During all the TGS madness last week I failed to report on the yearly developer data from the Swedish Gaming Industry (Dataspelsbranschen). There were 91 companies that make up the Swedish gaming industry at the end of 2007, up from 68 companies one year earlier (+34 %) and employment has gone up from 812,5 to 1153,33 (+42 %). About half of the companies only employ 0-3 persons, whereas the vast number of employees work for the largest six companies; EA DICE, Grin, Avalanche Studios, Massive Entertainment, Starbreeze Studios and Jadestone. Game development in Sweden is spread out all over the nation with the largest concentration of companies in Stockholm (21) with Malmö in second place (11). The numbers are probably higher today as the employment numbers lag considerably in the financial reports.
Sweden's biggest developers in number of employees (current) are:
1. EA DICE 280 employees
2. Grin 252
3. Avalanche Studios 153
4. Massive Entertainment 132
5. Starbreeze 86
It should be noted that the study only covers public limited companies (Aktiebolag) and therefore hobby developers or developers with a simpler company type are not included.
The full report (Swedish): https://www.dataspelsbranschen.se/items/reports/DSB_rapport_Utvecklarindex%202007%20screen.pdf