The main thing for the weekend (October 29 – 30)
Rovio reports revenue growth, Hogwarts Legacy becomes the most coveted game on Steam, and Sega shares the successes of Sonic and Total War – we tell you what happened in the gaming industry this weekend.
Last week, the recommended ruble price tags on Steam increased. Following this, publishers began to raise the actual prices. One of the first to do this was Devolver Digital and Valve itself. For example, Half-Life: Alyx now costs 1,900 rubles (previously it cost 1,085 rubles), and Half-Life 2 — 385 rubles (previously it could be purchased for 259 rubles).
▪️Rovio has published a financial report for the third quarter of the fiscal year. The company’s revenue reached $77 million (annual growth of 8.4%). Receipts also increased to $70.5 million (an increase of 6.2%). At the same time, operating profit decreased from $14.2 million to $12 million. The main source of earnings for the company are two games: Angry Birds 2 (it earned $28.6 million in the quarter) and Dream Blast (its revenue was $ 17.5 million).
▪️The most anticipated Steam game was Hogwarts Legacy. Since June 2022, this place has been occupied by the Yakut The Day Before. However, now only the second place is behind her (Bethesda‘s Starfield is in third place). The growing interest of the audience in Hogwarts Legacy did not prevent the postponement of the release of the latter to February next year. Initially, the project was supposed to be released first in 2021, and then in 2022.
Sega spoke about the success of its brands over the entire period of operation. The company’s most popular franchise is Sonic The Hedgehog. Total sales and downloads of the game series have reached an astronomical number of 1.5 billion. As for the Total War series, it has sold 40 million copies. Sega also highlights the Persona series, whose sales and downloads since the release of the first part of the game in 1996 reached 15 million.
▪️Jagex is doing well. The developer of the MMORPG Runescape, which was released back in January 2001, said that it has been increasing revenue for the seventh year in a row. Once again, we note that the main “milking company” remains Runescape, which is more than 20 years old. In the last financial year, its developer earned £125 million. This is 4% more than a year earlier. And, by the way, the company has never earned such money in its history.
The story with the nerf of the legendary gemstone Blessing of the Worthy can end safely. Recall that some time ago it turned out that the characteristics of the premium item in Diablo Immortal prescribed in the description do not correspond to the actual ones. Activision Blizzard fixed this after the players’ appeal. However, I corrected it in an unexpected way for the community – by lowering the characteristics of the subject to the declared ones. In response, the players began to demand compensation for the money spent on the subject. Initially, the company did not plan to carry out compensation. This weekend it became known that under a barrage of criticism, the company decided to meet the players halfway.
