MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
The Swedish game development sector is experiencing a new boom according to statistics from the 2017 Swedish Game Developer Index, which has been released today.
According to the study, revenue earned by Swedish game developers has increased to €1.4 billion in 2016, which is an increase since 2010 of 1000 per cent. There has also been a large growth of game studio start ups in the country. At present, there are 287 studios, which sees a year-on-year increase of 22 percent of working studios. Nearly 10 per cent of those studios are now working in VR. The majority of the platforms worked on however are PC and Mobile
Of course, the successes of Mojang and King are well known with Minecraft and Candy Crush being stand out Swedish produced franchises for those developers respectively. But other studios like EA DICE have produced stand out hits for the Battlefield and Star Wars franchises. Ubisoft recently announced they were opening a new studio in Stockholm.
“Sweden is blessed with great game developers, but we would hire more if we could," said the spokesperson for Dataspelsbranschen (Swedish Games Industry), Per Stromback. "Now we’re looking to attract new talent from overseas. Some companies have also opened offices in places like New York, Los Angeles, London and Berlin to tap into that talent pool.
"Sweden is constantly rated one of the best places to do business and live from top publications and developers are working even harder to make Sweden a particularly appealing place to work as they attract new games creators from across the globe.”
Speaking of the global reach of the Swedish gaming industry, one of the interesting statistics is that 1 in 10 people globally have played a game developed in Sweden. It’s hard to refute that when you look at the success of mobile gaming that has originated from the country.
Other good news is that nearly half of all employment in the Swedish games sector is generated by medium and smaller companies who are quite happily operating alongside the big triple-A developers. While 75 per cent of the revenue from companies is attributed to large employers (over 250 employees), the smaller companies are still profitable. Employment has incerased by 15 per cent overall.
Good work Sweden. Skål!
