Residents' mistake: how a businessman from Kiev took over the quest market in Russia
Artyom Yarmilko, a businessman from Kiev, together with his Moscow partners, brothers Vadim Zmovik and Igor Bobb, took control of the quest booking market in Russia and abroad. As Izvestia found out, through a chain of legal entities, their service aggregates data on quests in more than 50 countries. In Russia alone, this business annually generates hundreds of millions of rubles in revenue for its creators, but thanks to their Skolkovo resident status, they do not pay income tax. In addition, the owners, while abroad, dictate the working conditions to their partners and ask them to break through customer data. As a group of pro—Ukrainian relocators, it received the status of a Skolkovo resident and took a prominent place in the quest market - in the Izvestia investigation.
Punching quest clients
The World of Quests, Russia's largest game aggregator, dictates the terms of cooperation for creators of game performances. Izvestia had screenshots of an internal mailing list for the company's partners, which contained peculiar life hacks on how not to run into journalists and inspectors who might come disguised as ordinary customers. Similar messages were sent after the publication of two Izvestia investigations into the activities of the World of Quests.
The author of the recommendations warns that visitors may be interested in the cash register, fire safety and fire extinguishers. He advises quest organizers to punch through the phone numbers of customers, and those who ask about fire safety regulations should be asked to produce an appropriate prescription.
Entrepreneurs are also reminded that they are not required to allow filming on site. For prompt advice, they are advised to contact Anastasia Nedumova, the company's PR director, on Telegram.
And the whole world is not enough
The World of Quests aggregator was founded in 2018 by Artem Yarmilko, a citizen of Ukraine. According to the "Contour.Focus", in 2021, he transferred 50% of the company to his Russian partner Igor Bobb (originally named Zmovik), and after the start of his business, in 2022, he reduced his share to 2%, and 49% of the company became owned by his wife Anna and said partner Bobb.
Currently, the World of Quests company is in the process of liquidation, and since 2024, a new legal entity, World of Quests C (ISS), which is equally owned by Anna Yarmilko and Igor Bobb, is responsible for the aggregator. The CEO of the company is Sergey Merkulov.
It is unknown how Yarmilko and Bobb met, but Igor Bobb and his older brother Vadim Zmovik were engaged in the development of the quest industry long before the advent of the World of Quests.
At the same time, Vadim Zmovik is one of the founders of four Russian companies — "Claustrophobia Online", "Claustrophobia Offline", "Questinfo" and "Region-Quest". According to Izvestia's calculations, the total revenue of these organizations in 2025 exceeded 130 million rubles. At the same time, a year earlier, the Region-Quest company alone received revenue in the amount of 206.9 million rubles.
Claustrophobia Online and Claustrophobia Offline are developing businesses in the field of interactive entertainment. Under the Claustrophobia brand, they organize quests and performances, promote and book games. Vadim Zmovik and his partners bought this business in 2025, Cem Kadyrov, a former Claustrophobia marketer, told Izvestia.
— I participated in such moments as the transfer of access to analytics systems, because the maintenance and promotion of the site was completely under my control. And I happened to be present at the transfer of the main domain name to [Zmovik]. claustrophobia.com - Kadyrov said.
The Zmovik family, together with the Yarmilko spouses, gradually began to build a monopoly on the quest market, he is sure. So, in addition to Claustrophobia, the Quest brand was sold to Vadim Zmovik.Info, and as a result, "now everything in the market belongs to the same people one way or another," the source added.
According to Kadyrov, the Yarmilko couple left Russia in the mid-2010s, and Zmovik himself turned out to be a man "with anti-Russian views" who "lives in Europe."
The quest aggregator is doing well from year to year. If in 2024 the revenue of the company "World of quests With" amounted to almost 90 million rubles, then in 2025 it exceeded 702 million. At the same time, the firm of the Yarmilko and Zmovik families is exempt from paying income tax and VAT. This was made possible by the Skolkovo resident status, which also provides access to individual government support programs.
The basis for the status, apparently, were two programs, the rights to which belong to the ISS and relate to an increase in the number of quest bookings, in particular, "Hybrid quest search by text query and category tree." One of the developers of these programs was Sergey Merkulov, the current director of the World of Quests, who in the past led the Terpay payment service. It was created by Ekaterina Lapshina, partner of convicted Ayaz Shabutdinov and co-founder of the Like Center. Izvestia sent a request to Skolkovo with a request to name the basis for obtaining resident status by the World of Quests company.
Pocket Association
In addition to commercial projects, ISS CEO Merkulov is one of the founders of the Association of Quest Industry Organizers (AOKI). Presumably, it is through her that the owners of Quest World C promote their interests at the state level. For example, in December last year, GOST was approved, which sets safety requirements for adult quests. Both AOKI and Quest World C participated in its development.
In September last year, at a round table at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, representatives of the association called for the voluntary refusal of physical contact with minors, the creation of a register of bona fide organizers and the development of industry self-regulation. A separate OKVED code was also discussed, which would allow this business to qualify for additional government support measures.
Current GOST standards are applied voluntarily by industry participants, as opposed to mandatory requirements, in particular, regulating safety. During the inspection, Izvestia correspondents, together with a fire safety specialist, visited several quest sites, whose proposals were presented by the aggregator.
