Everything You Didn't Know About Playrix with Maxim Kirilenko, CBDO at Playrix

maxim kirilenko chief business development officer at playwrx welcome to the podcast hi michael uh very good to be here thanks for invitation it's really great to have actually it's really really great to have playwrights on the podcast because playwrights is a company that everybody knows but especially people in the western games market don't know much about so i'm really happy to have you on to kind of open up the the unveiled the iron curtain uh in front of in front of playmakes yeah actually that's great i remember uh article uh i guess uh at poker gamer uh website uh that clerics became uh number two as a silent giant from uh eastern europe yeah and it's true we don't have a lot of uh podcasts we don't have a lot of uh news about lyrics uh only like uh on gaming uh portals

yeah yeah but yeah now we're gonna we're gonna unveil all the secrets all the secrets on this podcast so actually in in 2016 there was a venture beat article 2006 that's a long time ago uh it said playwrx hasn't become europe's quiet giant in mobile gaming and at that point already in 2016 you were the number two game publisher in europe in europe yeah definitely yeah and you had then already you had township fish dump and gardenscape and fast forward what five to six years you you've grown significantly uh if if i just go through the pivotal moments before before giving you a chance to to talk about where players is right now is uh when i look at the pivotal moments like the fish dome was essentially coming out of nowhere brought in a new twist to match three games then you had a gardenscapes which kind of took the fish dome a step further added a more narrative to it became absolutely monstrous hit then homescapes essentially same type of a

game now you had two games just gigantic and then what was very interesting that what we're going to talk about today in the podcast as well is you had this uh user acquisition war with apple islands firecraft studios uh should say competition competition fair competition yeah well let's put it this way it for sure increased cpi's across the market it was i remember even glue posting uh official um i think it was like some kind of earnings warnings because they they couldn't scale up their game as as firecraft and homescapes and and and garden escapes were were having this little competition and um and and as as the competition kind of weaned out uh i feel like your marketing really picked up during this competition phase with with firecraft studios because it was followed by the growth of township and fishdom which were sort of like almost like legacy titles for you they grew to become massive hits and then

uh it kind of like it has been just a string of acquisitions in central and eastern europe so this is i think most of the people understand of play wrecks but could you talk about you know playwrx current situation market share anything uh about about uh about clerics yeah let's start with current situation now we assume that we are number two in terms of global grossing uh behind ten cent but of course our goal to be number one and this goal was the goal of power funders then when they found that company uh in 2004 uh and the thing about let's say think about clerics is that players success is not uh random uh we have uh a strong history behind history of game development because as i already mentioned company founded it was founded uh in 2004 uh as a startup at that time of two brothers uh who started to develop uh

screensavers who started to develop minigames uh in a small city in russia and then this business uh after six 17 years uh grew at the scale of like global company which uh suppressed in terms of uh revenue giants uh like king and supercell yeah so it's it's interesting i remember back in the days when i was starting my my career in gaming uh i was working on a platform called google plus i think you remember that at one point yeah and that's where township launched that's that that was the the first place where where it launched and and that's where where i played my first uh play wrecks game so yeah it was a while ago yeah i'm definitely dating myself uh with with that comment but i i should i should add here that actually for example as for fish them and gardenscapes uh

here also like successes are not random because uh like originally a player started um game development way uh developing pc games and if you will uh type a search query like player xpc games you will be surprised how many pc games playrix developed from 2004 until the first uh release of a mobile game and the thing is that fishdam for example was our pc game in the past and there was uh several fishdam games which are which were successful on pc and then players started to think about uh mobile as a platform growth platform for a company and switched actually or port fish them uh into mobile world and it was like a foundation very good foundation for our success if we're talking about garden escapes and

homescapes gardenscapes originally on pc it was hidden object game mixed with meta gameplay with the same decoration and storyline gameplay and the austin was was there like 10 years ago in this case yeah and because of that our team just uh decided to rethink uh what is more convenient uh gameplay for customers on mobile and then decided okay metric probably is much better uh and much more convenient that time so so here's an interesting part so you take you talk about um going on a platform that is growing and you also talk about changing a core gameplay to something that resonates better in the market this kind of gives an indication that playrix is very data informed company would that be correct yeah that's uh that's correct uh we're trying to be data informed we're trying to uh to collect data and also to

