The organization Communications Workers of America (CWA, the union of communication workers of the USA) sent a letter to the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, Margrethe Vestager. She asked not to block the sale of Activision Blizzard to Microsoft, as this deal will benefit the labor market in the gaming industry.

Insider Tom Henderson commented on the hacking of Activision Blizzard‘s internal network, which was previously reported in vx-underground. He claims that hackers, among other things, gained access to personal data of company employees.

Chinese giant Tencent has nothing against Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. This is reported by Dealreporter, who has read the responses of Chinese gaming companies to the regional antimonopoly regulator.

In 2022, the British gaming market earned £5.38 billion. According to analysts from Ampere Analysis, this is 1.6% less compared to the previous year. The last time analysts recorded a drop in the local market was in 2012.

In early February, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt, Amr Talaat, expressed support for the gaming industry. He said that the country’s authorities are striving to create an environment that will promote the development of video games.

Izvestia writes about this, referring to Google and Yandex statistics.

In December 2022, hackers using phishing gained access to Activision Blizzard data. This is reported by the organization vx-underground, specializing in collecting malware.

In August 2022, the Chinese company NetEase announced that it was buying the developers of Detroit: Become Human and Heavy Rain. Insider Tom Henderson found out that this deal cost €100 million.

The Steam administration told what last year was like for the site. We have chosen the main thing.

Several Blizzard Entertainment employees anonymously told the Game Developer portal how the last working meeting organized by Mike Ybarra took place. In short: not very good.

SEGA will pay employees more. She announced that on July 1, 2023, she would increase the average monthly salary by 30%.

For the second time this week, it becomes known that the Public Investment Fund (PIF) from Saudi Arabia is increasing its stake in Nintendo. Now he owns 8.3% of the Japanese company.

Telltale Games studio has closed the Series A funding round. During it, the developers received $8 million from the Hiro Capital fund and Skybound Entertainment.

The Saudi authorities continue to pay great attention to the gaming industry. Axios portal noticed that the country’s state funds invested money in three more companies.

Ubisoft has released a report for the third fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2022. She reported a drop in receipts (net bookings), but noted the success of a number of projects.

The Chinese giant NetEase has announced that the upcoming MMO Justice Online Mobile will feature a gaming analogue of ChatGPT. The neural network will allow you to have meaningful conversations with NPCs and influence the actions of characters.

Ghost Ship Games studio has announced that it will start publishing third-party games. She will work with small teams, helping them with financing and marketing.

The initial sales of Hogwarts Legacy in Europe turned out to be higher than the vast majority of projects released after October 2018. In particular, the game in the Harry Potter universe surpassed Elden Ring in sales for the debut week by 56%.