Due to russian military aggression, the work processes within Kevuru Games have undergone a number of adaptive changes. Currently, more than 90% of the team is fully working on both pre-war projects and new ones. All our employees are located in safe places in the west of Ukraine or abroad.
Work Format
With the expansion of our employee presence in 2021, we were able to quickly restore pre-war levels of productivity across all teams and ensure that projects were delivered seamlessly to meet deadlines. At the moment we have employees in 10 countries besides Ukraine:
- Poland
- Montenegro
- Bulgaria
- India
- Indonesia
- Armenia
- Kazakhstan
- Moldova
- Switzerland
- Canada
Despite the fact that those of our employees who remain in Ukraine are in safe places, we have created a special backup plan for replacing them in case of unforeseen circumstances – air raid alerts, potential relocations, etc. In the event of force majeure, each Ukrainian employee is instantly backe up by a colleague who works from abroad. In this way, we stay resilient, avoid downtime, and prevent work interruptions.
If the client wants all the specialists who will work on the project to be outside of Ukraine, we try to fulfill such wishes as much as possible – almost all specialists are interchangeable. If it happens that the required expert is not available abroad, we warn clients that they will have to wait for either the relocation of a person from Ukraine, or the procedure for hiring another specialist.
We also continue to actively recruit new employees around the world to develop existing expertises and implement new ones.
Employee Motivation and Support System
Moral support for employees occurs at the level of both individual teams and the entire company. In particular, during the war, we have introduced a system of psychological assistance, where everyone can get a free session with a psychologist. In addition, the leaders of each department monitor the morale of their team, hold regular informal calls, and arrange for quick replacements for employees who need a temporary break or rest.
PMs also track the morale and motivation of the teams they work with. Everyone gets timely support, thanks to which we manage to maintain a high level of both productivity and overall morale in all teams.
Donations in Support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and Humanitarian Goals
We actively support the Armed Forces of Ukraine and humanitarian organizations to accelerate our victory. Since February 24, the company has donated about UAH 2 million to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine (body armor, drones, thermal cameras, drones, radios, cars, etc.), purchase medical kits, and meet the needs of volunteers.
At the same time, we work only with those organizations and volunteers whom we know personally or whose work results are immediately visible. For example, an organization today buys thermal imagers in the Czech Republic, tomorrow they will be in Uzhgorod, and the day after tomorrow they will arrive where they are most needed – we send funds to such people, because we are confident in the benefits of such a donation.
Kevuru Games plans to continue to allocate at least UAH 1 million monthly for financial support of the army and volunteers. Every help, hryvnia or a million, brings Ukraine closer to victory. We also encourage other GameDev companies to do the same. We are a united industry and must show that we support our soldiers and volunteers to the maximum.
Operating Activities Result
The plan for 2021 was exceeded: during this period, the company more than doubled with revenue growth of 163%. The number of employees increased to 400+ people with 60% senior specialists and 12% attrition rate. We confidently entered 2022 with new goals for globalization and the achievement of greater goals.
With the start of the war, we really had a slight drawdown in the number of new projects. We took advantage of this pause to move our employees to safe places. The transitional period lasted several days. At this time, work on current projects was carried out by our foreign specialists, who ensured the timely completion of all tasks. When the relocating employees settled in their new places, everything quickly recovered.
Now we have reached the pre-war level of functioning and opened new areas of expertise:
- NFT and metaverse projects – these are the hottest areas that are the most attractive for investment: NFT game sales hit $5.17 billion in 2021. Our NFT highlights are the creation of 2D avatars for the RPG Guild of Guardians, game design and 3D asset modeling for the survival game Undead Blocks, as well as full-cycle development of the upcoming robot combat game MechaChain.
- In addition to classic gaming tasks, we work on VR projects with the highest requirements for quality and realism of models. For example, for the VR-based simulation project Birdly Insects, we created 23 ultra-realistic models of insects, birds, and plants with animation according to real photo references.
- Enterprise gamification services are also gaining momentum – extensive experience in this niche gives us the opportunity to offer customers ever more effective approaches adapted to modern realities. Our gamification solutions are already actively operating and bringing benefits – this is an application for training insurance activities for BNP Paribas, a platform for conducting test trading for Purestream, etc.
During the last months of work, already functioning in wartime, we became sponsors of such events as the Hamburg Games Conference, Game Developers Conference, and Nordic Game Conference.
Thus, now our company is fully adapted to wartime and continues to actively develop in terms of increasing the team, deepening existing expertises, and developing new ones.
