Mail.Ru is investing $100 million in games.
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Mail.Ru Group creates $100 million investment division to fund games

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Games could use a boost, and now the Russians are coming. Moscow-based Internet communications firm Mail.Ru Group is announcing that it has set up a $100 million investment division to invest in games and developers. The investment amount is the largest one from Russia to support the game industry, and it will invest in game companies there as well as the rest of the world.

Mail.Ru will finance “accomplished game studios and publishers” who need funding for scaling as well as young game developers. The division will employ a variety of investment strategies, including royalty investments. That means that it could invest in individual games, financing the money upfront and receiving payments in the form of royalties after the product ships.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.