Born in Kyiv, Headquartered in Malta: 4A Games, Maker of Metro

On March 16, 2010, the game Metro 2033 was released. It is a first-person shooter about people trying to survive in the tunnels of the Moscow metro after a nuclear war. It was made by 4A Games, a developer born in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, whose headquarters is now on the Mediterranean island nation of Malta.

In a February 2025 announcement, the company said that about 150 people of a team of more than 200 are in Ukraine. The next game in the series, METRO 2039, is listed on its Steam store page with a planned release date of February 4, 2027 (as of October 2026). Drawing on company announcements and news reports, we look in order at where this company began, why it moved its headquarters, and in what form it develops games today.

Metro 2033 and the Kyiv Studio

The 4A Games website says the company was founded in Kyiv in 2005 by a team of people with experience in the games industry. In a text published in March 2025 for the 15th anniversary of Metro 2033, the company recalls that, 20 years ago at its founding, it began work on its first game, of the same title, inspired by Dmitry Glukhovsky’s “then online novel.” The team that released the first game in 2010 numbered 60.

The core of the founders were people who had worked at GSC Game World, a Kyiv game company. A May 2014 company announcement names co-founder and Creative Director Andrii Prokhorov (Андрій Прохоров). In its 2025 text, the company presents the fact that its colleagues worked on the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as part of its own background. GSC and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. themselves are covered in our article on GSC.

A July 2026 article (by Oleh Danylov) in the Ukrainian IT outlet Mezha (Межа) says that four people left GSC and founded 4A Games: Prokhorov, the programmer Oles Shishkovtsov (Олесь Шишковцов), the programmer Oleksandr Maksymchuk (Олександр Максимчук), and the 3D artist Andrii Tkachenko (Андрій Ткаченко). On why they left, it presents two accounts: one that it was a dispute over money, and one that GSC was trying to cut staff.

Founded in 2005 or 2006, by Three Founders or Four?

The founding year and the number of founders are written differently depending on the source. The company itself says 2005.

Source	Year founded	Founders
4A Games website (home page); the March 2025 15th-anniversary text	2005 (“20 years ago”)	No number given. The February 2025 text calls the founders the “four A’s”
Embracer Group announcement (August 13, 2020)	2005	Three developers from GSC Game World
Mezha (July 10, 2026)	2006	Four people: Prokhorov, Shishkovtsov, Maksymchuk, and Tkachenko

Timeline: From the Founding to METRO 2039

Date	Event	Source
2005	Founded in Kyiv	4A Games website
March 16, 2010	Metro 2033 released	Steam store page
May 12, 2014	Announces that it will open a new studio in Malta and make it the headquarters	4A Games
Summer 2014	The headquarters and more than 50 staff members and their families move to Malta	4A Games (August 20, 2014)
2017	Releases the VR game ARKTIKA.1	Embracer announcement
2019	Releases Metro Exodus	4A Games (January 24, 2023)
August 13, 2020	Embracer Group announces that it will acquire all of the shares	Embracer
January 24, 2023	Announces how development is going under the full-scale invasion, and the free release of the development tool “Exodus SDK”	4A Games
September 13, 2024	Announces that 4A Games will remain with Embracer	Embracer
February 28, 2025	Explains how the company came to be and what happened to the Kyiv studio that became a separate company	4A Games
April 16, 2026	Announces METRO 2039	4A Games
February 4, 2027	Planned release date of METRO 2039	Steam store page (checked October 31, 2026)

2014: The Headquarters Moves to Malta

On May 12, 2014, 4A Games announced a plan to open a new studio in Malta and make it the new headquarters. It said the Kyiv studio would continue. Dean Sharpe, who joined the board as chief executive officer at that point, said the following in the announcement.

“By basing our new headquarters in Malta, a member state of the EU, 4A Games will be able to better compete on the international stage.” “Malta offers fantastic incentives for game development.”

According to the company’s August 20, 2014 post, in the summer of 2014 the headquarters and more than 50 employees and their families moved from Ukraine to Malta. It says the move took more than six months from preparation to execution, with a chartered plane flight and belongings carried in dedicated containers. The current official website gives the headquarters as Sliema, Malta, and the Ukrainian base as the Pochaina district of Kyiv.

How the Founders Explained the Move

On June 2, 2014, the Ukrainian IT outlet ITC.ua published an interview with Prokhorov. He gave as the main reason that 4A Games had been unable to hire foreign specialists of the level it needed. Even when applications came in from France, Spain, Australia, and elsewhere, the company had no choice but to turn them down. His explanation was that with a proper office in an EU country, the company could bring in people from anywhere.

He also cited the favorable tax and incentive terms offered by the Maltese government, and the general tension in Ukraine over the preceding months. He then said that this was an expansion, opening an office and a development studio in the West, not leaving Ukraine.

