Marketing

At the end of October, it became known that AppLovin and its subsidiary game studio Machine Zone had downsized some of their staff. The number of employees who lost their jobs was not disclosed at that time, but the portal SFGATE found these figures in a statement filed by AppLovin with the California state authorities last week

We continue our series of publications about games seeking investment or a publisher. Up next is a piece on the mobile parenting simulator Best Parent.

Games industry veteran Vladimir Nikolsky and online gambling traffic expert Alex Riddick have discussed the state of these two different markets during the recent WN Conference Cyprus’24. Here’re the main differences in terms of competition, user acquisition, and other issues.

Activision's Chief Marketing Officer, Tyler Bahl, shared details about the promotion of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. He stated that no less was spent on the game's marketing than on any of the major blockbuster films of this year

AppLovin and its subsidiary Machine Zone (known for Game of War and Mobile Strike) have conducted a series of layoffs

The newest whitepaper from GamesIndustry.biz, titled "A Complete Guide to Monetizing and Marketing Your Video Games Direct-to-Consumer," is now available for download

New information has surfaced regarding Epic's strategy for its mobile games store, revealing plans to feature up to 50 third-party games and extend its PC marketplace giveaway program before the end of the year

Update: Riot Games has stated that it is "not connected to the complaint mentioned in SAG-AFTRA's press release."

We continue to publish the findings of our salary survey, conducted from April to May 2023, chapter by chapter. This publication focuses on the income levels of Russian-speaking gaming marketers.

We continue our series of publications about games seeking investments or a publisher. Up next is a feature on the word game Word Masters, which is currently in soft launch

Unionized employees at Raven Software in Wisconsin have lodged a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against the studio and its parent companies, Activision and Microsoft. The grievance, reported by Game File, was submitted last Friday, alleging "Refusal to Bargain/Bad Faith Bargaining." These workers have been seeking a contract with the company since they unionized through the Communications Workers of America in 2022. The complaint also mentions alleged "Changes in Terms and Conditions of Employment" and "Concerted Activities (Retaliation, Discharge, Discipline)" as additional concerns.

The data attribution service Tenjin released a report on the state of the mobile game advertising market in the second quarter of 2024. Here are the details

Sony has introduced the MENA Hero Project, an incubator initiative designed to discover and assist regional developers in the Middle East and North Africa gaming sector. According to a blog post, the program will extend support to developers from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. This support encompasses mentorship, training, and investment tailored to specific projects

Playgendary may have laid off its entire marketing team, as well as the team working on arcade games. This was reported by a manager from one of the Cypriot companies on social media, citing their sources

The advertising service AdSense will soon completely stop operating in Russia. Google sent emails to Russian AdSense account holders, warning them about the impending deactivation of their accounts

We continue our series of publications about games seeking investments or a publisher. Up next is a piece about the St. Petersburg studio Selfish Snakes, which is working on a first-person shooter with roguelike meta elements called Hell over Me

Marvel Rivals, an upcoming PvP hero shooter from NetEase, is showing great numbers at the start of its closed beta. The game has already attracted tens of thousands of concurrent users on Steam alone.

Capcom has set a goal to boost the proportion of female managers to 15%. During a general Q&A session at a recent shareholders meeting, the company revealed that 21.2% of its overall workforce is female, with women comprising 13.6% of its core talent. It remains unclear how Capcom differentiates between employees and core talent

The Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation has prepared a draft law that lists measures to support the Russian gaming industry, according to the news agency "Interfax," which has reviewed the document

Approximately one-third of the workforce at video game marketing firm Project N has been dismissed as part of a service consolidation effort. News of the layoffs surfaced when editorial team members, deputy editor Jack Ridsdale and senior staff writer Miri Teixeira, announced on social media that they were affected. GamesIndustry.biz later verified the additional layoffs after contacting Project N's parent company, Network N, which also manages media platforms like PCGamesN, Pocket Tactics, and The Digital Fix

The Northern Ireland Assembly All Party Group on Reducing Harm Related to Gambling has advocated for tighter regulations on loot boxes within the region. Although they have not suggested an outright ban, they recommend that gambling within video games be restricted as much as possible during the second phase of gambling legislation in Northern Ireland. This recommendation is part of a report generated after an inquiry conducted from December 2022 to January 2024, which examined the public health implications of gambling. The APG asserts that Northern Ireland is well-placed to set a precedent in the regulation of loot boxes

Another top executive from Unity has decided to leave the company. This time it is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Carol Carpenter

June 30 will be the last working day at Microsoft for Xbox Marketing Director Jerret West. He has decided to move to Roblox. Following his departure, the company will make changes to the structure of the marketing department

Dark and Darker is back on Steam after more than a year away due to a legal battle with publisher Nexon. Despite decent player interest, the game received mixed reviews from users due to its new monetization model.

Another analytical report has been released by the data attribution service Tenjin. It provided insights into the advertising market for mobile games in January-March 2024

The marketing company AppsFlyer is preparing to go public, according to Bloomberg sources. They claim that AppsFlyer expects to raise approximately $300 million during its initial public offering.

The Japanese government has made changes to the Cool Japan strategy, which is aimed at spreading Japanese culture worldwide and strengthening Japan's ties with other countries. Specifically, it has listed the content industry (video games, anime, manga, etc.) as key elements of the strategy

According to AppMagic analytics service, by the end of 2023, only one hyper-casual new release made it into the top 50 most downloaded mobile games. This game is Burger Please!, published by the South Korean company Supercent. Representatives from Supercent shared with AppMagic what they are doing to promote the game

Blizzard Entertainment co-founder and former chief design officer Allen Adham has opened up about the studio’s early days, also sharing his design principles and how to scale game development teams.

Adsup marketing agency decided to help marketers and application developers. It has published a guide on mobile traffic sources and working with them.

We continue the cycle of publications about games that require investment or a publisher. Next up is material from Herbarium Games studio, which is developing a cooperative online action game BUS: Bro U Survived.

In early April, Yandex released the seventh version of the Mobile Ads SDK. Among other things, the SDK has a new advertising format — the feed.

App2Top brought together representatives of AdQuantum, Appska, Tenjin, AppsFlyer, Adjust and Appier to talk about the current situation in the mobile game advertising market. We discussed AI, the transition to the web, traffic prices and much more.

There is little talk about games in the Telegram messenger. We decided to fix the situation by talking with Daria Novikova, product director at PlayDeck startup. The latter launched a gaming marketplace for Telegram. In a conversation with Daria, we touched on topics such as user engagement, earnings from leading projects, monetization and, of course, PlayDeck itself.

Journalist Stephen Totilo from Game File spoke with Michael Douse, head of the publishing department at Larian Studios, about the current state of the gaming industry. We chose the main thing from the interview.

The document is called the Mobile Ad Creative Index. Its focus is on the average cost of advertising for various types of creatives. One of the verticals considered by the authors of the work is mobile games.

The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled that Electronic Arts (EA), Miniclip and Jagex misled users by not telling their game ads about the presence of loot boxes in those games. Companies have been banned from using this advertisement in the country.

The giant 2024 Unity Gaming Report has been released. It is dedicated to trends in game development. If possible, we will briefly tell you about the main thing from the study.

We continue the cycle of publications about games that require investment or a publisher. Next up is material from the Russian studio Artemics, which is developing the strategy game Will&Reason.

Adjust, together with Applovin, has released a report on the state of affairs in the mobile market — Mobile app trends: 2024 edition. A separate chapter is devoted to mobile games. Read more about them in our material.

Google is expanding its Google Play Games service by adding several important features. One of them is support for games built specifically for PC.

The Yandex analytical service has received a new tool. It is called "LTV and Outflow Predicates". The service predicts revenue from the existing audience and identifies users who are going to leave the application.

Together with the Game Finder business partner search service, we continue the cycle of publications about games that are looking for investments and publishers. Next up is material about the Russian studio Aeroplan Games, which is preparing to release a game dedicated to the culture of the Altai Republic.

What should be understood by LiveOps, what tasks this discipline solves, why it is important not to confuse it with operating a game — the editors of App2Top talked about this and much more with Vadim Bulatov, the author of the course "LiveOps in games".

Unity continues to restructure, this time preparing for changes in its leadership. The founders of ironSource, an app monetization platform it acquired in 2022, will soon leave the company.

All six ironSource founders will leave Unity within the next six months. This is reported by the Mobilegamer portal, which has read the letter from Jim Whitehurst, interim CEO of Unity, sent to the company's employees.

Russian MPs want to limit the duration and frequency of advertising in video games. The draft amendments to the federal law "On Advertising" have already been submitted to the State Duma for consideration.

We continue to summarize the results of 2023 with gaming (or related to the gaming sector) teams and organizations. This time we talked with Konstantin Ivanov, brand director of AdQuantum.

This was stated by the former marketing director of Pixel Federation and SuperScale Matej Lancaric. He believes that Scopely spends up to $4.5 million per day on user purchases.

In a world where more than 1,000 games are released every month, even quality titles run the risk of not recouping their development costs. Here are the lessons indie studio Pixelsplit learned from the launch of its theme park sim Indoorlands.