In the coming year, Russian game developers will be able to apply for grants to the state for the first time. The total amount of grants is 3 billion rubles. The contest was announced by the first deputy head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation Sergey Kiriyenko.

Kiriyenko met with representatives of the Internet Development Institute (IRI) and the media industry in Moscow. It emphasized that such state competitions have not been held in the Russian Federation so far, TASS reports.

For the first time, we have quite significant budget funding to support creative people who create content on the Internet. Significant compared to the fact that there was zero, but probably not quite significant compared to what is necessary in order to maintain this environment.

Sergey Kiriyenko

First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation

Which projects will be allowed

Grants will be issued in the following areas:

  • games and software;
  • special projects from online media;
  • blogger content;
  • video content.

Both companies that have already entered the market and startups that have only a creative concept in their hands are allowed to participate in the competition. Projects and ideas on topics are required from them:

  • “Living Memory” (about the victory in the Great Patriotic War);
  • “Do good” (volunteering);
  • “We are together” (multinational);
  • “We are proud” (successes in domestic sports, business and cultural sphere);
  • “Act” (the possibilities of Russians).

How projects will be selected

The contest is held by the IRI. On January 20, the first acceptance of applications will open on its website. Projects will be selected through expertise and open pitching (by analogy with the Cinema Foundation). The selection will fall on the Supervisory Board of the IRI and the “professional community”.

Two more waves of the competition will be held in April and October.

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Note: a similar initiative on state support of the Russian game dev was recently put forward by the LDPR deputy Vasily Vlasov. He proposed to create a fund to finance game developers. This practice is already common in some countries (for example, in Germany, Great Britain, France and Canada).

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