Founded by a group of friends in 1999, Alawar initially developed hard core PC games for the Russian retail market. Eventually, the market became unprofitable, with developers earning only pennies per copy of a game sold. At that time, small computer games sold online via the shareware distribution method were becoming popular, so Alawar shifted its focus to creating these kinds of titles, which would eventually come to be known as casual games. Since making this switch in 2001, Alawar has published more than 200 games.
Source: Wikipedia, "Alawar Entertainment," available under the CC-BY-SA License.