How to Publish a Game on Yandex Games and How Much It Can Earn

I know how to publish a game on Yandex Games from the publisher's side. In 2024 alone our HTML5 publisher Mirra Games put 100 games on Yandex, 228 in total, and almost 12.5 million people played our games that year. In April 2023, Yandex Games brought about 75% of the revenue of our HTML5 business. We have moved beyond Yandex since then: by 2026 our income from abroad is much bigger than what we make on Yandex Games. Still, in 2025 I called Yandex the most promising HTML5 platform in the world.

Rules, requirements and timelines here come from Yandex's offer and documentation as of October 9, 2026. Revenue numbers come from my posts and from live streams with developers who make their living on Yandex.

Ruble amounts in this article are converted to dollars at the Bank of Russia rate for October 22, 2026, about 82 rubles per dollar.

I share how we release games on Yandex, Steam and consoles and what each of them earns on X.

Yandex Games for developers: who can publish a game and what it costs

Yandex Games is a catalog of HTML5 browser games. People play them on a computer or in a mobile browser without downloading anything. Publishing a game there costs nothing: the offer has no listing fee, and Yandex earns together with you from ads and in-game purchases.

The contract with Yandex is a license offer that you accept in the developer console. It can be signed by:

• individuals, sole proprietors and companies from Russia;
• sole proprietors and companies from Belarus;
• self-employed people (they have their own tax terms, more on that below).

This offer does not fit individuals and sole proprietors from other countries. Foreign companies connect through the unified license scheme in the console.

For a beginner from Russia, Yandex is, in my view, the fastest way to start. At our round table on Yandex Games in April 2025, I compared it with Google Play like this: "You don't need some foreign company, you don't need to hunt for some account."

According to Yandex, 40% of players are not from Russia and the CIS, half of them play on a phone and 40% on a computer. So a game on Yandex needs English and controls for both phone and computer.

If you don't have a game yet, start with how to make your own game from scratch: prototypes and engine choice are covered there.

How to publish a game on Yandex Games: steps from archive to release

Publishing a game on Yandex Games takes seven steps, and most of them happen in the developer console. The longest parts are usually adding the SDK and waiting for moderation.

1. Sign-up and contract. Go to the developer console at games.yandex.ru/console and accept the offer. Payout details are filled in there too.
2. Yandex Games SDK. The SDK is the platform's code that goes into your game's code. Without it the game will not be accepted. Ads and purchases work through the SDK. Monetization is mandatory: the game must have ads, purchases or both. When the player can start playing, the game has to call LoadingAPI.ready(). The game also detects the language itself, through the SDK.
3. Archive. Pack the game into a ZIP: index.html in the root, no more than 100 MB unpacked, no spaces or Cyrillic letters in file and folder names.
4. Local test. Yandex has a utility, @yandex-games/sdk-dev-proxy: it runs the game locally together with the SDK, so you can check ads and saves before you submit.
5. Draft. In the console, click "Add game", upload the archive and fill in the card: title, "About the game", "How to play", categories, age rating, languages, platforms and screen orientation. Yandex does not call translation mandatory, but it advises translating the game into Russian and English right away: the description can be machine-translated right in the console, while the game itself you translate yourself.
6. Moderation. Send the draft for review, it usually takes 3-5 business days. Timelines and rejection reasons are below.
7. Release. After approval the status changes to "Published", and the game spends a week in the "New" section.

The card needs these promo assets:

Real gameplay must take up at least 70% of each screenshot. A game screenshot cannot be used as the icon or the cover.

Yandex Games SDK for Unity, Construct and other engines

Yandex has official SDK plugins for Unity, Construct 3, Cocos Creator and Defold. For other engines, the SDK is connected through third-party tools like GamePush or Playgama Bridge, and for plain JavaScript directly. Back in 2022 I wrote that "the top 2 engines for the web are Construct and Unity", and in 90% of cases I recommended Unity: with it, one game can go out in the browser, on phones and on PC.

Unity WebGL has a downside: the build is heavy. Daniil Sazonov, head of Mirra Games, told the round table how we cut the build of one Unity game from about 100 to 50 MB. After that, its Android revenue grew five times, without any featuring. A player doesn't wait for loading and leaves for the next game, so build size hits money directly.

Yandex Games moderation: how long it takes and why games get rejected

Full moderation usually takes 3-5 business days. It is needed for the first release and every time you change the game's files, that is, with every build update. If you change only the icon, cover or screenshots, or run an A/B test of icons and covers, the review is shorter: 1-2 business days.

A queue comes on top of that. Its length depends on your account history and your games' metrics, and a new account can wait in it for several weeks. No more than two new games can be in review at the same time, and an account with no history can have only one.

