Facebook named Wargaming the most profitable gaming company of all time. Facebook named Wargaming the most profitable gaming company of all time Profitability of conventional tanks by level and class
Thanks to the game World of Tanks, Wargaming has turned into an international corporation with revenues of about $600 million. The transformation is not easy: the founder of Tanks, Viktor Kisly, has launched a business restructuring
Victor Kisly, founder of Wargaming (Photo: Andrey Kovalev for RBC)
“Oh God, I’m at Wargaming” - approximately 80% of the interviews conducted by the company began with these words, recalls Anastasia Blokhina, director of the department for organizing events for players in the CIS countries. The management also cherishes its commitment to the game of “tanks,” as World of Tanks is called by its fans, within the company. Upon hiring, any employee is created an account in the game and bonus points are awarded to it, and each employee in Blokhina’s department must conduct an average of eight tank battles per day and must test all upcoming updates.
Since the birth of the idea of a game about tanks in 2008, the number of Wargaming employees has grown tenfold - from less than 100 people to 4 thousand in 15 offices (at the beginning of 2016). One of the largest developers in the world, Activision Blizzard, has about 7 thousand full-time and part-time employees. busy employees in ten offices.
“I feel like a citizen of the world - on almost every continent I have an office where I can go, and I will be welcome there. This is exciting,” Wargaming founder Viktor Kisly admits in a conversation with RBC. He pronounces some phrases in English, then, as if having come to his senses, he selects the Russian equivalent. For several years now, Kisly and his family have been living in Cyprus, where Wargaming’s headquarters have been located since 2011.
In mid-April, along with 60 managers, Kisly flew to Stanford University to study a week-long course specially designed for them on leadership “in the context of innovation in a rapidly changing world.” A newly minted billionaire is trying to instill in his brainchild the habits of an effective corporation and learn how to benefit from difficulties.
First from the CIS
In 2016, Bloomberg included Kisly for the first time in its “billionaires index,” valuing Wargaming’s business at $1.5 billion. For comparison, the deal to sell the cult game Minecraft to Microsoft brought in $2.5 billion for Swedish programmer Markus Persson in 2014. Kisly is the first billionaire in the gaming industry in the CIS, says the founder of the entertainment Internet portal “Kanobu” Gadzhi Makhtiev.
Kisly himself about financial side businessman is reluctant to talk - he is not ready to “reveal all his cards to competitors.” He only says that the company’s revenue is measured in “hundreds of millions of dollars.” According to Bloomberg, Wargaming received $590 million in revenue at the end of 2015, the same amount was calculated by experts from the research company Newzoo. If Wargaming shares were traded on the stock exchange, the developer would be among the top 30 largest gaming companies, says Newzoo Marketing Director Emma MacDonald.
Wargaming will turn 18 in August, but the company made a breakthrough only in 2010 with the release of World of Tanks, an MMO game (Massively Multiplayer Online, massively multiplayer online game). Today, the number of registered tank players exceeds 110 million worldwide (40 million from the CIS), of which almost 97% are men aged about 30. For comparison: the popular South Korean shooter game Cross Fire (published in Russia by Mail.Ru Group) has about 400 million registered users. At the same time, not a single Russian game has yet reached an audience size of 110 million.
Kisly calls the player “the main boss and investor.” World of Tanks, which accounts for more than 80% of the company's revenue (based on data from Superdata Research), is monetized using a free-to-play model - the game can be downloaded for free, while the game itself has built-in payments. About a third of fans of tank battles buy a premium account for 550 rubles, or $10, per month (the company has a fixed exchange rate), which saves the player time and speeds up his development in the game. Most of the revenue comes from payments for premium access. Another third of users pay for additional options- for example, for a premium tank, that is, the tank that is maximally upgraded in terms of characteristics, you can pay from 143 to 2640 rubles.
Now World of Tanks can be played on almost any existing platform - in addition to personal computers on the PlayStation4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles (the games were made by different studios that Wargaming either bought or built from scratch) and on smartphones - the World of Tanks version Blitz. The mobile version of the game became number one in terms of revenue in Russia in 2015, McDonald calculated, without disclosing exact figures. In terms of mobile revenue, Wargaming is the third highest-grossing mobile publisher in Russia at the end of last year, she clarified.
