Gaming urbanist and level designer Konstantinos Dimopoulos is preparing a book Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities — the first atlas of its kind and a guide to cities from famous video games.

According to a survey among users playing Spells of Genesis, a mobile freeplay with blockchain—based monetization, only 44% of players bought or sold game items through the blockchain. Others consider this technology too difficult to understand or do not have enough money.

Recently, Novosibirsk studio GBN launched its Smash The Bugs project on the Facebook Instant Games platform. We talked to the company about its experience with the site. In particular, they touched upon the issues of traffic, user retention and problems with advertising monetization. I answered the questions Natalia Yarovenko, head of the HTML5 direction of the studio.

A new regulation on user data protection, the General Data Protection Regulation, came into force today. Serbian Game Studio Nordeus has made a selection of solutions with which market participants can fulfill the GDPR requirements.

For ten years, a full-fledged narrative games market has emerged in the industry: they have their own specific audience and special requirements for game design. The author of the hit What Remains of Edith Finch, Ian Dallas, explains how the expectations of players and their feedback allow the genre to develop, but at the same time they also slow down its development.

Torn Banner Studios has removed the online action movie Mirage: Arcane Warfare from Steam and announced the imminent shutdown of game servers. The developers explained the closure with the entry into force of the European data protection law — GDPR, but even before it, the Torn Banner project was far from flourishing.

The head of the Pocket Gems studio, Michael Dawson, told why interactive novels for mobile are such a success. The flagship title Pocket Gems is the Episode interactive stories platform, which has gained more than 125 million downloads.

The VKontakte app for iOS now supports Direct Games is an HTML5–based gaming platform where games can be run without downloading.

On May 25, a new law called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the general data protection regulation, came into force in the European Union. GDPR provisions should strengthen the protection of personal data of residents of all EU countries, but, according to experts, the new regulations will complicate the lives of developers and publishers of video games.

First Person is a series of short videos from Google Play, where authors, developers and even voice actors talk about their work on popular mobile games.

Owners of Apple mobile devices will not be able to play titles from the Steam library on them through the Steam Link streaming application. Apple has not allowed Valve to place the Steam Link in the App Store, according to the publication Venture Beat.

Analysts from SuperData summed up the April results of the gaming market: in a month, users spent $9.09 billion on games distributed in numbers. Console games showed the greatest dynamics due to the success of Fortnite and the new God of War.

Among the 500 highest-grossing mobile games in the USA, the largest number of titles (15.1%) belong to the battler genre. This was told in its latest report by the analytical company Playliner.

Sprite hybrid bitmap and bagel Wizards of Legends from the indie team Contingent99 sold 200 thousand copies in the first week.

The beta version of H1Z1, an online shooter in the world of the zombie apocalypse from Daybreak Games, attracted an audience of one and a half million players in the first 24 hours since the launch of the PS4 version.

According to some reports, Valve plans to introduce age restrictions for Steam users. Persons under the age of 16 will be able to register on the gaming platform and use Steam features only with the consent of their parents or guardians.

The Sensor Tower mobile analytics platform has studied the impact of features on downloads from the Google Play app store in the USA. According to the company, getting the game into the New + Updated store section for a week increased the number of downloads by 194%.

The Chinese Internet company NetEase has announced that it is developing a dramatic web series, the basis for which will be the multiplayer game Knives Out – a mobile clone of PUBG.

The creator of the GameMaker Studio game engine franchise, YoYo Games, has opened its own publishing division. They intend to release games by independent developers created with the help of GameMaker Studio products.