Nexters is a
Cypriot
Cypriot (in older sources often "Cypriote") refers to someone or something of, from, or related to the country of Cyprus.
* Cypriot people, or of Cypriot descent; this includes:
** Armenian Cypriots
** Greek Cypriots
** Maronite Cypriots
** Tur ...
video game company
The video game industry encompasses the development, marketing, and monetization of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide.
The video game industry has grown from niches to mainstrea ...
, headquartered in
Limassol, Cyprus
Limassol (; el, Λεμεσός, Lemesós ; tr, Limasol or ) is a city on the southern coast of Cyprus and capital of the district with the same name. Limassol is the second largest urban area in Cyprus after Nicosia, with an urban population ...
. The company story dates back to 2010 when Andrey Fadeev and Boris Gertsovskiy met. The company is best known for the social and mobile games ''Throne Rush'' and ''Hero Wars''. Nexters is one of the top five independent mobile game companies in Europe.
History
In 2010 Andrey Fadeev was running Progrestar, a
social games development studio, when he first met Boris Gertsovskiy, a future friend and fellow game developer.
By 2012, Gertsovskiy had become the President of Crazy Bit, also a
social games development studio. Not long after, Crazy Bit and Progrestar began a partnership. Both teams moved into a new, shared office space and would regularly share best practices and hold cross-company events.
In 2013, Progrestar released ''Throne Rush'', a strategy game, which ultimately became one of the most popular social games on
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...
and
VK.
In 2014, Fadeev and Gertsovskiy decided to form Nexters. This led to Nexters' first release, ''Island Experiment'', a casual game for social networks.
In 2016, Nexters established its new headquarters in Cyprus. At the same time, they also released ''Hero Wars'', an action RPG. By 2018, Nexters decided to focus on mobile game development and scaling those games.
In the summer of 2018, the founders of
Playrix
Playrix Holding Ltd., also known as Playrix Entertainment and Playrix Games, is a developer of free-to-play mobile games behind titles such as ''Township'', '' Fishdom'', ''Homescapes'', and '' Gardenscapes''. The company was founded in 2004 by Dm ...
, brothers Igor Bukhman and Dmitry Bukhman acquired a stake in Nexters.
Nexters generated $318 million in bookings and $120 million in
free cash flow to equity In corporate finance, free cash flow to equity (FCFE) is a metric of how much cash can be distributed to the equity shareholders of the company as dividends or stock buybacks—after all expenses, reinvestments, and debt repayments are taken care o ...
(FCFE) in 2020. As of 2020, 35% of the company's net bookings came from the United States, 23% from Europe, and 19% from Asia
Its flagship product, Hero Wars RPG, was downloaded 36 million times in 2020 on
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...
and
Android.
In February 2021, Nexters announced it would go public on the
Nasdaq
The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...
via a
SPAC deal with Kismet Acquisition One Corp. The merger valued Nexters at $1.9 billion.
On August 27, 2021, Nexters went public on Nasdaq under the ticker GDEV.
In 2021, in addition to the released ''Chibi Island'' at the end of the year the company soft-launched the new casual game ''Island Questaway''. Nexters plans to launch a
match-3-style game, ''Riddle Island''
in 2022.
In January 2022, Nexters said it planned to acquire Cubic Games for $70M, 48.8% of MX Capital Limited (RJ Games) for $15M, and 49.5% of Castcrown Limited (Royal Ark) for $4.95M.
On February 28, 2022, Nasdaq, Inc., halted trading in the stock of Nexters, Inc. and four Russia-based companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange. The halts were due to regulatory concerns as the stock exchange seeks more information following economic sanctions imposed on Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine.
Games
References
{{reflist
External links
Official Website
Video game development companies
Companies established in 2014
Companies listed on the Nasdaq
Companies based in Limassol