The success of the “tanks” forced Kisly to open company offices around the world, and, in his opinion, such a large number of people “makes Wargaming a corporation.” If at the start entrepreneurs did all the accounting themselves, now Wargaming takes care of “boring things like paying taxes” highly paid specialists, says Kisly. The former chief financial officer of the company with Belarusian roots became the financial director in September 2015. Chief Operating Officer Barclays Bank Andrew Tinney. In addition, despite the difference in salaries for IT specialists in the United States and Belarus, the level of training required to create game tanks requires “significantly higher salaries” for Belarusian developers as well.
How “tanks” were created
The first Wargaming office was located in the apartment of Viktor Kisly in Minsk - he and his brother Evgeniy moved into one room, the second was freed for work. The first online game was developed by students of the Belarusian State University state university, where Kisly himself studied. It was the turn-based strategy Iron Age, the paper version of which Victor and his brother came up with in childhood.
Victor first saw a computer in the laboratory where his father worked: a simple game on a gray-green screen amazed him. “I realized that this piece of hardware is smart, it plays against me and makes me think,” recalls Kisly. Before the launch of World of Tanks, his company released the games DBA Online, Massive Assault, Operation Bagration, and Inhabited Island. In December 2008, Kisly and his associates decided to make an MMO game about tanks - there were no popular products in this niche. About a year before this moment, the company was working on an online fantasy game, which was supposed to become a competitor to the already promoted World of Warcraft - role playing game about the world of orcs and elves from Blizzard Entertainment. Since the beginning of 2009, designers and programmers began to actively work on the future World of Tanks, and in May of the same year the first video of the game was released, in which orcs fight with elves, and they are run over by a tank. A few months later, the first test of the game took place, in which friends of Wargaming employees participated. Since the spring of 2010, World of Tanks entered open beta test mode, and in August the game officially launched in Russia.
But last year, Kisly realized that a large number of people is not only the key to success, but also a problem. The company developed quickly and not always efficiently, admits the founder of Wargaming, so in 2015 management approved a restructuring plan. Joined the company in February new chapter HR department - Jerry Prochazka, former director of talent at American Riot Games, creator of the game League of Legends. As Makhtiev says, Riot Games has a “mirror approach” to hiring people compared to the one that has so far been adopted at Wargaming: the number of interviews for a candidate often exceeds a dozen, and the head of the company’s office in a new country can be searched for within 2.5 years.
Since the end of March, Wargaming has been switching to a so-called distributed development structure - employees from different regions can work on one project, and as a result, separate “pieces” of the game are created in different parts of the world. The founder of Wargaming compares the World of Tanks game to an Airbus A380, which is assembled in Toulouse, and parts for it are brought from all over the world - wires from China, seats from Italy, etc. In game development, it looks about the same: finding a video director or artist of the “right level” is easier in California, where Hollywood is nearby, than in Eastern European countries. Kisly admits that such a business reform will complicate the work process: employees will need to “become more disciplined” and management will need to look for new ways of managing. Nevertheless, Kisly is determined: given the current scale of the business, restructuring makes sense.
The company doesn't disclose how much profit it makes, but Kisly says most of it goes toward growing the business: what he calls "harsh reinvestment." In 2010, when World of Tanks took off in the market of the former Soviet Union, Wargaming almost immediately began developing two more games - World of Warplanes and World of Warships. Creating new games took an average of three to four years and required the efforts of 200-400 people, says Kisly. He does not disclose the volume of investment in these games. The CEO and founder of the Nival development company, Sergei Orlovsky, estimated the amount of expenses by the time of the launch of World of Warplanes and World of Warships at $20 million and $30 million, respectively.
The strategy of “harsh reinvestment” of such amounts does not always yield results. The game World of Warplanes, released in 2013, did not become successful project, admits Kisly. “It is natural for a person to walk on a plane or at most climb a tree, but not to fly in three-dimensional space at a speed of 400 km/h and shoot at the same time,” Kisly gives his explanation of the failure. Video blogger Pavel Sukhanov, who reviews World of Tanks on YouTube, explains the “planes” that “didn’t take off” with historical features: “If a Russian player’s grandfather fought, then most likely he was a tank driver, much less often he flew or sailed. In England or the USA, on the contrary, grandfathers flew and swam. That’s why our national mentality is about tanks, while the world’s mentality is about ships.”