to work with data to find interesting theories or assumptions which can lead us to an innovative things uh in our games not only in game development not only in game design but also like in user acquisition uh activity a marketing activity and different other uh fields of business and of course uh like clerics uh started from pc uh games uh accumulated uh tons of knowledge about uh mixing of uh different gameplays and uh yeah but at the same time i should say that as far as i remember gardenscapes uh development time was not usual for mobile again gardenscapes uh was in development for two and a half years and actually our team were trying like

different mixes not only like matrimix with uh meta gameplay uh but uh like different other hidden object was actually first one so we started with a hidden object then we uh really soft launched tested a few versions of hidden object uh found out that okay hidden object degener is quite niche uh for mobile yeah uh compared to of course match regenerator and then we decided uh almost before the release of gardner's case we decided to change core gameplay and then we started development from scratch so um interesting thing i have two questions there so um can you talk a little bit about your development process because what i'm hearing is it's very market driven it's open for pivot uh so i'm curious just to hear

how quickly you push games to soft launch like to you is is is the goal of the game development to move as fast as possible to get to the soft launch and then start pivoting and and and thinking what works or are you more of the sort of a thing where you know this is where we want to be we're going to build a very big product and then take it to the market and figure where it's going to work like which which one or is it a combination of both i think that we have combination of both ways but i should say we close to the second option here so usually when we uh we're trying to decide about developing a new game uh we usually start with a very detailed let's say game design document and we are trying on the paper understand uh future of this game and only when we have let's say all details uh what we are going to do um

what content we are going to provide uh for this game and for specific uh gameplay uh we actually start to develop this game and actually it could take like one year it could take one and a half years to develop a game and then soft launch game so it's not uh and like number of iterations and then soft launch and then pivot and then uh new cycle but this is uh very well prepared and detailed uh game development process and after that we usually soft launch game and then decide how to adjust so good example here actually uh manor matters which is our hidden object mixed with storyline and decoration which we released two years ago and they think about manner matters i know that like not so many companies they really would like to discuss and share

how they fail in the beginning and then uh achieve success but the thing is uh with minor matters is that we released our game uh life and globally with apple and google and we started to see that let's say real uh metrics and real time or life metrics uh are not the same as uh we uh achieved during like soft lunch and we started to think about okay so these metrics are good but not enough to scale this game up in terms of marketing uh budgets and in terms of driving this game to the top and for player x it took like half a year to understand what to do and how to adjust uh and we released one more version actually we released updated version a released update of matter matters and from this update we started to scale up all marketing activities and you can see

using up any growth of minor measures and now many matrix is one of the top hidden object in the market and uh it's still in development our team is developing new storyline curves and new uh liveops events and uh started to work uh on this game from different angles this is a very good story how we develop games that's interesting so super detailed design document that allows you to invest big into development and because you have a big investment into the development cost of the game that probably leads to pretty big perseverance when you're in the market because we've seen that with wildscapes and and puzzle battle or kind of puzzle breakers level breakers it was for a significant amount of time that you tried multiple different ways to make it work and and i bet that if the development is quick to market then it's quick to fail

also where you're like well we didn't invest into that that much we can try a new game but it seems like you very much invest into building something big because you believe it through the design document and through that that leads for you to have a lot of perseverance in the market yeah that's true that's true and uh we 100 agree uh with this and the thing is that they're good that you mentioned well escapes uh for example while escapes uh i mean landscapes it's a great game and you if you'll check revenue of this game and this is pure let's say organic revenue in this case it is a very good game for a medium-sized company a small company and all metrics of this game is enough for uh for this company but for us uh because we would like to provide like triple a uh title globally for a lot of customers and uh make these customers happy playing our game longer

term for us all these metrics are not enough not only from business standpoint but also from joy's standpoint because at the end of the day our goal is to bring joy to our customers and we're seeing that we're seeing millions of customers of gardenscapes and homescapes and township and fish them who are playing our games like several years in a row without any [Music] thing to stop mm-hmm since you brought in wildscapes how do you test marketability because my perception would be that with a game around a zoo theme that you know it might have been fun in 1990s but in 2020 it's it's almost perceived like uh like a a prison for animals like like uh where those type of thing like i don't even know if that's the case it's just my perception and definitely i was not bullish when that game came out i

saw that you know the gameplay was fantastic the uh the art style was much better than in the previous iterations the animals were cute the guys were you know the guys and gals everything looked pretty but i was still like well you're still putting animals into k into into cages so was was that a sort of a like uh a break for for how much the game could scale i think not because the attendance they are team tried to provide better place for all uh these animals yeah sanctuary yeah not not prison but some kind of like resort yeah and we think that in this game there are a lot of tasks uh trying to uh trying to build not only um how can i say infrastructure for people and for comfort of people but also infrastructure for animals and because of that actually

like together with our store partners we discussed and confirmed that okay this game is fine with all ethics uh things and we can uh we can move forward in this case and we can scale up this game and actually we discussed uh like several times with this organization wild nature fund so we uh we had several times conversation about some kind of like collaborations uh not only uh in our uh let's say top title says gardenscapes and homescapes but at the same time in wellscapes and how to protect animals what to do around these so this kind of like social and epic things which can help to scale up this activity globally and we are still thinking about how to participate in this kind of like collaborations with different kind of organizations uh especially a good example uh world health organization

because during pandemic time right in the middle of pandemic last year we released an event together with the world health organization it was yoga season in garden skates where everyone uh all our our players received a letter from world health organization with a brief instructions what they should do in terms of their health at home why exercise is important why you're very important and all this kind of stuff and uh actually austin he was some kind of like a teacher and lead leader of this uh [Music] union how to stay healthy at home yeah it was great a great event for both uh for world health organization in terms of global reach and for us it was great because uh we received a lot of different positive feedback about this that's good to hear and it's it's good

to hear that the games have impact but i wanted to so so we talked about wildscapes and we had a chat just before we started recording and i believe like i haven't seen this ad but but i believe you said in wildscapes there was an ad of pink penguin hunting and i'm not going to talk about that ad specifically i'm going to talk about play rick's marketing strategy because it's been it's been when the competition as you say or as everybody said the war between firecraft studios and then the playwrights occurred it seemed to have taken playerx's marketing capabilities to a whole new level now can can you a little bit talk about that because uh you know players also the king of misleading ads as we know there's multiple different games where you pull levers by the way i i should rephrase that the king of creative ads yeah king of creative ads but but you know this is a this is a podcast of ours so i'm going to use the uh the word on

the street terms that that would be the misleading ads and it's not that that that you know you're the only one who makes misleading ads but you're the only one who has been able to grow with misleading ads because the biggest challenge with misleading ads is like how the hell are you able to keep the players who come in after playing something totally different playable ad or seeing a totally different type of ad so anyways i just wanted to ask you to kind of walk us through the the competition with firecrack studios that ended up by the way in playwrights winning the competition uh and and what was the impact on the marketing strategy that the players occurs because when gardenscapes and homescapes was going head-to-head with fi with with uh with matching to mansion we actually had a deconstructor fun blog post written about it i think 40 50 000 people read it i'm like that was very interesting to a lot of people and uh they're interesting topics too yeah and and what happened was that as

that battle was kind of over you took that same strategy to old games like the fishdom and township and suddenly we saw township being in like 100 million installs just insane rates i remember when playwrights was the most like had the most download despite not even being a hyper casual studio so can you kind of walk me back to the days of of firecrackers yeah sure let's getting inspired by your games yeah let's let's split this question into two yeah uh so first of all let's say uh competition and uh question about marketing uh creative feds misleading yet all kind of heads uh and second one about uh let's say fish them township is that they started to grow because this is two different stories township and fish them story connected to marketing but not only it's also like a product story uh more compared to marketing and as for competition uh first of all and players believe that competition can bring the whole industry to the next

