US consumers spent a record $10.8 billion on video games in the first quarter of 2020, according to NPD, via VGC. This is up 9 percent year over year. The surge in spending is clearly related to coronavirus lockdown measures.

The ownership of the SystemShock3.com and SystemShock4.com websites has beent transferred from OtherSide Entertainment to Tencent Holdings.

After 11 years on the market, Minecraft is still going strong, with 126 million people playing the title every month. By now, the game has sold over 200 million copies, excluding China where the free-to-play version of Minecraft has around 300 million registered accounts.

The Flower Collectors is a detective game that came out on April 21. While essentially a point-and-click adventure, it offers other mechanics as well, including timed events, and even secondary story storylines. The game features an unusual setting (Barcelona, 1977) and lots of book and movie references while dealing with sensitive topics like privacy and disabilities.

Fortnite has surpassed $1 billion in lifetime player spend on mobile.

Humble Bundle has rebranded its publishing arm, which was previously known as Humble Bundle Presents, to Humble Games.

Valve has rolled out a new experiment that will point players towards the next game they might want to play from their library.

Mobile marketing platform AppLovin has acquired Machine Zone for an undiscloses amount. Machine Zone are creators of Mobile Strike, Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire, and hit strategy game Game of War: Fire Age.

Many video games companies are reporting unprecedented profits due to users’ increased engagement amid the pandemic. However, this doesn’t mean that the industry is immune to the ongoing crisis. In fact, the impact of coronavirus on the video games production will become obvious in the early 2021.

Vancouver-based ‍Ziva Dynamics raised $7 million in a seed funding round led by Grishin Robotics, Toyota AI Ventures, and Millennium Technology Value Partners’ New Horizons Fund.

As part of its Unreal Engine 5 preview, Epic Games announced changes to its licensing policy. Now creators will only have to pay royalties to Epic once their games have generated over $1 million in revenue. This applies retrospectively to all games released after January 1st, 2020.

Playrix now boasts over 1.1 billion downloads across its games, according to Sensor Tower.

Copenhagen, Denmark-based mobile gaming company Multiscription has announced Unleashd, a subscription service for free-to-play games.

Niko Partners project that video games in China will bring in over $46.7 billion in 2024.

Sony is launching a brand uniting PlayStation exclusives developed by its first-party studios.

China’s biggest trade show for the video games industry will take place in Shanghai from July 31 to August 3.