Nival attracts $20 million for online games

The Russian company Nival Interactive has found an investor ready to spend $20 million to acquire its Nival Online (NO) division and create a new online game. According to sources aware of the details of the deal, the investor is the owner of the Mail.ru portal. Nival Interactive was dealing with the development of the Heroes of Might and Magic V game for the French company Ubisoft Entertainment. In accordance with Finam evaluations, Nival Interactive earned $5 million in 2005 and over $10 million in the first seven months of 2006. The key developers of "Heroes" will work at Nival Online. In all the company plans to hire about 200 people by 2008. NO President Sergey Orlovsky estimates that in 2008 the number of online-players in Russia will be 4-7 million, who will spend about $8 a month just on payment for the time of the game.