Should your business outsource to Iceland?

The energy prices in Iceland will rise around 6% this year.

I live in Denmark and am from Iceland. Gamedev requires a lot of electricity, and the Unreal scene in my home country is apparently very active and growing.

Just a thought. The megawatt hour in Denmark has risen by 275%

Turns out it pays off going sustainable, which we did decades ago, from fossil fuels, to geothermal heated water and mostly hydro power plants in waterfalls for electricity.

I live in Iceland. And no do not outsource here.
Iceland is small and suffers total lack of skilled programmers which is even worse for game devs here.

Unless you doing cryptocurrency, then sure, but be prepared for almost double prices for all hardware.

Turns out that it pays off NOT going sustainable - I notice you don’t mention intermittent and unreliable wind and solar. Also If there is a drought your waterfalls and hydro stop working too.

Iceland is powered by geothermal and hydro energy.
And hydro energy is reliable, powerplant is build on glacier river.
About drought, you should come to iceland around november, you will change your mind about possibility of that here.

And one more thing as comment to OP.
Labor costs here are quite high, they would offset difference in energy prices (yes Denmark has it even higher).

Yes, Iceland is positioned well for energy due to it’s unique geology and lack of reliance on intermittent ‘renewables’
Denmark not so much.
Poland is maybe a better place to outsource to as coal power is both cheap and reliable and labour costs are reasonable.

Denmark is considering going geothermal as well, by drilling 1-3 kilometres into the ground.

“Iceland is small and suffers total lack of skilled programmers which is even worse for game devs here.” @Nawrot - In other words, one of these villages could benefit from building up an IT business. If coding and family is the primary goal for someone, living in these villages are superb, especially with smaller kids. I moved to DK in 2005, back then it was rather lonely throwing these ideas out, to harvest the future by acting today.

Since covid lockdowns i was in office for about 3 days total. So yes it is possible to work from some small village, many of my coworkers do. However while Iceland is lovely during summer whole winter is terrible, dark, windy and with horizontal rain.

There are 2 game companies that i know about: cccp (EVE onlie) and myrkur games (they make some promising RPG). And recently there was some unreal devs meeting, sadly i knew about it after it happened.

With remote work I would rather pick place like Croatia, Portugal (yes i miss sun and warmer places), or cheaper ones like Poland, Czech Republic Slovakia.

About remote working, before covid everybody was uncertain or unused to it, but now covid changed everybody’s thinking about it. Even employers noticed they do not need to pay electric bills while everybody is working from home. Mine is kind of generous (or maybe it is norm now) they pay for internet, phone and cables.

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I miss that horizontal rain, especially the horizontal hail. Not to forget the hand break turns and overalls for a major fitness routine, just to get to the grocery store.

Indeed, going to grocery store 1min, coming back 30min, because of wind direction. :smiley:

Yes :slight_smile: During heavy wind, we used to ride on these sleds with the thin iron “skis” on the main road leaving town, holding our jackets up like sail.

That’s the only time kids tune into the news broadcast, hoping school is cancelled.