More than 15 million invested and 130 jobs created: video games made in Portugal already have a presence around the world

In just two years, 132 new jobs have been created and more than 15 million euros have been invested in scientific research and technological development, enabling the gaming sector in Portugal to be aggregated and strengthened into a true cluster. The eGames Lab , the largest video game research group in Portugal, which is the result of a consortium financed by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), is presenting its results today at the 3rd National Meeting at PACT - Alentejo Science and Technology Park, in Évora, and has good reason to celebrate.

Created with the ambition of establishing a cluster for the video games industry in Portugal, "creating a sustainable ecosystem capable of retaining talent and attracting foreign investment", a total of 207 employment contracts have already been signed (of which 132 are new positions), with almost two thirds of the investment allocated to scientific research and technological development activities, to leverage the gaming area and streamline the exchange of knowledge between academia and business.

Born out of the Mobilizing Agendas and with 23.61 million in funding from the PRR, the Madeira-based consortium — which brings together 22 entities, including 14 micro and small businesses, two scientific entities and six public and private entities from several Portuguese cities, such as Lisbon, Funchal, Évora and Angra do Heroísmo — has taken giant steps and has already launched a handful of games. The augmented reality/virtual reality football application created by FootAR, for example, won the Best Application award in May at VRAR World Expo 2025, the most prestigious Asian event dedicated to Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, which took place in Shanghai. But this is not an isolated success story. Among the titles in development that are generating great expectations at the eGames Lab, there are also games such as Hanno , a finalist in the Games Developers Conference Pitch in 2024 — "which has attracted a lot of attention on all continents" — World Trivia Quest, by WalkMe Mobile, The Kause, by WOWSystems and Fapptory, and KEO and HooverShock, by Redcatpig", says Miguel Campos, leader of the eGames Lab Consortium, confiding that, at this moment, "the launch of Rail Rescue is being prepared" .

"Before eGames, when we were still preparing the application, the first thing that stood out was the fragmentation that existed in the sector: there were some kids in a garage, others elsewhere, each one doing it for themselves, without a guiding principle and without a support base. And there was a lot of discouragement with what was being lost. But the video game ecosystem was growing a lot, moving a lot of money, while Portugal exported only 5 million euros a year in this industry in 2018, which is nothing. With the creation of the consortium and this aggregated logic, in 2022, we jumped to 38 million, the following year to 48 million and in 2024 we were already very close to the 100 million mark. This was largely due to the eGames Lab consortium and the Portuguese Video Game Producers Association (APVP), because they began to see that they could join this wave and be present at the biggest fairs in the world", he explained, in a recent interview. to SAPO, the scientific director and leader of the consortium, Pedro Campos (Miguel's brother).

"eGamesLab is an aggregating project and is working directly with the national ecosystem, as a whole, with the aim that all entities benefit and that the sector, at the very least, doubles its size", adds Miguel Campos, highlighting the consortium's focus on "developing projects in blockchain technology, virtual reality and augmented reality, artificial intelligence with a view to the storytelling process and transformative video games based on the green agenda".

With a multidisciplinary team that brings together areas ranging from design to psychology, the eGames Lab is focused on producing high-quality video games capable of competing in the international market, resulting in the aforementioned awards, as well as the "Best Poster Award" (2024), awarded at the 12th International Conference on Research and Technology in Sports Sciences to the scientific work Assessing Physical Activity Levels While Playing Virtual Reality Exergames: A Pilot Study , by Mário Teixeira, Hildegardo Noronha, Pedro Campos and Cíntia França, which analyzed the impact of virtual reality video games on the physical activity of healthy adults. "Also this year, the eGames Lab stood out for the scientific article Eidolon: Exploring the Complexities of Prolonged Grief Disorder Through a Digital Game , developed by Filipe Tomé, selected as a finalist in the Student Game Competition at CHI 2025, the world's largest conference in the area of ​​Human-Computer Interaction.

In order to deepen the project's research activities, the Portuguese consortium based in Madeira has partnerships with entities such as Carnegie-Mellon University, ID&T, a world-renowned company in the entertainment industry, IT Copenhagen University, which provides workshops for research fellows, and the Faculty of Human Kinetics at the University of Lisbon to disseminate knowledge and apply gaming technology and bring projects closer together between the business and academic worlds. It also has strategic alliances with giants such as Amazon Web Services GameTech, Sony PlayStation and Dell's Alienware.