Get woke, go TO THE ******* GULAG!!! Russia CONFISCATED World of Tanks!

[Eyestabber]

I learned this news from Portuguese sources, but the gist of it is the company behind World of Tanks/Warships is ******* HUGE, one of the largest gaming companies in Russia. Apparently the CEO decided to virtue signal by making in game content supporting Ukraine and he sent the money to "humanitarian aid" in Ukraine. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the money ended up supplying Ukranian troops. This happened in 2023. 2024 came and went with employees grumbling and asking for the content to be removed while the CEO spent the entire year OWNING THE CHUDS and telling everyone Russia wasn't going to do **** about it.

Turns out they DID do something about it, by confiscating his entire fortune as part of a settlement to avoid jail time. So the next time someone whines about Trump cracking down on traitors in the USA, take a ******* look at how Russia handles business, lmao. The guy was one of the richest men in Russia and by far one of the most successful gaming industry millionaires. And it all came crashing down because he HAD to virtue signal. Did someone mention faith > money with these people? Oh yeah, I DID.

More: https://www.eurogamer.net/russia-seeks- ... nks-bosses

[rusty_shackleford]

Moved to general video games because it's about video games

[rusty_shackleford]

Now, two separate World of Tanks developers and two separate versions of the game exist - though the Russian government does not appear to be making a distinction between them. This is despite the fact that the main World of Tanks is no longer available in Russia, and the Russian version - now referred to as Mir Tankov - is made entirely separately.

Seems like russia is doing a stupid unless the journo is wrong?

[Vergil]

Did he forget Putin started his presidency by purging and harshly punishing oligarchs who wouldn't fall in line? Actual suicidal libtardism but I guess what do you expect from the guy in charge of turbo normgroid slop.

[Eyestabber]

There's conflicting information on reddit, we need someone who speaks Russian to provide some insight. From what I gather the company was split between Russia and non-Russia parts, the non-Russia part did the thing and the Russian govt just went "nuh-uh!" and punished everyone. LOOK, do you guys seriously expect the Russian Government to give a flying **** about things like Business Law? Come on...

[wndrbr]

World of Tanks dev, Wargaming Studio, is actually from Belarus, not Russia. Wargaming's founder and CEO is indeed a liberal guy who hates Belarus and Russia, but the vast majority of its playerbase are vatnicks, so Wargaming had to cave in and accommodate their audience.

After the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war, Wargaming boss came to the conclusion that he no longer wants to work in/with Russia. But what should he do when like 80% of people who play World of Tanks are the russians? The solution was splitting the company in two parts - with Wargaming becoming international company with headquarters in Cyprus, and most of World of Tanks stuff given to a new company called 'Lesta', located in Russia. The idea was that Wargaming will continue trying to spread WoT in the rest of the world, while Lesta will be managing their original audience (nationalistic russian gen-Xers).

The ongoing controversy happened because Wargaming boss indeed funded Ukraine. But it wouldn't have been a major issue if he did so using Wargaming funds, after all it's an international company that technically ceased its operations in Russia. The problem was that they were using funds taken from Lesta through some financial jewry via offshore accounts.

Unfortunately, as a way to punish them, the russian gubermint chose the most heavyhanded approach - they are trying to nationalize Lesta entirely.

[Tangerine]

The ongoing controversy happened because Wargaming boss indeed funded Ukraine. But it wouldn't have been a major issue if he did so using Wargaming funds, after all it's an international company that technically ceased its operations in Russia.

This is Jewish legal word magic that not a single person actually believes is true and we should stop incentivizing this behavior. Russia is doing nothing wrong.

[Stack of Turtles]

The ongoing controversy happened because Wargaming boss indeed funded Ukraine. But it wouldn't have been a major issue if he did so using Wargaming funds, after all it's an international company that technically ceased its operations in Russia.

This is Jewish legal word magic that not a single person actually believes is true and we should stop incentivizing this behavior. Russia is doing nothing wrong.

He's saying that it would have been fine IF he had only used non-Russian money to do it. The guy isn't himself a Russian and the main company has nothing to do with Russia, the only nexus to Russia seems to be that Russians like the game.

