Early in the morning on December 13, the tenth anniversary ceremony of The Game Awards took place. This year, the main triumphant of the event was Astro Bot.

The Chartboost platform has changed ownership. Mobile game publisher Zynga has announced its sale to LoopMe, a technology company specializing in brand advertising.

Shares of the Polish company 11 bit studios have plummeted to their lowest level in seven years. Investors are concerned that the studio may be planning to cancel a game currently in development and write off its assets.

In the past year, gaming companies from California have been particularly active in conducting layoffs. Journalist Stephen Totilo highlighted in his Game File newsletter that this state accounted for about a third of all gaming industry layoffs in 2024.

Glow Up Games is yet another game development studio that didn’t survive the crisis in the gaming industry. Its closure was announced on LinkedIn by CEO Mitu Khandaker.

Not only does Balatro have strong sales: Estonian solo developer Mike Klubnika has also shared new achievements of his creation. He announced that today, the horror game about Russian roulette, Buckshot Roulette, has sold over 4 million copies.

The Minister of Transport and Infrastructure of Turkey, Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, believes that the country’s authorities should restrict access for children under 16 to social media and online games. In his view, this is necessary to protect young Turks from inappropriate content.

The developer LocalThunk and publisher Playstack announced that the card game Balatro has reached a new milestone, selling 3.5 million copies worldwide.

Following Google, Apple Corporation has announced the best mobile games of 2024 in its app store.

Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad reported that the Chinese “beta” of Delta Force was played by over 40 million people. In China, it launched on PC earlier than in the rest of the world—on September 26, 2024.

Last month, it became known that Sony is in talks to acquire Kadokawa, a Japanese media conglomerate whose subsidiary includes FromSoftware. Bunshun reported that Kadokawa employees are hopeful for a successful deal outcome.

Build A Rocket Boy announced the acquisition of a new studio. The acquisition involves PlayFusion, the team behind the card games Lightseekers and Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Champions.

The Chinese company miHoYo won a lawsuit in Canada against the developers of cheat software Akebi GC, Acrepi, and Genshin XYZ. These programs allowed players to bypass rules in Genshin Impact.

Publisher Game Seer shared the successes of Half Sword with GameDiscoverCo. This is the debut project from the similarly named studio, Half Sword Games.

Nintendo has acquired 100% of the shares of the Japanese studio Monolith Soft, known for the Xenoblade Chronicles series. This information appeared on the Monolith Soft website, as noted by Automaton Media.

Developers from China are investing significant funds in advertising their games and applications on the Russian marketplace RuStore. According to VK’s estimates, from January to November 2024, they spent over 60 million rubles promoting through the “VK Advertising” platform.

The Polish company People Can Fly has decided to focus more on developing games in partnership with other companies. These include Project Gemini, which is being developed in collaboration with Square Enix, and Project Maverick, with support from Microsoft.

The Google team has compiled a list of the most popular search queries of the outgoing year. In the “Games” category, the leader was Connections—a word puzzle from The New York Times, where you need to group words by meaning.

The Drucker Institute has published its annual ranking of public companies in the United States with the most effective management. Among them is a number of companies related to gaming.