The gaming division of ByteDance has announced the purchase of Moonton mobile studio, developers of the popular MOBA Mobile Legends. As a result of the transaction, the company was valued at $4 billion.Reuters reports on the purchase and evaluation of Shanghai Moonton.

In May, the trial of Apple and Epic Games will begin. On the eve of the meeting, the parties announced a list of possible witnesses. Among them are the heads of companies Tim Cook and Tim Sweeney, as well as other top managers and a number of former employees.According to TechCrunch, the witness lists were submitted to the court at the end of last week.

The Playrix group of companies has become larger. Ukrainian Boolat Games joined it under a new name. Now it’s called Boolat Play.

Less than a week after the next mass layoffs at Activision Blizzard, as it became known — the publisher is already preparing for new ones. The media reports that this time the company plans to close most of its European offices responsible for the publication.

Obsidian Entertainment has been specializing in RPG for many years. Despite their commitment to one genre, screenwriters have to adapt to almost every new project. Carrie Patel, the studio’s senior narrative designer, spoke about the difference in approaches using the example of Pillars of Eternity and The Outer Worlds.Patel shared her experience during a speech at the GDC Showcase.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many things, including the sources of game downloads in the App Store. Referral links now play a decisive role, and not a search in the store, as it was before 2020. The analytical company Sensor Tower writes about this in a new report.

Despite the problems at the launch, Sea of Thieves continues to develop actively. Shortly before its third anniversary, the game broke the mark of 20 million players. In honor of this, the developers announced several nice bonuses and events for fans at once.

Koch Media, a subsidiary of Embracer Group, decided to support the Payday 3 shooter. She has already signed a deal with Swedish Starbreeze and promised to allocate approximately €50 million for the game.

GameRefinery has published a large study of the American social casino market. The dominance of slots in this category continues — they account for most of the total revenue. Analysts also talked about the main trends and mechanics that distinguish social casinos from other genres.The main thing from the report

What is the average salary of game developers in the market, how many of them are women, does higher education affect wages — these and many other questions are answered by a new salary study from Talents In Games and App2Top.ru .

Swedish holding Embracer Group is preparing for new purchases. The company announced the issue of 36 million new Class B shares and now plans to earn 7.6 billion Swedish kronor ($893.9 million) on this.

In February, Gismart released two of its games at once. One of them — the Pencil Rush 3D hyper—casual arcade – turned out to be a hit. Its monthly downloads amounted to more than 8.3 million. With App2Top.ru the British-Belarusian developer shared what metrics the game had at the start.

The 1v1Me app has been launched on iOS, which allows you to bet on matches in online games. Currently, access to it can be obtained only by invitation. However, its authors have already raised $2 million for the development of their startup.The company 1v1Me was founded by young entrepreneurs Anthony Geranio and Alex Emmanuel.

Anthony and Joe Russo (Anthony Russo, Joe Russo), who directed the last two parts of “The Avengers”, turned out to be big Fortnite fans. So much so that they even helped Epic Games create the sixth season of the second chapter of the battle royale.

Wanted: WannaPlay IT recruiter, mobile game monetization manager at DP SPACE and 3D environment artist at Kevuru Games.

The State Duma adopted amendments to the law on education in the third reading. Now educational activities will be regulated by federal ministries. Experts directly call it censorship. However, it is still unclear whether the new law will affect courses and conferences related to the gaming industry.The text of the adopted amendments to the Federal Law “On Education in the Russian Federation” is published on the website of the Ministry of Education and Science.

The Epic Games team decided to take up the improvement of social functions in their store. For example, now they want to add group chats to it. But personal messages will be removed for a while.

Sensor Tower analysts in a recent study decided to see how the mobile puzzle genre was doing in 2020. It turned out that it was not bad. During the year, US gamers left more than $4.6 billion in such games. Among the highest-grossing projects, two games from Playrix were noted at once (and another one became the leader in downloads).

While 50 Activision Blizzard employees are out of work, its CEO will receive a huge bonus. Bobby Kotick will be paid $200 million for the fact that the company’s shares continue to grow. However, a group of investors considers such payments excessive and wants to revise the amount of remuneration for the publisher’s management.Bobby Kotick can count on such an impressive bonus thanks to a clause in his contract called “Shareholder Value Creation Incentive”.