Bringing Payfulness to Project Management: Codecks Reaches €1 Million Investment With EU Grant to Fuel Expansion and Innovation in Game Development Project Management

2019 was a really, really big year. We got the first photo of a black hole. 5G rolled out. Game of Thrones ended. Disco Elysium, Kingdom Hearts 3, Death Stranding, Pokémon Sword & Shield, and more were resleased.

It was also the year Codecks was founded, here in cloudy Berlin, by us: Riad (also the co-founder of Maschinen-Mensch) and Daniel (also Codecks’ Lead Developer). It’s been five years, more than 60.000 users, tens of thousands of studios and organizations (such as Unity, GRAVITY,  Warpfrog, Toukana Interactive, Free Lives and more), many games and even more Cards (2.280.733, to be exact!) created since then. And now, 2024 has proven to be just as big a year as 2019, with the biggest set of news we’ve had to share since Codecks was born: we’ve been given a €700.000 grant from the European Union’s Creative Europe MEDIA program, which, along with other €300.000 invested by us, will allow us to expand and grow Codecks beyond anything we’ve been able to so far.

This grant is part of the “Innovative Tools and Business Models” funding line, and with it Creative Europe Media is aiming at helping EU technologies and IT tools that can increase competitiveness, sustainability or the use of AI for the creative industries. A total of 8.5M were given, spread across some of the most promising companies in Europe—including ours.

So, what does this mean for Codecks?

Well, it means that we’ll be able to create and implement a lot of new features for Codecks, and expand dramatically on what the tool does–while keeping it accessible to as many teams as possible, no matter their size (and wallet!). We still see Codecks the same way as they did back when Codecks was originally formed, in the (as we’ve established) very eventful year of 2019: as a love letter to the people in game development, and a way to help turn their ideas into games. How? By creating a playful and adaptable project and community management tool created specifically for the industry and its people—made by game developers, for game developers.

Codecks is a bootstrapped company with a unique vision–and we’ll continue our mission as such… just with a lot more means to make that vision a reality. Our unique Card and Deck project management system and all its distinctive features (Asset Templates! Community integration! Open Decks!) is already something we’re proud of and something we really believe in–but it’s only the tip of a very, very big iceberg.

We have a lot of features we want to add to Codecks, along with tons of ideas to strengthen existing ones—and with this grant we can get down to work and do just that, really growing Codecks in a way that wasn’t possible until now, creating an overall better experience (and a better tool) for both new and existing users (all 60.000+ of you!).

Things have already been happening behind the scenes, with the recent hiring of Gonçalo Trindade (hi, that’s me, also helping write this blog post!), ex-Marketing Lead at PlaytestCloud, as the new Head of Marketing–with more updates to come.

What’s next?

2019 was a big year, 2024 was bigger, and 2025 is shaping up to be the biggest.. In these five years since we created Codecks we’ve listened and taken notes on everything our community has said (particularly on our Discord!)—every little thing they struggle with in this industry, every little thing they’d like to see on Codecks, every way we can help them. Everything we do, every week, is focused on that, and on making Codecks the tool to help people all around the world make games. Our mission is still the same: turn (your) ideas into games, together.

And now, we’ll be able to work even more towards that mission, and ensure Codecks helps more and more people make more and more games—in a way that’s playful, efficient, and tailored specifically to game developers.

Some of the upcoming features this grant will allow us to work on include the Vision Board, which will be a separate section on Codecks where you’ll be able to see, at glance, the overall development stage of your game–and how close you are to getting it in the hands of players. Imagine something like a skill tree–but for your game.

With Codecks, we want to make project management as fun and efficient as possible for every single person around the world making games—and now, we believe we can make that a reality. After all, we’re game developers ourselves—we know how we think, what we need, and what we want. We made Codecks for other game developers like us, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.

If you’re reading this and you’re not not using Codecks yet: find out why so many studios around the world are! Sign-up and give it a try! Or reach out to us with any doubts or questions you might have using the form below, about Codecks or game development or whatever’s on your mind–we’re here to help you turn ideas into games, and that includes yours.

As a conclusion: thank you for using our tool, for allowing us to do what we do, and, most of all, for making the games we love. We’re happy to have you on this ride and we promise: the best is yet to come.

The Codecks Team,

Riad, Daniel and Gonçalo

Note:

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Creative Europe’s MEDIA program. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.