Hi everyone,

I wanted to update you on the latest public guidance changes for King County, the region where the Redmond area campuses are located.  The specific recommendations from King County may be found here. We are adjusting our guidance in response to these new recommendations.

These updates will go into effect at the end of day today, Pacific Standard Time, and will remain in effect through March 25^th, but we will be continuously monitoring the situation and adjusting guidance as appropriate.

As always, for full list of our guidance to employees, please visit the Global Security website.

Puget Sound and Bay Area work from home updates:

• Consistent with King County guidance, we are recommending all employees who are in a job that can be done from home should do so through March 25^th. Taking these measures will ensure your safety and also make the workplace safer for those that need to be onsite. Please let your manager know that you will be working from home, so all our teams remain well coordinated.
• If in your role it is essential to be in the office or other work environments (e.g., data center, retail, etc.), plan to continue to go to your location. We will continue to implement the CDC guidelines for cleaning and sanitizing the locations. If you are not sure whether you are in a role that requires you to be onsite, you should speak to your manager.
  
  • The exceptions to this new guidance are the following groups who are being advised by health authorities to avoid interaction in large groups or public settings:
    
    • If you are over 60
    • If you have an underlying health condition (heart disease, diabetes, etc.)
    • If you are immune system compromised
    • If you are pregnant
  • In these cases, you should work with your manager to determine leave options or other accommodations available to you.
  • If you are a caregiver of someone that is immune system compromised, please contact your health provider for input.
• If you will be in the office or other work environments, we recommend limiting prolonged close interactions with people. Specific recommendations are below, but your manager can help implement plans that work well in your particular situation.
  
  • Limit prolonged interactions and try to stay more than 6 feet/1.8 meters away from others.
  • Keep in-person meetings as short as possible.
  • If you are in open office space and located 6 feet/1.8 meters away from others, you meet the current guidance for appropriate distance from others.
• Most importantly do not come to work if you are sick. This will be clearly posted on all building entrances.

Updated Global Travel Guidance:

• We recommend that people postpone travel to Puget Sound or Bay Area campuses unless essential for the continuity of Microsoft.
• All non-essential business travel should be canceled in regions with active COVID-19
  
  • “Essential” is defined as work related to operations, sales, customer services (e.g., customer support and customer success).
  • You should discuss travel felt to be essential with your manager and get their approval.
• You are not required to travel if you have concerns about doing so.

 If your region was not mentioned in this email or my email yesterday, it is because there are no additional updates to the current guidelines, but we will continue to keep you informed. Please look for updates from Global Security if the situation changes in your area.

If you have any questions on how the above guidance applies to your particular circumstances, please discuss with your manager.  You can also send questions to HR.

 What to do if you’re feeling symptoms or believe you’ve been exposed:

In King County, if you believe you were exposed to a confirmed case of COVID-19, contact the novel coronavirus call center: 206-477-3977 or your health care provider. For other locations, please contact your local health department hotline.

If you believe you may have symptoms, please contact your health care provider immediately.

Note for all employees globally:  If you are receiving testing or have a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19, please confidentially inform HR – we will assist in informing your manager and taking measures that protect others.

 As a reminder, we are following the below precautionary measures from the WHO:

• Frequently clean hands by using alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water.
• If you are sick (e.g., flu, cold), do not come to work.
• When coughing and sneezing cover mouth and nose with flexed elbow or tissue – throw tissue away immediately and wash hands.
• Avoid close contact with people who are unwell or showing symptoms of illness.
• If you have fever, cough and difficulty breathing, seek medical care early and share previous travel history with your health care provider.

We will continue to assess the situation and update you as our recommendations change. I really appreciate your patience.

Thanks,

Kurt

There are a multitude of applications to manage your todo list. One of these apps is Taskwarrior, it allows you to manage your task in the terminal without a GUI. This article will show you how to get started using it.

What is Taskwarrior?

Taskwarrior is CLI task manager and organizer. It is flexible, fast, and unobtrusive. It does its job then gets out of your way.

