Swedish games industry worth €3.1bn in 2022
Number of people employed by Swedish games companies increased by 6%
Revenue generated by Swedish games companies in the country has grown 13% year-on-year, reaching €3.1 billion in 2022, according to the annual report from Sweden's games trade body Dataspelsbranschen.
When including international sales in addition to domestic sales, revenue generated by Swedish games companies reached €8.1 billion last year, a 38% increase year-on-year. The Embracer Group represented €3.5 billion of this total, the trade body added.
The number of people employed by the Swedish games industry increased 6% in 2022, to 8,445 people.
As of December 2022, there were 939 active companies in Sweden, an increase of 19% over 2021. Almost half of these organisations have been registered in the last five years and 104 were established last year.
Nearly half of companies were solo enterprises, whereas large enterprises (with 250 or more employees) made up only 1% of the industry.
The highest performing companies in domestic revenue included King (€598 million), Mojang (€516 million), and Paradox Interactive (€187 million).
There were just over 500 new full-time positions created last year in the country, which was lower than the previous year. Dataspelsbranschen attributed this to a "major shortage in skills" and "comparatively few game developers graduating from the country's education programmes and employers are largely recruiting from other countries."
Ubisoft remained the country's largest employer, with 850 employees. EA DICE followed with 696 people, and King at 621 team members.
Women comprised over 23% of the Swedish games sector in 2022, holding 1,977 positions — an increase of only 1% compared to 2021.
44% of new entrants into the Swedish games industry were women in 2022, and over 50 companies in the Swedish games industry are made up of at least 50% women.
As of December 2022, there were nearly 400 Swedish-owned studios around the world, of which 257 have been acquired by Embracer Group.
Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox