4 takeaways from Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki and Finnish Games Week 2024

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Another week, another conference. This week, Pocket Gamer Connects returned once again to Helsinki. Only this time, it was part of a series of shows to form Finnish Games Week, which included Leadership Day by IGDA Finland and W Love Games – which is taking place right now.

Meanwhile we hosted the reveal of the Top 50 Mobile Game Makers at PGC, which named a few of Finland’s finest in this year’s list (more on that below). 

The week was a great time to network with the Finnish and wider Nordic games community while also welcoming peers from across the world. If there is one place to take the temperature of how the mobile games industry is doing – it’s Finland.

So, after a week of events, insightful sessions and plenty of networking opportunities, what did we learn?

1. Finns get real, Finland style

Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki kicked off with a talk from Neogames Finland director KooPee Hiltunen, diving into the state of the country’s games market. Its last report was based on 2022 data, showing strong growth in the sector as turnover reached €3.2 billion, up from €2.4bn in 2020.

But then came the hard truths of 2023 and 2024. ATT, inflation, decline in consumer purchasing power, reduced financing options, global instability and increased competition have all combined to varying degrees to create a tough games market.

Meanwhile – as we noted in an article earlier this year on the state of Finland’s mobile games industry, issues with new immigration policies and a rollback of government incentives in Helsinki are also making life difficult for local studios. And as studios retreat into ‘survive to 2025’ mode, some have resorted to more service oriented work, which has the potential to outstrip demand.

Hiltunen said these difficulties have led to industry-wide layoffs – which he estimated to have impacted around 25,000 jobs globally, more than ever before – a reduction in working hours at some companies, strategic changes in business (like the aforementioned subcontracting services), and studio closures.

Finland has seen a couple of notable closures this year, including Lightneer, originally founded as an educational games company before shifting to hypercasual, and Shipyard Games, the Supercell-backed studio working on geolocation-based AR titles.

There are growth signs coming back to the mobile games sector, and some of Finland’s biggest and most successful studios, like Supercell, are even scaling up. But the Finnish sector has got very real about the state of the market.

2. A close and honest community

It’s almost cliche at this point when talking about Finland’s games industry to mention the tightness of its community. But it’s worth highlighting – developers are willing to share honest feedback and lessons learned from their successes and failures. Hiltunen could have kicked off the show on a much more positive beat – but who would that serve? Facing the truth with honesty paves a much better path forward.

This week’s PGC also reminded me of one of my favourite sessions from last year, in which Critical Force chairman and founder Veli-Pekka Piirainen gave an excellent appraisal of the studio’s highs and lows over ten years. You can watch it here:

It wasn’t just PGC that provided a platform for networking and sharing insights this week (it’s worth noting that leaders in the Finnish industry meet up regularly each month anyway), but Finnish Games week welcomed more opportunities for the sector to get together across all levels.

PGC Helsinki taps into a wide spectrum of levels and professions, offering lots of opportunities for business with Investor Connector, Publisher SpeedMatch and the meeting system, as well as sessions on trends and various areas of development. Leadership Day provided a space for – you may have guessed it – industry leaders to learn from each other, with a lot of focus spent on DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) initiatives.

W Love Games, meanwhile, focused on development insights and a space for indies. It doesn’t take away from all the challenges of the industry – as Hiltunen noted, juniors are finding it more difficult than ever to get employed in the sector.

Overall, the week provided opportunities for a wide range of industry peers to come together, network, do business, and learn.

Worth reading: Former Huuuge Games VP of product: new games recently provided his analysis on the state of Finland’s games market on LinkedIn. It’s a classic honest appraisal of the industry in Finland – while perhaps a countenance to just how ‘honest’ leaders in the sector have truly been over the past couple of years and how adaptable developers have been to industry trends.

3. Direct-to-consumer strategies take centre stage (again)

This is basically a takeaway I get from every event – direct to consumer strategies are in vogue right now. And why not? The opportunity to break away from the (extremely slowly) crumbling 30% fees and walled gardens of platform holders and generate more profits is an enticing one.

This week, we hosted the Powering Payments track at PGC Helsinki, welcoming speakers from the likes of FastSpring, Nexus, Rovio, Aghanim, STash and Raptor PR.

Appcharge also hosted a session on the topic of web stores, while investors on my panel entitled ‘Tipping Point: When Will we see the Investment Tap Flow?’, which included Agnitio Capital, Sisu Game VEntures and PLay Ventures, also discussed the positive change DTC strategies bring.

In a session alongside FastSpring CMO David Vogelpohl, Nexus CEO Justin Sacks said publishers don’t need to drive all of their players to the web store for it to have a substantial impact on profitability. He claimed that if publishers can convert 25% of mobile revenue to DTC platforms, this could lead to as much as an 8% increase in profitability.

His top tips for getting players to pay through a web store instead of in-app included:

• Better deals – Discounts / extra content.
• Exclusivity – Unique content you can’t get any other way.
• Passing on savings you make off the platform to the player.
• On platform you lose 30%. On D2C it’ll be a lot less. So you can pass on 10% to 15% additional content/currency to players on your web shop.
• If publishers focus on VIPs, they can make unique bundles based on player activity and previous purchases.

4. Finnish influence in the Top 50

This week also saw the unveiling of PocketGamer.biz’s Top 50 Mobile Game Makers 2024, revealed live on stage at PGC. 

We create the list every year to shine a light on the industry’s best and brightest. Criteria for being in the list expands from the quality of new games released, live ops success and revenue performance to notable innovation, industry impact, business transformation, and future potential.

Finland, as one of the key epicentres of the mobile games industry, of course, had a few mentions. Fingersoft, Metacore, Rovio and Supercell also made their way onto the list, with the latter ranking particularly highly following the enormous success of Brawl Stars, amongst other reasons.

Looking deeper at the list, you can see Finland’s influence stretching further, too. EA was named in the Top 50, which owns SimCity BuildIt developer Tracktwenty, based in Finland. Netflix, meanwhile, owns Next Games, Take-Two/Zynga houses Small Giant Games, MTG previously acquired Snowprint Studios, and SciPlay has a Finnish office.

Playtika owns the Best Fiends IP, developed by the now closed studio Seriously, and Supercell holds a majority stake in London developer Space Ape Games. That’s not to mention a certain acquisition by Tencent of Supercell, too.

There’s been some debate about Finland’s prominence in recent years, with the rise of other industry hubs like Turkey during the hypercasual boom years and its casual game development stars Peak Games, Gram Games and Peak Games. But it’s hard to deny just how influential it remains in the sector.