Taskwarrior uses $HOME/.taskrc and $HOME/.task to store your settings and tasks respectively.

Getting started with Taskwarrior

It’s easy to use the Taskwarrior to add your daily missions. These are some simple commands. To add tasks:

$ task add buy milk Created task 1. $ task add buy eggs Created task 2. $ task add bake cake Created task 3.

To list your tasks, you can use the task command on its own for the simplest listing:

$ task ID Age Description Urg 1 17s buy milk 0 2 14s buy eggs 0 3 11s bake cake 0 3 tasks.

To mark a task as complete, use the done keyword:

$ task 1 done Completed task 1 'buy milk'. Completed 1 task.

$ task 2 done Completed task 2 'buy eggs'. Completed 1 task.

$ task [task next] ID Age Description Urg 1 57s bake cake 0 1 task

Diving deeper into Taskwarrior

Priority management

Taskwarrior (task) is designed to help prioritize your tasks. To do this, task has multiple implicit and explicit variables it can use to determine an “Urgency” value.

Consider the following list.

$ task [task next] ID Age Description Urg 1 2min buy eggs 0 2 2min buy flour 0 3 2min bake cake 0 4 2min pay rent 0 5 3s install fedora 0 5 tasks

One could argue that paying your rent and installing Fedora have a higher priority than baking a cake. You can tell task about this by using the pri modifier.

$ task 4 mod pri:H Modifying task 4 'pay rent'. Modified 1 task.

$ task 5 mod pri:M Modifying task 5 'install fedora'. Modified 1 task.

$ task [task next] ID Age P Description Urg  4 4min H pay rent 6

 5 2min M install fedora 3.9 1 4min buy eggs 0 2 4min buy flour 0 3 4min bake cake 0 5 tasks

Rent is very important, it has a due date that we need to pay it by, such as within 3 days from the 1st of the month. You can tell task this by using the due modifier.

$ task 4 mod due:3rd Modifying task 4 'pay rent'. Modified 1 task.

$ task [task next] ID Age P Due Description Urg 4 12min H 2d pay rent 13.7 5 10min M install fedora 3.9 1 12min buy eggs 0 2 12min buy flour 0 3 12min bake cake 0 5 tasks

$ date Sat Feb 29 11:59:29 STD 2020

Because the 3rd of next month is nearby, the urgency value of rent has skyrocketed, and will continue to do so once we have reached and passed the due date.

However, not all tasks need to be done right away. Say for example you don’t want to worry about paying your rent until it is posted on the first of the month. You can tell taskwarrior about this using the wait modifier. (Hint: in the following example, som is short for “start of month,” one of the shortcuts taskwarrior understands.)

$ task 4 mod wait:som Modifying task 4 'pay rent'. Modified 1 task.

$ task [task next] ID Age P Description Urg 5 14min M install fedora 3.9 1 16min buy eggs 0 2 16min buy flour 0 3 16min bake cake 0 4 tasks

You will no longer be able to see the pay rent task until the start of the month. You can view waiting tasks by using task waiting:

$ task waiting ID Age P Wait Remaining Due Description 4 18min H 2020-03-01 11h 2020-03-03 pay rent 1 task

There are a few other modifiers you can define. Schedule and until will place a “start” date and remove a task after a date respectfully.

You may have tasks that require other tasks to be completed. To add a dependency for other tasks, use the dep modifier:

$ task [task next] ID Age P Description Urg 5 30min M install fedora 3.9 1 33min buy eggs 0 2 33min buy flour 0 3 33min bake cake 0 4 tasks

$ task 3 mod dep:1,2 Modifying task 3 'bake cake'. Modified 1 task. $ task [task next] ID Age Deps P Description Urg 1 33min buy eggs 8 2 33min buy flour 8 5 31min M install fedora 3.9 3 33min 1 2 bake cake -5 4 tasks

This will modify the priorities of any tasks that is blocking a task. Now buying eggs and flour is more urgent because it is preventing you from performing a task.

