The year 2022 has come to an end. All major companies are reviewing the major events in the gaming industry in 2022. At the same time, Redfinger has sorted out the 10 hottest events in the gaming industry in 2022.

On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced that it would acquire Activision Blizzard in a full cash way of US $68.7 billion, which would also set a record in the global gaming industry. The news immediately shocked the world, and Activision Blizzard, who was caught in the storm due to various scandals, was also regarded as having found a lifeline by the outside world.

As the businesses of the acquirers are all over the world, this transaction needs to be approved by regulatory authorities in 16 countries and regions, including China, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union. However, up to now, only a few countries, such as Brazil and Saudi Arabia, have unconditionally approved this merger. The regulatory authorities of major game markets are still conducting strict anti-monopoly review on this case. In particular, the EU, which lacks game giants, is particularly worried that this merger may pose a threat to the development of the European gaming industry. Visit Gaming Console Skins to buy best products.

The acquisition of Microsoft was hindered by the “snag” of its old rival Sony. In particular, “Call of Duty” may leave the PS platform and cause loss of users, which is the best excuse for Sony to ” selling badly “.

#2: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Since the outbreak of the Russian Ukrainian conflict in February, the Russian economy has been shaken by Western sanctions. Among them, the seemingly unimportant gaming industry has also suffered serious consequences of industrial collapse and brain drain in Russia, which has directly shaken Russia’s digital economic foundation.

Against this background, the Russian government recently launched a Jedi counterattack. An internal conference document shows that the Russian government is discussing a systematic gaming industry support program called “Future gaming industry”. In the most optimistic case, it will provide up to 50 billion dollars of investment in the gaming industry, establish state-owned game developers and publishers, promote the construction of rating agencies, and increase the number of domestic game studios 14 times by 2030.

#3: Luna Avalanche & FTX Bankruptcy

The capital market fluctuations brought about by the global economic downturn will also affect Web3, which was once the best in the world, in 2022. In May, the cryptocurrency Luna launched by Terra Corporation of South Korea ushered in an avalanche crash, which broke the life and death line of $1 from a high of $80. Since Luna coin has a 1:1 theoretical exchange relationship with Terra’s another token, UST, and the latter has a 1:1 theoretical exchange relationship with the US dollar, falling below 1 yuan directly leads to the systematic collapse of the entire token.

The FTX, the world’s second largest crypto token exchange, also suffered the disaster. On November 11, FTX officially declared bankruptcy, which also directly impacted a group of Korean game companies, including Yude and Netstone, which had virtual tokens and digital assets on FTX. In addition to the general decline in token prices, the stock prices of some companies also fluctuated, and investors’ concerns were self-evident.

Although the giants including Line, Japan’s largest IM platform, still choose to enter various Web3 businesses including Web3 game platform in 2022, there is no doubt that the continued collapse from token to platform has caused Web3 to suffer an epic collapse of confidence in 2022.

#4: Google’s Stadia Closed & Setback in Cloud Gaming

In February 2022, on the second anniversary of Stadia’s business, Google lowered the internal level of Stadia. On September 29, Google officially announced that it would close this cloud gaming platform on January 18 next year and open the refund channel.

As for the failure of Stadia’s business, some industry analysts believe that the lack of exclusive games and the lack of high-quality games are the key reasons for the failure of Stadia’s model to be recognized by users. Google, on the other hand, said that although Stadia was shut down, its underlying technology would continue to play an important role in YouTube, Google Play and AR projects.

#5: EU Adopts Resolution to Develop Gaming Industry 

In November 2022, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the development of video games with an overwhelming number of 560 affirmative votes, 36 negative votes and 16 abstentions. The adoption of the bill means that the European Parliament, as the legislative body, formally recognizes the huge economic, cultural and educational values hidden behind video games, and will accordingly urge the European Commission and the European Council to formulate long-term video game development strategies.

Saudi Arabia, which is highly dependent on the oil economy, is also contributing to the gaming industry. In 2022, the sovereign fund of the country has successively invested in Kapoor, Nintendo, NCsoft, Nexon, SNK and other game manufacturers, and has become a major shareholder of several Japanese and Korean game manufacturers. At the same time, the country also launched a special game investment plan with a total amount of 37.8 billion dollars, committed to establishing 250 game companies in the local area, creating 39000 jobs, and increasing the GDP contribution of the gaming industry to 50 billion rials (about 13.3 billion dollars) by 2030.

In addition, Singapore, Canada and other countries have also made frequent moves in the development of the gaming industry. It can be predicted that the game will become a new battlefield for big countries to play games in many fields such as economy, technology and culture in the future.

