Spanish government axes $2.4 million in funding for indie devs

A €2 million ($2.42 million) grant slated to fund Spanish indie developers is now dead in the water.

According to a report from El Español (translated by Polygon), Àlvaro Nadal, Spain's minister of energy, tourism, and digital agenda, cancelled the grant for unspecified reasons. The decision comes just one week before a presentation by DEV, a Spanish videogame association, on the state of the industry.

Funded by the European Union, the grant would have given €50,000 to €150,000 to 20 different developers, with a particular focus on small studios of five or fewer members working on their first game.

While Spain isn't the world's biggest games market, as NewZoo reports, it is a major player as the fourth largest market in the EU and the ninth largest in the world. You're probably familiar with some of the country's studios, too. Tequila Works released Rime and The Sexy Brutale last year alone, and newcomer Fourattic is now working on cartoonish adventure game Crossing Souls following its successful Kickstarter. BeautiFun Games released Nihilumbra in 2013, and has a top-down puzzle game in the pipes for 2018.

Austin freelanced for PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and has been a full-time writer at PC Gamer's sister publication GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a staff writer is just a cover-up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news, the occasional feature, and as much Genshin Impact as he can get away with.