"It's all pretty sad." The gaming industry in Russia during war

Sanctions, emigration of developers and censorship. How did the war against Ukraine affect Russian producers and consumers of computer games and slow down the development of what was once one of the most promising markets?

At the end of 2021, a large American consulting company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), published a study on the state of the global gaming industry. Russia entered the top five countries in terms of intensity of game content consumption The indicator takes into account the size of the gaming market, player involvement and consumption of related content: viewing streams and videos of games, as well as e-sports events - together with the USA, China, Japan and South Korea. At the same time, the authors of the study placed Russia only in 10th place out of 12 in terms of the intensity of its production The indicator takes into account the total income of the sector, the number of companies engaged in the gaming and e-sports industries, as well as the “maturity” of the infrastructure: the scale of financing, as well as the development of education and other supporting elements .

In its annual report for 2021, the international analytical company Newzoo, which specializes in gaming industry research, did not even include Russia in the top ten countries in terms of gaming market volume - that year it amounted to only 158 billion rubles or $2.1 billion (exchange rate as of December 31, 2021). The total volume of the global market that year reached $180 billion, with the Chinese and American markets being the largest in terms of volume – $45 and $39 billion, respectively.

In 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, the largest console platforms – Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch – suspended sales in Russia. Players on personal computers and mobile devices (these devices are the most popular) 1 , 2 in Russia for games) problems also arose: the largest stores - Steam, App Store and Google Play - stopped accepting Russian cards for paying for purchases.

Large game studios and publishers also stopped sales in Russia: Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, CD Project, Epic Games, Activision Blizzard and others.

To purchase games, users from Russia now have to look for workarounds - change the region in the account settings, turn to intermediary sites, buy keys to activate games or gift cards, and also use foreign cards. Thus, the volume of official We are talking about games or services that are purchased through official stores and trading platforms. The games market in 2022 fell by 80% compared to 2021 and amounted to 19.8 billion rubles or $275 million. (rate as of December 31, 2022).

Russian or closely related to Russia projects also had to leave the market.

In particular, the influential company Wargaming, which created the popular game World of Tanks, announced its departure - the company's annual revenue is estimated at $1.2 billion. It transferred its gaming business in Russia and Belarus to the Lesta studio, which was previously part of Wargaming and was developing the game World of Warships. Now the largest gaming company in Russia, with annual revenue of 29 billion rubles ($363 million), is controlled by the Russian state.

How Lesta came under state control

In 2025, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office recognized the head of Lesta, Malik Khatazhaev, and the head of Wargaming, Viktor Kisly, as “participants of an extremist association.” The Wargaming company collected money for the purchase of ambulances for Ukraine, clarifying that we were talking about cars for civilians, and Lesta itself stated that the company was “out of politics,” and the Lesta Games group of companies first became the property of the Federal Property Management Agency, and then it was transferred under the management of the recently created Moscow company “IT Technologies” - it also came under state control a couple of months later.

After the outbreak of a full-scale war, Playrix, a developer of free mobile games, founded in 2004 in Vologda, closed its offices in Russia. In 2021, it became one of the three publishers of mobile games with the highest incomes in the world and earned $2.7 billion. The total audience of the company's games at the time of leaving Russia was 180 million people monthly. And although Playrix’s headquarters have been in Ireland since 2013, the company’s staff in Russia in 2022 numbered one and a half thousand people.

Thousands of people lost their jobs: some projects were downsized and some of the staff were transferred to foreign legal entities, while others simply closed . Forbes’ interlocutors then told the publication that many companies left Russia due to difficulties in bringing money into the country, poor exchange rates and the resulting high cost of personnel, as well as the “toxicity” of the local market and lack of prospects.

State of the Industry Today

According to estimates from the consulting company Strategy Partners, the market volume in 2022 reached 166 billion rubles Due to conflicting estimates, we are intentionally not comparing this figure to 2021 data.

The assessment methodology of the analytical company Newzoo, which annually assesses the state of the gaming market, is transparent and clearly formulated : the statistics take into account only consumer spending on the purchase of games and services related to games. Analysts do not take into account hardware sales, in-game advertising, B2B services and gambling and betting revenues.

The problem is that in the open part of its reports, Newzoo publishes only the top ten countries by market size, which Russia was not included in either 2021 or 2022. The company refused to provide Radio Liberty with full versions of reports for these years "due to restrictions related to the sale of data and the provision of data for external use."

