The game developers population forecast
We just published a new report that looks into the people at the heart of game development. The Game Developer Population Forecast provides data and insights into trends that allow you to estimate the addressable market for game software development technologies, languages, and target groups.
In the report, we estimate the number of game developers globally, how many are professionals, what types of organisations they work for, and where they are located. We additionally investigate the size of the addressable market for specific game platforms, programming languages, and technologies, and segment by experience level and company size.
How we count the how many developers are there
To count developers, we use an independent, bottom-up methodology. The data we use to arrive at the estimates in this report comes from:
Reliably measured numbers of developers or direct indicators of their activity: Github accounts and repositories, Stack Overflow accounts, and employment statistics from the USA and the European Union.
Our proprietary Developer Nation survey data on developers from around the world. For this report, we use data from 20,000+ game developers across six consecutive surveys.
We then measure the global population of active software developers, including serious hobbyists and students. Within our surveys, we give developers the option to self-identify as "active" in certain software sectors, or as using specific technologies.
The growth of game developers by professional status
Here's our latest estimate on game developers:
In Q1 2024, there are 11.1 million game developers
How many of these are professionals? Have professionals and hobbyists grown the same over the past years?
You can find all answers to these questions in this graph, taken directly from the full report's pages.
Answers covered in the game developer population forecast
The full report sheds light to more questions that professionals in developer-first or developer-plus companies engaging game developers have.
Some of these questions are:
How many game developers are there?
How many professional game developers are there across the globe and where are they working?
What technologies and programming languages are being used by game developers?
How is the level of experience in the game developer community changing?
You can see a full preview of the report in our Research Space.
Are you engaging game developers? Here is everything we have available on game developers.
Do you have any specific questions that you want answered? Let's talk.
About the author
Stathis Georgakopoulos, Product Marketing Manager
Always keen to see what’s next in the industry, Stathis is the Product Marketing Manager for SlashData, setting the table and running the marketing activities. He's our go-to guy for all things marketing and does not hide his love for content marketing and creating helpful content.