JH: How did your relationship with Samsung start? We believe people can innovate in whatever space they want. People could decide to work from home or other remote places and we didn't really have to make many changes to our work environment. ![]() They may decide they didn't want to commute during the winter when it's rainy season here. In Dublin only 30% of the staff works in the office, others could be remote. After Covid hit, we maintained the same approach. Our department had 50% were working remotely in their home offices or in other countries. MK: Playrix has a hybrid approach that people can work from anywhere-the office, their home, the beach, anywhere in the world. MK: Playrix now employs more than 4,000 people, and that number continues to grow. I live in Dublin, Ireland, Playrix's headquarters. MK: Playrix employees can work remotely from anywhere or from one of our 17 offices located in Ireland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Serbia, Kazakhstan, and Armenia. JH: Where is Playrix located, and where do you live? We want to keep focusing on creating more innovative games and new genres. Growing with the M&A strategy and adding talented people really helped create AAA titles which accounts for our rapid growth. The switch to mobile really accelerated our rapid growth. We originally started with PC games, then social and web versions. JH: That's amazing! What do you attribute to your success? In 2020, Playrix placed in the top three for leading game publishers worldwide according to App Annie, and last year we climbed to second place. So we started developing our M&A strategy, and over the past four years, 13 studios from Armenia, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus have joined the Playrix group of companies. ![]() The company was actively growing, and in 2018, we came to the conclusion that it was time to build new partnerships. MK: In 2016, Playrix released Gardenscapes, which was the first game in our famous Scapes series. In 2004, your focus was PC games and then you switched to mobile in 2015. The mobile version of Fishdom came out in 2015, which is when the company became the leading mobile game developer in Eastern Europe. It was also the first project to be released as a mobile game later on. The first Facebook game, Township, was released in 2012 and immediately made the top 50. Around that time, they started developing social network games. By 2010, the company had released several successful PC games. MK: Our team has been developing games since 2004, but the founders of Playrix, Dmitry and Igor Bukhman, started making games even earlier, back when they were still in school. Now I lead the business development and M&A (Merger and Acquisition) teams. I worked in business development in marketing originally until I combined it with business development in general. So in 2018, I joined Playrix as Head of Marketing Growth. I realized I had wanted to return back to gaming, my passion. While I was working in IT, I was recruited by Playrix. I was always fond of games and had played Playrix's Gardenscapes. For three years, I helped the company penetrate foreign markets and launch new services in Indonesia, Brazil, Poland, and Thailand, to name a few. ![]() I also worked as Director of Business Development for an IT company doing Internet advertising for a while. I've come a long way in the industry since then-from Quality Assurance Manager to Executive Director at a game publisher in Russia. I started off at the Korean company Gravity, working on PC games like Ragnarök Online and Requiem Online. I've been in the gaming industry since 2007. How did your professional journey lead you to Playrix? In this first blog of a two part series, Maxim Kirilenko, Chief Business Development Officer at Playrix, chats with Samsung Developer's Senior Marketing Manager, Jeanne Hsu, about Playrix and Gardenscapes TM.
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