The largest game development company in Ukraine by the number of employees and fourth among the world’s largest developers in the world – Playrix is not going to leave the Russian market.

The company has founded by entrepreneurs from the aggressor country, but with 4000 its employees almost 1500 are Ukrainians. In particular, Playrix belongs to Ukrainian studios Zagrava Games, Boolat Play, Voki, Home Games and 4Friend. Now the developer of Gardenscapes, Fishdom and other famous games are is planning to leave Russia and is going to stay in Ukraine, told the co-founder Igor Bukhman.

A few hours after the invasion, Ukrainian teams were sent on a paid vacation. In two days all employees paid a bonus, a size of monthly salary. According to Bukhman, the payment helped not only Ukrainians on the front-line, but also Russians who “suffered from the fall of ruble”.

The company helped Ukrainians with evacuation, but 10% of Russian workers who traveled to Georgia, Armenia and Turkey received the same support. At the same time, Playrix did not allow to discuss the war in Slack, where employees were communicated. Initially, the company deleted the war-related messages of Ukrainians, and later blocked the Slack channels. Now one of them was restored.

The co-founder of Playrix explained that expressing opinion is not prohibited in chats, but here they want to save space for business communication. Now managers are trying to separate communication between Ukrainians and Russians as much as possible. However, the company’s management expects a wave of dismissals.

At the beginning of the war, the company asked employees not to transfer funds to support Ukraine because in Russia it is punishable by law. However, in March, Playrix sent $500,000 to the Ukrainian Red Cross Society.

The company still did not express its position on the Russian-Ukrainian war. On February 24, her leadership stated that Playrix is apolitical. On February 28, the co-founders of Igor and Dmitri Bukhman called war “tragedy” and called to “stop war.”