The four along with Romanian-held Mavenhut posted 491.5 million lei (EUR107 million) revenue together from video, PC and mobile game development and testing last year. They are the five largest game development companies in Romania, ZF has found from Trade Registry data.
The revenue of the five rose by 6% to 15% in Romania in 2017, with market leader Ubisoft seeing the highest growth. The revenue of the five comes from development projects for the international market and very little of it from sales on the domestic market.
Despite the rise in revenue, the top five did not all see an increasing profitability. Only the local subsidiary of Ubisoft and Mavenhut posted 24% and 20% growth in net profit. The other three saw 3% to 37% decline in net profit.
The ranking of the video games developers in Romania by revenue remained unchanged last year. Ubisoft was again in the lead by revenue and headcount. Ubisoft Romania posted RON193.6 million net revenue, up 15% on 2016 and RON10.4 million net profit, up 24% on the previous year. The average number of employees was 1,576, 144 higher than in 2016. It is currently employing more than 1,700 people after having hired 270 for all its divisions in the first half.
The local Ubisoft subsidiary is also the largest game testing center of the group in the world and the second largest by number of employees after the one in Canada.
Electronic Arts Games (EA Games), the second largest actor on the market by revenue, posted 11% higher revenue last year, RON161.3 million, but the net profit shrank by 3% to RON9.6 million. The average number of employees rose by 53 to 502, though.
Gameloft Romania, the local subsidiary of the French-company by the same name remained on the third place by revenue last year, posting RON111.8 million revenue, while the number of employees, 1,033 put it on second place.
Romania’s video games market reached RON443 million last year, up some 8% on 2016 and is expected to increase to RON477 million in 2018, Euromonitor data show.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)