The second advertising service in a week has stopped working with Russian companies. On August 15, Apple blocked Search Ads accounts registered in Russia.

On August 15, Crytek released a major update for Hunt: Showdown, which transitioned the shooter to the CryEngine 5.11 engine and significantly altered many aspects of the game. The title has even changed—it’s now called Hunt: Showdown 1896. As a result, the game’s concurrent player count on Steam rose to record levels.

The analytics company Niko Partners has released a report on the state of the gaming market in the countries that are part of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council)*. Below are the main findings.

Warner Bros. Discovery and NetherRealm Studios announced that Mortal Kombat 1 has surpassed 4 million copies sold.

Adam Williams, the lead writer of Detroit: Become Human and Star Wars Eclipse, has left Quantic Dream. Williams worked at the studio for nearly ten years, having joined Quantic Dream in January 2015.

The Chief Strategy Officer of Tencent, James Mitchell, informed investors that Apple is seeking a share of the revenue from mini-games within the WeChat app. The companies are already discussing the terms.

Epic Games has supported AltStore PAL developers, who created an alternative app store to the App Store in EU countries. They invested in them as part of the Epic MegaGrants program.

In 2024, residents of Russia spend an average of 11.5 hours per month on mobile games. This is 5 hours and 20 minutes more than in 2023. These figures were shared by the DTF portal, citing a study by the telecommunications company Yota*.

The South Korean studio Shift Up released its report for the second quarter of 2024. It announced that it achieved the highest quarterly revenue in its history.

Last week, it was noted that Valve is working on a new filter for user reviews on Steam that hides reviews lacking meaningful content, such as jokes and ASCII art. Now, the company has confirmed the rumors.

Embracer Group published a report for the first financial quarter, which ended on June 30, 2024. Here are the key points from the document.

A new deal in the gaming market. Eschatology Entertainment studio has closed a Series A funding round amounting to $11.3 million. The round was led by KRAFTON, the owner of PUBG.

Playgendary may have laid off the entire marketing team, as well as the team working on arcade games. This was reported on social media by a manager from one of the Cypriot companies, citing their sources.

Tencent has published its financial results for the second quarter of 2024. Let’s take a look at the report.

We continue our series of publications where gaming industry specialists talk about various professions. The new article in the series is dedicated to the work of a concept artist. Valeria Berlenko, content producer at Cubic Games (part of the GDEV holding), shares insights about this specialization.

The analytical service GameDiscoverCo has compiled a top-20 list of the games that earned the most in the first half of 2024 on Steam. Only a third of the list consists of games that debuted on the platform this year.

Gaming expert Simon Carless noted that Valve has slightly updated the Steam interface. The company added a “Trending Free” tab or “Popular Free Games” on the main store page.

Valve announced changes to the rules regarding game descriptions on Steam. It plans to introduce three new prohibitions.

The revenue of the German gaming market fell by 6% in the first six months of 2024, as reported by the German association GAME. Experts note that this is the first decline in many years, attributed to the lack of major releases.