In 2018, the trend towards decentralization of digital PC retail has become more noticeable. More and more companies are leaving Steam and moving to their own sites. In parallel, near-gaming services have become more active. They set about launching their own grocery storefronts. We talked about the reasons for the current situation with experts of the gaming market: Sergey Galenkin, Ivan Pomytkin and Nikolai Bondarenko.

Belgian players in Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm will soon not be able to buy loot boxes. Blizzard will disable this feature to comply with local laws — the country’s authorities have recognized luboks as gambling mechanics and banned publishers from monetizing titles in this way.

A selection of 10 books dedicated to significant events, personalities and titles in the video game industry.

The date of the event has been published White Nights Moscow 2018. The organizers of the conference also shared a preliminary list of participants.

Bill Gates’ company took an unexpected step in the hope of surpassing Sony PlayStation 4 in sales. Microsoft launched the Xbox All Access initiative. According to its terms, the user receives a set-top box (Xbox One X or Xbox One S to choose from) and a subscription to two main gaming services. In return, he will have to pay the company a certain amount every month for two years.

Business news (and not only) of the gaming industry for August 27.

On July 31, 2018, the independent studio Bit Kid released a two-dimensional action role-playing film Chasm, which she worked on for five years. Bit Kid Marketing and PR Director Dan Adelman spoke about how the company maintained the interest of players in the project throughout the development period and attracted the attention of a new audience to it.

Fortnite remains the most prolific newsmaker. This time, however, with a minus sign. The Android installer of the game, distributed by Epic Games outside Google Play, turned out to be at launch with a major vulnerability.

Google has added transparency. The developer console in Google Play now segments organic traffic. Developers can see how much traffic their listing (application page) receives from the search, and how much comes from the research store.

Business news (and not only) of the gaming industry for August 24.

On August 16, a new three-in-a-row was released in China. It’s called Zootopia Dream Diaries. This is an interpretation of the Scapes series of the domestic Playrix. In the novelty, the user also plays match3 and equips the territory.

The Battle for Azeroth addon for the role-playing MMO game World of Warcraft has beaten the sales figures of the first day of all previous additions to the popular online project of Blizzard Entertainment.

Epic Games has started encouraging players to take care of the security of their accounts. As a reward for enabling two-factor authentication, the company gives gamers an exclusive emotion-the Boogie Down dance.

Business news (and not only) of the gaming industry for August 23.

What becomes the main obstacle for most independent developers? The creator of the indie platformer Spelunky, Derek Yu, tried to answer this question on his Twitter. In his opinion, if a developer wants to succeed in his business, he needs to learn not to abandon projects halfway, but to consistently bring them to the final.

A report by Chris Keeling from Wargaming.Net . The speaker spoke about how successful companies innovate in a crowded market, what innovations can be introduced into your projects, why innovations can be destructive.

The analytical firm NPD Group has prepared a review of the gaming market of the United States of America in July 2018. According to the company, the highest-grossing game last month was the Switch-exclusive Octopath Traveler from Square Enix.

49% owned by the Russian Post, the bank became interested in the gaming audience. The organization plans to attract 100,000 new customers within this niche by the end of 2019. To do this, she took up investments in domestic esports.

The famous Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto (Shigeru Miyamoto) appealed to colleagues in the gaming industry with a request not to be so greedy for gamers’ money. According to him, Nintendo partially avoids free—play monetization models precisely for this reason – the company does not want to ruin players. Miyamoto stated this on August 22 during a speech at the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference held in Yokohama.