QA and Support

Electronic Arts (EA) continues to cut staff. Insider Tom Henderson found out that in a few weeks more than 40 testers from the UK who worked on Apex Legends will leave the company.

Unity has decided to end the support for Ziva Dynamics, a set of tools used for simulation, deformation, and real-time 3D character creation. As a result, the engine maker will sell the license to VFX company DNEG.

Google is expanding its Google Play Games service by adding several important features. One of them is support for games built specifically for PC.

Microsoft has finally shared the promised update on the future of Xbox and its business strategy. The company detailed its approach to game exclusivity and finding players on other platforms, as well as its plans for Game Pass and next-gen hardware.

Recent layoffs might be just the tip of the iceberg of wider problems at Bungie. A new report alleges a massive decay in morale among employees and fears that the studio could be completely taken over by Sony.

Players have found out that Ubisoft has apparently started experimenting with in-game ads. These pop-up banners appear during gameplay, promoting discounts on the latest Assassin’s Creed title.

Unity has announced the new major version of its engine that will feature various improvements such as performance optimization and accelerated multiplayer game creation. However, the biggest highlight is the new AI tools for developers.

Paradox Interactive and Harebrained Schemes, the studio behind Shadowrun and BattleTech, have decided to part ways. This comes just days after the new turn-based tactics The Lamplighters League proved to be a commercial flop.

Outsourcing and tech services provider Keywords Studios has laid off a group of Canadian testers working on BioWare games. These were the same employees who unionized last year.

Team17 is now going through another wave of layoffs, the second this year. The Worms maker has initiated a restructuring process that will result in dozens of people losing their jobs.

More than 8 thousand developers have applied to participate in the beta test of the Russian Nau Engine. It was possible to achieve such a figure in three months: the collection of applications was opened in June.

Erik Peterson, responsible for business development at Valve, has shared some insights into visibility and discovery mechanisms on Steam. Here is how the company helps devs reach players and connect users to games.

Spyro Reignited Trilogy, a remaster bundle for the classic platformer series from Insomniac Games, has hit a major milestone by selling 10 million copies globally. Let’s take a look at how these figures compare to the original titles.

Blackbird Interactive is another game studio that has been recently hit with job cuts. It appears that the Homeworld 3 developer has laid off dozens of people, including some senior staff.

Star Citizen still has no approximate release date, but its developer Cloud Imperium Games continues to receive massive support from players and enthusiasts. Here is everything to know about the game’s latest milestone.

Developers of anti-tamper solution Denuvo have announced a new feature that would prevent users from manipulating files in games made with Unreal Engine. Branded as another way of fighting against pirates and fraudsters, it poses a real threat to modding.

Magic shooter Immortals of Aveum has just been released globally. The initial metrics for the AAA game, developed by Ascendant Studios and published under the EA Originals program, don’t look promising.

Consultant and experienced developer Rami Ismail has shared his thoughts on the state of the games industry, while expressing some fears and concerns. He tried to outline the issues of the existing system where funding decides what gets made.

The enhanced version of Quake II came out last week, offering updated graphics and even new content. Looking at all the technical and QoL improvements, it is safe to say that other companies would be better off taking a similar approach to rereleases and remasters of their old games.

What are hybrid-casual games and how are their monetization loos different from hyper-casual? Voodoo head of publishing Thibault de Vésinne-Larüe has opened up about the company’s approach and what metrics it looks at when launching new titles.

VK Group has announced the start of accepting applications for testing a domestic game engine. She also revealed the name of the engine — Nau Engine.

Google has applied for a patent for a technology that allows you to test games using artificial intelligence. The corporation expects that it will significantly accelerate work on games.

MMO Palia about life in the village has not yet been released, but it has already attracted hundreds of thousands of users. The developers from Singularity 6 said that to date, 600 thousand people have applied to participate in testing the game.

Appodeal has prepared a detailed tutorial on split testing of monetization on its platform.

The studio was founded by industry veteran Joel Benton, who previously worked at Codemasters, Just Add Water and The Aon Agency.

VK reports that its streaming platform has interested such streamers as Ilya Maddison, Danya Craster and Olyashaa.

