I just spent 5 days in São Paulo meeting studios from all over Latin America. Completely lost my voice, but gained so much 🙂

Here are my 2024 takeaways:

1) “The future of game development is coming from South and Latin America.” - Thiago de Freitas in GamesIndustry.Biz. If I had to summarize the overall mood at Gamescom LATAM, this would be it. With over 1,000 companies in attendance, the vast majority of which were based in LATAM itself, Gamescom delivered as a top tier games B2B (& B2C) conference in the fifth largest consumer market in the world.

2) Paradoxically, I was a bit shocked at how little B2B representation there was among North American and European companies. Only a handful of publishers and platforms, and even fewer AAA studios; anecdotally way down from 2022. My guess here is that the supply crunch of those years forced outsourcing departments to look outside their usual suspects, with companies now retreating back to known quantities.

3) Following #2, while the Brazilian government is very active in supporting the development of the industry via grants, which has led to an extremely diverse and healthy population of independent studios, publishing investment continues to be very hard to come. It’s not unusual for Brazilian publishers to only offer marketing and services, but no financial support. As a result, most Brazilian studios continue to use work-for-hire to support their original game ambitions.

4) The overall business environment in Brazil continues to be an issue, as Brazil taxes all remittances coming from abroad (including investment dollars). However, Brazil recognizes the need to support this growing industry. As a result, a new law aims to reduce these taxes in games by 70%. The “Legal Framework for the Electronic Games Industry” has already been approved by the Brazilian House of Representatives at the beginning of April and is working its way through Congress.

5) Despite these challenges, investment and growth persists. Congrats to my friends Pablo Martin Navajas and Mauricio Navajas from 3OGS | Three Ordinary Guys Studio for joining forces with Kokku and creating a new service powerhouse in LATAM! Excited for the future of OV Entertainment.  Article in comments, which includes Tiago's quote from #1.

Side note - gamescom latam has by far the best business rounds out of any games conference, period.  Excellent tech platform and so well organized.