After 2022, Newzoo stopped mentioning Russia altogether in its reports, probably due to the inability to objectively assess the market in the country, since a significant part of purchases are made “in the gray” - through intermediaries, stores in other countries, gift cards.

Therefore, we are forced to use data from different sources to estimate the size of the Russian market, which do not disclose the exact calculation methodology , which potentially allows researchers to manipulate the data by including or excluding certain categories of goods and services from the calculations. Due to the lack of clear criteria for evaluation, it is impossible to verify the data published by various companies.

Thus, one of the largest consulting agencies in the world, PwC, writes that the volume of the Russian games market in 2021 amounted to 158 billion rubles, taking into account the sale of in-game advertising (3.8 billion rubles). At the same time, the gaming company MY.GAMES, then owned by VK, estimated the market at 177 billion rubles.

The Russian consulting agency Strategy Partners estimated the market size next year, 2022, at 166 billion. Thus, the market volume could either fall by 6% or grow by 5% - with an overall decrease in the volume of the world market by 4.3% and a drop in the volume of the official Russian market by 80%.

These factors, however, do not mean that the overall volume of the market in Russia should necessarily have decreased: the fall of the world market after the pandemic does not prove the decline of the market in Russia, the official market could be replaced by a gray market, and war, sanctions, the departure of Western companies and the relocation of Russian ones could theoretically not affect the market volume, since it depends not on the income of companies, but on the spending of users. The problem is that it is impossible to verify this: the available studies do not indicate how and from what these or other estimates are formed .

, in 2023 – 176 billion, and in 2024, according to the ADV Game group, already 182.5 billion.

Last year, the volume of the Russian market, according to statements There is no independent confirmation of this information. The main analytical company in the field of video games Newzoo does not include Russia in its reports of Russian companies, increased to 200 - 208 billion rubles, and this, according to forecasts, can grow to 210-222 billion: this figure is comparable to the volumes of the markets of Italy ($2.7 billion), Brazil ($2.8 billion) and Canada ($3.2 billion), which are at the end of the top ten world ranking of countries in terms of gaming market volume, but significantly lower than the leaders - Chinese ($55 billion), American ($50.8 billion) and Japanese ($17.6 billion).

The size of the market, however, reflects the spending of players, and not the development of the field of game creation as such. Other criteria for evaluation include:

• Number of employees in game development. Russian authorities hope that the number of specialists in the field of creating video games will reach 40 thousand by 2030. In the United States, 83 thousand people are now directly involved in this area If we count specialists indirectly related to the field of game creation, the number will increase to 250 , in Japan - from 58 to 83 thousand specialists 200 thousand are involved directly and indirectly , in South Korea - 54 thousand excluding indirectly involved specialists;
• Number of gaming companies. At the beginning of 2026, the press service of the Creative Industries Agency told Gazeta.ru that over the past five years the number of “large video game industry companies” in Russia has doubled and reached “about 600.” It is not clear which companies the ACI considers “large”, so this statement cannot be verified. It is known that many IT companies, including those from the game development sector, left Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine and continue to leave to this day, and there is no open list of all Russian gaming companies, so it is not possible to compare the number of companies in Russia with other countries. Russian companies lag far behind in terms of income 1 , 2 from foreign;
• Number of games released. It is not possible to estimate the number of games released annually by Russian developers, and the question of who can be considered a Russian developer of companies of Russian origin that left Russia is still controversial.

Game designer Mikhail (name changed), who is based in Russia, says in an interview with Radio Liberty that there is no consensus on this issue among representatives of the gaming industry. Some experts, Mikhail continues, believe that if the company that released the game was once based in Russia, then this is enough to consider the game Russian - even if it later left the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. This, for example, happened to the major developer Atomic Heart A game from the Cypriot studio of Russian origin Mundfish. The number of players - who bought the game or got acquainted with it through a subscription - reached 10 million a year ago , explains Mikhail.

“In this regard, I have a question: if the main office of a company is located outside of Russia, how relevant is it to consider it Russian? It seems to me, not very much. Although there is, for example, UNIGINE - an engine Basic software, the foundation of an Unreal level game One of the most popular game engines in the world, created by the American company Epic Games , which is included in the register of domestic software and its team is located in Tomsk, but its headquarters are registered abroad. They call themselves a Russian company.

