Investment

Krafton has decided to acquire a 10% stake in People Can Fly. The deal will also help the Polish developer finance its updated business strategy.

It is difficult for smaller mobile devs to avoid problems that can affect the development and lifecycle of their games. ZiMAD M&A manager Yana Vesnina discusses the key challenges and shares some professional tips in an article for Game World Observer.

Yana Vesnina, M&A Manager at ZiMAD, told about the challenges facing young mobile game developers in her column.

Electronic Arts is preparing to lay off hundreds of employees as part of its announced business restructuring. The company plans to only focus on areas that contribute to its long-term growth.

In his traditional newsletter, Simon Carless, for a moment, the former editor-in-chief of Gamasutra, as well as the former vice president of GDC, who runs the GameDiscoverCo agency today, spoke about the main trends in the PC and console games industry. We have a careful translation of his assessment into Russian.

Microsoft has announced some major changes to its ID@Xbox program. The updated acceleration initiative aims to empower underrepresented indie game developers and lower barriers to entry for them.

Atomic Heart has reached its first milestone in terms of player numbers. This follows Mundfish’s recent comments about the studio’s future plans and approach to game development.

On March 20, Remedy Entertainment published a more detailed version of its annual report. The document provides additional information about the company’s production pipeline and business strategy.

The sanctions have seriously affected the Russian gaming market. According to the results of last year, its volume decreased by 80%, the Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC) estimated.

The founders of the Mundfish studio expect that in the future their team will be able to make games in 24-hour mode. Robert Bagratuni and Evgenia Sedova shared such plans in an interview with Durov’s Code.

Metaverse projects continue to attract investment. German Flying Sheep Studios has announced that it has received $ 1.2 million to create the game Star Life. The money was given by the Federal Ministry of Economy and Climate Protection of Germany.

Italian publisher Digital Bros has released its financial report for the six months ended December 31, 2022. The company also disclosed sales and other data for its main revenue-generating games.

Forspoken has failed to meet Square Enix’s expectations in terms of sales. And the game’s alleged production budget indicates that the company is unlikely to recoup its investment.

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.

On March 10, it became known about the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest US bank specializing in high-risk investments in technology startups (it accounted for half of all American venture financing). Many businesses have lost money. Including gaming.

Playtika has released a report for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022. The Israeli publisher has also decided to temporarily suspend its game development pipeline, which means no new launches in the near future.

In September 2022, Japanese game designer Toshimichi Mori left Arc System Works after 19 years of work, promising to continue developing games. He intends to keep his promise. Together with Toshinori Aoki, the former vice president of Marvelous, Mori opened a studio called Studio Flare.

The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine wants to ban the sale of Mundfish’s recently launched game Atomic Heart in the country. It also encourages other countries to take similar action.

InvestGame has published a report on deal activity in the games industry in 2022. Analysts highlighted the biggest trends and offered their investment forecasts for the near future.

The Sami Union demanded that Square Enix remove a set with traditional folk clothing from Final Fantasy XIV, and Steam has the opportunity to transfer games over a local network — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry this weekend.

Wild Hearts has just launched globally. Although Omega Force’s new game is appealing gameplay-wise, its technical state could ruin the studio’s plans to build a new monster hunting franchise. Let’s take a look at the title’s market potential and what made Electronic Arts bet big on it.

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.

Embracer Group has released its financial report for the third quarter ended December 31, 2022. The Swedish holding company recorded strong revenue growth and detailed its game development pipeline for the next several years.

VK has started work on the creation of a Russian open source game engine. It allocates one billion rubles for its development. This was announced during a press conference with the participation of Maksut Shadaev and Vladimir Kiriyenko. App2Top has prepared an edited* transcript of the event.

Supercell has disclosed its revenue and other financial results for 2022. CEO Ilkka Paananen also outlined the main challenges facing the company, as well as key steps the Clash of Clans developer should take to fulfill its mission of creating innovative live service games.

