Lesta Games, the nationalised developer of World of Tanks, has been sold to Industrial Structures, a little-known company with undisclosed owners, Kommersant reported on October 16.
The buyer, which calls itself a consortium of private investors, plans to invest up to RUB10bn ($120mn) in Russia's gaming industry over the next three years, including through a new venture fund, and aims to release at least five new games in that time, it told Kommersant. Neither side disclosed the price.
"We see Lesta Games as a key element for further consolidation of the market. The accumulated expertise, financial resources and technical capabilities will speed up many ideas and allow talented authors to realise them on a much bigger scale," a representative of the new owner told the paper.
The sale returns to private hands one of the best-known assets taken in Russia's wave of state seizures since 2022, but to owners who cannot be seen. Nationalisations made up as much as 21% of Russian M&A by value in the first half of 2025, and analysts counted Lesta among $1.93bn of asset transfers made without court damage assessments that year.
Industrial Structures, registered in Moscow in November 2024 as AO Promyshlennye Sooruzheniya, ended 2025 with a zero balance sheet and a single employee, The Insider reported on October 16. Its chief executive, 25-year-old Zakhar Kislykh, took up the post on October 15, the day the Lesta assets changed hands, and previously worked as a finance specialist for Boris Dobrodev, the outlet said.
Dobrodev, a former chief executive of internet group VK (MOEX: VKCO) and son of state broadcaster VGTRK head Oleg Dobrodev, has run Lesta since the seizure through his company IT Technologies, which was appointed to manage the assets, Novaya Gazeta Europe reported on October 16. The new owner said it would keep Lesta's current management and strategy.
Lesta earned revenue of RUB29bn ($347mn) and net profit of more than RUB10bn ($120mn) in 2025, according to The Insider. The studio, founded in St Petersburg in 1991, employs about 2,200 people.
Former Formula 1 driver Nikita Mazepin had been named as the leading contender for Lesta in September, when Forbes Russia reported valuations of between RUB30bn ($359mn) and RUB50bn ($598mn) under discussion. Kommersant did not mention Mazepin, and Novaya Gazeta Europe reported that the deal with him did not happen.
Lesta, which also makes World of Warships, took over the Russian business of Belarusian-founded Wargaming in 2022, after founder Viktor Kislyi pulled out of Russia and Belarus following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Moscow's Tagansky District Court seized the assets of three Lesta companies in April 2025 at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office, and in June ordered them confiscated after declaring Kislyi and Lesta owner Malik Khatazhaev members of an "extremist organisation". The case centred on a 2023 Wargaming fundraiser for a Ukrainian charity. The three companies passed to the Federal Agency for State Property Management (Rosimushchestvo).