The Ukrainian most popular file-sharing site Ex.ua has been shut down by Ukrainian police with immediate effect.

The police confiscated 200 servers on which more than 6,000 terabytes of data was stored. The servers were located in 5 data centers in Kyiv. The Ex.ua raids follow less than two weeks after US authorities ordered the shutdown of another file-hosting service, MegaUpload.

Because the site was widely used to share copyrighted files, several international companies including Microsoft, Graphisoft and Adobe filed complaints against the service. After a six month criminal investigation, this resulted in the shutdown of Ex.ua.

Sixteen employees were taken in for questioning. At the time of writing it is unclear how many arrests have been made, if any. The authorities did confirm that the site was run by a Latvian citizen.

If found guilty, the operators of the site face up to five years in prison.

An ugly rumor coming out of Ukraine claims that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is canceled and developer GSC Game World has been closed down.

This is seriously disappointing news if it turns out to be true. According to a Google translation of Ukrainian News, GSC Game World founder and CEO Sergei Grigorovich has decided to shut down the company. What led to the decision isn’t clear, although it appears that someone – perhaps Grigorovich, perhaps employees at the studio – weren’t happy with the progress being made on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. The closure of the studio, of course, means that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is dead in the water.

And sadly, it looks like it is true: GSC initially denied the report via Twitter, but that tweet was quickly deleted and then followed by another from GSC Director Dmitri Bourkovski, who wrote, “not PR. GSC closed.” In response to inquiries from Rock, Paper, Shotgun, GSC said only, “Sorry, no comments at this point,” which is never a good sign.

On the other hand, this wouldn’t be the first time that an eastern European game company pulled a bizarre “we’re going out of business!” stunt to drum up publicity. It’s a faint hope – a very, very faint hope – but given how much I’ve been looking forward to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, I’m going to cling to it.

UPDATE: It turns out that Dmitri Bourkovski, who earlier “confirmed” the closure of GSC on Twitter, doesn’t actually work for GSC Game World at all; his Linkedin profile lists him as the “Head of Publishing, Games Division” at Mail.ru. He also told Beefjack that he has “no connection” with the project and was only tweeting about what he’d heard. An interesting twist! We’re waiting for an official response to our inquiries from GSC and will update again when we hear more.

UPDATE 2: Sergey Galyonkin, marketing director at 1C Multimedia [1C Company published the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games in some regions] has blogged about the closure of GSC, which you may or may not take as confirmation as you see fit. “GSC is closed, a fact confirmed by all. The team is almost completely dissolved, the state has only a few people,” he wrote, obviously Google translated.

Galyonkin said a deal to bring the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series to consoles fell through and the projected sales for a PC-exclusive post-apocalyptic shooter based in eastern Europe weren’t enough to justify the expense of developing the game. There were also apparently concerns, as stated earlier, about the current state of the game’s development and some claims that GSC Game World chief Grigorovich is just “stupidly tired.”

We’re still awaiting official word from GSC but at this point, it sounds very much like that’s that.

(c) Escapist

On November 29, 2011 International Investment Forum “Seed Forum Kyiv” will be held at the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Velyka Zhytomyrska Str., 33, 4th Floor, conference hall “Colosseum”). Forum co-organizers are the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, “Seed Forum” and the State Agency for Investment and management of national projects of Ukraine.

“Seed Forum” is an international network of investment companies, venture funds, business angels, innovative startups, technology parks, business innovation centers. For 9 years being “Seed Forum” brought together into one operating system over 12,000 investors and 1,200 companies – one of the world’s largest network of entrepreneurs and investors. Seed Forum is a global organization hosting investor conferences in more than 40 countries and is considered to be one of the most professional and experienced venues for presentations of investor ready start-up companies.

Thanks to Forums companies that require initial funding receive a unique opportunity to present their business ideas to potential investors and partners. Investors will be able to see the best Ukrainian and foreign start-ups and get a chance to invest in the future Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Partnerships are established with such influential organizations as the EBRD and the London Stock Exchange, Association of Singapore venture capital investors, the State Agency for Trade and Investment of UK, with well-known political figures, including President of Iceland, administrations and governments of Norway, Poland, authorities and business circles of London, Oslo, Tallinn, etc., as well as embassies of countries where the forums are held, with many private and corporate investors in Ukraine and abroad, including Nokia Venture, Intel Capital, Ericsson Venture, Capman, Alliance Venture.

“Seed Forum” starts in Ukraine as a national component of the global network. “Seed Forum” promotes the development of innovative enterprises in Ukraine, establishment of effective direct ties with foreign investors and innovative companies, integration of the Ukrainian, especially start-up, business in European and global investment and technology space.

The Forum program includes participation in the official opening of the International Charitable Fund “Seed Forum Ukraine” with participation of a number of leading members of Parliament and representatives of ministries and departments of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine

Participants will have every opportunity to communicate with foreign companies and selected IT startups from Ukraine, as well as a number of Ukrainian and foreign investors and businessmen. Also there will be a ceremonial signing of a cooperation agreement between the “Seed Forum Ukraine” and the state industrial development corporation «SIVA» (Norway). The activity of SIVA aims to develop strong regional and local business groups and industrial clusters in the fields of infrastructure, information technology, and innovation centers.

The Forum is free, but a number of seats is limited.

Register on the forum and get more information  at http://www.seedforum.org.ua/.

Russian telecommunications equipment and technology distributor Netwell opens representative office in Kyiv. Ukraine is the first country in which Netwell will have its international office. The main task of Kyiv office will be extending the sales network in Ukraine, informed Paudis.