Annotations

You can add notes to a task using task <number> annotate:

$ task 3 anno No blueberries Annotating task 3 'bake cake'. Annotated 1 task. $ task [task next] ID Age Deps P Description Urg 1 1h buy eggs 8 2 1h buy flour 8 5 1h M install fedora 3.9 3 1h 1 2 bake cake -4.2 2020-02-29 No blueberries 4 tasks

Organizing tasks

Tasks can being assigned to projects and tags by using the project modifier and adding a tag using the + sign followed by the tag name, such as +problem.

Putting it all together

You can combine everything you learned to create a task in one line with all the required options.

$ task add Write Taskwarrior post \

pri:M due:1m wait:som until:due+2w sche:15th \

project:magazine +taskwarrior +community +linux Created task 6. The project 'magazine' has changed. Project 'magazine' is 0% complete (1 task remaining).

$ task 6 No command specified - assuming 'information'. Name Value ID 6 Description Write Taskwarrior post Status Waiting Project magazine Entered 2020-02-29 13:50:27 (6s) Waiting until 2020-03-01 00:00:00 Scheduled 2020-03-15 00:00:00 Due 2020-03-30 14:50:27 Until 2020-04-13 14:50:27 Last modified 2020-02-29 13:50:27 (6s) Tags taskwarrior community linux Virtual tags SCHEDULED TAGGED UDA UNBLOCKED UNTIL WAITING YEAR LATEST PROJECT PRIORITY UUID 27768737-f6a2-4515-af9d-4f58773c76a5 Urgency 5.3 Priority M

Installing Taskwarrior on Fedora

$ sudo dnf install task

$ sudo rpm-ostree install task 

Tips and tricks

• Taskwarrior has a hook system, meaning that there are many tools you can plug in, such as bugwarrior!
• Taskwarrior can connect to a taskserver for server/client setups. (This is left as an exercise for the reader for now.)

Photo by Bogdan Kupriets on Unsplash.

Today, we’re happy to announce the Generally Available (GA) release of PowerShell 7.0! Before anything else, we’d like to thank our many, many open-source contributors for making this release possible by submitting code, tests, documentation, and issue feedback. PowerShell 7 would not have been possible without your help.

What is PowerShell 7?

For those unfamiliar, PowerShell 7 is the latest major update to PowerShell, a cross-platform (Windows, Linux, and macOS) automation tool and configuration framework optimized for dealing with structured data (e.g. JSON, CSV, XML, etc.), REST APIs, and object models. PowerShell includes a command-line shell, object-oriented scripting language, and a set of tools for executing scripts/cmdlets and managing modules.

Three years ago, we announced PowerShell Core 6 as a completely new edition of PowerShell. Built on top of .NET Core, PowerShell Core introduced cross-platform support across Windows, macOS, and Linux, SSH-based PowerShell Remoting, massively improved support for REST and JSON, official Docker containers, and more. Additionally, it was the first release of PowerShell made under an open-source license (MIT), encouraging long-time PowerShell enthusiasts and complete newcomers alike to contribute directly to the source code, tests, and documentation.

After three successful releases of PowerShell Core, we couldn’t be more excited about PowerShell 7, the next chapter of PowerShell’s ongoing development. With PowerShell 7, in addition to the usual slew of new cmdlets/APIs and bug fixes, we’re introducing a number of new features, including:

• Pipeline parallelization with ForEach-Object -Parallel
• New operators:
  
  • Ternary operator: a ? b : c
  • Pipeline chain operators: || and &&
  • Null coalescing operators: ?? and ??=
• A simplified and dynamic error view and Get-Error cmdlet for easier investigation of errors
• A compatibility layer that enables users to import modules in an implicit Windows PowerShell session
• Automatic new version notifications
• The ability to invoke to invoke DSC resources directly from PowerShell 7 (experimental)

For a more complete list of features and fixes, check out the PowerShell 7.0 release notes.

