughter” named the Private Division Development Fund. She said that the foundation will offer independent developers financial assistance and advice, but they will have to publish the games themselves.

The developer of 3ds Max and Maya is finally leaving Russia. In the database of the portal “Fedresurs” there was information that on November 30, Autodesk started the liquidation of AUTODESK (SI-ES) – the legal entity of the company in Russia.

Recently it became known that Playtika decided to reduce 15% of the staff or about 615 people in Europe, Israel and the USA. Portal dev.by found out how layoffs took place in the Minsk and Warsaw offices.

MTS continues its expansion into the gaming platform market. She launched a beta version of the service for the sale of keys for games – Rushbe.

Next week, the Bombora publishing house is going to release a work on another franchise — The Pokémon Generation. How the game saga that gave us Pikachu was created.” This is the story of the development and development of the cult Pokémon series, which covers not only games, but also anime, manga and many other projects.

Six months ago, the British studio Hutch Games, known for Rebel Racing and F1 Clash, switched to a four-day working week in the format of an experiment. It turned out to be so successful that the studio decided to continue working in this format.

On the eve of the New Year, App2Top opens the traditional interview series “Results”, in which we interview top managers of the gaming industry (and related ones) about how the year has passed for their company and industry. This time we start the cycle with an interview with Roman Lukyanov, managing Partner of the Semenov & Pevzner law firm.

The editors of App2Top found out from hh.ru how the situation on the labor market in game dev has changed this year. Not for the better. The number of new gaming vacancies on the platform decreased from 8,072 in 2021 to 7,308 in 2022.

Online school XYZ School together with hh.ru announced the launch of a reality show. It will be called “XYZ Reality“. His heroes will master the game dev profession and find work in the industry.

Jagex has announced the acquisition of Croatian Gamepires, best known for SCUM survival. She did not disclose the purchase price.