2024: Year in review

With the year winding down and 2025 on the horizon, we’d like to, as per tradition, share some highlights from what happened in and around Game Habitat during 2024. Yes, it was another eventful year, to say the least.

Changes in the board and team

We welcomed two new people to the board:

Isa Nordén, COO, The Game Assembly

José Maria Font Fernandez, Senior lecturer, Malmö University

And we had a new Chair of the board elected: Sara Ponnert, DEI & Sustainability Manager, Avalanche Studios Group. You can read an interview with Sara, conducted as part of our WeMakeGame interview series.

The Game Habitat team stayed solid with your familiar faces throughout the year. However, one change was announced late in the year. Henning Eger, the DevHub Operations Coordinator, will be leaving the team by the new year. Henning has been an integral part of DevHub’s journey since the early days, starting as a volunteer and quickly transitioning to becoming a key member of our team. His contributions have been invaluable, and he will be sorely missed. While Henning’s presence in the house will be hard to replace, the change will not affect the day-to-day experience for DevHub’s inhabitants. Henning’s current duties will be integrated into the Game Habitat team.

New members

In 2024, we welcomed 10 new members to the family: BitEgg Inc, Blackdoor, Bloom & Gloom, Decemberborn, Llama Lane, Magnetic Games, Something We Made, Sydow Production, Thunderful Group, and Vreski - thank you for your support!

With this lovely bunch joining us, Game Habitat's member count remains steadily in the mid 40's - see the full list of members. Thank you all for your invaluable contributions!

Become a member

Game Habitat is a non-profit member organization. Our work is all about improving the game development industry in south Sweden. The members are essential in enabling that work. In return for their support, members get business opportunities, visibility, influence, friends, access, and - perhaps most importantly - the gratitude of all current and future game developers in south Sweden.

All game development related companies in south Sweden are welcome as members - if you believe in our work, join us!

And eventful year

As every year, 2024 was a year full of events. This year we organized well over 40 events (!), having more than 4000 people (!) from various corners of our regional community and the wider international world attending.

We’ve had so many great times gathering game developers, members, friends, and others for networking and knowledge sharing throughout the year. Here are a few of our highlights:

Five Game Developer Meetups in various venues around Malmö
The keynote with Casey Yano from Mega Crit on his success with Slay the Spire
Four PlayTest Sessions at DevHub, with 30+ indie games joining
Multiple meetups for the HR network and the production network
Four Founders’ Breakfasts, and the first edition of the Game Writing Breakfast
The Games Career Day together with Arbetsförmedlingen
Various DevTalks, Seriously Indie talks and workshops
The Global Game Jam hosted at DevHub

The full list of events in 2024.

GEM powering on

GEM, the Game Empowerment Movement, is the south Swedish games industry initiative created to empower the regional game development industry to become an equal and inclusive place where everyone’s voice will be heard. Read more about GEM.

Among other things, in 2024, the initiative again organized a GEM Week, and the GEM mentorship program.

3rd edition of GEM Week

Together with community members, Game Habitat organized another full week of events around International Women’s Day - focusing on diversity, inclusion and equality in games. The GEM Week 2024 program included:

Talk & mingle, "Sandboxing in a Man’s World", by Hilde Sunde at IO Interactive
Luncheon & inspirational talks for women in games, at DevHub, together with King
Panel & mingle, "A Journey Through 51 Years in Games" at Sharkmob
Talk, panel, and breakfast, "State of the Industry – Diversity in Games and Tech", at DevHub together with Avalanche Studios Group (watch the full event)
Afterwork at the International Women’s Day for women in games, at DevHub, together with Tarsier Studios

See the full 2024 GEM Week program.

GEM Mentorship program 2024

In 2024, we also ran the second edition of GEM's mentorship program, together with our Guardian member Massive Entertainment - A Ubisoft Studio. This year we matched up 22 female developers and aspiring game developers for mutual support and career development during an eight month long program.

We’re planning for a third round in 2025, so if you're interested in participating - sign up!

Project and collab updates

Every year, Game Habitat participate in numerous projects and engage in even more collaborations. It's part of who we are as a collaborative community organization. Here's a brief update on four important projects:

BSG-Go!

BSG-Go! is a three year project creating a community for young game developers and entrepreneurs to build on communication competences and ensure stable growth for the games industry.

Focused creating resilience and better cooperation between the European game hubs, Game Habitat’s main contribution circles around hybrid pitching and hybrid events. With a new technical set up at our DevHub spaces - we’ve been testing new formats of hybrid events and pitching through various pilots and concepts.

We’ve also run several sessions focusing on identifying and developing mentorship skills and leadership skills with various groups in our community.

Find out more about the project.

Susindi

The Susindi project (Sustainability in new digital industries) is all but wrapped up. The project aimed to enhance sustainability in the games industry by highlighting existing initiatives, promoting effective sustainability practices, and developing a CO2 calculation model. It also provided tools, advice, and policy recommendations to support long-term sustainability efforts.

