Online gaming is a booming industry worldwide and Russia is no exception. I-Jet Media, founded in 2005 is one of the pioneers and a current leader in the Russian market with more than 60 million registered users and 70+ games. The company is allegedly valuated at $100 million, though some investors estimate this figure to be exaggerated and valuate it closer to $30-50 million. I-Jet Media is currently looking for $20 million funding for 25% stake in the company, Vedomosti reported. Alexey Kostarev, one of the founders, explained that the funding is needed to hire more developers around the world. The likely investors include venture funds like Almaz Capital, DST and Finam. Company's biggest success, a social game called 'Happy Farmer' ('Счастливый Фермер'), was launched in 2009 and within one year attracted 10 million registered users. It also generated $20 million in revenue, though half of that money went to Vkontakte.ru - Russia's biggest social network where the game was launched.

'Happy Farmer'  is strikingly similar to Zynga's 'Farmville' though its numbers fade in comparison: 'Farmville' attracted over 80 million users and Zynga generated around $150 million in revenue in the same year. The exact revenue of i-Jet Media is not disclosed, though a company source told Vedomosti that it is estimated to reach $15 million in 2010. The company claims that if last year 'Happy Farmer' brought almost 90% of revenue, this year it's only 5% as i-Jet Media came out with more successful games on more social networks. The latest example is i-Jet Media's and Disney-owned Playdom's joint launch of a social game 'Bole' on Germany's social network VZnet Networks. Since Playdom provides social games for Facebook and MySpace, the cooperation between two companies potentially expands i-Jet Media's markets. The company already provides games for many social networks worldwide like Orkut, Netlog, MeinVZ, Limpa.ru, MoiMir, Vkontake, Odnoklassiniki and recently Facebook. Though no numbers regarding those networks have yet been released. I-Jet media currently employs over 100 people and has four offices - two in Russia responsible for development and publishing (Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg respectively) and two representative offices abroad in Silicon Valley and Beijing.

Other big Russian gaming companies include IT Territory with 20 million users, Nival Group that operates an online gaming network Zzima.com with 300 000+ daily visitors and Drimmi, launched in 2009 by Nikita Sherman, former chairman of Odnoklassniki.ru, that got an undisclosed sum of funding (allegedly a couple of millions USD) from Mangrove Capital and ABRT Fund in January this year and released four games for Russia's biggest social networks Vkontakte.ru and Odnoklassniki.

According to comScore study, Russians are the heaviest social networkers worldwide in terms of time spent per user and, according to some numbers on i-Jet Media's website, 25% of social network users play online games. The worldwide average for spending time on a social network is 4.5 hours per month while Russians spend double that figure - 9.8 hours or an average of 30 min per day. I-Jet Media also claims social network users play online games for an average of 10-15 min per day. If all of those figures are indeed correct, then Russia's market for online games is quite big and rapidly growing.