We continue the cycle of publications about games that require investments or a publisher. Next in line is material from the outsourcing studio Earworm Studio, which is trying itself as a developer of the isometric survival Vesta Survival (aka Space Stars).

Two weeks ago, Epic Games announced at the GDC 2024 developer conference that it had paid $320 million over the year to users who created their islands in Fortnite. Naavik analyst and senior business manager of the Xbox publishing division, David Taylor, looked at how this amount was distributed among developers.

In April, as part of the WN Academy educational project, a course dedicated to business sales in the gaming industry is being launched. The course is taught by Yulia Lebedeva, COO and partner of WN Media Group.

In November 2023, Chinese Joy Net Games released Legend of Mushroom – idle RPG on mobile devices, in which the user plays as mushroom warriors. By the end of March, the project began to earn about $ 2.5 million every day from in-game purchases (IAP) and generate more than 200,000 downloads.

The loyalty service for mobile players Mistplay has published a study on the behavior of paying users. We tell you about the key points of the work.

For the gaming industry, March was a quieter month in terms of layoffs than January and February, but hundreds of people were still out of work. According to the Game Industry Layoffs portal, gaming companies laid off 628 employees last month.

CD PROJEKT spoke about microtransactions, the creators of Dredge donated $ 100,000 to protect whales and dolphins, Jim Ryan said that the PlayStation 5 is moving towards becoming Sony’s most successful console — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.

Hasbro, which owns the rights to Dungeons & Dragons, decided to invest more in video games after the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 and MONOPOLY GO!. In an interview with GameSpot, Dan Ayoub, head of digital product development, mentioned that she has distributed $1 billion between her subsidiary studios working on AAA-level projects.

It has always been difficult for small developers to get funding, but now the situation has become even more gloomy. In an interview with PC Gamer, the creators of Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon stated that indie teams were paid less for an exclusive release in the Epic Games Store and Game Pass.

In March, Embracer Group announced two major deals, the sale of parts of Saber Interactive and Gearbox Entertainment. At an investor event, the CEO of the Swedish holding company, Lars Wingefors, said that his company no longer plans to part with its divisions.

Gearbox Entertainment has conducted a round of layoffs after announcing its sale of Take-Two Interactive for $460 million. This is reported by the Game Developer portal with reference to the publications of former employees of the company on social networks.

CD PROJEKT has published a financial report for the past year. The Polish gaming giant is showing excellent performance both in terms of revenue and profit. The report also announced the revenue of the Cyberpunk 2077 franchise for the entire period of operation and gave an update on the company’s future line of projects.

Thunderful Group has announced that Headup Games is coming under the control of Microcuts Holding, a company headed by Dieter Schoeller, founder and CEO of Headup Games.

Saber Interactive has officially withdrawn from the Embracer Group. This is reported on the website of the Swedish holding.

Vladimir Putin instructed the government to “consider organizing” the production of portable gaming devices and consoles in Russia. The parliamentarians are optimistic. However, market participants believe that it is impossible to create a device that is competitive with Western ones.

The publisher and developer of hyper casual games, FreePlay, boasted that he had crossed a new milestone in downloads. A third of the 1.5 billion downloads of his game have been collected over the past year.

Tony Watkins, who headed the Russian division of Electronic Arts (EA) for almost 15 years, was appointed head of Astrum Entertainment, a domestic publisher and developer of video games.

SEGA continues to restructure. As part of it, the company sold Relic Entertainment, best known for the strategies of Company of Heroes, Age of Empires IV and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War.

The French company DON’T NOD has released a preliminary financial report for 2023. We share the main thing from it.