The Spanish video game is growing at a double-digit rate

A total of 520 Spanish companies carry out their activity in this sector in which microenterprises predominate in the business fabric. 75% of companies invoice less than 200,000 euros.

The turnover of the Spanish video game production sector reached 813 million of euros in 2018, 14% more that in 2017, as revealed by the White Paper on Spanish Video Game Development in its 2019 edition that was presented this Monday, March 2, in Madrid by the Spanish Association of Producers and Developers of Video Games and Entertainment Software (DEV) , with the support of ICEX Spain Exportation and Investments, the collaboration of Acción Cultural Española and the sponsorship of CREA SGR, eGoGames, MCR, Plastic SCM, Polygone Studios and U-tad.

The largest companies are the ones that have driven this growth: the 44% of the turnover corresponds to companies that earn more than 50 million euros, and 46% of employment is generated in companies with more than 50 employees, while companies that have a turnover of less than two million euros and employ less than 10 professionals, account for 8% of turnover and 7% of employment.

It's a clearly exporting sector, since 65% of income comes from international markets. Catalonia, with 53% of turnover, maintains a clear leadership, followed by the community of Madrid (33%) and, at a great distance, Andalusia (8%) and the Valencian Community (4%). Since 2014, DEV has been preparing the White Paper on Spanish Video Game Development with the aim of offering a complete annual overview of the video game production sector in our country. As in previous editions, the 2019 White Paper has been prepared with the information provided by Spanish video game development studios in an exhaustive survey carried out last year.

This year the cover of the White Book of Spanish Video Game Development pays tribute to the cartoonist Alfonzo Azpiri, who died in 2018, known for his Lorna or Mot comics and illustrator of some of the best-known covers of Spanish video games during the 80s and early 90s: the covers of Abu Simbel Desecration, Phantis o Game Over They were born from Azpiri's brilliant imagination.

Young microenterprises

The census of Spanish video game production companies experienced intense growth last year, after having stagnated and even reduced the previous three years. Thus, it has gone from 455 companies in 2018 to 520 in 2019.

It's still a very atomized business fabricor and based on small businesses; 61% are microbusinesses that invoice less than 200,000 euros per year and 75% employ less than 10 professionals. Employment increased by 8.9% in 2018, reaching 6,900 people.

The White Paper also shows that these are young companies: 41% have been created in the last five years, 39% are between 5 and 10 years old and only 20% have been active for more than ten years.

The sector generates young, qualified and quality employment: 49% of professionals are under 30 years old (and only 3% are over 45 years old) and 71% have completed higher education. 65% of the positions correspond to indefinite contracts. However, it stands out the large number of companies (57%) that have difficulty finding professionals with the most in-demand profiles: programmers (which are already the bulk of employment in development studios), marketing, game design, monetization, art and business development.

These data indicate great growth potential (there are around 250 projects waiting to be established as a legal entity), but it has also been detected in the survey that a hundred companies are not active and are at risk of disappearing.

The sector generates young, qualified and quality employment: 49% of the workforce is under 30 years old (and only 3% are over 45 years old) and 71% have completed higher education. 65% of the positions correspond to indefinite contracts. However, it stands out the large number of companies (57%) that have difficulties finding workers with the most in-demand profiles: programmers (which are already the bulk of employment in development studios), marketing, game design, monetization, art and business development.

Own intellectual property

He 86% of Spanish studios develop their own intellectual property, 46% develop commissioned video games, 13% publish third-party games and 37% opt for self-publishing.

Serious games already account for 21.4% of the games published in 2018, aimed primarily at Education, Culture and Health. 83% of Spanish studios use Steam to reach international markets, although the saturation of Valve's digital platform is leading producers to look for other stores such as Epic Games, which is experiencing global growth.

Download the full report, here.

10 recommendations from the sector to the Government

• Establish a tax incentive for video game production in order to attract large international productions to the country and make the industry more attractive to Spanish investors.
• Design a reinvestment scheme for multinationals in Spanish video games. Taking into account that the Spanish market is the fourth in Europe, a reinvestment of 5% of gross income could generate a pool of up to 70 million euros for Spanish content.
• Promote the presence of women in the industry with educational campaigns in pre-university stages. Currently the presence of female employment only reaches 16%.
• Provide continuity to the aid programs for the sector so that the 400 existing microenterprises launch their processes and consolidate.
• Create a type of companies without economic activity that responds to the fact that the economic income from the exploitation of a video game takes time to arrive, but the expenses are generated from the beginning of the activity.
• Improve the mechanisms for access to tax deductions for R&D&I activities in order to promote game engines and prototypes, as well as new technologies applicable to video games and other technological sectors.
• Professionalize and internationalize small companies by providing them with resources to hire advice on issues such as marketing and PR.
• Promote job creation with bonuses in Social Security contributions for new highly qualified jobs and with specific quotas for self-employed professionals that take into account long periods of production without billing or income.
• Attract publishers and investors to Spain through incentives for the establishment of local subsidiaries.
• Focus the presence of the Spanish video game in the Chinese market by enabling resources in the Economic and Commercial Offices of the Diplomatic Missions of Spain in China, a country that is the world's leading market and represents a quarter of global income.