Spanish Minster Cancels 2 Million Indie Gaming Grant

Bad news for the Spanish indie gaming scene: a 2 million eruo grant (around 2.42 million USD) that was supposed to be handed out to the country’s local developers has officially yet mysteriously vanished.

The report, which comes to us via an article translated by Polygon, tells us that Àlvaro Nadal, Spain's minister of energy, tourism, and digital agenda, has decided to cancel the grant, although he hasn’t shared yet why. The grant was supposed to give anywhere from €50,000 to €150,000 to 20 different developers, with extra care given to the very small studios that are trying to get by with five or less employees. However, it seems that money won’t be heading their way.

The timing is rather suspicious, as he’s decided to do this just a week before the Spanish gaming world hosts “Presentación del Libro Blanco del Desarrollo Español de Videojuegos”, which is basically a conference discussing the current state of the industry. A report that will need to be re-evaluated now that this cash injection, which was sponsored by the EU, will be missing.
 
The good news is that not all is lost: in response to this news, several Spanish Minsters will be meeting early next week to discuss the possibility of restructuring the grant, rather than outright canceling it. Heading this effort will be Ivan Fernandez Lobo, founder and managing director at European events organizer Gamelab Conference. So hopefully they're able to fix whatever problems have arisen.

Spain’s gaming scene is far from the biggest, of course, but you may have heard of some games that have come from it. 2017 cult hit The Sexy Brutale was put out by a Spanish studio, the same one who released the significantly less impressive puzzle platformer Rime. Another upcoming game that’s gotten some attention, Crossing Souls, was a kickstarter project started in Spain.

It’s unknown how this will impact those studios if the cuts are finalized, or the games they might have been planning to make, but the impact is sure to be heavy. Oftentimes studios have to work with money they assume they’ll be getting, and if these studios have been working under the assumption they’ll be able to pay with it using this grant, their plans just went south very fast.