Last week, an estimated 131,800 people — many of them dressed as their favorite video game characters — turned out for the Gamescom Latam Big Festival gaming event in São Paulo, Brazil.
It was the biggest fan and business-to-business (B2B) gaming event in Latin America’s history, happening amid a difficult time for the video game world. For the second year in a row, I paid a visit to the largest gaming event in the Americas and I came back with interviews, impressions and good vibes. This time, the floor space more than doubled to 50,000 square meters in the new location of the Anhembi Convention Center, the oldest such venue in São Paulo.
Gustavo Steinberg, CEO of Gamescom Latam, said in an interview that the game economy in Brazil continues to adapt as the industry becomes more efficient and competitive. It’s in a rare position as a country now, as much of the gaming industry in the rest of the world has suffered through 2.5 years of layoffs. In fact, while North America grew 0.1% in 2024, Brazil grew 6.2%, market researcher Newzoo said.
A lot of this comes down to Brazilian fans, who are a passionate bunch. There are 2.6 times more of them showing up at Gamescom Latam than there were at the BIG Festival just a couple of years ago, and they’re coming to see global speakers like Shuhei Yoshida, who was at Sony’s PlayStation division for 31 years, and Henk Rogers, the Tetris entrepreneur who was on a book tour in Brazil.
“We’re still selling tickets. I think we are going to get to very close to [130,000] which is a [big] increase compared to last year (101,000), which is not bad,” said Steinberg, during the show. “Brazilians are more enthusiastic in general. So I think it has a lot to do with that.”
While Brazil’s game companies are still weak when it comes to having massive hits or well-known intellectual properties, Brazil’s game development workforce is making strides with the growth of external development and co-development — or outsourcing in the service of the world’s big game brands.
As noted with the rise of Keywords to more than 13,000 people worldwide, external development is a huge layer of talent for making games that didn’t exist more than a decade ago, and now it’s helping emerging territories like Brazil win a greater share of the overall business, said Rodrigo Terra, president of Abragames (the Brazilian game association), in an interview with GamesBeat.
Steinberg noted the publicity for the show is improving with the addition of the Future Game Show’s livestream. He noted there were about 40 publishers on the show floor and more than 210 attending the show, with around 120 exhibitors altogether. That is a bit more than last year, but there were more than 30,000 additional fans this year. He likes the position of the show between GDC in San Francisco in late March and the Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles on June 5. But he hopes more big publishers show up.
“There are still strong publishers in the business here,” he said. “People have realized that there are more game players in Latin America than North America. We have, 350 million players, and we are still growing faster than North America. We are now the biggest industry event in the Americas.”
Of 3.422 billion players in 2024, about 355 million were in Latin America, compared to just 244 million in North America, according to market researcher Newzoo. Brazil alone has an estimated 105 million gamers. It makes sense that local devs could profit from making local content.
Key to thriving will be the addition of home-grown hits that are born in Brazil. But to make that happen, a lot of talent, time and investment are still necessary. Steinberg thinks the industry will strive so long as developers focus on creativity and vision. Brazil’s chance is to move more of its developers into triple-I or double-A status.
“Brazil and Latin America are still one of the few regions that are growing the game industry,” said Patricia Sato, executive manager of the Brazil Games Project, in an interview with GamesBeat. I think this has a lot to do with our adaptability. We were always the underdog of the industry, so we are used to the kind of challenges that the world is right now facing. I hope my best for the game industry, but I’m glad to know that it means we are prepared for the years that are to come.”
Legal support for games
One of the things that is helping is the Brazilian government’s support of the industry, as last year the country’s lawmakers officially adopted a law recognizing the game industry as a separate industry with its own job categories, said Terra.
The Brazil Games Project is a joint venture of Abragames (Brazilian Association of Game Developers) and ApexBrasil (Brazilian Agency for the Promotion of Exports and Investments).
With legal definitions for roles such as game developers, Brazilian lawmakers will be able to pass tax cuts and other benefits specifically targeting the growth of those jobs.
Abragames estimates that there are 1,200 game companies in Brazil, compared to about 1,042 studios last year. Last year, the group said there were 13,225 game developers at 1,042 game studios which generated more than $251.6 million. That’s only about $241,458 in revenue per company — not enough to sustain larger companies.
And there are still 20% taxes on foreign investments coming into the country, which is almost like a tariff on the game business, but there are ways to deal with that tax as Brazilian companies set up their own subsidiaries in other countries or partner with foreign companies, Terra and Steinberg said. The aim is to invest money in Brazil and have the money stay in Brazil.
