Steam Analogue in Russia and CIS: How to Get into VK Play

On March 2, Valve, the American game developer, restricted the main payment methods on Steam for users from Russia, which are Visa, Mastercard and Mir cards. Now you can pay for purchases only through PayPal or an internal Steam wallet. Users of other gaming services faced similar difficulties, in particular PS Store, Microsoft Store, Nintendo eShop, GOG, etc.

Currently users with Russian cards cannot legally buy games on foreign sites and VK has decided to occupy this niche.

The volume of the Russian gaming market in 2021 amounted to 177 billion rubles, and the audience of gamers is more than 80 million people. "Interest in games is constantly growing: they become not only entertainment, but also a profession and a tool to manifest the potential. That is exactly why we are launching VK Play — a convenient and safe platform that will become a single access point for the entire gaming community in the country," said Artem Chermenin, Director of Strategic Development at VK Play.

VK is already negotiating with a number of game development studios on agreements for the exclusive representation of games on the VK Play gaming platform in Russia and in the CIS. Thus, VK intends to create a Russian analogue of the Steam and Epic Games platforms.

VK Play is being developed as a single access point to gaming and near-gaming content in Russia and therefore should offer the most diversified catalogue.

"We are open to all developers who want to effectively grow their products on the Russian market," he added. "For this, VK Play already offers favorable conditions: the lowest 5% commission on the market, marketing support, and flexible formats of cooperation," a VK representative said in an interview with Vedomosti.

What is VK Play

So far, VK Play is a platform for gamers, developers, and creators. The platform is actively evolving to become a full-fledged substitute for Steam in Russia, but already now it has functionality for buying games, showing streams, holding tournaments, cloud gaming, etc.

Direct Games and Web Games

Depending on the platform on which gaming applications are running, VKontakte divides games into two types:

• Direct Games are games that are launched from VKontakte mobile apps for Android or iOS, as well as in the mobile version of the VKontakte website (https://m.vk.com );
• Web games are games that run in the desktop version of the VKontakte website (https://vk.com).

How to Get into the VK Play Catalogue

To get into the catalogue, the game must pass moderation. To do this, you need to make a request and correct errors that a moderator will point out. If all is well, the game will be added to the catalogue.

How to prepare the game for moderation and what conditions it must meet is described in detail in the instructions.

RMAA Game Marketing specialists will help prepare the game for moderation subject to all the requirements of the platform, make a request for moderation and promptly report errors that need to be corrected in the game, in case the project is rejected by VK Play moderation.

Besides technical components for successful moderation localization must be taken into account: the main language of the game should be Russian.

Source: VK instructions for developers.

As a whole, the moderation process takes no longer than a week. After that, the game will be available to players and it will already be possible to actively promote it to Russian-speaking users. Read the article to find out how to promote your game placed on the VK Play platform.

In Conclusion

VK Play is actively developing its tools and increasing the base of both developers, and gamers. We, as experts in the promotion of games in the Russian-speaking segment, see great prospects for this project on the Russian market, as well as on markets of the CIS countries. Since it is not soon when the major players such as Steam return to the market if at all. And the problems with purchasing games on foreign platforms will soon lead to reducing of buying activity of Russian players to a minimum and will give rise to an active search for alternatives. VK Play will be exactly such an alternative.

The article uses materials from the online edition of Vedomosti and VK instructions for developers.

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