The Organization for the Development of the Video Game Industry (ODVGI) has criticized the draft law titled “On the Activity of Developing and Distributing Video Games within the Russian Federation.” Representatives of the organization stated that the initiative would harm the domestic game dev industry instead of supporting it.

Today, December 12, a bill titled “On the Activities of Development and Distribution of Video Games in the Russian Federation” was submitted to the State Duma. We asked Roman Lukyanov, managing partner of the law firm Semenov&Pevzner, to share his opinion on the proposal.

We provided detailed coverage of the bill this morning. Now, it’s worth noting that the published final version is not significantly different from the draft that was previously available to the editorial team. However, there is one nuance.

A month ago, Russian gaming companies began adding new labels to their games as part of an experiment — warning of the presence of violence, smoking scenes, in-game purchases, and various other content. Several hundred developers implemented this on the VK Play platform alone.

Today, the Internet Development Institute (IDI) has begun accepting contest applications for the creation of Russian content in the digital environment. Games are one of the key focus areas of the contest.

In Russia, the issue of issuing distribution certificates for games, similar to those for films, has been raised again. The discussion took place during a roundtable organized by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation with developers of a domestic gaming console, according to “Kommersant” sources.

On November 13, the State Duma of the Russian Federation passed in its first reading a bill that mandates Apple to allow the installation of the RuStore app store on iPhones and iPads within Russia.

According to data from a new survey by XYZ School, Russian users may have spent 65 billion rubles on in-game purchases from July to September 2024.

According to the latest survey by XYZ School, Russian gamers are increasingly moving away from pirated games in favor of licensed ones.

The M.Video-Eldorado Group shared data on console sales in Russia for January-September 2024. By the end of this period, the Russian console market continues to show confident growth.

A group of enthusiasts from three Russian universities is working on creating a reindeer herding simulator with survival elements called Yakut. Visually, the game resembles the well-known survival game, The Long Dark, but is designed with a top-down view.

An initiative group has launched a voluntary labeling of game content on a trial basis. It includes the Association of Professionals in the Gaming Operations and Development Industry (APRIORI), Lesta Games, Astrum Entertainment, 1C Games, VK Play, and RuStore. The labeling will be tested on domestic platforms VK Play and RuStore.

The newspaper “Kommersant” reported that a new industrial association, the “Association of the Gaming Industry” (AGI), has started operating in Russia.

The Russian Ministry of Digital Development has officially abandoned the experiment to create a unified national repository of open source software in Russia. This was announced by Ilya Massukh, Director of the Competence Center for Import Substitution in the Field of Information and Communication Technologies, at the “PROF-IT” conference.

There are currently no plans to restrict access to the Steam gaming platform in Russia. This information was reported by Roskomnadzor in a statement to TASS.

Three pages from the “Community” section of the Steam platform have appeared in the registry of Roskomnadzor, which compiles websites containing information prohibited for distribution in Russia.

Roskomnadzor has blocked access to Discord in Russia. In a comment to TASS, the press service of the agency stated that it was blocked due to violations of the country’s legislation.

The President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, has instructed the government to allocate funds from the federal budget aimed at supporting Russian game developers. This initiative is undertaken “for the purpose of developing creative industries” in the country.

Three months ago, a group of Russian deputies drafted a bill to ban the sale of smartphones and tablets in Russia without access to the RuStore app store. Their initiative is primarily aimed at Apple devices. According to TASS, the government recently approved this idea.