President Vladimir Putin has promised to include the topic of licenses for Russian game companies seeking to enter the lucrative BRICS market into negotiations with Moscow's BRICS country partners.
"We will include this in the negotiation process...The market is colossal. Not just China, but in all the BRICS countries. Alright," Putin said, speaking at an exhibition in Moscow dedicated the development of the creative economy in Russia.
Putin made the commitment after being informed that Russian game developers have experienced problems entering the Chinese market because doing so requires special licenses from the Chinese government, whose issuance has faced complications. Putin was told that even 10-15 licenses per year would be like a "breath of fresh air" for Russian companies.
The president also revealed at the exhibition whether or not he himself enjoys playing video games in his free time.
At a press conference Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that he has never heard of the Russian president playing video games. "I don’t know whether the president plays computer games. I have never seen it or heard about it from him," the spokesman said.
Although he doesn't appear to be a games player, Putin does seem to recognize the significance of this nonlinear form of entertainment in the modern world.
Last month, in an address to Games of the Future, a Russian-based international phygital ("physical+digital") sport tournament, Putin hailed the competition and its ambitious plans to meld "e-sports and classical sports on one platform – tournaments in video games, virtual and augmented reality with traditional sports including football, basketball, hockey and mixed martial arts" as an absolutely "unique" venue.
Putin expressed pride over the fact that such ideas were being thought up in Russia, and stressed that cybersports units people from different countries and continents along one ideal: of "sports outside of politics, and designed to strengthen mutual understanding and friendship between peoples, to serve humanism, prosperity and the good."
Russia is among the top five countries in the world in terms of the overall size of its video game market, behind only China, the United States, and Japan, with an estimated 65 million regular gamers.
The international online games market lost up to 80 percent of its revenue stream from Russia in 2022 amid the outflow of foreign giants and restrictions slapped on Russian users of major games platforms like Steam and the Playstation Network, plus the relocation of some Russian game studios out of the country to avoid sanctions.
But experts expect the market to "bounce back quickly" given the successes of new Russian games, plus the growing popularity of mobile games – with that market continuing to grow even in 2022.