The multinational Sandsoft Games has established a studio in Barcelona to develop new mobile video games, making it its main European base. The Saudi company thus completes its landing in the Catalan capital, where it opened offices in January 2022 and recently hired Pasqual Batalla, a veteran of the local gaming sector, as Chief Operating Officer.
"Barcelona hosts a thriving community of video game creators and is a perfect place for talented developers from all over Europe to come and be part of what we are building at Sandsoft," says its CEO, David Fernández. The new studio will grow progressively, with the forecast of hiring 60 workers in the next three years. Currently, there are already 15 employees and the company has nine active job offers on its website for the city, with positions such as video game developer, designer and data analyst, data scientist and data engineer.
Sandsoft's European center in the Catalan capital will be led by Alexandre Besenval, former Head of New Games and Studio Director at Madbox. Besenval has also worked as Studio Director at Gameloft and Vice President of Product at Socialpoint. Pasqual Batalla also came from this latter company, a veteran company in the gaming sector in the Catalan capital, acquired in 2017 by the American multinational Take Two Interactive, publisher of the game Grand Theft Auto.
The company was born in 2019 with the support of the Saudi Arabian government to diversify its economy and grow the video game industry. Its headquarters are in Riyadh and it already has teams in Shanghai (China) and Helsinki (Finland). Currently, it is in a phase of growth and expansion, with a focus on opening its own studios to develop new video games and on publishing games created by third parties, with a special interest in covering the Middle East and North Africa.
To establish itself in Barcelona, Sandsoft has received support from ACCIÓ, the agency for business competitiveness of the Department of Business and Work. According to ACCIÓ data, Catalonia has consolidated itself as the first region in the European Union in attracting foreign investment in the video game sector, taking more than 12% of the total and attracting projects from the United States, France, Sweden, and South Korea. The agency adds that 40% of the main companies in the sector have a presence in Barcelona, including Bandai Namco, Ubisoft, and King.