Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov is a Russian video game designer and computer engineer, who developed the popular game Tetris while working for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, a Soviet government-founded R&D center.
Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris with Vadim Gerasimov and Dmitry Pavlovsky. Under his employment contract with the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he received a regular paycheck instead of royalties (similar to "work made for hire" under modern copyright law). He and Henk Rogers went on to found The Tetris Company in 1996.
As of 1996 to the present (2006), Pajitnov works for Microsoft, designing games for MSN Zone and Xbox Live Arcade.
Game Developers Choice Awards First Penguin Award
LARA - Der Deutsche Games Award
