On April 23, Helsinki City Hall opened its doors to a room full of game developers, studio leaders, investors, indie creators, and job seekers — all there for the same reason: to get into the real conversations about AI and investment that are reshaping the business of games.

The first-ever Finland Game Talent Fair was a one day conference for people who work in games to deep dive into two of the most pressing topics in the industry right now — how AI is changing the way games are made, and how investment and funding decisions are shifting in response. Practical, honest, and built around the people who are actually doing the work.

AI Is Not Coming. It's Already Here.

The first half of the day was dedicated to AI — not the theory of it, but what it actually looks like inside studios today. C-level leaders from across the Finnish games scene shared practical, business-first perspectives on what's working and what's next.

The session opened with a keynote from Hyun Park, Stanford Seed Consultant, Professor, and Global Business Growth & M&A Advisor who framed the macro picture: the games industry is rapidly moving from experimental generative tools to integrated agentic AI and predictive development pipelines.

Elina Arponen, CEO of Quicksave Interactive, showed how her team adopted AI across the full development pipeline — from marketing to code to management. The studio recently launched Playables.ai, a tool that lets studios create playable ads by prompting — a product born directly from their internal AI practice.

Teemu Haila, Co-founder and CPO of Metaplay, tackled the context problem: getting AI agents to do useful work on a live game requires that the agent understands your stack, your SDK, and the live state of your game. Metaplay built infrastructure to solve exactly that.

Markus Hjort, CTO of Bitmagic, put it starkly: "We used agents to build agents" — Bitmagic's platform lets creators make web games by prompting, and was itself built using agentic tools.

Tatu Petersen-Jessen, CEO of Odd Latent, rounded out the session with lessons from using AI coding agents on a lean team and designing AI as a creative engine for game creators.

The consensus: AI in games doesn't have to be a threat to creative work. The best studios treat it like any other tool — clear rules, ethical sourcing, human ownership of creative decisions. 

Investment: What Has Actually Changed

The afternoon turned to funding. Jere Partanen of Sisu Game Ventures laid out a shifting landscape: smaller teams, AI compressing production timelines, fewer active investors, and new funding models emerging alongside traditional equity.

A panel with Natasha Skult (MiTale) and Jussi Ultima (Zaibatsu Interactive) brought the studio perspective — what it actually feels like to raise in this environment and how to position for it.

A First: The Finland Great Place to Work in Gaming Award

For the first time ever, the event hosted the Finland Great Place to Work in Gaming Award — recognising Finnish games companies that stand out for how they build and sustain workplace culture. Finland has long been home to game studios with genuinely outstanding work environments, and this award is about making that visible.

The 2026 winners were Geek Lab, Kuuasema, and Nitro Games — three companies that exemplify what it looks like to build a great place to work in the games industry.

The day also featured the Finland Salary Survey 2025 results, presented by Game Makers of Finland.

From the Stage to the Floor

Once the talks wrapped up, the real conversations began. Participating studios opened their mini stands and the networking session took over — established names like Next Games, Fingersoft, and Reaktor shared the floor with a new wave of promising studios and startups including Nimblefox AI, MiTale Games, Stupidella, Delveria Games, Audio Rob, Playnest, and AI Gamedev. It was a rare chance to talk directly with the people building the next generation of games.

Game Makers of Finland — the world's first trade union for game industry workers, founded in 2017 — were also on hand throughout the day, offering advice to attendees on employment matters and answering questions about Finnish labour law and employee rights. For international talent considering a move to Finland, or anyone navigating the current job market, having that expertise in the room was genuinely valuable.

Careers Zone: Meet the Companies, Get Advice & Get Hired

Alongside the networking, a dedicated Careers Zone space gave job seekers the chance to sit down for one-on-one interviews with growing companies actively hiring — matched in advance through the platform so every meeting counted.

Professional recruiters and artists from studios including Remedy, MiTale, Reaktor, and others also volunteered their time for personal CV and portfolio reviews — honest, expert feedback from people who know exactly what studios are looking for.

For anyone looking to take the next step in their games career, it was one of the most practical parts of the day.