[Vergil]

Belarus is basically Russia

[rusty_shackleford]

After the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war, Wargaming boss came to the conclusion that he no longer wants to work in/with Russia. But what should he do when like 80% of people who play World of Tanks are the russians? The solution was splitting the company in two parts - with Wargaming becoming international company with headquarters in Cyprus, and most of World of Tanks stuff given to a new company called 'Lesta', located in Russia. The idea was that Wargaming will continue trying to spread WoT in the rest of the world, while Lesta will be managing their original audience (nationalistic russian gen-Xers).

Is Lesta its own company, or owned by a parent?

[Stack of Turtles]

Belarus is basically Russia

It's like Russia, but White

[Eyestabber]

It looks to me like this is the Eastern version of what happens in Western development: ****** CEO hates their player base, pushes virtue signaling that literally nobody likes, but instead of ******* and ******** you have Ukraine.

This is Jewish legal word magic that not a single person actually believes is true and we should stop incentivizing this behavior. Russia is doing nothing wrong.

It did! It ****** Russian gamers in the ***.

[wndrbr]

Russia is doing nothing wrong.

I don't think there's anything wrong with punishing corporate **** for funding foreign militaries that are currently fighting against their country, however nationalizing was the worst way to do that. Russian IT industry already sucks for a variety of reasons, nationalizing companies just further dissuades devs from registering their startups and paying taxes in Russia.

First the russian gaming industry was annihilated by the 2009 financial crisis - a fuckton of smaller studios and even publishers went bankrupt, the ones who survived switched over to making ****** mobile games.

Another issue is that the russian IT field is dominated by the rootless cosmopolitan liberals (which is a common theme everywhere I guess). Due to the nature of their work they all speak english and regularly communicate with foreign devs, so naturally they don't have this attachment to their own country. A lot of them leave once they hit it big, and move to USA/Cyprus/Israel/Netherlands.

This isn't the first time the russian government nationalizes an IT company - they did it with VK (russian facebook clone, FSB forced Pavel Durov to sell it to some Kremlin-affiliated dude because of the risks of personal data leaking to foreign intelligence agencies), they sort-of did the same withing with Yandex (yandex founder and ceo was also a libtard who fled to Israel).

[wndrbr]

After the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war, Wargaming boss came to the conclusion that he no longer wants to work in/with Russia. But what should he do when like 80% of people who play World of Tanks are the russians? The solution was splitting the company in two parts - with Wargaming becoming international company with headquarters in Cyprus, and most of World of Tanks stuff given to a new company called 'Lesta', located in Russia. The idea was that Wargaming will continue trying to spread WoT in the rest of the world, while Lesta will be managing their original audience (nationalistic russian gen-Xers).

Is Lesta its own company, or owned by a parent?

it was originally owned by Wargaming, but it became independent after the split.

[rusty_shackleford]

After the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war, Wargaming boss came to the conclusion that he no longer wants to work in/with Russia. But what should he do when like 80% of people who play World of Tanks are the russians? The solution was splitting the company in two parts - with Wargaming becoming international company with headquarters in Cyprus, and most of World of Tanks stuff given to a new company called 'Lesta', located in Russia. The idea was that Wargaming will continue trying to spread WoT in the rest of the world, while Lesta will be managing their original audience (nationalistic russian gen-Xers).

Is Lesta its own company, or owned by a parent?

it was originally owned by Wargaming, but it became independent after the split.

OK, so the russian government is just being stupid then?

[wndrbr]

Is Lesta its own company, or owned by a parent?

it was originally owned by Wargaming, but it became independent after the split.

OK, so the russian government is just being stupid then?

who knows how it actually works. Maybe due to some agreement Lesta kept sending funds to Wargaming despite no longer being a subsidiary, and the government doesn't like that.

[Tangerine]

I don't think there's anything wrong with punishing corporate **** for funding foreign militaries that are currently fighting against their country, however nationalizing was the worst way to do that. Russian IT industry already sucks for a variety of reasons, nationalizing companies just further dissuades devs from registering their startups and paying taxes in Russia.

