Analysts from Gamma Data have published a monthly report on the state of the Chinese gaming market. According to them, in January 2023, the market began to recover, but the situation on it is still far from ideal.

The games of the Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy series and many other projects of Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics studios have become available to users from Russia again on Steam.

IT companies founded by people from Belarus have firmly established themselves in the capital of Lithuania. Last year, they rented 15,000 square meters of office space — half of the space that all IT companies in Vilnius rented.

American Senators Edward Markey and Richard Blumenthal are concerned that Meta* is rumored to want to expand the audience of Horizon Worlds and let teenagers into its metaverse. They turned to Mark Zuckerberg and called for the plans to be immediately curtailed.

In 2020, several gamers from Austria sued Sony. In their lawsuits, they stated that they spent hundreds of euros to buy loot boxes in the PlayStation version of FIFA, but never received valuable cards with football players. In March 2022, the court sided with gamers and fined the company.

Respawn Entertainment has left the creative director, and Ubisoft, according to rumors, has decided to close some offices in Europe — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry this weekend.

The eFootball 2023 football simulator is actively collecting downloads. Konami announced that its mobile version alone has already been downloaded 600 million times.

The CEO of the South Korean Nexon, Owen Mahoney, said at a meeting with investors that it was incorrect to call his publishing house a gaming company. Because it doesn’t work with video games, but with virtual worlds.

Analytical company data.ai She also spoke about the situation on the mobile games market in Mexico. According to her estimates, in 2022, spending by local gamers on in-game purchases increased by 9.3%.

Brazil’s mobile gaming market is booming. Analytical company data.ai I calculated that last year Brazilians spent $640 million on in-game purchases in them. This is 12.3% more than in 2021.

Recently, rumors appeared on the network that a Russian court approved the decision to block Dota 2 in the country, the head of the Safe Internet League allegedly wrote about this in her Telegram channel. In a comment to TASS, Ekaterina Mizulina denied this information.

Yosuke Matsuda is preparing to leave the post of president of Square Enix. Instead, Takashi Kiryu, who now holds the position of Director of Strategic Development, will become the head of the Japanese company.

The action Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty has an extremely unsuccessful start on Steam. In the first hours after the release, the game collected 1.3 thousand negative reviews.

In December 2022, seven members of the US Congress sent a letter to Valve, Epic Games, EA and 11 other major gaming companies. Politicians demanded to explain how they fight extremism and other harassment in games. The answers received did not please at least one congressman.

Yesterday, Reuters, citing sources, reported that the European Commission may become the first major regulator to approve the sale of Activision Blizzard to Microsoft. After the release of this news, the shares of the companies rose in price.

Sources tell Reuters that the European Commission is unlikely to offer Microsoft to buy only part of Activision Blizzard — the regulator can allegedly support the deal without this requirement. In early February, such a condition for the transaction was put forward by the British regulator.

A court session was held in Tokyo, where the case of Yuji Naka, a game designer accused of insider trading in shares of Final Fantasy VII developers, was examined: The First Soldier. The former head of Sonic Team pleaded guilty.

According to The Verge, this figure was named by the vice president of the VR direction Meta* Mark Rabkin during a presentation for employees.

On March 1, Godot developers announced the full release of the fourth version of their open source engine. Work on it went on for four years.