Nival (company)

Nival
Company type	Private
Industry	Video games
Founded	November 18, 1996; 27 years ago
Founder	Sergey Orlovskiy
Headquarters	Limassol, Cyprus
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Sergey Orlovskiy; (CEO)
Products	Etherlords series; Blitzkrieg series; Silent Storm series; Heroes of Might and Magic V series; Prime World
Website	nival.com

Nival is a video game developer and publisher founded by Sergey Orlovskiy in 1996. It is headquartered in Limassol, Cyprus.

History

The company was founded by Sergey Orlovskiy on November 18, 1996 as Nival Interactive, and became famous as the developer of several successful role-playing and strategy series, including Rage of Mages (known as Allods in Eastern Europe), Blitzkrieg, and Etherlords, all of which would receive sequels. Nival also created the Silent Storm engine and developed several games using it, beginning with the eponymous Silent Storm series in 2003. Among these was Heroes of Might and Magic V and two add-ons, published by Ubisoft.

Nival began to self-publish its own games in 2005. Nival financed and published external developers including KranX Productions, creators of King's Bounty: Legions and Bytex, developers of Berserk Online. In early 2005, the part of Nival operating under the name Nival Interactive was bought by Ener1 Group, a Florida-based holdings company, for around $10 million. On November 30, 2007, Sergey Orlovskiy regained full control of Nival Interactive.^[1]

In early 2010, another part of Nival, Astrum Nival, was bought by Digital Sky Technologies for more than $100 million, becoming a part of Astrum Online Entertainment. Nival's internal development studios became focused on PC and mobile projects. Nival has developed and launched Prime World, King's Bounty: Legions.^[2]

In December 2013, Nival raised $6 million in its Series A funding round led by Almaz Capital. The funds were to be used for global expansion.^[3] In 2017, Nival released the world's first Neural Network AI for RTS game Blitzkrieg 3.^[4]

The company is currently making investments and providing advising support to innovative projects that explore video games, education, artificial intelligence, and new forms of interactive experiences.^{[citation needed]}