Russian developers are actively releasing games on VK Play and using AI, according to a study
The Internet Development Institute (IRI), the APRIORI association, and the Skolkovo Foundation conducted a study on the state of the game development industry in Russia. They interviewed 140 developers: both from game studios and solo developers.
“Zemsky Sobor”
The most interesting points from the survey:
- 55.9% of surveyed Russian developers create exclusively single-player games, while 13.2% focus solely on multiplayer games. However, a third of developers create both types of games;
- primarily, Russian developers create games for PCs (91.9%), mobile devices (48.5%), the web (30.9%), and consoles (19.9%);
- Unity is the most popular engine in Russia, used by 56.6% of developers. Unreal Engine (39.7%) and Godot (13.2%) also rank in the top three engines;
- 64.7% of the respondents publish their games on VK Play. Nearly as many developers said their projects are released on Steam—61.8%. Other popular platforms include RuStore (26.5%), Google Play (26.5%), App Store (21.3%), Xbox Store (8.8%), PlayStation Network (8.8%), Yandex Games (8.1%), and itch.io (8.1%);
- the main challenges for Russian developers are game promotion difficulties (66.9%), limited budget (65.4%), and difficulties accessing foreign services (62.5%);
- 79.4% of Russian developers use AI, primarily for coding (47.8%), graphics (40.4%), and scripting (28.7%).
Note: In some questions, developers could choose multiple responses, which is why the total percentage does not always equal 100.