Almost every significant game studio uses the services of third-party teams in working on AAA titles. This is reported by The Outline, which has studied the gaming outsourcing development market and talked with representatives of several companies.

The German authorities saw the mechanics of loot boxes as a threat to young people. The reason for the concern of officials was the research of the University of Hamburg. Scientists have come to the conclusion that video games are increasingly converging with gambling, Welt reports.

On February 6, the Odnoklassniki social network announced the release of the OK Games application. It allows you to run web games from the platform library on the desktop. Including projects made using Flash technology, which is not supported by default by Chrome, Mozilla and Opera browsers.

Hong Kong-based game company Animoca Brands has acquired the Finnish studio TribeFlame. The total amount of the transaction may amount to €350 thousand. Tribeflame is known for the Benji Bananas series of mobile arcades, whose total downloads have exceeded the 107 million mark.

On January 25, independent developer Matt Thorson released a new Celeste platformer project. In 2 weeks, the Nintendo Switch version of the game has overtaken its PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One editions in sales.

On February 6, the authors of the RAWG gaming service announced that they had raised €1 million in January of this year. It is already known what the money will be used for.

Wanted: a leading UI engineer at Pixonic, head of the traffic buying department at Playrix, HR assistant at Nevosoft, as well as a leading level designer at SargosGames.

There have been layoffs at the Capcom Vancouver studio. The company confirmed the reduction of 30% of the staff, explaining this by restructuring the business.

On February 6, the Korean gaming giant Netmarble published a report for the fourth quarter of 2017. It ended very well for the company. She earned $565 million. The commercial success of Lineage 2: Revolution played a big role in this. It accounted for 39% of the company’s revenue.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has included “gaming disorder” in the draft of the new edition of the international classifier of diseases. It will be released this year.

The lead designer of Civilization IV, Soren Johnson, and the art director of the Civilization V project, Dorian Newcomb, have been developing a new strategy called 10 Crowns.

On February 2, the Japanese publisher and developer GungHo Online Entertainment published the results for the 2017 fiscal year. For the company, it ended much worse than the previous one. The main reason is the drop in revenue of the main title GungHo, the Puzzle & Dragons card battler, which entered the mobile market six years ago.

Square Enix will implement the “game-service” model in new single-player titles, said the company’s CEO Yosuke Matsuda. He clarified that he does not mean loot boxes and microtransactions.

Sales of the RimWorld space colonists simulator by the independent studio Ludeon Studios exceeded 1 million copies. The alpha version of the game was released in 2013, and since 2016 it has appeared in Steam early access.

In the first week after the release of the Monster Hunter: World role-playing action, 1.2 million physical copies of the game were bought in Japan. This is 92% of the initial batch of discs sent by the publisher Capcom to stores.

The American branch of Nexon Gaming Corporation has laid off an unnamed number of employees.

Sony Corporation has reported on the results of the work of the gaming division of Sony’s Game&Network Services for the 3rd fiscal quarter of 2017. Over the past three months, the company has delivered fewer consoles, but compensated for this with a significant increase in game sales.

On February 13-14, the Czech capital will host the White Nights game development conference. On the first day, a round table will be held about the gaming user experience and interface. Editorial Office App2Top.ru offers to compose questions for the participants of the table. The authors of the best will receive a premium ticket.

On January 31, the Japanese publisher Konami summed up the financial results of the last three quarters. The period for the gaming division of the company ended in a good plus. A significant merit in this is PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER, the company’s football franchise.