What data actually exists about this industry, who typically holds it, at what granularity, and how obtainable it is. Public means openly published; purchasable is sold by a vendor; partnership needs a bilateral deal; exclusive is effectively locked up by one party.
| Data category | Who holds it | Granularity | Access |
|---|---|---|---|
| pricing | Storefronts, price-tracking aggregators (SteamDB, IsThereAnyDeal, Deku Deals), publishers, key resellers | Per SKU per storefront per region, with timestamped price/discount changes | public |
| registry/licensing/permits | Age-rating bodies (PEGI, ESRB, USK, CERO, GRAC, IARC), platform certification programmes, national tax-credit schemes (UK VGEC/BFI cultural… | Per title/per submission, with rating, descriptors and date | public |
| employment & workforce | Publishers and studios, trade bodies (ESA, Ukie, TIGA, video game Europe, GamesIndustry.biz layoff trackers), LinkedIn/job-board scrapers… | Per-studio headcount and job postings; annual industry aggregates; per-layoff… | public |
| reviews & sentiment | Storefronts (Steam reviews, App Store/Google Play ratings), Metacritic/OpenCritic, Reddit/Discord/YouTube/Twitch, social-listening vendors… | Per review/per post with timestamp, platform and language; aggregated per title | public |
| financial filings | Listed publishers (EA, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Capcom, Embracer, CD Projekt), national business registries, regulators (SEC, AMF, JPX) | Quarterly/annual per legal entity, sometimes segment- or franchise-level… | public |
| incident/safety/claims | Publishers' trust & safety teams, platform moderation systems, data-protection authorities (GDPR breach notices), consumer regulators (FTC… | Per report/per enforcement action; aggregated transparency reports per period | public |
| waste & emissions | Large listed publishers' CSRD/ESG reports, Playing for the Planet Alliance, disc manufacturing partners | Annual per legal entity, scope 1/2/3 split | public |
| transactional/sales | Digital storefronts and platforms (Steam/Valve, Sony PSN, Microsoft, Nintendo eShop, Apple App Store, Google Play, Epic Games Store)… | Per-transaction/per-purchase at platform level; aggregated to per-title… | purchasable |
| customer demographics | Platforms (age/region from accounts), publishers' CRM and player accounts, market researchers (Newzoo, Circana, GWI, Nielsen) | Per-player attributes internally; survey panels aggregated by country, age… | purchasable |
| communications/marketing performance | Publishers' UA teams, ad networks and DSPs (AppLovin, Unity Ads, Meta, Google), influencer/streaming analytics (Twitch/Streams Charts… | Per campaign/creative per day, per channel; wishlist and store-page conversion… | purchasable |
| inventory & supply chain | Publishers with physical SKUs, disc/cartridge manufacturers, distributors (Plaion, Solutions 2 GO), retailers (GameStop, Amazon)… | Per SKU per warehouse/retailer, weekly sell-in and sell-through | partnership |
| energy consumption | Publishers running live-service backends, cloud providers (AWS/Azure/GCP billing and carbon dashboards), Playing for the Planet reporting… | Per-account/per-region cloud usage monthly; company-level annual disclosure | partnership |
| booking/utilization/occupancy | Platforms and publishers (concurrent players, DAU/MAU, session length, retention); Steam public concurrents; analytics vendors… | Per-title per-day (or per-session/per-player internally), by region and platform | partnership |
| production output | Publishers and their studios, engine/DevOps tooling (Perforce, Jira, Unreal/Unity build systems), platform release calendars, SteamDB/store… | Per-title milestone/build/patch; per-sprint internally; release counts per… | partnership |
| geospatial/movement | Platforms and publishers via IP-geolocation of players; location-based game operators (Niantic); mobile SDKs | Per-session country/region; per-player GPS traces for location-based titles | exclusive |
| quality & compliance testing | Platform certification teams (Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo TRC/XR/lotcheck), QA outsourcers (Keywords Studios, Testronic), publishers'… | Per build/per submission pass-fail with defect lists; per-crash event telemetry | exclusive |
Compiled by the TriData research system from public registers, industry structure and regulatory reporting obligations; refreshed as the underlying catalogue grows. Look up the code itself in the NACE code finder.