Terra and Sato both said that the recent ruling in the Epic Games vs. Apple antitrust case should help improve the mobile game industry’s revenues as it will be easier for game developers to evade Apple’s 30% platform fees. During the 4.5 years of litigation, Apple stalled on enabling one part of the ruling — allowing developers to steer players to off-store web shops where they didn’t have to pay the 30% platform fee and could enjoy better discounts.
U.S. District Court judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple’s insistence that it could muzzle developers on steering actually hurt consumers and led to higher prices — an antitrust breach. She held Apple in contempt of court for dragging its feet and Epic Games said it will now be able to get Fortnite back on the App Store. Apple is appealing the ruling, but Xsolla’s chief strategy officer Chris Hewish said in an interview that the floodgates may now be open for game companies to bypass the 30%.
On the IP front, Brazilian game developers were encouraged at the success of Black Myth: Wukong, the Chinese-made game that was both a hit for its elevation of Chinese mythology and culture — something Chinese fans liked — as well as its mass appeal on the global stage. That game quickly hit more than 25 million copies sold last year and it means China’s game industry can now compete on a global stage.
Financing new IP with work for hire
All of this is context for noting that the world of gaming is a competitive place, with 19,000-plus games coming out on Steam every year, with very few of those coming from Brazilian game developers right now.
Brazilian game developers want to accomplish the same as the makers of Black Myth: Wukong, making games that reflect their own native cultures while still increasing gaming exports. Yet a number of the game developers I met with noted they did not raise outside capital. Rather, they financed their games with outsourcing or found their own local sources of capital investment. Still, by self-publishing their titles, it could take five or ten years for the small Brazilian teams to move on to their dream games.
One of those companies is Gixer Entertainment, which has done work for hire since 2008. The company did the development work on Capybara Clicker 2, a casual title that had more than 70 million players. That was good for the publisher, but not so much for Gixer itself.
“We are trying to survive. We are trying to get through this moment,” said Juno Cecilio, CEO of Gixer Entertainment, in an interview with GamesBeat. “I think those who can get through this time will have a good moment.”
Cecilio’s company has a lot of experience and it is working on three original titles now.
At the B2B event, Terra said, “We wanted to frame how video games is important for the economic development and we need to talk about the competitiveness and efficiency of the video game market, and how Brazilian game developers, studios, publishers and the ecosystem itself now needs to evolve into be a more efficient industry in terms of really be part of a strategy for the bigger country.”
He added, “We need to talk about politics, but we need to talk about incentives. To talk about taxes. We need to talk about how our market needs to grow in terms of revenue, in terms of number of studios, publishing, and more. We need to keep talking about how we can evolve video games through the public sector. Money definitely needs to come here, from outside and inside Brazil. “
He said non-endemic brands are starting to look into the gaming world and help them get in front of consumers. They can investment in development and put their brands in front of consumers who are more highly engaged in games than any other kind of entertainment. Some of that money is coming from inside Brazil, so the local game industry isn’t entirely dependent on foreign investment.
When companies start to scale, the taxes are a greater burden, so there is still time to address the smaller companies as they grow. And foreign companies are investing in local Brazilian industry by acquiring companies that can become strong local partners. Epic Games, for instance, bought a Brazilian company, Aquiris, back in 2023 as it acquired a local presence in the region. It turned that company into Epic Games Brasil.
Still, Brazil needs a lot more momentum to catch up with popular regions for game investment like Turkey or Finland.
“Discoverability is an issue more than anything,” Terra said. “Our industry is less than ten years old in many ways, but countries like Turkey have shown the way.”
Oddly enough, stability used to be a big complaint that those considering doing business in Brazil had. Now it’s among the more stable countries in the Americas. Yet it has to deal with crime, corruption and other challenges that emerging countries face. Tourists, for instance, are often warned to keep their smartphones hidden while walking down the streets of Sao Paulo.
“Our political system is still super stable, and as Latin Americans and Brazilians, we know how to do one thing — navigate through instability. That’s important as quite often entrepreneurs don’t have a breakout hit until they have their third or fourth game company,” Sato added.
Incubating games
One of Brazil’s hits is Soulstone Survivors, published by Digital Bandidos, has sold more than a million copies. It was made by Game Smithing, a small independent studio of Brazilian game developers spread across Brazil and the UK. Although the studio was first founded in 2022, some of the team have worked together for over ten years.
The team worked on Soulstone Survivors for over two years, having massively grown the scope of the game following the incredible PC Early Access success. Rogue Soulstone, Soulstone Survivors’ sister project, is currently in pre-production.
