Chinese app developers increased their advertising investments in Russia’s domestic app store RuStore nearly fivefold in 2025 to RUB400mn ($4.5mn), becoming the largest group of foreign advertisers on the platform, according to the RBC business portal citing a RuStore spokesperson.

bne IntelliNews closely follows Russo-Sino trade, which is consistently skewed towards higher value added and tech goods and services imported from China to Russia.

Amid this background, game and app developers from China, Turkey and Singapore entered the top five in terms of advertising spend on RuStore last year. 

Chinese companies alone accounted for 70% of all foreign advertising expenditures for the second consecutive year, according to RBC. Chinese developer revenue on RuStore reportedly rose 18-fold in 2025, with an average in-game purchase of RUB600 ($6.70).

RPG games led spending by genre, followed by strategy and adventure games. User spending on puzzle games rose 25% year-on-year (y/y), while arcade and action game spending increased by 16% and 8% y/y respectively.

RuStore was launched in 2022 by now state-controlled tech major VK with the support of the Ministry of Digital Development. 

The app marketplace became mandatory for installation on all new mobile devices sold in Russia from September 1, 2025. Its audience reached 65.5mn users in 2025, up 1.5-fold y/y. As of November 2025, more than 85,000 services and games from 70 countries were listed on the platform.

The analysts surveyed by RBC confirm that the Chinese firms have moved to fill the gap left by departing Western companies. 

Additional analysis by Digital Budget for RBC found that advertising placements for Chinese games such as Genshin Impact, Honor of Kings and Lords Mobile nearly tripled in 2025 compared to 2024. Most ads appeared on platforms like Ozon, Citilink and Yandex Zen, with display ads offering promo codes proving most common. 

As followed by bne IntelliNews, Russian gaming market has been shaken in 2022 amid the full-scale military invasion of Ukraine.

Large foreign game developers have pulled out of the market, with Plarium and Game Insight closing their studios employing almost 1,000 people. Wargaming has opened studios in Belgrade and Warsaw after pulling out of Russia and Belarus. Russia’s largest bank state-controlled Sber (Sberbank) terminated its gaming division SberGames.

The company with the largest gaming portfolio in Russia is VK (former Mail.ru), which effectively became state-owned at the end of 2021.

VK had been developing a solid position in video games and cybersports, which have become the main driver of its financial results. Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, unconfirmed reports even suggested that VK could IPO its gaming division.