We continue to wrap up the year 2025 with gaming (or gaming-related) teams. Up next is an interview with Vladimir Obruchev, head of the gaming division at Bombora publishing.
How did the year turn out for the publishing house (gaming division) from a business standpoint?
Vladimir Obruchev, “Bombora”: The year was challenging for the entire book industry — there was increased government regulation on content at a legislative level, and resolving these issues took a lot of energy and resources from our publishing house. This affected the purchase of books from foreign rights holders, as we now need to coordinate text changes with them, and rights holders (or authors) are sometimes not open to such changes (even if it requires removing just 1-2 words from the entire book). In such cases, we are forced to decline purchasing publishing rights.
Otherwise, the year was quite decent.
How did the year 2025 go for Bombora’s gaming division in terms of product releases?
Vladimir: As planned, we invested significantly more in working with Russian-speaking authors. This is due to ongoing issues with acquiring book rights as well as the demand for the experience of Russian developers among the Russian-speaking audience. Yes, sometimes such books take longer to prepare for print compared to translations, but as a publisher, we are ready for this.
Two of our most notable releases in the gaming genre are “Need More Gold: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment” (yes, we continue naming books after memes) by Jason Schreier and the magnificent gift art book “Elden Ring Mythology: Gift of Grace,” which was released at the end of the year in two editions — a deluxe gift edition and a super deluxe collectible edition.
Besides these, I would like to highlight Semyon Kostin's book “Harry Potter and the Gifts of Game Development,” dedicated to the numerous games about the boy who lived, another book on the Silent Hill franchise titled “Silent Hill: Mysteries of the Foggy Town,” as well as books on the franchises Castlevania, Dishonored, Undertale, and Street Fighter.
Among books related to development, I’d like to highlight several releases. These include the second edition of “I Want to Get Into Game Dev! A Beginner’s Guide to Game Development” by Vyacheslav Utochkin, Konstantin Sakhnov, and Dmitry Tabakov, “Management in the IT Industry: How to Manage Yourself, a Team, and Projects” by Oleg Dobroshtan, “Community Management and Game Operation: Two Sides of the Same Coin” by Alexander Tolkach, and “The Profession of Level Designer: A Practical Guide to Creating Game Worlds” by Benjamin Bauer, scientifically edited by Vasily Skobolev.
We also released a book on board game development — Scott Rogers’ “Your Move! A Guide to Creating Board Games.”
How has the Russian market for gaming books changed in 2025?
Vladimir: Major foreign rights holders still aren’t eager to sell rights for publishing in Russian, and now legislative obstacles concerning book content have compounded this issue. The market is clearly shifting towards Russian-speaking authors — it is easier and more profitable for publishers to find such authors and negotiate the creation of books on topics and franchises of interest. This trend is expected to continue for at least another year (of course, we hope that publishers like Dark Horse or Titan will change their licensing policies and start working with the Russian-speaking market, but this seems unlikely for now).
What trends in book publishing related to video games do you expect in 2026?
I believe the market will begin to focus more on gaming projects by Russian developers. More fiction, comics, and similar books related to games created in our country will begin to emerge.
What are the publishing plans for next year?
Vladimir: Our plans, as always, are extensive and ambitious. I will list only the most interesting ones here.
- Just a few days ago, we announced that Yevgeny Peklo is writing a book for us on the Heroes of Might & Magic franchise.
- The publishing house has acquired the rights to Sid Meier's autobiography. Yes, we know this book was previously released in Russian, but in our view, it went largely unnoticed, and it deserves a second chance.
- We are working on books about games from the Star Wars franchise (it will be in the style of Semyon Kostin’s book on Harry Potter games).
- Nikita Entus is working on a book about the history of Bioware, and Sergey Tsilyurik’s book on the Final Fantasy franchise is already at the printing house.
- For lovers of beautiful gift editions, we are preparing richly illustrated books on Demon’s Souls and on the Zelda, The Sims, and Sonic franchises.
- In spring, we plan to release Vasily Skobolev’s book “Level Design of Good Tone.”
- The work on Vasily Ovchinnikov's “Not a Guilty Game” is nearing completion, and we also hope to release the book in spring.
- Of course, our plans do not end there — we are conducting numerous negotiations with authors on various “unannounced projects,” so we definitely plan to delight our readers with new exciting releases in 2026.