There is no clear answer here. Developers and gamers want to consider a game Russian if there is at least someone from Russia on the team - but, strictly speaking, outsourcing remains outsourcing: if a game is released under the brand of a foreign company, you cannot call it a domestic product,” explains Mikhail.

The creator of the Balancy service for game developers , Andrey Apanasik, calls the game Atomic Heart “a project from people with Russian roots, and not a project from Russian developers,” because its developer, Mundfish, is not legally part of the Russian industry, despite an agreement with VK In Russia and the CIS countries, the game was exclusively available on VK Play - for this, according to unconfirmed reports, the Russian holding paid the game studio $7 million .

Such questions create additional difficulties when assessing the Russian gaming segment, says game designer Mikhail: Russian “outsourced” studios are often not included in reports, explains the game designer.

"We know that Russian developers participated in the creation of Baldur's Gate 3 The game from the Belgian company Larian studios, whose sales exceeded 20 million copies , not to mention Atomic Heart - the level of specialists there was quite high,” he says.

Balancy creator Andrei Apanasik told Radio Liberty that Russia's war against Ukraine affected "literally everything" in the gaming industry.

“Relocation, access to investments, attitude in the world market, payments, access to services. There is segregation between “ours” and “ponauehs”, precedents for squeezing out business - as was the case with Lesta. The economy and tightening the screws are also not particularly conducive to the growth of the industry,” he explained.

In the area of ​​gaming development, the expert notes, “everything is quite sad so far.”

“Studios and people continue to leave. If you don’t take into account studios with Russian roots, which are now in Cyprus or somewhere else, then everything will shrink to companies like Astrum Russian developer and publisher, the second gaming company in Russia in terms of revenue last year , Lesty and several others. There are not many internal relatively large studios. Indie studios Independent and usually small teams that create games outside the structure of large publishers and maintain creative control over the project. There is no single definition of an indie studio. they are trying to survive, but against the general background their contribution to the total volume is very small,” he explains.

At the same time, players, according to Apanasik, did not consume less content, and Russia would still be in the top five countries for this indicator, but “a lot of people are now consuming content in the Turkish region,” and the reasons for this are clear, he says.

Game designer Mikhail admits that since the beginning of the SVO, many companies actually left Russia due to difficulties in withdrawing money from abroad, and “the situation at some point really got worse,” but the changes, in his opinion, also contributed to growth: start-up companies grew to medium-sized, and medium-sized to leading.

"Paradoxically, this factor spurred the development of the industry. Yes, many large companies - for example, Playrix - relocated, but new studios like Maningame also appeared Russian studio specializing in free mobile games or Blackhub Games Game studio of mobile games with its project Black Russia A popular mobile online role-playing game about criminal Russia, inspired by the cult game GTA: San Andreas by the American studio Rockstar Games. Tens of thousands of people play it at a time, and the creators claim tens of millions of downloads during the existence of the project , which has grown noticeably in recent years,” says the interlocutor.

Mikhail draws attention to the fact that the crisis has affected the entire global video game industry: despite the growth of the global market - last year it exceeded $200 billion for the first time - studios and companies around the world continue massive layoffs or even close: from 2022 to mid-2025, the industry lost 45 thousand jobs. The amount of private investment in the sector is also falling: in 2025 alone it fell by 55%.

“In Russia, this manifested itself to a lesser extent, although here, too, 2022 was the last year when specialists easily found work. Now many colleagues are looking for one for a year and a half,” the specialist notes.

However, according to Mikhail, there is no need to talk about stagnation of the industry in Russia: it is developing.

How does the state sponsor the creation of games?

Mikhail admits that it has become more difficult to obtain investment for game development, and in order to attract large investors it is necessary to register a company outside of Russia, so game creators are now “looking mainly towards government sources of funding.”

The state, in turn, has turned towards game creators, the specialist continues: the gaming industry has received billions of rubles from the Internet Development Institute (IDI); specialists are also supported by the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, the Russian Foundation for Information Technology Development, the National Technical Initiative and other funds. In total, since 2022, the Russian gaming industry has received, according to various estimates, from 7 to 10 billion rubles from the state, and by 2030 the state may spend up to 50 billion rubles on the development of the sector.

“It is clear that the projects supported by these funds have a certain focus, reflect the values ​​and cultural agenda of Russia, and contain ideological elements,” admits Mikhail.

The most striking example of cooperation in the “money in exchange for propaganda” format can be called games released with funding from Iran.