level to completely different different level and because of that for us like competition is good and it's some kind of like necessary stress to uh to unite around the problem internally and they think about what we can do and how we can evolve internally and they think about that competition with firecraft and not only with firecraft at that moment because that moment also peak was uh very strong with two and toy blast with uh different strategies so all that events that were happening at uh that moment helped us to identify new ways of growth through different types of ads some of them were less connected to the game some of them were more connected to the game we tried different mixes of these ads

and of course like it brought result but it not only a pure user acquisition and not only pure change of our marketing strategy brought result that we started to be at that time number three in terms of global growth but also changes in our games and our products especially garden skates and homescapes and this kind of like competition helped us to receive from a lot of our customers requests that okay please we've seen uh puzzles could you please uh implement same type of gameplay in in your in into your game and the thing is that we start to think about okay so if we're receiving a lot of uh customer requests this kind of like gameplay could be popular in our game and we started to think about our game is not as a game but as a gaming platform a gaming platform for different types of

gameplay not only let's say core gameplay plus something but a number of gameplays and now you can notice that we have different types of gameplay in our gardenscapes and homescapes games and also in township and fish them and it's like completely different like measuring decoration storyline with different story curves and intrigue intriguing moments uh also puzzle elements through different mini games also merge match to collapse uh even hyper casual uh things like sm mini events and uh yeah because at the end of the day uh we're like application for entertainment not let's say pure game and through our application through our let's say course story uh we can provide different types of gameplay for customers and they bring joy and

especially mobile world fast paced world with the significant changes of taste of customers it's a must to provide for your end customers various gameplay interesting because yeah because customers usually uh if i talking about like mobile games they usually uh get bored very quick and this is the main problem and if you are let's say trying to provide different types of gameplay in one application uh probability uh and chance that you will keep these customers uh longer last term is higher and of course it's it takes uh significant resources and company resources for example now our uh gardenscapes team um only for one game it's uh as far as i remember it's ten percent of

our company right now which is focusing on game development of only one game supporting live observing supporting uh sales supporting stores with different activities supporting uh various activities with other partners and and as you're making these decisions for different types of games that you add into the township or gardenscapes or any of your top games are those influenced by marketing like are is the creative strategies that when you see certain creators performing really well does that lead you to those or is it more like hypothesis based that we think this will be fun and you just do it it's hypothesis based first of all and also like requests from our customers so it's kind of like mix uh because let's say we uh as i already mentioned we received like a lot of requests uh that okay we would like to play various types of gameplay and especially this ad yeah that's great let's uh let's try to think about how to

integrate this ad into uh into storyline interesting because uh i don't know i think that um i'm gonna say uh english speaking community and especially in game development haven't noticed but we had a very interesting uh collaboration with number one female russian singer zinfir and we uh she by the way she wrote this song about austin and the everything which is connected to austin and austin's family because he is still like addicted player of homescapes and the thing is that inferior she started at some point to live life uh of austin inside the game because a lot of different story curve a lot of

different events happening with austin uh at any time and she started to tell story about austin through her song okay and if you will check video clip uh which we produced together with this singer this uh this video clip called bad dream of austin and you can check how bold we were with this clip because we changed like completely art style and we changed completely uh everything about like austin so he he he was trapped in a bad dream his bedroom so that's interesting because uh i i checked out actually on on google photo search everybody can do that they check zinfira um she doesn't yeah she looks like a like if you would imagine um a singer a rock singer out of berlin that would be probably

close to what you're looking at so not yeah you know not your original britney spears type of a pop singer but more of like a very uh emo rock type of a singer so interesting choice of games but you know yeah that's true that's true but the thing is that uh at the end of the day homescapes gardens kids fishdom township uh games that help people to relax yeah yeah yeah and especially especially during like pandemic time it was there in austria we received a lot of different uh thank you letters from our customers that shows us our impact uh globally and because that not only let's say were let's say happy and were supported by our games during a pandemic period but like millions people all over the world i think we're a good example uh which is connected to actually this creative type of strategy because we were creative in our advertising