We took lead on organizing sessions around the project's focus areas during For Devs in Stockholm. The sessions explored the games industry's role in addressing climate change by reducing carbon footprints and using games to promote environmental sustainability.

We introduced a new tool for calculating game company's emissions and practical advice from studios already implementing greener policies. We also ran an interactive brainstorming workshop where game developers can share ideas on integrating climate awareness and ecological responsibility into their games.

Read the full report on the project's findings, or just browse the summary.

PowerUp

We’re part of The PowerUP network which is lead by RISE and involves most Swedish games stakeholders. The goal is to increase synergies and cooperation between local, regional, and national actors and increase opportunities to create more international connections. The project is primarily a catalyst for finding and refining structures, trying new methods and connect more actors, but will also address current conditions and challenges.

Find out more about the project.

Level Up

We’re part of the Sweden Game Arena lead Level Up project. The project aims to strengthen national collaboration in the games industry through research, talent development, technology, business models, and social impact. Key initiatives include promoting game research, improving training opportunities, accelerating AI adoption, developing industry-specific business tools, and fostering a digital community. The project also advocates for inclusivity and equality.

Find out more about the project.

So many new games

The amount of new games being produced in Malmö and south Sweden and released into the wide world are astounding given the small region that this is. Games made in the region have a global impact, on players, and on the industry as a whole. They games made here are literally played by millions of players from around the world. New games released in 2024 include Star Wars Outlaws, Fabledom, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, Touchgrind X, and SteamWorld Build.

See all game updates from 2024.

We launched Haven

In autumn of 2024, we launched and ran the first edition of Haven! Haven is a game specific support program to kick-start new studios through coaching, community, and workshops. It’s designed specifically for experienced game developers that are just starting out founding their own game studio.

The participating studios in the first Haven was: Blackdoor, Dead Astronauts, Folded Fox, Odd Dreams Digital, Svargames, Revolver Mousetrap. Find out more about the studios.

Haven is a collaboration between Game Habitat and Minc, aiming to continue to grow the successful south Swedish games industry.

State of the regional industry

In November we published a new report on the state of the digital game development industry in Sweden's two southernmost regions, Skåne and Blekinge - The South Swedish Game Development Industry 2024. The report consists of key figures retrieved from the regional game development companies’ publicly available annual reports for 2023, and a region-wide employee survey.

The report found that, despite economic turmoil in the industry globally, the game development industry in south Sweden added new companies and staff in 2023 and are overall continuing to do well.

Read the full report, or just browse the summary.

Spreading the word

In 2024, we...

... attended 9 external events and conferences. Such as local, national and international events - to spread the word about Game Habitat, the south Swedish games industry and what’s happening in our community.

... did 15 talent focused outreaches. Such as visits to educations and contexts for future talent - informing people about the games industry and the regional ecosystem to get them excited about in a career in games.

... had 13+ study visits at DevHub. Such as visits from educations, delegations, international game companies, and others curious about our region. Including visits from the Swedish Minister for Culture, and the Parliamentary Committee on Cultural Affairs. We of course also had countless of individuals popping by when in town to meet peers and see what the house is all about.

Life at DevHub

Our shared office building DevHub continue to reside in its excellence in central Malmö. At the end of this year, it's home to 130+ inhabitants and 30+ companies. In the past six years since its founding, we’ve had over 100 companies and close to 500 people housed at DevHub. As every year, we had to say goodbye to some of our beloved inhabitants as they outgrew our space or had to move on for other reasons, but of course we also got to say hello to new companies moving in and becoming part of the DevHub family!

New inhabitants in the house in 2024 was: Bloom & Gloom, Cult of the North, gotoAndPlay, Butter Goose, Llama Lane, Other Tales Interactive, Rebound Sound, Work with Kuba, and Film i Skåne.

Visiting companies in our guest office and trial offices in 2024 was: BitEgg, Monsoon Bit, idno Interactive, and Something We Made.

In 2024, we also celebrated DevHub's 6th anniversary with another Tour de Office party!

Join us at DevHub

There's room left at DevHub if you wish to join. We provide offices and desks to rent and have space is available for 1 to 20+ people. We offer complete - hassle-free - office packages, including events, fun and games, sauna, and a friendly community. We currently also offer free trials for up to a month.

DevHub is a shared office building in central Malmö, dedicated to companies working in the game development industry. It’s the perfect place to grow a studio, build relationships, and be part of the region's games community. DevHub is equally suitable for sizable studios, smaller indie developers, and anyone involved in the craft of making games.

And even more...

We could make this yearly review endlessly long, but in the interest of your - the reader's - time, we'll wrap up shortly. But first, just briefly, a few more really cool things that happened in 2024:

2024: Year in review

Changes in the board and team