On August 28, a vacancy “Business Development Manager (Games)” appeared on the HeadHunter website. It would not have attracted attention if it were not for the name of the company that placed the ad — Yandex.
According to the text of the vacancy, the new employee will have to attract game developers, build a financial model of the product, as well as engage in the processes of connecting games to the platform. The company itself requires that the applicant understands the monetization of browser games and understands the specifics of the mobile games market.
From all this, it is easy to conclude that Yandex is now preparing to launch its own gaming platform, which, most likely, will be a showcase for gaming browser products and, possibly, offer traffic for mobile projects.
Even in the first half of the day, the vacancy was available, but at the time of writing these lines, it can no longer be found. It has either been deleted or archived.
We have sent an official request to the company regarding Yandex’s plans to launch its own platform. There is no answer yet.
Previously, Yandex already had a gaming platform. As Alexander Zezyulin, the operational director of the R&D division of Wargaming, noted on his Facebook page, it ceased to exist approximately simultaneously with his departure from Yandex ten years ago, where he held the position of product manager.
Zezyulin also noted that he would look with interest at where the company would take browser games on the modern market, and also admitted that the new platform might not reach release at all.
It should be noted that today there are enough companies on the Russian market that offer their own platforms with browser games. Among them Mail.Ru Group, 101XP and CreaGames.