The growth of the industry of creating computer and digital games in Slovakia is not slowing down, the number of the Slovak projects published globally will reach 300 and their yearly turnover will be more than EUR 42 million in 2018.

Bratislava, Slovakia – Slovak Game Developers Association (SGDA) has published the updated State of the Slovak Games Industry Report, in which it monitors the companies developing computer and digital games. 35 companies joined the regular monitoring, they employ the total of more than 480 experts from different areas (technical and art sectors), and vast majority of them have been on the market for more than 5 years.

Eight new companies were established only last year and according to the survey 580 professionals will be working in the gaming industry sector at the end of 2018. However, they have encountered lack of labour force already today, computer programmers and designers are missing the most. More than a half of the respondents employ and/or consider employing foreign professionals. This insufficiency will grow more and more in the next years.

“The gaming industry is more and more interesting for secondary school and university students as well as for new creators. They realize the potential in it as well as work opportunities with long-term and sustainable jobs in the environment with steady progress, which brings new and new challenges” said Marian Ferko, the SGDA President.

 55 projects available on all distribution platforms were published globally last year. More than 300 gaming projects for all available platforms including virtual reality and augmented reality have been published globally so far. Gaming companies develop more than one project on average.

Most of the respondents (59%) rely on self-publishing, only 12% use distribution and publishing services of a foreign partner. Roughly the same number (57%) invest only their own funds in projects, only 26% of the respondents have used the call of the Slovak Arts Council for multi-media work support so far. 50 projects across all development stages have been supported and co-funded by the amount of more than EUR 650,000 in last two years.

The estimated turnover of the Slovak computer and digital game creators will reach EUR 42.7 million this year, which means a year-on-year growth by 18%. The growing trend will create approximately 100 new jobs only this year.

You can download the whole report with further details like list of companies, recent projects and educational initiatives and more on the official website here: http://press.sgda.sk/SGDA_Katalog.pdf