After three years of work on the mobile action movie War Robots, Ilya Smirnov, the producer of the project, leaves Pixonic. His next job is unknown. Smirnov himself plans to rest first.

On February 20, the Russian developer Black Sun Game Publishing announced a fundraising campaign for the creation of the game “Corsairs: The Black Mark” (“Corsairs 4”). The next day, Dmitry Arkhipov, co-founder of Akella, the developer and publisher of the first three parts, said that the creators of the new game do not have rights to the trademark of the series. App2Top.ru I talked to representatives of both sides of the conflict.

Call of Duty: WWII development managers Michael Condrey and Glen Schofield have left Sledgehammer Games studio for executive positions at Activision. Schofield and Condrey founded Sledgehammer in 2009.

The main motive for a gamer to continue rather than quit the game is his desire to make progress in it. This is stated in a study by the analytical company Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR), conducted in 2017 in North America.

Last August, the game Flippy Knife from the Russian team Beresnev topped the world charts. The studio’s debut project, which previously specialized in graphics and animation, was downloaded 20 million times, and its revenue amounted to a six-figure sum. We publish a story by the founder of the studio Oleg Beresnev about where the team started and how it achieved success.

The Russian government was offered to create a ministry for the development of new technologies and virtual reality. This initiative was made by Boris Chernyshov, Deputy head of the Education Committee of the State Duma.

Polish studio CI Games fired a significant part of the developers, reducing the development group to 30 people. The company explained the reduction by the desire to speed up and optimize work on titles, as well as high competition in the industry.

Outsourcing company Glass Egg Digital Media from Vietnam is in litigation with mobile publisher Gameloft. Glass Egg accuses the French company of copyright infringement, unfair competition and misappropriation of trade secrets.

On February 14, the White Nights conference ended. Its winter session was held in Prague for the second year in a row. A quarter of the audience was represented by guests from the USA, Great Britain and Germany.

February 19 investment division Mail.Ru Games Ventures and developer studio Epic Games have announced the beginning of a joint collaboration. One of the main objectives of the partnership is to find and support promising gaming products. Both financial and expert assistance is planned.

Game Key Store G2A.com launched its own production of video games for virtual reality. The marketplace has opened the Monad Rock studio.

The French mobile publisher Gameloft has published financial results for 2017. According to the report, Gameloft Advertising Solutions’ own advertising network earned €36.3 million — 93% more than a year ago.

A selection of the most profitable publishers of applications on the mobile market for 2017 has appeared on the web. The most interesting thing about it: the emergence of new names and the high position of the casual colossus Playrix, based in Russia.

Atari shares rose by 60% after the announcement of the company’s plans to create an entertainment blockchain platform and issue the Atari Token cryptocurrency.

Half of the employees of the French studio Eugen Systems went on strike. The developers accused the company’s managers of violating labor laws. 21 out of 44 Eugen Systems employees joined the campaign.

In the Hangar 13 studio owned by the 2K publishing house, cuts have been made. According to Kotaku, the owners laid off “a significant part” of the workers. The first and so far the only Hangar 13 game remains the Mafia III action adventure.

Swedish developer and publisher Starbreeze suffered losses of $22.2 million in EBITDA in 2017.

Finnish mobile developer Supercell reported a 20.5% decrease in profit in 2017. The main reason for the decline was the slowdown in sales of the flagship title Supercell — the Clash of Clans strategy, which was released 5 years ago.

Hawaii became the first US state to propose bills to restrict video games with the mechanics of loot boxes. Such ideas have been voiced before, but it was the Hawaiian administration that first formulated these requirements in the form of legal documents.