The number of registered users in the game World of Warships, which was released in September 2015, reaches about 7 million - “a remarkable pace,” notes Kisly. But it’s hard for “planes” and “ships” in the shadow of their established counterpart, he continues: one game “eats” the other. The audience is so immersed in tank battles that they have virtually no time for other types of battles. But Kisly is not ready to close World of Warplanes - this will “make unhappy” a small but well-formed core of players. Global corporations are not always so sensitive to their projects: for example, Electronic Arts in July 2015 announced the closure of several games that did not receive due popularity - Battlefield Hero, Battlefield Play4Free, Need for Speed World and FIFA World.
Big sport
Over the past three years, Wargaming has spent $32 million on professional esports events.
“Did you see the last fight?” - asks Kisly. We are talking in the midst of the World of Tanks tournament - Wargaming.net League, which has been taking place for the third year in early April in Warsaw. Behind the founder of Wargaming is a huge screen, battles are broadcast on it. The businessman cannot attend all the fights due to the busy schedule of meetings, but he monitors changes in the standings.
Kisly still comes to the stadium for the last fight of the final sports complex Torwar Hall and gets lost in the crowd of 5 thousand spectators. If you don’t look at the stage where the players are sitting with headphones on at their computers, what is happening in the stadium can be mistaken for a classic football match: there is a commentator, during breaks between battles invited experts discuss the team’s tactics, the highlights of the battles are “scrolled” on the screen. The spectators - mostly men and teenagers - are wrapped in scarves with the symbols of their favorite teams, and they greet each shell hit with a loud roar. The name of the winning team - Navi - the stadium is chanting while standing: Kisly himself greeted the champion so loudly that his voice broke.
In addition to international tournaments, Wargaming organizes local events - in 2015 alone, and in Russia alone, the company held about 35 offline events (for example, in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and Yakutsk). Players go to such events with their families: while husbands are busy with tank battles, wives can do makeup, manicures or visit a hairdresser in specially equipped areas, and children can draw or play, says Blokhina. Wargaming does not disclose the budget for “local” events. Blokhina says that the company’s local tournaments are helped by organizing volunteers, which Wargaming has in every city in Russia, and some of the necessary equipment (for example, computers) migrates from region to region.
One of the largest events organized by Wargaming in 2015 was the celebration of Victory Day: the company rented the Olimpiysky Sports Complex, inviting cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the Chizh and Co. group and the general director of MTV Russia Yana Churikova as a presenter. “My motor skills and reaction speed are not very good yet,” admitted Churikova at a press conference, who, while preparing for the event, tried to play “tanks” for the first time. Wargaming tries to choose celebrities to host major events who are already familiar with the game and are able to joke about this topic. The budget for the Victory Day celebration was $300-500 thousand.
Kisly does not disclose how many Russian players Wargaming has and how much revenue they bring to the company. But the company never opened a full-fledged office in Moscow. From 2013 to 2015, about 25 people worked for Wargaming in the capital, recalls one of these employees in a conversation with RBC. First of all, they were engaged in establishing connections - with museums, government departments and private businesses. Wargaming cooperates, for example, with the Military Historical Museum of Armored Weapons and Equipment in Kubinka, and held joint events with the Ministry of Defense and Uralvagonzavod. In the modern world, everything can be done remotely, especially since Moscow is not the cheapest city, Kisly answers the question of why the company does not have an office in the capital. At the same time, Wargaming has a Lesta studio in St. Petersburg, which develops World of Warships, and full-fledged divisions of the company are open in Tokyo, Chicago, Paris and other large and not the cheapest cities in the world.
Wargaming does not disclose the total budget for promotion. Kisly only clarifies that this expense item is one of the three largest for the company. Now the businessman is betting on mobile version"tanks" and is going to actively advertise it. “Wargaming’s global competitors spend several million dollars a day on advertising purchases and literally scoop up all the users,” says Kislyi. “So even if the game is very good, this is not enough, you need to have comparable budgets.” In the USA, for example, for several years now, mobile game developers have been advertising during breaks between matches of the American football Super Bowl final, that is, at the most “delicious” advertising time, and the videos they produce are worthy international festival“Cannes Lions,” Kisly says with delight. “We haven’t fully deployed yet, we’re getting ready,” promises the founder of Wargaming, without going into details.
