Wargaming announces decision to leave Russia and Belarus

[Haswell 2,399]

https://wargaming.com/en/news/business-operations-worldwide/

Quote

 

Over the past weeks, Wargaming has been conducting a strategic review of business operations worldwide. The company has decided it will not own or operate any businesses in Russia and Belarus and will leave both countries.

Effective March 31 the company transferred its live games business in Russia and Belarus to local management of Lesta Studio that is no longer affiliated with Wargaming. The company will not profit from this process either today or going forward. Much to the contrary we expect to suffer substantial losses as a direct result of this decision.

We will be completing the operational transition with all due speed while remaining in full compliance with all laws and ensuring the ongoing safety and support of our employees. During the transition period the live products will remain available in Russia and Belarus and will be operated by the new owner.

Wargaming has also started the process of closing its studio in Minsk, Belarus.

We will be providing as much severance and support as possible to our employees affected by the change.

Despite the magnitude of this decision, we as a company are confident in the future of our business and are committed to delivering quality games to our players.

Figured this is important enough for me to post here.

[Balthazars 210]

Wow, okay that's certainly interesting. I guess they see that it's better to take the pain of moving its operations out of Russia and Belarus (the Minsk studio is still its biggest, isn't it?) now than risk getting sucked into an even bigger storm in future. From that perspective it makes sense, but will be interesting to see how it affects development/maintenance of its games if the Minsk studio really does still contain a large part of its work-force.

On a less serious note: will this also mean the end of Russian bias in WoT, if WG no longer has ties to Russia?

[kolni 69,670,872]

Guess WG will look to be hiring personnel or step on the brakes for development coming forward for a while. To be honest I think the game has been on an upward trend since the EBR bullshit where, short of some maps, most of the changes and additions have been positive. 

There's also the possibility that WG thinks they can keep their workforce as almost the entire worlds game devs have learned how to work remotely now, and with the main offices just being a PR thing outwards which is necessary. I understand the importance of sticking to your guns when it comes to ideals but not keeping the majority of the workforce will mean a drastic change in direction (as mentioned). 

Where's a likely place they'll end up? The US is probably the best place to gather a large amount of tech-savvy people very quickly but it's also a region where their playerbase barely exists anymore and it's expensive to set up this big of a corporation quickly enough for this transition to be feasible. 

Poland is my probably my best bet. Huge playerbase and an okay infrastructure (last time I checked the quality of PL has been one of the most improved countries in Europe over 10 years) and it's reasonably cheap to set up there. It's got historic ties to the game and I think it would be an overall positive reception. They do have offices and stuff on Cyprus but only for tax reasons, doesn't make very much sense as it'd be hard to assemble a work force there without lots of remote work and relocations. 

 

I wouldn't mind the game staying as it is for a while as the spot it's in isn't as bad as 2018, while it's not 2014 good there's still enough to do to keep the players playing with minimal effort from moving the game forward for a while. A very long frontline campaign (stage 100 instead of 30) and a new personal mission grind and you should be set for the next year in its entirety for premium buyers to keep a revenue stream, while I suspect the prem tanks are the ones that'll take a hit where you can simply enable grinds or flat out purchase options for the strong tier 8s to keep that going. Less revenue from the hardcore players but should still siphen some cash from the casuals. 

[Balthazars 210]

13 minutes ago, kolni said:

Guess WG will look to be hiring personnel or step on the brakes for development coming forward for a while. To be honest I think the game has been on an upward trend since the EBR bullshit where, short of some maps, most of the changes and additions have been positive. 

There's also the possibility that WG thinks they can keep their workforce as almost the entire worlds game devs have learned how to work remotely now, and with the main offices just being a PR thing outwards which is necessary. I understand the importance of sticking to your guns when it comes to ideals but not keeping the majority of the workforce will mean a drastic change in direction (as mentioned). 

Where's a likely place they'll end up? The US is probably the best place to gather a large amount of tech-savvy people very quickly but it's also a region where their playerbase barely exists anymore and it's expensive to set up this big of a corporation quickly enough for this transition to be feasible. 

Poland is my probably my best bet. Huge playerbase and an okay infrastructure (last time I checked the quality of PL has been one of the most improved countries in Europe over 10 years) and it's reasonably cheap to set up there. It's got historic ties to the game and I think it would be an overall positive reception. They do have offices and stuff on Cyprus but only for tax reasons, doesn't make very much sense as it'd be hard to assemble a work force there without lots of remote work and relocations. 

 

I wouldn't mind the game staying as it is for a while as the spot it's in isn't as bad as 2018, while it's not 2014 good there's still enough to do to keep the players playing with minimal effort from moving the game forward for a while. A very long frontline campaign (stage 100 instead of 30) and a new personal mission grind and you should be set for the next year in its entirety for premium buyers to keep a revenue stream, while I suspect the prem tanks are the ones that'll take a hit where you can simply enable grinds or flat out purchase options for the strong tier 8s to keep that going. Less revenue from the hardcore players but should still siphen some cash from the casuals. 

It seems they may be letting quite a few people go, otherwise I don't think they would explicitly mention severance and support for as many of their employees as possible.

Their Cyprus office is just the corporate HQ and is entirely for tax purposes, so there's no way they're going to be setting up new teams/offices there. I agree they will almost certainly look to stay primarily in Europe as that's where the majority of their player base is. I think they have offices in the UK, Germany and somewhere else in Europe from memory, but I agree that Poland would be a good shout for them to try and set up shop, as the country also has a reasonably active game development industry.

I also agree that WoT game is in an okay place right now so a 'maintenance mode' shouldn't be too bad. That said, there hasn't been a huge amount of new content for some time already, and their last attempted major new feature (Crew 2.0) got torpedoed due to being horrible in design and facing huge player back-lash, and the most recent new tank line doesn't appear to have been too spectacularly popular. WG may be wary about having WoT in particular be on standby for too long as a result, which kind of makes me worried if they do shed a lot of their workforce as part of this move. Anyway, time will tell I suppose.

[Assassin7 4,353]

I think they'll move their head offices to the EU somewhere. Maybe even make the paris office the new primary one, since expanding an already established office to me makes more sense than setting up a new one.

 

[Devo 50]

On 4/5/2022 at 6:43 AM, kolni said:

Where's a likely place they'll end up? The US is probably the best place to gather a large amount of tech-savvy people very quickly but it's also a region where their playerbase barely exists anymore and it's expensive to set up this big of a corporation quickly enough for this transition to be feasible. 

Poland is my probably my best bet. Huge playerbase and an okay infrastructure (last time I checked the quality of PL has been one of the most improved countries in Europe over 10 years) and it's reasonably cheap to set up there. It's got historic ties to the game and I think it would be an overall positive reception. They do have offices and stuff on Cyprus but only for tax reasons, doesn't make very much sense as it'd be hard to assemble a work force there without lots of remote work and relocations. 

They have offices in Chicago and Baltimore (Hunt Valley), Maryland for the console games.  It wouldn't be a stretch to expand those areas.

As an aside, Firaxis Games, the publishers of the Sid Meier games is located in the Hunt Valley area also, which is just north of Baltimore proper.