Cyprus LIVE #3 GDCy and the Story of the Largest Developer Festival in Cyprus

We're back for round two, this time with less rosé and more water. Yeah. [laughter] And I am joined today by our two co-hosts of the event. If you guys wouldn't mind introducing yourself.
Yeah, sure. My name is Tim and this is Andrew, my partner. And we both doing GDC and Cypress gamedev Cyprus.
And what exactly is GDCY gamedev Cypresscy is for Cypus.
Very very literal. Very very literal.
That's the point. That's the point. That's the whole idea. Basically, it's the community of people who work in gamedev and live in Cyprus and work in Cypress, obviously. And now it's the third year in a row. It's the biggest games conference in the region and uh the second executive launch we are having now today.
But before we get to business, how big was that tuna that was served?
Oh my god.
Just two tunas. Two tunas, 13 kilos each.
Incredible. Incredible. It's delicious, too.
It's still delicious. It's upstairs there waiting for you. And there was also a ham leg a hom so you know we have to close the podcast and go eat

[laughter]
soon soon.
Honestly the hon part is one of the our philosophy behind the GCI with we're trying to make it all together be the right place with right people with right food and drinks to make it all like the proper atmosphere for again developing people to share experiences and uh like work together
here in a winery too.
Yes. Winery is the best place to have a like very honest discussion with people like in a really nice atmosphere here. Uh very calm and very like comfortable. When we started executive lounge last year, the idea was the good game should age like a good wine. It could be become better and better. If you're speaking about IP, if you're growing your like game, right, you're be becoming more mature. You have wider audience. It's like deeper and it's interesting from different perspectives. Let's say this way.
So, how long have you guys been here? How long have you two lived here?
Uh, I'm living here for 9 years almost
and uh the GDC is 5 years old.

Yeah, we met something like in 2018 I think uh here but I moved here recently like three or four years ago.
Okay. And so you've been doing this for 5 years?
Yeah.
Kind of four or maybe maybe
no five five. It will be five in next year. Anyways, you've really been working everything everything [laughter] started everything started after the co actually when all lockdown were were lifted we found that people are eager and they just like cannot sit at home anymore and look on each other through zoom and we decided that that's the best time to start gathering of the game deaf and frankly it was like I booked a table in the pub and just like wrote on my Facebook just like guys let's meet like I book a table for 30 people or something 15 minutes before the time it was already 60 people and in the end almost 100. So I had to close the whole pup and everyone was like yeah finally let's keep doing this and that's how it all started.
So what have you noticed in the changes in those 5 years in the game development community
it's growing like exponentially a lot of

cool companies moving here a lot of new IPs even started here like UFFL for example from PAOS and Atomic Heart they also here in Cyprus. So uh we are growing and we becoming like the very big and fat spot on the map for the game dev.
Speaking about revenue, Cyprus is like somewhere in first five uh regions attracting the more revenue worldwide for the game development. So it's like a big revenue hub because of the legislation because of the like immigration policies and all other stuff. But the concept is that it's really good to start your new game developing here or moving your existing IP here if you want to live like on the sea seaside and like under the sun 350 days a year. Uh
yeah, something like that.
Yeah. The cool thing that IP is protected here by the British law. So that's why it's very attractive to the companies because Yeah.
The thing I've been really surprised by and we were talking to someone who was in puzzle recently. We were talking

about someone who's in HD or PC console. It seems like there's a bunch of different genres happening here and platforms which have been hyper casual. Say games. I didn't know say games was here.
Um I'm surprised about just the genre diversity for such a a small country to be here. Usually it's it's one thing
frankly even surprised. [laughter]
Why not? It's all about the development. It's not only games. Cypress is really attractive for many different companies who doing business in it. So because it's always not only for gamedev what we do we're trying to make it more attractive for game developers giving them community and the like space to share the experiences and the good people to network with. But it's even bigger in terms of global IT with totally diversified software stacks and solutions.
So we're talking about explosive growth. I I hear this all the time. It's not really explosive I think but close to explosive
close to explosive. What what would we call that? uh any growth is explosive for a kind of small island. You know the Cypress is like 1.2 million people

living on so it's not
about the size of Stockholm.
Yeah, it's not really big but comparing to the business lots of people doing things here on the global scale.
That's why it looks like small country doing a big impact.
I can tell you like for my uh 9 years almost 9 years I noticed like it started to grow right in front of me. So when I came like the biggest uh building was an oval. It's like office building now. It's like one of the smallest one. So we have a lot of skyscrapers. We have a lot of companies moving here. Like I I lost count at some point. So uh yeah it's unbelievable how it growing and I hope it will be growing more because frankly looks like government understands that it's like a very good potential and a good strategy and they invest more resources and uh time to invite more companies here to make Cypress attractive for the business and uh for it business in the first place.
Sometimes the best impact is not making new obstacles for business to grow.

