Weekend Highlights (November 8-9)

Misery was removed from sale on Steam following a DMCA complaint from the creators of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Roskachestvo decided to inspect Homescapes and Royal Match for manipulative mechanics, NetEase closed Jackalyptic Games — here are the main events in the gaming industry from the past weekend.

The cooperative survival game Misery was removed from Steam. According to developers from Platypus Entertainment, the removal was due to a DMCA complaint filed by GSC Game World for copyright infringement on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. The creators of Misery deny the allegations. They admitted drawing inspiration from various games, books, and films but do not see any rights violations: "Misery does not use characters, plot, assets, monsters, music, code, or other elements from GSC Game World's games. Everything is either personally created by us or legally licensed," they stated in their announcement. Platypus Entertainment also reminded that the creators of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. themselves relied heavily on the novella "Roadside Picnic" by the Strugatsky brothers and Andrei Tarkovsky's film "Stalker." GSC Game World has not commented publicly on the situation.
Match-3 genre games have become new subjects for inspection by Roskachestvo. They will be examined for manipulative mechanics that encourage gamers to spend money. In total, experts will check 14 games with the highest number of downloads. The full list has not been disclosed, but it's known to include Candy Crush Saga, Homescapes, Royal Match, "Planet of Gems," and "Gnome Home." Roskachestvo promised to share the research results by the end of November.
In 2022-2023, NetEase opened a series of western studios led by industry veterans. Now it is methodically closing them. Its latest "victim" was the American Jackalyptic Games, led by former game designer of Star Trek Online and City of Heroes, Jack Emmert. The studio operated for three and a half years and did not release anything — its debut game was supposed to be an MMO set in the Warhammer universe. Notably, Jackalyptic Games was NetEase's first studio in the USA, and essentially, it was from this point that the massive opening of the Chinese company's overseas divisions began.
Studio Team Soda shared fresh sales data for Escape from Duckov. They announced that the evacuation shooter about combat ducks has sold 3 million copies. It took just over three weeks: the game was released on October 16 on PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and Mac App Store.