Gaming startup ecosystem
The European gaming industry, led by Sweden, Finland, and Poland, is a global powerhouse. From mobile gaming to AAA studios, the region benefits from deep creative talent, strong engineering culture, and established publishing infrastructure. We track 85 organisations in this sector across 6+ countries.
Showing 1–20 of 85 Gaming
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Gaming results
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1939 Games
1939 Games is an independent game development studio founded in Reykjavik in 2015 by veterans of CCP Games. The studio developed KARDS, a free-to-play digital collectible card game set in World War II, which launched on Steam in 2019. KARDS blends traditional CCG mechanics with real-world historical units and strategies from the Second World War and has built a global player community.
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33East
33East was founded by Demetrios Zoppos and Yiannis Eftychiou and selected by the European Investment Fund in 2023 as Cyprus's first EIF-backed venture capital fund. It closed a €26 million debut fund in January 2025, anchored by the Cyprus Equity Fund (NRRP) and private investors including the Bank of Cyprus. The fund targets pre-seed and seed-stage startups with a Cyprus connection, writing cheques of €100K–€1M across enterprise software, fintech, gaming, marketplaces, logistics, digital health, and climate tech. First portfolio companies include Electryone AI, an AI-powered renewable-energy management platform.
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3Lateral
3Lateral is a Novi Sad-based deep-tech studio that builds some of the most advanced digital human technology in the world, including high-fidelity facial rigging, performance capture, and AI-driven character animation pipelines used across games, film, and virtual production. Founded in 2004 by Vladimir Mastilović, the company became a go-to technical partner for AAA studios pushing the boundary of believable CG faces, and was acquired by Epic Games in 2019 to anchor what would become the MetaHuman Creator — the feature inside Unreal Engine that lets any developer ship production-grade photorealistic characters in hours instead of months. Even after the acquisition, 3Lateral continues to operate out of Serbia as a core R&D center for Epic's digital-human stack, making it one of the clearest examples of world-class computer-graphics IP built entirely in the former Yugoslav space and now shipped into tools used by hundreds of thousands of developers globally.
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Artur Kurasiński
One of Poland’s first startup bloggers and influencers, Artur has also become an angel investor. He leverages his audience and industry knowledge to promote and invest in Polish startups, often focusing on edtech and gaming. Associated startups: Trafi (mobility) and ThinkCube (edutainment) are a couple of ventures he’s been publicly associated with as an investor.
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Assembly Organizing Oy
Assembly Organizing Oy is the company behind Assembly, Finland's largest digital festival, held twice a year for more than 30 years and drawing nearly 30,000 attendees to Messukeskus Helsinki, with over 4,000 simultaneous computer and console seats. The company produces the Assembly events and the Assembly.org platform, plus esports and other digital content, most notably the Telia Esports Series, for clients ranging from major global brands running their own esports programs to those seeking to reach gaming audiences through relevant content and channels.
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Assembly Summer 2026
Finland's legendary demoscene and gaming festival, running since 1992, now combines its traditional demo competitions with esports tournaments, indie-game showcases, and creative-coding workshops. 5,000+ attendees bring their computers for a LAN party atmosphere. Relevant to gaming, creative-coding, and entertainment-tech startups as both a community event and a recruiting ground for engine and graphics talent.
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Assembly Winter 2027
Assembly Winter 2027 runs 25-28 February at Messukeskus in Helsinki, the winter edition of Finland's largest digital art and gaming festival. Over four days the event combines gaming, esports, demoscene art and digital culture, with ticket sales already open for the Helsinki gathering.
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Basecamp Malta
Basecamp is a 700 sqm incubator facility for video game development, esports, and immersive technology startups, operated by the GamingMalta Foundation — a non-profit jointly established by the Government of Malta and the Malta Gaming Authority. It offers ten subsidised studio spaces alongside an accelerator programme featuring business workshops, industry mentoring, and connections to local and international investors.
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Borys Musielak
Borys Musielak is a Warsaw-based engineer-turned-investor, Founding Partner at SMOK Ventures — a pre-seed and seed fund backing Central and Eastern European founders — and the driving force behind SMOK Angels, a no-fee network of 220+ founders-turned-investors. He previously founded Filmaster, a movie-recommendation engine acquired by Samba TV in 2015, and co-founded Reaktor Warsaw (one of Poland's first startup coworking hubs) and the Startup Poland foundation. Through SMOK he has backed CEE startups across AI, gaming and software including Authologic, Alokai, inStreamly and Defguard, and in 2025 he co-founded No Cap, an AI-driven angel investing platform.
