Pursuits
World of Tanks Video Game Mints a New Billionaire From Belarus
- Digital battleground sets record for gamers on a single server
- World of Tanks is a leading title in $16.5 billion industry
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As Vladimir Putin rolled tanks across Red Square last May to commemorate Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany, thousands of gamers across town had just finished celebrating the triumph with an epic battle of their own.
Over at a packed Olympic Stadium, a venue normally hosting the likes of Madonna, Beyonce and Metallica, bands of virtual warriors manned banks of computers along the venue floor to hunt each other with Allied and Axis war machines. Bright orange bursts of cannon fire lit up 10-meter screens as flickering black-and-white war footage of Red Army advances in World War II played to the delight of the crowd.