The games companies in Germany have decided: Bavaria is Germany’s best games location. This is the finding of game’s industry barometer, where members of game – The German Games Industry Association assessed the political involvement of the individual German states for games companies. The battle for first place was a head-to-head race. North Rhine-Westphalia, which placed second in the latest rankings, had finished first in the rankings for 2023. Berlin took third place, ahead of Hamburg, after the two had shared second place two years ago. Some changes were also evident at the bottom of the rankings: Hesse, who ranked tenth out of twelve in 2023, brought up the rear this time, behind Saxony-Anhalt in 14th and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 15th place.

“The trend of the past years is continuing: more and more German states are recognising the value of the games industry for their region and are working on better conditions for games companies. In view of the flip-flopping relating to national games funding, the German states with good game funding programmes were all the more important in the last two years. This commitment has paid off for these locations in the form of countless positive effects in areas such as the economy, innovation and society,” said Felix Falk, Managing Director of game – The German Games Industry Association.

Some of the federal states have seen positive developments since the previous rankings. The Bavarian state government is distributing funds of around 3.3 million euros in total. With the recently opened game hub DIE GAMEREI – a recipient of 560,000 euros in funding – as well as the Level Up accelerator programme and the gaming event GG Bavaria, the state is providing additional support to the companies in the region. Berlin and Brandenburg distributed record amounts for game development in 2023, with studios receiving funding totalling 5.3 million euros. Further projects are being supported by Berlin’s state government – a coalition of CDU and SPD – such as the planned House of Games. Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg and Hesse have all increased their funding budgets for 2024. In Central Germany – Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia – more funding was provided for games in 2023 than in the year before. In Saarland, the state games funding programme has been transferred to the State Ministry of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digital Affairs and Energy and allocated a total of 300,000 euros in the 2024 budget – also an increase over the previous amount. Bremen most recently also provided funding in the amount of 150,000 euros. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in contrast, remains the last white spot on the funding map: The governing coalition of SPD and Die Linke announced in their coalition agreement in 2021 that they would be supporting the games industry in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, though this has not yet materialised. The positive trend and strong momentum have continued in recent weeks: There have been further political initiatives to strengthen the games industry in the federal states of Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, which announced additional funding of one million euros in mid-November 2024 for the development of titles to be used in prevention and education against disinformation and Islamist propaganda, in addition to the further development of games funding.