Wargaming Vilnius has opened

In November 2020, Wargaming announced plans to open a new development studio in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Now the details have become known, and the official opening of the office took place this month.

On April 9, 2021, the new Wargaming office was officially opened in Vilnius. The Lithuanian branch will continue to strengthen the company’s distributed development model, which currently operates throughout Central and Eastern Europe, and will also act as a publisher. The new office is located in a modern business district located in the city center and will focus on both current and future projects. Located in a fast-growing area of ​​the capital, the stylish studio will become a new place of work for several hundred employees over the next 3-4 years.

Following the announcement of the opening of a new office, MS-1, the leading mobile app development studio of Wargaming, which created the popular game World of Tanks Blitz, is looking for talent for the new branch of the company. For MS-1 (WG subdivision) Vilnius will become another key point, along with the already existing offices in Minsk and Moscow. While the flagship cross-platform shooter World of Tanks Blitz has been downloaded over 140 million times worldwide, MS-1 continues to create games for mobile and handheld devices, with two as yet unannounced games in development.

The studio is headed by game industry veteran Thaine Lyman, who has been with the company since 2015. Prior to that Thaine spent over 17 years at Activision as an Executive Producer for the Call of Duty series on consoles and PCs, and Vice President for Destiny and Marvel Licensed Games.

“Thanks to the tremendous success of World of Tanks Blitz in recent years, MS-1 Studio not only continues to support this game, making big plans for the future, but is also developing two new yet unannounced games in the mobile action / shooter genre. To support the growth of the studio for these ambitious projects, we plan to attract new employees to all of our branches, while focusing on our new office in Vilnius, ” said Thaine Lyman, CEO of MS-1 Studio (WG).

“This office will be our main office, where the teams responsible for the development of two of our new games will work. Our team already includes developers and publishers from diverse backgrounds and cultures, and we hope to continue to attract talent from around the world to our studio. We already have a list of open vacancies that will be constantly updated in the coming months, so potential applicants should definitely check it regularly! “

The goal of the MS-1 team in Lithuania is to become a kind of melting pot, in which 100 representatives of different cultures from all over the world will work. The team will leverage this diversity to create games that appeal to different audiences, as well as offer a welcoming work environment for new hires from different cultures around the world.

In turn, the former director of the Agency for the Promotion of Foreign Investments in Lithuania Investuok Lietuvoje Mantas Katinas became the head of the Vilnius division of the Belarusian developer of computer games Wargaming .

“I am convinced that the new Wargaming studio and the plans for the future that are being built in relation to it will help the city create a vibrant ecosystem, attractive for the international gaming industry,
” said M. Katinas in a press release.

The studio in Vilnius will become the 18th division of Wargaming in the world; in general, the company now employs about 5500 employees.

• MS-1 Studio:
  MS-1 is Wargaming’s premier mobile game development studio behind World of Tanks Blitz, a popular cross-platform shooter with 140 million downloads worldwide. MS-1 is a studio with several branches in Minsk, Moscow and Vilnius, employing more than 325 professionals with various skills and backgrounds responsible for development, publishing and operations management. This multiculturalism helps create games that can capture the attention of diverse audiences around the world.

** The address of the new office in Vilnius: Lithuania, Vilnius, Constitution Avenue, 21A (Quadrum East).

Last year, Wargaming was one of the Belarusian information technology companies that, due to the brutal suppression of protests against the authoritarian President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, announced the transfer of part of its activities to Lithuania.