World Of Tanks devs Wargaming.net reports multi-million profits
Luke Stratford March 19, 2012 - 7:19 pmNews: Wargaming.net rakes in millions per month in the ‘double digit’ range from World Of Tanks.
If any further proof that the Free-To-Play’ format is a sound business plan is needed, look no further than the smash hit World Of Tanks, created by Wargaming.net – which, according to its CEO, Victor Kislyi, is raking it in.
Describing their monthly profits to be in the ‘double digit’ range, Kislyi spoke to GamesIndustry.biz regarding the runaway success of the World Of Tanks, the upcoming release World Of Warplanes, and the strength of their approach to working within the FTP business model.
‘We probably have one of the highest payment ratios in the industry, it’s around 25-30 per cent,’ he explaned ‘Because people love the game.’
‘Ironically the game is not squeezing monetisation, it’s not rough. There’s no velvet rope over the gates and you have to buy a key to open it. Some MMOs are like this but we are not. It’s smooth and non-intrusive.’
With a devoted, and rapidly expanding user base behind them, Wargaming.net reporting close to half a million concurrent active users in Russia and Europe combined, with Chinese users (managed by KongZhong) standing at around 150,000. Expanding their reach and manpower, the studio already counts 400 staff working on World Of Tanks, 150 working on World Of Warplanes and another 50 at work on what Kislyi described as ‘smaller projects’.
One of the cornerstones of the game’s success, according to Kislyi, has been World of Tanks’ attention to detail – reproducing the tanks of many different nations – a risk that they initially worried would alienate the Chinese market; ‘We were really nervous to begin with and there were doubts that Asian people were not ready for tanks and warplanes – they prefer dragons and princesses. Well, we proved them wrong. Our Chinese revenues and the number of players are growing really fast. Since November they have almost doubled. That’s a pretty good growth rate.’
Now, however, with expectations high for World Of Warplanes, Wargaming.net are beginning to feel the pressure.
‘With World of Tanks it was easier for us go in and nobody was expecting anything from us. We kind of flew under the radar.’ Kislyi admits, ‘For World of Warplanes we can see the cameras looking at us. The games industry, the media, the players. They have very high expectations, we cannot screw it up, we have to make everything perfect.’
