Playdom, in a partnership with i-Jet Media, is taking a leap this week to become the first American developer operating on Russian grounds. As the social gaming cold war ensues, large players in the space are actively working with partners to establish presence across international social networks. i-Jet Media is the largest games publisher and distributor in Russia and Eastern Europe and will work with Playdom publish games in these regions this fall. We expect a long-term cooperation that will bolster both of the players’ market positions in the long run.

We are not sure at this moment which games Playdom will be releasing but there will be about four games launched this fall according to the release. i-Jet will be providing its technological resources to help integrate any game into all the networks it participates in. This is great news for the brands Playdom will be working with because gaming can prove to be a very engaging channel especially as brands look to increase brand awareness in other countries. For example, Playdom and Marvel could localize the game they are working on in Russian and work with i-Jet to distribute that.

i-Jet Media General Producer Alexey Kostarev has no doubt that Playdom games will become popular not only in English-speaking countries, but also in Russia. “Playdom entry in Russia is this year’s key event for the domestic social games market. First and foremost, it means that leading developers are seeking after new markets, and that is why they consider Russia to be interesting for them. I am sure that Playdom will be followed by others: Zynga, Playfish, and so on, and we are ready to assist them,” Alexey Kostarev said.

Alexey Kostarev believes that the Russian social market will benefit deeply from the entrants of leading, high-quality game developers and raise the bar for all Russian developers in the space. There are other ancillary benefits, however, such as piracy that are plaguing both companies. Playdom is ready to take monitoring for clones upon itself, and i-Jet Media assumes an obligation not to publish pirated copies, but to stop distribution of such games even through other publishers after receiving a well-grounded complaint from any developer over a fact of piracy. (This is a question of obvious theft of a code, graphics or unique soundtrack.) Anti-piracy alliance has already proved to be efficacious: the two companies revealed one piracy game by Chinese developers. The game was cut off the platform very quickly, immediately after Playdom voiced its conclusive evidences.

Playdom was recently acquired by Walt Disney for $763M and has over 40 million active users at the time. i-Jet Media has 60 million users that come from 30 social networks across the 70 apps that it has published, with Happy Farm being the most notable one having earned i-Jet Media $20M in USD.

Social Times: Azam Khan on August 30th, 2010 5:30 PM