Rostelecom buys Cloud gaming service GFN.ru — presumably for 1.5 billion rubles

There was information that Rostelecom is preparing to acquire GFN.ru — the Russian version of the GeForce NOW cloud gaming service. According to experts, the value of the transaction may amount to 1.5 billion rubles.This was reported by Kommersant on January 31, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the details of the transaction.

Information about purchase plans GFN.ru Rostelecom also confirmed it.

If the transaction is completed successfully, the shares will change. 51% will go to Rostelecom, and SFI and Troitsky will control 25% and 24% respectively.

Now GFN.ru it is estimated at about 3 billion rubles, and the purchase of the service can cost Rostelecom 1.5 billion rubles. These funds will partially be used to repay the debt GFN.ru on loans from SFI in the amount of 1.25 billion rubles (most of it has already been paid). The remaining money will be spent on new servers and going abroad.

According to Kommersant, revenue GFN.ru last year it amounted to 177 million rubles. However, the service is still unprofitable — its losses in 2021 reached 382 million rubles.

GFN.ru It was launched in Russia in October 2019. It runs on a ready-made NVIDIA technology solution that allows you to run games on remote machines via the cloud.

A representative of Rostelecom noted that the company considers the cloud gaming segment promising. According to PWC, this market in Russia is now estimated at $4.6 million. At the same time , most of it falls just on GFN.ru , which competes in this niche with solutions from MY.GAMES, “Sber” and other companies.

It is worth noting that MY.GAMES at the end of last year raised the cost of unlimited tariffs to 3.5 thousand rubles per month (almost three times). There is a possibility that after the deal with Rostelecom GFN.ru it can also increase the cost of services (now unlimited in the service costs 999 rubles per month).