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The Game Industry of Poland — Report 2021

Lelouch0612

Lelouch0612

Staff
Archivist Genius Staff
First I'd like to thank @Ystad who made the thread but couldn't post it by themselves. Let's now dive in the Polish gaming industry !

Polish Agency for Enterprise Development, published a report of the state of the Polish game industry in mid-October 2021.

The report is available in the link below. It’s a PDF file on 162 pages. It contains the main data, some success stories and ~110 pages of game companies.
The Game Industry of Poland – Report 2021 (parp.gov.pl)

Key points as taken from the report:
  • 470 active game producers and publishers
  • 969M EUR industry revenue in 2020
  • 600+ new releases annually
  • 12 110 people working in the game production sector
  • 25% are female (globally only UK reports a higher percentage)
  • over 24% growth YOY
  • over 1 000 foreigners (more than 8% of total employment)
  • “In 2020, thanks to its massive growth, the Polish game industry finally reached the state where more games are exported than imported. Game production is the only creative and cultural industry to have achieved it.” – I think they mean revenue wise.
  • 96% of the Polish game industry revenue is export. USA ~50%, Asia ~10%, rest mainly EU.
  • 19% growth of global game publishers from Poland, 44 in total in 2020
  • PC remains number one for Polish producers, Switch fastest growing (2019+), but mainly for ports.
  • Polish universities have 71 game related degree courses, of which 30 are for programmers
There is much more, like employment structure, Steam info, etc.

From page 53 there is companies catalog. A list of Polish game companies (not a complete list) with info about platforms, team size, etc. Please note, this info was provided by the companies and was not revised.


The PDF link was available from the article in the link below (in Polish), dated 11th of Oct. 2021.
The Game Industry of Poland 2021 - PARP - Centrum Rozwoju MŚP
 
I am impressed by the fact that Poland has put itself on the map of the gaming industry while Germany is a quasi non-factor.

Seriously, we have British, French, Spanish and Italian gaming companies that are very well to fairly well known. Germans, however? Nichts.
 
Kenka said:
I am impressed by the fact that Poland has put itself on the map of the gaming industry while Germany is a quasi non-factor.

Seriously, we have British, French, Spanish and Italian gaming companies that are very well to fairly well known. Germans, however? Nichts.
Click to expand...

Ugh, don't remind me.
The only notable gaming studios are either Indies (great to have them though) or Ubisoft subsidiaries. What happened over the last few decades?!
 
Kenka said:
I am impressed by the fact that Poland has put itself on the map of the gaming industry while Germany is a quasi non-factor.

Seriously, we have British, French, Spanish and Italian gaming companies that are very well to fairly well known. Germans, however? Nichts.
Click to expand...
Lichtsang said:
Ugh, don't remind me.
The only notable gaming studios are either Indies (great to have them though) or Ubisoft subsidiaries. What happened over the last few decades?!
Click to expand...

Crytek?
 
Kenka said:
I am impressed by the fact that Poland has put itself on the map of the gaming industry while Germany is a quasi non-factor.

Seriously, we have British, French, Spanish and Italian gaming companies that are very well to fairly well known. Germans, however? Nichts.
Click to expand...

I still remember to read an article on an Edge magazine of the promising future of the German videogame industry ten years ago. It was on the peak of Crytek with Crysis 2 and CryEngine 3.
They wanted to transform Frankfurt in a place where best developers go to make videogames.
 
Poland reminds me a lot of Sweden years ago. Strong demo scene, a couple of giant developers, and a lot of startups.

Kenka said:
I am impressed by the fact that Poland has put itself on the map of the gaming industry while Germany is a quasi non-factor.

Seriously, we have British, French, Spanish and Italian gaming companies that are very well to fairly well known. Germans, however? Nichts.
Click to expand...

Germany's lack of investment in gaming compared to other European countries has been a criticism for years. It costs more to operate a studio in Germany compared to Eastern Europe and you don't have the luxury of big government support to offset that. Big publishers can make a studio elsewhere for pennies to the dollar and poach German talent.

This is changing though with German government becoming more involved in game development. Studios like Mimimi Games received government funding for their games.
 
Violette said:
Poland reminds me a lot of Sweden years ago. Strong demo scene, a couple of giant developers, and a lot of startups.



Germany's lack of investment in gaming compared to other European countries has been a criticism for years. It costs more to operate a studio in Germany compared to Eastern Europe and you don't have the luxury of big government support to offset that. Big publishers can make a studio elsewhere for pennies to the dollar and poach German talent.

This is changing though with German government becoming more involved in game development. Studios like Mimimi Games received government funding for their games.
Click to expand...

I can also imagine that the upcoming Ampel-Government with the FPD as part of it, could increase the investment in that sector.
 
For me shin'en (still consisting of the two demo scene people I think) is the pride of the German game "industry" (lol).

There's actually plenty of support for smaller game studios at a lower level. But in Germany support for startups in general just falls flat, plenty efforts at lower levels only to fizzle out a little later.

Lelouch0612 said:
  • 25% are female (globally only UK reports a higher percentage)
  • over 1 000 foreigners (more than 8% of total employment)
Click to expand...
Sounds like the game industry in Poland may be one of the more progressive areas within the country.
 
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As an older Nintendo-focused game player, I can remember when Factor 5 was the name to know in Europe (other than Rare, of course.) Still think it's a real shame what happened to them. That studio had a great deal of talent, and made plenty of wonderful games.
 
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