Developer and publisher Wargaming.net has revealed that World of Tanks, its client-based, free-to-play game, makes somewhere in the low end of "double-digit" millions in profits every month.
The privately held company hasn't disclosed exact sales or profit numbers, but CEO Victor Kislyi compares Wargaming.net's revenue and headcount growth to the early expansions of giant internet services firms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google.
"We probably have one of the highest payment ratios in the industry, it's around 25-30 per cent," said Kislyi in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz. That's especially impressive when you consider World of Tanks has 20 million registered users.
The game launched in Russia in 2010, and has since released in North America, Taiwan, and other European countries. Wargaming.net recently announced that it will release World of Tanks in Southeast Asia, and has hinted at plans for Brazil, Turkey, and the Middle East.
As for its staff, the London-headquartered company has 400 people working on World of Tanks alone -- compared to the 120 it had 18 months ago -- across its development studios in Minsk, Belarus and Kiev, Ukraine.
Along with those employees, it has 150 people working on World of Warplanes, 50 people creating small projects, and over 70 people at its St. Petersburg, Russia studio developing World of Battleships. Wargaming.net has offices in Paris, Berlin, and San Francisco, too.
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But I don't respect their business model in the least. Pay to win, and punishing their client base with absurdly long and unbalanced gameplay to make it to the actual game.
Besides the facts that everyone that plays knows this game has maybe 10-20 k players in the US compared to the 50-60k in Europe and 200k in Russia.
The reality is with greater discernment due to choice, this game is seen as a rather nasty player abusive grind, and doesn't need to be. Hence why it isn't very popular in the US.
Coupled with the fact that where they get the vast majority of their popularity its what I can only guess a national sport at this time, based on it's revenue.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismis the numbers. If they are in fact developing two new major titles for the series that means there is a series market for these types of games. I think they have done a great job at I sing a void in the market and owning it.
You can spin doctor the metrics all you want it still doesn't justify bs game dynamics.
Also if this game functioned correctly it wouldn't need to constantly break the borders by supplementing players from other countries when the match maker failed utterly.