MY.GAMES’


RETREAT FROM MOSCOW


Richie Shoemaker questions MY.GAMES’ CEO Vladimir Nikolsky about cutting ties with Russia and the future beyond its borders


I


MY.GAMES CEO and co- founder Vladimir Nikolsky


n the immediacy of the invasion of Ukraine there seemed to be an expunging of the R-word word from certain wikis


and company websites, while headquarters proudly ascribed to Moscow and St. Petersburg were quietly relocated to Cyprus with just a few stealthy edits. It caused some of the industry’s more cynical observers to assume Russian-aligned studios and publishers were – understandably – attempting to avoid association with the machinations of the Motherland while they figured out a long-term plan to deal with a collective identity crisis. For the Russian publisher MY.GAMES


things were simultaneously easier and more difficult. Easier because even before its founding (when it was known as My.Com) it had long been established in Amsterdam and had already begun the process of breaking


36 | MCV/DEVELOP June 2023


away from its parent organisation to afford it a more global outlook. More difficult because that parent was Mail.ru, the tech company behind social media giant VK, which just a few months before the invasion had effectively been put under state supervision when a controlling stake was bought by “Putin’s banker” Sergei Pugachev. Reportedly to avoid sanction, last year VK (nee Mail.ru) sold MY.GAMES for $642 million to entrepreneur Aleksander Chachava, who for years had set himself up as an investor in outward-looking Russian tech startups. Then, a few weeks later in December, the plan was announced that MY.GAMES was to sever all links with Russia: While a new company, Astrum Entainment, would take over Russian interests, MY.GAMES would be free to focus “solely on international business development”.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76