The gaming industry in Finland has grown exponentially in recent years and its market value has increased 45% on average. As a result, in 2016, Finland managed to create a record-breaking profit of 2.5 billion euros from its gaming sector.
Now, the Nordic nation is one of the biggest players in the global gaming community. In fact, if we were to look exclusively at population size versus revenue generated by video games, Finland would come out top in the world.
But what exactly is the gaming industry like in the country? What is the secret behind its success? Let’s dig a little deeper and find out more.
Game Development
There are roughly 260 studios for video game development in Finland. This is a surprisingly small amount, given how massive the industry has become.
Due to this chronic shortage, Finnish video game developers have been outsourcing to other countries to hire their employees, relying on international head-hunters and recruitment agencies.
The biggest issue has been acquiring senior officers for the companies. This could be one of the reasons why profits dropped from 2.5 billion euros to 2.36 billion euros in the Finnish gaming industry between 2016 and 2017.
Now, the sector is looking to invest a significant amount of money into improving the transition of immigrated talent into these game development companies.
Mobile Gaming
Finland isn’t having any problems on the mobile gaming front. Back in 2016, it generated 7% of the global revenue for mobile gaming. This was mainly thanks to the smash-hit smartphone game Angry Birds, which was produced by the company Rovio Entertainment – a Finnish video game developer based in Espoo.
Angry Birds was made available across the world and expanded into a series. The franchise has, overall, been downloaded three billion times from the Appstore. Resultantly, it has been titled the most successful iOS app and the most downloaded ‘freemium’ game series of all time.
This has set Finland significantly ahead of the competition when it comes to mobile gaming, and so the industry has become more focused on developing smartphone software.
Free-to-Play Games
Following on from the staggering success of Angry Birds, the Finnish gaming industry turned its attention towards free-to-play video games.
They have since become the most popular gaming model in the country, relying on optional microtransactions to make their money. As such, Rovio Entertainment isn’t the only successful mobile game supplier in Finland anymore.
The company Supercell (established in 2010 and based in Helsinki) has started to climb to the top as well. They have produced some mega-hit games like Clash of Clans, which generated about 1.5 million dollars for the company every day in 2015.
This is what the gaming industry looks like in Finland. It is one of the leading countries for mobile and free-to-play games – and it’s establishing itself in the iGaming market, too.