Yandex lists the common rejection reasons itself:

• the SDK is missing or integrated with errors;
• the game doesn't start or crashes with errors;
• sound doesn't pause during ads or when the tab is switched;
• the browser context menu opens in the game area;
• progress is not saved;
• the interface looks unfinished;
• the game doesn't match the genre and description in the draft.

After a rejection, you can resubmit only after a cooldown, and it doubles with every retry, up to 16 days. So check the game against the requirements yourself before sending it: two or three hasty submissions can easily eat a month.

Content is checked too. By the requirements, a game must not copy another game in the catalog, even partly, and must not duplicate your own games. Alexey Gorbatov, who lived on Yandex Games income for several years, told the same round table how he wanted to make a sandbox riding the wave of a popular game about a cat and a granny, and was rejected with the words "You can't beat grannies." According to him, Yandex is strict about violence now.

I admit myself that moderation on Yandex "can be hard". But almost every rejection reason on the list above is technical, and you can check it before submitting.

Every platform has its own moderation. I post how we get through it on Steam, consoles and the web on X.

Yandex Games monetization: ads, purchases, taxes and payouts

Money on Yandex Games comes from two sources: ads in the game and in-game purchases. Everything goes through the SDK, third-party ads are not allowed.

There are three kinds of ads:

• fullscreen ads cover the whole game, and the platform itself controls how often they show;
• rewarded ads: the player chooses to watch and gets a bonus, with no frequency limit;
• sticky banner stays next to the game while it is being played.

Fullscreen ads may only be shown at logical pauses, for example between levels, and the sound and the game must pause while they play.

My round table guests and I agreed that a mixed model works well on Yandex. I summed it up like this then: "IAPs are the priority for Yandex, but ad monetization is fine too. Banners, as always, carry the load." IAPs are in-app purchases. The guests said Yandex promotes them and takes them into account in the algorithm that sends players to games.

There is a lot of confusion about Yandex's share, so it is better to read the offer. Only one thing is fixed there: for purchases, the developer gets 50% of Yandex's revenue excluding VAT, and that revenue is counted after taxes, acquiring, store fees and refunds. The offer has no fixed percentage for ads. It says the reward may be increased by agreement of the parties, and the final monthly sum is fixed in an act. Yandex directly calls the numbers in the console indicative, the exact sum will be in the act.

Payouts work like this:

• they come no more than once a month, within 20 business days of the next month;
• the minimum is about $37 (for a contract in another currency: $150, €100 or 500 UAE dirhams);
• if the minimum isn't reached, the money rolls over to the next month.

Taxes depend on how you are registered. If you are in Russia: a self-employed person pays the 6% professional income tax themselves, with a limit of about $29,000 a year; for an individual, Yandex withholds the tax (13-22%, progressive scale); sole proprietors and companies pay their taxes themselves.

How much do games make on Yandex Games?

Earnings on Yandex Games are very uneven. People who make money there advise a beginner not to expect more than about $244 from one game. Experienced developers have months of about $12,000 and more, but such months don't last long.

Yandex gave a platform-wide figure in February 2023: over four years, developers earned about $60M from games on the platform. There are no fresh official totals with sums, so we have to rely on the people who earn there themselves.

Real numbers from developers

At the round table in April 2025, I asked people who make money there how much a beginner will earn. Their answers:

• Alexey Gorbatov: "If it's a real beginner making it, I wouldn't count on anything more than [about $244] per game." According to him, if you release games all year, by the end it can add up to about $1,220-2,440 a month.
• Stas Vetokhin: made games for Google Play for two years before Yandex, and his first payout on Yandex was about $2,880.

Alexey told what the peak looks like and what comes after it in an interview on my channel in December 2025. In December 2024 he made about $22,000 in one month from dozens of small games. From January 1 his income dropped sharply: ads got cheaper, and revenue from foreign players went down with them. Then came about $7,300, $6,100, $4,900 a month, then about $3,700-4,900 until September 2025. When he almost stopped releasing new games, Yandex kept bringing him about $2,440 a month.

In that interview Alexey and I went through how he mentored a group of developers in exchange for their game sources, put out 20-30 reskins in one month and why his income fell from January. The video is in Russian, and YouTube has an English dub track for it.

from 18:09

Our conclusions as a publisher are similar. Yandex, as I said at the round table, "isn't very stable in the sense that a game's tail may not be very long. But it still brings a good share of revenue." Seasonality on the web is predictable. The best months are November and December: before New Year advertisers spend their budgets, and ads get more expensive. In January they get cheaper, and income drops after them.

