Federal funding for games: Gaming Minds Studios in Gütersloh has received an impressive €1.26 million for the Tropico 7 Season Pass. Meanwhile, Paintbucket in Berlin is getting just over €250,000. Funding is also being provided for games projects from Ubisoft and gameXcite.
Gaming Minds Studios in Gütersloh has received €1,262,544 from the federal government's games funding programme for a Tropico 7 Season Pass. The funding period runs from 15 October 2025 to 14 October 2028. Incidentally, this is the second-highest amount of funding approved this year, with the highest amount (€1,735,433; June 2025) also going to Gaming Minds Studios for Project Genesis.
Tropico 7, the main game, was announced at gamescom 2025 and is scheduled for release in 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Additional content will follow, as was the case with its predecessor, which now has nine DLCs. Gaming Minds Studios is a German game developer that emerged from Ascaron Entertainment in 2009. Kalypso Media initially held a 60% stake in the company and took over completely in 2020.
Paintbucket Games, based in Berlin, is receiving €260,262 in funding for a DLC titled Revision. This could be an expansion for The Darkest Files, released on 25 March 2025. The funding period runs from 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
Ubisoft Blue Byte in Düsseldorf is being awarded direct project funding for 'Blueprint', but the funding period is fairly short, running from 1 November 2025 to 31 August 2026. Perhaps this will also be a DLC.
The funding period for Galactic Journey Switch 2 Porting with Expansion by gameXcite is even shorter at 1 November 2025 to 28 February 2026. The Hamburg-based studio will receive €142,775. It is highly likely that this is a Switch 2 version of Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown.
