The main thing for the weekend (June 18-19)

The Internet Development Institute (IRI) has revealed how much it is going to invest in video games in 2022, Nintendo has sued the operator of the Russian “Nintendo World”, and the creators of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga reported strong sales, — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry this weekend.

The IRI will allocate at least 1 billion rubles to support Russian game developers in 2022, the head of the organization Alexey Goreslavsky said during a speech at the SPIEF. He indicated that the money would be given to studios “with the hope of entering the eastern markets.”

The head of the IRI also said that in Russia it is necessary to create a council that will deal with the development and regulation of the gaming industry. In his opinion, this council should include both representatives of the authorities and the developers themselves.

Deputy Director General for Legal Affairs of the IRI Boris Yedidin added that gaming companies need to assign their own legal status. Since it is incorrect to refer them purely to IT — in addition to programmers, there are enough creative specialists like artists and designers in the studios.

▪️Nintendo sued the KupiVIP company, which operated the Nintendo World store in Russia, and demanded to pay 963 thousand rubles. Note that KupiVIP closed in September 2021, and “Nintendo World”, in fact, stopped working in March 2022.

According to Axios, The Quarry horror and the High on Life shooter were originally supposed to be released exclusively on Google Stadia. However, last February Google decided to close the internal game studios, so the developers were forced to leave to other publishers.

▪️LEGO Star Wars Edition: The Skywalker Saga has reached the mark of 5 million copies sold. Earlier, the title showed the best start in the history of LEGO games, selling 3.2 million copies in two weeks since its release on April 5.