WePlay Studios is more than just a production company — it’s a hub of creativity, innovation, and groundbreaking experiences.
Our Journey
The history of WePlay began in 2012 in Kyiv, Ukraine, from a simple passion for video games. Yura Lazebnikov and Oleg Krot founded a company to conduct regular local esports competitions at an amateur and, in time, the semi-pro level. In parallel with the development and growing popularity of esports, the business grew, too, and in 2016 WePlay held the first major LAN tournament of its professional Dota 2 series.
It was this tournament that became one of the turning points in the development of WePlay — when we saw that we didn’t want to be yet another tournament operator.
In 2016, the company rebranded and acquired its legendary name, WePlay Esports. In parallel, our team built two studios for filming content in Kyiv and, in 2020, opened the doors of the WePlay Esports Arena Kyiv.
WePlay Esports has left its mark and contributed to the development of today’s esports scene with its Dota 2 and CS:GO tournaments. At the beginning of 2020, in the heart of the Carpathian Mountains, the WePlay team held the WePlay! Bukovel Minor, Valve’s most-watched DPC Minor tournament, in the spirit of a magic Christmas tale. Just a month later, the team was already in Kyiv preparing WePlay! Tug of War: Mad Moon, a cyberpunk-themed tournament featuring the newly released Cybertruck that set the record of one of the most-watched Dota 2 events outside the DPC system. In the spring of 2020, we raised nearly $200,000 for the development of a vaccine against COVID-19 as part of the charity marathon WeSave! Charity Play.
In 2021, WePlay Esports got the right to hold a DPC Major in Ukraine — the first Dota 2 LAN tournament since the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Designed in just over a month, the tournament brought together two passionate and engaged communities — those of gaming and anime. Even though there were no spectators in the arena, WePlay AniMajor went down in esports history as one of the most popular Dota 2 Majors by both peak viewers and hours watched.
Throughout its history, WePlay has become a nominee and winner of more than 10 international awards in the field of entertainment and production. In 2021, the team was nominated for the Sports Emmy Awards for its high-quality esports coverage. That same year, it was shortlisted for Creative Team of the Year at the Esports Awards.
Our Mission
However, we decided to look further. In 2022, WePlay began its expansion into the international market with the opening of the WePlay Esports Arena Los Angeles, the U.S. The company has become a strategic partner of One True King, America’s largest influencer network. In the fall of that year, we became Enthusiast Gaming’s production partner for NFL Tuesday Night Gaming.
In 2023, we entered a new round of business development as WePlay Studios, a production company specializing in content creation in the field of entertainment and gaming.
Based on the knowledge gained in esports, technology, and the event business, WePlay Studios aims to create groundbreaking entertainment innovation to supercharge viewers’ experience and accelerate industry development with end-to-end solutions in broadcasting, augmented reality, computer graphics, and venue design.
Our mission is to create groundbreaking entertainment innovations that will form the future of the industry and supercharge viewers’ experience they need to recover from the daily race.
Our Values
We Play
Created by gamers for gamers, WePlay prides itself on producing shows that fans know their favorite games deserve. We treat every title like it is our favorite game because, for someone in our company, it is. We pair this authentic enthusiasm with cutting-edge technology to consistently raise the bar with each project. All of us at WePlay are passionate gamers driven to produce the best shows possible — shows that we, as fans, would have wanted to see ourselves. It is not only our passion, but our responsibility to remain loyal to our viewers and to ourselves as representatives of the games we all love.
We Strive
We create shows and tournaments that last in the audience's attention and memories. We encourage them to create memes, talk about what they’ve seen, and remember the broadcast not only for the game itself and the teams playing but for the cultural moments broadcasts brought them to.
We Impact
With the latest and greatest tech at our fingertips, we strive to ensure that every pixel is perfect on viewers’ screens. We have not forgotten what makes gaming so special: the seamless union of both viewer and screen to create interactive, engaging, and memorable experiences. Our shows are able to create these rich experiences for fans around the world that will stick with them for the rest of their lives. You never know when a viewer might tune in or log off; every single second counts in a broadcast. We at WePlay work hard to ensure that each second of our shows is special for the viewers.