Weekend Highlights (March 11-12)

Atomic Heart made it into the top ten most downloaded games for the PS5 by the end of February, GSC Game World reported that it has been facing hacker attacks and blackmail for over a year, and the commercial director of the Overwatch franchise announced his departure from Blizzard. Here's what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.

▪️Sony released lists of the most downloaded games in the PlayStation Store for February 2023. One of the month's hits was Atomic Heart. The shooter from Mundfish ranked ninth in the top PS5 games in the United States, Canada, and Europe. The first place went to Hogwarts Legacy (and in the PS4 games top, it was The Last of Us Part II).

▪️Studio Mundfish has not officially disclosed how much was spent on the development and promotion of Atomic Heart, but some estimates were shared by RBC. A source in the gaming market suggested that the total budget for the shooter could be "at least $25 million." The founder of the advertising agency Digital Church estimated the annual marketing budget for the game at 20 million rubles, and the editor-in-chief of InterMedia speculated that just the use of music in Atomic Heart cost "hundreds of thousands of rubles." Separately, journalist and blogger Aleksey Makarenkov, citing sources, stated that the game's sales on VK Play were "very good," and VK has already "comfortably recouped" their costs for the rights and promotion of Atomic Heart.

▪️Administrators of the VK community "The Messenger of 'That Very Stalker'" claimed they have tens of gigabytes of data from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2*. They threatened to publish the information unless GSC Game World** changes its attitude towards users in Russia and Belarus and restores the Russian localization. In response, the developers stated that trying to blackmail or intimidate them is pointless. They pointed out that the studio has faced hacker attacks for more than a year, but all of this only motivates them to work harder.

▪️Jon Spector, commercial director and vice president of the Overwatch franchise, decided to leave Blizzard after six years. He wrote on Twitter that he will leave the company at the end of March but will continue to follow the game's development as a gamer.

▪️The circulation of Anno 1800 surpassed 2.5 million copies. The economic strategy game was released on April 16, 2019, and is currently available only on PC. In a few days, on March 16, Anno 1800 will also be available on PS5 and Xbox Series.

*Owned by GSC Game World, whose activities are deemed undesirable in the Russian Federation

**The studio's activities are deemed undesirable in the Russian Federation