Short answers, pulled from the story.
Tetris was created by Alexey Pajitnov in 1984. Pajitnov was a Soviet software engineer working in a Moscow computing research environment when he built the game as a puzzle experiment, not a commercial product.
Russia ranked 11th globally as a gaming market in 2018, with 65.2 million players spending 1.7 billion dollars on games that year. The market grew by an estimated 35% in 2020, then fell by 80% after international sanctions followed the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The Dendy was a Taiwanese hardware clone of the Famicom, sold in Russia starting in 1992. It sold over one million units in Russia by 1994 and reached a total of six million units across Russia and other post-Soviet states.
Around 69% of Russian gamers reportedly pirated a video game in 2022. The International Intellectual Property Alliance estimated 282.1 million dollars in market value losses from game piracy in Russia in its 2009 report.
Esports was officially recognized by the Russian government in 2001. It was temporarily removed from the National Sport Register in 2006 due to administrative changes, reinstated in 2016, and granted equal status with other recognized sports by 2017.
The Russian Esports Federation, or RESF, was established in 2000. It has organized over 1,000 competitions, awarded more than 300 million rubles in prize money, and by 2024 was conducting up to seven online tournaments daily. Its events include the Championship of Russia, the BRICS Championship, and the National Student Esports League, which involved 102 teams from 91 universities.