The state of Finland's games industry in 2025

Learn more about Finland's games industry at Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki on October 7th and 8th, as well as in our region report coming soon.

Finland has long been a force to be reckoned with in the games industry. 

Despite being a relatively small country, it has always boasted a great deal of talent when it comes to games, all the way from the demoscene days that gave us the likes of Remedy Entertainment and Housemarque. 

More recently, Finland has been a pioneer in the mobile games space, giving us hit makers in the form of companies including Rovio and Supercell. The country’s exports of Angry Birds and Clash of Clans were key names in the early days of Europe’s mobile revolution, becoming two top hits in the premium and free-to-play eras of the platform.

As a testament to Finland’s position in the mobile market, those franchises still persist today, spanning sequels, spinoffs and transmedia forays with a third Angry Birds Movie flying in and a Netflix deal for Clash.

In 2025, the Finnish games industry is weathering many of the same headwinds that the rest of the world is facing. Global uncertainty and unpredictable economic tides - combined with a post-pandemic industry lull and mobile specific-challenges like privacy changes and high UA costs - are making life difficult, but those in the space are confident about the state of the market. 

“[The sector is] alive and kicking,” says KooPee Hiltunen, the director of Finnish trade body Neogames. 

“Despite some difficulties in the previous couple of years, the Finnish game industry is still strong. Big companies are doing just fine, and the indie scene is more active than it has been in years. Companies are looking for new opportunities and platforms, and regulatory initiatives like DMA will hopefully offer some possibilities for growth in the future years.”

Rovio’s chief sustainability officer Heini Kaihu adds: “[It’s] resilient. Despite facing the same headwinds that have been witnessed across the global games industry over the past couple of years, Finland's game industry remains fundamentally strong and resilient. The established players – companies like us, Supercell, and Remedy – continue to perform well and maintain their global presence.

“The indie scene is more vibrant than it's been in years, with smaller studios exploring innovative concepts and new platforms. There's a palpable sense of companies actively seeking fresh opportunities, whether through emerging technologies, new distribution channels, or untapped markets.”

Of particular note on the mobile side of the Finnish games industry in recent years is how studios have adapted with the ever-growing – and ever-evolving – importance of live ops. It’s the bread and butter of a successful mobile games business, with Supercell ramping up its live teams over the past couple of years - a change to its famous company culture of small cells - as it seeks to keep up with rivals and the content churn.

“Companies like Supercell and Metacore have managed to iterate on their live operations, shipping player experiences that have led to recent peaks in some of their games,” explains Antti Kananen, head of games at Games and Leaves. 

“Still, even these companies have struggled to launch new games at the scale they once did.” 

Kaihu adds: “Over the past few years, Finnish companies have increasingly mastered live operations, which has helped us continue growing very successful mobile franchises that were launched years ago.” 

Kananen believes that there is ample opportunity within the Finnish games industry, but in order to make the most of this potential, companies need to be unafraid to communicate. 

“Even if large-scale new game launches have slowed, there’s an opportunity to leverage this knowledge through the means the industry has raised its profile in the past: networking,” he explains. “As long as we keep sharing and caring about things together, we’re hopefully able to learn from each other on how we can do better.” 

And while the waves of layoffs and company closures we have seen in recent memory are painful, they may also hold the seeds for the sector’s future. 

“The wave of closures and bankruptcies, while painful, also seeds the ecosystem with experienced talent starting new ventures,” Kananen continues. “This creates a fertile ground for fresh ideas, and experimentation. Given the energy of this experimentation is used in combination with our creative power, in alignment with the commercial efforts some companies have managed to demonstrate, there is an opportunity to build better companies. This requires, however, really great execution, and looking most probably into spearheading some level of paradigm shifts.”

Uncertain talent  

Education in Finland is also robust enough to ensure a promising future for the games industry. This, combined with the fact that the country is seen as a desirable place for foreign labour to come to, ensures that there is no shortage of workers for its games industry.

“The talent pipeline is strong,” Kaihu explains. “Finnish universities are producing world-class game developers and engineers, and we're seeing international talent choosing Finland not just for career opportunities, but for the quality of life – clean environment, excellent work-life balance, strong social systems, and a culture that values innovation and long-term thinking over quick wins.” 

There aren’t many new challenges to the Finnish industry; more of the same problems that the country has faced for some time. Many of these are not unique to Finland, either. 

“We're still a small country, and as big companies continue to grow, they're looking for more specialist workforce than we have domestically and than our schools can produce. The industry continues to need specialist talent from outside Finland,” Rovio’s Kaihu explains. 

“As mentioned earlier, Finland remains an attractive hub for the gaming industry, boasting a safe and family-friendly environment; however, we must work actively to maintain this position. It's not something we can take for granted.” 

Kananen adds: “Beyond the market’s financial performance, there are other challenges – such as people having a difficult time securing jobs due to dynamics unfolding both locally and globally. On that front, the industry has also been hurt by government-level changes.”

Earlier this year, the Finnish government amended its Aliens Act. This gave foreign workers limited time to find work if their contracts were terminated, between three and six months, depending on their circumstances.

