The number of Free Fire downloads on Google Play has exceeded a billion. As the developers from Garena point out, no other mobile battle royale can boast of such an achievement yet.

The announcement of the Steam Deck aroused considerable interest among gaming industry experts and ordinary users. At the same time, most of the reactions were positive. The Valve console is compared to the Nintendo Switch, memes are made about it, and they also talk about whether it will be able to find its audience and become a competitive solution in the market.

Yesterday, Valve announced its portable Steam Deck console. Its cheapest version will be $50 more expensive than the new Nintendo Switch OLED. However, Gabe Newell believes that this is still a “painfully” low price tag.

Valve has announced a game console. It is portable, called Steam Deck and allows you to run PC games.

App Annie analysts told about the most popular and popular mobile games in Russia in the second quarter (April-June). Brawl Stars, released three years ago, became the leader at the box office, and the new Fidget Toys 3D was the best in downloads.

Google intends to pay developers money depending on the number of gaming sessions in the paid cloud service Stadia Pro. However, not everyone in the industry has positively received this model. Some fear that it will force studios to create stretched games and artificially increase user engagement.The discussion arose against the background of the new Google Stadia strategy.

It is now possible to buy shares of large gaming companies on the Moscow Stock Exchange. Among them are Activision Blizzard, Sony, EA and others. Trading is carried out through an exchange-traded investment fund (ETF), and the commission will be 0.9% per annum.The auction began on July 14, the official website of the Moscow Stock Exchange reports.

The Nintendo Switch with an OLED screen may become one of the few consoles that will not be sold at a loss. According to Bloomberg, the new Switch will cost $350 — $50 more expensive than the previous version. Despite the fact that its production turned out to be more expensive by only $ 10.

Analysts from GameRefinery told about the main trends of casual games this year. Developers are looking for new ways to engage users and actively add elements from other genres to projects. Among them are meta-gameplay, social functions and seasonal passes.Meta elements

Netflix goes beyond movies and TV shows. According to Bloomberg, the streaming service is launching a gaming direction. The first games on the platform may appear as early as 2022.

Resolution Games studio, which creates VR games, received $25 million from investors. The company plans to spend the collected money on creating games-services in virtual reality.

Wanted: project manager at FunCorp, business development manager at Borscht and leading narrative designer at Game Garden.

Analysts continue to talk about a decrease in the effectiveness of advertising on iOS, which is associated with the new IDFA policy. According to the Consumer Acquisition marketing agency, some developers on the Apple platform have already noticed a 15-20% decrease in revenue after the release of iOS 14.5.The main thing from the report

Microsoft has released an update for Xbox Family Settings, an application that manages children’s accounts on Xbox consoles. Now parents can set a limit on purchases in games or even ban them altogether.

Google wants to attract more developers to Stadia. To do this, the company introduces a new commission system. Now the authors of the new games will pay Google only 15% of the first $3 million in revenue received on its cloud platform. However, there were some nuances.This became known at the Google for Games Developer summit.

Chinese giant Tencent could get even bigger. According to German media, the holding aimed to buy Crytek studio for €300 million. That’s just the profile analysts doubt the reality of the deal.

The company miHoYo decided to do charity work. Together with the Chinese Youth Development Foundation, Genshin Impact developers have launched a program called the Flamescion Public Welfare Project. As part of this program, they have already allocated money for the construction of a new building for an elementary school in Tongzi.

In Africa, as in most other regions, the pandemic and lockdowns provoked an explosive growth of mobile gaming. Compared to the first quarter of last year, local users have become more active in downloading games and making more in-app purchases. This is reported by AppsFlyer in a joint report with Google.Note: The study covers the period from the first quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021 (ended March 31).

Where in Russia you can get a state diploma in game development — in the material for App2Top.ru Maria Kochakova, founder and CEO of the Narratorika School of game Screenwriters, told us.