A report by Kate Edwards from Geogrify. During her 25-year career in gaming, Kate has witnessed the development of the gaming industry, which has become a real cultural and economic force in a global society.

Activision Blizzard Gaming Corporation reported record revenue in the 1st quarter of 2018. The company earned $1.97 billion and received $500 million in net profit.

Russian IT Corporation Mail.Ru The Group reported for the first quarter of this year. Revenue from the company’s MMO games increased by 28.5% compared to last year and amounted to ₽5.12 billion ($80.8 million).

Since November last year, the Belarusian studio Belka Games has been headed by Alexander Bogdanov. Prior to that, he launched the Social Quantum, Game Insight and Playrix gaming divisions in St. Petersburg. Editor App2Top.ru Alexander Semenov talked with Bogdanov about his path to the industry, the development of X-Mercs and the reasons for the transition to Belka Games.

Google has confirmed the existence of the Arcade gaming startup, which develops mobile social games.

Hong Kong-based mobile developer and publisher Animoca Brands has reported earnings for the 1st quarter of 2018. The company earned $ 3.4 million, its revenues increased by 54.5% compared to last year. Financial success in Animoca was explained by the indicators of a new game in the genre of tower defense Crazy Defense Heroes.

Zynga has reported financial results for the 1st quarter of 2018. The California company’s revenues have grown and it has made a profit despite the pessimistic forecast.

A report by Alexander Pavlov and Pavel Kazimirenko from IQeon. The speakers talked about their gaming platform, which allows players to earn money on their achievements.

The founder of Zynga, Mark Pincus, has exchanged his shares of the company with high voting rights for ordinary shares. Because of this, Pinkus’ voting rights as a Zynga shareholder were reduced from 70% to 10%.

Sensor Tower analytical platform named PUBG Mobile’s “battle royale” by Tencent the world leader in downloads among mobile games in the first quarter of 2018. This is reported in the company’s report.

Unity Technologies has released a new version of the popular Unity game engine — 2018.1. The update introduces new tools for working with graphics, physics, creating three-dimensional models and animation.

In 2018, Russian users will download mobile games over 2 billion times. According to the number of game downloads on mobile, Russia will take the 5th place in the world. This is stated in the forecast of the analytical company App Annie.

The Instant Games platform of the Facebook social network has been accepting applications for adding IAP to games since May 7. Developers will be allowed to earn from the platform in a traditional way for the industry.

Wanted: producer in Playrix, bizdev in Pixonic and ASO-optimizer in PlayFlock.

The management of Nintendo is dissatisfied with the performance of its mobile games. This was announced by the president of Nintendo Tatsumi Kimishima (Tatsumi Kimishima).

Arrest and $5.1 million fine — this is how the Chinese police are fighting the distributors of cheat programs for the “royal battle” of PLAYERUNKNOWN BATTLEGROUND. On April 25, Chinese authorities detained 15 people on suspicion of creating and selling hacking programs for a popular online action movie.

Newzoo has published a forecast for the games market for this year. The company’s experts believe that the revenue from the games by the end of 2018 will amount to $ 137.9 billion. This is 13.3% more than the industry earned last year.

The Chinese IT giant expects to increase its stake in Bluehole to 11.5%. Now Tencent is considering the possibility of outbidding the developer’s shares from venture funds for $ 468 million.

The head of games at Microsoft, Phil Spencer, said that in the near future the company does not plan to develop its own game in the battle royale genre.