Active investments from a gaming company with Belarusian roots will soon really be needed: competitors are not ready to put up with the total dominance of “tanks”.
Fight for the player
“Tanks” greatly expanded the gamer market - those who had not previously sat down at a computer for this purpose began to play, Makhtiev explains the merit of Wargaming.
Kisly's company was the first to make a popular game about tanks: even six years later, competitors have not given up hope of conquering this niche. In September 2015, a game about tanks, Armored Warfare: Project Armata, was launched by the Mail.Ru Group corporation, whose annual revenue from multiplayer games reaches almost 9 billion rubles. Mail.Ru Group made a project about modern tanks, where one of the main “heroes” was the T-14 “Armata” - newest tank, who first appeared in public at the Victory Parade on Red Square in Moscow only in 2015. The holding had to coordinate the mention of “Armata” in the title of the game with the Ministry of Defense and the tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod.
Mail.Ru Group Operations Director Vladimir Nikolsky classifies games about tanks as slow shooters. “There are many people who want to play, but cannot quickly press the buttons, as required, for example, by Counter Strike - and it was for them that the World of Tanks game was released, and Armored Warfare: Project Armata continued this series ", explains Nikolsky.
“The entertainment market is structured in such a way that every year new products appear on it, the purpose of which is to entertain and surprise users,” Nikolsky answers a question about competition in the market. In the “Armata Project,” tanks drive faster and more dynamically, prices for in-game purchases are lower by about 20%, and Mail.Ru Group lists the advantages of the new project. Nikolsky refused to name the exact share of players that the company plans to pull from Wargaming’s tanks. A high-quality clone of the game that entered the market within short term after the original, has a chance to drag 10% of the audience of the main project, Orlovsky believes.
More than 5 million players are registered in Armored Warfare, and building an audience is now more important for the company than monetization, Mail.Ru Group CEO Dmitry Grishin is quoted as saying in the holding’s latest reporting. Russian company has already launched a massive advertising attack: in one of the issues of the Kommersant newspaper, an entire page was occupied by the slogan Make Love Not WoT. The company translated it as “Make love, not love.” WoT is the usual abbreviated name for World of Tanks, but Mail.Ru Group insists: we are talking about the stable expression Waste of Time (“Wasting time”). And a little later, Mail.Ru Group launched a promotion under which existing World of Tanks players, when registering in Armata, receive game bonuses and have the opportunity to “fight on any sixth-level vehicle.”
Kisly perceives Mail.Ru Group’s bites without much emotion: “When you’ve done something right, people will definitely start copying you.” TO possible loss part of the audience and the businessman is psychologically prepared for wrong steps. In October 2015, Wargaming announced a major update (patch) “Rubicon”, in which a number of improvements were planned - tanks had to learn to roll over, acquire a new sound palette, etc. The company was preparing for the launch for several months, but a month later on the Wargaming website Kisly’s appeal appeared, in which he apologized to the players “for unjustified expectations.” The new update did not change the game as users expected, so the players reacted extremely sharply, recalls Sukhanov.
But in last years Sour seems to have learned to turn problems to his advantage.
Fragment Games World of Tanks
Foreign markets
In 2013, Wargaming became a shareholder in the Cypriot bank Hellenic, along with two other major investors. Wargaming and the American investment fund Third Point each received 30% of the shares, paying €40 million each, the Cypriot investment fund Demetra Investment received 15% for €20 million. At the end of 2014, the game developer and Third Point spent another €45 million each on a 20% buyout. additional issue of Hellenic shares.
Circumstances forced Wargaming to become a shareholder of the bank: a financial crisis broke out in Cyprus, the bank froze depositors’ money, and the gaming company was among them (it did not disclose the amount of stranded funds). Today, Kisly calls the acquisition of Hellenic “a good financial investment.” Cyprus has shown extreme discipline in the political arena, he continues: all the demands of the “troika” - the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund - were met, and a few months ago representatives of these organizations left the island.
“Now we as a country look confidently into the future,” Kisly says enthusiastically, by “we” he means the Cypriots.