and uh the inferior clip a video clip and austin video clip shows how bold we can be in our decisions i mean uh i think that not so many especially casual game developers big one can do pretty much the same thing with their uh hike colorful games yeah and switch into completely different uh thriller mode and dark mod yeah it shows shows that that you're also open to different types of variation and that your marketing i mean your marketing is is i don't know if it's best but definitely top three on on mobile um and then just shows that you you you know you tap into whatever works and um yeah so regarding marketing actually i want to add how has the idfa been impacted because since you have

these very i'm going to say again misleading ads but i've seen other companies try similar type of ads and failed miserably because because they were advertising something that the game wasn't and the traffic that was coming in wasn't performing in their game and they basically tried multiple multiple different variations said like we can't do this only players can do it so are you still able to do that post idfa or is it something that you're able to do only or is it something that requires extensive amount of data to do successfully yeah that's a great question i think that i don't have uh like 100 correct answer because we're still also like exploring all idfa changes and the main problem now is that uh there is no uh certainty still uh what will happen because uh like correct me if i'm around all industry we're waiting for is 15 uh like complete a block of probabilistic

attribution fingerprint and all this kind of stuff but uh ios 15 release happen it was silent release so you can download is 15 on your phone but it's optional uh and apple is not promoting this change a lot and the thing is that still there is no certainty what what we will see we see that apple is the apple started to hear uh industry what things uh industry especially mobile gaming industry uh should get uh if i'm talking about sql network and all these kind of things which is connected to the privacy update uh but it is still interesting time and uh in paris we are now testing like different uh kind of uh marketing strategies that can help us to understand what what is next i think that no one now in the world

except apple uh have answered on this question what we'll see in the future hope that google a privacy update will be more certain yeah well most likely would um since we're talking about growth one of the one of the growth factors is of course the growth of your games through marketing and new game releases but also through m a and playwrx has been active in m a uh i don't know it's been a while since since we've seen the news on on m a but um how how are you usually like i mean you're probably a pivotal in player x's m a so how do you identify these new targets how do you you know how do you go after i'm not sure if how what your involvement is with visor or next but i mean even that looking at nexter's board your founders are on the board of nexter and looking at both visors and nectar's ads they look like clerics ads so clearly there's some kind of uh

there's i can name your company like a lot of companies uh who are not uh in players investment but their ads also looks like okay they're successful with the similar ad strategy as playwrights there's a lot of companies that try but aren't successful so my question is more like like how do you approach mna and what's what's your sort of updated strategy at the moment yeah that's a great question uh and i think that uh first of all we're kind of new to m a so we started this in the beginning of 2019 uh with uh released so far let's say first news about enemy uh and we're still trying to identify uh 100 certain m a strategy because for different companies m a strategy is different let's say for public companies they are looking more for ebitda they are looking uh more for

margin this kind of things just to be sure that overall their numbers are looking uh good uh we're a private company uh still and the thing is that our um strategy here uh should or could be uh different in this case and we are more flexible we don't we don't need to uh wait for next earning call uh yeah and we don't need to afraid yeah next turning call in this case and because that uh of course we are looking for new products uh which has very good quality uh and we are looking for uh how we can scale uh these products up using all our knowledge about marketing about product uh about other things which which are connected to game development

and the thing is that let's say if you can see like next first visor uh and like several more uh companies that we invested in were acquired uh all these companies are with a very good product and product evolved with uh after our acquisition uh or investment products started to evolve marketing strategy started to evolve and a lot of different other things started to evolve yeah in these companies and actually this combination of factories help uh these companies to grow and yeah you can see like very good growth of next year's advisor from different uh points yeah and we are going to uh let's say support our partners uh all partners new old uh future partners um are using all our resources uh and players resources yeah interesting um okay so i wanted to ask about mna like

