In the summer of 2023, a group of former developers from Fallout 76, Doom, and Star Wars: The Old Republic launched a new studio under the wing of NetEase, called T-Minus Zero Entertainment. Two years later, they faced difficulties.

The authorities in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward have initiated an unusual tax campaign. They announced that residents of Japan could receive a tax deduction in the form of in-game currency if they allocate part of their taxes to the ward’s budget.

Over the last two decades, the turnover of Finland’s gaming industry has significantly increased, reports Neogames in a recent report. According to their estimates, in 2024 the figure amounted to a near-record €2.85 billion.

Continuing our column “Developer/Publisher Wanted,” where indie teams share about themselves and their projects. Next up is the Eternal Troops Team, which is creating an original isometric shooter set during World War I.

Rec Room Studio, the developer behind the eponymous social sandbox reminiscent of Roblox, has announced significant layoffs. The company has decided to let go of nearly half of its staff—approximately 100 employees.

Just over two weeks remain until the start of the gaming business conference WN Conference Cyprus’25, which will take place on September 11-12. Among other things, an indie game exhibition will be held, where developers will showcase their projects.

Atari’s portfolio has expanded with more games. The company announced a deal with Ubisoft, resulting in its acquisition of intellectual property rights related to five projects.

The team at Klukva Games, currently preparing for the release of the steampunk roguelike Dead Weight, shared in detail about how they gathered wishlists on social network X.

The chart of the highest-grossing games on Steam for August 19-26 has been released. Below are the key changes compared to the previous week.

The Google Corporation has decided to make Android safer. It announced that in the near future, all developers will be required to verify their identity, otherwise their applications will become unavailable for download.

In July, Microsoft conducted mass layoffs, which also affected developers from King. The MobileGamer portal discovered that not all terminated King employees parted on good terms. At least some of the former employees have gathered to sue the company.

Maxim Babichev, CBDO of PlayDeck, shared with App2Top which genres are in demand and what the main features of the platform are.

The South Korean studio Epid Games recently applied to register the trademark “EPIDGames” in several countries outside of its homeland. Noticing this, Epic Games filed an objection with the registration authorities.

A week ago, journalist and producer Geoff Keighley hosted Opening Night Live — a ceremony that kicked off the Gamescom 2025 gaming exhibition. The analytics company VG Insights reported which games mentioned at the event collected the most wishlists from August 18 to 23.

The recruiting agency WN Talents conducted a survey of game studios regarding the hiring landscape. According to the responses, over half of the studios found it more challenging to approve hiring budgets over the past year. Marina Lopatina, the agency’s Business Development Director, provided more details to App2Top.

This conclusion was reached by the analytical company Ampere Analysis. In their study, they examined the price tags of 150 games with the highest average monthly active user base* (MAU) on Steam from January 2024 to June 2025.

Matej Lancaric, formerly the head of marketing teams at Pixel Federation, BoomBit, and SuperScale, wrote an extensive article about the importance of a prolonged soft launch for mobile games. He is convinced that projects lacking proper testing risk failing upon release.

The failure of individual games is an unavoidable part of business for large corporations like Sony, whose internal studios work on dozens of projects. Hermen Hulst, the head of PlayStation Studios, approaches this philosophically.

I talked with Kesha about how he manages to single-handedly develop and promote an experimental project for Steam with the help of AI today.