March 21 GOSU company.AI, founded by former Game Insight CEO Alice Chumachenko, has announced the closing of a $1.9 million funding round. The main investor was the venture fund Runa Capital.

The corporate culture of Telltale Games “contributed to constant overwork, toxic management and creative stagnation.” The problems in the team of creators of interactive stories were told by The Verge with reference to former employees of Telltale.

Nintendo has announced the Top 10 titles from independent developers that are best sold for the Switch console in the eShop branded web store. Celeste platformer by Matt Thorson and Noel Berry became the sales leader.

Polish game company CD Projekt Red has acquired a local independent studio Strange New Things. The studio staff will support the development of the next big project CD Projekt Red — the role-playing long-term Cyberpunk 2077.

On March 20, the French publisher Ubisoft announced the signing of an agreement with Vivendi. According to the agreement, Vivendi sells its entire stake in Ubisoft. The deal is estimated at €2 billion.

The revenue from using the CryEngine engine will have to be shared. Crytek is preparing to introduce royalties in the amount of 5% of revenue from games created on CryEngine. The new rule will take effect in the new version of CryEngine 5.5, which is already available for download.

Report by Vladimir Tomko. The speaker spoke about the prospects and possibilities of blockchain games.

Wanted: Unity-developer at Banzai Games, QA-director at Playrix and UA-manager at MyTona.

On March 19, the Institute of Modern Media (MOMRI) published a study on how children interact with media in modern Russia. A separate chapter in the report is devoted to video games.

The online capabilities of most of the largest gaming companies depend on Amazon. According to representatives of the corporation, 90% of the leaders of the gaming industry use the infrastructure of Amazon Web Services cloud servers. Amazon’s customers include such giants as Activision, Supercell and Ubisoft.

Unity Technologies and Universal Film Studio have announced a competition for game developers. Its participants will be able to create games based on Universal franchises, including “Back to the Future”, “Battlestar Galactica”, “Jaws” and others. The winner will receive $250 thousand.

Atari has given the official name of its new console, announced last year. The device will be called Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS).

On March 19, Facebook announced the launch of a new SDK. It is called the Games SDK and is focused on native PC gaming products. Representatives of the social network positions it as a tool for attracting and engaging gamers.

Amazon has introduced the cross-platform gaming service GameOn. It allows developers to embed competitive multiplayer into titles and assign both in-game and material prizes for winning virtual tournaments.

On March 19, the analytical company SensorTower announced that consumer spending on the mobile version of Fortnite for the first four days amounted to $ 1.5 million. Most of the amount was spent on the game in the first 72 hours.

Google has introduced Google Play Instant, a system that allows you to run demo versions of the game directly on the Google Play store page without preloading. Google Play Instant already supports titles such as Clash Royale and Words with Friends 2.

A report by Natalie Portier from Appodeal. Natalie shared the latest data in the field of mobile monetization, which Appodeal received by analyzing more than 31 thousand applications.

In 2017, consumer spending on mobile apps in Russia increased by 40%. At the end of last year, they amounted to $470 million. This was stated by App Annie in her own presentation on the situation in Russia.

On March 19, Epic Games took a very generous step. The company has opened free access to all developers on Unreal Engine 4 to the graphical assets of Paragon. The developer decided to close the latter this winter against the background of the success of his other project – Fortnite.