The shift from PowerShell Core 6.x to 7.0 also marks our move from .NET Core 2.x to 3.1. .NET Core 3.1 brings back a host of .NET Framework APIs (especially on Windows), enabling significantly more backwards compatibility with existing Windows PowerShell modules. This includes many modules on Windows that require GUI functionality like Out-GridView and Show-Command, as well as many role management modules that ship as part of Windows. For more info, check out our module compatibility table showing off how you can the latest, up-to-date modules that work with PowerShell 7.

If you weren’t able to use PowerShell Core 6.x in the past because of module compatibility issues, this might be the first time you get to take advantage of some of the awesome features we already delivered since we started the Core project!

Awesome! How do I get PowerShell 7?

First, check out our install docs for Windows, macOS, or Linux. Depending on the version of your OS and preferred package format, there may be multiple installation methods.

If you already know what you’re doing, and you’re just looking for a binary package (whether it’s an MSI, ZIP, RPM, or something else), hop on over to our latest release tag on GitHub.

Additionally, you may want to use one of our many Docker container images. For more information on using those, check out our PowerShell-Docker repo.

What operating systems does PowerShell 7 support?

PowerShell 7 supports the following operating systems on x64, including:

• Windows 7, 8.1, and 10
• Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, and 2019
• macOS 10.13+
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) / CentOS 7+
• Fedora 29+
• Debian 9+
• Ubuntu 16.04+
• openSUSE 15+
• Alpine Linux 3.8+

Additionally, we support ARM32 and ARM64 flavors of Debian and Ubuntu, as well as ARM64 Alpine Linux.

While not officially supported, the community has also provided packages for Arch and Kali Linux.

If you need support for a platform that wasn’t listed here, please file a distribution request on GitHub (though it should be noted that we’re ultimately limited by what’s supported by .NET Core 3.1).

Wait, what happened to PowerShell “Core”?

Much like .NET decided to do with .NET 5, we feel that PowerShell 7 marks the completion of our journey to maximize backwards compatibility with Windows PowerShell. To that end, we consider PowerShell 7 and beyond to be the one, true PowerShell going forward.

PowerShell 7 will still be noted with the edition “Core” in order to differentiate 6.x/7.x from Windows PowerShell, but in general, you will see it denoted as “PowerShell 7” going forward.

Which Microsoft products already support PowerShell 7?

Any module that is already supported by PowerShell Core 6.x is also supported in PowerShell 7, including:

On Windows, we’ve also added a -UseWindowsPowerShell switch to Import-Module to ease the transition to PowerShell 7 for those using still incompatible modules. This switch creates a proxy module in PowerShell 7 that uses a local Windows PowerShell process to implicitly run any cmdlets contained in that module. For more information on this functionality, check out the Import-Module documentation.

For those modules still incompatible, we’re working with a number of teams to add native PowerShell 7 support, including Microsoft Graph, Office 365, and more.

Azure Cloud Shell has already been updated to use PowerShell 7, and others like the .NET Core SDK Docker container images and Azure Functions will be updated soon.

How is PowerShell 7 officially supported by Microsoft?

As with PowerShell Core, PowerShell 7 is a supported product for a wide range of customers with existing Microsoft support agreements.

With PowerShell 7, we’re moving to a support lifecycle whereby we match the lifecycle of the underlying .NET runtime that we distribute as part of PowerShell. This means that PowerShell 7.0 is a long-term servicing (LTS) release that will be supported for approximately 3 years from December 3, 2019 (the release date of .NET Core 3.1).

You can find more info about PowerShell’s support lifecycle at https://aka.ms/pslifecycle

What’s next for PowerShell?

We’re already hard at work on PowerShell 7.1, and you should expect its first preview soon, chock full of new features and bugfixes that didn’t quite make it into 7.0. Stay tuned for a more in-depth roadmap blog outlining our current investigations and desires for 7.1.

As noted above, we’re also moving to an annual release cadence in order to align better with .NET releases and their support lifecycle (with previews continuing to release roughly every month).

How can I give feedback on PowerShell 7?

For most issues directly related to PowerShell 7, start by filing an issue on the main PowerShell repository. For issues related to specific modules (e.g. PSReadline or PowerShellGet), make sure to file in the appropriate repository.

