Nordic Game 2026 was full of smiles, but they hid a very tough reality | Opinion

The indie conference Nordic Game returned to Malmö this week, and although the event naturally has a big focus on Scandinavian developers, there was a multinational flavour to the event booths. Germany, Ukraine, and Moldova were among the countries represented on the show floor, and in fact the Moldovan game Lootbound scooped the People’s Choice Award, which is voted for by conference attendees. But my personal highlight was DDoD, a roguelike shooter from Ukrainian developer The Future Entertainment Company. I came for the giant mutant snails, but stayed for the tense, loot-based gameplay in a huge industrial wasteland, which felt like a tantalising cross between Stalker and Diablo.

Nordic Game gained a neighbour this year in the form of Pocket Gamer Connects Summit Malmö, which cheekily took place in the Comfort Hotel, directly opposite Nordic’s home in the converted slaughterhouse of Slagthuset. A number of visitors double-dipped, sporting lanyards for both events, although the PGC shindig was considerably smaller. It speaks to the draw of Nordic Game, I think, that it has attracted hangers-on. Maybe next year Devolver will start its own event in the car park, just as it did in the glory days of E3.

I didn’t have a chance to ask conference organiser Jacob Riis whether he was flattered by PGC’s attention, although his comments in the run up to the event that each year felt like a family reunion rang true. A large portion of the attendees I spoke to enthusiastically agreed with this sentiment, praising Nordic Game’s friendliness – of which I can attest. One attendee also ventured that the event had a much more positive feel this year, after the doom and gloom discussions of 2025. Yet many of the talks I attended were still centred on how to negotiate an era of difficult transition. Everyone is facing the same problem – too many competing games and not enough money – and that problem isn’t going away.

At the venture capital (VC) panel on Wednesday, investor Jason Della Rocca dished out some tough-love truths that companies in search of cash might not want to hear. “I think a lot of developers don’t really understand what VCs are looking for, what those deal structures look like,” said the co-founder of Execution Labs. “When I talk to developers, it’s still too much need-based, where the developer is: ‘I need money, I have to pay my staff, I need funds to do stuff’. And the reality is no one cares that you need money. I mean, they want to be helpful, but their job is not to help you because you need money. They’re there to back opportunities.”

Yet the traditional VC model – buying chunks of a company in the hope of a healthy return when the firm is sold – is being sorely tested by the current climate in the games industry, where mergers and acquisitions are thin on the ground. “On the PC and console side, there’s definitely been a lot less acquisitions in the last few years,” said Walter Paleari, an investment associate at Makers Fund.

“I’m sure it’s one of the reasons why Griffin started a project-funding fund. And it’s something that we think about all the time as well. There’s a lot of games that are extremely profitable and can do really, really well. At the same time, if there are no buyers for the company for pure equity investment, there’s not an exit.”

Jakob Longer, an investor at Griffin Gaming Partners, was enthusiastic about Griffin’s $100 million fund, which is particularly targeting AA titles – a sector that has been struggling to attract investment in recent years as publishers focus on smaller bets. Longer said Griffin has invested in around 16 titles so far, with the VC firm taking a revenue share rather than equity.

“We saw a lot of incredible talent out there on the market, and this is typically your AA titles that were being self published,” said Longer. “There were some incredible amounts of value to be captured inside that space.” However, he emphasised that the Special Opportunities Fund is an addition to Griffin’s usual equity investment activities, rather than a replacement. In total, Griffin has around $1.6 billion dedicated to the games sector, so the $100 million fund is relatively small in the grand scheme of things. But it will be interesting to see how many other VCs follow Griffin’s move into project funding if the acquisitions drought continues.

In the panel talk “Designing for Lifetime, Not Launch Week,” Adam Orth gave a similarly blunt assessment. “The old model doesn’t work anymore. It’s inherently broken,” said the CEO of Midwest Games. “That comes from … a complete defragmentation of both the development and the publishing space. When you’re looking at how you publish games, there’s really no playbook anymore.”

He described the switch over to modular publishing, whereby publishers might only take on certain aspects of the process according to the developer’s needs. (Personally, I prefer the term pick and mix publishing, although that is mostly because I still pine for Woolworths’ legendary sweet section.)

Strategic Alternatives’ Tim Campbell went one further by emphasising that publishers might not be involved in the process at all. In his talk “It’s Not About Making Games Anymore,” he recommended that developers should assume they are self-publishing from the outset, and plan accordingly.

“You have to think like a self-publishing developer,” he said. “You may not end up that way, but … traction is a prerequisite for investment. So that means you need to start thinking about product/market fit almost at the outset. You need to build that initial community.”

That self-reliant mindset will in turn make the developer more attractive for investment – which they might ultimately decide they don’t need. “If you can get a piece of software to a mature state and you can build a substantial audience that would attract an investor, you start to ask yourself a question: ‘Well, why don’t I just go the rest of the way, right?'”

He also emphasised that even with a publisher, the future isn’t necessarily secure. “If you’re going to be in the games business … you’re going to be cancelled at one point,” he said, giving an example of a client whose game was shut down out of the blue following a board-level strategic shift at the publisher.

“Unfortunately, I see this happening with increasing frequency in my career, and my advice to developers now is you have to assume even if you’re working with a publisher, you’ve got a deal, and everything’s going great, you can be cancelled and terminated at any moment. What does that mean for you? If you don’t have your beautiful corner maintained, ready to drop into sales mode at any time, you’re not prepared for the future.”

Sage advice. But equally, I can imagine that remaining on a self-publishing war footing at all times is mentally draining. It feels like there is no safe harbour any more; hustling is the future.

There was little good news in the “State of the Industry 2026” talk, either, where the verdict was that the regular boosts we used to see from the introduction of new hardware are diminishing. “I think we’ve reached a technical plateau,” said Emmanuel Rosier, director of market intelligence at Newzoo.

“When you look at games launched 10 years ago… it’s on par with what you have today. I think from PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5, you had the loading time that was reduced thanks to the SSD technology, but we’re not going to go 8K, 16K, 240 frames per second – you don’t see really what would be the jump from a technical standpoint to require a new platform. And I think the industry is kind of running out of ideas to create new technology for video games.”

He added that modern games are now competing with older titles. “Someone starting video games today can play Uncharted and older PlayStation games at a cheaper price, and the quality is as high as we can find today. So yeah, that’s difficult.”

“I think the industry is kind of running out of ideas to create new technology for video games”

Emmanuel Rosier

Rosier had more bad news later in the same talk when it came to increased competition from China. “Western publishers, they saw China as a new market where they could sell and make more revenue, and that was the first step. At the same time, the Asian publishers, they invested in Western studios or Western publishers, and I think they learned to make good games, and now it almost feels like they don’t need Western publishers anymore.”

Brace yourself, it gets bleaker. “I could be more pessimistic than that,” Rosier continued. “If you look at all industries, like manufacturing industries, you see what has happened through the years where all the production has moved to Asia or to China. There is a world where some of the video game production could also move to these countries.”

It’s all sobering stuff, and quite the contrast to the general bonhomie seen elsewhere in the halls of Slagthuset. Celebrations reached a peak with the Nordic Game Awards on Thursday, where Arc Raiders took home Nordic Game of the Year, and everyone retired to beers and enthusiastic karaoke.

But the hard truth underneath the cheers is that the game industry is changing. It needs to change, more to the point. Times are tougher, publishers don’t have the power they once did, and developers can’t necessarily rely on getting the funding they want or need. In Europe, it’s evolving into a leaner, more efficient, more specialised industry, where the giant companies of old are struggling to stay afloat.

It’s a necessary transition. But my god, it’s hard on everyone involved.