There’s a new generation of games coming behind. One of the games on display at the Abragames booth at Gamescom Latam was Dungeons & Drivers, made by Digital Synapsis with a small team. The company calls it a “bullet heaven” rogue-like game on wheels, with RPG elements. Up to four players can join at once and fulfill quests in dungeons while dealing with nonstop enemy attacks.
The games is being made by a team of four people based in São José dos Campos, São Paulo. They started as a work-for-hire studio in 2014, and now they’re trying to make their own original intellectual property. They plan to hire two to three people in the coming year and they’re in discussions with publishers, said Guilherme Lourenço Silva, cofounder of the company, in a message to GamesBeat.
Another company, ViVa Games, is based in São Paulo and Los Angeles. It has eight people and the team is spread across Brazil, with people in states like Minas Gerais, Ceará, and Rio Grande do Norte.
They’re working on Kakele Online, a 2D pixel art MMORPG. Two twin brothers, Lucas and Bruno Adami, started developing Kakele as a hobby in 2020 and launched it that same year. They saw potential and began monetizing it. Two years later, they officially founded ViVa Games.
The game was suited for Latin America in that it was designed to run smoothly on low-spec devices and slow networks.
“Bruno and I grew up loving games but didn’t always have the hardware to run titles like World of Warcraft, so we played lighter games like Tibia and Zelda,” Lucas Adami said. “With Kakele, we set out to build an MMO for players like us — gamers who may not have access to high-end devices, but still want a rich, multiplayer RPG experience.”
ViVa Games is releasing expansions every six months to keep the community engaged and they hope to grow the team in the next year and start working on a second game. They’re self-funded so far and are generating revenue with a sustainable business model. They’re currently looking for publishing partners who can take them into regions where they don’t have a strong reach. Most of the players are from Latin America, and they see potential in expanding to markets like Mexico, Poland, and Southeast Asia.
One of the bigger games in the works I saw was BlackThorne Keep, which is being built by Limiar Studios, a remote team based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The company has 20 people and they’re all working on BlackThorne Keep, semi-open-world action RPG set in a fictional world inspired by the South American colonial era and the Brazilian imperial period, where strategic, visceral combat merges with deep immersion, said Pedro Garcia, COO of Limiar Studios. The game is in a pre-alpha state.
The studio was founded in 2021 and it began operations on May 26, 2022. The game is based inspiration from The Witcher’s rich storytelling, For Honor’s tactical dueling, and Dark Souls’ oppressive atmosphere, the game promises to challenge even the most seasoned players. The hero is kind of stuck in an endless loop, and he has to break out of it.
The company has funded the title primarily through service-based outsourcing revenue, doing work for other game studios. It is now seeking to expand by securing a publishing deal, Garcia said. I saw a long demo of the game with a lot of combat.
“We’re trying very hard, and we’re sitting at the table with everyone who wants to help us,” said one of the game leaders.
Rockhead Games is working on Starlit World, a successor to the original games Starlit Adventures. It’s a cute open world 3D adventure game with cute gameplay, where you jump around, explore and zap cute creatures. It’s about the residents of Starlit Island, where you have to recover stars from a thief who stole all the stars in the sky.
The team has 10 people, and it has been around for a decade. It has additional help from others. The company started making mobile games and it has moved to the consoles. It hopes to self-publish Starlit World in 2026, said Christian Lykawka of Rockhead Games, which received funding from Google.
Getting discovered
Terra said he hopes that the Brazilians will now proceed with a variety of incentives that can help bring capital into the industry and improve discoverability and awareness of the Brazilian game industry. These policies could lift Brazil’s game industry, even as it runs into global headwinds like overall slower growth of games, slower growth of indie titles, tariffs and economic slowdowns in markets like the U.S.
Yet Terra is encouraged at the good results that countries like Turkey, Finland, China India and others have had in fostering the growth of local game industries. Developers in those regions took advantage of creativity and moving fast into emerging parts of the game industry, like mobile games and free-to-play.
The delay of Grand Theft Auto VI from the fall of 2025 to May 26, 2026, may hurt the perception of fast growth in the game industry this year, but it should also leave room for smaller games to succeed in 2025.
Steinberg, Sato and Terra all said that among the things that Brazil has on its side is extra passion — something that helps its soccer leagues in a big way — for entertainment such as gaming. The passion of Brazil’s creators and cosplayers for gaming is evident at the show, as fans wait in long lines for the chance to try out new games. Brazil also has a growing game media sector, in contrast to shrinkage elsewhere.
Brazilian influencers are making use of new platforms like TikTok to reach wider audiences.
One of the big messages of the show is that Brazil has become one of the most stable regions in the Americas, in contrast to the U.S. with its political chaos now.
