How has the pandemic affected the gaming and entertainment media market in Russia?
The introduced isolation has led to an increase in the audience of video games, as well as to an increase in their sales. In turn, we decided to find out if there is a similar trend in Russia with regard to gaming and entertainment media. To do this, we interviewed key market participants.
The material was prepared with the participation of Games.Mail.Ru/PC and inGameDev.
1. How have COVID and global quarantine affected your website traffic?
Andrey Sirotin, Head of Marketing GoHa.Ru
Unfortunately, the picture has not changed in any way in terms of traffic. We expected growth, we thought that more people would read us from home, but this did not happen. As time has shown, most people read us from work, and since work ended or moved home and began to require more time, nothing has changed at all. Alas.
Dmitry Kungurov, Editor-in-Chief StopGame.ru
The traffic behavior is the same as everywhere else: a 30% increase in all streamers, we are no exception. As for the traffic on the website and YouTube, it remained at about the same level.
Anton Gorodetsky, Project Manager Games.Mail.ru/PC
Yes, traffic has grown in April, but we have been adding so much every month since last fall, the situation with the virus is only here (please understand me now, correctly) played the role of an unexpected bonus.
Dmitry Kolganov, Acting Editor-in-Chief of the Igromania website
We see growth, but it is difficult to say how much it is connected with COVID-19, since “Gambling addiction” is already growing every month from year to year. Yes, we saw some spikes at the very beginning of the quarantine, but here, again, it is difficult to say whether they are related to isolation. I’m more inclined to believe that, as always, the main role is played by content.
Anastasia Voroshina, Co-founder and Head of Marketing at VGTimes
Since we have been growing continuously since 2017, it is very difficult for us to determine the percentage of growth that is associated with COVID-19 and quarantine. So, we always have plans and tasks that we implement within the framework of the project and which are aimed at expanding and achieving new indicators.
Cohen, Editor-in-chief of Shazoo
Traffic in general has increased, but it is difficult to say exactly what impact the situation with COVID-19 had. Even before the quarantine, we invited a consultant to optimize the code and search. Perhaps it will be possible to estimate in 3-4 months when the situation will go to normalization.
Ekaterina Semukhina, editor of special projects Cybersport.ru
Esports, like everyone else, has suffered from the coronavirus pandemic, but not to a critical extent, largely due to the initial life online. This definitely did not affect the infopods and content. Editorial Office Cybersport.ru it works normally. We have stable traffic indicators, we continue to grow and follow the plan that we outlined even before all the crisis events in the world. I would also like to note that during the period of remote work and self-isolation, we successfully closed two important vacancies in the team.
Peter Salnikov, co-founder and head of DISGUSTING MEN
They influenced us in two ways: on the one hand, we see an increase in the popularity of video and small text formats on the site, collections; on the other, we feel a drop in audio and large text materials. We attribute this to the fact that people are used to using longreads and classic podcasts on the way somewhere, and now no one is really moving anywhere. In addition, competition has increased. In normal mode, a person knew that he needed to allocate time for a new podcast, which he definitely needed to listen to — and now he has a lot of time, he is at the computer all the time, a million tabs are open. You can take your time and watch the whole Internet at the same time.
Alexander Semenov, Senior Editor App2Top.ru
Our traffic grew even without a crisis. Another thing is that in the first two weeks of quarantine in Russia, we observed an exceptional 40-50% increase in visits. Then, in April, the situation returned to normal. The increase in visits in April compared to visits in February was about 25%.
2. How do advertisers behave at this time?
Andrey Sirotin, Head of Marketing GoHa.Ru
We have one major advertiser who has been hosted by us for several years (this is an iron store that decided to completely suspend business in order not to endanger employees, it can be understood). Part of the advertising armor was postponed due to the change of game release dates, the filmmakers generally fell off for obvious reasons. But, surprisingly, April is the best month this year in terms of income for us, we are also very optimistic about May and June.
Dmitry Kungurov, Editor-in-Chief StopGame.ru
The flow of advertising has not decreased yet, because, obviously, the quarter is going according to the old plans. What will happen in the future is stupid and unprofessional to predict, of course. No one knows if there will be a V-crisis, like in China, or if supply chains will break everything down to W and below.
Anton Gorodetsky, Project Manager Games.Mail.ru/PC
What we are seeing now is an active demand for a gaming audience from companies of completely different categories; we are happy to find placement options for everyone.
