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Russia returns to the 90s: the level of piracy in computer games has sharply jumped after leaving the market of Western studios / Alexander Galperin / RIA Novosti

Due to the withdrawal of major international publishers from the Russian market, gamers began to actively use pirated versions of games. In 2022, two-thirds (69%) of Russian users played at least one pirated copy, and 51% of players began to pirate more often than they did in 2021. Such results are given in their research by the online school of game development XYZ School (part of the Ultimate Education educational company). Vedomosti got acquainted with the result of the survey.

The survey was conducted in June 2023, and 1,500 gamers from all regions of Russia took part in it. The study took into account all unlicensed game formats, but most of them are games downloaded from torrent trackers, explained the operating director of XYZ School Emma Yusova.

Almost a third (27%) of respondents used up to three pirated copies of PC games in a year, and 20% used more than 10 pirated copies. 31% of respondents categorically opposed this practice, according to the XYZ School study. In parallel with piracy, gamers continued to buy licensed versions of available video games and only 7% of respondents did not buy new games in any way, XYZ School calculated. 

In 2022, the share of pirated content increased several times, experts interviewed by Vedomosti confirm. The growth of piracy is caused primarily by the departure of large corporations from Russia, including Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, and the inability to use Russian cards to pay for purchases in international stores, including Steam, GOG, etc., recalls independent video game expert Alexander Kuzmenko.

"Players are used to buying games on Steam in one click, and now to buy a game, you need to perform the same actions as when downloading the pirated version, so everyone chooses to save," agreed Egor Tomsky, co–founder of Watt Studio. The growth of piracy is also caused by the fact that people have started saving on entertainment, including video games, due to the difficult economic situation, Kuzmenko believes.

GROWTH OF GAMERS’ SHARE IN RUSSIA 

Year	% for people who play video games on a computer, console, tablet or phone
2018	18
2022	60

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In addition, the largest game studios left Russia, closing access to content to users. First of all, we are talking about Electronic Arts, Microsoft, RockStar Games, and Activision.

VK Play can partially solve the problem, but so far it is much inferior to foreign stores in terms of functionality and content, says Vasily Ovchinnikov, head of the Video Game Industry Development Organization. In addition, many gamers like to collect games in one place, he noted.

A representative of VK Play said that during the period from December 2022 to the end of the first quarter of 2023, the number of registered users on the platform increased from 12 million to 16.5 million people. According to him, every six months the platform records an increase in the number of users by 1.5 times.

The easiest way to get a pirated game at the moment is from torrents, and on physical media they almost completely disappeared along with the illegal disk sector more than 10 years ago, Kuzmenko noted. Most often, Russians pirate expensive AAA games since in this case they face not only technical restrictions on the purchase but also the need to pay 2500-3000 rubles for the game, said Konstantin Sakhnov, co-founder of Vengeance Games studio. The most popular pirate games – Baldur's Gate 3 and Atomic Heart – are regularly on the torrent download charts, Sakhnov knows. Russians also often download old games, including The Witcher 3, Mass Effect, and Sid Meier's Civilization VI, he listed. 

In 2021, according to the developer and publisher My. Games, the total volume of the Russian video game market reached 177.4 billion rubles. No similar study was conducted in 2022. 48% of this amount, or 85 billion rubles, accounted for PC games.

In 2022, 88 million Russians played games, according to a study by the NAFI Analytical Center and the Organization for the Development of the Video Game Industry. However, the study covered all possible types of devices, including smartphones, tablets, and consoles. According to Mediascope (the study was conducted in 2022, and 30,000 people took part in the survey), 70% of the Russian population aged 12 to 64 years at least sometimes play games on some medium, and 33% of the population plays on a PC.

If we filter out one-time random sessions, we can talk about 40-50 million gamers in Russia, Sakhnov believes. Up to 40% of this number, i.e. about 20 million people, account for the PC segment, he knows. At the same time, the average price of a PC product on Steam varies from 300 rubles for simple indie games to 3000 rubles for an AAA product. If we assume that every gamer buys at least one game per month, then the maximum estimate of the lost profit will be at the level of 30 billion rubles, Sakhnov believes. But this is the maximum possible indicator of losses, he noted.

The cumulative damage to foreign companies from the inability to release and sell their projects in Russia can be up to $200-300 million (from 18 billion to 27 billion rubles), Kuzmenko agrees with him. According to Ovchinnikov, the indicator is lower – at the level of 15 billion rubles.

It is difficult to accurately assess the cumulative damage of foreign studios from leaving Russia, but it is estimated in "tens of billions of rubles," confirms the owner of the portals about video games "Kanobu" and "Igromania" Gadzhi Maktiev.

According to his forecast, the share of pirates will tend to be 80-85% of the total number of gamers. "The biggest danger is that it will become part of the culture of a new generation of gamers, since piracy will be accepted as "legal" and will be institutionalized by society," the expert argues. In Russia, piracy will always be at a fairly high level, since it is, in fact, not suppressed in any way and is not condemned by society, Tomsky said.

Kuzmenko admits that if the position of international publishers does not change radically, the market will roll back to the state of 20 years ago when 95% of all games were exclusively pirated. The scale of piracy will definitely grow, and its limit depends on how long the restrictions on purchases will last, Sakhnov agrees with them. "Some international publishers are gradually abandoning the policy of banning their games in Russia, but this is not yet a mass phenomenon," he noted.

Source: https://www.vedomosti.ru/technology/articles/2023/07/20/986111-dolya-piratov-v-rossiiskoi-igrovoi-industrii?utm_campaign=newspaper_20_7_2023&utm_medium=email&utm_source=vedomosti