Sid Meier, an eminent game designer and creator of the Civilization series, turned to modern developers. He doesn’t like that many companies forget about the gameplay and put monetization first. According to Meyer, this is a dead-end path that will only harm the industry in the end.Meyer talked about this with the BBC.

Representatives of the Russian gaming industry have published an open letter calling for “stopping [Roskomnadzor] with Ukraine.” It has already been signed by over 900 people.

Last week, the best-selling game on Steam predictably became Elden Ring. The bestseller chart includes all its editions and pre—orders – together they took four places at once, including the first three. The recently released Steam Deck also showed strong sales.

The governor of one of the central banks in the Eurozone told Reuters about the imminent disconnection of Russia from the SWIFT system.

The developer and publisher of the Scapes puzzle series has transferred all its employees working from Ukraine to paid leave. The company also announced the opening of a round-the-clock line and readiness to help with the organization of the move.

1C Entertainment, registered in Poland, which owns the rights to the King’s Bounty and Space Rangers series, announced that it has become part of the Chinese corporation Tencent (Updated: “Caliber” is not included in the deal).

Dontnod Entertainment has published a business review for 2021. The company almost didn’t talk about finances, but it shared the indicators of some games.

Pancake Week festival for developers from the CIS will not take place next week. META Publishing made the decision to postpone the event indefinitely due to the beginning of [Roskomnadzor] with Ukraine. Now the company is resolving the issue with representatives of GOG and Steam.

The ban of the Free Fire mobile shooter in India has greatly shaken the position of Sea, the parent company of Garena. Yesterday, the Singapore authorities expressed concern about the decision and appealed to the Indian government for an explanation of the reason for the blocking.This was reported by Reuters with reference to four anonymous sources familiar with the situation.

NetEase has published a financial report for the fourth quarter and the whole of 2021. Successful releases of Naraka: Bladepoint, Harry Potter: Magic Awakened and Revelation Mobile helped the Chinese company to increase gaming revenue. As a result, it has overtaken a number of other large companies in terms of revenue from games.

Bombora Publishing House is preparing to release the book “Baldur’s Gate. A journey from the origins to RPG classics.” This is a detailed history of the formation of the Baldur’s Gate franchise, in which there was a place for board games. We tell you what the book is about and share an excerpt from it.

BlueStacks company, known for the Android emulator of the same name for PC, continues to expand the capabilities of developers. She announced the launch of the “world’s first and only” platform for modding mobile games.

Mobile publisher G5 Entertainment made an official statement after the start of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. The company expressed its readiness to protect Ukrainian employees and provide them with the necessary assistance.In its statement, G5 Entertainment noted that at the moment none of its employees living in Ukraine were injured.

AppsFlyer has prepared a large report on marketing trends in the mobile games market. According to the analytical company, global revenue from in-game purchases on iOS fell by 35% last year after the introduction of Apple’s new privacy policy.A noticeable drop in in-game revenue on iOS began in June 2021.

Two and a half years ago Activision Blizzard released a mobile version of Call of Duty. Over the past time, gamers have spent over $1.5 billion in it. This allowed Call of Duty: Mobile to become the third highest-grossing mobile shooter in 2021.

We have prepared a fresh selection of vacancies in the gaming industry. This week they are wanted: a data engineer at Beresnev Games, a game designer at VIM Digital and a game analyst at Hypercell Games.

The BuzzGuru marketing platform has found out which mobile games are the leaders in annual spending on influencer marketing. It’s about spending on advertising among bloggers on YouTube. We share the results of the study.

There is one more educational game dev initiative. Oleg Pridyuk, a former evangelist of Unity and Defold engines, together with Leroy Batyan from Devrel Events opened his online school. Non-core specialists will be retrained into game developers.

Victoria Tran, community director Among Us, gave some tips to indie developers on working with the community. She spoke about budget planning, the difference between community management and marketing, and the range of main tasks in this area.