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in which countries (Sandqvist, this volume). Although North American and
Japanese developers prevail among the largest developers, Europe hosts a
large population of these highly creative small development studios, mainly
to be found in the UK, but also France, Germany and the Nordic countries
(De Prato et al. 2010). Indeed, taken together the Nordic countries form
a large “developer area” in Europe with companies like Funcom, DICE,
CCP, Remedy, IO and Starbreeze. Funcom is the leading “big” MMO
online developer in this area (De Prato et al. 2010). Unlike, e.g. the U.S.,
the UK has retained a large independent developer community, alongside
companies owned by international publishers (Miles and Green 2008).
Various listings of game developer companies can serve to illustrate this.
Table 11.1
indicates that most top developers are found in the U.S., Japan,
includes twenty-seven European companies (of which twenty-three are from
the UK), whereas the U.S. leads with thirty-two companies and Japan and
Canada follow with twenty-six and eleven companies, respectively. As of
May 2011, the site gamedev.map keeps track of some twenty-two hundred
video game companies of which some 1,240 are developers, 170 developer/
publishers, 290 online developers and two hundred mobile/handheld com-
panies. Among those, Europe appears to be better positioned with some 40
In conclusion, it could be said that, based on simple indications of the
presence of developers, Europe has quite a strong position in the part of the
value network, although the picture varies substantially among countries
and it is perhaps less relevant to talk about a “European” game developer
industry. In addition, this position may be weaker than suggested, due to
the powerful gateway positions held by other actors in the value chain (pub-
lishers and console manufacturers), who are controlling major parts of the
necessary fi nancing and decisions on which games to include in their prod-
uct portfolios, as well as distribution and marketing.
Publishing
Publishing is perhaps the weakest link in the European video game ecosys-
tem, not the least because of the important position large publishers hold
in the video game value network. The publisher is responsible for identify-
ing titles; fi nancing development costs; acquiring the intellectual property
rights for new games; licensing the rights; and marketing to distributors,
retailers and end-users. Often they are quite large international compa-
nies with strong bargaining power (Kerr 2006; Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development [OECD] 2005). Publishers rarely special-
ize in only one platform, but opt for platform diversifi cation in order to
achieve economies of scale and scope (De Prato et al. 2010), even though
such a strategy may be in confl ict with console manufacturers' strategies of
exclusivity. As is common in media and content industries, publishers also
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