Originally the company is from the very heart of Donbas – Luhansk, Ukraine. With the Russian invasion in Ukraine 8 years ago, Luhansk has become a center of the war operations. One day, our founder got a text: “Guys, you no longer have an office”. A Russian missile was fired right in the iLogos head office. Luckily this happened on the weekend and no one was inside.

Since then, iLogos Game Studios has managed to build an effective remote-first game development pipeline. At the time of a crisis, businesses either disappear or become much stronger than they used to be. iLogos case was the latter. At that time we relocated around 300 people to various newly opened hubs in Ukraine: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa and Kryvyi Rih. And realized that there was no other way than going global.

Thanks to this decision 8 years ago, we have met the war in 2022 prepared:

• our work pipelines have been fully remote for the last 8 years
• our infrastructure since the first Russia’s invasion in Donbas has been prepared for distributed teams located in 13 countries
• we did have the business processes for emergency relocation in place (we were not able to use them fully at this war, but at least it has given some certainty in coordinating the business on the first days of war)

And it still has been a challenge!

The impact of war

At the moment, iLogos game production teams are present in 15 countries in Europe and worldwide. We focus on the massive projects and work with the game companies like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Sony Pictures.

February 24th has divided all of our lives into before and after. We remember the sales calls in the first days of the war when some colleagues were joining the call from the shelter. Once a colleague based in Kharkiv said to the clients on the call “oh sorry for the noise, looks like something has exploded outside”. The client started crying.

Even the very fact of continuing the project operations felt heroic.

We did have to adjust the principles of the employee relations to the war time. Here’s what we have implemented in a nutshell:

• finance department works 24/7 to quickly serve the emergency financial support requests
• international teams also worked almost 24/7 on production for the first weeks, to back up their fellows from Ukraine who were on their way of relocation or who temporarily could not work due to serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Territorial Defense.
• relocation center works 24/7 to fully support and coordinate the team on their journey to the safer places
• A corporate psychological support center is also working non-stop to provide psychological help. Instructions given to all the managers on how to talk to people who lost their loved ones or have been witnesses of violence or tragedy.

By the end of March, most of iLogos teams have been relocated either to safe parts of Ukraine or to the other countries, mostly to Romania, Poland and Baltic countries. 

At the moment all the relocated teams work remotely. We are in the process of choosing the location for the next organized hub in Europe, considering Poland, Portugal or Estonia. 

Despite the time of the war, we have signed three project extension agreements with existing clients during March, and are working on growing the team further!

Volunteer initiatives 

Every team at iLogos, as well as top management, is driving some volunteer initiatives for helping the army and Ukrainian people. During the time of the war, iLogos teams helped purchasing several military cars, bulletproof vests, helmets, heat vision devices and run humanitarian projects such as help to the animal shelters who suffered from artillery attacks or helping kids who lost their families in bombing.

In cooperation with the Ukrainian online governmental service DIIA, the iLogos volunteer team created a „digital sedative” – the mobile game ’eBayraktar.’ In this game, you can virtually fight against the military equipment of the Russian invaders, control Bayraktar, a symbol of modern warfare for many Ukrainians. So far, 1.88 million users of the DIIA application have played this game.

Another mobile game, ‘Steal Russian Tank’ – the second initiative from one of our volunteers. The main idea of this game is based on the famous story of the first days of the war, when a Ukrainian farmer stole an abandoned Russian tank on his tractor. 

We call such projects cyber volunteering, which helps users and developers cope with stress.

But our main front is economic. Despite difficult times, we keep our progress and continue working to help the country earn money and maintain its strong economy. Furthermore, since February 24th we have signed 3 new contracts, and are ready to hire up to 100 specialists in various countries, including Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.