Japanese giant Sony will support indie developers during the pandemic. The corporation will create a special fund for $10 million. The funds from it will go to help independent studios that are suffering losses due to the coronavirus.

Valve has announced the Steam Summer online games festival. From June 9 to June 14, free demos of future new products will be presented in the store. Developers wishing to participate must submit applications by April 24.

The coronavirus pandemic has turned into a serious problem for the Japanese gaming market. The local rating agency CERO has frozen all operations for a month. This can lead to numerous transfers of console and desktop games.

Because of the coronavirus quarantine, people are paying more and more attention to games. According to Nielsen, a 45% increase in the indicator “time spent in games” was recorded in the United States. In addition, users began to spend more money on games.

Quarantine has a positive effect on the performance of entertainment programs. The publisher of music and hyper-casual applications, Gismart, said that the growth of its product indicators, depending on the region, has increased from 10% to 200% in recent months.

How much downloads and revenue of mobile games have grown in the first quarter of this year,” App Annie, an analytical company, said in its latest report.

Mobile developer Easybrain has made donations to the Belarusian Ministry of Health and the Treasury of Cyprus. The first department received $ 100 thousand, the second — € 100 thousand. The money will be used to treat patients with COVID-19.

Rockstar Games has joined the fight against the coronavirus, and it has serious intentions. From April 1 to May 31, the company will donate 5% of GTA Online and Red Dead Online revenue for the treatment of patients.

In countries where a state of emergency was imposed due to the threat of coronavirus, the DAU of mobile games and their downloads have grown, the ironSource advertising platform reports.

Playgendary has become another gaming company donating to the fight against coronavirus. The publisher transferred $38 thousand to the Republican Center for the Organization of Medical Response. The Center has opened a special account for the treatment of coronavirus patients in Belarus.

The coronavirus has dealt a blow to such segments of the gaming industry as production and business development. However, in terms of sales, everything is different. As our colleagues from GamesIndustry report in their research.biz, sales are growing.

Advice from the World Health Organization (WHO) for those in home quarantine. The organization suggests remembering active video games: fitness games for Switch (like Ring Fit Adventure) and Wii, Kinect-enabled projects and other similar titles.

The authors of Homescapes announced material support for the Russian and Ukrainian regions in the fight against coronavirus. Playrix will allocate several grants for the purchase of medical equipment in hospitals.

Quarantine for coronavirus has allowed to increase the metrics of many games. Brawl Stars are among them. Over the past week, her installations and revenue have grown noticeably.

The authors of the game about deadly pandemics Plague Inc. have joined the fight against the coronavirus. They transferred $250 thousand to organizations that are looking for a vaccine against COVID-19.

Playtika decided to provide humanitarian assistance during the coronavirus pandemic, writes Gamesindustry.biz . The developer instructed catering companies to feed people in quarantine and a number of non-profit organizations in Israel and Eastern Europe. 500 food rations will be received weekly in Israel, and more than 2,500 in Eastern Europe.

We asked five marketing companies — Appodeal, AdQuantum, Digital Turbine, Borscht and AdSide Media — about the impact of the pandemic on the gaming advertising market.

The Yakut IT business decided to help local hospitals. In light of the coronavirus pandemic, the MyTona gaming company, inDriver passenger transportation service and entrepreneur Arsen Tomsky will allocate 45 million rubles to hospitals in Yakutia for the purchase of artificial lung ventilation (ventilator) devices.

The quarantine of coronavirus in China and South Korea plays into the hands of the game rendezvous. Weekly installations increased significantly in both countries in February. In the Middle Kingdom — by 80% at once compared to the average of 2019.