To put into context; Microsoft bought Activision/Blizzard for 69 Billion dollars. A huge portion of that was actually King.
Around 2014, over 93 million people were playing Candy Crush Saga, while revenue over a three-month period as reported by King was over $493 million. Five years after its release on mobile, the Candy Crush Saga series has received over 2.7 billion downloads, and the game has been one of the highest-grossing and most-played mobile apps in that time frame. As of September 2023, it had reached over $20 billion in revenue.
Safe to say mobile market makes a lot more money we’d be comfortable with.
I shared my arcade membership with my mom a while ago (I had gotten it included) and it put her purchases on my card. This bio-chemist (very smart lady in some specific subjects) spent over $25 on ‘micro’ transactions in a week or so. They prey on the group that just want to get things done.
This is oversimplification to avoid an essay; Nationalism has been on the rise all over. With nationalism comes a loss of multi-nation agreements/positive sentiment (a la Brexit). Even without statements of pro-Putin ideology, it’s easy to see why Russia would want nationalists in power. I have family in Germany and am worried about AfD.
TL;DR - they don’t even need to be pro-Putin to get his help (not to say that they aren’t)