It seems that there will be no new tax for Steam, Epic Games Store and other foreign playgrounds. The Ministry of Finance of Russia stated that it was not going to finance the fund for the development of patriotic games “at the expense of any fees.”

Russian officials plan to levy another tax on foreign gaming stores: Steam, Epic Games Store, PS Store and others. They want to send the money collected with its help to the fund for the support of patriotic games. UPDATED: The Ministry of Finance of Russia has denied information about plans to finance the development of such games at the expense of new taxes.Black Book

The Public Chamber of the Russian Federation proposed to equate large playgrounds with audiovisual services. In this case, services like Steam, Origin and PS Store will be required to comply with the requirements of the law on “landing”.Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Russian gaming retail is still alive. The total sales of console games in retail last year amounted to 1.8 million. The figure is not very large, but it is at the level of the pre-pandemic indicators of 2019.

The day before yesterday we wrote that in Russia they are going to issue grants for the development of patriotic video games. The Internet Development Institute (IRI) will distribute them. Is this so and how much is such a grant news at all?

Today it became known about the launch of an accelerator in Kaliningrad for game developers based in Russia. It’s called PlayPort and is aimed at novice gaming teams. Money is not promised to all participants, only training and expertise.

The Russian state plans to stimulate the domestic development of patriotic video games. It is going to do this with the help of grants.

The Russian government is considering new ways to regulate the gaming industry. First of all, we are talking about controlling the market of in-game items and skins, which they want to bring out of the gray zone. The authorities do not like that such purchases are not taxed and can be used for money laundering.CS:GO

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation has released a report “Cryptocurrencies: Trends, risks, measures“. It proposes to prohibit both any operations with cryptocurrency and mining as such.

App Annie spoke about the indicators of the Russian mobile games market over the past year and its dynamics over the past five years. We share graphs.

The auditing company PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has prepared a detailed review of the Russian video game market for 2020. On the pages of the report — income data, its features, the main problems and growth factors, as well as a comparison with the markets of other countries. There are still many figures only about Moscow.

Russian censors can start using neural networks. One of the centers controlled by Roskomnadzor suggested using AI to search for prohibited content in video games. But, according to experts, this can seriously affect the availability of games.

You can come to disappointing conclusions by reading the forecast of MY.GAMES for this year. According to him, Russians will spend 165.6 billion rubles on video games by the end of 2021. This is only 1% more than a year earlier (163.4 billion rubles).

Ivan Agarkov, Production Security Team Lead at Wargaming, wrote a big thread about salaries in the IT sphere. He spoke about the basic principles of the formation of the labor market, the importance of soft skills, the difference in salaries for women and men, and negotiations for an increase. We chose the main thing from Agarkov’s thread.

According to MY.GAMES, most often Russian gamers on PC, consoles and mobile devices spend money to buy in-game currency and items. But loot boxes from domestic players are not in great demand.Statistics on the Russian market based on data for 2020 were shared by the publication “RBC”.

In 2017 , the Mail.Ru Group has a gaming investment division — MY.GAMES Venture Capital (MGVC). Since then, it has managed to invest over 6 billion rubles in developers. A third of the amount went to Deus Craft.

Publisher tinyBuild and St. Petersburg studio niceplay games reported on the success of the game Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator. In just three days since the release, sales of the title have reached the mark of 100 thousand copies.

Alexander Bastrykin, Chairman The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, spoke about the reasons for the attacks on schools and other educational institutions. In his opinion, this is largely due to video games and the destructive influence of the Internet. Against this background, the Kremlin again raised the issue of restricting the free demonstration of violent content.Alexander Bastrykin

Nexters has shared its financial results for the first time since going public. In the first half of 2021, it increased revenue by more than half. But at the same time, Nexters’ losses also increased — by eight times at once.