The Kongregate game portal is gradually moving away from publishing ambitions and is paying more and more attention to internal development. According to the company’s management, now it intends to focus on creating idle games popular among its users. Many of the new projects will be made under license.

Epic Games has attracted additional investments in the amount of $ 1 billion. This, among other things, made it possible to strengthen cooperation with Sony, which this time invested an additional $ 200 million in the company. Epic Games’ total valuation was $28.7 billion.Epic Games announced the closing of the investment round today on its official website.

Publisher Nekki announced the release of the Cascadeur program in early access format. The company also announced exactly how it plans to monetize the service.

The Chinese analytical service SocialPeta shared the results of last year in the mobile games market, and also told what to expect from this year. There are a couple of interesting figures in the study.

Tripledot Studios is a British mobile studio consisting of former employees of King, Facebook and other companies. This month, she raised $78 million, based on the studio’s estimate of almost $500 million.Investors in the Series A round were Eldridge, Access Industries and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Another trial at Activision. This time the company went to court after it was accused of violating the trademark “Warzone”. The fact is that at the end of 2017, indie developer Randy Ficker launched a browser game Warzone.com — almost three years before the release of Call of Duty: Warzone. According to Ficker, the trademark rights should belong to him.

Last month, the AppLovin marketing platform filed for an IPO. Now there are details about the goals that she wants to achieve after going public. The company expects its valuation to exceed $30 billion.AppLovin plans to put 25 million shares on the NASDAQ stock exchange, according to the InvestGame portal.

The number of age-related players is growing rapidly. Analysts at the Global Web Index research company have estimated that since 2018, the number of gamers aged 55-64 has increased by 32%.

Epic Games is losing hundreds of millions of dollars on its own store. Over the past two years, Epic Games Store losses have reached $454 million, and by the end of 2021, they may even amount to about $ 600 million. But Tim Sweeney is sure there is nothing wrong with that. He calls the losses “fantastic investments” and believes that such a strategy will prove itself well in the future.

Quantic Dream has been sued for several years for creating an unhealthy working atmosphere. The studio was accused of racism, sexism and homophobia. However, this month, the developers of Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human finally managed to defend their rights, and the employees who sued were ordered to compensate for material damage.On April 7, the Paris Court of Appeal issued a final decision in the case against Quantic Dream.

The hyper-casual games market is becoming more competitive. In mid-February, MY.GAMES announced an investment in Espresso Publishing. This is a new hypercage publisher. We talked with Zakhar Serebryannikov, CEO of the startup, and Elena Grigoryan, Marketing and Advertising Director of MY.GAMES, about what he is going to offer to the market.

ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, has gained a strong foothold in the mobile gaming market. Since 2019, its Ohayoo gaming division, which cooperates with casual and hyper-casual developers, has released more than 150 titles. During this period, the publisher’s projects have been downloaded more than 500 million times.From this impressive list, eight games have reached the first line in the list of the most downloaded mobile titles in China.

In this generation, Sony finally made a bet on exclusive AAA games, almost completely abandoning the support of inexpensive titles from less experienced studios. Despite the commercial prospects of such a strategy, it harms small ambitious teams. Among the main problems are staff turnover and studio closures.Jason Schreier writes about this in his article.

Last week’s best-selling games on Steam were Outriders and It Takes Two again. But Cyberpunk 2077 and Evil Genius 2: World Domination did not enter the chart this time.

In the Russian Nintendo eShop, prices have risen sharply. Now the standard versions of some flagship games will cost users 6299 rubles. For example, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (their old price is 5249 rubles).

A new deal on the gaming market of Belarus. GEM Capital, an investment company with Russian roots, has become a partner of Weappy Studio in Minsk. She invested $1.4 million in the authors of the This Is the Police series.

The French independent company Dontnod, known for the games Remember Me and Life Is Strange, will start publishing third-party games. The first title under the new strategy will be a project from the Danish studio PortaPlay, the authors of the Broken Lines tactics.Dontnod announced this on its official website.

Large Chinese companies continue to actively invest in the gaming industry. Bilibili, which owns the video platform of the same name, wants to acquire a stake in the studio Yoozoo Games. The total amount of the transaction is estimated at $765 million.photo: Wikimedia Commons

The Brazilian authorities have launched an investigation, according to the results of which the country may completely ban loot boxes. Several major publishers are mentioned in the case. Companies that refuse to turn off these mechanics in the event of a ban may face daily fines of over $700 thousand.The National Association of Centers for the Protection of Children and Adolescents (ANCED) appealed to the authorities to ban loot boxes.