Anton Bolshakov, founder of the game development company AB Games, best known for the f2p game Hidden City, shared his view on the state of the Ukrainian gaming industry and commented on the cooperation with the publisher G5 Entertainment, which decided to return to the Russian market.
Anton Bolshakov, founder of the game development company AB Games, best known for the f2p game Hidden City, shared his view on the state of the Ukrainian gaming industry and commented on the cooperation with the publisher G5 Entertainment, which decided to return to the Russian market.
This is described in Bolshakov’s interview with Forbes Ukraine, in which he also spoke about the use of AI in the gaming industry and the financial performance of Hidden City, the publisher of which is still listed as G5 Entertainment.
Anton Bolshakov answered the question of whether Ukrainian game development is in decline in the affirmative.
«Ukrainian game development has not been able to form into some kind of national history. Mostly, large Russian or global companies bought Ukrainian ones, Ukrainian developers. And there are simply divisions of these large players on the market», — says the founder of AB Games.
According to him, the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the «investment history» also had an impact, when investors were not ready to negotiate if the company «did not have a physical presence of at least a key team in Cyprus or Malta».
Bolshakov also commented on the close ties between Ukrainian game developers and the Russian market that existed before the Russian military aggression.
«My personal opinion: company owners simply chose the easier path. It’s difficult to come up with a game yourself, bring it to the market, survive, and achieve success. It’s easier to become part of some large company, where someone will give you an understanding of how to be successful. Plus, the moments when you don’t have money and are just surviving disappear. It was very difficult for me to make a game when you don’t have money, you’re not succeeding or it’s unsuccessful and everyone tells you to close it and move on. It’s difficult to grit your teeth and move on», — says Anton Bolshakov.
In 2023, Gamedev DOU, citing an internal letter from the company’s CEO Vlad Suglobov, reported that G5 Entertainment was returning to the Russian market after leaving due to the war.
«In the current situation of the lack of growth of our games and big new hits, against the background of the weak dynamics of the games market in general, we cannot ignore the sales markets. We have marked our position, we have not been on the market for a long time, but given the realities, I have decided to return our own games to the Russian market in order to receive additional income that will help us stabilize the situation in the company,» the letter said.
AB Games, whose most successful game Hidden City is published by G5 Entertainment, emphasized that they do not operate or receive revenue from the markets of Russia and Belarus, where the project has been unavailable since May 2022.
«Our position is simple and clear — we do not work, do not earn, and do not want to have any business with an aggressor country that is waging war against Ukraine and killing Ukrainians every day. This is the principled position of me as the owner of the company and everyone at AB Games. It has been this way since the first day of the war and will remain so forever», — Anton Bolshakov noted last year.
In a recent interview with Forbes, he reaffirmed that AB Games has not returned to these markets because it does not align with the company’s values and views.
«We do not support the Russian language, we are not on the Russian side. I came up with the game and I kept the rights to it. The intellectual property rights belong to AB Games, it belongs to the publisher,» Bolshakov explained. «The conversation was like this: they made the decision ‘because’. I took that into account. There was some pressure. But I said ‘no’ and explained why. The decision remained the same.»
The founder of AB Games said that the company has a contract with G5 Entertainment, under which the latter is responsible for marketing and traffic purchase. According to Bolshakov, the contract was signed back in 2012 and cannot be terminated unilaterally to change the publisher.
«There is a list of reasons why a contract automatically ceases to be valid. If there is a violation, for example, the publisher does not pay royalties or something else», — he noted.