Thanks again!

Much appreciation to everyone involved in this release, from multi-time contributors all the way to those of you keeping up with our preview releases. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Joey Aiello
PM, PowerShell

I’ve been doing a research project about Iran’s video games history focusing on how it began, and how it evolved. Through the course of my research I discovered that there were almost no articles in English on the subject, and of the few that exit, none are historical or research-based.

That’s what inspired me to create this document, which should help shine some light on the history of video games in Iran. This is just a small subsection of the larger document I am preparing (in Persian). I thought it would be interesting to compare the history of games in Iran with the recent history of the country itself, pairing important events with events in the video game timeline.

My sources include Persian-language websites about games and technology, physical paper magazines such as Daneshmand, and I also interviewed people I know from the industry, both game journalists and developers. Sometimes I simply trusted my own memory.

The accompanying image should give you a larger context not only for the state of games in Iran, but what was going on in Iran at the time.

• Daneshmand is a monthly magazine about science and technology. The first issue of Daneshmand was published in October 1963. Daneshmand is still running today, and is the oldest magazine about science and technology in Iran. For my research I used the magazine’s 50-year digital archive. Unfortunately, there’s no existing online archive for historians to browse, but there is a pack of 6 DVDs that includes every issue from the start of the magazine through 2013, which I used for my research.

Video Master by Woodrow International in Daneshmand.

Video Master.

• Jun 1978, TV Game Released: In its 174^th issue Daneshmand reported that another game console similar to the Magnavox Odyssey was released in Iran. The producer of this new console, TV Game, was General Electronic Kit, located in Tehran. The cost of a TV Game set was about 37 USD. Neither Video Master nor TV Game were manufactured in Iran, but they were both assembled there.
• Oct 1976, Video Master Released: In its 157^th issue Daneshmand magazine published a report showing that a game console similar to the Magnavox Odyssey had been released in Iran. This seems to be the first game console released in the country. The Video Master was imported by a company called Woodrow International, with locations in Tehran and Isfahan. Woodrow International doesn’t exist today.

TV Game set by General Electronic Kit.

A TV Game set similar to Video Master assembled by Shahab company. Shahab is still operating, and now makes TV sets.

• Iran Revolution Succeeded, Iran Hostage Crisis Started, Cultural Revolution Started, Iran – Iraq War Duration: In these periods of time nothing much happened in the fields of entertainment, science and technology. During the Cultural Revolution, all universities closed down for 30 months.
  The Hostage Crisis caused the U.S. to break their relations with Iran, and all official imports were shut down as a result. The Iran Revolution rendered most entertainment and even some sports illegal. This includes card games, pinball machines, chess, billiards, golf, bowling, and any kind of gambling. Some ten years later they slowly became legal again, one by one (with the exception of gambling).
  When the war began, everything and everyone throughout the nation was called to arms to fight against the enemy. There was no fun to be had during the war until the Atari 2600 arrived.
• 1985, Atari 2600 Came to Iran: This was the first game console which was bootlegged to Iran after the Revolution, and the price was about 120,000 Rl, or more than 200 USD. Since this was was after the Revolution, most of the electronic companies of the past were shut down, and official imports from the United States were impossible (just as it is today). So for many years every video game and computer related product had to be smuggled in.
• Nov 1988, First Video Game Reviews Published in Computer Magazines: In its 93^rd issue, Elm Electronic va Computer (Electronic Science and Computer) magazine published a video game review. The review covers two Amiga games. This may be the first game review ever published in Iran, and is certainly the earliest that my colleagues and I could find.
  When the war ended a flood of entertainment came to Iran, including game consoles, PCs, toys, VHS players, movies, and so on. Almost everything related to entertainment was smuggled in to the country. This isn’t distant history either – most PC parts were bootlegged up until 2007, aside from some Korean monitors officially imported by LG and Samsung and, some printers like HP and Epson. So this review was likely of a bootleg copy.

Elam Electronic va Computer Magazine no. 93.

