“We will not sell $ 3 billion”: there are two new billionaires in Russia who have earned a fortune from scratch

Bloomberg included two Russians in the list of billionaires - the founders of the Playrix game company Igor and Dmitry Bukhanov. Their combined fortune is $ 2.8 billion, that is, $ 1.4 billion for each of the brothers. They created the first game in 2001 on Pentium-100, and in 2018, Playrix entered the top rating of publishers of mobile games for iOS and Google Play in revenue.

Success story

• The first game - an analogue of Xonix - the brothers were released by students in 2001 in Vologda. She brought them about $ 100 monthly. “And we thought: if one game brings $ 100, you can write a couple of dozen and earn a lot of money,” says Igor Bukhman.
• Gradually, the games gave more and more revenues-from $ 200 per month per game with an animated character up to $ 700 for an analogue of Tetris, which the brothers had to be deleted due to copyright.
• The brothers sold the first games on platforms like majorgeeks.com or download.com, then switched to Yahoo !!!! And AOL, and then on social and mobile platforms.
• In 2004, accounts - in Vologda - founded Playrix. By that time, the brothers had already earned up to $ 10,000 monthly. It was planned that the company would specialize in computer games, but subsequently Playrix developed in the developer of Free-to-Play Games for smartphones and tablets. According to Igor Bukhman, it was a challenge-they were used to releasing the game and forget about it, and in the case of Free-to-Play, the game is rather a service: updates need to be released constantly.
• The most popular Playrix games now - Fishdom (2015) and Gardenscapes (2016).
• In these games, accounts found and began to exploit the original game model that combined “three in a row” (Match-3) with mini-quests and metagra. The success of these games destroyed the seemingly absolute monopoly Candy Crush.
• Playrix is ​​preparing to release games in new genres, but does not reveal the details.
• Igor Bukhman is 37 years old, Dmitry Bukhman is 34. Very little is known about their personal life, they are poorly represented in social networks.

Games in numbers

• The main Playrix markets are the USA, China and Japan. The total number of players exceeds 30 million, annual sales are $ 1.2 billion.
• About 1,100 specialists work for the company, including developers from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Most of them work in the company's head office in Ireland.
• Advertising brings the company no more than 3% of the revenue. Basically, income goes from the internal purchases of the players. Games themselves can be downloaded for free.
• In August 2017, Playrix took first place in total income from Google Play and App Store in Europe and overtook the Finnish Rovio with its Angry Birds.

Plans for the future

• In February 2019, information appeared in the media that accounts were going to sell the company to Chinese competitors like IDreamSky Technology or FunPlus Game Co for $ 3 billion, but in the Bloomberg conversation, the brothers denied this information. “We won’t sell $ 3 billion,” Dmitry Bukhman answered reporters with a smile.
• “There is no magic figure that we will hear and decide to sell the company. Because we work not because of money, but because of a sincere love of the process, ”the brothers add.
• Among the goals of Igor and Dmitry Bukhmanov - to stand on a par with the titans of the gaming industry as Activision Blizzard with Electronic Arts in the West and Netease Inc. With Tencent in China.
• “We want to grow to their level, using the talent of developers from the former USSR and Eastern Europe,” says Igor Bukhman.