War Thunder

Marketing | Aleksander Ptak | Why Everything You Knew About Publishing in China Is Now Obsolete

• Around 80% of China's gaming market is mobile and about 15% is PC, yet Steam's global version hosts most of the PC player base, so Chinese players largely use global Steam rather than a Chinese storefront.
• Chinese players communicate almost exclusively through Steam reviews, so Western social media influencer campaigns (even 50,000–60,000 euro budgets) often fail to drive traffic that reaches Chinese platforms like Douyin and Bilibili.
• Refund rates in China run around 15–30% versus 8–10% in the West, because players treat refunds as a demo option, making clear tutorials and accurate Chinese translation critical for retention.

Can a Bad Name Hurt a Good Game?

The extraction shooter genre is undergoing a strategic evolution as developers increasingly integrate cooperative PvE modes to mitigate the high churn rates associated with purely competitive PvP environments.

• Extraction shooters like ARC Raiders are shifting toward PvE-focused co-op modes because player data shows a growing audience segment that prefers cooperative play over the high-stress, hardcore PvP experience.
• The lack of formal contracts in the Roblox ecosystem is leading to legal disputes, as early contributors to successful games seek compensation after being excluded from revenue shares that can reach millions of dollars per month.
• Game titles do not significantly impact commercial success as long as they are functionally distinct and searchable; generic names are common across successful titles like War Thunder, Delta Force, and World of Tanks.

Data Appendix: FY2026/3

SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS INC. has published its Data Appendix for FY2026/3 (fiscal year ended March 2026), dated 2026/5/12, containing supplementary financial and operational data across its business segments, with quarterly series from FY24/3 through FY26/3 and full-year forecasts for FY27/3.

• Consolidated sales for FY26/3 reached 487.5 billion yen, while the full-year forecast for FY27/3 is 510.0 billion yen.
• Consolidated operating income for FY26/3 was 47.1 billion yen, while the full-year forecast for FY27/3 is 44.5 billion yen.
• Consumer sales for FY26/3 totalled 219.9 billion yen, with overseas sales at 65.5% of the consumer total.

State of Gaming 2026

Sensor Tower's "State of Gaming 2026" covers the mobile, PC and console games markets worldwide for the full year 2025, using iOS App Store and Google Play data for mobile and Video Game Insights data for PC/Console (Steam, PlayStation and Xbox).

• Mobile game downloads fell 7.0% year over year in 2025 to 50 billion, while mobile IAP revenue rose 1.4% to $82 billion.
• Steam premium game revenue grew 13.0% year over year in 2025, reaching $11.7 billion.
• Battlefield 6 was the best-selling PC/Console game of 2025.

Ten Square Games Q4 and 2024 Financial Results Presentation

The Ten Square Games Q4 and 2024 Financial Results Presentation details the financial performance and operational status of the group for the 2024 fiscal year.

• The group reported total 2024 bookings of PLN 398.1 million, a 10.3% decrease compared to the previous year.
• Wings of Heroes bookings grew by 66.1% year-on-year in 2024.
• The group maintained a cash and cash equivalents balance of PLN 143.8 million at the end of Q4 2024.

Top-Grossing New Steam Games of 2024

This analysis summarizes the top-performing new and overall games on Steam for 2024, based on data provided by Valve and supplemented by SteamDB.

• Black Myth: Wukong and Palworld led 2024 Steam engagement with peak concurrent user counts of 2.4 million and 2.1 million, respectively.
• Top-grossing new releases on Steam for 2024 included S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Path of Exile 2, Black Myth: Wukong, Helldivers 2, and Palworld.
• Ten games on Steam surpassed 450,000 peak concurrent users in 2024, a list dominated by both established titles like Counter-Strike 2 and new launches.

Factorio and its DLC Break Into Top 5 Highest-Grossing Games on Steam

This analysis details the highest-grossing games on Steam for the week of October 22-29, 2024, focusing on significant shifts and new entries.

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was the top-grossing product on Steam for the week of October 22–29, 2024, dethroning Counter-Strike 2.
• Factorio and its new Space Age DLC secured the second and third spots respectively among premium titles, with the DLC selling over 400,000 copies in its first four days.
• The success of the Space Age expansion helped the base game, Factorio, reach a peak of over 118,000 concurrent players.