Microsoft has shared the success of its ID@Xbox program. Over the five years of its existence, the total earnings of all projects released with its help amounted to $ 1 billion.

On February 6, in an interview with Gamasutra, the author of the Gunpoint stealth platformer Tom Francis admitted that it took him almost 4 years to develop his second game, the space indie bagel Heat Signature. He does not plan to delay the work like this anymore. But on Steam, the approximate circulation of Heat Signature for the first four months amounted to 100 thousand copies.

A tool such as a conversion funnel helps to find weaknesses in games. How to work with it, – says devtodev analyst Vera Karpova in our series of materials “Performance indicators of games”.

The developers of Bring Me Cakes, one of the first games on Defold, told why they work on it, as well as what to expect from the feature on iOS if you release a paid game.

The metric that allows you to track the loss of audience in the product is called Churn rate (it is also the outflow of users). How to work with it, – says devtodev analyst Vera Karpova in our series of materials “Performance indicators of games”.

The developer and publisher of the Syberia series has officially launched a new brand. Under the name Microïds Indie, the French company plans to launch projects of independent studios on the market.

In search of investments for the game Lordmancer II Active Games company paid attention to blockchain technology. By introducing cryptocurrencies into the game, the company hopes to earn. We asked Anton Telitsyn, the company’s CEO, how this technology would work in the game.

In the summer of 2017, the Kaliningrad Tortuga Team released the fourth part of the turn-based strategy Braveland with the subtitle Heroes. We talked with the creative director of the studio Anton Mikhailov about how the work on the project was going.

Why indie developers should stop lowering the price tags for their games and take advantage of the experience of the creator of The Witness, – Sergey Galenkin, the author of Steam Spy and the main publisher of Epic Games in Eastern Europe, told on the pages of his English–language blog. App2Top.ru publishes a translation of the material with the kind permission of the author.

In August last year, independent developer Alexander Simakhin released the Slash Arena MMO game he made alone as a WebGL application on social networks. Today, August 3, 2017, the game was released on Steam in early access. App2Top.ru I asked Alexander about the fate of the project and whether it is now possible to create games alone and earn money from it.

Laralyn McWilliams, who participated in the development of Gears of War 4, Full Spectrum Warrior and Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, shared tips on game development in her blog on Gamasutra. We share the Russian version of the material.

The indie team Stoic is planning to release the third part of the series The Banner Saga. Where to get money for its development is an open question: sales of the first two series of invested money were not repulsed.

The developer of the MonoGame framework, on which Bastion and Axiom Verge were created, told the publication 80.lv about the capabilities of the package and work on it. We provide a translation of the material.

One of the main third-party projects based on Defold today remains the isometric cooperative shooter SMASH BASH: Date with the Desert, developed by the indie studio Rising Wave. We talked about the history of the project, engines and difficulties in developing turn-based tactics and action games with the project producer Yaroslav Kravtsov.

Charlie Oscar studio launched an annual bundle on Steam together with five other teams and explained App2Top.ru why I took this step.

As part of the Casual Connect autumn session, which will be held in Tel Aviv, a showcase of indie projects will traditionally take place within the framework of the Indie Prize international scholarship program. We talked about what kind of program it is with its director, Yulia Moshkareva.

The Color Switch mobile game, originally made by two developers in a week without using code, has collected 100 million downloads in 8 months since its release.

Shovel Knight took almost two years to sell 1.2 million copies. The game developers consider this a success.