The return of Nordic Game to Malmö this week carried the familiar warmth of a family reunion, as organizer Jacob Riis had predicted. The indie-focused conference filled the converted slaughterhouse of Slagthuset with a multinational energy, drawing developers from Germany, Ukraine, and Moldova alongside its core Scandinavian contingent. The Moldovan title Lootbound took home the People’s Choice Award, while the Ukrainian roguelike shooter DDoD offered a tantalizing cross between the atmosphere of Stalker and the loot-driven tension of Diablo. Yet behind the friendly handshakes and the enthusiastic karaoke of the Nordic Game Awards, the 2026 edition revealed an industry grappling with a transition that is proving anything but comfortable.
A Neighbour in the Shadow of Slagthuset
For the first time, Nordic Game had a direct neighbour. Pocket Gamer Connects Summit Malmö set up shop in the Comfort Hotel, directly across the street, creating a two-event ecosystem that many attendees navigated with dual lanyards. The smaller PGC gathering served as an informal satellite, a testament to the gravitational pull Nordic Game now exerts on the European games calendar. The presence of a second conference reinforces the sense that the event has become an essential checkpoint for the independent development community, a place where the conversation about the future of game-making is happening in real time.
The VC Panel: No One Cares That You Need Money
If the hallways were filled with optimism, the panel rooms delivered a different message. The venture capital discussion, led by investor Jason Della Rocca of Execution Labs, offered a stark reality check for developers seeking funding. Della Rocca’s blunt assessment cut through any pleasantries. “I think a lot of developers don’t really understand what VCs are looking for,” he said. “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.”
The core issue, as Della Rocca framed it, is that venture capital is designed to back opportunities, not to solve payroll problems. This distinction is critical, and it is one that many studios appear to miss when they approach investors. The traditional VC model has historically relied on a healthy mergers and acquisitions market to generate returns, but that market has largely dried up. Walter Paleari, an investment associate at Makers Fund, acknowledged that “on the PC and console side, there’s definitely been a lot less acquisitions in the last few years.” This creates a structural problem: even if a game is profitable, the absence of buyers for the parent company leaves equity investors without a clear exit.
Jakob Longer of Griffin Gaming Partners offered a partial solution. Griffin’s $100 million Special Opportunities Fund is specifically targeting AA titles, a sector that has been starved of investment as publishers shifted toward smaller, lower-risk projects. Instead of taking equity, Griffin takes a revenue share from the games it funds. “We saw a lot of incredible talent out there on the market,” Longer said, “and this was typically your AA titles that were being self published. There were some incredible amounts of value to be captured inside that space.” The fund represents a significant shift in how capital can flow into game development, but Longer emphasized that it is an addition to, not a replacement for, traditional equity investments. Whether other VCs will follow Griffin’s lead remains an open question.
The Broken Playbook: Why Self-Publishing Is No Longer Optional
The panel titled “Designing for Lifetime, Not Launch Week” delivered an equally sobering verdict. Adam Orth, CEO of Midwest Games, declared that the old publishing model is “inherently broken.” He attributed this breakdown to a “complete defragmentation of both the development and the publishing space,” leaving studios without a reliable playbook for how to bring a game to market. Orth described a shift toward modular publishing, where publishers take on only specific aspects of a project according to a developer’s needs.
Tim Campbell of Strategic Alternatives pushed the logic further. In his talk, “It’s Not About Making Games Anymore,” Campbell advised developers to assume they will be self-publishing from the very beginning. “You have to think like a self-publishing developer,” he said. “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.” The argument is counterintuitive but deeply practical: by behaving as if no publisher will ever come, developers make themselves more attractive to the publishers who do appear. And if the publisher never materializes, the studio has already built the infrastructure to go the distance alone.
Campbell also warned that even when a publishing deal is in place, security is an illusion. “If you’re going to be in the games business … you’re going to be cancelled at one point,” he said, describing a client whose game was shut down without warning after a board-level strategic shift at the publisher. “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.” The only defense, he argued, is to maintain a “beautiful corner” ready to pivot into sales mode at any time.
The Technical Plateau: Why New Hardware No Longer Guarantees Growth
Perhaps the most unsettling presentation at Nordic Game 2026 came from Emmanuel Rosier, director of market intelligence at Newzoo, during the “State of the Industry 2026” talk. Rosier argued that the industry has reached a technical plateau. “When you look at games launched 10 years ago… it’s on par with what you have today,” he said. “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.”
The implication is profound. The historical engine of growth for the games industry has been the hardware cycle, with each new generation of consoles unlocking new possibilities and driving fresh consumer spending. If that cycle is losing its power, the industry must find new sources of momentum. Rosier also noted that modern games now compete directly 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.”
The Rising Competition from China
Rosier delivered another dose of uncomfortable news regarding global competition. “Western publishers, they saw China as a new market where they could sell and make more revenue,” he explained. “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.” The shift is not merely about market access; it raises the specter of production moving eastward. “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,” Rosier said. “There is a world where some of the video game production could also move to these countries.”
The Necessary Transition
Against this backdrop, the celebrations at the Nordic Game Awards felt both genuine and defiant. Arc Raiders taking home Nordic Game of the Year provided a moment of collective pride, and the evening dissolved into beers and enthusiastic karaoke. But the hard truth beneath the cheers is that the European games industry is being reshaped by forces it cannot control. Publishers no longer hold the power they once did. Developers cannot count on traditional funding routes. The technical magic of each new console generation is fading.
What emerges from Nordic Game 2026 is a picture of an industry evolving into something leaner, more specialized, and more self-reliant. The old structures are crumbling, and the new ones are not yet fully formed. The transition is necessary, but as the conversations in Malmö made painfully clear, it is also incredibly hard on everyone involved. For the developers who packed the halls of Slagthuset, the message was unequivocal: assume nothing, prepare for cancellation, build your own audience, and never stop hustling. The family reunion was warm, but the world outside the slaughterhouse is cold.
