The main events over the weekend (June 29-30)

Ubisoft laid off dozens of employees in Toronto, Steam broke its online record during the summer sale, Helldivers 2 lost 90% of its audience on Steam—here’s what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.

Helldivers 2

• Ubisoft conducted mass layoffs at Ubisoft Toronto—a division involved in developing the remakes of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Splinter Cell. Thirty-three people lost their jobs. In a statement to the media, the company explained that the layoffs were part of a targeted restructuring. They were necessary for the Canadian studio to achieve its ambitious plans.
• On June 30, Steam attracted a record number of concurrent users. According to data from SteamDB, the platform's online presence peaked at 36.9 million people. This achievement was made possible by the recently started summer sale, during which many games in the Steam catalog received significant discounts. The previous record of 36.35 million people was set on March 17—also during a sale.
• Five months after its release, the Steam version of Helldivers 2 significantly lost its audience, observed Forbes. In February, more than 458 thousand people played the co-op shooter simultaneously, but now the daily online count remains at around 44 thousand people. This means the audience shrank by 90%. It's unknown how the PlayStation version of Helldivers 2 is doing. However, Forbes writes that the game has long stopped appearing in the top 10 most popular games on Sony consoles, yielding to long-released hits like Fortnite, Call of Duty, GTA Online, and Roblox.
• The creators of the toy soldier shooter Hypercharge: Unboxed announced that the game’s sales exceeded 100 thousand copies. It reached this milestone a month after its release on Xbox. To recap, besides Xbox, the shooter is available on PC and Nintendo Switch.