The tens of millions of dollars in Romania with only 1000 employees: how much money do game developers make

More and more Romanians are turning to programming, to fields of activity that involve many hours in front of the computer, but also generous salaries. If you’ve flirted with this idea, the numbers below might encourage you.

At the moment, in Romania, the largest independent video game development studio is Amber. The company just published its financial results last year and positions gaming as a surprisingly profitable field for our country. As a reference, the small giant with only 1000 employees recorded a turnover of 126 million lei or 30.5 million dollars in 2021. That value represents a year-on-year increase of 56%.

How Amber came up with a fabulous turnover

The year 2021 was an excellent year for Amber, one in which we saw a massive increase in the sales channel, based on the investments made in recent years in strengthening our development and sales teams. We exceeded our revenue estimates for 2021 by 10% and ended the year with the highest turnover ever recorded by an independent video game studio in Romania. Access to key talent is essential to Amber, and we believe we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the latest industry trends and capitalize on the talent base available in emerging markets. We expect our growth to accelerate in 2022, in line with the growing demand for Amber services, ”said Jaime Giné, CEO of Amber.

Of the 126.8 million lei mentioned above for 2021, approximately 70% was R&D revenue for video game development. The other 30% is revenue from development assistance, quality control, outsourcing and more. As a reference, most of the money behind Amber’s revenue comes from the US, thanks to collaborations with giants such as Amazon, Disney, NBC Universal, Paradox Interactive, Rovio, That Game Company, N3twork and more.