Kisly decided to take World of Tanks outside the CIS even before the official launch of the game. In 2010, he packed sets of brochures about “tanks” into a suitcase and went to Shanghai. The laws in China are strict: any developer must work through a local publisher, and the game itself almost inevitably has to make changes. For example, instead of the Soviet flag, the Chinese version of World of Tanks uses a visually similar one.
To work in China, Wargaming in 2011 agreed with one of the largest Chinese developers, the publisher of computer and mobile games KongZhong. When Kisly first came to see the head of KongZhong, Leilei Wang, he saw that his entire office was filled with model tanks: the Chinese businessman’s father was a military man, and he himself turned out to be a big history buff. Wargaming actively promoted its game in China - the company held press conferences in tank museums, and Kisly himself sang “The Internationale” in Russian at one of the events. In 2012, the parties entered into an agreement: KongZhong received the right to be the first to release future games of the developer, and Wargaming received an option to purchase shares of the Chinese company (5 million American depositary receipts at a price of $5.94 each).
Wargaming currently owns approximately 10% of KongZhong. “It is believed that we are now brothers for a century: instead of quarrels, it is more profitable to cooperate, and to settle controversial issues that always arise between the publisher and the developer,” he added. Chinese market is one of the three largest for Wargaming after the CIS (now it brings in about half of the revenue due to the fall in the ruble exchange rate) and Europe, where the Germans and Poles show the greatest interest in World of Tanks. Kisly does not disclose more precise data.
Over the past five years, “tanks” have also appeared in South Korea, the USA, Japan, Europe and Southeast Asia. Global expansion is not only initially included in Wargaming’s development strategy, but also helps to stand firmly on its feet in times of crisis, says Kislyi. At Wargaming's competitor, Gaijin Entertainment, developer of the War Thunder flight simulator, the share of revenue from Russia in dollar terms decreased in total volume from 30-35% in 2014 to 10-15% in 2015, company founder Anton Yudintsev told RBC. In rubles, Gaijin Entertainment's income in Russia continues to grow, as does revenue in general: by the end of 2015, by about 20%, he noted, without giving exact figures. Because of the crisis, the company decided to focus on promoting the game outside of Russia - Western markets bring in more income, says Yudintsev. Gaijin Entertainment generates most of its revenue from the US and Europe.
Presence in different markets forces Wargaming to adapt to the tastes of local players and working with them is perhaps a key part of the company's activities, admits Kisly. “Americans like to play more relaxed, having fun rather than being tense and competitive. Russian-speaking players, on the contrary, are competitive: they need to get to the tank as quickly as possible and go into battle,” says Kisly.
When Wargaming opened an office in Tokyo in 2012, its employees got a cat and named him Hellcat - after the anti-tank self-propelled gun that is also in the game. The cat has been sewn special clothes and created an account on social networks to “communicate” with local players. And for Chinese players who easily part with money in World of Tanks, Wargaming, at the request of its partners, has developed an exclusive “golden” tank with a record price of $400. This caused outrage among Russian-speaking players, and Wargaming representatives had to explain the difference in mentality. In Chinese games, for example, you can buy the right to “kick” players from your team in order to demonstrate your wealth.
Unreal tanks
A little more than 40% of the tanks in World of Tanks existed in reality, historian and Wargaming developer Pyotr Bityukov told RBC. Another 30% are prototypes, about 20% were created only on paper. About 5% of the cars are completely fictitious. It was originally planned that the equipment in the game would be no older than the 50s of the 20th century, but due to a lack of prototypes, the deadline was moved to 1965. But even so, there were not enough machines to arm all the “nations.”
Developers can take a real car as a basis, but modify it, continues Bityukov. This happened with a group of German self-propelled guns, only half of which existed in reality, and the other half only on paper. One of the settings had to be invented. “This anti-tank self-propelled gun broke the balance of the game so much that it had to be redone several times, and players still remind us that we introduced a miracle Yudo into the game that no one designed,” Bityukov laments. Recently, in the German archives of Wargaming, we managed to find a project for a installation with which it would be possible to replace the invented machine, and in the near future it will appear in the game.
