Merge games are on the rise and can become a replacement for match3 titles for many users, according to analysts from GameRefinery. They use similar gameplay principles and monetization models. However, merge games have great potential to engage and retain players.Evermerge

Chinese giant Tencent has signed another deal. This time, the company acquired a minority stake in the British Playtonic, the authors of the platformer Yooka-Laylee. How much this purchase cost is not disclosed.

InvestGame analysts have calculated the volume of investments, public offerings and completed M&A transactions in the gaming market over the past nine months. They amounted to $57.7 billion. This is 72% more than a year earlier for the same period.

Activision Blizzard employees demanded the resignation of Bobby Kotick. The petition has already been signed by over 1300 people. Meanwhile, Phil Spencer announced that Xbox will reconsider the terms of cooperation with the scandalous company. According to him, such an attitude towards employees has no place in the gaming industry.Overwatch

Mobile publisher and developer Green Grey has supported Pocket Size Games. This company positions itself as “the first distributed studio between the UK, USA and Eastern Europe”. The amount of investments amounted to $2 million.

Soon there will be one more analytical service. Developers from the Polish Superhot Team have announced that they will soon open access to their IndieBI tool. It tracks and collects data on game sales on “big” platforms into one database. The studio received $3 million from investors to finalize the service.

According to the analytical company Sensor Tower, in the third quarter, users from South Korea spent almost $ 1.5 billion on mobile games. At the same time, the vast majority of revenue came from Google Play. And the highest-grossing title was the MMORPG Odin: Valhalla Rising.

The Xbox Cloud Gaming Cloud Gaming service has become officially available on consoles. Xbox users will now be able to play games from the Game Pass library without installing them on their hard drive. Russia, however, is not yet on the list of supported countries.Microsoft announced the launch of Cloud Gaming on the official Xbox blog.

Epic Games is one of the first gaming companies to announce its ambitions to create a metaverse. The other day, its head, Tim Sweeney, noted that these plans were partly the reason for his confrontation with Apple and Google.

Jim Ryan, who heads PlayStation, criticized Activision Blizzard amid the latest accusations against the publisher. He believes that the company is not doing enough to improve the situation. Meanwhile, Activision’s management continues to support Bobby Kotick and tries to calm down disgruntled employees. Reaction of the head of PlayStation

A group of investors who own less than a percent of Activision Blizzard‘s shares called for the removal of Bobby Kotick from the post of CEO of the company. In addition, they opposed two members of the board.

Jen Oneal, who held the post of Blizzard co-CEO until November, said that she was offered an equal salary with another co-CEO, Mike Ybarra, only after she made decisions to leave the company. Before that, she had been refused a salary increase several times.

Last October, Meta (formerly Facebook) released a new VR headset – Oculus Quest 2. Since that time, 10 million people have bought the device.

Chinese players have complained about the facial expressions of female characters in the mobile Harry Potter: Magic Awakened. Allegedly, they look too provocative and have obvious sexual overtones. NetEase has already apologized for the situation and explained the cause of the problem.Examples of facial expressions of female characters in Harry Potter: Magic Awakened

The freeplay battler Hero Wars (also known in Russia as “Chronicles of Chaos“) has reached a significant figure. The title, developed by a team with Russian roots, collected its first billion dollars.

In the near future, the Chinese regulator will again issue licenses to online games. He hasn’t done it in four months. Against the background of such news, the shares of local giants Tencent and NetEase increased in price.

The publisher of Hero Wars summed up the quarterly results. In July-September, its revenue amounted to $115 million. This is a record figure for Nexters. Previously, the company did not earn so much in three months.

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal published a big investigation about the situation inside Activision Blizzard. It is alleged that Bobby Kotick hid information about harassment for years and once threatened to kill one of the employees himself. The board of directors sided with him, but the company’s shares fell to the lowest in more than a year.

Embracer Group has published a report for the second fiscal quarter of 2021 (ended September 30). During this period, the Swedish holding managed to almost double the revenue from gaming sales and significantly increase profits. The company also shared plans for new M&A deals.