Where people play. Games are played on three kinds of device: consoles, PCs and phones. Mobile games bring in the largest share of the industry's revenue. In India, almost all players are on phones.

In India, most players never pay, so a studio earns far less from each Indian player than from a player in America or Europe.

A game earns in four ways: it is bought once, it is free to play and sells purchases inside the game, it shows ads, or it is part of a subscription library. In a free-to-play game most players never pay and most of the money comes from a few who pay a lot, and in India almost all players are on phones.

A game as a live service. A modern game is not finished when it is launched. It runs for years as a live service. The studio adds new levels, events and items every week or month. This needs servers that host millions of players, systems that match players into games, and teams that watch how players behave. A large game is built by hundreds of engineers and artists.

A game as a live service: after launch, the studio keeps adding levels, events and items, players come back and are matched into games, and the studio watches how they behave to decide what to build next, for years.

Studios and publishers. A studio builds the game. A publisher pays for it, markets it and sells it. Large companies are often both. Most studios build on a game engine, the ready-made software that draws the graphics, runs the physics and plays the sound. Unreal Engine is one of the best known.

The work in India. Global studios build game engineering, live services and quality assurance in India. Quality assurance means testing a game for bugs before and after each release.

A studio builds the game on a game engine such as Unreal Engine, and a publisher pays for it, markets it and sells it to players on consoles, PCs and phones; large companies are often both. In India, global studios build game engineering, live services and quality assurance.

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

This Market Segment has two sub-segments: