Grand Games is a Kazakhstan-based technology company bringing together mobile gaming, advanced digital products and AI-driven solutions under a single ecosystem. Its flagship title, Grand Mobile, has grown into one of the country’s most successful tech exports, recording over six million monthly active players worldwide. In this interview, Founder Roman Lineitsev outlines how he built a hit mass-market mobile game with more than 70 million downloads.
Q: What was your initial vision when you founded Grand Games and its flagship title Grand Mobile?
Roman Lineytsev, Founder: I have been playing games since I was a kid, especially online open-world role-playing games that are similar to what we are doing now, so I always had a dream to create something like this. While studying, I focused on economics and finance, which gave me a good background for building a games company.
We founded Grand Mobile over three years ago, but before that I tried to create many startups, even while living in the UAE. We tried food-tech and health-tech projects. I had been trying to create something since I was about 16. For example, I was developing a food-tech company while studying in the UAE but targeting Kazakhstan. At that time there were no big players in the food-tech market in Kazakhstan, only some small local services, but it was difficult. When I came home on vacation from the UAE, it was hard to be 17 years old going around offering restaurants to work with you. They see a 17-year-old kid and ask, “What do you want?”
During all that period I was playing games with my friends. Some of those friends I have never met in person, but we are friends because we played the same game. The gaming community is a special thing; it creates a very strong bond that carries over.
We started to develop Grand Mobile. It took some years and some money. We already had some revenue and profits, not very big, and we reinvested all of that into Grand Mobile. On 3 December 2022, we launched Grand Mobile. It was not as big a success as we expected.
Grand Mobile was not an instant hit, but we believed we needed to acquire experience, knowledge and expertise. From the beginning we understood that it was important to do as much analysis as possible and collect as many statistics as possible. Grand Mobile never had rapid growth out of nowhere; it always grew steadily. We earned a little, reinvested it, tested if something worked and if it did not, we tried something else.
At some point we decided that we wanted more than just games and started developing our fintech company. The main idea and vision of Grand Games is that it will be the mother company for all our other companies. We chose the name “Grand Games” because games can be very different; you can even treat fintech as a kind of game in some sense.
Our main vision is that Grand Mobile, which is an open-world mobile game, is essentially a metaverse. People who play it do not have a rigid set of rules or a fixed path that we create for them. They enter a society. It is a life simulator in which we create instruments for people to interact with each other. It is a metaverse-like experience, and for many people it has value comparable to real life.
Q: What do you think clicked and works so well compared with other games in the global market?
RL: I think the main point is that we are creating a life simulator. What we do is give an alternative method to socialise and interact with people. When you are playing, you do not have the same social concerns. You are not so afraid to sound stupid or to make a mistake. There is a big community of real players inside the game.
It feels more real than just texting on social media. We see it as a kind of 3D social network. For us, it is not primarily about inventing new game mechanics, because most mechanics already exist. We focus on creating instruments that allow people to interact and socialise, and then we gamify these instruments.
Q: Is Grand Mobile now focused on growth and expansion, or are you still developing its core experience, and where does the game stand today?
RL: We have been getting better and better, but we did not choose the best technical pathway from the beginning, because we were a bit inexperienced.
That is why at some point we started to develop Grand Mobile 2. It is essentially the same idea, but technologically and as a product it will be much better, so we can reach a wider audience.
We will keep developing two products. With Grand Mobile 1, some of our early mistakes came from inexperience and lack of resources, so we did not make all the best decisions in terms of long-term development. For the second product, we want to make something more sophisticated while continuing to serve the first audience.
Q: What are your expectations for scaling, growth and downloads as both versions grow in parallel?
RL: The first game is still growing; I would not say it has reached a limit. If we look at the numbers, in 2024 we made around $19 million in revenue. In 2025 we plan to make about $28–30 million. In 2026, with the new game, we are planning to roughly double this year’s result.
Q: Are you planning to create additional games or mainly to develop other types of ventures beyond gaming?
RL: I would call them other ventures. We have two main directions. First, we want to launch new projects in fintech. The game and the metaverse idea require us to have an in-house fintech company that will support Grand Mobile. The game needs to process payments, and we also want to connect our gaming community and players’ digital assets with the outside world, so we need an internal fintech capability.
Second, we are looking into creative and lifestyle areas such as music and cinema. In Kazakhstan the creative industry is now developing quickly, not only IT. Many Kazakh productions are making commercially successful movies and similar projects. When we examined gaming and other types of production, we saw that the processes are very similar. Creating a game and creating a movie are almost the same: in games we render what you see in real time, and in movies they render what you see before you see it. The production process is similar.
