The Internet Development Institute has begun supporting games anonymously to protect their developers from sanctions

The fall under the sanctions of the European Union in 2024 did not pass without a trace for the ANO “Institute for Internet Development” (IRI). The organization’s CEO Alexey Goreslavsky told Vedomosti about this in an interview.

Image source: Cyberia Nova

Let us recall that when announcing the winners of the competition to create “national content” last summer, IRI hid the names of the games that received the structure’s support. As it turned out, this was no accident.

According to Goreslavsky, IRI decided to partially close the results of the selection of the national content competition for video games in order to protect their developers from the risks of sanctions.

«The distribution of the projects they make, both with and without us, is tied to foreign platforms, including Steam, etc. Therefore, we felt that we had no right to twist their arms,” Goreslavsky explained.

The developers of “Time of Troubles” are not afraid of sanctions

The IRI now plans to disclose the names of the winners only with their consent (and readiness for “possible risks”) and only after the development of these projects is completed.

One of the few exceptions was the developers of Time of Troubles from the Cyberia Nova studio, so the release of educational supplements to the interactive textbook Time of Troubles was announced in IRI “completely calmly.”

In total, in 2024, IRI supported nine games and applications, including a racing arcade, a sci-fi RPG, a tactical strategy with role-playing elements, a first-person drone racing game, and so on. The projects will begin to be released in 2026.