We continue to publish transcripts of lectures from the “Gaming Industry” conference held in July. Up next is the presentation by Maryam Karpova, head of the “Start the Game” competition. Her talk focused on the current funds available in Russia ready to subsidize game development.

The analytics service VG Insights shared data on Black Myth: Wukong. It estimated that to date, 8.4 million people have purchased the Steam version of the game, 80% of whom are residents of China.

Office Fight is a physical puzzle game about a corporate employee who died and turned into a vengeful office ghost after being abruptly fired. The game was developed by the Australian company Fenix Studios. Recently, the studio announced that they would be giving away free copies of the title to those who lost their jobs due to layoffs in 2024.

Modern gamers may permanently lose the ability to play 96% of old games released in Australia. This conclusion was reached by the National Film & Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA).

It will become easier for Russian developers to distribute their games in China, and for Chinese developers in Russia. The authorities of the two countries have agreed to strengthen cooperation in the gaming sector and “promote the advancement” of projects in their markets.

Apple Corporation will reorganize the division that manages the App Store. According to Bloomberg, it decided to do this in response to changes in iOS policy in the European Union.

Streams of Black Myth: Wukong on Chinese streaming platforms Huya, DouYu, and Bilibili were watched by 29 million people on the game’s release day, August 20, analysts from Niko Partners noted. No single-player story-driven game has ever drawn so many viewers in China on its debut day.

We continue to publish the results of our salary survey, conducted from April to May 2023, by chapters. This current publication focuses on the average salary level of gaming industry specialists in Russia.

The analytics company Circana reported on the state of the U.S. gaming market in July and identified the games most purchased by American gamers.

In the fall, the UK is expected to enact the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill. Ahead of this, the UK competition regulator announced the conclusion of investigations into the App Store and Google Play.

We continue to publish videos of presentations (plus transcripts) from the “Gaming Industry” conference held in July. Up next is the presentation by Alexander Shchevelev, CEO of the Maningame studio. He shared how and how much one can earn today on free-to-play games in Russia.

On July 22, the French indie studio of two people, Bureau 81, released the game The Operator for PC. The initial results of the project turned out to be quite impressive.

The analytics company Sensor Tower reported on the state of the Japanese mobile gaming market for the first six months of 2024. We share the main findings.

The major gaming outsourcing company Virtuos has grown even larger. The company announced the acquisition of the British outsourcing studio Third Kind Games.

The Chinese news agency Caixin reported that the action RPG Black Myth: Wukong has sold over 4.5 million copies across all platforms. Of these, Steam users purchased 3 million copies.

The company Starbreeze has announced its financial results for the first half of 2024. We have highlighted the key points from the report.

Black Myth: Wukong continues to actively attract players on Steam. On the evening of August 20th, the Steam version of the game reached an online peak of 2.15 million players.

Capcom has announced a collaboration with Japan’s Kindai University. Its students will have the opportunity to take a course where they will learn about game development on the RE Engine—the engine behind Devil May Cry 5, Dragon’s Dogma 2, and the latest Resident Evil games.

We are beginning to publish the results of the salary survey conducted by us from April to May 2023, chapter by chapter. The first of these publications is about relocation from Russia. In this chapter, we share the percentage of Russian game developers who have moved abroad. We mention which specializations, levels, and age groups were most affected by relocation.