79.5% of Chinese PC gamers use Steam to play premium games, according to a report by the analytical company Niko Partners. Moreover, the overwhelming majority prefer the international version of the platform.

Another game studio has ceased to exist. It has become known that Wicked Games, which was working on the creature-collecting MMO Spherix, has been shut down.

Continuing our series of publications where professionals from gaming companies talk about their careers. The new article in the series is about Core Game Designer. Dmitry Aborilov, the lead core gameplay designer at Nekki, has detailed the position.

There is an ongoing decline in the market for virtual and augmented reality headsets, reports the analytics company IDC. They found that in the first quarter of 2024, 67.4% fewer VR/AR headsets were sold compared to the beginning of 2023.

Eight months ago—on November 2, 2023—Blizzard Entertainment released the mobile strategy game Warcraft Rumble. As noted by the portal MobileGamer, since then the game has earned over $39.1 million from IAP.

Steam is experiencing a boom in cooperative projects, according to a report by the analytical service VG Insights. Last year, 799 cooperative games were released on the platform — the highest number since at least 2018.

Arc System Works Studio announced that the audience for the fighting game Guilty Gear -Strive- has surpassed 3 million players. The game took a little over three years to reach these numbers.

Game outsourcer Keywords Studios has agreed to become part of the investment firm EQT Group. It will join EQT Group’s subsidiary, called Bidco.

Skillz has sued the French publisher Voodoo. The company claims that Voodoo uses bots in games such as Blitz — Win Cash to manipulate match outcomes where users place monetary bets.

Although more and more gaming companies are integrating generative artificial intelligence into their production processes, Nintendo prefers to stay away from such technologies. At a meeting with investors, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa stated that generative AI could cause issues with copyrights.

Surgent Studios, developer of the action-platformer Tales of Kenzera: ZAU, has conducted layoffs. They have parted ways with “more than a dozen” employees.

On July 2, the cooperative looter-shooter The First Descendant was released on PC and consoles. This game by the South Korean company Nexon immediately became one of the most popular new releases of 2024 on Steam.

Steam is seeing an increasing number of successful games with the word “Simulator” in their titles. Gaming expert Simon Carless analyzed all the projects released since July 2023 that he classified under the subgenre “X Simulator” and compiled a list of bestsellers.

The cycle of publications about games seeking investments or a publisher continues. Up next is an article about the Russian team Sunday Morning Meet-up Studio, which is developing an ironic adventure game called Jesus Christ.

Attorneys at Nintendo continue their fight against game piracy. Recently, the company filed two lawsuits.

A British employment tribunal has found Cloud Imperium Games guilty of discriminating against an employee. The company fired a worker with autism after he requested permission to work from home.

Last week, Steam’s summer sale kicked off, significantly affecting the sales chart. It helped many long-released games return to the list of top-grossing products for the week from June 25 to July 2.

On June 20, Byterunners Studio and publisher Movie Games released the sequel to Drug Dealer Simulator on Steam. By July 1, over 100,000 people worldwide had purchased the second installment of the drug dealer simulator.

The studio Singularity 6, which developed the life simulator Palia, has joined Daybreak Game Company, which itself is a subsidiary of the Swedish holding company EG7. The terms and amount of the deal have not been disclosed.