Q: How will your team and geographic footprint expand to support all these simultaneous initiatives?
RL: We do have many plans, but we also have a strong team. Personally, I focus mainly on the game itself and on developing this business.
We believe that for the gaming and creative industries, the main bottleneck is talent: the people who create. What we are trying to do is to create conditions for this talent in Kazakhstan. With the help of Astana Hub and the coming game development centre, we want to create a space in Kazakhstan where we can find and support talented young people. Right now, you can be a very talented game designer and still have no clear path to develop, no obvious place to apply your skills. We want to change that.
Q: Can you clarify the nature of the Astana Hub Ventures investment, and what that venture partnership has meant for Grand Games?
RL: It was a strategic partnership with Astana Hub Ventures. We had never done an investment round before, because we have pretty good margins and are quite self-sufficient. We are not looking just for money; we are looking for strategic investors who can help us in other areas with expertise, networking and so on.
It is good to have your own financial resources, but for us it is very important to expand our network and expertise. Astana Hub Ventures has been very helpful in many ways. We can go to them for consultations at any time, and that helps a lot.
We are also looking for similar strategic partners in the UAE and Middle East, because we are planning to expand there. We are already growing in MENA in general. Wherever you go, it is good to have local partners. From my experience living in the UAE and then in Geneva, there are many markets where, without a local partner, it is very difficult to develop your product.
Q: How is Grand Games supporting wider national digital transformation, particularly through your e-government or AI initiatives beyond the game itself?
RL: What we are doing in this area actually came from the game. We are helping to create an AI-based platform that will facilitate creating nodes for the country.
Inside the game, we are trying to create a very safe space. At some point we realised that we needed more guardianship and mentorship for players, because many people interact in the game. We already have many moderators who play alongside users and control what is happening, but we wanted to support players and the safe environment even more.
We started to build our own AI platform inside the game to support players and facilitate the work of moderators. We have a simulator of the real world and an AI-based platform that helps people inside it. At some point we asked ourselves why the government could not use a similar AI platform.
Q: How do you approach corporate social responsibility and find the time to play such an active role in society alongside rapid business expansion?
RL: Unfortunately, I do not personally participate as much as I would like in all of these social projects. For me, it is not only about corporate responsibility. I believe we already do many good things for the country.
Supporting projects like Enactus is more personal for me. I try to participate in the initiatives where I would have wanted someone to participate when I was in that position. Now we are still quite small to fill all gaps, but we try to fill the gaps where we can: supporting national heritage and national sports, for example. Together with the team, we try to fill gaps where we see that support is missing, to create more equality.
Q: For potential strategic partners and investors in the UAE and wider Gulf region, where do you see the main opportunities to participate in Grand Games’ growth?
RL: We are looking for potential strategic partners and investors who can help us expand in the MENA region and Middle East in general. The main focus will be on the game, and possibly on our AI ventures, but primarily on Grand Mobile. For us the game is always the starting point of new ventures. We try to create everything in-house for the game, and when a product we build for the game can become a separate business, we treat it as a new venture.
We are looking for partners for the game and maybe for our fintech venture. We want partners who can help with expansion, help us settle in the region and bring networks that can complement our products.
Q: What are your plans for HR and attracting, organising and growing the talent that underpins Grand Games?
RL: In general, we have a work-from-home culture. People do not need to come to the office. Most of those who work in the offices here or in Almaty chose to move to Kazakhstan and work from the office. We do not have a mandatory office culture. Everyone can work from home; it is 100% remote for everyone.
We are hiring globally. We have a global HR function and a very good HR department, and we are always looking for talent. Most big companies that people want to work for rely heavily on physical offices. We try not to, because this helps us stay competitive on the job market.
We host many informal meetups, where we invite people who work for us from all over the world and try to meet from time to time. As a young person myself, I can say that we have a very cool company culture.
Q: How does being hosted at Astana Hub and having access to its infrastructure and support ecosystem benefit Grand Games and the people who work with you?
RL: Astana Hub has created a very good ecosystem that helps you at every step as a company. The nice thing is that they really create a feeling of total support for what you are doing. You just need to do your work and love what you do. If you succeed, you feel support from everyone around you and feel that what you are doing is recognised.
This kind of support is very important for young entrepreneurs. When you feel recognition and stability and you feel supported, you worry less about external issues. Our main company, Grand Games, is registered in the AIFC, where they have created everything, a startup needs to grow, develop and expand.