One more caveat. On the web, a single ad impression pays less than in mobile games: "The problem of HTML5 games is the very low eCPM compared to mobile," I wrote back in 2024, when we were adding purchases to games on Crazy Games. eCPM is revenue per thousand ad impressions. I showed what mobile games earn per thousand impressions by ad format in the article on how much mobile games make. That is why purchases matter in browser games. To compare with Steam, see how much indie games make on Steam.

How a game gets players: "New", recommendations and packaging

You don't have to buy ads for a game on Yandex: the platform brings players itself. But the "New" section gives less than 30% of traffic, and most players come to a game from recommendations.

A game gets into "New" once, at first release, and stays there for a week. After that the recommendation algorithm decides. According to Yandex's documentation, it takes into account:

• how fully the card is filled in;
• the game's rating;
• the number of game sessions and their length;
• how many players come back;
• revenue.

Yandex picks games for the "Popular" section by hand. You can suggest your game for it by writing to games-partners@yandex-team.ru.

Stas Vetokhin, whose whole income comes from Yandex, named concrete targets: "CTR 5, playtime 7 minutes and retention 15%. Then your game will take off." CTR here is the share of people who clicked on the game in the catalog. Playtime is time in the game. Retention is the share of players who came back the next day.

If the icon's CTR is below 4%, the game, in Stas's words, "will gather dust". In the catalog a player sees the icon, the cover and the title, and according to him nothing else matters. Run icons through A/B tests: they are built right into the console. There are also flags there to roll out an update to part of the players first.

About "Popular", after that conversation I said: if day-one retention is around 15% and playtime is 25-30 minutes, write to Yandex "and hope for a miracle". Nobody gives guarantees here.

My minimum program for a game on Yandex fits into one list:

• Russian and English versions: 40% of players are not from Russia and the CIS, and for some games, according to the round table guests, players abroad bring half the revenue;
• controls for both PC and phones, including iOS: traffic splits roughly in half, and a game made for only one loses half its players;
• a strong icon;
• optimization so the game loads fast and doesn't lag on weak phones.

What games to make for Yandex Games

Yandex needs small but finished games and fast iterations. At the end of the round table I put it this way: "Sitting there for 3-4 months building something and putting it on Yandex is... most likely going to be a failure." Gorbatov added that a piece of a big game "looks really pathetic" on Yandex, so it is better to take a small mechanic from the start and finish it.

The second common mistake is not understanding who plays. According to Gorbatov, the Yandex Games audience is "mostly kids": Roblox, Minecraft and "something for kids" do well. A pixel platformer, "make it for a year, three or seven", will earn about $7 on Yandex. When someone in the chat asked about nine games in a row making about 6 cents a day, I answered that most likely you repeat the same thing each time: show the games to experienced developers and ask for feedback. Gorbatov added that after nine games on one mechanic, it is time to change it.

A few more rules I have worked out for myself:

• You can bring niches over from Steam. A mechanic that took off on Steam but isn't on the web yet works on Yandex too.
• No online games for the first three years. Online projects hold players, but it is easy for a beginner to get stuck in them.
• No projects left in a drawer. Made a learning game? Put it on Yandex. Even 6 cents, 12 cents or $1.20 is better than a game sitting in a folder.

It is the same approach as with a first game in general: small projects, test the niche, try again. AI helps put together such a small game quickly now: which genres it can almost build by itself is in the article how to make a game with AI.

Only Yandex or other platforms too: what Mirra Games learned

Start with Yandex, and go to other platforms once the game already earns. In my talk in April 2025, before the round table on Yandex Games, I said: "While you have 10 games that make zero, don't bother putting a game on 10 platforms. Most likely it will be zero or close to zero everywhere." But when one game takes off on Yandex or Google Play, it is time to add platforms. If the game has an Android build, the next one can be RuStore, Russia's Android app store: I covered it in how to publish a game on RuStore.

Survival after War shows what this looks like on one game. It is an idle arcade game that we released on Google Play first and then ported to six web platforms. Yandex Games gave it 45.1% of its HTML5 revenue, Game Distribution 36.8%, Crazy Games 11.8%.

That takes an SDK for each platform, so we made our own Mirra SDK: it releases a game on 27 platforms at once. Not every platform pays off the effort. Through Game Distribution we got into the Samsung store, got hundreds of thousands of downloads in a few days and earned $2,624 from it. My conclusion back then was that Samsung "didn't become a portal like Yandex Games or Crazy Games." In 2025 we tried to release all our games both on Yandex and on Crazy Games, but we didn't make them specifically for Yandex.

