The Russian game market more than doubled in the past five years to more than $2 billion in 2019, online payment system Yandex.Checkout has said in a report, according to Venture Beat.
Historically dominated by free-to-play PC games, Russia’s market is shifting more toward mobile games in the past year, says the report by Yandex.Checkout, a joint venture of internet firm Yandex and Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank.
The revenue hit the $2 billion mark in 2019, adding more than 15% growth in comparison with 2018. The top-earning segment was free-to-play PC games at 47%, or $940 million, up 4% from a year earlier.
The mobile segment was the fastest growing in 2019 at $700 million, or 34% of the total market and growing 29% from 2018. Consoles also saw a significant growth of 19% to $240 million, which indicates a shift in customers’ preferences.
Yandex.Checkout is a joint venture of search engine Yandex and Russian bank Sberbank.
From 2014 to 2018, the overall revenues grew by 20%-to-25% each year. Yandex.Checkout said that the market has become more sophisticated and now will correspond with the global growth pace.
The top companies in the Russian market — as measured by revenues, number of transactions and number of customers — were Valve (via Steam), Wargaming, Mail.ru projects (Russian IT-giant game division), Sony, 4game (Russian game store), Origin.com, and Riot Games. China’s Tencent Games has also started gaining an audience in Russia.
Top titles by revenue are World of Tanks, Fortnite, Call of Duty: Black Opps IV, League of Legends, Dota2, FIFA 19, and Honour of Kings, the report says.
