Microsoft has paused advertising on Facebook (including Instagram) despite being its third-biggest advertiser in 2019. This is coming from Bloomberg, which cites its unnamed sources.

Starni Games have announced a new title in the Strategic Mind franchise, called Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism. It’s a turn-based strategy with strong RPG elements offering the USSR’s perspective on WW2. The game will follow the historical path up to Berlin, but will also have an alternate history ending after the end of WW2. This will apparently include “staging the world Communist revolution,” according to the game’s description on Steam.

Since at least March, Tencent has been testing a live-streaming platform in the U.S. The new service is called Trovo Live, and, according to Bloomberg, it “closely resembles Twitch in its appearance and functionality.”

Supercell co-founder Mikko Kodisoja left the company on June 26 2020. The news of his departure he shared on Facebook, as spotted by PocketGamer.biz.

Last week, the Disco Elysium developer ZA/UM has partnered with the production company dj2 Entertainment to create a TV show based on the game.

The latest PlayStation blog post has revealed that The Last of Us Part II has sold over 4 million copies in three days since the game came out. How it breaks down between physical and digital isn’t mentioned.

Startup Admix has raised $7 million to fund its “non-intrusive” in-game advertising technology.

Focus Home Interactive has acquired The Surge developer Deck13 Interactive.

This year, gamers will spend $159.3 billion on games. This is up 9.3% from last year. The main growth drivers are the pandemic and the upcoming launch of new consoles.

Apple’s new iOS 14 will enable users to turn off Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) for each app. That option has existed before but it has been securely buried in the Settings where not a lot of people could find it.

HTML5 Game Developer Day will be held on July 7. It’s an event focused on the creation of HTML5 games. Speakers include representatives of Cocos, Snap, Facebook, SoftGames, CoolGames, OK.ru and other companies.

IIDEA, the association representing the video game industry in Italy, has joined the European Games Developer Federation (EGDF).

Apple has confirmed to publishers that it will remove all games from the App Store in China that have not received a government approval by June 30.

Facebook is pulling the plug on Oculus Go, a VR headset launched in 2018.

Defold has added support for the Nintendo Switch. It’s the fist console that the engine supports.

The Epic Games Store reached 61 million monthly active users as a result of its game giveaway campaign, “The Vault.”

Unity has made its premium learning resources free on a permanent basis.

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