Results of 2021: Evgeny Sidorov from FreePlay about the main thing for the year

We continue to summarize the results of 2021 together with top managers and experts of the gaming industry (and related ones). Next up is an interview with Evgeny Sidorov, CEO at FreePlay.

How did 2021 go for the company?

The year turned out to be the most productive for us. In addition to working on our bestseller, Join Clash, we have released several more hits that helped us reach the half a billion downloads mark. Below are cool indicators that speak about the outgoing 2021 better than any words:

• launched this year Count Masters (129+ million), Fidget Toys (65+ million) and Happy Printer (22+ million);
• Join Clash has reached the mark of 300+ million installations for all time;
• our total downloads for all time have reached 500+ million installations;
• the number of employees has grown almost 2 times;
• we have launched the publishing direction and are actively developing it.

What event or trend of 2021 do you consider central within your niche?

We didn’t really change our hikes at work. Even when the studio was founded, we laid down a development strategy in which we focus on the quality of products, not their quantity.

If we talk about publishing, we understood from the very start what problems we might face. For example, we initially abandoned the model of cooperation with external studios in the PPP format (pay-per-prototype, when the publisher pays for the prototype). This would entail certain negative consequences: partners would not have the opportunity to iterate the product, they would start working as a conveyor.

Of course, some even manage to make a business out of it. However, as time shows, it is quite short-term. “More prototypes means more money, we don’t need hits” is a controversial approach that definitely has nothing to do with success.

What will be the stake in the development of the company in 2022?

We have a lot of plans, and we hope that 2022 will be even more successful and productive for us. So we:

• we rely on close cooperation with strong external teams (maximum partnership, deep immersion in products);
• we will continue to increase expertise in the hyper-casual niche, as well as experiment with related genres;
• we are going to attract more qualified resources and market professionals, and we will also expand geographically to other countries and cities.