Ilkka Paananen, CEO of Supercell, summed up the results of 2022 for his company. He spoke about the drop in revenue and said that developing hit games “has become more difficult than we ever thought.”

This is reported by Vedomosti with reference to Alexey Goreslavsky, Director General of the Internet Development Institute (IRI).

VK Play platform has announced the launch of an investment division — “VK Play Investments”. She is going to invest 300 million rubles in gaming teams through him in 2023.

Australian federal film agency Screen Australia has expanded its funding program to support more indie developers. It will invest in 11 games of different genres varying from platformers to survival horrors.

The Australian government agency Screen Australia continues to invest in local indie developers. This time it invested a total of one million dollars in the authors of 11 games.

When announcing the shutdown of Apex Legends Mobile, Electronic Arts stated that it no longer lived up to the bar for quality. The reasons, however, must be more complex given that the game has been one of the highest performing titles in the company’s mobile portfolio.

Started as a label for indie games, EA Originals has now shifted its focus to publishing bigger projects rather than smaller niche titles. Here is what’s behind this transformation.

Analysts from Niko Partners predict rapid growth in the gaming market of the MENA-3 region (Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt). It is estimated that in five years its revenue will increase by 56% at once.

Vlad Korolev and Alexander Zoll from Gunzilla Games may be involved in a number of fraudulent schemes. This was stated by anonymous studio employees in an interview with Talk Finance.

The exact size of the investment is not disclosed. According to the estimates of the GamesIndustry portal.biz, we are talking about many millions of dollars.

MY.GAMES investment division continues to invest in gaming assets. Today it became known about the conclusion of a strategic partnership between the foundation and two game studios — DC1AB and AMT Games.

The court refused to suspend consideration of the gamers’ lawsuit against Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, Phil Spencer commented on the layoffs at Microsoft in a letter to employees, and Riot Games was subjected to a hacker attack — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry this weekend.

Google’s parent company Alphabet has announced mass layoffs affecting thousands of workers globally. The tech giant will now focus on its growth areas, including AI.

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.

In 2022, the global games industry set a new record for the number and value of closed or announced deals. All thanks to Microsoft’s historic bid to acquire Activision Blizzard, but there have been a few other noteworthy investments as well.

We continue to summarize the results of last year together with top managers and experts of the gaming industry (and related ones). Next up is an interview with Natalia Yurkova, Managing Partner of i-Legal.Tell me, what was the year for you personally?

Drake Star estimates that in 2022, the volume of announced and/or closed M&A agreements, investments and public offerings in the gaming industry amounted to $127 billion. This is 78.8% more than a year earlier.

We continue the series of interviews in which we summarize the results of 2022 together with top managers and experts of the gaming industry. This time we talked with Vasily Ovchinnikov, the head of the “Organization for the Development of the Video Game Industry” (RVI).

Ghost Ship Games has bought a minority stake in the VR studio Bolverk Games from the investment firm Capnova. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed.

VK group at a meeting with the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation said that it plans to continue to actively invest in game developers. Through the VK Play division, she intends to invest in projects that are at the prototype stage or at an early stage of development.

A group of Playground Games veterans led by Mike Brown, the former creative director of the Forza Horizon series, has launched its own game development studio. She has already attracted the first investments (their size is not disclosed) and has started developing the debut AAA open-world game for PC and consoles.

Microsoft seems to be betting big on ChatGPT to bolster its cloud and AI presence. The next step might be a $10 billion investment, which would help it increase its stake in OpenAI, a research lab behind the technology.

Microsoft Corporation, together with a number of venture capital firms, is negotiating investments in OpenAI, Semafor reports, citing sources. If the deal goes through, the market value of AI developers will be $29 billion.

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 Boris Sinitsky, the publishing director of the World of Tanks at Lesta Games.

We continue to summarize the results of last year. This time we are publishing an interview with Pavel Ignatov, CEO at Balance, a company specializing in gaming LiveOps.