Google intends to pay developers money depending on the number of gaming sessions in the paid cloud service Stadia Pro. However, not everyone in the industry has positively received this model. Some fear that it will force studios to create stretched games and artificially increase user engagement.The discussion arose against the background of the new Google Stadia strategy.

Google wants to attract more developers to Stadia. To do this, the company introduces a new commission system. Now the authors of the new games will pay Google only 15% of the first $3 million in revenue received on its cloud platform. However, there were some nuances.This became known at the Google for Games Developer summit.

In Africa, as in most other regions, the pandemic and lockdowns provoked an explosive growth of mobile gaming. Compared to the first quarter of last year, local users have become more active in downloading games and making more in-app purchases. This is reported by AppsFlyer in a joint report with Google.Note: The study covers the period from the first quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021 (ended March 31).

Google has announced Play as you download, a feature that will allow you to play games without waiting for their final download from Google Play. The innovation will work on devices with Android 12.

Google was sued. The authorities of Washington and 36 US states accused the corporation of monopolizing Google Play. They are concerned that Google allegedly does not allow other stores on Android and pays competitors not to make their own app stores.

Google has allowed Android developers to register in a program that reduces the commission for a portion of the amount earned on Google Play to 15%. At the same time, she told about the conditions of participation.

Android developers have been notified of the imminent changes to the Google Play rules. They relate to the advertising identifier and resemble Apple‘s IDFA policy.

At the beginning of the year, Google Stadia began to have big problems after the closure of internal development studios and the departure of Jade Raymond. Despite this, the company assures that the platform feels great and continues to develop. Among the arguments are regular replenishment of the library of games and cooperation with indie studios. However, Google still doesn’t say anything about the size of the service’s audience.About the current state of Stadia in…

Not only the Russian authorities can tighten the screws. Already this June, Google is introducing a “tax on bloggers.” We are talking about rules that will oblige all owners of YouTube channels to make deductions in favor of the United States from the income received from American users. This will also affect Russians.

Today it is difficult to satisfy the personnel hunger of domestic gaming companies. Their global success requires significant scaling, which is impossible if only specialists from game dev are involved.

In early February, Google decided to close the internal development studios of Stadia, but their employees did not know anything about the company’s intentions. Just a few days before, the management praised them for their progress and promised to share their plans for 2021.This was reported by Kotaku with reference to four sources familiar with the situation.

Another Google project was under attack. The corporation announced that it was discontinuing game development for Stadia and closing internal studios. The platform itself will continue to work for now, but without exclusives.

While Apple is investing in virtual reality, Google is shutting down VR services. The company has announced that it will no longer officially support the Tilt Brush 3D drawing application. From now on, its source can be found on GitHub.

Google has slightly updated the icons in the Play Store. Thanks to the innovation, users can see whether an application is falling or growing in the charts.Now you can see an arrow under the position of the application or game in the chart.

This week, the Google Play Pass service, which allows you to play premium games when paying for a subscription, will be available in Russia. For our country, the subscription price will be 149 rubles per month.However, according to the official Google Play website, Play Pass is already available with us (although the editors failed to launch it:

Google and Nvidia have announced that their cloud gaming services will appear on iOS in the form of web applications. At the same time, GeForce Now already works on Apple devices, and the company itself plans to release a special version of Fortnite adapted for control on smartphones.GeForce Now and Stadia decided to follow the path of Amazon’s Luna service, which appeared on iOS in the form of PWA, a progressive web application.

The connection between Google Stadia and YouTube has become even stronger. Now premium subscribers of the video hosting can get the Stadia Premiere Edition bundle for free — it includes a gamepad and a Chromecast Ultra streaming player. But the offer is temporary and does not work for all countries.

In the Play Store, it is now possible to compare several applications with each other on the same screen. While the function is in test mode, however, Google itself does not say when it will become available to a wide range of users and whether it will be at all.Attention was drawn to this by the Android Police portal.

Streamers should deduct part of their revenue to the developers of the games they broadcast, according to Alex Hutchinson, creative director of Stadia Games and Entertainment. His statement provoked thousands of angry comments, and Google representatives hastily disavowed his statements.How did it all start?