Dmitry Kolganov, Acting Editor-in-Chief of the Igromania website
Here I can’t answer, the editorial office and the commercial department work independently of each other. But I can say that we are now trying to support small and medium-sized businesses on an editorial basis. We already have several cases with Dodo Pizza and the F5 esports club.
Anastasia Voroshina, Co-founder and Head of Marketing at VGTimes
We didn’t feel any special problems with advertisers of our niche.
Cohen, Editor-in-chief of Shazoo
In general, the relationship with advertisers has not changed. Some things have moved, new opportunities have appeared.
Ekaterina Semukhina, editor of special projects Cybersport.ru
Advertisers’ interest in esports has grown, as it is now one of the promising areas of the market, and global quarantine has only strengthened this trend.
Of course, a lot depends on specific products and services, but there are always different options for integration and cooperation. At the same time, we see a general pessimistic mood in the advertising market, and this cannot but worry us.
Peter Salnikov, co-founder and head of DISGUSTING MEN
Very active, we have already had several thematic placements that fit perfectly into the context of quarantine. There are weeks when we hardly have time to process all incoming commercial requests.
Alexander Semenov, Senior Editor App2Top.ru
Our main advertisers are gaming companies that are looking for new personnel. As far as I know, despite the pandemic, they are now continuing to actively recruit employees, including for remote work. So we have not noticed any changes in the behavior of our customers.
3. What measures do you plan to take in the near future to make it easier to get out of this crisis?
Andrey Sirotin, Head of Marketing GoHa.Ru
Work, f*****b (work hard), more, higher, stronger. We do not have a crisis at work as such. We are working smoothly, developing services, looking at what we can offer new.
Dmitry Kungurov, Editor-in-Chief StopGame.ru
Nothing has changed from the inside: we are all remoters in general. Accordingly, no measures are required yet, but we have a place to compress the amount of content, if necessary.
Anton Gorodetsky, Project Manager Games.Mail.ru/PC
We are not experiencing any crisis right now, we are steadily continuing to develop the project, according to our product strategy.
Dmitry Kolganov, Acting Editor-in-Chief of the Igromania website
In general, we adhere to the same rules and goals as before. We strengthen the content part, increase the quality and try to be the first everywhere. But in the press, this rule is observed at any time and has nothing to do with COVID.
Anastasia Voroshina, Co-founder and Head of Marketing at VGTimes
You know, we have been living with a constant sense of instability for many years. Is it possible otherwise with us? That is why we are continuously working for growth and development. Not hoping that everything will be fine without it. We need to work — and then everything will be fine. Our entire team wishes that this whole story with the virus and quarantine is over as soon as possible and the people affected by these circumstances can return to their former lives.
Cohen, Editor-in-chief of Shazoo
The first priority is to save the whole team and make sure that everyone is provided for. Since we have a decentralized team and a website independent of publishers, there have been no difficulties so far. Let’s see what the situation will be in a couple of months.
Ekaterina Semukhina, editor of special projects Cybersport.ru
Part of the editorial board Cybersport.ru and before the quarantine, she worked remotely, so we had no difficulties in rebuilding communications and workflows. The main thing that we are all doing to get out of this crisis is observing the self—isolation regime and continuing to actively work and implement projects.
Peter Salnikov, co-founder and head of DISGUSTING MEN
We have always worked in a more or less similar mode, outside of office orders and schedules. Therefore, from this point of view, little has changed for Disgusting Men. We bought additional equipment and made it so that there was no need to gather in the studio at all. This year we planned a lot of fresh traffic, especially offline. The fact that I had to abandon my plans outside the Internet, I consider it rather a good turn of events. This way we can focus on new products — launch one completely new show and bring back a couple of old ones with new seasons.
Alexander Semenov, Senior Editor App2Top.ru
We are seeing an increase in visits, there are still advertisers who are ready to be placed with us, we ourselves have effectively rebuilt to work from home. For this reason, I would not say now that there is a crisis for us. So far, everything is fine, we are sitting, working.
***
We also learned how things are on the game streaming market. According to a representative of DonationAlerts, a company engaged in the development of tools for streaming, the main indicators in this market are growing:
Coronavirus and social distancing have increased interest in streaming. The number of new streamers who use our tools increased by 32% in March compared to January of the same year. The total number of donations made through DonationAlerts increased by 40% compared to the same period a year earlier.
P. S. Several leading Russian-language publications are missing from our survey. Some of them declined to comment, some did not respond to requests.