The Fund supported the development of the games "Sparta", in which the player controls fighters of a Russian PMC in an African country, and "Front Edge", in which the player fights with the US Army, as well as "Front Edge: ZOV. "Gostomel Bogatyrs" - the game's plot revolves around the operation of landing Russian elite units in the area of the Antonov airport in Gostomel near Kiev on the first day of a full-scale invasion: these units were supposed to ensure the landing of the main российских сил для дальнейшего наступления на Киев. И хотя российская пропаганда преподносит эту операцию как пример военного мастерства и мужества, в реальности десант обернулся полным провалом: украинские подразделения разбили огнем взлетную полосу, сделав посадку самолетов невозможной, а ВС РФ потеряли убитыми не менее 125 десантников и вынуждены были отступить.

Самым громким и дорогим проектом, профинансированным ИРИ, остается "Смута" – главный герой игры вступает в войско Минина и Пожарского, чтобы освободить Москву от польско-литовских интервентов. На создание и продвижение "Смуты" потратили миллиард рублей: как минимум половину выделил ИРИ.

Игра не понравилась ни критикам, ни игрокам: помимо прочего, создателей обвинили в шовинистической пропаганде. Поляки и немцы представлены в игре исключительно в негативном ключе (и почему-то говорят с максимально неестественным акцентом), в то же время главный герой – представитель "традиционных" ценностей, восставший на борьбу со "злом" и высмеивающий западный мир с его "девками, которые на самом деле не девки вовсе, а мужики переодетые" ( слова главного героя в разговоре с немцем).

После этого создатели выпустили несколько дополнений и полноценное продолжение игры – "Земский собор". Критики и игроки признают 1 , 2 , что создатели "старались провести работу над ошибками", но все еще находят 1 , 2 в ней множество недостатков.

"Стоит ли покупать "Земский собор"? Однозначно нет. В прошлом году Cyberia Nova выпустила "Смуту" – посредственный экшен от третьего лица. Многочисленные недочеты можно было списать на неопытность разработчиков, для которых это был первый проект подобного масштаба. Тем не менее в "Смуте" проглядывался потенциал, и реализовать его как раз можно было в сиквеле. (...) Вот только "Земским собором" Cyberia Nova ничего не реализовывает. Даже наоборот: наступает на те же самые грабли, попутно задевая новые", – считает обозреватель Николай Абатуров .

Игровой дизайнер Михаил, тем не менее, считает, что "Смута" и "Земский собор"– хороший пример работы государственного финансирования.

"Несмотря на смешанные отзывы геймеров и экспертов на старте, проект показал, что подобная модель поддержки и выпуска работает: игру доработали после релиза, а следующий проект, "Земский собор", вышел уже заметно более качественным. Дальше по этой же цепочке вышли "Сатурн" Игра о российском инженере-физике по имени Аким, которому необходимо предотвратить конец света за отведенное время. Хотя отзывы на игру смешанные ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ), такой же резкой критики, как в адрес "Смуты", в сторону "Сатурна" нет: вероятно, в том числе из-за того, что в эту игру можно поиграть бесплатно, в отличие от серии игр про Смутное время и ряд других проектов. В целом российские студии, даже инди-студии, получили возможность создавать проекты уровня АA, пусть пока не ААА", – объясняет он.

Как классифицируют игры?

А, АА и ААА – это неофициальные категории игр. А-играми можно назвать работы небольших инди-студий, АА-игры – игры от профессиональных студий с хорошими бюджетами, но без гигантских ресурсов, как у ААА-игр. Последние можно сравнить с голливудскими блокбастерами – речь не идет о качестве финального продукта или восприятии игры критиками, а, скорее, о масштабах производства: бюджете Сотни миллионов или даже миллиарды долларов – как в случае с GTA VI от студии Rockstar Games – ее бюджет оценивают в два миллиарда долларов , размере студии (сотни и тысячи человек), времени производства – на создание подобной игры уходят годы. Впрочем, четкого определения, что можно считать ААА-игрой, нет.

В качестве примеров игр, которые создавались или создаются без участия государства, Михаил приводит игру "Киберслав:Затмение", которую разрабатывает Game Art Pioneers при поддержке "Яндекса", а также игру PIONER, которая разрабатывалась студией GFA Games, но в итоге вышла эксклюзивно на площадке "Ростелекома", что разочаровало часть пользователей. Игра получила смешанные отзывы, а в 2026 году компания столкнулась с финансовыми проблемами.

