Did the creators of Metro almost lose the first game's domain?

Today, April 16, the ownership of the iconic metro2033.ru domain could have changed hands. The official website of the first game was not renewed on time and ended up on the registry's deletion lists.

Our team also entered this race. We planned to buy the domain and turn it into a new, safe base for fans — after all, QR codes from millions of printed books worldwide still point to this address, making it a perfect source of a new audience for our community.

However, we failed to intercept the asset: at theRU-CENTERregistrar's auction, an unknown "whale" locked the bidding by dropping a bid of over 65,000 rubles.

Such an amount instantly cut off all other participants. The community assumes that this was an emergency move by the lawyers of the publisher PLAION or Dmitry Glukhovsky's*** agents in Russia, who realized the mistake at the last moment and decided to flood the problem with corporate budgets so as not to lose the legacy.

However, it is still unknown whether they will actually be able to claim the domain, as bids were also placed on many other drop-catching platforms (expired.ru,reg.ru, etc.).

And while lawyers are buying up old assets for tens of thousands, we look to the future. As a reminder, the first details about the new installment of the series — Metro 2039 — are expected tonight! Stay tuned.

*** - Recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation.