Bandai Namco Online is a subsidiary studio of Bandai Namco Entertainment specializing in online games. The GameBiz portal has noticed that the studio is increasingly operating at a loss and, if the situation does not improve, it could soon face bankruptcy.

Chinese company Perfect World conducted large-scale layoffs. According to the newspaper The Paper, it laid off several hundred people due to financial issues—by the end of 2023, its net profit fell by 64.31%.

Currently, four ports of AAA games are available on iPhone and iPad — these are Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the Resident Evil 4 remake, Resident Evil Village, and Death Stranding. According to analysts, all of them are selling very poorly.

In early April, the space survival game The Planet Crafter reached its release after two years of early access on Steam. In a conversation with the GameDiscoverCo team, the indie studio Miju Games disclosed the game’s metrics and compared the results before and after the full release.

Steam revenue is growing. According to GameDiscoverCo, the platform’s gross income in May 2024 reached $1.075 billion. This is 14% more than a year ago.

The cross-party group in the Northern Ireland Assembly on gambling harm has called for tighter control over video games that include loot boxes and other gambling mechanics. They believe these harm players’ mental health.

During a press conference dedicated to its IPO, Shift Up touched upon the topic of Stellar Blade sales. They shared that by the end of May, they had earned 22 billion won (15.8 million dollars) from the game — this is the amount of royalties that Sony has transferred to them.

We already mentioned that the cooperative platformer Chained Together made it to the Steam bestsellers chart for the past week. But that’s not its only achievement. According to SteamDB, the game managed to become the tenth release of 2024 in terms of online presence on Steam, surpassing titles such as Ghost of Tsushima and Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor.

The leader of the top-grossing products chart on Steam for the week of June 18 to June 25 was predictably Elden Ring. The game itself took first place, while the expansion released on the 20th, Shadow of the Erdtree, took second.

The French publisher PulluP Entertainment (formerly Focus Entertainment) acquired a minority stake in two indie studios. The company invested in Uppercut Games, the developer of City of Brass and Submerged: Hidden Depths, as well as in Rundisc, the creator of Chants of Sennaar.

The gaming studio Midnight Society announced it is ending its collaboration with streamer Guy Beahm, known as Dr Disrespect. It did so shortly after former Twitch employees revealed to the media an explicit correspondence between the streamer and a minor — allegedly the reason why Twitch banned Dr Disrespect in 2020.

This is the second time this month we are addressing the topic of adult games. This time, in an interview format. We discuss the niche of “for adults” projects with Andrey Postnikov, Senior Business Developer at Nutaku.

A bill has been submitted to the State Duma that prohibits the sale of smartphones and tablets in Russia without access to RuStore, the Russian app store. The primary target is Apple devices.

The release of Dungeon & Fighter Mobile in China has been extraordinarily successful. According to Bloomberg, citing data from Sensor Tower, the Chinese version of the game earned over $270 million in the first 30 days. And this income is only from the App Store — the figure should be even higher when considering Android stores.

South Korean NCSOFT has decided to restructure. It plans to split its business into two companies: NC QA Company and NC IDS Company.

Apple became the first company to be accused by EU authorities of violating the European Digital Markets Act. The European Commission concluded that Apple hindered competition in the App Store.

On June 11, PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium subscribers gained access to Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus — a platformer by Sucker Punch Productions, which was originally released in 2002 on the PlayStation 2. According to the TrueTrophies portal, the game had a record-breaking launch within PlayStation Plus Premium.

The rating of the Elden Ring expansion on Steam dropped to “mixed” due to high difficulty, the creators of Second Wave announced the imminent closure of their studio, and the number of players in Microsoft Flight Simulator exceeded 15 million. Here is what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.

In January, Square Enix CEO Takashi Kiryu stated that the company would start using artificial intelligence more “aggressively” in game development. Six months later, it seems he no longer considers this such a good idea.