Main Highlights from the Weekend (October 5-6)

The Saudi Arabian Sovereign Fund is considering increasing its stake in Nintendo, sales of "Rusy against the Lizards" reached 680,000 copies, and the remake of Until Dawn showed one of the weakest online launches on Steam among Sony games — here's what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.

“Rusy against the Lizards”

• The Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) is contemplating buying more shares of Nintendo and other Japanese gaming companies. This was reported by Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, the vice-chairman of PIF’s owned company Savvy Games Group, in an interview with Kyodo News. He emphasized that the fund will increase its shares only with the consent of the Japanese themselves. Currently, PIF controls an 8.58% stake in Nintendo and is a major shareholder in Koei Tecmo and Capcom. It’s worth recalling that a month ago, PIF announced plans to transfer all its shares in gaming companies to Savvy Games Group by 2025, so it’s unclear whether PIF itself will buy more shares or if Savvy Games Group will be the one to do it.
• The indie studio The Bratans shared sales statistics of the game "Rusy against the Lizards" marking its first-year results. According to the developers, since its release on September 27, 2023, the meme action game sold a total of 679,420 copies. Notably, nearly all copies were sold on Steam, with VK Play accounting for only 7,000 sales. On average, players spent about 30 minutes completing "Rusy against the Lizards," with total playtime reaching 503,000 hours. Additionally, The Bratans mentioned that at its peak, 1,212 people played the title simultaneously.
• On the evening of October 4th, the remake of Until Dawn was released on PC and PlayStation 5 consoles. According to SteamDB data, the peak online count for the horror game’s Steam version stood at 2,607 people. This is one of the weakest results in the history of Sony-published games. Only Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (191 people), Sackboy: A Big Adventure (610 people), and Concord (697 people) performed worse. At the time of writing, the remake of Until Dawn has a "mixed" rating on Steam, with 560 reviews, of which 66% were positive.