By January 2026 the picture at Mirra had changed: "We moved beyond Yandex Games long ago. And income from abroad is far bigger than revenue on Yandex Games," and most of our revenue now comes from selling game licenses. If you don't want to deal with every platform yourself, you can go to a publisher. What a publisher takes for that and how to pick an honest one, I covered in the article on finding a publisher for an indie game.

And if you want to go to Steam next, keep in mind what was said at the end of the round table: "Steam is good, but don't forget Yandex... on Yandex it will be simpler than on Steam." What a Steam release takes, I covered in the guide how to publish a game on Steam.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to publish a game on Yandex Games?

Nothing. The Yandex Games offer has no listing fee, and signing up in the developer console is free. Yandex earns together with the developer: from in-game purchases the developer gets 50% of Yandex's revenue excluding VAT, and for ads the final sum is fixed in a monthly act. You only spend on the game itself and the promo assets: icon, cover, screenshots and a short video.

How long does Yandex Games moderation take?

Usually 3-5 business days for a full review, which is needed for the first release and every build update. If you only change promo assets, 1-2 business days are enough. But before review the game waits in a queue, and for a new account that can take several weeks. After a rejection, the cooldown doubles with every retry, up to 16 days.

How much can one game earn on Yandex Games?

A beginner should not count on more than about $244 per game: that is what Alexey Gorbatov said at our round table in April 2025. Releasing games all year, according to him, can bring about $1,220-2,440 a month. It can be more: Stas Vetokhin, who had Google Play experience, got a first payout of about $2,880, and Gorbatov once made about $22,000 in a month from dozens of games.

Can a developer from outside Russia publish on Yandex Games?

Partly. The license offer can be signed by individuals, sole proprietors and companies from Russia and by sole proprietors and companies from Belarus. It does not fit individuals and sole proprietors from other countries, while foreign companies connect through the unified license scheme in the developer console. For a contract in another currency, the payout minimum is $150, €100 or 500 UAE dirhams instead of about $37.

Which engine should I use for a Yandex Games game?

Yandex has official SDK plugins for Unity, Construct 3, Cocos Creator and Defold, and for other engines GamePush or Playgama Bridge work. The main thing is that the archive is no more than 100 MB and the game loads fast. Unity is handy if the same game goes to phones and PC, but its WebGL build is heavy, and it is worth slimming down.

Does a Yandex Games game need English?

Translation is not called mandatory, but the game must detect the language itself through the SDK, and Yandex's draft instructions advise translating the game into Russian and English. According to the platform, 40% of players are not from Russia and the CIS. Guests of our round table said that for some games, players abroad bring half the revenue.

Sources

• Yandex, License agreement with Yandex Games developers, version of 11/28/2025 (in Russian)
• Yandex Games, Game requirements, updated 09/29/2026 (in Russian)
• Yandex Games, Uploading a game (in Russian)
• Yandex Games, Filling in the draft (in Russian)
• Yandex Games, Moderation (in Russian)
• Yandex Games, Ranking and featuring (in Russian)
• Yandex Games, Unified license scheme and payouts (in Russian)
• Yandex Games, Working with self-employed developers (in Russian)
• Yandex Games, Ads in the SDK (in Russian)
• Yandex Games, Plugins for game engines (in Russian)
• Yandex Games, Platform advantages (audience) (in Russian)
• Habr, "Yandex Games" sums up 2022, 02/09/2023 (in Russian)
• Evgeny Grishakov, Telegram post #2187 "A year of Mirra Games", 12/27/2024 (in Russian)
• Evgeny Grishakov, Telegram post #1888 "Survival after War + Mirra SDK", 07/24/2024 (in Russian)
• Evgeny Grishakov, Telegram post #2995 "Looking for HTML5 projects", 01/20/2026 (in Russian)
• Evgeny Grishakov, Telegram post #2115 "$$$ from the Samsung Store", 11/08/2024 (in Russian)
• Evgeny Grishakov, Telegram post #1777 "First games with IAPs on Crazy Games", 06/07/2024 (in Russian)
• Evgeny Grishakov, Telegram post #498 with answers about web games, 11/25/2022 (in Russian)
• Evgeny Grishakov, round table on Yandex Games with Alexey Gorbatov, Daniil Sazonov and Stas Vetokhin, YouTube, 04/23/2025 (in Russian)
• Evgeny Grishakov, "How to make MILLIONS on Yandex Games: an interview with Alexey Gorbatov", YouTube, 12/18/2025 (in Russian)
• Evgeny Grishakov, "April results! How much we made in a month in game dev", YouTube, 05/10/2023 (in Russian)

How our games keep doing on Yandex, Steam and consoles, I share on X.