A Karlsruhe studio received funding of €180,000 for a new edition of Snake – and recently a lot of ridicule for it. Now the team is fighting back.
Update from December 5, 2024: The term for the 'Modern Snake' project ended on October 31st – now Karlsruhe-based Kr3m Media GmbH is showing a screenshot from the current version for the first time. Managing director Jan Reichert told GamesWirtschaft: “We are working hard to complete our v1.0.”
The biggest challenge: the smooth, high-performance display of the multiplayer game – both in the browser and on mobile devices, i.e. smartphones and tablets. By the end of March 2025 at the latest Modern Snake get started.
For a preliminary sketch, the company had to endure a lot of social media malice in the Gamescom environment and thus triggered a fundamental debate about the meaning of the federal government's support for games. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is subsidizing the development with almost €177,000 – the funded studio is contributing the same amount.
Kr3m Media will have a further €171,937 for the project in 2022 Grandma Chicken Run received, which can be recognized by the Appstore hit Subway Surfers oriented and licensed to Payback Germany. There the game is under the name Pointee Run in use.
Report from August 24, 2024: “The Federal Government is supporting games like 'Modern Snake' with 200 million euros” – “Taxpayers have to pay for new ‘Snake’ game” – “176,776 tax euros from Habeck for a mobile game – and it gets even more absurd.”: These and similar headlines have been fueling a debate about state funding for games since Friday.
In the middle of the hurricane stands the Kr3m Media GmbH based in Karlsruhe, one “modern and attractive” Variant of the classic cell phone Snake developed. For HTML5 browser game Modern Snake In May 2023, the studio received a funding notice for €176,776 from the Federal Ministry of Economics – this results in a total budget of almost €360,000.
Planned end of the project duration: October 2024 – in just a few weeks.
Just in time for the weekend, Kr3m has one as a result of free-wheeling online polemics Statement on the website published. The medium-sized company – which employs 30 people and was represented at the Gamescom joint stand of 'The Länd' in recent days – also addresses the criticism of a game image that was in the Project description of the responsible Federal Ministry of Economics.
Accordingly, it is a preliminary 'sketch' that “in no way” should correspond to the final product. Rather, they are included in the budget “high-scaling multiplayer servers” and “high quality graphics” – the estimated budget is for a game like this “usual”. In addition, the reach of partners is like The mirror so high that there is a probability of success with regard to refinancing.
Even though the project is obviously close to completion, Kr3m has so far refrained from publishing a daily screenshot from ongoing development.
“O'zapft is'”: Bavaria invests millions in games
It is by no means the first time that federal and state government funding for games has caused irritation: the Free State of Bavaria has invested a total of €450,000 in four games (Pong, Moon Patrol, Sharks! Sharks!, Skiing) invested in the never-released Intellivision Amico game console.
In the course of the Modern SnakeDebate also 'caught' the official Oktoberfest game on Friday, which will only be usable with VR headsets and was the focus of the Bavarian Gamescom 2024 appearance. The Digital Ministry initially received €200,000 in 2022 – the federal government added another million a year ago. The Munich-based K5 Factory GmbH wants to publish the game in April 2025.
The tenor in social media and press: In times of empty coffers, why is the state pumping hundreds of millions of euros of tax money into the development of these and other computer games made in Germany? And when it comes to more quality, more jobs, more start-ups and international competitiveness: I can do this Modern Snake, Pin Ballers & Co. succeed?
Games funding: “flops on the assembly line”?
WirtschaftsWoche came in the spring to knowledgethe federal government supports “Flops on the assembly line”. Following on from this, the AfD parliamentary group made a request, which the Ministry of Economic Affairs answered in detail a few weeks ago. According to this, almost €180 million was approved for 550 projects from 2019 to 2023 – a further €40 million is planned until the end of 2024. There is an additional €50 million in the budget for 2025, as of now.
Together with the €33 million that is stored untouched and unplanned by Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (Greens), this amounts to a total subsidy package for the German games industry of more than a quarter of a billion euros within five years.
This does not include other settlement bonuses and aid from the federal, state and local governments.
Games subsidies: Federal Audit Office exercises fundamental criticism
It's not just the opposition that is asking questions about efficiency and effectiveness. At the end of June, the Federal Audit Office hardly gave a damn about the previous procurement practice and the fundamental responsibility of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK). Economic development is the responsibility of the states. The clear message: “If the financing authority is not given, federal funding must be discontinued.”.
The supervisory authority also criticizes obvious ones “Takeaway effects”lack of success control and the practiced 'first come first served' principle – after all, only the fastest benefit from the funding. The Game industry association responded to the scolding with a sharply worded statement, according to which the Court of Auditors “completely misunderstands the global market reality”.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs has now incorporated the foreseeable criticism into a new guideline that is due to come into force at the beginning of 2025. The federal government then wants to concentrate on medium-sized and large projects – which inevitably means that the federal states much have to contribute more than before.
However, there has been expected, strong resistance there for months – especially from economically strong regions, especially since there are so far only substantial funding sources in North Rhine-Westphalia, Berlin/Brandenburg and Bavaria. But even their resources would be far from sufficient to close the resulting gaps.
Games funding: what happens next?
The truth is that not only have hundreds of studio startups been created along with games funding over the past five years, but established medium-sized companies such as King Art, Egosoft, Keen Games, Deck13 and Limbic Entertainment have also grown. On the plus side there are also qualitatively convincing, commercially successful titles such as Pioneers of Pandoria, Enshrouded or the console implementation of Anno 1800. And: Of the 30 titles that received grants of more than €1.5 million, more than 20 are still in development and will not be ready for the market until 2025 or 2026.
But it is also clear: The funding for games using the watering can principle, which was introduced in 2020 by CSU Minister Andreas Scheuer and continued largely unchanged by Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens), is a phased-out model – simply because it demonstrably lacks plannability, reliability and sustainability . The findings of the Federal Audit Office at the latest leave no doubt about this.
Aside from the planned guideline reform, the Game lobby association is therefore increasing the demand for 'tax credits', which larger publishers and studios are joining. The charm of such tax discounts is that, firstly, they are not capped and secondly, they are widely used internationally. Habeck signaled fundamental support at Gamescom 2024 – but nothing has been decided, especially since the coalition partner FDP, in the form of Finance Minister Christian Lindner, has been threatening a veto since the beginning of 2024.
However, it doesn't help small and medium-sized studios without sufficient capital if the tax burden only falls afterwards. Rather, there is growing concern that the budget dispute, the jurisdictional wrangling between the federal and state governments, plus the harbingers of the 2025 federal election are slowing down a practical solution.
The social media malice in the Gamescom era is currently one of the smaller concerns of Germany's game developers.
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