Потенциально самой дорогой игрой в российском сегменте может стать Distortion от создателей "Киберслава" – они планировали потратить на ее разработку и продвижение сто миллионов долларов, что сопоставимо с некоторыми относительно крупными западными проектами.

Андрей Апанасик выделяет среди перспективных проектов российских студий игру "Война миров: Сибирь", которую разрабатывает независимая московская студия "Мгла".

Крайне позитивные отзывы в России и мире также получили психологический инди-хоррор "No I am not a human" от российской студии Trioskaz и инди-игра в аниме-стиле Miside: ее также создали российские разработчики. В открытых источниках нет информации о том, где базируются эти студии.

Российские команды, или, вернее, команды с российскими корнями, в последние годы создали сразу несколько мировых хитов: и речь не только об Atomic Heath кипрской студии российского происхождения Mundfish. Например, недавно вышла Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era – новая часть знаменитой пошаговой стратегии. Ее разработала студия Unfrozen российского происхождения со штабом на том же Кипре.

Еще одним примером удачной игры, созданной в последние годы уехавшими россиянами, можно назвать инди-игру Indika – об одержимой бесами монашке, живущей в альтернативной России конца ХIX века. Создатели игры открыто выступили против войны в Украине.

Игру Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 с миллионами продаж по всему миру разработало петербургское крыло студии Saber Interactive, но ее штаб-квартира базируется в США, а издает игру французская Focus Enertaiment, поэтому игру тоже нельзя назвать в чистом виде российской.

Что мешает российским студиям выпустить полноценный игровой блокбастер?

В 2022 году правительство РФ планировало , что российские студии выпустят к 2030 году 25 ААА-игр: согласно источникам "Коммерсанта", такой игрой российские власти считают "высококачественный проект с бюджетом от 6,5 миллиардов рублей". К середине 2026 года российские разработчики не выпустили ни одной игры с даже близкими к этому бюджетами.

Эксперты отмечают , что разработка крупных блокбастеров внутри России стала экономически нецелесообразной: внутренний рынок способен окупить лишь 25-30% затрат. К тому же сама наклейка "ААА-игра" и высокие бюджеты не гарантируют проекту успех.

Хороший пример того, что мировой успех возможен без гигантских вложений, – французская игра Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Игра с бюджетом в несколько десятков миллионов долларов стала не только коммерчески успешной – миллионы продаж и сотни миллионов долларов выручки, – но и получила высокие оценки от критиков: на главной игровой премии The Game Awards 2025 "Экспедиция 33" стала игрой года и получила рекордное количество наград.

Андрей Апанасик отмечает, что даже 10 миллионов долларов – недостижимый бюджет для большинства российских команд. Инвесторы внутри России, по его словам, не хотят давать разработчикам крупные суммы из-за высоких рисков, а международные издатели и инвесторы опасаются сотрудничать с российскими компаниями. При этом, отмечает специалист, в России есть высококлассные специалисты, которые, впрочем, все чаще уезжают из страны.

Игровой дизайнер Михаил считает, что проблема для российских разработчиков заключается не только в деньгах, хотя привлекать инвестиции действительно стало сложнее.

"Частных инвестиций почти нет, независимых фондов тоже. Не все разработчики готовы вписываться в культурную повестку, которая часто является условием для получения поддержки от государственных фондов", – продолжает он.

Не менее важной проблемой он считает отток сильных специалистов: они, по словам Михаила, либо продолжают дистанционно работать на западные компании, не оглашая этого, либо уезжают из страны, из-за чего российский рынок "омолодился": на рынке остались специалисты с небольшим опытом, которые только делают первые шаги.

"Поэтому даже если выделить большие средства – как было со "Смутой" – нужно время, чтобы команда дошла до нужного уровня качества. Из-за дефицита опытных кадров замедляются крупные проекты, а небольших по-прежнему много", – считает игровой дизайнер.

Многие специалисты, продолжает Михаил, не решаются открывать собственные студии из-за трудностей с выводом денег от продаж, регистрацией компании в России и получением грантов – само открытие компании не гарантирует финансирование от фондов.

"Это отдельная история, с которой не все умеют и хотят работать", – резюмирует собеседник.

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  Евгений Легалов

  Journalist. Выпускник факультета социальных наук Карлова университета в Праге