Stores and publishing

A significant development in the years-long legal battle between Apple and Epic Games. An American court has ruled that Apple must immediately stop charging fees on payments made outside its app store.

Microsoft has announced worldwide price increases for Xbox products, with the Xbox Series X seeing a $100 increase in the United States.

Epic Games has announced a triumph in its legal dispute with Apple following a US court's enforcement of an injunction. This ruling prevents Apple from imposing fees on app purchases conducted outside its App Store.

Microsoft has released its financial results for the third quarter of 2025, announcing a "record quarter" with a 6% rise in revenue from its gaming division.

We continue the story about studios founded by former Blizzard Entertainment employees. Since 2020, at least two dozen such companies have emerged, collectively raising over $200 million. They are led by industry veterans, but most of the teams have yet to release anything noteworthy

The analytics service AppMagic has compiled a top-10 list of the largest mobile game publishers in terms of net IAP revenue in the main Western markets* based on the results of the first quarter of 2025. As was the case last year, Scopely topped the list

The new leader in the Steam top-grossing products chart is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. The remaster of the cult RPG by Bethesda Game Studios has surpassed all other games in weekly revenue at Valve's store, including the free-to-play hit Counter-Strike 2

On April 28, the role-playing gacha game Wuthering Waves appeared on Steam. It reached Valve's store nearly a year after its initial release in May 2024

Apple has been penalized $568.6 million (€500 million) by the European Union for breaching its Digital Markets Act

Steam is launching accessibility tags designed to assist players with disabilities in finding inclusive games. This feature allows developers to label their games, providing a clearer description of how the games support accessibility.

This morning, on April 24, the action RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was released by the French studio Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive. Steam users warmly received the new title

Last week, the Russian studio Dream Dock Games announced a Lovecraftian fishing adventure called DreadMoor — its trailer was published on IGN's YouTube channel. The team's co-founder, Rostislav Fedorov, spoke with App2Top about the achievements the game has made so far.

WN Media Group announced an event where leaders of the gaming industry will discuss the most pressing topics. Instead of the usual speakers and stage, there will be group work, practical workshops, and networking

The European Commission has indeed recognized Apple as a violator of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and imposed a fine on the corporation. Rumors about the agency's plans to do this first emerged last summer

Valve is preparing to add an optional section to Steam game pages that will inform users about the availability of accessibility features in game projects. For example, whether they include options to adjust text size or a voice assistant for the game menu.

On the evening of April 22, Bethesda Game Studios and Virtuos released an updated version of the iconic The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. This caused a huge stir: the Steam version of the remaster alone attracted 182,298 concurrent players at its peak

Schedule I lost its lead in the paid games sales chart. During the week of April 15 to 22, it was surpassed by Jagex's new release, the cooperative survival game RuneScape: Dragonwilds

The Chinese regulator issued a new batch of licenses for publishing games in China. This time, the list of approved projects includes nine games from foreign developers

Infinitize, a digital media agency, has introduced Vendetta, a new division dedicated to 'publishing-as-a-service' for gaming. This unit features a team with experience on campaigns for notable clients, including Devolver Digital, Dreamhack, and SXSW Gaming.

At the end of March, the British indie studio Digital Cybercherries introduced the PlayStation version of the shooter about toy soldiers, Hypercharge: Unboxed. The developers boasted that the announcement garnered significant interest from the audience.

Matthew Emery, the founder of Turbine Games Consulting, decided to find out which platform was easier to achieve success on last year — PC or mobile. To do this, he compared the revenue of around 8,000 new releases from 2024

On April 17, the second season of the action RPG Last Epoch, titled Tombs of the Erased, launched. Its release led to a sharp increase in the game's daily online activity: last night, 150,198 Steam users decided to play Last Epoch simultaneously.

Publisher Kitfox Games announced that the Steam version of Dwarf Fortress has sold over a million copies. The game reached this milestone roughly two and a half years after its release on the platform: Dwarf Fortress launched on Valve's store on December 6, 2022

On April 15, Jagex released RuneScape: Dragonwilds in Steam Early Access—a cooperative survival game set in the universe of the iconic MMORPG RuneScape. Judging by the initial numbers, the game had a successful launch

In the week from April 8 to 15, Counter-Strike 2 and Schedule I once again topped the Steam best-sellers chart. However, almost the entire rest of the top ten saw changes

Lesta Games Group shared new achievements of Tanks Blitz. They announced that users on RuStore have downloaded the game over a million times.

