As an American I’m amazed how many quality games come from Sweden. For a population of just around 10 million they produced a lot of big titles like Minecraft, Battlefield, Helldivers, Arc Raiders etc. and more to come. I didn’t know these came from Swedish studios before I did some research.
How does Sweden do it and bigger European countries can’t? Like for example Germany.
https://i.redd.it/ywfd32903jcg1.jpeg
Posted by batukaming
28 Comments
Creativity and realizing what the audiance actually wants instead of making slop versions.
Cause we got alot of darkness from oktober to like march that means alot of gaming has to be done, with that comes creativity 😉
Were a creative country id say. We also make a ton of popular music as well.
Getting an education you actually want is free. It allows for more creative freedom, Swedes don’t have to be doctors and lawyers because Daddy is paying for school.
Sweden was really fast to adapt to computers in the 90s, so a lot of regular people got a hold of it for a cheaper price due to taxes.
Thus making it easier for people to learn computers and creating game developers
through that.
It’s basically the same for musicians.
Taxes helps a lot. Your country should try that one day.
A society that’s both egalitarian and has a strong focus on creativity and culture.
The strong focus on creativity and culture means that these virtues extend into the engineering sphere as well.
The egalitarian part means that the hierarchical structures tend to be very flat and that people very low on the totempole are free to pitch ideas and influence the final product.
All of this helps innovative design in general and game design in particular.
There is a documentary about it made by state tv: svt. “Det svenska spelundret.” I am not sure if it is available anywhere with subtitles.
It started with a boom of roleplaying in the 80s and then a big adoption of personal computers. First the c64, amiga/atari and then the 286-486 pcs. And a early build out of internet broadband.
Also, the social safety net and that you can get a state loan to go to university/college are also mentioned.Â
Sweden where also dominant in the demo scene on c64 and amiga in the 80s/90s.
It’s the same with music. We have some of the best music producers too.
Some believe it’s part of the genes. That we have a higher percentage of some old gene that make us have higher emotional intelligence (but perhaps lower logical intelligence).
My guess is that we have a state that allows failure. So if you start a company in Sweden and fail, your life is not turned to absolute shit. It’s obviously worse than if you didn’t start the company, but the social welfare system is very kind on failures. This makes it easier for people to realize their dreams without risking their whole family. Your kid still goes to the same school, you still have enough to put food on the table and you got a roof over your head.
Some really cool public investments into digitization and good internet for the avrege citizen in the late 90s and early 00s probably helped.
Kidz back then are making great products today.
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hem-PC-reformen
Well I can’t answer for why they get popular but I do believe that there a good underlying reason for it.
In the 90’s the Swedish government decided that schools and homes should have access to computers and that people should be comfortable with computers.
Many homes could afford a computer. Schools had lessons very early on how they worked.
So a broad mass of the population became interested in this and many continued to study later on in life.
We called it the “IT-satsningen” or “IT-push” or how you would call it in english.
I do believe that this helped us with this. Not just for the gaming industry, but for alot of IT related subjects.
Sorry for bad English, it’s not my first language.
Good economics enabling art and education plus a very tech advanced nation with many people growing up with games and the internet. It’s one of the least dense populstions so connecting with people online through things like games became really popular in the 90s and 00s.
All education is free, even for us adults. We have good study grants and student loans that allow you as an adult to train for whatever you want.
Quality over quantity, hombre
Free higher education and a stable society allows many people to do what they want from a very early age, and do so in a professional setting.
This is a good read: [https://www.theguardian.com/games/2025/dec/12/skovde-sweden-video-games-goat-simulator-valheim-v-rising](https://www.theguardian.com/games/2025/dec/12/skovde-sweden-video-games-goat-simulator-valheim-v-rising)
Because of social democratic politics which has shaped many of the policys we have since like 60 years. Free education, free healthcare, lots of activities funded by taxes so kids and adults become much more creative. Also we had real broadband internet very early for like 99% of the population and also families could buy computers tax free (via state subsidies) via their employer back in the late 90:s.
This impacted generations of IT-people and spawned lots of programmers, gamers and so on and of course a certain amount started creating games. Voila!
I think swedish devs had a big part with battlefield 1 as well
We are tired of our own existence and creating our own little worlds is the only way out
“Sweden accounts for roughly 20% of Steam’s 2025 gross revenue and, in the 2024-2025 release window, Swedish developers delivered five of Steam’s global top-10 bestsellers (Battlefield 6, R.E.P.O., Peak, ARC Raiders, and Split Fiction)”
“More than 1,100 game companies cluster around Stockholm, Malmö, and Gothenburg, producing AAA franchises (Battlefield, Indiana Jones, the Paradox catalog), survival dominance (Valheim, V Rising), viral indie breakouts (R.E.P.O, RV There Yet?), and Helldivers II — Sony’s fastest-selling first-party title to date”
Source: https://investgame.net/news/the-rise-and-reset-of-sweden-s-19b-gaming-capital-machine/
Sweden is a very innovative country by the people receiving free speech at an early and fortunate time, having many universities, focusing a lot on high education, and the natural resources Sweden is available to produce products out of and export.
Millennials grew up in a time where the state pushed heavily for IT and tech literacy. Having a PC, having ADSL broadband (or fiber! I got 10/10 fiber in 2004), and having friends to play video games with, were more or less taken for granted as teenager in the early 00’s. Part of it is also that in this context, parents were in approval of LAN parties as a both prosocial and *sober* activity that their teenage kids did.
Compared to Germany, they’re like 10-20 years behind in many respects. Me and a group of Swedish friends traveled through Germany on our way to Switzerland to meet a friend of mine. The restaurant we ended up going to did not accept bank cards for payments, and none of us Swedes had any cash. Literally zero cash. Because in Sweden, it’s more often the opposite and many retailers nowadays refuse to take cash payments. Paying with a bank card (or Swedish version of PayPal, *Swish*) is always an option. Germany is great in many respects and all, but they are generally far behind when it comes to digitalization.
Where I live (in a tiny village far up north) the local sawmill has an MRI scanner that they send all the logs through, and then a computer to calculate where to cut it to maximize yield. Meanwhile, many of the German industries are struggling to incorporate computers and technology in a similar way. I’d imagine that Germany is in a more similar situation to the US (broadly) regarding the adoption of IT on a large societal scale, whereas Sweden is the extreme outlier.
Also little nightmares and so on and so forth. The answer is the same as to why Sweden produce so much successful mudic: State funded popular adult education.Â
Early adopters of pc/internet and it’s pitch black outside for like 6 months of the year here.
Free education and early adopters of new tech.
You forgot Wolfenstein. Dope ass games. At least the two main ones
Not specifically about video games, but for creativity at all; we have folkbildning and föreningsliv. It has primarily helped some of our musicians, but many gamers have engaged in it in some way or another, sometimes even unknowingly through an event hosted by a förening.
It is supported by the state or kommun (county), depending on the work done.
Sweden is also big on tabletop gaming thanks to this, which transitioned well to video games thanks to being an early IT adapter.
Just to add what everyone else have already said
Sweden stands out in game development because several factors aligned early. A free and open education system that blends arts, music, math, and programming combined with widespread computer literacy, thanks to the 90s reform that subsidized home PCs, giving an entire generation early, hands-on access to computers.
Games naturally sit at the intersection of creativity and technology, and Swedish kids grew up tinkering, modding games, running servers, coding, making music, because computers were normal household tools.