Cologne’s Gamescom is being used to herald Germany’s renewed bid to become a serious player in gaming. Technology Minister Dorothee Bär unveiled multi‑million euro support for developers, even keeping a life‑size Lara Croft in her office as a symbolic mascot of the industry’s hopes and her own commitment. The centerpiece pledge is 125 million euros per year for game funding starting in 2026, a hefty rise meant to shave roughly 30 percent off Germany’s cost disadvantage versus peers in Canada, France, the UK, Ireland, Australia, and beyond. Industry watchers greet the uptick with polite enthusiasm, but they remind us that the plan still needs Bundestag approval and that domestic value creation remains disappointingly low while profits flow largely to large platform companies. The sector employs around 12,000 people and brought in about 9.4 billion euros in revenue last year, yet faces higher costs and elevated interest rates in the post‑pandemic era.

One cannot help but marvel at the theatre, and yet one’s admiration is tempered by the obvious: this is policy as performance, a glossy pledge masquerading as strategy. The minister parades a life‑size trophy of a virtual adventurer as if that alone proves national genius, while the reality remains that Germany’s domestic studios still struggle to keep work on home soil and to own the IP that sustains them. Thumping 125 million a year sounds generous until you compare it to the structural issues: a domestic value chain that barely hums, profits siphoned off to platform gatekeepers, and a financing environment that still punishes homegrown risk. If we truly desire a thriving German games industry, subsidies must be complemented by hard incentives for local ownership, long‑term investment in domestic studios, training to supply skilled workers, and policies that keep value creation and IP in Germany rather than letting it slip toward international platforms. Until then, this is a splendid display of civic generosity that promises much and delivers, at best, a more comfortable runway for the status quo.