As the geography expanded, the composition of top management also changed. If at first there were Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians in the leadership, now only four leaders of Wargaming, including Kisly, speak Russian, among the rest are Americans, a Briton, a Greek Cypriot, a Frenchman, a Korean and a Finn. Kisly calls this core “analogous to a board of directors.” The businessman himself has not been involved in operational management for several years, but not a single strategic decision is made without his participation. One of Kislyi’s personal initiatives is the relaunch of the space strategy Master of Orion, the rights to which Wargaming acquired in 2013 and on which it is working together with a large Argentine studio NGD Studios.
Just like Apple Corporation, which has been trying to find a new revolutionary product for several years, Wargaming is also looking. The company has “a significant number of ideas” in various stages of development, says Kisly, but whether there is a main and breakthrough “secret project” among them is not admitted. This is what they do in corporations, although the businessman himself prefers to refer to the laws of show business - before making an announcement, he must make sure that new idea"will light up." After all, Kisly has no right to disappoint the players.
Facebook management drew attention to the successes of Wargaming. Julien Codornou, Facebook's EMEA director for platform partnership development, called the World of Tanks developer "the most profitable gaming company of all time." "About business." studied the latest business estimates for Wargaming.
In an interview with Business Insider, Codorho praised the quality of IT products being developed in Eastern Europe: “Look at Wargaming, the most profitable gaming company of all time, based in Minsk. You may not have expected this."
According to Codorniu, in the near future new IT companies with billion-dollar turnover will appear in Eastern Europe and Israel.
Wargaming has stopped publishing its financial reports. There is still no report for 2013 on the website of the Cyprus Stock Exchange, where the company’s securities were traded.
According to expert estimates, Wargaming will reach a turnover of $0.5 billion+ by the end of this year.
Actual and forecast revenue figures for World of Tanks, $ million
Source: SuperData, data for 2013 and subsequent years - estimates
Latest SuperData ( consulting company, which specializes in market research digital technologies and games) show that World of Tanks (an MMOG game, the main product of Wargaming) is included in the list of the most profitable in the world.
Top 5 MMOG games that brought in the most revenue in January-September 2014, $ million
According to SuperData Newzoo (another reputable consulting company that analyzes the gaming market) in its October ranking awarded the version of World of Tanks, developed for personal computers, 2nd place in popularity. Compared to September, the “tanks” moved up one place.
Top 5 PC games by number of unique sessions in the US and Europe, October 2014
Data on current profit the Wargaming company and the profitability of the World of Tanks game are not available in open sources. Perhaps Facebook management has insider information.
I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg will call Viktor Kisly? Or have you already called?
Here are comparative tables of tank profitability by level.
This statistical information is presented for informational purposes only and represents average indicators (hospital average). When collecting statistics, the influence of a premium account, bonuses, or completing tasks was not taken into account.
Profitability of conventional tanks by tiers and classes
Judging by the data in this table, you can earn money on regular, non-premium tanks up to level 6 inclusive. At level 7, at best you will end up with 0, and already at level 8 you can expect losses.
The most profitable are levels 5 and 6. The most profitable classes of equipment are artefacts of levels 4, 5 and 6 (about 5-6k per battle). In second place are TT, ST and PT of level 5 with an indicator of 4-5 thousand silver per battle.
Profitability of premium tanks
The following picture is visible here. The most profitable are level 8 PTs, which are capable of giving out more than 20k per battle. In second place are TTs of the same level 8 and 16k per battle. Third place for ST level 8 and 14k for the battle.
After level 8, the most profitable premium tanks are representatives of levels 6 and 7.
Profitability by level (premiums versus regular ones)
The undisputed leader in this comparison are premiums: levels 8, 7 and 6. In first place is level 8 and 16,000 silver per battle, followed by 6 and 7 with an indicator of 10 thousand.
Summarizing
The most profitable tanks are level 8 premiums. If you take ordinary tanks, then to farm you need to roll out equipment up to level 6 inclusive, since beyond that there is a high probability of going into the red. The most uniform earnings across classes occur at level 5. The most profitable tanks are level 5 and 6 artefacts.
The financial indicators of Wargaming speak more eloquently than any words that every person retains a piece of a child somewhere in the depths of their soul. In this case we're talking about about the secret (and for some, not hidden) desire of almost every man, regardless of age, to play . The widespread desire to plunge into the world of carefree childhood with the help of interactive battles brought the developers of the online game World of Tanks just over $500 million in 2014. If we calculate the company's profit at the current exchange rate of the national currency, then the profit amounted to 31.1 billion rubles.
