It’s an eight-day train journey from Moscow to Vladivostok, where the the King’s Bounty team reside. They couldn’t make it to KRI for that very reason. What’s more it’s a place where publishers need to battle with the problems of distribution and rampant retail piracy. We might get upset about torrent sites and online theft, but up until a few years ago most games sold in Russia were pirate copies sold as packaged products on the street. The cost of broadband meant, for the larger part, it was cheaper to buy pirate product from a vendor. The problem was so bad that pirate companies were reportedly approaching publishers to offer to distribute their games. This has been quite fiercely stamped out by the Russian authorities.
[...]
Gaming in Russia is around 70% PC-based, and so it was relatively easy for pirates to gain the upperhand, selling games for a few roubles in the same subway stalls that people use to buy cigarettes, cans of coke, and pocket-sized bottles of Vodka. 1c knew they had to combat this and their approach was quite brutal. Firstly they launched retail products that were super cheap, to compete with the pirates, and bear them on support and service. And then they lobbied for legislation to help them out.
[...]
1C went as high as they could: to President Vladimir Putin himself. The man from the KGB soon realised just what value this burgeoning industry would be to his vast, developing country. The punishment for commercial piracy is now up to seven years in prison. A Russian prison. As disincentives go, it’s a good one.
[...]
With 300 people a year now jailed for software theft, piracy is rapidly disappearing quickly in the major cities of Russia. [...] As more and more people shopped in the 1c stores, so the Russian publishers have been able to raise their prices back towards what it is in the West. [...] Much of this, of course, is making the 1c bosses rather wealthy, but it’s also funding the vibrant creative industry that we saw on show at the Cosmos Hotel.​