Yeah,
that's more important than like doing something instead of that. So,
and I'm curious about that. Like, do we expect this growth to continue or do you see some some headwinds in the future potentially?
Uh, how do you feel about the game development market right now? It's not like growing exponentially. So,
we would be just small projection of the market itself. But here we have a bit easier infrastructure to do things. It's like more compact, more easy to handle. when everyone is like stagnating, we are trying to grow. We'll see for next few years how it happens, but uh it's not the easy time for the game industry.
So, we were talking a little bit about the government policies. I think many people will understand that tax is quite low here, which attracts a lot of firms, which is fantastic. Is there anything else you think the government is doing specifically for games or maybe they shouldn't do anything specific?
Well, I can tell you like I told you already for about the IP law here, British law, but also the IP box. It's the like let's say government program.

If you developing your IP here in Cypus and it's registered in Cypress, you pay only
2.5%. So 2.5% instead of that's a rounding. [laughter] That's a rounding error.
Exactly. Instead of 12.5, that's like 80% discount on corporate tax. That works not only for game development. You're asked about game development, but it's also for all IT companies. If you're developing SAS service here from Cyprus in distributing it all over the world, you have this benefits as like IT company registered and uh developing your product here. That's why it's interesting important and that's why it attracts lots of companies abroad coming to Cyprus incorporate and like doing business here. So lots of people are thinking right now and like we see them coming to our conferences speak with us and thinking how they could relocate their businesses here. Cost of living here is average in Europe. The IP box is really attractive because you could save the money on the taxation. And the interesting thing there's 0% tax on dividends.
For the founders is like unbelievable.
If if you're a successful developer and

you earn money that's good
well even if you're unsuccessful for startups it's very
if you're unsuccessful you have zero. Of course the question is about that. If you play in the Uber model when you're growing your capitalization like no matter what, it doesn't work this way. Not like so convincing. But if you're profitable, it's very very interesting.
So one of the things we were hearing about earlier is this idea that a culture is emerging here where it's okay to trade secrets, people talk to one another.
Do you see that Cypress is having like a distinct identity when it comes to game development emerge?
That's hard to say. In case most of us are immigrants, it's diversified vision and like culture experience for everyone
and like as a secrets or future secrets uh in our like
almost secrets. [laughter]
Yeah. Uh for us we identify ourself as like part of the Cyprus but our experiences is like from different

cultures, different regions and we see different experiences uh here evolving in Cypus. Many good things happens, many interesting things comes from different countries and different cultures like technology innovates in the world like all over the world. Some of them are like happening here faster, some slower depends. So there was no proper delivery services here before co
at home
and even can you imagine like when I come here it's like if you want to call a taxi you need really call the taxi and they may not pick up because they don't care. So [laughter] that's like that was the point or they can pick up and say yeah I will come to you Philly and never come. So that was the reality here.
So it's better and better year over year but uh it's small island there it's have own mentality. It's like you get used to it but uh it's
or not
or not. Yes. It's slower than many other countries or many other mega policies and uh you just adopt. Do you think there's a billion dollar game sitting on

this island right now?
I think they already here.
The player like the biggest guys in the market, they already here. Not the whole company, not maybe not even the founders, but the revenue stream goes through Cyprus in most of the cases. So yeah.
Do you think Cypress could also be a satellite location for a lot of the bigger devs who are looking for more support and resources? Do you think that's another growth opportunity?
Maybe. Maybe. Who knows? We will see.
Depends on what you think. What you mean about resources? So there are not so many workforce here. So most of the companies relocate workforce from abroad.
Mhm.
In that case, it's it would be hard to make Cypress a satellite for some like bigger location when you have like a Delaware or Ireland whatever like you have a revenue hub there. It's good side office. It's a good location for locating people from like different regions. Uh because taxation is good. uh the low is like comfortable but it's cheaper than US any other locations

