Game culture: German games market shows low growth in the first half of the year

The association of the German games industry “game” has a report on the growth of the German games market in the first half of 2022.

In-game purchases continue to be popular

After last year’s high, sales of games and hardware rose by just 2 percent (EUR 4.5 billion) in the first half of the year. While revenue from in-app purchases fell 7 percent to 1.3 billion, revenue from in-game purchases grew particularly strongly for PC and console games. Compared to the previous year, this increased by 24 percent to 705 million euros. Subscriptions for individual games and fees for online services were also successful. As could be foreseen, due to the delivery bottlenecks in the hardware sector, only gaming PCs and laptops were able to increase their sales by 10 percent to 479 million euros.

This was announced today by game – Association of the German Games Industry at the gamescom press conference:

“The long-term effects of the corona pandemic, such as the numerous postponements of new titles, supply bottlenecks and the general deterioration in the economic outlook, are also leaving their mark on the games market. After the particularly strong growth of the past two years and compared to the much more problematic situation in many other sectors, the games market is still in good shape,” says Felix Falk, Managing Director of game – the German Games Industry Association. “This resilience is also closely related to the great relevance of computer and video games, which has long since extended far beyond the actual games market. There are countless examples of this, especially in pop culture, on which games are now having a particularly large influence. The fact that this relevance, together with the great potential of games for our society, is increasingly being recognized and valued by the general public is all the better news.”