Path of Exile 2 has entered the top 15 most popular games in Steam’s history, Steam’s online count exceeded 39 million people for the first time, and the studio behind Life is Strange: Double Exposure has conducted layoffs — here is a recap of the key events in the gaming industry over the past weekend.

In recent weeks, the executives and shareholders of Ubisoft have been discussing the possibility of a management buyout. Sources report this to Reuters.

We continue to wrap up 2024 with teams that are gaming-related or within the gaming sector. Up next is an interview with Balancy, which specializes in LiveOps. We spoke with the company’s CEO and CTO — Pavel Ignatov and Andrei Apanasik.

From November 21 to 22, the WN Conference WN Conference for game developers and publishers took place in Southeast China. Participants discussed and exchanged experiences on how local Chinese studios can establish themselves in the international market. 

Path of Exile 2 is launching in a paid early access format on PC and consoles tonight at 10:00 PM Moscow time. According to the developers, the frenzy surrounding the imminent launch has exceeded all their expectations.

The average lifespan of blockchain or Web3 games is just four months, according to a study by the ChainPlay platform. This conclusion was reached after analyzing 3,279 projects in this segment.

Continuing with experts and teams from the gaming industry, we sum up the results of 2024. Up next is an interview with Sasha Goodwin, the founder of the studio Goodwin Games.

VK summarized the year for the social network “VKontakte”. Among other things, it listed the games most frequently mentioned by users in comments and posts in 2024.

The new mobile puzzle game from the Turkish studio Dream Games has made an impressive start. According to AppMagic analytics, Royal Kingdom has earned $1.83 million in pure IAP revenue—net of store commissions and taxes—in just two weeks since its release.

Square Enix has shared the success of the Dragon Quest III remake. To date, the revamped version of this iconic role-playing game has sold over 2 million copies. It reached this milestone within three weeks of release.

Dark Math Games is one of the game studios founded by former employees of ZA/UM. The studio has announced securing significant investment. While the exact amount remains undisclosed, it’s reported to be a seven-figure sum.

On December 6th, Marvel Rivals—a team-based action game featuring Marvel heroes, developed by the Chinese company NetEase—was released on PC and consoles. According to SteamDB, shortly after its release, the Steam version of the game alone managed to peak at attracting over 444,000 concurrent players.

The Internet Development Institute (IDI) has revealed the total downloads of games it partially funded. They have reached 6.7 million.

We continue to review the results of 2024 with experts and teams from the gaming industry. Next up is an interview with Alexey Meleshkevich, the founder of the studio Goodville.

Playgama, a platform for HTML5 games, has successfully completed another round of funding, raising $3 million.

Dungeon Clawler is a turn-based card strategy game with roguelike elements, where items for your deck need to be drawn using a claw from an arcade machine. The game debuted on Steam and mobile devices on November 21, 2024, and has sold over 100,000 copies to date.

On the night of December 4th to 5th, the open beta test of Delta Force, a tactical shooter by Team Jade, a subsidiary of the Chinese giant Tencent, launched on PC. The game received mixed feedback on Steam.

Gaijin Entertainment has released a video comparing the capabilities of the Dagor Engine and Unreal Engine 5. The company’s conclusion is that its engine is just as capable as the giant from Epic Games.

In October, the Korea Mobile Game Association urged South Korean gaming companies to join a class action lawsuit against Google and Apple regarding monopoly control over the mobile store market. Two months later, several organizations claimed that Google is persuading developers to withdraw from the lawsuit.