HR

The PC version of The Last of Us Part I has been released in a very poor technical state. This has already resulted in one of the worst AAA launches on Steam in terms of player reception in recent memory.

A group of Ubisoft Paris employees anonymously complained to NME about working conditions in the studio. According to the developers, during the creation of Just Dance 2023, they were forced to work overtime regularly.

New game development studio, Lighthouse Games, has been formed by Playground co-founder Gavin Raeburn. The team is now working on their debut AAA title.

Take-Two Interactive may have made a new purchase. The network noticed that the subscription service GameClub, which specializes in retro mobile games, came under the control of the company.

In February, the official comic book for the Shadow Fight franchise appeared on the bookshelves of the CIS. We talked with Nikita Korzhavin, Nekki‘s business development director, about how the comic was being worked on and what task it solves for the game franchise.

Dream Games has announced the launch of its first overseas office. It is located in London.

We are publishing a new list with gaming vacancies. Wanted this week: technical artist at Lesta Games, game producer at Craft Games and senior designer at WN Media Group.

At the end of last year, AST Publishing house published a book by indie developer Slava Gris, “Make a video game alone and Don’t Go Crazy.” We liked the book so much that we decided to write about it, and at the same time share one of its chapters on our pages.

What is a Google Ads agent account, — Mikhail Karpach, head of the advertising department of the YeezyPay payment service, told in his column.

Cygames has launched a special scholarship program for Japanese students aspiring to become game developers. This includes monetary payments and internships.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney continues to push for more transparency and unity across the various game stores. This time, he had some harsh words about Valve’s Steamworks API and how it limits multiplayer features.

The head of Epic Games criticized Valve for the limited capabilities of the Steamworks API for multiplayer games. In an interview with the PC Gamer portal, he stated that the company has seriously complicated the lives of both developers and other app stores.

On March 9, Epic Games introduced a set of publishing tools that are available to all owners of the developer account. However, each game must meet the following requirements:

From now on, game developers will be able to self-publish their titles on the Epic Games Store. All thanks to new tools available to any studio as long as it meet the platform’s requirements.

The difficult times for gaming companies continue. And they affect even very young studios. Today it became known about the cuts in the Dragon Machines team. She lost a little more than a quarter of the staff.

Belka Games development director Vitaliy Kuzmin has opened up about how the team restructuring helped the company increase the frequence of update releases and set two records for daily revenue.

Insider Tom Henderson commented on the hacking of Activision Blizzard‘s internal network, which was previously reported in vx-underground. He claims that hackers, among other things, gained access to personal data of company employees.

Activision allegedly faced a data breach at the end of 2022. Anonymous hackers got access to some internal documents, including content roadmaps.

Ilkka Paananen, CEO of Supercell, published a program column on the state of the studio on the company’s blog. In it, he spoke about the challenges that the Finnish company faces today, and also shared its financial results for the past year.

Mick Gordon, best known for his work on soundtracks for the last Doom games, has announced his decision to donate his Atomic Heart fees to humanitarian aid for the people of Ukraine. The composer noted that he wanted to “provide practical support” to those affected by the war.

China has no plans to ease its regulations aimed at protecting minors from gaming addiction. Tencent has already expressed its readiness to help the government in the new phase of this protracted fight.

The Bombora publishing house announced that the book “The Witcher. The history of the franchise. From fantasy to cult game saga” by the authorship of game journalist Raphael Lucas. It primarily tells about the problems and successes of CD PROJEKT in the development of games in The Witcher series. But there was also a place for stories about the creation of the book cycle itself, the filming of film adaptations and the formation of the…

The year 2022 was rich in legal initiatives against loot boxes. The Versus.legal law firm has prepared a detailed overview of them, broken down by country.

Blizzard is yet to announce its new Chinese partner following its split with NetEase. However, new rumors allege that the company may strike a licensing deal with Shengqu Games, the local operator of Final Fantasy XIV.

The main scandal of the last day in the Russian game dev is the appearance of a two—hour appeal by the former head of the narrative department of MYTONA, Sergey Gres, to the company’s management. We have prepared a summary and highlighted the main thing.

As the future of Blizzard games in China remains hazy, local players have started applying for refunds for unused in-app purchases. NetEase, which was responsible for operating these products in the country, explained how users can claim their money back.

