EGDF and VGE Publish Joint Report on the European Games Market

The "2022 European Video Games Industry Insight Report" provides the most comprehensive picture of the status quo of the games industry in Europe. In the year of the report, the industry was heavily influenced by the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The report is made possible by extensive cooperation between the two European umbrella organisations European Game Developer Federation (EGDF) and Video Games Europe, the umbrella organisation of the more publisher-oriented games associations. The fact that the report looks at the year 2022 is due to the very different points in time at which market data is available from the respective countries. Although data from 2023 has long been available for the core markets of the UK, Germany and France, this does not apply to all countries. However, the "2022 European Video Games Industry Insight Report" aims to paint as comprehensive a picture as possible and summarises the standardisable data from a total of 20 European countries. Last year, however, there were still 22 countries.

The most important key figures, such as the number of studios, the number of employees in the industry and the turnover of companies, increased year-on-year, albeit only slightly. This is remarkable not only because of the omission of data from two countries, but also because the data basis in France was massively adjusted, according to the associations. On the other hand, there was a significant increase in other countries. For example, the number of studios in Sweden rose by 20 per cent. According to the report, there are around 5,300 game studios in the EU, excluding the UK. The number of employees in the industry - also in the EU, i.e. excluding the UK - has risen to around 90,000, with the proportion of women at just 24.4 per cent. Last but not least, according to the report, the industry's turnover in the EU totals 19 billion dollars.

In detail, there were some very different developments. The two chairpersons of the associations, Hester Woodliffe, representative of WB Games and Chairwoman of VGE, and Hendrik Lesser, rcp and President of EGDF, referred in their foreword "the Russian invasion of Ukraine and simultaneous political unrest in Belarus. Both events triggered a historical game industry talent exodus from Ukraine, and Belarus – causing a significant influx of game industry war refugees, into the EU." Poland and Lithuania in particular have taken in numerous creative professionals, which has led to an enormous increase in the number of game industry employees there.

The "2022 European Video Games Industry Insight Report" can be downloaded from the website of EGDF.