Despite a backlash to the legislation, it came into effect on June 11th. Neogames and many companies in the games industry have opposed the changes largely due to the sector’s dependence on foreign labour. It’s a blow to a sector that has already seen government support wane, faces competition from other rising games hubs, and that’s already facing wider industry-specific challenges.

“Relocating to Finland can be perceived as being less attractive than it was in the past, which is not ideal for the industry in terms of work-based immigration,” Kananen explains. 

“For the games industry, this is especially challenging: a significant portion of the workforce in Finland’s game studios consists of foreign talent. Several companies, as well as Neogames have voiced serious concerns that these restrictions could undermine innovation and competitiveness.” 

Kaihu adds: “Rovio, the entire Finnish game industry, alongside many other industries, naturally strongly opposed the whole idea, and we still do. The good news is that almost all games industry employees fall into the six-month category due to their specialist status, but this sends a very wrong signal overall.

"Even though the talent needed in our industry is very much welcomed and needed, the policy creates unnecessary uncertainty for the international professionals we're trying to attract.” 

From Neogames’ perspective, it’s still early days and we are yet to see what the impact of this amended legislation is. Regardless, the fight isn’t over. 

“Neogames continues the discussion with authorities, like Migri (the Finnish Immigration Service), about the practicalities,” Hiltunen explains. 

“It´s worth noting that one can find similar legislation in all EU countries, with different implementations. In Finland, we are on par with the protection periods in other EU countries. Of course, Finland is not as big as some other EU countries and finding a new job is harder since the company base is also smaller. That's why we are still advocating  for longer protection periods.”

Money problems 

In recent years, there has been a decline in investment in the Finnish games industry. Neogames’ Hiltunen admits that 2023 was “difficult globally” with the amount of funding coming into the country dipping, though says that 2024 was slightly better.

“The sentiment in the industry seems to be that getting investment is harder than before. The old mobile ‘scale-up with money’ model isn't functional anymore, due to the high UA price,” he says. “Investors are looking for a new approach to the game business, but how to find a winning bet? For investors, technology, especially AI-based, seems to be one. In Finland, we are pretty good at all kinds of R&D,  so I hope we can turn this situation to our favour.” 

Rovio’s Kaihu echoes this thinking, adding: “The sentiment in the industry seems to be that securing investment is harder than before. Investors are looking for new approaches to the game business; perhaps this could come from more technical innovations, which would make the Finnish market quite interesting given our strong tech foundation.” 

However, Kananen says that while funding has certainly dipped, it’s not entirely the fault of investors. 

“It’s also because Finland has not had many fundable companies recently, owing to certain global dynamics that have raised the bar significantly,” he explains. “Simply put, it’s hard to fund companies that don’t operate with the right balance of creativity and commercial excellence. It will be interesting to see if these new ventures manage to combine these elements at the required level to bring the industry back into a growth loop on the startup front.” 

Despite investment woes and changes to local legislation, there’s optimism within the Finnish games industry. The sector has some lofty goals, too. 

“[By 2030] our goal is to be an autonomous, sustainable industry with a strong community and strong regional cluster organisations,” Hiltunen says. “Our share of global game industry turnover was around 1.8% in 2023, and we are looking to increase or at least maintain that share, which would mean at least doubling the industry turnover by 2030. It is an ambitious goal, but we have all the means to reach it. Structurally, we have never been as strong as we are at the moment.”

Rovio’s Kaihu also cites the aim of doubling industry turnover by 2030, adding: “Established companies like us and others need to keep growing our business with existing and new games, and most likely, we also need new companies with global hits. I believe this is doable, but it requires that we build this ambition level into everything we do – talent development, game concepts and production, and also how the games industry is viewed from government and funding perspectives.

“We need to protect the industry from overly strict regulation based on misunderstanding digital and gaming business fundamentals, while ensuring it's recognised as a valuable export sector. This means building forward-thinking, innovative programs to boost growth rather than hinder it.” 

Kananen isn’t concerned about the future of the Finnish industry, but everyone needs to pull their weight to maintain the sector’s status. 

“If our ‘giants’ can double down on what they already do exceptionally well and start shipping commercially viable games more consistently, we can sustain the current trend of showcasing the global excellence Finland is known for,” he says. “Beyond that, I genuinely hope, on PC and console front, Housemarque earns its ‘proper’ triple-A crown by successfully delivering high-quality games one after another, building on the success formula they seem to have found.

“While it might be hard to imagine today, I remain optimistic that some of the new companies will be able to build scalable businesses rather than repeating the mistakes others have already made. In my view, this will require certain paradigm-level shifts, which I hope they are actively exploring – shifts that could lead to building something both tangible and successful.” 

He concludes: “As long as we build with ‘sisu’ [Finnish term, loosely translates to English as tenacity of purpose or resilience], keep learning, iterate on those learnings, and share knowledge with one another, I believe the market could turn a page – especially in light of the broader macro-level changes currently in motion.”

Learn more about Finland's games industry at Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki on October 7th and 8th, as well as in our region report coming soon.