Ubisoft told about the changes in its development strategy. The publisher intends to release freeplay offshoots of its key franchises. However, we are not talking about reducing the number of AAA titles, but about the approach that Activision has been using in recent years to develop the Call of Duty series.Ubisoft announced this during a conversation with investors after the publication of the annual report.

Ubisoft has published a financial report for the year (ended March 31). Sales turned out to be record-breaking and exceeded € 2 billion, and the total number of unique players on PC and consoles reached 141 million. The company also shared data on individual games and talked about the calendar of upcoming releases.Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Wrath of the Druids

Apple prohibits developers from not only implementing their own payment systems, but also generally telling users about discounts outside of iOS. For example, they cannot be sent emails with an offer to buy a subscription or game currency on the game’s website cheaper than in the App Store. Also, you cannot specify similar information in the application itself.

The Swedish Stillfront Group has replenished the portfolio. A studio with Ukrainian roots, Game Labs, known for the strategic games Naval Action and Ultimate General, came under the leadership of the company.

Turkey occupies an increasingly important place in the gaming industry. This is evidenced by the growing popularity of mobile titles from local developers on the world market. For example, now 20% of the most downloaded games in the USA are projects of Turkish studios.Royal Match

Two weeks ago, Apple released the iOS 14.5 update, which required applications to ask users for permission to collect personal data. This feature has already been appreciated by many owners of iOS devices. As Flurry analysts found out, today only 15% of users from all over the world were not against the collection of their personal information.

Against the background of the tragedy in Kazan, Senator Alexander Bashkin proposed to strengthen control over the content of video games. He believes that games glorify violence and can lead to shootings in schools.

Wanted: account manager at Borscht, game designer at RJ Games and UI/UX designer at Green Pixel.

The authors of the Noclip channel have released an hour-long documentary about the creation of the Dishonored series. They talked to Arkane employees about all aspects of the games — from concept development to the design of variable levels, including the Mechanical Mansion that impressed many players.

Activision Blizzard wants remasters of old games to take full advantage of three-dimensional engines and at the same time preserve the spirit of the original projects. This is evidenced by the publisher’s new patent, which deals with the technology of converting 2D assets into 3D in real time. This can theoretically greatly simplify the process of creating updated versions.Diablo II: Resurrected

According to Matthew Weissinger, marketing director of Epic Games, Fortnite has practically nowhere else to grow on consoles. The authors of the battle royale see the biggest opportunities for growth in mobile. He explained this by the fact that everyone has smartphones, unlike consoles and gaming PCs. Weissinger also added that before Fortnite was removed from the App Store, there were only 2.5 million people on iOS DAU titles — 10% of the total DAU…

Roblox reported the results of the quarter for the first time after entering the stock market. In January-March 2021, the company increased revenue by 140% to $387 million. However, it also suffered losses of $134.2 million — almost twice as much as in the first quarter of 2020.

Tristan Kosmynka, one of the heads of the App Store, said that in 2017-2018, developers of 5 million applications applied for publication in the store. Approximately 40% of them were unable to pass moderation due to a violation of Apple‘s privacy policy. For example, in 2019, out of 4.8 million applications, slightly more than 1.7 million (36%) were refused publication.

Less than a month ago, an application appeared in the Epic Games Store Itch.io — stora for indie games without DRM. As Apple noted, the standards of this site are very different from the standards of the Epic Games Store. In particular in Itch.io there is a Sisterly Lust game that includes “a list of fetishes with words that should not be uttered in federal court.” Although Epic Games itself does not encourage such content.

According to internal documents, Epic Games negotiated the purchase of 4-6 titles. Moreover, it is not completely clear from the wording: is $200 million the price tag for all the games or for each of them separately? If this is the price for one game, then in total the company was ready to spend up to $1.2 billion on Sony PC exclusives.

The owners of the Epic Games Store planned to earn about $500 million if 80 of the best-selling Steam games appeared in their store. The company developed the plan in 2019. In it, Epic Games also explained that without these bestsellers, it would be problematic for her to get a large share of the PC market. However, we note that by the end of the year, the company had agreed only with the developers of…

Epic Games has revealed data on the distribution of games from December 2018 to October 2020. In the graph, the company showed how many newcomers came to the Epic Games Store after these promotions. The distribution of GTA V was the most profitable — over 7 million new users. In second place was Sid Meier’s Civilization VI — 2.5 million people.

By the spring of 2020, there were five sales in the Epic Games Store. The largest was during the winter holidays in 2019, when gamers left $21.8 million in the store. But a few months later, the most “unsuccessful” sale took place in the store — $ 5.7 million. Later, Epic Games held another sale, but it also collected several times less than the Christmas one — $ 9.9 million.

Indie developers are required to agree to support the xCloud streaming service if they want to publish games on Xbox. Epic Games‘ internal documents state that this is a matter of principle for Microsoft, and the company uses “harsh expressions regarding the requirement.” All unsuitable games are not allowed by Microsoft or removed from the Xbox ecosystem.