#6: Third-party Stores May Avail in iOS

Apple’s iOS ecosystem has always been known as “safe, reliable and closed”. Unlike Android, Apple has always prohibited users from obtaining and installing apps from channels other than the App Store. However, in the view of the EU, Apple’s practice seems to be for security, but it also directly led to its monopoly of the application payment channel, making it absolutely dominant in the application revenue sharing.

To this end, the European Union formally introduced the Digital Market Law this year, which aims to regulate the behavior of large technology companies in and outside the European single market and ensure fair competition. Specifically, Apple requires iOS to download apps from third-party stores and allow developers to use third-party payment. With the formal adoption of this bill, Apple, which has previously refused to open third-party app stores on the grounds of protecting ecological security, will probably have to follow Google’s Android platform and open the door to third-party payment and third-party app stores.

#7: Meta Suffered from Loss in Metaverse

Since Facebook was officially renamed Meta at the end of last year, Zuckerberg’s determination to re-invest in the meta universe has become clear. To this end, in the past year, Meta has invested tens of billions of dollars in comprehensive research and development from hardware equipment to content ecology. However, the huge gap between ideal and reality not only made consumers not pay, but also made investors leave in anger. In addition to frequent crises in various financial indicators, Meta’s share price also fell by 60% in the past year.

Therefore, on November 10, Zuckerberg issued a letter to all employees, saying that he would cut 11000 employees on a large scale, accounting for 13% of his total employees. However, despite the initiation of “cost reduction and efficiency increase”, the stubborn Zuckerberg admitted that he had made mistakes, on the other hand, he said that he would continue to develop the meta universe, and firmly believed that Meta was undervalued.

#8: Another MMO Publisher Amazon Emerges 

If you still regard Amazon as an e-commerce platform with well-developed cloud computing business, you may have to refresh your understanding. Because in 2022, Amazon has a new title – the most successful MMO publisher in the European and American markets.

After the release of “New World” and “Lost Ark”, Amazon is constantly creating new records on the MMO track. Games of various MMO genres can be found in redfinger cloud phone. As of press release, Lost Ark is still the MMO game with the highest number of real-time online users on Steam, with a daily peak number of about 300000 and a historical peak of 1.3 million. Amazon’s efforts to localize the South Korean MMOs to the European and American markets have contributed a lot, and even Amazon has taken the initiative to harmonize the overly sexy role models to comply with the laws and regulations of Europe and the United States.

On TGA2022, the MMO Blue Protocol released by Amazon was officially exposed. Whether this kind of MMO with JPRG style can further the MMO layout of Amazon will also be another point of view for the European and American game circle in 2023.

#9: Netflix Stepped into Gaming Sector 

In addition to Amazon, Netflix, a streaming media giant, is also taking the gaming industry seriously. After the third quarter financial report of fiscal year 2022 was released, MiKe Verdu, director of Netflix game studio and vice president of game department, said that 55 new games of Netflix were being developed simultaneously, and the company was also seriously exploring cloud game products.

It is worth noting that, although most of these games under research, like the products that have landed on the Netflix Games game platform, are mainly small-scale video IP peripheral games, Netflix obviously does not focus on these lightweight products. In October 2022, Netflix set up a special game studio and invited Chacko Sonny, the executive producer of Overwatch, to lead it. The subsequent recruitment information also implied that Netflix had plans to develop FPS or TPS class 3A games.

After acquiring three studios, including Spry Fox, Netflix now has six internal game studios. This kind of decisive investment in the gaming industry also led Reuters to make a prediction recently that Microsoft may acquire Netflix. After all, Netflix Games, like XGP, is more like an asset closely related to Microsoft’s business than pure streaming media services.

#10: TGA Annual Rewards by Falcom 

In the TGA Award just passed, “Elden Ring” became the biggest winner without any doubt, and won the “Game of the Year” award, which is the second time that his FromSoftware won the TGA Award of the Year after “Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice”.

Behind the two victories is the continuous popularity of the soul like category in recent years. While many games choose to reduce the difficulty in order to expand the audience, the hard core and all-in-one soul like game has met the players’ higher game demands, although it has gone against the trend. The “open world of soul” design of Elden Ring has brought the game experience of soul like game to a new height.

In 2022, FromSoftware also ushered in a new “golden owner” with the apotheosis of Elden Ring. On August 31, Kadokawa of Japan issued a statement, agreeing to let Tencent subsidiary Sixjoy and Sony’s SIE Tokyo use cash to purchase the newly issued shares of Kokawa subsidiary FromSoftware. After the completion of the transaction, Tencent and Sony will become the second and third largest shareholders of F News Agency respectively. This fund will mainly be used to strengthen the ability to create and develop game IP, and expand the distribution scope and strength of FromSoftware in the global market.