Trollgames and Thoughtfish Receive Federal Funding

The number of approved funding applications and thus the total amount of federal funding for games in 2025 continues to rise. Around €400,000 will go to Trollgames and Thoughtfish. This means that a total of 14 applications or partial applications from 2025 have been successful so far.

The Berlin studio Thoughtfish has been awarded €227,623 in funding for its project GodZ, while Trollgames from Füssen has received €135,820 for its project AI Arcae Adventure. Both funding commitments were recently added to the federal government's funding database, where all successful funding applications are published, albeit with a delay.

This brings the number of applications submitted in 2025 that have been approved to 13 and 14, as there were two separate partial applications for the Sea4U project from mixed.world and Seetree (as we reported). The total amount of 2025 funding that has been approved so far stands at €5.52 million. As the term of one application from 2023 has been postponed, the budget already committed for 2025 is likely to be €1.7 million higher.

This remains an obstacle, at least for the moment, as all funding decisions to date must be financed from the provisional budget approved by the previous government. The Merz cabinet recently approved a budget that significantly increases funding for games and even provides for further increases from 2026, but it still needs to be passed by the German Bundestag. After that, new funding commitments are likely to be made at a much higher frequency.

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