uh is it my per is is the perception correct or that that you're you're geographically most of the m a is happening in former soviet union countries yeah that's true that's correct yeah why is that is that because player x is inherently a very russian company in the sense like everybody speaks russian and it's a and in a you know we discussed this before like you don't hear a lot of russian people on podcasts because um there's a culture of of saving faith and kind of like if you don't feel 100 comfortable in your english language you rather not talk and that's just that's just the you know it's a it's also an asian culture and in many extent yeah that's true industrialization culture especially japanese cultures in this case but i know a few examples how japanese companies switched their uh language into english and this is

interesting stories uh as for your question uh we think about like clerics that first of all um there are a lot of still very talented game developers and game development companies uh in russia cis and let's say eastern europe uh even now when market is very competitive uh when foreign companies there started to notice that okay probably we should uh check russia and cis as a region but still there are like numerous companies and it's now it's hard but before it was not so hard to find uh diamonds yeah in in this region and i think that because um there are a lot of like talent as i mentioned companies in russia and cs the whole industry and professionals uh they are uh evolving and they are moving to a different level

and this leads to new companies new different games new different mixes and because of that at first our focus was there uh then like 2020 we started to check what uh we can do abroad outside of russian cis region uh but you know the thing is that now uh there are only like probably like 10 or 12 companies in top 500 gross increase if you will check like opinion uh which are still private looking for maybe some opportunities and these companies are let's say western companies are like from from from europe and a lot of like hundreds of chinese companies uh which is challenging to uh invest in yes yeah and because that now i think that uh everyone all game development companies

they're a little bit limited in terms of acquisitions yeah yeah and uh we're seeing that uh industry stars started to consolidate around like different uh players and uh i guess that we will see at the end of the day that uh competition and this kind of like consolidation uh will move to the point when we'll be uh probably like five six big players and then industry around these five six big players so uh regarding this consolidation of industry one of the one of the routes of consolidation not everybody has been going through this but vertical integration has been a big element is is players also looking into vertical integration or or like you know basically just getting more ownership of the player data that's that's really uh what we're talking about um yeah that's a great question i think that we discussed this question like internally but uh we

uh don't have let's say uh now the correct answer on this question so it's uh future we will show yeah what uh what will be and also future will show uh what which approach is uh better yeah yeah because just before we recorded this mob has been acquired by by applovin who has been acquiring of course studios but now at increasing pace all the support not support but basically the other platforms for for marketing and scaling has been has been their route but on the other hand we've seen platika not acquire anything and they've been they've been not anything in terms of um uh these marketing platforms and they have a marketing yeah i guess that play ticker and they are not acquiring marketing uh platforms because there are not so many marketing platforms left that could be it that could be uh yeah because like uh let's say companies which are available uh valuation of this company is probably

very high yeah and not like everyone can afford uh how do we discuss this i feel like i feel like you know platika is based out of tel aviv i think if you would throw um i don't know a spoon in tel aviv will hit some some marketer in the head marketer so many of these scaling and monetization and attribution platforms they're all out of tel aviv so i would have assumed that if they would chase that route they would have been among the first to acquire one of them because even later on like we saw wu do acquiring in tel aviv and other companies so so it's um i think it's more of a chosen strategy rather than rather than they missed the train because i mean they were literally sitting on top of the train so yeah that's true so um so so yeah um okay um yeah so i did did did i get the answer of because i was i was trying to like i'm i'm kind of trying to take this

conversation more towards your culture but m a is kind of leading there like like how important it is to uh to speak russian language at playwrx just it depends uh it depends on the team yeah but uh i will lie if i will tell you that not important i understand it's and in that sense it's it's much like french company like you can work at a french company but if you don't know french there's a there's a panzer glass ceiling that opens up only once you once you mastered the language so i i should also add that for example do two years ago or two and a half years ago uh all our tools uh internal tools like uh asana slack uh all those were in russian okay yeah that's uh and all the communication and communication language uh was the

