A year after the harassment allegations, the famous game designer and screenwriter Chris Avellone spoke about the situation for the first time. He told his version of events in detail, pointed out the inaccuracies in the words of the girls and recalled how he lost his job in one day because of the cancellation culture. Avellon has also filed a libel suit and intends to defend himself in court.Source: Critical Path

The Australian authorities have expanded the list of professions that will be given priority during immigration. Now it will be easier for developers and other game specialists to get a work visa and a residence permit. This is another measure to restore the economy from the effects of the pandemic.The Australian Ministry of the Interior announced the changes last week.

TiMi Studios, known for the mobile hits Call of Duty: Mobile and Honor of Kings, intends to make multiplatform AAA games. To do this, Tencent’s subsidiary studio announced the opening of a new office in Seattle. It was headed by veterans of the gaming industry who worked on the Battlefield and Halo series.The new office will open before the end of 2021.

The Reddit community decided to help indie developers get unbiased reviews of their games. For these purposes, the Destroy My Game subreddit appeared on the site (Destroy my Game), whose users should point out the pros and cons of the proposed projects without embellishment and as honestly as possible.An example of one of the projects submitted to the court of Destroy My Game users

Igor Dyatlov, who founded XYZ School in 2017, announced on his VKontakte page that he was forced to leave his company a year and a half ago. According to his version, the partners, who are now business leaders, were forced to resign by threats.

Over the weekend, XYZ School, known for its game-dev courses, found itself in the center of a big scandal. It all started with a collective letter from deceived students who could not get a fully paid course program for almost nine months. The post caused a great resonance, and after the official response of the management, the editorial board of the media direction left the company.

In April, Wargaming launched a new studio. It is located in the capital of Lithuania — Vilnius. A couple of months later it became known that the “tank” giant also purchased 76 apartments in one of the high-rise buildings there. The transaction amount is estimated at €20 million.

Another company, following Apple and Google, reduces the commission for developers with a small income. Amazon has announced that from the fourth quarter of 2021, the commission in its Appstore will be reduced to 20%. Developers will also be able to receive 10% cashback.

Developer Scott Cawthon, known as the creator of the Five Nights at Freddy’s series, has announced his retirement from the gaming industry. This happened shortly after he and his pregnant wife began receiving death threats. The reason was Coughton’s political views and support for “wrong” candidates like Donald Trump.

The head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, said that a joint show with Bethesda at E3 broke records for views from his company. He thanked for a great week and noted that Microsoft has not felt so much energy and inspiration from players and teams since the Xbox 360.

Ads will appear in games for Oculus VR headsets. Facebook has announced that it will start testing creatives in the coming weeks.

The last major presentation at E3 2021 was Nintendo Direct. According to many players, the show was very successful, but investors did not share the enthusiasm. The shares of the Japanese company fell by several points.

On June 15, Capcom held a half-hour conference at E3. There were very few announcements there, which neither gamers nor investors liked. Immediately after the presentation, the company’s shares went down.

Yesterday it became known that Gary McKay became the new general manager of BioWare. He started his career at Electronic Arts and was responsible for the development of the FIFA series for some time. Despite a lot of experience in the industry and promises to create great story RPGs, some fans were dissatisfied with the new leader.Gary McKay (source: BioWare)

Yesterday, June 13, Microsoft and Square Enix held their conferences as part of E3 2021. We understand how the stock market and the gaming community reacted to them.

The opening ceremony of Summer Game Fest was held yesterday. At it, Koch Media, a subsidiary of the Embracer Group, presented a publishing label — Prime Matter. However, neither the launch of a new publisher nor the announcement of its games impressed investors.

E3 and similar events have been criticized for years by both ordinary viewers and people from the industry. On the eve of the new exhibition, a big emotional thread on this topic was written by the head of Raw Fury and a scouting specialist Johan Toresson. He explained why developers and publishers should stop spending money on big events.Toresson’s thread appeared in response to criticism of the E3 media portal by Matt Brown, senior editor…

Apple has named the winners of the Apple Design Award, which is awarded to mobile applications and games for the best design. This year, four games became finalists, among which there is Genshin Impact.

Many Chinese gaming companies have rather harsh working conditions — specialists work six days a week from 9 am to 9 pm. However, Lightspeed & Quantum studio, owned by Tencent and developed PUBG Mobile, decided to fight crunches. To do this, she made a number of small concessions for her employees.This was reported by analyst Daniel Ahmad.