Tokyo-based studio Thirdverse, which develops VR games, has raised $8.5 million. In the future, the company also plans to create entire virtual worlds using blockchain technologies.Thirverse received money as part of Round A, which was led by JAFCO, Presence Capital, Sisu Ventures and Incubate Fund.

Activision Blizzard has taken on serious cuts. The company is closing a branch in Versailles, France, where about 400 people worked at the beginning of 2019.

Nintendo may refuse to create new consoles and simply update the Switch by analogy with Apple and its approach to the release of the iPhone. This is reported by Bloomberg, talking about the prospects of such a model and the complex relationship of the company with investors.Financial prerequisites for the new model

Next Tuesday, Unity launches the second season of Unite Now – free online sessions for learning, entertainment and inspiration. In short videos and podcasts, experts will continue to share their experience with Unity technologies.

The game Sky: Children of the Light has been downloaded over 50 million times on mobile devices since its release. This is an adventure project from the creators of Journey and Flower.thatgamecompany studio notes that word of mouth among Android users, as well as the release of new seasons and in-game events helped it achieve such indicators.

Genshin Impact, which is distributed for free and has already earned several million dollars, continues to set records. In just four days, the game has been downloaded 17 million times on mobile devices alone.UPDATED: According to the latest App Annie data, in the first week after the release, the number of Genshin Impact installations exceeded 23 million.

The business processes of gaming and non-gaming companies differ dramatically, according to SuperData co-founder Joost van Dreunen. An analyst with twenty years of experience tells about this in the newly published book “One Up: Creativity, Competition, and the Global Business of Video Games”. The pages contain an empirical analysis of innovations and strategies in the video game industry, refutation of industry myths and hundreds of case studies.

The Swedish holding Thunderful Group will include the British studio Coatsink Software, which is also working on a VR project on the “Jurassic World”. The transaction amount was $29.8 million.Thunderful Group will pay $14.9 million in cash and the same amount in shares.

Today, on October 6, a free online event on the legal aspects of the gaming business started. It’s called the Game Industry Legal Conference. During the first day, lawyers from Voodoo, ESA, Nexon, Playrix and a number of law firms specializing in the gaming business will speak.

The boom in investment in the gaming industry has not bypassed the VR segment. American Survios closed the fourth round of financing, during which it raised $16.7 million. The company will direct the money to “its own contribution to the development of the virtual metaverse.”

Kiev-based developer of social casinos Murka is going to push the ranks of the largest market players. The studio recently reported revenue growth of 44.6% year-on-year, and its estimated quarterly revenue was $40.5 million. This put Murka on the tenth line of the rating of the most successful companies in the segment.

Google has announced that it will not introduce a mandatory 30% commission on in-game purchases in the Play Store for India until 2022. This happened after local companies merged to create their own store without deductions.The new Play Store rules will come into force in September next year, obliging developers to pay 30% from each transaction within applications.

The MAU of the Huawei AppGallery app store, which is available in 170 countries, has reached 490 million people. The store also attracts a low commission, which does not apply to local developers from China.From the new material Pocket Gamer it became known that in the first three months of stay in the Huawei store, the number of downloads of Gameloft games increased seven times.

During the year, Call of Duty: Mobile managed to become one of the most successful mobile shooters. Sensor Tower reports that the revenue of the game has approached $ 500 million, and the project has a release in the Chinese market ahead.General information on Call of Duty: Mobile

Sensor Tower analysts studied the mobile gaming market and stated: in the third quarter of 2020, players spent $4.4 billion more than a year ago. We have highlighted the main thing from the company’s report.

A new GameDataCrunch project has appeared on the network, which collects data about games in one place based on third-party sites and open sources. The service does not provide information about sales, but gives access to metrics by which you can roughly judge the degree of success of different games.Who is behind the project?

Startups and India’s largest IT companies have teamed up against Google, which controls 99% of the smartphone market in the country. Local developers intend to create their own store in order not to pay a 30% commission on Google Play.What made Indian companies unite?

Good news from Belarus. Minsk-based game studio Neskin has received strategic investments from the Australian gambling giant Aristocrat, whose assets include such major gaming companies as Big Fish Games and Plarium.

The authors of the psychological horror Observer together with the Polish publisher Forever Entertainment founded the studio Fearful Entertainment. She will make remakes of famous horror franchises for Nintendo Switch.