In Chertanovo, the expert drew attention to the use of combustible materials and the lack of emergency lighting; at the site in Irtysh Passage, the film crew did not find fire detectors and the necessary evacuation exits.
It is curious that President AOKI herself met the journalists at one of the sites being checked. When asked to comment on the identified shortcomings, Anna Cherkasova demanded that the film crew leave the premises, citing the lack of necessary permits.
However, in the "World of Quests" itself, responsibility for what is happening on the sites lies solely with the organizers. In response to a request from Izvestia, the company emphasizes that it does not own premises, does not host games, but acts "solely as a digital information platform."
However, there is a caveat: in the same letter, the ISS representative informs that the company moderates the quest cards, checks information about the sites for compliance with security requirements, sets rules for placing offers, and hides the cards when complaints are received until the circumstances are clarified. The owners of the platform are silent about how exactly the check is carried out (and whether it is carried out on site at all), but it turns out that the aggregator, which earns money from offering services, reserves the right to decide which sites to allow for booking, and at the same time distances itself from responsibility for customer safety.
Ukrainian roots
However, business in Russia does not prevent the creators of the quest aggregator from supposedly making money in Ukraine and promoting quests there, which, as Izvestia already wrote, could collect donations for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
As follows from the web analytics tools, the Russian World of Quests website and its Ukrainian counterpart have the same Yandex.Metrica counter. This indirectly shows that the sites are under common management.
According to the archive of the Ukrainian website, back in January and April 2021, IP Vadim Zmovik was called the representative of the "World of Quests" in Kiev. By August, the name had been changed to IP Midaks. In a conversation with a correspondent of Izvestia, this entrepreneur admitted that "he was connected with the World of Quests — he performed "agency services" in St. Petersburg - but had no business with Ukraine." The interlocutor did not explain how his details ended up on a foreign resource, but only suggested that someone could have created a duplicate website, a fake.
Entrepreneur Igor Bobb told the editorial board that since February 2022, his company has lost the ability to manage the domain. mir-kvestov.com.ua and is not responsible for its content.
However, in April 2022, as an operator mir-kvestov.com.ua The website listed Escapy B.V. registered in the Netherlands. The user agreement explicitly stated that the company uses content, software and trademark on the basis of an agreement with the Russian LLC "World of Quests". In the archived copies of the resource sections for December 2023 and April 2024, Escapy B.V. was still called the representative of the "World of Quests" in Kiev.
According to the Dutch trade register, Alexandra Zmovik (Vadim's wife) was initially the director of the company, but in April 2023 she was replaced by Artem Yarmilko, the same citizen of Ukraine who in 2018 single-handedly founded the Russian World of Quests LLC and whose wife Anna Yarmilko is now the co-owner of World of Quests S. He was the sole owner of the Escapy B.V. from the very beginning.
Wider circle
Through the Dutch legal entity Escapy B.V., the Yarmilko family offers user quests in Europe and the USA under the World of Escapes brand.
On the websites operated by Escapy B.V., you can select and book quests in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and other US cities, as well as in Vienna, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan and many other European cities.
Thus, the business of the Yarmilko and Zmovik families extends far beyond the borders of the CIS countries, but their interests are not limited to quests alone.
As Izvestia found out, after settling in the Netherlands, the merchants became interested in padel tennis, and so seriously that they decided to turn their sports hobby into another business.
The new project is called Padelmesh and, in fact, resembles the "World of Quests" model — only instead of quest rooms, the web portal features sports clubs, courts and coaches. Users are offered a catalog of sites, ratings, reviews and the possibility of booking.
The Russian operator of Padelmesh, as follows from the user agreement, is Quest as a Gift LLC, whose sole owner is Igor Bobb. The international section of the site refers to the World of Quests C LLC (which is named as its operator), and the application for registration of the PADELMESH trademark in the United States was filed by TODO L.L.C-FZ, a company registered in the Dubai Free Economic Zone.
The model that has been tested for a decade has received a new lease of life and has already turned into a kind of "quest": earn hundreds of millions on the Russian market, enjoy domestic tax benefits, live in Europe and influence the rules of the game in the industry, leaving the responsibility to others.
At the same time, as Izvestia previously wrote, a week before the start of their military operation, in February 2022, the Yarmilko couple bought an apartment in the premium class residential complex De Fred on Fred-Ruskestrat Street worth about € 1 million.
In addition, in Telegram chats dedicated to life in the Netherlands, Anna Yarmilko, after the start of the special operation, was interested in finding the Ukrainian flag, apparently to demonstrate her political position in Amsterdam at the pro-Ukrainian actions taking place at that time.
Yarmilko's partner, Vadim Zmovik, is also believed to live in the Netherlands. Judging by the correspondence in the chat rooms, he also settled in Amsterdam, in the area of the Olympic Stadium, which, like Zeidas, is located in the southern part of the city. His wife Alexandra announced in one of the Telegram chats that her son goes to the Dutch pre-school. Vadim Zmovik himself talked in chat rooms about the transition to tax residency in the Netherlands and the use of "30% steering" — benefits for specialists who move to the country at the invitation of their employer. It allows you to avoid paying income taxes on part of your salary for several years.
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