The main thing for the weekend (February 23-26)
The Russian age-marking system for video games was proposed at the start to be distributed only to digital publications, Hogwarts Legacy sold over 12 million copies in the first two weeks, the developers of the calendar application TheDayBefore confirmed that they are trying to defend the rights to the trademark of the same name — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry this weekend.
Alexander Malakhov, head of the Digital Development department at the Center for Strategic Research, put forward a number of proposals on the Russian age-marking system for video games. He believes that it is necessary to label games in five categories: “0+”, “6+”, “12+”, “16+”, “18+”. It is also necessary to indicate the reason why the project was assigned a rating (for example, due to the presence of in-game purchases or obscene language in it). According to Malakhov’s proposal, the developers and publishers themselves will label the games, and not a specially created organization. At the same time, at least for the first time, labeling will be mandatory only for digital editions of games.
The audience of Russian cloud gaming services has grown significantly in 2022. According to Kommersant, the number of Drova users has doubled, VK Play Cloud — by 50%, Loudplay — by “several tens of percent”.
▪️Shinji Mikami (Shinji Mikami) decided to leave the Tango Gameworks founded by him after 12 years of work. He will leave the studio in the coming months. The reasons for Mikami’s departure and further plans are not disclosed.
Forbes has published the top richest residents of Poland. The fifth place went to the founder of Techland Pavel Marchewka, whose fortune the publication estimated at $ 1.86 billion. The founders of CD PROJEKT did not get into the top ten richest Poles this time. According to Forbes, the fortune of Marcin Iwinski is now estimated at $370 million, and the fortune of Michael Kiczynski is estimated at $317 million.
A Korean company that developed a calendar application called TheDayBefore gave an interview to the Eurogamer portal. She said that she released her app back in 2010, and in 2015 registered the trademark “The Day Before” in Korea. After the announcement of the game of the same name, the company decided to take additional measures to protect its rights to the sign and registered it in a number of countries, including Russia. The authors of the calendar did not disclose details of communication with the developers of the game, but noted that the publisher MYTONA filed an administrative lawsuit in Korea.
The authors of Atomic Heart apologized for the appearance in the game of an episode from “Well, wait!“, in which a cartoon of a dark—skinned aborigine is shown – Western gamers and the media considered it racist. Mundfish promised to remove the disputed fragment.
▪️Warner Bros. Games reported on the success of Hogwarts Legacy. Sales of the game in the Harry Potter universe in two weeks since its release exceeded 12 million copies, and revenue reached $ 850 million.
The Sons Of The Forest survival, which was released in early access on Steam last Thursday, also showed strong sales. In 24 hours, the game was bought more than 2 million times. It should be noted that interest in the project continues to grow. On February 26, Sons Of The Forest updated the peak online on Steam, reaching the mark of 414,257 people.
▪️Unity has reported its first profitable quarter since going public in 2020. Its gross profit for October-December 2022 was $311 million, and revenue was $451 million (+43%). However, investors were dissatisfied with Unity’s forecast for the first quarter of 2023, which caused the company’s shares to fall by 20% on the day of the report’s release.
