The online player count for Half-Life 2 on Steam has reached an all-time high, Telegram introduced a full-screen mode for mini-games, and the head of Grove Street Games criticized Rockstar Games for removing mentions of his studio from the GTA trilogy remasters. Here’s a rundown of the major events in the gaming industry this past weekend.

On November 21, WN Summit Vietnam’24 will be held in Ho Chi Minh City, the largest city in Vietnam.

Bit Odd is a studio founded in 2019 by three former lead developers of Supercell, responsible for games in the Clash franchise. Recently, it successfully completed a new funding round.

The company Meridian Play, founded by former MY.GAMES business development director in Asia, Ilya Gutov, announced the launch of a gaming accelerator for startups, focusing on the Asian market.

On December 2, the WN Summit Bangkok’24 will take place in the capital of Thailand. This event aims to introduce participants in the international gaming industry to the local game development community.

The year 2024 has already become the best in the history of 11 bit studios in terms of revenue. The Polish company reported that from January to September 2024, it earned more than the entire record-setting year of 2020.

11 bit studios announced that sales of the city-building survival game Frostpunk 2 have reached 511,000 copies. This figure does not include copies that were freely claimed by Game Pass subscribers—adding those would increase the game’s total sales even more.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) examined the content distributed by users on Steam. They identified a vast amount of unacceptable material on Valve’s platform.

In July-September 2024, Wargaming paid 4.3 million euros into Lithuania’s treasury. This is 20% more compared to last year. This was reported by the portal dev.by, citing data from the Lithuanian tax authority.

The financial report for NetEase for the third quarter of 2024 has been released. We have selected key gaming-related highlights.

The Chinese mobile development studio Lilith Games has laid off several dozen employees. This information was reported by the portal GameLook.

The company SayGames has decided to support mobile studios that are developing hybrid-casual games. It plans to invest $30 million into these teams over the next three years.

As a follow-up to the previous news, here are the top games on the Nintendo eShop

Simon Carless analyzed the sales charts of eShop games in the U.S. and the U.K., which he compiled using his own analytical service, GameDiscoverCo.

The Swedish holding company Thunderful Group announced its second restructuring of the year. The previous one occurred at the beginning of 2024, leading to the dismissal of 20% of its staff.

The digital store GOG has announced the launch of a program aimed at preserving iconic games from the past. Its goal is to support their functionality on PCs now and in the future.

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.

Embracer Group reported its financial results for the second quarter, which ended on September 30, 2024. The company announced a decline in sales across all business segments.