Poland is a major video game market and home to one of the largest video game industries in the world. In 2022, Poland became the world’s fourth largest exporter of video games[1] and Polish publicly-traded gaming companies were worth over €12 billion.[2] The game studios in the country employ around 10,000 people and release almost 500 new games annually.[3]
CD Projekt, developer of The Witcher franchise, including The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – one of the best-selling video games of all time, as well as Cyberpunk 2077, is based in Poland.[4] A significant portion of the Polish population plays video games,[5] and Poland is the home to a developing esports market. In 2019, owing to the industry's growing importance in the country, the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) dedicated an index to it, the WIG Games Index, as part of the exchange’s strategy to attract technology companies. By the end of 2020, the number of gaming companies listed on the WSE had risen to 54, the most in the world, surpassing the previous leader, the Tokyo Stock Exchange.[6]
As of 2021, 97% of spending on video games in Poland is spent on foreign titles.[7] The Polish gaming market was valued about US$924.2 million in 2020, with an esports market valued at US$11.5 million.[8] Of game localizations on Steam, Polish typically ranks between the 9th or 10th most popular language of localization. There are 20 million video game players in Poland; of this group, over 80% are adults and about 49% are women.[9]
The Polish video game market has been described as emerging from the practice of trading pirated video games as a way of experiencing western culture under the Polish People's Republic.[10] Poland hosts the esports tournament Intel Extreme Masters, which draws hundreds of millions of viewers.[10] Among Polish citizens interested in esports, FIFA, League of Legends, and Counter-Strike were the most popular games as of 2020.[11] Notable esports players from Poland include Counter-Strike player NEO and Quake player Av3k.
As of 2021, 96% of revenue in the Polish gaming industry comes from exporting video games to foreign countries, and the Polish gaming industry employed 12,110 people across 470 game companies.[12] The largest video game company in Poland is CD Projekt.[13] CD Projekt is most well known for developing action role-playing games, such as The Witcher video game series and Cyberpunk 2077. CD Projekt also operates the global video game distribution platform GOG.com.[14] In 2019, Poland was the largest video game exporter in Europe and the fourth largest in the world, largely due to the success of The Witcher.[15] The Polish government has invested into the country's video game industry and sees it as a vehicle for growth. Heavy emphasis on math in the Polish school curriculum has also been credited for the success of Poland's video game industry.[10][16]
11 Bit Studios was the developer of This War of Mine and Frostpunk. The Polish government placed This War of Mine on the official school reading list in 2020, making it the first video game to be put on such a list by a national government.[16][17] The Polish game development industry has been praised for contributing to and spreading Poland's cultural heritage.[18][19]
PLAY Sp. z o.o. (Founded 1994. Ceased game publishing after 2017. Ex-"Play.pl" in 2001 to 2007; also "PLAY-publishing.com" in 2004-2017. Its CFO later founded PlayWay.)
Otherwise colloquially known as 'Assembly factories' of the industry. These firms have the record and reputation of making and/or releasing/publishing one to many game titles per year, which can lead to dilution of their quality or highly variable results. Some of them like PlayWay particularly like to make numerous life/job simulation games.[38][39] Some others like Forever Entertainment also make many console ports, including remakes, but not exclusively.[40][41]
They are also renowned for revealing many planned title releases well in advance.
Some firms like Drago Entertainment make better games on average than others.[42]
Rutkowski, Eryk; Marszałkowski, Jakub; Biedermann, Sławomir (2021). The Game Industry of Poland — Report 2021(PDF) (Report). Polish Agency for Enterprise Development.
