Penza, 26 April 2018. PenzaNews. Mail.Ru Group purchased 51% of shares of the Penza company Bit.Games engaged in the development of mobile and social games.

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It became famous thanks to the game Little Helper, which aroused interest of over 10 million users of social networks in Russia.

Currently the studio is engaged in the development of the mobile role-playing game Guild of Heroes, which has already been installed by about 7 million users around the world. Over the last year – from March 2017 to March 2018 – its monthly revenue grew more than 10 times and exceeded 1 million dollars.

Commenting on the deal, the sum of which is not disclosed, the press service of the Mail.Ru Group explained that Bit.Games will continue to work on Guild of Heroes independently. The team of the Mail.Ru Group game development department will provide the studio with expert support for further scaling of projects and will give access to its resources in the fields of development, analytics, and marketing.

Previously the Penza IT company had already collaborated with Mail.Ru Group – in December 2017 the investment department of Mail.Ru Games Ventures started to work with the studio: the team received investments for project development as well as marketing and legal support.

As it was noted by the head of the game development department of Mail.Ru Group, Vasily Maguryan, Bit.Games is one of the most promising studios in the industry.

"I am convinced that our cooperation will enrich the experience of game development in mobile software industry. In turn we will provide the Bit.Games team with access to all our resources in order to speed up the development of our projects in Russia and foreign markets.

According to Bit.Games general director Vladimir Rogozov, the partnership with Mail.Ru Group will let developers reach a new level of interaction with participants of the market of mobile game development.

"This deal means not only new prospects for the development of our leading project Guild of Heroes but also broader horizons for implementation of new projects," he noted.

Bit.Games studio was established in 2002. It was engaged in the development of websites and web services.

In 2007 it started to create mobile games. The company developed such games as Guild of Heroes, Little Helper, and Cinderella Story.

Currently, the staff numbers over 70 people.