In January, Lawyer.se attended Ume\u00e5 Game Conference, a highly curated videogame conference in northern Sweden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The conference, which started in 2023 as an effort to raise more capital for regional developers, saw about $5 million in investments in companies based in the Ume\u00e5 area last year. It’s too early to say how successful this year’s conference was, but several deals have already gone through for Ume\u00e5 developers, including at least one with an international publisher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Behind Ume\u00e5 Game Conference is Andreas De Faria Waleij, a veteran in northern Sweden’s videogame ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00abEssentially, there was no capital available locally, so now I fly in the capital instead,\u00bb Andreas said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But to get international publishers to want to attend, Andreas and Agora Gaming Partners, a global investment bank and advisory firm specializing in video game industry transactions, handpick the studios that get to pitch their games. Andreas also has partnerships with other regions, both in Sweden and abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tickets sold out this year, with over 20 publishers and 77 studios attending. With the goal being a high-quality, curated event, Andreas doesn’t want to grow it much further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00abWhat I take with me from this year, though, is that the publishers want to meet more studios,\u00bb he said, noting that the structure of Ume\u00e5 Game Conference offers opportunities to form business relationships that are significantly more challenging to come by at the world’s biggest videogame conferences, where thousands of studios attend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00abHere you’ll get a meeting with everyone you want to meet, either formally or over breakfast, lunch, or dinner,\u00bb he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ume\u00e5 Game Conference is part of a broader, flourishing ecosystem of videogame developers, incubators, education-focused programs, and municipal partnerships working in the region. For example, Andreas runs Ume\u00e5 Municipality’s We Make Realms and collaborates with Skellefte\u00e5 Municipality’s game hub Arctic Game. Boden Game Camp also has an incubator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00abWe have an amazing partnership between regions here, and we’re all pieces of the videogame ecosystem puzzle up here in northern Sweden,\u00bb Andreas said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ume\u00e5 has a long history of videogame development. Many of today’s studios can trace their roots to Daydream Software, one of Sweden’s first major videogame developers, founded in the 1990s. Since then, creatives working at Daydream, including Andreas himself, have gone on to build their own games and studios, growing the region’s network to what it is today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The success of these developers brings in new blood to the region, too, Andreas said, which \u00abadds to Ume\u00e5’s broader cultural ecosystem.\u00bb<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lawyer.se is an important partner to the Ume\u00e5 Game Conference, he said, bringing experience and legal know-how to help studios, for example, sign publishing deals. Talking about one studio that recently signed with a publisher, Andreas said he connected them with Lawyer.se because he knew it would help the developers get the deal done. It’s easy to feel uncertain, he said, thinking, \u00abIs this correct? Are we getting the best deal possible?\u00bb<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00abLawyer.se has been helpful in making these studios feel more comfortable and getting their deals done more quickly, without losing any rights.\u00bb<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next year’s Ume\u00e5 Game Conference will be held January 26-28<\/strong>,2027<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In January, Lawyer.se attended Ume\u00e5 Game Conference, a highly curated videogame conference in northern Sweden. The conference, which started in 2023 as an effort to raise more capital for regional developers, saw about $5 million in investments in companies based in the Ume\u00e5 area last year. It’s too early to say how successful this year’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5835,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-okategoriserad"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n