• Jan 1989, Commodore 64, Spectrum, Amiga 500, PC, and other Devices Came to Iran: Right after the war ended, even more consoles and other computer devices came to Iran. I don’t have exact dates on this because of the complicated nature of post-war unformation, but I’m working on it. I can say this influx of platforms happened some time between 1988 and 1989.
• 1992, Micro Genius, a Clone of the Famicom, Came to Iran: As far as my research tells me, there was never an official Famicom in Iran’s market, but a huge number of clones came to the country during the 90s. The first and the most important was Micro Genius, made in Taiwan. After Micro Genius, some infamous clones like Dendy and Super Semtoni became available, both of which continued selling until 2005. During the Micro Genius era Nintendo games became popular in Iran. Mostly Contra, Mario, Duck Hunt, Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, Mega Man, and so on.
  

But the problem was the cartridges! They were expensive and rare to find. Because of this, people used to exchange their game cartridges to each other (this trend repeated itself with the release of the PlayStation 4). Gamers in Iran had to rely on the pack-in games from their Famiclones for the most part.

• Dec 1996, Tank Hunter Released: In the mid-90s we see the first serious attempts at local game development. A game studio was established called Honafa. Honafa was the first game studio which developed a few games for governmental institutions including the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Iran Drug Control Headquarters.

Seyedof, the engine developer at Honafa told me: “Honafa was the first real Iranian game company in existence, and was active for more than 5 years, and developed several finished and polished games.”

Honafa had both a production and R&D team. The production team was busy developing their current projects, since the R&D team was doing research for game engine and 3D technology.

The Tank Hunter was their first release. It was an endless 2D game for MS-DOS in which a man with an RPG destroyed the enemy’s tanks. This game was dedicated to Iranian martyrs and the heroes of the Iran – Iraq war.

Tank Hunter by Honafa Studio.

• Ali Baba Released: Ali Baba was released some time after Tank Hunter, and was developed by Ramin Zafar Azizi, who is not in video games anymore. Ali Baba was a 2D side scroll platformer like Prince of Persia, released for MS-DOS.

Ali Baba by Ramin ZafarAzizi.

• May 1998, Devil’s Death Released: Another 90s game made by Honafa studio for Iran Drug Control Headquarters to promote their anti-drug messages. It was a top down shooter in which the player would destroy smugglers trucks.

In 2019, Ali Seyedof, the game engine developer of Honafa, left Iran for Europe.

Devil’s Death by Honafa Studio.

• Apr 2001, Bazi Rayane Publishes its First Issue: Bazi Rayane was the first Iranian magazine completely dedicated to video games. It was first published in April 2001, using the license of another magazine called Tabarestan. After publishing 4 issues the Tabarestan license was seized by the government and Bazi Rayane stopped publishing for nearly 4 years. At the beginning of 2005 Bazi Rayane resumed publishing using the license from another magazine called Ettela, and continued till 2014. On August 2014 Bazi Rayane shut down forever due to economic problems.
  

  You may be wondering about this license thing. In Iran all magazines and periodicals must acquire a license from the Ministry of Islamic Culture. If the Ministry doesn’t grant a license, it is possible to publish your periodical using another periodical’s license as a “special issue.” This is what Bazi Rayane was doing in order to get published. In later years Bazi Rayane was able to get its own license.

• Sep 2005, Donyaye Bazi Founded: Donyaye Bazi published its first issue in September 2005 using its own license. In September of 2014, after publishing 176 issues it closed down forever due to economic problems.

Another magazine was Bazinama, which published its first issue some time in 2005. Bazinama still publishes today, but it abandoned the paper version in September 2019 and turned to digital.

Two issues of Bazinama Magazine and Donyaye Bazi Magazine.

• 4 Oct 2005, Quest of Persia: The End of Innocence Released: Quest of Persia: The End of Innocence was the first 3D game from Iran, developed by Puya Arts. The chief developer was Puya Dadgar. QoP: The End of Innocence also was the first game developed after a five year break in game development in the country, and was the first Iranian-developed game released since the 90s. In 2011 Puya Dadgar, the lead developer of this game, left Iran for the US.