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Brunnur Ventures
Brunnur Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2013 and focused on high-growth Icelandic startups. The firm backs scalable B2B software, gaming, biotech, cleantech, and marine-tech companies, writing initial seed cheques and following on through growth rounds. With around 34 portfolio companies, the firm has achieved notable exits including CCP Games and Oculis. Key partners include Founding Partner Sigurdur Arnljotsson and Managing Partner Arni Bloendal.
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Casumo
Casumo is a Malta-based online casino and gaming company known for its gamification-driven approach to iGaming, blending adventure-style progression mechanics with traditional casino and sports betting products. Founded in 2012 by Swedish entrepreneurs who established operations in Malta to leverage the island's regulated gaming jurisdiction, Casumo holds licenses from the MGA, UKGC, and other European regulators. The company has built a strong brand around player engagement and UX innovation in a highly competitive market, employing hundreds of people in Malta and serving players across multiple European markets.
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CCP Games
CCP Games is the Reykjavik studio behind EVE Online, the long-running sandbox space MMO that has become one of the most culturally distinctive video games ever built in Europe: a single persistent universe shared by all players, with a player-driven economy, alliances, and wars that have produced academic papers and international news coverage. Founded in 1997, CCP effectively bootstrapped Iceland's modern games industry and remains the anchor of Reykjavik's interactive-entertainment cluster. The studio was acquired by South Korea's Pearl Abyss in 2018 but kept its Icelandic operations and brand, and has since expanded into new IP explorations, third-party developer partnerships, and blockchain-adjacent experiments around player-owned assets. For the directory, CCP illustrates how a small European capital can sustain a live-operations games business at a scale usually associated with Tokyo, Los Angeles, or Helsinki.
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CD Projekt
CD Projekt is a Warsaw-based video-game holding founded in 1994 by Michał Kiciński and Marcin Iwiński. Its CD Projekt RED studio produced The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 franchises, while GOG.com operates a DRM-free PC games store. The company went public on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in 2011 and at peak was Poland's most valuable listed company. Co-founder Michał Kiciński later left day-to-day operations to focus on impact-oriented investing and wellness projects.
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Conector Startup Accelerator
Founded 2013 by prominent Spanish entrepreneurs. Runs 5-month batches for early-stage digital startups in media, gaming, and mobile; mentors take equity and support Demo Day. Notable alumni include Glovo and Meller. Scope: Regional (Barcelona & Madrid).
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Crowberry Capital
Crowberry Capital is a Nordic seed and early-stage venture fund founded in 2017 in Reykjavik, with additional offices in Copenhagen and Stockholm. The all-female founding team backs technology startups across the Nordics, with a particular focus on SaaS, digital health, fintech, and gaming. Its second fund closed at €90 million and the firm has invested in over 34 companies. Notable portfolio companies include Lucinity (AI anti-money laundering) and Mainframe Industries (cloud-native MMO gaming).
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Develop:Brighton 2026
The UK's leading games-industry conference, marking its 20th anniversary in 2026. For games-startup founders and developers it offers business and publishing tracks, an indie showcase, and an expo — strong for funding conversations, partnerships, and hiring across the UK games ecosystem.
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Develop:Brighton 2027
Develop:Brighton's next edition is confirmed for 13-15 July 2027, save the date, following a 2026 edition that marked its 20th anniversary with over 5,800 attendees. The UK's leading games-industry conference offers business and publishing tracks, an indie showcase, and an expo.
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Diana Koziarska
Founding and managing partner at SMOK Ventures, an early-stage fund focused on Central and Eastern Europe. A physics graduate, she co-founded ReaktorX and was a leading figure in the Polish startup community before moving into venture capital, and has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30.
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Digital Dragons 2026
Premier game industry conference in Krakow featuring an indie game showcase, publisher meetings, and strong startup presence across VR/AR, AI tools, and creative tech. Attracts 2,000+ game developers, publishers, and investors. Valuable for gaming and creative-tech startups seeking publishing deals and development partnerships in the CEE region.
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Digital Dragons 2027
Digital Dragons 2027 takes place in Krakow 23-25 May, one of the largest B2B events for the games industry in Europe. It is run by the Krakow Technology Park as part of a broader ecosystem that also includes a games industry accelerator supporting studio formation and growth in Krakow.
