Scopely’s growing presence in Barcelona: From five employees to 750

• Pocket Gamer Connects Barcelona 2025 saw Scopely director of operations Néstor Pequeño take to the stage.
• He discussed the development of Barcelona's games industry over a decade and its role in Scopely's business.

Barcelona has long been an important hub for Scopely. The mobile giant expanded its operations into the city almost a decade ago and today employs staff spanning game developers, central teams, legal, finance, IT, strategy, business development and more.

Representatives from the Monopoly Go developer will join more than 1,000 attendees at Pocket Gamer Connects Barcelona 2026 on June 15th and 16th.

At last year's show, we spoke on stage with Scopely director of operations for Spain, Néstor Pequeño, who confirmed that the studio employs approximately 1,000 people in Spain. Among them, more than 750 people work in Barcelona and more than 100 work on Scopely’s in-house game dev platform Playgami.

"When Scopely came to Barcelona it was with the purpose to create this platform," Pequeño shared.

"I would say that’s a key function that was born here in Barcelona that has been very successful, and that provides support to all the gaming studios."

Scopely in Barcelona

Scopely originally chose to expand into Barcelona in 2017 because co-CEO Javier Ferrera, a native Spaniard who started his career in Spain, saw potential in the location. Initially, a small studio was established with just five employees.

They were tasked with building a technological platform that could work end-to-end with all of Scopely’s games - ultimately accomplished by Playgami.

Pequeño noted that Scopely’s marketing team was also established early in Spain, dating back to 2017 and having grown significantly since.

Today, there are also teams in Barcelona working on the development of specific Scopely games, such as Stumble Guys, Star Trek: Fleet Command and multi-billions maker Monopoly Go.

"Primarily, the success of gaming here is around mobile," Pequeño said on stage. "You have a large number of properties from the casual genre that have been cultivated, created and operated from Barcelona."

Attracting studios and staff

During his talk, Pequeño reflected that many developers once looked to Barcelona for its junior talent, attracting developers looking for low operating expenses. However, as more studios have established themselves in Barcelona - Scopely, King and other big mobile names included - talent has advanced and people must be compensated accordingly. Thus, these expenses aren’t as low as they were.

"Over the last 10 years, I would say Barcelona has matured a lot," explained Pequeño. "Now the ecosystem is totally different. Now it’s very well established as a global hub and the variety of talent, the depth of talent you can find here is significantly higher than what it was."

Naturally, this has changed the benefits of Barcelona for developers. It’s become easier to attract talent to the international city and Pequeño believes it’s easier to find the talent a studio is looking for than it was in the past.

Furthermore, Barcelona itself remains an attractive prospect for many, between its cosmopolitan status, Mediterranean weather, food, public services and more - making it "pretty unique in the world".

Pocket Gamer Connects will return to Barcelona, Spain on June 15th to 16th, 2026. You can register for a ticket to join over 1,000 attendees, including developers, publishers, investors and more, right here.