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News February 20, 2023

Rumor: at the end of 2022 Activision Blizzard was attacked by hackers

In December 2022, hackers using phishing gained access to Activision Blizzard data. This is reported by the organization vx-underground, specializing in collecting malware.

News February 20, 2023

The main thing for the weekend (February 18-19)

The Sami Union demanded that Square Enix remove a set with traditional folk clothing from Final Fantasy XIV, and Steam has the opportunity to transfer games over a local network — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry this weekend.

News February 17, 2023

Insider: NetEase paid €100 million for Quantic Dream

In August 2022, the Chinese company NetEase announced that it was buying the developers of Detroit: Become Human and Heavy Rain. Insider Tom Henderson found out that this deal cost €100 million.

News February 17, 2023

83 thousand new customers daily — Steam summed up the results of 2022

The Steam administration told what last year was like for the site. We have chosen the main thing.

News February 17, 2023

Media: Blizzard president held a working meeting, his speech angered developers

Several Blizzard Entertainment employees anonymously told the Game Developer portal how the last working meeting organized by Mike Ybarra took place. In short: not very good.

News February 17, 2023

SEGA will raise salaries to employees

SEGA will pay employees more. She announced that on July 1, 2023, she would increase the average monthly salary by 30%.

News February 17, 2023

Saudi Arabia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund has become Nintendo’s Largest Shareholder

For the second time this week, it becomes known that the Public Investment Fund (PIF) from Saudi Arabia is increasing its stake in Nintendo. Now he owns 8.3% of the Japanese company.

News February 17, 2023

Telltale Games has raised $8 million from investors — for The Wolf Among Us 2 and The Expanse: A Telltale Series

Telltale Games studio has closed the Series A funding round. During it, the developers received $8 million from the Hiro Capital fund and Skybound Entertainment.

News February 17, 2023

Saudi Arabia has made investments in EA, Take-Two and VSPO

The Saudi authorities continue to pay great attention to the gaming industry. Axios portal noticed that the country’s state funds invested money in three more companies.

News February 17, 2023

Sales increased, receipts fell — the main thing from the Ubisoft report

Ubisoft has released a report for the third fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2022. She reported a drop in receipts (net bookings), but noted the success of a number of projects.

Management February 17, 2023

Blood, sweat and mini-teams. How and why did Belka Games change the structure of the project

How, during the change in the structure of the Belka Games teams, it was possible to increase the frequency of the release of updates and set two records for daily revenue, — said Vitaly Kuzmin, director of development of the company.

Vacancies February 16, 2023

Vacancies of the week: employees are looking for Playkot, JustMoby and Fun to Mass Games

We are publishing a new list with gaming vacancies. Wanted this week: delivery director at Playkot, game designer at JustMoby and financial manager at Fun to Mass Games.

Industry February 16, 2023

Supercell CEO: “I thought it was easier to create new hits when I had already made a couple. It turned out to be the opposite”

Ilkka Paananen, CEO of Supercell, published a program column on the state of the studio on the company’s blog. In it, he spoke about the challenges that the Finnish company faces today, and also shared its financial results for the past year.

News February 16, 2023

NetEase is going to add a neural network to its new MMO game – gamers’ requests will affect the behavior of NPCs

The Chinese giant NetEase has announced that the upcoming MMO Justice Online Mobile will feature a gaming analogue of ChatGPT. The neural network will allow you to have meaningful conversations with NPCs and influence the actions of characters.

News February 16, 2023

The authors of Deep Rock Galactic have launched a publishing label — Ghost Ship Publishing

Ghost Ship Games studio has announced that it will start publishing third-party games. She will work with small teams, helping them with financing and marketing.

News February 16, 2023

Hogwarts Legacy is the largest release in Europe since Red Dead Redemption 2, if you do not take into account the FIFA and Call of Duty series

The initial sales of Hogwarts Legacy in Europe turned out to be higher than the vast majority of projects released after October 2018. In particular, the game in the Harry Potter universe surpassed Elden Ring in sales for the debut week by 56%.

News February 16, 2023

Playgendary closes Belarusian division

On February 6, Playgendary started liquidation of the Minsk Playgendary Development. This is what the dev portal writes about.by with reference to data from the Unified State Register of Belarus.

News February 16, 2023

“Gamers don’t understand anything about how Games Work” — No More Robots chapter on the impact of Game Pass on sales

Mike Rose from the indie publishing house No More Robots condemned the people who have been actively criticizing the Game Pass lately. He stated that he does not consider a Microsoft subscription to be something bad for developers.

News February 16, 2023

Embracer Group Report: Sales more than doubled, 224 games in development

Swedish holding Embracer Group has published a report for the third fiscal quarter (October-December 2022). Many of the company’s key indicators have grown significantly.

Industry February 15, 2023

VK has started developing a Russian game engine. All the details of the announcement are in our transcript of the press conference

VK has started work on the creation of a Russian open source game engine. It allocates one billion rubles for its development. This was announced during a press conference with the participation of Maksut Shadaev and Vladimir Kiriyenko. App2Top has prepared an edited* transcript of the event.