On the evening of April 14, the studio 4A Games and publisher Deep Silver launched a free giveaway of Metro 2033 Redux on Steam, GOG, and Xbox to celebrate the series' 15th anniversary. As a result, the shooter's online presence in Steam reached a new record milestone

Not long ago, an article appeared on HowToMarketAGame claiming that wishlists supposedly "do not expire," meaning their value and likelihood of converting into sales do not decrease over time. The perelesoq team decided to test this thesis by using real data from five different games: Torn Away, CyberCorp, Elixir, Selfloss, and Tavern Manager Simulator (they also included data from Furnish Master)

After the presentation of the Nintendo Switch 2, the discussion about rising game prices flared up again. Many fixated on the $80 price tag of Mario Kart World, neglecting to look at the broader situation. Major publishers are increasingly resorting to manipulations, disregarding the changing market realities. Possible solutions to the issue are discussed in our article

Last night, on April 10th, the release of Blue Prince took place on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series. It is currently the highest-rated new release of 2025 on Metacritic with a score of 92 out of 100. It was well-received on Steam

At the end of last year, the Russian indie team Orc Group announced The Scouring — a multiplayer real-time strategy game inspired by Warcraft with elements of action RPG. Since then, over 100,000 Steam users have added the game to their wishlists

The chances that the CEO of Pocketpair will agree to sell the company are very slim, according to John Buckley, the Director of Communications and Head of Publishing at Pocketpair. He shared this opinion in an interview with IGN

On April 9, 2025, publisher Kalypso Media and studio Claymore Game Studios released Commandos: Origins, a new installment of the iconic tactical game series. The project did not impress Steam users at launch

Warning: This article includes discussions of severe sexual violence, and we advise reader discretion

Do No Harm is a Lovecraftian doctor simulator developed by the indie team Darts Games from Azerbaijan. The studio's co-founder, Novruz Javadov, wrote an extensive post on Reddit where he discussed the game's success, its creation, and the challenges they faced

Microsoft has revealed that the annual Xbox Games Showcase is scheduled for June 8, 2025

What could publishers do to better support indie developers? This question was posed by Inverse journalists to the winners of The Game Developers Choice Awards 2025. According to one of the executives at Playstack, publishers need to start taking a more straightforward approach to allocating funds for games

On April 8, the full release of the adventure action game South of Midnight took place on PC and Xbox Series — prior to that, only premium edition owners had been able to play for five days. At the very least, the project by Compulsion Games didn't generate much interest among the Steam audience

A list of the top-grossing products on Steam for the week from April 1 to April 8 has been released. This time, indie games secured two spots in the top three.

Last week, it became known that the Polish publisher Movie Games, known for the Drug Dealer Simulator duology, is investigating the game Schedule I for plagiarism. In the official Discord channel, the company stated that they initially did not intend to launch an investigation

Steam users have shown great interest in Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era. The studio Unfrozen boasted that over half a million people have added the game to their wishlists

The French company Twin Sails Interactive, known for publishing numerous video game adaptations of board games, has announced its separation from Asmodee Group. It will now operate independently.

The company Movie Games, which published the drug dealer simulator duology Drug Dealer Simulator, suspects the creators of the indie hit Schedule I of infringing on its copyrights. The company has decided to investigate the game for plagiarism.

Simon Carless, the founder of the analytical service GameDiscoverCo, shared which games released last month earned the most on Steam.

A new company has emerged in the gaming market. A group of industry veterans announced the launch of the publishing house The CoLab

A significant portion of the daily active users (DAU) for Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox is concentrated around a relatively small number of games. Analyst Simon Carless examined how these users are distributed.

Analyst Simon Carless from GameDiscoverCo calculated how many games released in 2024 were able to sell over 100,000 copies across various platforms by March 2025. He also determined how many of them were games based on new IPs.

Today marks the launch of The CoLab, a newly established independent games publisher based in the UK.

Azra Games has named Kris Davis, the former co-head of mobile at PlayStation, as its chief business officer

Based on the results for the week from March 25 to April 1, 2025, the top of the chart for the highest-grossing products on Steam underwent significant changes. In particular, the indie game Schedule I, which has already become a hit, climbed to the number one spot in the rankings.