russian language as well yeah uh and for example in our company channel uh in slack uh where we regularly post news updates about company and this kind of things uh there were only news uh in russian language yes and it was 25 years ago now we are seeing different situations and now we're seeing like bilingual news so um russian version of news and also english version of english because company is growing we're adding more people around the globe uh we're looking for like different people for different positions around the globe also and it was uh in the news that a few of our studios are um like english-speaking studios from eastern european countries and uh languages like english to communicate with them yeah because of that we're on the way uh not probably like to switch language into

english completely but uh we are checking for different uh opportunities in this case yeah okay i understand i would still position it towards the uh the ubisoft type of a type of approach where whether you like it or not if you want to reach the top you have to do it by speaking russian and there you have to do it by speaking french it just is what it is i think wudu is exactly in the same place and i think many of the french companies and i think it's um you know i'm sure yeah it's a tough change uh because it's such a dominating attention long-term change yeah so uh i i mentioned uh like japanese companies yeah these companies i don't know how to pronounce brexit yeah company and actually uh ceo of this company like five or six years ago his dream was uh to switch company language and he successfully did it and now uh

this company is english-speaking company completely and even in japanese office uh like employees they speak or communicate in english but it uh took like five years yeah six years and and i think in the playwright situation it's not that that it's it's like a nationalistic company it's more that you were in a position where you had tremendous amount of resources in russia so you didn't need to change your language because everybody was coming out of russia the studios you were acquiring were in russia and you were basically on this sort of a peaceful place in mobile industry where there wasn't even ton of competition coming in from the western markets or the chinese markets to enter the russian markets and to acquire the talent so you had plenty of talent so hence you didn't have to change the company language because you had plenty of talent as it is but now as you you are you know the second largest in the market i think it's just a it's a matter of time as you

have to expand more because even the russian market or the central uh or the eastern european market is is getting competitive so you have to find new new ways to grow yeah also you know the thing is about language is that we started to change a little with language uh when we started to think about mobile so it was like seven years ago uh eight years ago and when we uh moved all our let's say um leadership to ireland and now uh because ireland and dublin especially is our hq uh city and we are growing uh very strong community here in ireland and because that we are exploring let's say how to integrate like different languages in one hq yeah that's also an exception for uh for a

russian company because most of the russian companies can be found on cyprus that's a different island but yeah we like weather yeah yeah yeah because i think the thing about talent is that weather is uh almost like constant around the uh year yeah and because that like it's comfortable sometimes rain sometimes yeah very predictable well i don't know my my dad was just in cyprus he he came back he was like it felt like a russian russian island like they were yeah and you know he's um his english is a bit challenging but he's natively in in russian speaking so he very much enjoyed his time in in russian speaking cyprus russian speaking cyprus yeah i can imagine um okay so um can you can we talk so before before we kind of end up i really want to talk about the ways of working at playwrx because the company is known for a very unique organization structure uh can you describe it and how it came

to be yeah this great question we can talk hours and hours about let's say players players culture and i can tell you a lot about things uh but i will uh tell let's say several about several core things about in players uh first of all i think it starts with the uh let's say core clerics culture yeah because even from the moment of first interview during the onboarding uh period uh we're trying to identify in our employees uh like leadership uh qualities and also entrepreneurial qualities as well because um like both leadership and entrepreneurship could lead uh not only company but this person to the next level and the thing is that and actually this is very interesting

question to discuss leadership and entrepreneurship in the remote work world player is actually of course not invented remote work but heavily utilized remote work and work from home even before pandemic so when uh companies started to grow and when uh igor and mitchell they decided to not increase number of employees they started to check an opportunity to record people from different cities different uh towns villages and different countries as well and the thing is that before covet almost 50 percent of our employees they were working from home because clerics uh were covering everything uh [Music] the time and steel uh now even more with the pandemics and all these kind of things covering all expenses

and providing or setting a workplace at home pcs master equipment programs uh even bandwidth but at the same time we have approached that if our employees they would like to work from the office and in one city there will be minimum five uh employees who would like to go to the office uh players easily can open office so we're kind of like flexible in this case and actually because of that uh we have like a lot of offices first of all all over the world uh and uh in russia especially in different cities so probably like 10 to 12 offices in russia that's that's that's a really fascinating thing so so it is a remote culture that can be on-site culture as soon as you get above five or five and above yeah yeah yeah so for example if you would five if you'd find uh a ua