Russia punishing corpo **** is awesome; them ruining their IT industry is a nice bonus. I don't even hate Russia, I just want not-America to do worse as a general rule.

[Oyster Sauce]

I remember playing like a dozen matches with my friend in World of Warships just completely dominating and having a great time until we realized that we were matched against bots in the ****** offline mode. Stopped playing as soon as we got owned by real people.

[Decline]

Now, two separate World of Tanks developers and two separate versions of the game exist - though the Russian government does not appear to be making a distinction between them. This is despite the fact that the main World of Tanks is no longer available in Russia, and the Russian version - now referred to as Mir Tankov - is made entirely separately.

Seems like russia is doing a stupid unless the journo is wrong?

>Owning traitors is stupid

Crusty Schekelford, 2025

[rusty_shackleford]

Now, two separate World of Tanks developers and two separate versions of the game exist - though the Russian government does not appear to be making a distinction between them. This is despite the fact that the main World of Tanks is no longer available in Russia, and the Russian version - now referred to as Mir Tankov - is made entirely separately.

Seems like russia is doing a stupid unless the journo is wrong?

>Owning traitors is stupid

Crusty Schekelford, 2025

How is it a traitor when it's not the same people?

[Decline]

I don't think there's anything wrong with punishing corporate **** for funding foreign militaries that are currently fighting against their country, however nationalizing was the worst way to do that. Russian IT industry already sucks for a variety of reasons, nationalizing companies just further dissuades devs from registering their startups and paying taxes in Russia.

Russia punishing corpo **** is awesome; them ruining their IT industry is a nice bonus. I don't even hate Russia, I just want not-America to do worse as a general rule.

I guarantee you that any country that undoes its entertainment industry (of which games are a part, mind) will improve.

[Stack of Turtles]

Seems like russia is doing a stupid unless the journo is wrong?

>Owning traitors is stupid

Crusty Schekelford, 2025

How is it a traitor when it's not the same people?

According to wunderbar, the main company WAS (illegally?) extracting funds from the Russian company, so they were the same people. If wunderbar's right.

[KOS-MOS]

he got what he ******* deserved

[Vergil]

Talking about the actual game for a second this seems like the ultimate obnoxious troglodyte game. People who are aspies about military vehicles are already pretty detestable but marrying it with third world f2p sloppa seems like a nuclear hellblast of ****. Do any of you actually play this? Like a gacha game but for people with strong opinions on WWII logistical minutae instead of age of consent laws.

[Stack of Turtles]

Talking about the actual game for a second this seems like the ultimate obnoxious troglodyte game. People who are aspies about military vehicles are already pretty detestable but marrying it with third world f2p sloppa seems like a nuclear hellblast of ****. Do any of you actually play this? Like a gacha game but for people with strong opinions on WWII logistical minutae instead of age of consent laws.

I'm pretty sure that the only reason it exists is as a honeypot for classified military secrets leaked by autists complaining about things not being exactly right.

[Tangerine]

classified military secrets leaked by autists

I'd bet a good number of those are intentional counter-intel leaks.

[fork]

I played WoT 10 years ago or so.
It was a pretty good and relatively deep game back then, and could be played for free. The grind to unlock higher tier vehicles was long and hard, but I enjoyed it for quite some time.
That being said, it was always P2W, but you could overcome the hurdle by being better (75% of players were utter *******).

[logincrash]

According to wunderbar, the main company WAS (illegally?) extracting funds from the Russian company, so they were the same people. If wunderbar's right.

I've always read his username as "wonderbread," lmao.

[Norfleet]

I'm pretty sure that the only reason it exists is as a honeypot for classified military secrets leaked by autists complaining about things not being exactly right.

That's War Thunder. World of Warshits don't have any actual modern vehicles in them, it's all pre-WW2 through early Cold War ****.

[gerey]

Devs that make "free" P2W garbage should be sent to the front in penal battalions to soak up bullets.

That being said, besides the amusement of seeing autists from all over the globe leaking confidential military documents with weapon specs to win internet slapfights, World of Tanks and Warthunder did a good job of dispelling the most common tank myths and taught a whole generation of guys just how vulnerable all tanks, regardless of origin, actually are.