The Number of People Who Moved Differs by Source

In the ITC.ua interview, Prokhorov says that the staff at the time numbered 75, that 33 would go to Malta first, and that with wives and children the number was 70. The company’s August 2014 post and its February 2025 text say “more than 50” and “roughly 50.” The sources may differ on the point at which people were counted or on whether families are included, and we have not found a source that can settle on any one of them.

The Old Spelling “Kiev” and the Current Spelling “Kyiv”

The company’s May 2014 announcement writes the city as “Kiev.” The company’s texts from 2023 onward use “Kyiv.” Kiev is a spelling based on Russian and Kyiv one based on Ukrainian; how the choice came about is covered in our article on the spelling of “Kyiv”.

The Shape of the Company: Headquarters in Malta, Two Studios in Kyiv

On February 28, 2025, 4A Games published a text explaining how the company came to be. According to it, in 2014 the founders formed “4A Games Limited” and set up the headquarters in Malta with roughly 50 fellow team members. They made Metro Exodus together with “4A Games Ukraine,” the company of the colleagues who stayed in Ukraine, on an outsourcing basis.

After releasing Metro Exodus and its additional content, 4A Games Limited set up another studio in Kyiv and brought in roughly 50 more people. It says 4A Games Ukraine became a completely separate company working on its own game, La Quimera, and changed its name to “Reburn.” It says the Metro series is made under contract with the publishers Deep Silver and Plaion.

On August 13, 2020, Sweden’s Embracer Group announced, through its subsidiary Saber Interactive, that it would acquire 100% of the shares of Malta’s 4A Games Limited. It said that more than 150 people were at the two studios in Malta and Ukraine. The upfront purchase price was about $36 million on a cash-free, debt-free basis, plus additional payments of up to $35 million if targets are met. The announcement gives 4A Games’ own projection of about 20 million euros in sales for 2020.

In March 2024, Embracer sold part of the Saber Interactive business to a company controlled by Saber’s co-founder. On September 13, 2024, Embracer announced that the buyer’s option to purchase 4A Games had lapsed and that 4A Games would remain with Embracer. In the 2025 statistics on Ukraine’s computer-services exports, Malta ranks second among partner countries (our article on exports). However, the statistics do not reveal the transactions of individual companies.

The Original Novel and Its Author

The original Metro 2033 is a novel by the Russian writer and journalist Dmitry Glukhovsky (Дмитрий Глуховский). According to the British Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (edited by John Clute and David Langford), Glukhovsky was born in Moscow in 1979. The novel appeared as an e-book in 2002, a revised edition was published by the Moscow publisher Eksmo in 2005, and an English translation appeared in 2010.

The game is set, like the novel, in the Moscow metro. The company introduces Metro Exodus as a game “inspired by” Glukhovsky’s novels, and writes that it is making the next game together with Glukhovsky.

The Conviction of the Original Author

According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), on August 7, 2023, the Basmanny District Court in Moscow sentenced Glukhovsky to eight years in prison over online posts condemning Russia’s full-scale invasion. The sentence was handed down in absentia while he was abroad; before that, Russia had added him to its list of “foreign agents” and issued an arrest warrant. The US broadcaster VOA reported the same day that the charge was spreading false information about the Russian army.

In its March 2025 text, 4A Games writes that Glukhovsky has spoken out against the invasion from the start and was sentenced to prison in absentia, and calls him a “friend and co-creator.”

The Shape of the Team Today

The 4A Games official website puts the size of the team at more than 200. The February 2025 text explains that people work from the Kyiv and Sliema offices and from home, that about 150 are in Ukraine, and that the rest are in Malta or work from home. In its April 2026 announcement of METRO 2039, the company writes that in the seven-plus years since the previous game, new people have joined from more than 25 countries.

In January 2023, for modding, which had been much requested, the company released the set of development tools used to make Metro Exodus free of charge as the “Exodus SDK.”

Development Under the Full-Scale Invasion

The company’s January 24, 2023 text writes that Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022 changed the lives of everyone in Ukraine, and reports that there are days when people cannot get to the Kyiv office, that electricity and water are cut off, and that some employees have joined the military. The April 2026 text also writes that many on the team still work every day from the Kyiv office and from homes across Ukraine, through daily power outages, using generators and batteries. Household outage schedules are in our article on electricity prices and outages.

METRO 2039 and a Changed Story

On April 16, 2026, 4A Games announced METRO 2039. According to the introduction on the official website, it is set in the Moscow metro in 2039, where a faction called the “Novoreich,” led by a figure named Hunter, rules people through propaganda and fear.

In its January 2023 text, the company wrote that, because of the war in Ukraine, it had rethought what the next Metro story should be. In its April 2026 announcement, it says that the full-scale invasion shaped how the story is told, and that what it wants to convey has shifted to “The Cost of Silence, The Horrors of Tyranny, and the Price of Freedom.”