Last year, residents of the Middle East and North Africa spent $1.6 billion in mobile games, analysts found data.ai . The most generous were gamers from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel. They left $546 million, $176 million and $162 million in games, respectively.

TikTok‘s parent company continues to get cheaper. According to Bloomberg, ByteDance is valued at $275 billion in the secondary market — last year its capitalization reached $ 460 billion.

Gamers began to play more mobile games developed by Russian companies. YOTA calculated that in June, the traffic of titles doubled compared to last year. The growth was also reported by Beeline and Tele2.

Japanese Square Enix intends to celebrate the 25th birthday of Final Fantasy VII in an unusual way. She will release collectible figures with built-in NFT. To do this, she entered into a partnership with Enjin.

In 2017, Bruce Straley, game director of The Last of Us and Uncharted 2.4, retired from the gaming industry. Five years later, he decided to return and announced the launch of a new studio — Wildflower Interactive.

The sequel “Tamagotchi” about the talking cat Angela turned one year old. In honor of this, Outfit7 announced that to date, My Talking Angela 2 has already been downloaded 300 million times.

The Chinese NEKCOM announced its expansion into the international market. The studio decided to start in the USA, where it opened its first foreign office — it is based in Manhattan.

The research company Grand View Research has released a report on the esports market. According to analysts, in the next eight years, its revenue will grow by an average of 21.9% and by 2030 will exceed the mark of $ 12.49 billion.

Recently, Rockstar has been actively hiring employees. According to the studio’s LinkedIn page, 307 vacancies are now open, and Rockstar has published 70 of them only over the past day.

Dubai wants to enter the top ten largest metaverse economies in the world. According to Bloomberg, the city authorities have launched a strategy under which the number of companies engaged in the metaverse and blockchain should grow fivefold in five years.

In mid-July, the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) talked to Russians about video games. It turned out that almost a quarter of respondents are interested in them.

The HoYoverse brand is based in Singapore. The developers have opened a new office that will be responsible for publishing and operating studio games around the world, and will also help develop new projects.

The management of Electronic Arts (EA) announced that the chief technical officer Ken Moss (Ken Moss) has decided to resign. As soon as he leaves the company, EA will divide his position into two and give it to Maria Radulovic-Nastic and Matt Tomlinson.

Square Enix has shared new figures about Final Fantasy X. The Japanese publisher reported that digital sales and physical shipments of the entire series have crossed the milestone of 20.8 million copies — it took 21 years.

In March, the Australian state-owned company Screen Australia opened the Games: Expansion Pack fund to support independent game studios. Yesterday she announced her first investment. Immediately 31 indie developers received a total of 4 million Australian dollars (2.7 million US dollars).

MetaX, a company developing VR and AR applications, has accused Meta* Corporation of violating the “META” trademark. She said that she had been developing this sign for more than 12 years “through blood, sweat and tears”, and because of the rebranding of Facebook* she faced serious problems.

Employees of the QA department at Blizzard Albany (formerly Vicarious Visions) were inspired by the example of Raven Software and also decided to unionize. They announced that they had applied to the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The Digital Markets Act, or DSA, has forced Google to review its mobile store policy. The company said that starting from July 19, developers will be free to use third-party payment systems and pay a lower commission on Google Play. But only in non-gaming applications and for users from the European Economic Area.

In October 2020, Riot Games released League of Legends: Wild Rift on smartphones. Now this game earns more than all the other mobile titles of the company combined. According to Sensor Tower analysts, to date, App Store and Google Play users have already spent $505 million in League of Legends: Wild Rift.