Slava Gris, an independent developer and author of such games as Fearmonium and Catmaze, gave a talk during the first session of the “Gaming Industry” conference. Based on personal experience, he provided a detailed explanation of how to work with Steam from Russia under current conditions.

Smart Ranking published a list of 49 Russian gaming companies that earned the most in 2023. Lesta Games topped the ranking, earning revenue of 19.2 billion rubles.

The studio Shift Up successfully went public. It managed to raise 435 billion won (319.7 million dollars) through its initial public offering — the best result among South Korean gaming companies in the last three years.

Recently, the publisher Playdigious announced that the roguelike game Loop Hero has reached a new milestone—mobile downloads have surpassed one million. According to the company, this result exceeded its expectations.

Although sales of virtual reality headsets are declining, VR games are setting records for downloads. SplitMetrics found that in the first half of the year, Android device owners downloaded the 28 most popular VR games a total of 5.5 million times. That’s 40% more than a year ago.

The big sales on Steam always spark a surge of interest among players in classic hits. This fact was confirmed by the authors of the city-building survival game Frostpunk.

The release of the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion boosted Elden Ring sales in the United Kingdom. According to GamesIndustry, citing GSD data, there were 467% more copies of the game sold in June compared to May.

On July 9, NetEase’s Starry Studio released the multiplayer post-apocalyptic survival game Once Human on PC. The game managed to attract a large audience at launch.

The studio Pocketpair announced that, together with Sony Music Entertainment and its subsidiary Aniplex, they have launched a company called Palworld Entertainment. This company will be responsible for developing the Palworld brand beyond the game.

The metaverse-focused company Infinite Reality announced the acquisition of Landvault. This studio creates virtual spaces and games in Decentraland, Sandbox, and Roblox to promote various brands.

Nexon announced that it is satisfied with The First Descendant’s initial performance. The company also noted that half of the game’s active audience comes from the console version.

The Swedish association Dataspelsbranschen believes that video games should be included in Sweden’s official “cultural canon” — a list of the country’s landmark works of art. It has selected 15 games that, in its opinion, are most worthy of being a part of it.

Sensor Tower has published a report on the mobile gaming market in South Korea for the first half of 2024. Here’s what the analysts discovered.

The cooperative looter-shooter The First Descendant is earning well. The game topped the chart of the highest-grossing products on Steam for the week from July 2 to July 9, displacing last week’s leader Elden Ring.

Pokémon Sleep is a mobile game that analyzes sleep and helps improve its quality. A week before its first anniversary, the project surpassed 100 million dollars in revenue, reports PocketGamer, citing the analytics service AppMagic.

Alexander Mikheev, CEO of the Association of Industry Professionals in Game Operation and Development (APRION), told the newspaper “Izvestia” that the start of a voluntary experiment to label games in the Russian market is planned for early fall. He did not specify an exact date but indicated that the initiative will begin no earlier than September 1.

The analytical company Circana has released a report on the American gaming market for May. Below are the main highlights.

On March 22, South Korean authorities passed an amendment to the gambling law requiring developers to disclose the probability of items dropping from loot boxes in games. According to the country’s Game Rating and Administration Committee, 1,255 games were subject to the law by July, but not all of them complied with the requirements.

Piranha Bytes has closed down, sources from the CD-Action portal claim. According to their information, the studio shut its doors at the end of June.