Scopely opens a new hub in Barcelona's 22@ district for video game development.

Scopely opened a new creative and technological hub for video game development this Monday in Barcelona. It occupies 8,500 square meters in two buildings and houses more than 700 employees.

The opening ceremony was attended by the President of the Generalitat (Catalan Government), Salvador Illa; the Minister of Culture, Sònia Hernández; the Deputy Mayor of Barcelona, Raquel Gil; and the Secretary of Business and Competitiveness of the Generalitat (Catalan Government), Jaume Baró. The video game company's representatives included its global co-CEO, Javier Ferreira; the CTO of Playgami and head of Scopely in Barcelona, Hugo Pibernat; and the director of operations in Spain, Néstor Pequeño.

The space brings together diverse profiles such as creatives, engineers, and designers, as well as lawyers and human resources and finance managers. Half of the staff is local and the other half represents more than 100 nationalities.

With an investment of €13.5 million, the offices allow the company to gain capacity to accommodate more employees after having moved through four different locations and having to relocate due to outgrowing the space.

"When we started the project, we thought we wouldn't fill the space. Now that we've opened it, we think it might be too small," predicted Ferreira, who recalled that the company arrived in Barcelona in 2017, when it had five employees. Pibernat, who studied at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), defined Scopely as the "dream of a kid from Barcelona who thought it was impossible to have a company of this size" in the city, and defended local talent.

Both representatives expressed their gratitude for the institutional support they received in establishing themselves in Barcelona after visiting several European cities and deciding that the Catalan capital was the best option for their headquarters, a key location for the development of their video games. In this sense, Spain does not represent a major source of income for the company, which is the largest global revenue earner in this sector excluding the Chinese market, but it is a very important hub for developing and creating games.

Illa thanked the company representatives for their commitment to the city and celebrated the "successful path" it has experienced in just eight years, growing from five to 700 employees. "We want to invest in this sector," Illa stated, defending the Government's policies to improve Barcelona's connection to the rest of the world, implicitly referring to the expansion of Barcelona Airport.

In her opinion, companies choose the city to establish themselves because of its way of life, which consists of a strong market economy combined with equity policies to ensure "no one is left behind." Raquel Gil explained that there are 4,500 people employed in the video game sector in Barcelona, and that this area is a focus of the City Council's efforts to diversify the economy.

Scopely is the largest video game company in Spain by employee count, with 1,000 employees spread across Barcelona and Seville (where it has 120), and around 180 remote workers worldwide. Focused on free-to-play and mobile games, it has helped develop games such as Stumble Guys, Scrabble Go, and Monopoly Go through the Playgami platform. The multinational company had revenues of $3 billion in 2024, operates on four continents, and has around 3,000 employees worldwide.