GameDev DOU published a rating of the 25 largest game development companies from Ukraine. It contains both familiar names to the general public and fairly specialized companies that do not want to draw undue attention to their work.

The list includes companies that develop their own products – mobile games, AA and AAA-projects, and outsourced studios that help others create games while staying behind the scenes. The rating does not include companies engaged in gambling, creating mobile applications for casinos, games in the genre of social casinos, etc. In addition, companies with less than 100 employees were not included.

A good rating from which you can learn something interesting. For example, GSC Game World already has almost as many employees as Kyiv’s Wargaming: about 500! At a time when GSC was developing the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and a few more strategy games in addition, the studio had no more than 200 employees. On the other hand, the complexity of games and the amount of content that needs to be created has “slightly” increased in 20 years.

In addition, the number of employees of the Ukrainian Ubisoft, which ranks second in the ranking equals 1115 people, which is impressive. If we add to this Gameloft, which has long been closely related to Ubisoft, then together they will take first place.

On the other hand, we have several questions for this rating. For example, what do companies with Russian and Belarusian roots are doing here in the fourth month of the Great War? For example, Playrix, which occupies the first step, was created in Russia, has studios in Russia, its owners are Russians. G5 Entertainment can be called a Swedish company as much as you want, but it is also created in Russia, has studios there and its owner is also Russian. The same applies to Wargaming, which seems to have left the Russian market, but not much, and meanwhile missiles from the territory of Belarus continue to kill Ukrainians.

That is, we understand that these companies have studios in Ukraine, employ thousands of Ukrainians, and even pay some taxes here, many of the developers volunteer, and some fight in the ranks of the Armed Forces… But these same companies also pay taxes in Russia, and these taxes finance the war. It seems unethical to add such companies to the rating of Ukrainian game studios.