Swedish games industry revenue increased 6.4% in 2023

The Swedish video games business’s home income has grown 6.4% year-on-year in 2023, to SEK 34.6 billion ($3.17 billion), in line with the most recent report from commerce physique Dataspelsbranschen.

The Swedish video games business physique famous in its newest Sport Developer Index that income doubled over the past 5 years.

The variety of video games corporations in Sweden has additionally elevated by 8% final yr, to 1,010, with 108 new video games corporations created in 2023.

The variety of staff grew by the identical fee and there have been 9,089 individuals working within the Swedish business in 2023. 75.8% of them had been males, and 23.7% had been girls – whereas the business within the nation is made up by an awesome majority of males, the variety of girls elevated 23.7% year-on-year.

The report highlighted that regardless of layoffs and studio closures, new hires elevated simply shy of 30% in comparison with 2022.

Taking a look at Swedish video games corporations, round 42% of them are solo endeavours, whereas 39% have fewer than 5 staff. Massive corporations with over 250 staff solely signify 1% of the full.

9 companies reported revenues over SEK 1 billion ($92 million) for the interval, together with King, Mojang, Paradox Interactive, and EA Cube.

“2023 must have been a extremely unhealthy yr for Swedish sport corporations,” commented managing director Per Strömbäck. “However it turned out to be a brand new report yr. Employment elevated. So did income. And the variety of girls. The will increase weren’t as huge as some earlier years, however nonetheless: all time excessive. It wasn’t all sunshine and soda popin’ 2023, although.”

He talked about that investments decreased resulting from a wide range of components together with low pursuits fee, inflation, redundancies, and studio closures.

“However investments have elevated once more in 2024,” he continued. “The variety of Swedish corporations’ staff overseas additionally decreased resulting from divestment of overseas subsidiaries (however whole income elevated).

“Why is it that Swedish sport corporations are going towards the tide of the financial disaster? The very best reply is that we make good video games. And we make many alternative sorts of video games that attain many alternative sorts of gamers. From easy puzzles to virtually infinitely detailed technique video games. Youngsters’s video games and video games for adults. Massive and small. Technologically groundbreaking or ingenious of their simplicity. Swedish sport corporations have every kind. That is the perfect recipe for the long run too.”

We talked to Paradox CEO deputy CEO Mattias Lilja final month about how the Swedish developer has weathered delays, developer splits, and Life By You’s cancellation.