BUSINESS

The “Portraits of Victory” tournament, sponsored by the World of Tanks video game, marked the culmination of a lifelong fascination with both history and technology for the game’s creator, Victor Kislyi. Two decades ago, Kislyi began melding the two passions in his family’s Minsk apartment with his brother, eventually building the company they created, Wargaming Pcl, into a growing army of 150 million global users.

The effort has valued the business at $1.5 billion and given the 39-year-old a net worth of $1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Kislyi declined to comment on the valuation, saying only that he has a “very modest” lifestyle and has never tried to put a number on his fortune.

“World of Tanks has created its own subculture and that’s the most important thing,” said Oleg Shpilchevsky, head of the games business unit at Moscow-based Mail.Ru Group, the maker of Armored Warfare: Project Armata, a competing product named after Russia’s most advanced real-world tank.

Wargaming is one of the industry’s most successful creators of free-to-play online games, which produce revenue through premium accounts offering players more credits that enable them to move faster through increasingly difficult levels of play. Kislyi controls 64 percent of the Cyprus-based business in his name and through a 25.5 percent stake held by his father, according to Wargaming’s 2013 semi-annual financial report. The business has 4,000 employees on four continents and revenue of $590 million in 2015, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and estimates by analysts.