NZ Game Developers Just Made $1 Billion. Path of Exile Is Carrying a Big Chunk of It

A country of five million people, a long way from anywhere, just built a billion-dollar games industry. New Zealand’s game developers earned NZ$1.01 billion in the year to March 2026, according to the NZ Game Developers Association’s annual survey. That’s up 33% in a year, and it’s two years ahead of the industry’s own target.

But when you dig into the numbers, one West Auckland studio and its demon-slaying action RPG are doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

The headline numbers

• NZ$1.01 billion in revenue for the year to March 2026, up 33%. The $1 billion target was set in 2023 for 2028.
• About 95% of it is exports. Only around NZ$55 million was earned in New Zealand.
• It’s grown fast: NZ$19.6 million in 2012, NZ$548 million in 2024, NZ$759 million in 2025, and now past a billion. The next target is NZ$2 billion by 2030.
• NZGDA executive director Joy Keene says the sector is “growing at more than 20 times the global average”. The global games industry grew about 2.7% in 2025.

For scale, New Zealand’s wine exports were worth about NZ$2.1 billion in the year to June. Games are already halfway there. Spread across the population, it works out to around NZ$190 for every New Zealander.

One caveat: the billion-dollar figure comes from the NZGDA’s own survey. MBIE told RNZ it doesn’t have independent data to back it up. It did point to the 43 studios getting the government’s game development rebate, which together made NZ$829 million.

So how much of that is Path of Exile?

A lot. In June, the NZ Herald reported that Grinding Gear Games (GGG), the Henderson studio behind Path of Exile, made NZ$526 million in revenue in the 15 months to 31 December 2025. The year before, it made NZ$105 million.

“The jump in revenue is due to our successful launch of Path of Exile 2 into early access in December 2024,” co-founder Jonathan Rogers told the Herald.

The rest of GGG’s numbers are just as wild:

• Net profit: NZ$191.7 million, up from NZ$38.6 million.
• Dividends to Tencent: NZ$110.2 million. The Chinese tech giant bought a majority stake in 2018 and now owns the whole studio.
• Staff: about 240 people.
• The Herald notes NZ$3 million from the taxpayer was part of the mix. The government rebate is capped at NZ$3 million per studio a year.

Comparing GGG with the whole industry is tricky, because the time periods don’t line up. GGG’s figures cover 15 months and include PoE2’s huge December 2024 launch, while the NZGDA’s year runs April to March. But if you spread GGG’s NZ$526 million evenly, it works out to about NZ$420 million a year. That’s roughly two of every five dollars the whole New Zealand games industry earned.

It also explains most of the growth. Since 2024, the industry has added about NZ$460 million a year. GGG alone has added about NZ$315 million. That’s our own back-of-the-envelope maths, not an official figure, but the direction is hard to argue with.

Per person, it’s even sillier. At around NZ$1.75 million in revenue per staff member per year, GGG makes more than twice as much per head as the rest of the industry, which averages about NZ$800,000 per worker.

How PoE2 got there

• It sold 1 million early access supporter packs before it even launched.
• It hit 578,569 concurrent players on Steam in December 2024, and topped Steam’s global revenue chart that week.
• Right now it has about 21,000 players on Steam, which is normal for a live-service ARPG between leagues.
• The full 1.0 release lands on 11 December 2026, going free-to-play on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S at the same time. It’s also just been certified Steam Deck Verified.

With 1.0 landing in December, GGG’s next set of numbers could be even bigger.

It’s not just GGG

• The rebate studios are growing too. The 43 studios in the Game Development Sector Rebate made NZ$829 million in 2025/26, up 17%, with 98% from exports. Medium-sized studios grew 44%, and there are now 194 games in development, up from 170.
• New games are adding up. Keene told b2bnews the billion-dollar figure “includes at least $200m from new games”.
• Roblox to Hollywood. 99 Nights in the Forest, made by three Kiwis at Grandma’s Favourite Games, has nearly 26 billion visits on Roblox. 20th Century Studios has bought the film rights.
• The rebate pays for itself. b2bnews reports the studios returned NZ$9.73 in tax for every NZ$1 of rebate in FY2026.

The catch: fewer jobs

While revenue went up a third, jobs went the other way. Sector employment fell by 157 to 1,257. Keene put that down to two setbacks:

• Futureverse, an Auckland studio and one of the biggest rebate recipients, shut down in September 2025 and went into liquidation that December. NZ On Air had raised concerns about discrepancies in the financial information it supplied.
• Wētā Workshop moved its game team onto its next film after releasing Tales of the Shire.

It’s tough for new grads, too. Rory Rackham, who worked on Path of Exile and now runs Hugenormous Games, told RNZ: “There’s a lot of experienced people being kicked out of their jobs. So those people are applying for positions. So for a new student… it’s a lot trickier.” Plenty are going straight into indie development instead.

There’s also Australia to worry about. Across the Ditch, game studios can get a 30% tax offset, plus another 10% in some states, compared with New Zealand’s 20% rebate. Some local studios are reportedly weighing up expanding there instead.

Our take

A billion dollars from a few hundred studios at the bottom of the world is a genuinely huge result. Most of that money comes from overseas players, and the industry needs no farmland, freight or shipping lanes to get it. We love to see it.

But the honest version of this story is that one studio is carrying a big chunk of the load, and its profits head to Tencent. That doesn’t make it any less of a New Zealand success. The jobs, the tax and the talent are all here. It does mean the industry’s growth leans heavily on Path of Exile, and on the next Path of Exile, whoever makes it. The rising revenue and falling headcount are also worth watching.

With PoE2 1.0 arriving in December, next year’s number might be even more ridiculous. Know a Kiwi studio we should be covering? Tell us in the comments or on the Discord.

Sources: RNZ, NZ Herald (industry survey), NZ Herald (Grinding Gear Games), b2bnews, b2bnews (GGG), NZ On Air (rebate data), RPG Site (PoE2 1.0), TheWrap (99 Nights), Vinetur (wine exports), Steam (player counts, 11 October).