Playrix

Lore & Background

Before founding Playrix, brothers Igor and Dmitry Bukhman developed simple computer games as students. Their first game, Xonix, was released in 2003 after a one-month development period on a computer with a Pentium 100 processor. They released Discovera in 2002, priced at $15, though its first-month earnings are not consistently verified. By 2004, the brothers had released three games and 30 screensavers, earning $10,000 a month, leading them to officially found Playrix, rent an office in Vologda, Russia, and hire ten employees. The company initially designed simple puzzle games for home computers, and by the end of 2007 had released around 15 casual games and its first PC game, reaching a monthly revenue of $300,000.

In 2009, Playrix became interested in free-to-play mobile games while still making PC games. A mobile games developer called Perfect Play Studio—founded in 2009 as WebGames, entering the market in 2010, and renamed Perfect Play in 2020—became part of Playrix, with studios mainly in Moscow and Bryansk. In 2012, Playrix launched its first Facebook game, Township, which became one of the top 50 grossing games on the platform with 350,000 daily active users. A year later, Township became the company’s first game released on iOS and later Android; over the next seven years, it was downloaded about 250 million times. In 2014, Playrix moved its headquarters to Dublin. The company began working remotely in 2015, and by 2016 more employees worked remotely than at its central office. In April 2015, Playrix announced its second free-to-play mobile game, Fishdom: Deep Dive. It then released Gardenscapes in 2016 and Homescapes in 2017; Gardenscapes generated significant revenue, though the $1.5 billion figure by the end of 2019 is not consistently confirmed in official sources. Playrix became the highest-grossing mobile game developer in Europe around 2018-2019.

Reader's Guide

Playrix's significance lies in its rise from a small Russian studio making casual PC games to one of the world's largest mobile game developers by revenue. Its free-to-play titles, particularly Township, Gardenscapes, and Homescapes, achieved massive global downloads and revenue, with Gardenscapes alone generating $1.5 billion by 2019. The company's success was driven by a shift to mobile and a strategy of acquiring European game studios, which fueled rapid growth. Playrix's valuation reached $8 billion in 2021, and by 2023 it was the third-biggest mobile game developer globally. However, the company faced criticism for deceptive advertisements, with the UK's Advertising Standards Authority ruling two ads misleading in 2020. Additionally, its handling of employee discussions about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine—including deleting Slack posts and shutting down channels—drew criticism, though it also provided paid leave and evacuation support for Ukrainian staff. Playrix's legacy is that of a commercially dominant but controversial player in the mobile gaming industry.

Did You Know?

• Playrix's first game, Xonix, was developed in 2001 on a computer with a Pentium 100 processor and took one month to create.
• In 2020, Playrix paid each of its 2,100 employees a one-off payment of $650 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Gardenscapes brought the company $1.5 billion in revenue by the end of 2019.
• In 2022, Playrix closed its offices and development operations in Russia and Belarus due to the war in Ukraine.