New pan-European report: Belgrade is the 7th city in terms of

EGDF (European Game Developers Federation) and VGE (Video Games Europe) have published a report on insights into the European video game industry for 2023, which you can view here. While we shared a report on the Serbian gaming industry in 2024 back in April, other associations publish things at a different pace, so the pan-European report always covers a period of two years in the past.

Undoubtedly, 2023 was a year marked by layoffs and studio closures. Despite the challenges, key indicators – employment and the growing number of game development studios – point to the remarkable resilience and adaptability of our industry. Combined European turnover, however, decreased for the first time, but fortunately by less than 1%, reaching €18.7 billion.

The crisis marked national associations, too, and as a result, two countries that are among the largest gaming centers, France and Poland, did not collect data that year and are absent from this report. The number of countries, however, has increased compared to the previous report and now stands at 22. The United Kingdom is present across more metrics than before, and more significantly, after a few years of absence, Turkey is also included in the report, providing insight into the size and importance of this center for the European industry.

Here are some interesting facts:

• The United Kingdom stands out as a clear leader in many aspects, especially in terms of the number of game dev studios and employees in the industry (over a quarter of all employees in Europe!);
• Turkey had the highest income in 2023 (but it should be noted that data for the United Kingdom is missing);
• Serbia is the first in terms of the number of women employed in the industry (33%), followed by Croatia (30%), while the European average is 24.9%.

A new piece of information this year is which cities have the most game dev professionals. There are two Serbian ones in the top 20: Belgrade is in 7th place, and Novi Sad in 19th. The largest European hub is Istanbul, followed closely by London and Stockholm. It will be interesting to review this next year, when we hope that France and Poland will also contribute to the research.

In addition to this, it is possible to see how many games were released in which country, as well as which platforms were in focus. It is particularly interesting to note that the same trend is observed in all countries that contributed platform data for 2023: PC is leading over mobile games.

The report also includes information on formal and non-formal education institutions, as well as public assistance available in each country. Key metrics can also be compared over the past five years in every country.

Read the whole report here.