The China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association has presented its annual report on the state of the local gaming market for 2024

The Google Play Store team has warned developers that it will soon stop processing payments worldwide intended for owners of Russian bank accounts. The restriction will take effect in two weeks on December 26, 2024

Early in the morning on December 13th, the tenth anniversary ceremony of The Game Awards took place. This year, the main triumph of the awards was Astro Bot.

Nearly 100 employees have been dismissed from Warner Games Montreal.

Chris Barrett, the onetime director of the Marathon reboot, has initiated legal action against Bungie and Sony. He alleges that the companies intentionally tarnished his reputation by wrongly and publicly suggesting they had conducted an investigation into his conduct and concluded he was involved in sexual misconduct. Barrett contends this was done to evade a $45 million payout owed to him.

uBroker Spa has purchased a 49% interest in the Italian independent studio, Memorable Games.

NCSoft continues its global expansion by announcing two deals with two game development studios. This is in line with the Lineage maker’s strategy to diversify its portfolio.

The Chartboost platform has changed ownership. Mobile game publisher Zynga announced its sale to LoopMe, a technology company specializing in brand advertising

Shares of Polish company 11 bit studios have plummeted to the lowest level in seven years. Investors are concerned that the studio is allegedly planning to cancel a game currently in development and write off its assets

Cooldown Games, a newly established publisher created by a team of industry veterans, aims to deliver premium games to both PC and console platforms.

Today, December 12, a bill titled "On the Activities of Developing and Distributing Video Games in the Russian Federation" was submitted for consideration to the State Duma. We asked Roman Lukyanov, the managing partner of the law firm Semenov&Pevzner, to share his opinion on the project.

In the past year, gaming companies from California have been particularly active in conducting layoffs. Journalist Stephen Totilo, in his Game File newsletter, noted that this state was responsible for about a third of all gaming industry personnel reductions in 2024

Despite the recent success of Frostpunk 2, 11 bit studios has been struggling on the stock market. The fact that the Polish company may potentially cancel one of its projects in development has caused panic among investors.

We wrote in detail about the bill this morning, and now we'll note that the published final version is in essence no different from the one obtained by the editorial team the day before. However, there is a nuance

In early December, the WN Summit took place in the capital of Thailand, Bangkok. Below are the main highlights of the event

We continue to wrap up the year 2024 with teams from the gaming industry (or related sectors). Next up is an interview with Dmitry Fokin, the CEO of CarX Technologies.

Glow Up Games is yet another game development studio that did not survive the crisis in the gaming industry. Its closure was announced on LinkedIn by CEO Mitu Khandaker.

Mitu Khandaker, co-founder of Glow Up Games, has announced the closure of the company.

Epic Games has finalized an agreement with telecommunications firm Telefónica, which will result in the Epic Games Store and Fortnite being pre-installed on Android devices.

2024 has been a big year for indie games, with two major releases — Balatro and Buckshot Roulette — recently hitting new sales milestones.

Not only is Balatro experiencing strong sales, but Estonian solo developer Mike Klubnika has also shared new successes of his creation. He announced that as of today, the horror game about playing "Russian roulette," Buckshot Roulette, has surpassed 4 million copies sold

The Turkish Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, believes that the government should restrict access to social media and online games for children under 16. In his opinion, this is necessary to protect young Turks from inappropriate content.

The developer LocalThunk and publisher Playstack have announced that the card game Balatro has reached a new milestone. It has sold 3.5 million copies worldwide

On the evening of December 11, Anton Gorelkin, a deputy and deputy chairman of the Committee on Information Policy, announced that on December 12, a draft law regulating the Russian gaming industry would be submitted to the State Duma for consideration. The editorial team of App2Top obtained the text of the draft law. Here's a straightforward explanation of what it entails.

AFK Journey, What If…? An Immersive Story, Squad Busters, Thank Goodness You're Here!, and Balatro+ are among the apps that have secured a place on Apple's list of App Store Award winners for 2024

Following Google's lead, Apple has announced the best mobile games of 2024 in its App Store

Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad reported that more than 40 million people played the Chinese "beta" of Delta Force. In China, it launched on PC earlier than in the rest of the world—on September 26, 2024

Continuing to wrap up 2024 with gaming (or gaming industry-related) teams. Up next is an interview with Kian Hozouri, COO and co-founder of the analytics service ByteBrew

Last month, it was revealed that Sony is in talks to acquire Kadokawa, a Japanese media conglomerate whose subsidiaries include FromSoftware. Bunshun reported that employees at Kadokawa are hopeful for a successful outcome of the deal.

Build A Rocket Boy announced the acquisition of a new studio. It is PlayFusion — the team that developed the card games Lightseekers and Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Champions.

Another game development studio is switching to a cost-cutting mode. People Can Fly has decided to reduce its self-publishing strategy and restructure its operations.

Nintendo has completed its acquisition of Monolith Soft by purchasing the remaining shares, after initially holding a 96% stake in the studio.

The Chinese company miHoYo won a lawsuit in Canada against the cheat software developers Akebi GC, Acrepi, and Genshin XYZ. Their software allowed players to bypass the rules in Genshin Impact.

We continue to summarize the results of 2024 with gaming (or game industry-related) teams. Up next is an interview with Dmitry Kachkov, the director of Sobaka Studio

The publisher Game Seer shared the successes of Half Sword with GameDiscoverCo. This is the debut project of the studio Half Sword Games.

The Polish game development company, People Can Fly, has revealed additional layoffs impacting over 120 employees

Nintendo has become the owner of 100% of the shares in the Japanese studio Monolith Soft, known for the Xenoblade Chronicles game series. This information appeared on the Monolith Soft website, as noted by the publication Automaton Media

Developers from China are investing significant amounts of money in advertising their games and applications on the Russian marketplace RuStore. According to VK's calculations, from January to November 2024, they spent over 60 million rubles on promotion through the "VK Advertising" platform.

The Polish company People Can Fly has decided to focus more on developing games in partnership with other companies. Examples include Project Gemini, which they are working on with Square Enix, and Project Maverick, being developed with the support of Microsoft.

Clear Angle Studios, a company specializing in 3D capture and processing, has launched a new facility in Culver City, Los Angeles

GamesIndustry.biz has scheduled one final territory special before the year concludes, focusing the remainder of the week on providing insights into India

Pocketpair has announced a few changes to the creature-summoning mechani  in Palworld. This comes amid the studio’s legal battle with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company.

We continue to wrap up the year 2024 with teams from the gaming industry (or those related to it). Up next is an interview with Vera Velichko, the CEO of the outsourcing company OWL Studio

The Google team compiled a list of the most popular search queries of the past year. In the "Games" category, the leader was Connections — a word puzzle by The New York Times, where you have to group words by meaning.

The Drucker Institute published its annual ranking of publicly traded companies in the United States with the most effective management. Among them were several companies related to gaming

Following its successful Early Access launch, Path of Exile 2 has become the highest-grossing game on Steam globally.

Build A Rocket Boy has purchased PlayFusion for an undisclosed amount.

We continue to wrap up the year 2024 with teams in the gaming (or game-related) industry. Up next is an interview with Anton Mikhailov, the creative director of the indie studio Tortuga Team

Enish is a Japanese mobile studio known for games like De:Lithe Last Memories and Attack on Titan: Brave Order. They decided to give employees an unpleasant New Year's surprise by reducing part of their staff

Dauntless has reached its release on Steam five years after its original launch. Users have received it, to put it mildly, coldly. Currently, Dauntless has an "overwhelmingly negative" rating on Steam with only 14% positive reviews.