Quest of Persia: The End of Innocence by Puya Arts.

• 2006, Tebyan Started Investing on Video Games: The Tebyan Cultural Institute existed under the control of Iran’s Islamic Development Organization, which was established in 2001. In 2006 Tebyan started developing some video games and during 8 years of activity developed about 25 of them, including Nejat e Bandar (Saving the Port), Moghavemat (Defense), Afsane ye Nowruz (Legend of Nowruz), Koohnavard (mountaineer). None of these games were particularly successful or popular.
• Apr 2007, IRCG Stablished: The Iran Computer Games Foundation aka IRCG was actually approved a year before this, by the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. But in 2007 the IRCG started actually operating, and in 2008 started funding some indie video games like Garshasp the Monster Slayer.
• May 2007, first Digital Media Festival Launched: The Digital Media Festival was the first festival hosting video games in Iran. One of the first games which participated in this festival was Quest of Persia: The End of Innocence.
• Jun 2010, Asemandez Released: Asemandez was one of the first video games which IRCG funded. It was the first MMO browser-based strategic game developed in Iran. Later in 2019 the main developer of Asemandez left Iran for foreign countries.
• Jul 2010, Everything Can Draw on TGS: Everything Can Draw was the first Iranian video game to appear at the Tokyo Game show. The developer Mahdi Bahrami later in 2017 made changes to the game and published it on Steam as Engare.

Engare by Mahdi Bahrami.

• Sep 2010, Entegham Released: September 2010 saw the release of the first Iranian Full Motion Video game. Entegham (Revenge) was a first person shooter similar to Mad Dog McCree.

Entegham by Phenomenon Studio (later Blazingfallgames).

• Oct 2010, Garshasp Released: In 2010 the most expensive Iranian video game of all time (up to that point) was developed by Fanafzar studio with investment from the IRCG. Garshasp 1 and 2’s combined budget was about 500,000 USD at that time (which is about 600,000 USD today). Garshasp 1 was the first locally developed video game which gained popularity in Iran, and gamers started actually playing it. Garshasp 2 was never released, because of a disagreement in contract and lack of budget.

Garshasp: The Monster Slayer by Fanafzar Studio.

• Jan 2011, Mahdi Bahrami’s BO at the IGF: BO was the first Iranian game to get into the Independent Games Festival, developed by Mahdi Bahrami. BO was one of the Honorable mentions in IGF 2011. Later Bahrami sent two other games to IGF called Farsh and Engare. Both were nominated in some fields.

Farsh (Carpet) and Bo by Mahdi Bahrami.

• Feb 2011, Cafebazaar Founded: In 2011 Cafebazaar, an online market for mobile apps and games started operation. Later it became the most important market for Android apps and games, with about 40 million users.
• Aug 2011, National Institute Established: IRCG established the first video game school in Iran, called Iran National Institute of Game Development. One year later IRCG established the first video game incubator. Both the incubator and National Institute were shut down in 2019 due to economic problems.
• 2014, Golden Age of Mobile Games Started: In this year most of the game developers began making Android games and stopped PC game development. Tebyan stopped funding video games and the IRCG staff changed. New IRCG managers changed the way they were investing in video games. IRCG shut down the Tehran Game Expo which had been launched at 2011.
  In TGF 2014, a mobile game section was added for the first time. In the following years of Tehran Game Festival, there was less and less PC game participation, and mobile games overcame the market and game festivals. Rooster Wars and Fruit Craft were two first mobile games that got viral and popular.
• May 2011, First Tehran Game Festival Launched: In this year IRCG launched the first video game festival in Iran, called Tehran Game Festival aka TGF. TGF continued working until 2018. Eight festivals were held but in 2019 IRCG shut down TGF due to economic problems.

Rooster Wars by Medrik Games and Fruit Craft by TOD.