Deputy general director Yevgeniy Chepusov commented: “Being a niche distributor we are able to provide our partners with access to unique products and solutions allowing them to make market in them and create demand, resulting in maximum profitability to them. Without any doubt, together we would be able to reach important goals.”

Despite the fact that Netwell has been dealing with many partners in CIS for a long time, the opening of Kyiv representative office created the most comfortable conditions for further mutual cooperation. Now there is a permanent warehouse facility in Ukraine which would help to significantly decrease delivery times. Specialists of Ukrainian office will conduct technical expertise of the projects in Ukraine and support their partners and customers at every stage of the projects implementation.

Ukraine is to experience a significant increase of new TV services, with up to two DTH (direct-to-home) platforms and a DTT (digital terrestrial television) operation expected to start this automn.

On August 5 General Satellite (Russia) announced that it is considering to enter Ukrainian market. They are planning to expand several DTH (direct-to-home) projects around the world, and they see Ukraine as a good place to start from.

It is said that General Satellite plans to distribute 55 channels in Ukraine, of which 28 will be local services. Most probably they would be transmitted using the localised version of Tricolor TV platform, a successful service from neighboring Russia.

It was reported last week that the Istil Group, which was previously behind the failed Poverkhost Plus operation, now plans to launch a DTH platform named XTRA. It is rumored that the platform will use Irdeto conditional access technology, which allows to protect the content delivery from piracy. It is also mentioned that the XTRA platform could go live as soon as this week.

Besides, Zeonbud, an operator of four of Ukraine’s six multiplexes (channels), plans to launch its DTT service this September.

AVentures Capital, along with several other private investors, are the first to invest into Divan.TV. Divan.TV is a new concept in the television experience. Divan will be targeting the Central Eastern European area. Adventures Capital has stated that their investment, at this time, has not exceeded $1 million, informed Paudis.

Divan TV (www.divan.tv)
 Divan.TV was established in 2009 and has quickly developed into a new platform that could change the way everyone experiences television. With the Divan box attached to the television, consumers can interact with their television through several multi-media methods.

Divan is targeting the Ukraine and Russia for its initial release in Fall 2011. Divan believes it will be in 1 million households by 2014.

AVentures Capital (www.aventures.com)
 AVentures Capital was founded in 1994 by Andrey Kolodyuk, and has realized over $1 billion in assets through 30 separate projects. Aventures Capital targets innovative IT start up ventures and is expanding its interests into the telecommunications and commercial property industries.

According to a report by the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (EVCA) Ukraine attracted EUR 96 mln investments from private equity funds.

Investment activity in 2010 was highly concentrated in six countries: Poland (EUR 657 mln), the Czech Republic (EUR 193 mln), Romania (EUR 119 mln), Ukraine (EUR 96 mln), Bulgaria (EUR 82 mln) and Hungary (EUR 65 mln). Together, they accounted for 94% of the total CEE private equity investment value in 2010 (EUR 1.29 bn) and 68% of the total number of companies financed.

Private equity and venture capital funds focused on the Central and Eastern Europe attracted EUR 645 mln of new funds raised for investments into the companies in the region during 2010.

(c) EVCA

Eutelsat Communications (Euronext Paris: ETL) will provide satellite Internet to users across Ukraine. Eutelsat announced the signature of a distribution contract for the Tooway™ broadband service between its Skylogic subsidiary and Eurosat-Ukraine. Eurosat-Ukraine is an affiliate of Altegrosky, a leading provider of satellite-delivered telecoms services in Russia and CIS countries. The new contract between Skylogic and Eurosat-Ukraine covers distribution to consumers in the Ukraine of the Tooway™ new generation satellite broadband service, which is delivered via Eutelsat’s KA-SAT satellite.

With Tooway™ packages enabling users to benefit from download speeds of up to 10 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 4 Mbps, Eurosat-Ukraine can now offer fast and immediate Internet access to users across the Ukraine. Leveraging Altegrosky’s extensive experience of providing traditional VSAT solutions in Russia, with 6 500 terminals already deployed, the company plans to focus on rural areas and areas with poor ADSL and mobile broadband coverage. Over 10 million households in the Ukraine’s rural and suburban areas are not served by any Internet access, representing a significant addressable market.

Celebrating the partnership with Eutelsat, Sergey Pekhterev General Manager of Altegrosky, said: “Our new partnership with Skylogic and Eutelsat is a powerful new platform for expanding our range of services and increasing the efficiency of the solutions we offer. Our objective with our joint effort is to tackle the problem of white spots by offering the speed and performance of Tooway™ to households across the Ukraine.”

Arduino Patacchini, CEO of Skylogic responded: “The selection of Tooway™ by Altegrosky, an expert in satellite-based telecom networks, highlights the confidence of our partners in the new KA-SAT broadband infrastructure. We look forward to developing Tooway™ service growth in Eastern Europe with Altegrosky and Eurosat-Ukraine, and believe that the performance and affordability of our new-generation satellite broadband services will contribute to rapidly reducing digital exclusion for individuals deprived of high-speed Internet access.”

The new generation Tooway™ service is provided by Eutelsat’s KA-SAT satellite which went into full commercial service in May. With its total throughput of more than 70 Gbps, KA-SAT is a wireless broadband infrastructure designed to deliver fast, effective and affordable IP applications to users across Europe and the Mediterranean Basin.

(c) Paudis

Yandex invested dozens of thousands dollars in a US/Ukrainian Internet startup Refine.io. Its office is in California, USA, and the development team is in Ukraine, informed Paudis.

Refine.io is a mobile application creation service aimed at creation of prototypes of iOS applications using convenient drag-n-drop constructor.