The Belarusian developer of World of Tanks and World of Warships, Wargaming, has announced it will be leaving Russia and Ukraine in a statement posted on LinkedIn.
Today Wargaming posted a statement on LinkedIn saying it will be pulling out of Russia and Belarus due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. The developer of the MMO, which is currently based in Belarus, has over 1,750 employees and will also be closing its studio in Minsk, Belarus.
In its statement, Wargaming said, “We will be providing as much severance and support as possible to our employees affected by the change.” The invasion of Ukraine, which is why the developer chose to do this, started on February 24th, 2022, and has caused 1,417 Ukrainian civilian deaths as of April 2nd, 2022, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
World of Tanks, which can be played on multiple platforms, including PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, iOS and Android, currently has more than 160 million players. The developer wants its fans to know it’s still committed to making games despite having to change locations, “Despite the magnitude of this decision, we as a company are confident in the future of our business and are committed to delivering quality games to our players.”
World of Tanks celebrated its 10th anniversary on August 12th, 2020, and it reached an all-time peak for players on Steam at 4,196 in May 2021. There is also a version available on the Nintendo Switch called World of Tanks Blitz which has had more than 1.5 million installs since April 2021. The main PC version currently has an 80 on gaming review aggregator site Metacritic with a 3.4 user-based score.
The company also said it won’t profit from this process, but they are still confident in their choice as their headquarters are in Cyprus.
Wargaming can be found at @wargaming_net on Twitter and its World of Tanks account can be found at @worldoftanks on the same site. The game is free to play on both consoles, PC, and mobile.
