The main thing for the weekend (October 21-22)
The Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation reported that they will work on transferring game servers to Russia, layoffs took place at PlayStation Studios Visual Arts, Battlefield 2042 updated the record for peak online on Steam, — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.
The head of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, Maksut Shadaev, told TASS that the ministry will work on the transfer of servers of popular games to Russia. Earlier, the idea to move game servers to the country was proposed by the head of the International Boxing Association, Umar Kremlev. His proposal was supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
PlayStation Studios Visual Arts is another studio that has cut some of its staff. As the Timur222 enthusiast noted, several developers wrote on LinkedIn that they had recently been fired. It is unknown how many people have lost their jobs. Recall that Visual Arts helps major Sony studios with game development. In particular, she was initially responsible for the remake of The Last of Us Part I, but later work on it was transferred to Naughty Dog itself.
On October 17, the action game Skull Island: Rise of Kong about King Kong was released. Many people did not like the game: It received a mostly negative rating on Steam with 36% positive reviews. In an interview with The Verge, the authors of Skull Island: Rise of Kong accused GameMill Entertainment of the poor quality of the game. According to them, the company gave only a year to develop, although they needed much more time, and did not provide all the information about the project. The studio also lacked funding, which is why a number of experienced developers left it. At various times, from 2 to 20 people worked on Skull Island: Rise of Kong.
Nintendo of America President Doug Bowser said that there are no unions in the company because employees are satisfied with working conditions. He pointed out that Nintendo has an excellent retention rate and low staff turnover. Note that in September 2022, a former Nintendo employee told Axios that he was fired after he asked Bowser's opinion about gaming unions at a meeting for testers. However, Nintendo itself reported that the employee was fired due to the disclosure of "confidential information."
Battlefield 2042 managed to update the record for the number of simultaneous Steam users in the game two years after its release. According to SteamDB, on the evening of October 21, the peak online Battlefield 2042 on Steam reached 107,376 people. It turned out to increase online thanks to a major update, an 84% discount and recent free weekends.