ON THIS TOPIC
According to data provided by Sam Barberi, a representative of the analytical company SuperData Research, in 2013 the company earned $457 million. Thus, Wargaming's revenue for the year increased by 5.26%.
In April 2014, the company's researchers made a forecast for the company's revenue, RBC reports. According to experts, in 2014 the World of Tanks game was supposed to earn $506 million. In 2015, according to their estimates, profits will increase further, and by a noticeable amount - up to $590 million.
Wargaming shares have been traded on the Cyprus Stock Exchange (CSE) since November 2011, but due to late publication financial results were withdrawn from trading on January 13, 2015. A company representative noted that the scale of the Cyprus exchange is not enough to adequately assess economic condition company, and further staying there does not correspond to the strategic vector of the company.
The company receives its main income from computer game World of Tanks, in which players can purchase equipment, shells and other virtual equipment for real money. After its appearance in 2010, the game quickly gained popularity - in 2014, according to Wargaming, the number of users exceeded 100 million.
The two largest Russian Internet companies are Yandex and Mail.Ru. In 2014 they earned 50.8 billion and 35.77 billion rubles respectively. Thus, Wargaming, whose revenue is estimated at 31.1 billion rubles, can be considered the third largest company in the post-Soviet space.
The prospects for the gaming market in Russia are evidenced by the fact that games are considered one of the priority areas of development for Mail.Ru. Revenue from them accounts for 22% of the company's turnover. The entire interactive entertainment market in the country grew by 13.3% over the year to $1.14 billion.
At the end of the past year, everything turned out perfectly for Wargaming. It continues to develop by leaps and bounds, actively supports its games, makes new ones, introduces new “chips” into online and offline e-sports, and also helps the development of third-party studios and external projects. And at a special event dedicated to summing up the results of 2016, company representatives shared with us the latest information, noting the following in numbers.
The World of Tanks game has reached 110,000,000 registrations over the 6 years of its existence. During the same period, it received more than 60 updates (there were 4 major ones in 2016 alone), and the graphics engine was optimized so much that it allowed for a 30% increase in FPS. There are currently 8 nations and more than 450 tanks in the game. The last nation introduced was the Swedes with two branches of development. As for the plans for 2017, they can be described in a few words: balance, artillery, maps, a new graphics engine and new unique mechanics for existing high-level tanks.
The game World of Warships entered the top 10 online games in the CIS. In its two years of existence, WoW has more than 8 million players worldwide. Some time ago, the development team decided to release updates every three weeks, and in 2016 alone, ships received 16 major updates. In 2017, all fans of the game can expect new scenarios and campaigns, as well as announcements of new vehicle branches.
World of Tanks Blitz has interesting indicators. In 2 years, the game has more than 60,000,000 registrations in the world, which is almost half as much as its big brother, but for an initially mobile game the figures are impressive. Also, players are offered only 1 account to play on the platforms iOS, Android, MacOS, Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10. Over the past year, World of Tanks Blitz has been updated 12 times. In 2016, the first Blitz tournament was held - Blitz Twister Cup, which brought together more than 6,000 teams and 45,000 players. One of the priority tasks for 2017 for the Wargaming esports division is the development of mobile esports.
Continuing the conversation about eSports, we will share the following figures:
- In the “Golden Series” of the Ru-cluster, two world champions play at once.
- $325,000 is exactly the amount of compensation for teams in each region, depending on their position in the rating table.
- 2 million people watched the Grand Final WGK 2016 online, and the broadcast itself lasted 80 minutes.
As for Ukraine in 2016, Wargaming has something to boast about:
- If at December 2015 there were 6.8 million registrations in tanks, then at the end of 2016 there were already 8.01 million.
- The prize fund of the first national amateur World of Tanks tournament “main caliber” amounted to 280,000 hryvnia.
- Together with Samsung, Wargaming held the first official offline competitions for World of Tanks Blitz: “WoT Blitz: Brotherhood of Battle.”
And, as Wargaming promises us, many more surprises await all fans of their games in 2017!
