Finnish games worth EUR 2.4 billion annually

This was the sixth consecutive year that the Finnish game industry has surpassed the two billion-euro mark. The coronavirus pandemic has done little to stem the growth of the industry, with the figure representing a nine per cent bump on the previous year.

The past decade has brought a distinct uptick for the industry, spurred by the success of Rovio and Supercell. One significant change in recent years, however, has been the shadow cast by Supercell. In 2015, Supercell’s share of the industry’s total turnover was almost 88 per cent. Fast-forward to 2020 and this shrunk to 54 per cent.

Altogether, 46 Finnish studios enjoyed an annual turnover of more than one million euros.

Despite the pandemic, the availability of private funding has been good and in 2019–2020 Finnish game studios received over 100 million euros in private funding. This does not include Israel-based Playtika’s acquisition of mobile game developer Seriously Digital Entertainment in August 2019. The price of that particular deal was not disclosed, but it has been estimated to be well over 250 million euros.

The number of games studios in Finland contracted over the past couple of years, now standing at 200. Yet the industry employs more people (3 600) than it did at the end of 2018 (3 200). In the next couple of years, Finnish game studios expect to open an additional 400–1 000 new positions. The share of women working in the industry has grown two percentage points to 22 per cent in 2020.