there are lots of cheaper more cheaper locations that
like Serbia or Armenia or Georgia or whatever you name it like it's much cheaper than establishing office here and hire people and keep them here like paying all the like social insurance and all the stuff so there is a lot more more cheap locations than Cypress so not everyone can afford to have like the full cycle studio on Cypress so it's quite a heavy burden to
and heavy problem is also the thing because if you don't have enough people here to hire uh you need to move them from somewhere else and you should have a reason for that. So we are trying to convince people to like spend more time and uh we are working with game development schools here in Cyprus like to convincing children to study more about game development.
Start them young indoctrinate them.
Yes.
We got to get in. We got to get there thinking about that and working on this area. So year over year the community is growing and the amount of people who at least knew that game development is that like proper job. You could learn it, you

could work it, and you could develop games.
Actually, the the third year in a row, we have summer school with the Robble. It's like local uh
Yeah, it's local. And we're doing GTCY school. We inviting people from gamedev uh industry like some professionals who come and uh like give some lectures to the kids. They help them to program on Roblox and Unity and different stuff. They like teach them blender, teach them uh a lot of stuff.
We're speaking about like from 8 years to 14. So my son is 11. He attended attended the school last summer. He he learned a bit about Unity. He know how to make games on Roblox. Like he he want to be a game developer.
So as part of the like whole strategy, somehow it works at least like in my family. But we never know what kid would decide to do later.
I mean this feels like it should be the easiest cell in the world. Do you want to make games or do you want to like sell insurance?
No. Always is like stops when you need

properly do something like
not like from the wish and the game. There's like a big gap.
Yeah. They feel with hard work usually.
Mhm.
That's usually the problem for the kids.
Blood and toil. Teach it to them young. But they also get to create something. It's not just a macaroni painting. It's it's a product which is inspiring. Yeah.
Do you expect to see more local cyprates start to enter the games industry? You're starting them young. It's a lot of international labor.
We hope so. We are trying to uh make it like evangelize it to make it more convincing, more interesting for them to join the suit because we showing that like people here doing games. They're growing, they're doing business like they are successful.
Yeah. We're bringing bringing some uh very cool talents uh on every GDC fest. For example, this year we brought from Kyoto Takay Mamura. He's like 35 years working in Nintendo and he's the guy who made the Star Fox and a lot of iconic uh characters from Nintendo universe and we

trying to bring cool cool guys like I'm even talking with Hideok Kajima if you work watching this like [laughter] let me know. So yeah, we are trying to bring some uh cool legends from game def industry like for our festival let's say so people can see them and then get
that's the part about putting the separ map and all the world. But speaking about kids, we're trying to help our like fellow partners and companies who are working with kids to make their storytelling more convincing by attracting the talent from the game industry with their success stories and their experiences. We'll see. Like it's a long journey.
Yeah, it's it's like baby steps, you know.
So, speaking of long journeys and baby steps, I think you said what is it year five for GDCY?
Yeah.
What does year six look like?
Oh, it looks like
Does the winery get bigger? Is it a brewery next time?
No, the winery is like the executive lounge concept. It's a very private event only for the executives. So, you can like, you know, have a
very relaxing atmosphere without NDAs.

You can speak with your equals and business.
We're always arguing about that. Yeah,
because like on few round tables there was questions like do we have NDA signed or could I share my experience? Maybe we will make NDA next year with everyone
because like it's uh it's important if people want willing to share something private they need to be aware that it's secure
but uh yeah expansion grow is not for us right now we couldn't handle it big but like we need to secure our current level make it's a bit nicer on all the areas that we covering
this year we extended to puffas from limosol so we have one more location we have at like two annual conferences one big the GTI fest And one like private small like here is executive lounge. We continue do that. We will try to do it more efficient and more professional because the market demands it.
We we growing as well. So we have more experience. We have more mistakes to learn from. So

that's how it works.
You know the good event is when you have huge amount of mistakes but nobody knows about them.
Exactly. Crying somewhere like under nobody cares about. Is there anything else you want me to ask, guys?
No. Perfect. Is that good? Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, gentlemen, for having me. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. You're welcome. It's a pleasure.
Let's go.
See you in year six.