Despite the rapid growth in popularity of AI services that generate visual content at the request of users, from a legal point of view, their work (as well as the use of graphics created by them) raises many questions. I-Legal lawyers answered the most relevant of them in a special material for App2Top.

We summed up the results of last year together with Anatoly Sharifulin, CEO and co-founder of AppFollow. He spoke about the difficulties faced by the company, as well as about the key changes in the ASO market.

Riot Games joins other game companies that have announced layoffs this month. According to the latest report, the League of Legends maker has decided to cut jobs in several divisions.

Journalist Jacob Wolf reported that Riot Games has also started firing employees. According to him, the cuts take place in the HR, support and esports departments.

Last week, Yves Guillemot made an unfortunate statement. In a letter to employees, he indicated that the fate of Ubisoft is in the hands of developers, and urged developers to give their all. Now the head of the publishing house has apologized for incorrectly chosen words.

Sky News, citing sources, reported that Microsoft plans to cut 5% of the corporation’s staff. It is assumed that the dismissals will be announced in the near future.

AppMagic analysts have published a report on hyper-casual games. They listed the 10 most popular games in the fourth quarter of 2022, and also shared key trends.

We continue to summarize the results of 2022. Next up is an interview with Pavel Moseikin, co—founder and CEO of XYZ School.

We are publishing a new list with gaming vacancies. This week we are looking for: UI/UX designer at Lesta Games, game designer at ZiMAD and a leading recruiter at WN Media Group.

Using ready-made 3D assets can save time and money for some teams, but there are also a lot of pitfalls. Maksim Nikifarovich, lead artist at Belka Games, has opened up about the key challenges that game developers may face.

After the New Year, we continue to sum up the results of 2022 together with the top managers of the gaming industry. Next up is an interview with Albert Zhiltsov, director of 1C Game Studios.

We continue the series of interviews in which we summarize the results of the year together with experts and top managers of the gaming industry (and related ones). This time we talked with Ilya Grabelnikov, Chief Distribution Officer of META Publishing.

Recruiting agency Talents In Games summed up the results of the open voting for the award “Game Dev HR Awards 2022“. The game studios Playkot and MYTONA turned out to be the winners by a large margin in terms of votes cast.

We continue to sum up the results of 2022 together with top managers and experts of the gaming industry. Next up is an interview with Ilya Eremeev, co—founder and General partner The Games Fund (TGF).

We continue the series of interviews in which we summarize the results of the year together with experts and top managers of the gaming industry (and related ones). This time we talked with Marina Lopatina, Director of business development of the recruiting agency WN Talents In Games.

We continue to sum up the results of 2022 together with top managers and experts of the gaming industry. Next up is an interview with Ivan Fedyanin, co—founder of the Ducky publishing house.

On the eve of the New Year, App2Top continues to publish a series of “Results” materials, in which it interviews top managers and experts of the gaming industry (and related ones) about how the year has passed for their company and the market. Next up is an interview with Vyacheslav Utochkin, co—founder and general producer of the gaming company Geeky House.

We summed up the results of the year together with Nikita Guk, CEO and co-founder of Hoopsly. He spoke about the growth of the company’s installations, changes in the hyper-casual games market and the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult for small developers to anticipate trends.

Semenov&Pevzner Law Firm has prepared a global report on legal conflicts in the gaming industry over the past six months.

We summed up the results of the year together with Victoria Belyaeva, head of the Business development and PR department of AppQuantum. She spoke about the success of the publisher, the growth of the quality of Chinese idlers and the hybridization of genres.

InnoGames stated that it became much easier for it to hire new employees after it began to openly publish information about salary forks. After implementing the new policy, the company managed to close all 19 vacancies in just two months.

The recruitment agency Talents In Games has announced the launch of an open vote and invites you to take part in it. The winners will become laureates of the Game Dev HR Awards 2022.

We continue the series of interviews “Results”, in which top managers and experts of the gaming industry (and related ones) tell what the last 12 months have been like for them. This time Dmitry Yaminsky, co-founder of Azur Games, shares his results.

We continue to summarize the results of 2022 together with top managers and experts of the gaming industry (and related ones). Next up is an interview with Kirill Perevozchikov, the founder of the White Label PR agency.