Build your own bridge to Skåne
This month’s regional spotlight looks at the region of Skåne and its capital of Malmö. The games industry in the old port town, and the surrounding region, has seen huge growth in recent years, and now has a development community and supporting infrastructure that’s second to none.
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kåne’s capital Malmö has more games developers and studios per capita than almost anywhere else on earth. Sitting just across the waters of the Øresund from Copenhagen, Malmö is relatively modest in size, but packed with opportunity. The biggest studio is Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment, creator of The Division franchise. While mobile heavyweight King has a big presence in the city, and more recently Just Cause creators Avalanche Studios, opened here too. Looking at indie teams, Little Nightmares creator Tarsier Studio was founded here in 2004. It is one of a plethora of homegrown outfits. Alongside them are micro studios such as Simogo, creators of Sayonara
Wild Hearts, and DeadToast Entertainment, the one-man team behind My Friend Pedro. With mobile and console, triple-A and indie studios, all working side-by-side, it’s understandable why the long-running Nordic Game Conference is held in Malmö every year. And the development community’s growth isn’t slowing. Hitman creator IO Interactive chose Malmö for its second studio in early 2019, making the short hop over from Copenhagen. Sharkmob was founded by Malmö veterans in 2017 and recently came to wider prominence when it was acquired by Tencent. Plus Swedish strategy king Paradox Interactive established its third Swedish studio here in 2017.
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