Clarification about Astrum Online “takeover” by Mail.Ru

[galethbg]

Hello everyone,

Since there have been a lot of rumors floating around lately concerning the owners of Astrum Online, I just wanted to put everything in one place and clarify things a bit.

PLAYERS:

ASTRUM ONLINE
Astrum Online Entertainment is the largest interactive online entertainment holding company in Russia and Eastern Europe, comprising five companies: Astrum Nival, Nikita.Online, IT Territory, TimeZero and DJ Games.

MAIL.RU
Mail.Ru is the largest communication portal in the Runet with a monthly audience exceeding 50 million users. It provides these users with around 40 services, including the largest free email service in Russia and the CIS countries, Russia’s leading instant messenger, national social network, photo, video and blog hosting services, leading game portal, search engine and many others.

Digital Sky Technologies (DST)
DST is the largest internet investor in the Russian-speaking and Eastern European markets and one of the leading investment groups globally to exclusively focus on internet and internet-related companies. DST is a privately held holding company backed by leading Russian and Western financial institutions.

RELATIONS:
Digital Sky Technologies was a majority share holder in both Mail.Ru and Astrum Online. Basically, they are the ones who own everything.

THE MERGE:
DST has merged its majority stake in Mail.ru with its majority stake in the Astrum Online. After the transaction Mail.ru became the 100% owner of Astrum Online. The transaction is structured as an acquisition of Astrum Online shares by Mail.ru, paid for by a combination of Mail.ru’s shares and cash. The combined company will continue to operate under the Mail.ru brand.

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Source press release:
http://dst-global.com/Press

DST info:
http://dst-global.com/About

DST portfolio:
http://dst-global.com/Portfolio


So that's more or less it. The point of this post is not to hypothesize about the future of Allods Online, but to clarify the relations between the main players, and remove confusion concerning who owns who in this whole mess.

Regards,

T.

[omgabear]

Thanks for the info. I am more interested in whether or not it is true that the originally developers all jumped ship, but any info is good info.

[schagrath]

+1

Thanks for the information and nothing but the information.

[galethbg]

Thanks for the info. I am more interested in whether or not it is true that the originally developers all jumped ship, but any info is good info.

Well, I've sent them an email asking just that. You think they'll answer?

[latticeman]

Thanks for posting this.. even though I feel this thread will be filled with more trolls in no time.

It's getting to the point that you can't say anything positive about Allods without getting slammed.

[galethbg]

Hello again,

I spent some time today doing a light investigation on the names behind Allods Online, and whether or not they are still employed by Nival. Anyway, this is based on limited information, but will suffice until (and if) I receive a response to emails I have sent.

There is only one person I managed to confirm that left Nival in June 2009, his name is Aleksei Gilenko. His job on Allods Online included: "taking part in preproduction and creative core design phases, then leading a scrum team of 8 people (programmers, designers, artists) responsible for GUI production." He left Nival in June 2009, and is currently employed by Nikitova LLC.

On the bright side, there is no indication (for now at least) that other people left the Allods project just prior or during the merge.

A few other names from Nival Online:
Sergey Orlovskiy
President of Nival Online (became Astrum Nival), September 2006 - present. So no change at the top, so far so good.

Please note:The following Wiki article claims that he indeed "handed operational control" to Company's CEO, Dmitri Devishev, although it is not clear whether this meant an official change of his position after the Mail.Ru merge, or simply a president leaving an almost finished project in the hands of his CEO, which is something a director should be doing anyway. It should also be noted that in November Mr. Orlovskiy presented his new project (Prime World), set to be released in 2010.
Article provided by goronian (thank you!)
http://alturl.com/kr2t

Alexander Gorbatyuk
Character Design Team Manager (Allods Online), employed by Nival Online, August 2006 - present. So still onboard.

Tatyana Kondratyeva
Game designer, 2008-present. Yup, no changes here as well.

These are 4 out of 15 names I managed to get to. Out of all of them, only one person stopped working for Nival Online in 2009, and that was the already mentioned Mr. Gilenko.

What I am trying to say is that, based on my limited research,there are no indications at this moment that any large scale change in the Allods Online developer team happened during 2009, and any such talk, for now, is pure speculation.

I have sent emails to a fair number of people involved in the project, to try and get an answer about all this.

If any one of them answers, I'll have some more info. Until then, this is what I have, since I'm trying to deal in facts only.

Regards,

T.

[omgabear]

Cookie for you my good sir.

[sentinel_]

Good work, but to be fair I am not concerned about the development side of the game

Moreso the item shop and turn to pay to win

[latticeman]

Thanks for the research, galethbg.

[goronian]

Sergey Orlovskiy
President of Nival Online, September 2006 - present. So no change at the top, so far so good.

Your info might be outdated, since Orlovsky has left the project sometimes during Russia CBT 2-3. I can't find any links, however this seems to be the common knowledge on RU forums.