A good show and a hub for Latin America
Despite the chaos around the world, there’s no disputing it was a strong show for Gamescom Latam.
“It’s amazing to see how much the show has grown in size,” “I go to a lot of events. I can see a lot of games that really stand out. They are beautiful. And I’m glad to see as well that we have lots of Brazilian companies that are now showcasing by themselves. like to see that the Brazilians are growing and that there is a space for us here inside of Gamescom Latam.”
More of the games on display are double-A titles or casual games, as opposed to triple-A or triple-I games, she said.
“They are flying out of the nest,” Sato said.
Finland’s Supercell, which had a large booth at Gamescom Latam. Ilkka Panaanen, CEO of Supercell, worked at companies like Digital Chocolate and participated in Demo Scene before striking riches in the billions of dollars with Supercell and titles like Clash of Clans and Clash Royale.
“The mobile market is changing and we’ve seen that people among Brazilian game developers are starting to close deals again, whether for external development or their own IP,” Steinberg said. “I’ve been telling everybody for more than 10 years, going to the international events, you’re wasting money if you’re not here, because the studios that you find here, not only Brazilians, but delegations of Argentinian, Chilean, Peruvian, Paraguayan, and Mexico. We are really like a hub.”
The future of games in Brazil
It’s a long path for Latin America and Brazil to move up the food chain, but there are some gains being made, based on a presentation by Jason Della Rocca of Execution Labs and Kristian Roberts of Nordicity at Gamescom Latam’s B2B event.
Steinberg said, “I don’t see, at least for now, I don’t see triple-A’s coming out of Brazil. I see more triple-I games. I think there is a decreasing number of triple-A games because people are not willing to pay as much as they used to. I see a lot of potential for success in studios, coming here and setting up in the country or in the region.”
“One thing that would be great is having a big hit that is recognizable as a Brazilian game. It would be perfect timing. So I keep telling the studios and the developers I’m doing my part. You can do yours,” Steinberg said.
But it’s hard to do with no money, Terra said. There still isn’t that much foreign investment coming into Brazil or Latin America, which in 2024 had about $7.7 billion in sales compared to $177.9 billion across the entire world, according to market researcher Newzoo. While small, Latin America is growing at 6.2% a year, second only to 7.5% for the Middle East and North Africa.
Jason Della Rocca, cofounder of Execution Labs, said in a session that game investors have become more cautious. And that means that game makers have to provide more evidence that suggests their games will be hits. The result is that many game makers in Brazil and Latin America have to turn to both social media and self-publishing, which can produce some of the evidence that those with money are looking for.
In market with powerful and engaged local influencers, this can be a viable path to the market, Della Rocca said. One game, Soulstone Survivors, has sold more than a million copies.
Yet game investors have not stepped up. Konvoy Ventures noted that there was zero investment in the first quarter of 2025 by game VCs in South America, Australia and Africa. But North America, which is growing only about 0.1% according to Newzoo, reaped more than $198 million in Q1 funding.
Some funding in the form of project financing can still happen based on promising games, Della Rocca said.
“I think the gaming industry as a whole is facing a shortage of investments. Even though this is happening, I see a lot of curiosity in Brazil and Latin America, which is great,” said Sato. “With the new legal framework, this can bring a lot of change in terms of tax incentives for the Brazilian companies. We expect that this will help us chase this opportunity we are facing.”
Growing talent
With cultural entertainment support from the government, Brazilian game companies will be able to access funds that can finance the whole of development. R&D tax credits can also reduce tax burdens for Brazilian companies. The hope is to grow talent and home and keep that talent from migrating abroad.
“This is the mindset that we are working with here,” Sato said. “Our main goal right now is to keep our talent in Brazil better.”
Sato added, “Brazil is huge with external development companies. Most of our companies from the north are the really great ones in terms of size and also experience. They are external developers and service providers. We actually became quite famous in this segment of the industry because of our talent. During the pandemic, lots of these studios helped game companies find a way to survive.”
And Sato added, “We are trying to incentivize more of our companies to do more deals in external development. A lot of our activities here, new activities we have inside are a little bit centered there. So this year, we brought in more buyers for external development. This year it was 15 external development buyers. So we are trying to bring in more of these guys, so we can foster the companies that are working in the segment so they can do better.”
Abragames wants to get more involved with the academic part of the game industry to teach more about external development.
“I see a lot of room for growing the show floor,” Sato said. “I would hope we can have a lot more students that we want to showcase here. So it’s nice that we have a bigger space.”
Disclosure: Gamescom Latam paid my way to the event.
