Just a few minutes after the opening, hundreds of gaming fans crowded into the Cologne exhibition halls to queue up at the stands for the hotly anticipated new releases. This year, over 1,700 exhibitors set a historic record at the Gamescom trade fair. 70 percent of them traveled from abroad. The computer and video game industry has long been a global billion-dollar business with gigantic growth potential.
As an interface for technical innovation, it drives developments in areas such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality and graphics performance that extend far beyond the entertainment industry. But the market continues to be dominated by international competition. While heavyweights like the USA set the pace with huge tech companies, most global hits still come from North America or Asia, such as Japan.
Funding and financial hurdles
The fact that the situation for the German games industry has gradually improved in recent years is also due to federal funding. These are now to be increased further, to 120 instead of the previous 80 million euros for the next two years.
However, access to these pots is not without hurdles, as the HeadUp development studio from Düren near Aachen knows. Managing director Dieter Schoeller points to the central problem of equity capital: "You just have to bring a certain amount of money with you in order to access the funding. If you can do that, then the funding pots are great."
And they are also filled and, in his opinion, put to good use. "There are great products from the funding. But the young studios suffer because they can't get traditional loans from the banks." Because investments in the games industry are still considered a risk here and there.
How many jobs are involved
Despite these hurdles, the industry appeared confident at Gamescom. According to the Game Association, the number of active games companies in Germany recently climbed by four percent to a record high of 956 companies. The industry provides jobs - there are currently 12,235 employees in the core labor market (a slight decrease) as well as over 30,000 jobs in the entire, extended area.
The importance of the industry was also emphasized by Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil (SPD), who opened Gamescom together with Federal Research Minister Bär (CSU): "We are benefiting from this in Germany, the jobs of the future are being created here, in digitalization, in development, also in AI, that is my claim that we are making progress in Europe."
However, in order to operate internationally on an equal footing with markets like the USA in the long term, the Game industry association is calling for further steps. Managing director Felix Falk emphasizes: "We want to play an even stronger role as a production location; the federal government has already done a lot to promote games. But now we also need a comparable international level and that requires tax support." Such tax incentives are already standard in many foreign competing countries.
Stability instead of global market leadership
Jörg Müller-Lietzkow, economist at HafenCity University Hamburg, analyzes where the German games industry currently stands in international comparison. He sees an ambivalent development: "On the one hand, the German games industry has always been very stable; it has not shrunk significantly in the last ten years. On the other hand, unfortunately, they have not managed to keep up with the increasing global market, especially in mobile gaming, so that today we say that world market leaders come from Germany."
The market volume figures impressively underline this finding. Although an impressive 4.2 billion euros in sales were still generated in the first half of 2026 (a decrease of three percent), German game productions only secured a small five percent market share domestically - while US blockbusters regularly top the sales charts.
Around every second person in Germany now gambles and the demand is huge. Now Germany only has to follow suit. The Gamescom trade fair showed a clear picture: the potential and passion of the audience are unbroken, but in order to produce real global industry giants from a stable niche location, financing remains the decisive factor.
