Two Russian brothers living in London have emerged among the big winners of the lockdown, with their mobile games? Gardenscapes? and? Homescapes? making $200 million from in-app purchases in April alone. Igor Bukhman and his younger brother Dmitry, who founded game developer Playrix in their hometown of Vologda in 2004, have found outsized success in recent months. Their games have hooked users with calm, domestic settings and increasingly challenging puzzles.? Gardenscapes? and? Homescapes? tweak the tile-matching formula popularised by King’s? Candy Crush Saga, adding a simple storyline of home improvement involving a dilapidated mansion and a butler named Alfred… According to estimates from analysts at Sensor Tower, April’s soaring user spending has set the brothers on course to overtake? Candy Crush, their main gaming rival… Sensor Tower also estimated earlier this month that? Gardenscapes? had made almost $2 billion in lifetime revenue since it was launched in its current guise in 2017, as a follow-up to 2016’s? Homescapes. The success of the two games has quickly turned Playrix, which now has its headquarters in Dublin, into one of Europe’s most successful games developers. Last year, the handful of smartphone games developed by the company earned $1.75 billion in combined revenues… up 35 per cent from 2018.

Tim Bradshaw,?