•  Sep 2014, Parvaneh Released. Biggest Fail Ever: Parvaneh Legacy of the Light’s Guardians was a video game which had been developed with the budget of 700,000 USD (800,000 USD today) by Bearded Bird. Although Parvane broke the record of most expensive Iranian video game of all time, previously held by Garshasp, it was a huge failure. It didn’t sell at all and the developer shut down that year.

Parvaneh Legacy of the Light’s Guardians by Bearded Bird.

• 24 Sep 2014, Donyaye Bazi Discontinued: After publishing 174 issues, Donyaye Bazi magazine discontinued forever due to economic problems. Earlier this year Bazi Rayane magazine was also discontinued due to economic problems. The owner of Donyaye Bazi owner left Iran for the U.S. that year and later Bazi Rayane’s owner left Iran for Europe.
• Aug 2015, Motori Published: When Motori (Android, free-to-play) developed by Glim Games was published on Cafebazaar on 2015 it quickly went viral. With 1.6 million local active users Motori broke all sales, download, and active user records within a few months. Iranian mobile game development entered a new era after Motori.

Motori by Glim Games.

• Apr 2016, Clash of Clans Published by Cafebazaar: Clash of Clans was officially published in Iran by Cafebazaar and the market boomed. It was the first big western video game which was officially published in Iran. Clash Royale was later published by the same company.
• 16 Jul 2017, 1st TCG Launched: IRCG launched Tehran Game Convention. Thbis was the first international video game convention in partnership with Game Connection France. It continued the next year but was shut down in 2019 due to economic problems.
• Apr 2019, IRCG Shut Down TGF, TGC, Game Incubator and National Institute: At the beginning of 2019 the IRCG manager announced that there won’t be any TGF and TGC this year. A few weeks later the National Institute of Game Development closed down after 7 years. The Video Game Development Incubator closed down also. All of this happened because of Iran’s economic depression and financial problems. The IRCG couldn’t afford the cost of continuing events and running sub institutes. Later this year IRCG reopened the National Institute by making a contract with Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran.
• Sep 2, 2019, Children of Morta Released on Steam: On September 2^nd the Polish publisher 11bit studio published Children of Morta, a game developed by Iranian developers in Fanafzar studio. It has been one of the more critically acclaimed Iranian-developed games, and sold well on Steam.

For a better understanding the economic depression and the effect of the current sanctions, please take a look at the USD to Rl exchange rate I prepared on the right part of the timeline.

Arash Hackimi is an Iranian video game journalist and game designer. Arash has been a lecturer in the Iran Game Development Institute, teaching History of Video Games, Video Games Genre, and Video Games Journalism. He started working as a journalist in 2005 as an editor in Donyaye Bazi monthly magazine.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/arashakimi
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Arash.Hackimi

Saeed Zafarany (editor) started his work as a video game journalist at the age of 15 when he joined the web site Donya-ye-Bazi  as a translator in 2009. Soon after, he became deputy chief editor and administrator. In 2014, after nearly 5 years of service at Donya-ye-Bazi, he decided to found his own media platform, and is now Co-founder and Editor in Chief at Gamenews. Saeed also took the role of Editor in Chief at Bazinameh magazine in 2019.

Brandon Sheffield (editor) is creative director of Necrosoft Games and former EIC of Game Developer magazine. He met Arash at the Tehran Game Convention in 2018, one year before it was shut down.

Invictus Games, the Hungarian mobile game developer behind the likes of Give It Up! and Froggy Jump, has been acquired by publisher and developer Zordix.

The deal sees Zordix acquiring 100 percent of the shares in Invictus. Exact terms of that arrangement weren’t offered alongside the news, though two Invictus founders, Tamas Kozak and Akos Divianszky, are both set to continue to lead the studio’s day-to-day following the acquisition.

“The company is an important addition in our acquisitions-driven growth that doubles our production capacity, adds 50 released games to our joint portfolio and several new titles are on their way out,” reads a statement from Zordix CEO Matti Larsson. “I am very impressed by Invictus management for running a profitable game company for 20 years. This is achieved by continuously developing and delivering a high number of new own titles under its own brands and with great success, especially in the exciting growing market China.”