Play Estonia

Play Estonia was established by socially active computer games start-up founders in late 2009. The aim of Play Estonia is to promote gaming as a lucrative business sector, establishing and building relations with neighboring countries industries’ and promoting sharing know-how among Estonian gaming start-ups.

Estonian gaming sector dates back to 1989, when Jaan Tallinn, Ahti Heinla and Priit Kasesalu published a game called Kosmonaut. Although it is almost certain that several games had been developed before by unknown authors, the fact remains that Kosmonaut was the first game to be published internationally. Over the next 10 years, the team behind Kosmonaut developed several titles. In 2000, the same team went to develop Everyday.com portal and later ended up founding Skype. It took 8 long years before Estonia could see a new wave of hungry entrepreneurs (are)entering gaming business.

In the last two years, Estonia has seen the initiation of over 20 gaming projects / start-ups that focus on mobile casual games (Candy Cane, Yrgel Entertainment, Indilo, etc) and browser based massively multiplayer games (IronCurtain Entertainment, E-Society, etc). This far Candy Cane has been most successful in publishing and marketing their iPhone based casual games – in 2009 Candy Cane earned over 140 000 Euros in net profit.

For 2011, Play Estonia awaits several on-going projects to emerge from stealth mode, publishing of Utopia Revolution and E-Society browser strategy games and the initiation of several new projects that take more use of Estonia’s existing rich and unique cultural heritage.