lead or a get great ui talent in helsinki and if that person can can bring in a couple of more people and suddenly you have player x helsinki yeah suddenly player is helsinki all right well i'm just insinuating i'm very much a pro healthy so it's a short trainer ride from from st petersburg yeah that's true that's true and also of course in like this kind of culture and especially in remote world decision making process it's important to discuss and think about decision making process is that in players we have many teams who decide and we have uh let's say distributed uh decision uh making process that when not only one let's say senior leader will decide what to do next but there will be a voting process of minimum of three people who are

for or against this decision and if all three let's say uh decision makers are for this decision we are going to do so because we are checking decisions from different angles and usually uh we can add somebody not from the same field of business to decide for example about user acquisition because this person usually has a fresh view on on a subject that's a that's very interesting very interesting culture and and that means that when the covet hit and there were lockdowns it probably wasn't that big of a thing well it will probably hit i mean you have gigantic development studios in um right well they are the most power in saint petersburg have like uh offices a very big one with development studios as well but a lot of the company culture was already built around remote remote work yeah remote sports remote spots not like

everybody's sitting alone but remote work and so i it probably wasn't that big of a hit on productivity compared to let's say companies like supercell that are built around everybody sitting in you know in in touch distance from each other just to just to creativity and then this sort of like a different approach yeah for us uh fortunately it was it wasn't a big hit and this pandemic uh of course let's say for 50 percent of our company what was a big hit but overall uh even this 50 percent of company uh used to work in a remote way with their friends and co-workers in this case and because of that like we had all necessary tools to do so we had all necessary yeah processes to achieve success in this case then because of that uh i think that of course we increased

like even more productivity yeah uh during the correlation that's that's that's interesting that's what i mean it of course it was like awful timing is like awful time for the whole humanity and for a lot of companies but um i'm pretty sure that we will overcome this period of time uh it was a fantastic time for a games business let's be honest against business yeah from radiant standpoint definitely from uh new customers standpoint as well yeah because now a lot of uh like many more people in the world uh know about games yes many more people in the world understand that okay games it's not only for let's say kids yeah but we can uh play games as well and because of that uh i guess that uh for the all our industry it's like a benefit because we have at the end of the day more customers correct yeah i 100 agree so uh before i let you go what's next for play rex are you going to ipo

uh are you going to continue acquiring more more studios in in the east are you going to expand to the western markets with acquisition in western companies um what's gonna happen um our goal is to be number one in terms of global grossing okay and to do so we we need to be flexible not only in our merchant acquisition strategies uh but also developing new games and uh bringing joy with new different mixes uh for our customers because only through uh happiness of our customers and satisfaction of our customers we can be at the top and this is let's say our company goal uh from the beginning we got it so yeah so that's a that's a very uh political answer so essentially anything that takes you to the uh the top of the heap is is the correct one so you're probably uh eagerly looking at the the chinese

new laws uh that are restricting their own games market because the only one ahead of you is 10 cent yeah that's true and i think that tencent now is struggling in china as well uh together with uh foreign companies yeah i think that this is let's say a topic of conversation for one more quote about chinese regulation and this kind of thing and we are passing through this period together with uh companies which are left there yeah uh in china and yeah for us of course it's uh i mean it's a challenge yeah a completely different club let's say closed market completely different culture uh different uh relations based things uh in china and because of that yeah for western company uh or is like even for uh for any western company it's a challenge all right maxim um on that note thank you so much for for joining the podcast and talking so freely about playwrights i don't think

i've never heard a podcast about playwreck so i hope this is the first and the most revealing for for everybody uh because i know that that when when people don't talk speak in russian uh some companies like playrix may seem a little bit intimidating because they don't understand even your web page is mainly russian so it may seem intimidating but you guys are not intimidating at all you just want to make cool games and be number one in the market who can hate on that yeah that's true thank you so much as well yeah thank you everybody for listening and um yeah on that note bye bye bye