Wargaming (company)

Wargaming Group Limited (also known as Wargaming.net) is a Belarusian video game company headquartered in Nicosia, Cyprus.

The group operates across more than 20 offices globally and development studios, the largest of which is located in Minsk, where the company originated from. Initially focused on turn-based strategy and real-time strategy games, Wargaming switched to developing free-to-play online action games in 2009, including the military-themed team-based game World of Tanks, and later World of Warships and World of Warplanes.

Wargaming has development centers also in Kiev, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Seattle, Chicago, Baltimore, Sydney, Helsinki, Austin and Prague.

History

The building of Wargaming Minsk, Wargaming's original headquarters and largest studio

Wargaming was founded by Victor Kislyi in Minsk on 2 August 1998, intending the company as a developer of strategy video games. The company's first project was DBA Online—the digital version of a miniature tabletop rule set De Bellis Antiquitatis—launched in 2000. Wargaming started working on its first full-scale commercial project—the sci-fi turn-based strategy game Massive Assault, in March 2002. Over the course of five years, the company shipped five projects within the Massive Assault franchise.

On 16 November 2007, Wargaming acquired the Minsk-based developer Arise. In December 2008, the company released its first real-time strategy Operation Bagration. On 16 April 2009, Wargaming started working on real-time strategy game Order of War. It was published by Square Enix on 18 September 2009. On 12 August 2010, the company released its first online title, World of Tanks. On 12 April 2011, World of Tanks was released in North America and Europe.

In 2011, Wargaming relocated its headquarters from Minsk to Nicosia, Cyprus. Since 17 August 2015, these headquarters are located in the Wargaming HQ building, formerly known as the President building, located near the Presidential Palace in Nicosia. European operations headquarters, known as Wargaming Europe, were established in Paris, France, in July 2011. On 3 August 2011, the company created a direct presence in North America by opening an office in San Francisco. At E3 2011, Wargaming announced the follow-up to World of Tanks, the flight combat online action game World of Warplanes. At Gamescom 2011, the company unveiled the third part of its military saga—the naval action online game World of Warships. In October 2011, Wargaming announced the online collectible card MMO game World of Tanks: Generals. Throughout 2011, Wargaming joined strategic partnerships with Persha Studia, Lesta Studio and DAVA Consulting, with each operating separate projects under Wargaming.

On 21 February 2012, the Android version of World of Tanks Assistant, the mobile application for World of Tanks, went live in Europe and North America. In May 2012, Wargaming entered the Korean games market by opening a subsidiary office in Seoul. Wargaming embarked on a rebranding initiative and announced the Wargaming.net service, which will unite its games and services into a single battle universe in June 2012. On 7 August 2012, Wargaming acquired Australian company BigWorld Technology which brought development of the middleware for its MMO projects in-house. In an annual report for the Cyprus Stock Exchange (CSE) in 2012, Wargaming's revenue was declared to be 217.9 million Euro, with a net profit of 6.1 million Euro. Wargaming's shares were delisted from the CSE in 2015, and it remains a privately held company to date.

Wargaming moved into the console market by acquiring Day 1 Studios on 29 January 2013. Renamed Wargaming Chicago-Baltimore, the studios are currently developing World of Tanks: Xbox 360 Edition (February 2014), Xbox One (July 2015) and PlayStation 4 (January 2016). On 12 February 2013, Wargaming announced its own esports league, the Wargaming.net League. The company acquired Gas Powered Games on 14 February 2013. On 26 March 2013, Wargaming announced World of Tanks Blitz, a mobile MMO game centered around tank combat available for smartphones and tablets. The game was released on iOS in June 2014. As of 2016, World of Tanks Blitz is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10 and Mac OS X. Wargaming branched into the Japanese games market by opening an office in Tokyo on 29 May 2013. On 22 July 2013, the company bought Total Annihilation and Master of Orion intellectual properties from the Atari bankruptcy proceedings.

In July 2015, Wargaming launched WG Labs as a division that would act as a third-party publisher to outside developers. The creation of the division was primarily driven by Wargaming's partnership with independent studio NGD Studios and their game, Master of Orion. In October, the company also rebranded DropForge, a Bellevue, Washington-based mobile game studio founded in 2013 by David Bluhm, as WG Cells. WG Cells was shut down in August 2016.

Wargaming's WG Labs division released a reimagining of Master of Orion in August 2016. The game was developed by the Argentine NGD Studios. In November 2016 Wargaming, SEGA and Creative Assembly announced a new strategic partnership that will see Total War: ARENA published worldwide. As of 2016, Wargaming owns a significant share of the Hellenic Bank (Daniel S. Loeb's Third Point Group is the other major shareholder of the Cyprus-based Bank) and has shown an interest in purchasing land property assets in Cyprus for its use and investment purposes. Wargaming has become the largest taxpayer within Cyprus.

In 2017, Wargaming started a mobile games division called Wargaming Mobile.