The Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) has approved financing in the amount of R$ 2.6 million for Sioux Serviços de Informática Ltda to carry out its 2016-2018 plan of investments, with a total amount of R$ 5 million. The support from BNDES corresponds to 51% of the total investment. 

 

The resources are from the BNDES Program for the Development of Culture Economy (BNDES Procult), one of the financial instruments that the Bank presents to the sector starting this Saturday (24), in the 5th Brazilian Independent Games Festival (BIG Festival), of which the Bank is a sponsor.

 

It is estimated that the Sioux project supported by BNDES will increase  the jobs at the company by 50%, in areas such as planning, game design, 3D projection, programming, support, project management and public relations, among others. 

 

The productive base of the digital games industry in Brazil is formed mostly by micro and small companies. Research of the University of São Paulo carried out in 2014 with 133 national companies pointed out that 75% of them declared annual revenue of less than R$ 240 thousand. 

 

Strategy – the BNDES financing of Sioux presupposes the strengthening of the games industry through three main strategies: use of games in the transmission of knowledge, by supporting the platform Ludos Pro and the Brincando na Rede website; improvement in the marketing of games developed by Brazilian companies, through their performance as publishers; and development of new business models that allow the generation of intellectual property such as Moovieplay.

 

Market – digital games are strategic for technological development since they present a high degree of dynamism, technological innovations and production of new content. In addition, the productive chains of games offer job opportunities to professionals of varied backgrounds such as Visual Arts, Programming, Software Engineering, Music, Script etc.

 

The global market of games involves around 2.2 billion consumers and in 2016 generated about US$ 101 billion in revenue, according to data from The Global Games Market 2017 survey, of the Newzoo company. The same survey predicts an annual growth of 6.2% between 2016 and 2020. Mobile platforms (cell phones and tablets) are the ones that most attract Brazilian digital game developers due to the lowest level of barriers to development. 

 

BIG – Next Tuesday (27), BNDES shall present its support instruments to the games industry, inviting Finep, Ancine, and Desenvolve SP to also present their mechanisms. The BNDES panel: Financiamento e Investimento para Games! [BNDES: Financing and Investment for Games!] shall take place at 2:30 p.m., with participation of the manager of the Bank’s Department of Investments in Funds, Ligia Werneck. On the same day, at 3:30 p.m., the manager of the Department of Culture Economics, Fernanda Farah, shall expose topics on Corporate Governance for the sector.