After years of growth, the number of companies and employees in the German games industry declined in 2025.
This was announced today by Game – The German Games Industry Association on the basis of data from gamesmap.de in cooperation with Goldmedia. According to the data, the number of companies in Germany that develop and/or publish games has dropped by 4% within the past year, to 910. Game also runs the Devcom/Gamescom event coming up in the week of August 17.
The boom in start-ups in the games sector, which was set in motion by the introduction of the German Federal Games Funding Programme in 2020, has now completely subsided. Last year’s figures already indicated a clear slowdown. This decline was due in particular to the consolidation of the global games market and the unreliable availability of games funding to date in Germany.
Three times since 2020, there have been months-long suspensions placed on funding applications. Despite the newly registered drop, the number of companies has risen by 46% overall since the initial start of the games funding programme in 2020.
Of the 910 present companies, 454 work exclusively in game development and 52 exclusively as publishers. The remaining 404 companies are active in both the development and publishing of games.
“Last year was another very difficult one for the German games industry,” said Felix Falk, managing director of Game, in a statement. “Germany’s international competitiveness was further decreased by the ongoing flip-flopping of the games funding policy, which ran right into the consolidation wave that swept the global games sector.”
Falk added, “Fortunately, the new federal government has already taken the necessary steps to level the playing field for companies in this country. The future funding budget is to be increased and thus adjusted to actual needs, and applications can be submitted from August onwards. These are crucial growth impulses that are urgently needed.”
And he said, “The additional funds will not only give companies more planning security, but also time to implement additional tax breaks for games, as set out in the coalition agreement between the CDU, CSU and SPD. The improved conditions will finally give games companies a boost, which will hopefully soon be reflected in more start-ups and the creation of new jobs.”
The number of employees at games companies in Germany has also declined over the last year. Whereas game developers and publishers employed 12,408 workers in 2024, the current figure stands at just 12,134 – a drop of 2%.
As with the number of companies, the employee numbers had previously shown strong growth since the introduction of the games funding program at the federal level: a rise of 23% from 2020 to 2024.
The recent decline indicates that the current conditions for the games industry, which offer limited scope for planning due to the repeated funding application stoppages and significant current funding restrictions, are having an impact on the job market.
A year ago, there were still more companies with ongoing projects that were internationally competitive thanks to funding at levels comparable to those in other countries – financing that had stabilised Germany’s game sector, despite the global consolidation wave and a lack of funding certainty for the industry here.
The game industry secures a total of over 30,000 jobs in Germany. In addition to jobs in development and publishing, these include, for example, skilled professionals in educational institutions, the media and the public and commercial sectors.