The games industry has faced a set of risks that feel both completely new and eerily familiar in recent years. Not too long ago, the company was known as Nexters, but it changed its name to GDEV Inc. to reflect its evolution as a holding company focused on the development and growth of its portfolio across various genres and platforms, including PC.
A quick side note here; Nexters Global continues to operate as a studio and remains a 100% owned subsidiary of GDEV Holding. GDEV is growing its franchises with new titles, expanding to new platforms, identifying market risks through expert analysis and increasing its monthly active users year-by-year while many others are closing shop left and right, regardless of their size.
GDEV’s expansion and diversification approach
GDEV’s full portfolio generated over $2.4 billion in revenue, amassing 550 million downloads, and its games have over 14 million monthly active players combined. The Cyprus-based gaming hub managed to grow its key metrics despite all the setbacks that shocked the games industry.
GDEV aims for further growth by creating more games that will inspire and engage millions of players, existing and new, and they’ve some very strong pillars in their subsidiaries such as Nexters and Cubic Games, the latter being one of the very first acquisitions and investment deals as a publicly traded company for the company.
The holding company also partially controls assets such as Royal Ark and Game Gears. Any potential future acquisition will also fall under GDEV leadership. While GDEV serves as the parent company, all the studios continue to operate under their own self-sufficiency and focus on what they do best.
GDEV’s new found success on PC and Steam
In fact, GDEV successfully launched the iconic mobile title Pixel Gun 3D on the PC platform back in April 2024, and the game quickly made it into the Top 20 most-sold and Top 50 most-played games on Steam. On its first day, it reached a peak concurrent user count of 25,000 players on Steam and it even recouped its PC platform development costs within the survive first day of release. An incredibly rare success story as most mobile titles that find their way to Steam either tank, fail to gain visibility or take too long to cover the cost of their PC ports and get shut down prematurely.
with popular game IPs across diverse genres and platforms. By GDEV
GDEV’s unstoppable growth on all fronts
The gaming hub expands beyond its safety net by launching new games both within its existing franchises and exploring new games, on mobile and other platforms as well. However, the team is also going beyond traditional gaming and venturing into non-gaming media to ensure its continued growth, reach new parties, drive more engagement, and generate more revenue.
The company has over 900 employees around the world, and this mega team effort contributed to over 550 million installs across their portfolio, making the company one of the top 6 independent mobile game developers in Europe. Needless to say, becoming an international gaming giant didn’t happen over a night or two.
Starting as a small game studio, we worked and I began to do business in Russia, in a highly competitive environment where only the strongest survive. Our commissions for deductions to stores and gaming platforms were around 60%, and it was very difficult to find employees – the game development market was just emerging, we had to think a lot about profitability and as a leader, I spent a lot of energy solving business problems, while at that time I wanted to dedicate more time to creating games and many other obstacles related to running a business.
Therefore, when Nexters began its victorious international march, we saw that the market outside our country was easier and so it turned out that we were already a trained team, having gone through fire and water, and therefore the problems we faced were not so scary for us, because we knew exactly what to do and how to solve these problems. Of course, some problems were new to us, here one of my favorite terms comes into play – unsexy work, which we will encounter several times throughout our article.”
GDEV’s Founder & CEO Andrey Fadeev
Over a third of GDEV’s revenue stems from the United States, according to the investors’ presentation, and international expansion was what changed the company for the better and was one of the core steps in the company’s supercharged growth. Many risks were taken throughout the journey, but all was worth it as GDEV’s stability and growth were solidified in the early 2020s and 2021 marked the turning point with the company’s successful Nasdaq listing.
Fadeev expanded on this bit too, stating that it was no easy task and only recently they were able to solve all the minor issues in regards to GDEV’s listing.
I would deceive you if I said that we simply and quickly entered Nasdaq perfectly, and probably any business owner would deceive by saying that it is easy for his company and team! It is a very difficult and complex process that requires years of preparation, various documents, requirements, checks, and a hundred other things that you need to do because it is Nasdaq! But we are very good at adapting to the processes, time, and tasks that lie ahead of us. I’ll tell you a secret, probably only this year, we have fully closed all the gaps in this project and solved all the problems that arose during this gigantic task.
GDEV’s Founder & CEO Andrey Fadeev
GDEV’s growth is a testament to its ability to adapt, innovate, and overcome challenges. From its humble beginnings in Russia to becoming a significant player on the global stage, GDEV has demonstrated resilience and strategic acumen. Their journey underscores the importance of perseverance and adaptability in achieving long-term success in the competitive gaming industry.
GDEV’s studio and game portfolio
At the moment, GDEV houses four portfolio gaming studios and seven games, the largest studio being the good old Nexters.
Nexters
If you’ve been around for a while in the mobile games scene, Nexters is a name you’re surely familiar with. The company has over 550 employees currently, and they are working on three highly successful mobile games: Hero Wars Alliance, Hero Wars: Dominion Era, and Island Hoppers. With 250 million downloads, nearly half of the total installs of GDEV’s portfolio come from this studio.
Hero Wars, per AppMagic, is one of the Top 3 Free RPG mobile games worldwide!
Cubic Games
This is the studio behind the mega-hit Pixel Gun 3D, and it packs over 200 million installs. The IP has been around for over a decade now and it also found big success on Steam as referred to in this article earlier.
Cubic Games is actively now working on its second game called Block City Wars, which accumulated over 85 million installs on the AppStore and Google Play combined.
Royal Ark
GDEV’s third studio, Royal Ark, is a young international gaming company with a trending game called Zombie Miner. The game has already scored over 2 million downloads in less than a year (launched in December 2023) and going strong!
Game Gears
Game Gears was acquired by GDEV back in January 2022, and the team here is made up of experienced mobile game developers. They’re currently working on RnD projects.
GDEV already has a diverse portfolio of studios that specialize in developing games across various genres. The genre focus of each studio reflects their core expertise and strengths. Hence, GDEV helps its studios to focus on sustainable development of their top-tier live service games in the genres of their expertise.
They believe that it can be done by continuous adaptation and improvements of studios’ games to stay competitive and relevant for the target audience. With that, they can break the standard life cycle of live service games with a phase of growth followed by a gradual decline. This approach also solidifies our market presence and bolsters financial sustainability.
GDEV believes that this approach is the correct answer in a challenging and demanding environment and ensures our games portfolio remains relevant and enduring, bolstering its market presence and visibility.
The company’s main focus lies in the United States market as that’s where they see the most growth and interest for their large portfolio. For how they’ll further grow their portfolio, the company CEO Fadeev said:
Going forward, we are planning to expand and diversify our game studios and franchises. The growth potential is vast, not only in customer acquisition, where we already have substantial experience but also in the iterative development of our company’s projects.
In our sphere, sometimes even minor changes can propel gain beyond this current plateau and look at a whole new level of success. In line with this vision, we are planning to launch several new projects within our existing franchises. We are also venturing into non-gaming media, which represents new growth opportunities. I hope that we will see something interesting in the near or mid-term future, and the US citizens will see it inevitably.
GDEV’s Founder & CEO Andrey Fadeev
GDEV is also developing its YouTube channel to be more interactive and be more close to its audience.
The company promises more new games are on the horizon and existing games will get updates such as new events and features and improved LiveOps services. GDEV is also seeking partnerships and considering M&A opportunities that align with the company’s strategic objectives.
