The Ministry of Digital Development will work on Putin’s instructions on the localization of game servers in Russia

The Ministry of Digital Development of Russia will work on the issue of regulating the Internet games market so that the servers of their developers are located in the Russian Federation, said the head of the department, Maksut Shadayev.

Russian President Vladimir Putin previously called for the implementation of a proposal to create a separate body for regulating online games, as well as to transfer them to servers located in Russia and to domains in the .ru zone. These issues were discussed at a meeting of the Council for the Development of Physical Culture and Sports, which the head of state held on October 19.

“We have received the President’s order, now we will work on it,” said Shadayev on the sidelines of the Battle of Robots championship, answering a question from TASS.

According to Shadayev, the servers of some domestic game developers are already localized in Russia.

Initially, during the meeting, the initiative to create a separate gaming regulator was made by the head of the executive committee of the Russian Boxing Federation, Umar Kremlev. He noted that American and Canadian companies are engaged in games on the Internet, and the turnover that is transferred abroad through the .com zone reaches about $5 billion. According to Kremlev, some games promote “anti-state values.”

The new regulator, in his opinion, will be able to block such games if necessary. Those companies that want to operate in Russia will have to register their games in the .ru domain, host software and servers in the country, and open a local office, Kremlev said.

The requirement to locate servers in Russia may mean both the physical placement of computing power on the territory of the Russian Federation and the storage of data in Russian data centers, he argues. But so far the president’s wording is quite broad, which is always typical for high-level orders, said Konstantin Sakhnov, co-founder of the Vengeance Games studio. If the order is accepted “to the maximum,” then Steam and other game stores, as well as player data on the servers of specific games, may be subject to the requirement to store data in Russia, he added.