The short answer
Finland's games industry earned about EUR 2.85 billion in 2024, according to Neogames, with around 270 active studios and roughly 4,300 employees. Most turnover comes from the Helsinki capital region, home to companies such as Supercell, Rovio and Remedy, while Oulu, home to Fingersoft and Oulu Game Lab, and Tampere have active studio scenes of their own. Finnish studios commonly work with external partners for co-development, porting, art and LiveOps when they need extra capacity.
The industry in numbers
Neogames, the Finnish game industry hub, publishes a regular report on the sector. Its report covering 2024 gives these figures:
| Measure | 2024 (Neogames) |
|---|---|
| Industry turnover | About EUR 2.85 billion, below a 2022 peak above EUR 3 billion |
| Active studios | About 270 at the end of 2024, up from 232 at the end of 2022 |
| Employees | About 4,300, of whom about 3,800 work in Finland |
| Concentration | Nearly half of studios are in the capital region, which accounts for most of the turnover |
The report also notes lower investment than in the 2021–2022 boom and a shift by some companies to fiscal years running April to March, so year-on-year comparisons need care. The picture is of a mature industry with a few very large companies and a long tail of smaller studios, many of them founded in the last few years.
Helsinki and the capital region
The capital region, which includes Helsinki and Espoo, hosts the companies that made Finland famous in games: Supercell in Helsinki, Rovio in Espoo, and Remedy Entertainment in Espoo, alongside many smaller studios. It is where most of the industry's revenue, investors and senior talent are concentrated.
Oulu
Oulu, in northern Finland, has a smaller but distinctive scene. It is home to Fingersoft, the studio behind the Hill Climb Racing series, and to Oulu Game Lab, a game development programme at Oulu University of Applied Sciences that trains developers through real projects. The city's technology history, with a strong base in mobile and telecoms engineering, feeds both studios and wider tech companies.
Studios in Oulu, like elsewhere in Finland, often look for external partners when a project needs more hands than a small local team can provide, for example for porting, extra content or art.
Tampere
Tampere combines university game research with a growing community of studios and events. Like Oulu, it is a source of new developers and new companies, many of which work with partners on parts of their production.
How Finnish studios use partners
| Need | Typical partner work |
|---|---|
| Extra capacity | Co-development teams building features or content alongside the core team |
| New platforms | Porting mobile games to PC, Steam or consoles |
| Art | 2D and 3D assets, characters, environments, UI and effects |
| QA | Device testing, regression testing and submission checks |
| LiveOps | Events, offers and content updates after launch |
| Prototyping | Fast prototypes to test new ideas without pulling the core team off live games |
Our article on co-development explains how two teams work on one codebase, and game porting covers moving games to new platforms.
What Finnish studios look for in a partner
- Engineering quality: code the core team can review and maintain after the partner leaves.
- Clear ownership: contracts that assign all code, art and IP to the studio on payment.
- Transparency: access to the repository, task board and builds at all times.
- Fit with live operations: partners who can work inside an existing release cadence without breaking it.
- Honest estimates: milestone plans with clear assumptions rather than optimistic day rates.
Our guide to choosing a game development studio lists the questions to ask any partner, and why outsourcing partnerships fail covers the warning signs.
Working across time zones
Finland is on Eastern European Time, UTC+2 in winter and UTC+3 in summer. A studio on US Pacific time is ten hours behind, so collaboration works best with a daily overlap window, written handovers at the end of each day, and weekly playable builds. Many Finnish teams are used to this rhythm from working with partners in other regions.
Publishers and partners: knowing the difference
Developers searching for a publisher in Finland should know the difference between roles. A publisher funds, markets and distributes games, usually for a revenue share. A development or co-development partner builds games or parts of games for a fee, and the developer or publisher keeps the IP. A Plus Games Studio is the second kind: we build, port and support games for studios and publishers. Our guides on funding an indie game and pitching to publishers cover the publishing side.
Working with A Plus Games Studio
We work with studios in Finland and across Europe on co-development, porting, art and LiveOps, with milestone pricing and full IP transfer. See our Finland page or co-development services.
Sources: Neogames Finland · Game Dev Reports: Neogames, Finnish game industry in 2025 · Supercell: about · Fingersoft · Oulu University of Applied Sciences. Checked October 20, 2026.
Related: Game development for Finland · Co-development · Outsource game development
Originally published on A Plus Games Studio, a game, AR and VR development studio in Sacramento, CA.
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