Over the weekend, the story spread that Cyberpunk 2077 came out raw due to an unscrupulous QA contractor, Quantic Labs. They say that she did a bad job with testing the game, deceived the leadership of the Polish studio and, in general, let the developers down.

How exactly is the process of A/B testing of visual content for app stores built in Belka Games, – in his article for App2Top.ru the leading ASO-manager of the company Anastasia Personal told.

tinyBuild is expanding. The company includes the American publisher Versus Evil and its internal studio Red Cerberus, specializing in QA. The total amount of the transaction may amount to $31.3 million.The Banner Saga 3

The release of a trilogy of remasters of classic GTA turned into a failure. User ratings on Metacritic dropped to 0.5/10 — one of the worst results in history. Players complain massively about bugs, the depressing technical condition of the project and demand a refund. At the same time, remasters were unavailable for launch for three days.

Today, a full-fledged release of PUBG: New State took place on mobile platforms. It turned out to be problematic. Many players were unable to log into the game as a result of a server malfunction. There were also a lot of bugs in the project, some of which have already been recognized by the developers themselves.

Testers often do not receive proper recognition in the gaming industry. Jocelyn Baxter, the screenwriter of Eidos Montreal, decided to fix the situation. She said that most of the Guardians of the Galaxy storyline was written by those who had previously been involved in testing.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy was released today. Despite the initial skepticism, the game exceeded the expectations of many critics. Some even call it “the new standard for comic book video games.” However, there were some negative aspects. Most of all complain about the abundance of bugs and too simple fighting.

Tomorrow Valve will start testing the official version of Steam for China. However, local users expressed their dissatisfaction with what was happening. They fear that they will soon be deprived of the opportunity to play thousands of games due to the unavailability of the international version of the store.What is the dissatisfaction of gamers?

Blizzard announced the start of closed alpha testing of Diablo Immortal, a mobile offshoot of the famous RPG. Only users from Australia will be able to participate in it. They will have to check the technical condition of the project. At the same time, the game still does not have a release date.

In the Play Store, it is now possible to compare several applications with each other on the same screen. While the function is in test mode, however, Google itself does not say when it will become available to a wide range of users and whether it will be at all.Attention was drawn to this by the Android Police portal.

The authors of Angry Birds have become another company that decided to borrow the experience of Playrix. She released match-3, which is very close in mechanics and concept to such box office hits as Homescapes and Gardenscapes.

Maxim Kordonets — Head of Community & Support of Belka Games studio — in his column for readers App2Top.ru he shared his experience of how he rebuilt the community and support department in a mobile company in a year.

Technical testing of Project Atlas starts on Wednesday. This is a cloud gaming service from Electronic Arts.

One of the reasons why the early Obsidian games were so busy on release is the publisher’s desire to release them to the market as soon as possible. This opinion was expressed by Obsidian Design Director Josh Sawyer.

Ubisoft has announced the Bug Hunter Program in the Rainbow Six Siege team shooter. As part of this initiative, users receive in-game content for detecting errors inside the game.

The open beta testing of the version of the GameMaker Studio 2 engine with the Nintendo Switch license has begun, which allows you to develop and port games for a hybrid console.

Canadian scientists from Queens University have found out what spoils the impression of video games. It turned out that bad game design annoys players the most when the gameplay is not exciting and makes them bored.

Electronic Arts is boycotting again, this time by FIFA 18 fans. Sportssim fans launched the #FixFIFA campaign with an appeal not to buy the game on sale on the occasion of “Black Friday” until the developers fix their mistakes.

About the most popular solutions for A/B testing in mobile, – Soomla company told.

TinyCo, developer of Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff, published a presentation from her speech at the GDC Next conference, which took place in November 2014 in Los Angeles. In it, the company revealed why it is important for mobile developers to work with the gaming community.

“Dragon Towers” (aka Dragon Warlords), a tug-of-war game in the universe of the popular role-playing game “Dragons of Eternity”, has entered the closed beta testing stage, Game Insight reports.

Alexander Dzyuba from Playtestix spoke at the recently concluded conference for mobile game developers White Nights 2014. We are posting a video with his speech and presentation.

A year after the announcement of World of Tanks, Blitz has finally reached the status of a closed beta version for iOS.