Tobias Springer

Tobias Springer, known online as tobspr, is a German game developer and the founder and CEO of tobspr Games, the studio behind the minimalist factory-building games shapez and shapez 2. The studio's name is a contraction of his own: Tob-ias Spr-inger.

Springer studied at FH Aachen, the University of Applied Sciences, and started by making browser games. His first release under the tobspr name, the 2018 web game YORG.io, mixed base building, supply chains and zombie defence, and was followed by YORG.io 3 in 2019 and the multiplayer sandbox schoolbreak.io in 2021.

The breakthrough was shapez, a calm automation game in which players cut, rotate, paint and stack abstract shapes on conveyor belts to satisfy ever more complex orders. It began as the open-source browser game shapez.io and reached Steam in June 2020, where it became one of the top-rated Steam games of that year. Forbes reported that shapez sold more than 400,000 copies and earned close to $2 million in gross revenue, enough to build a company around it, and named Springer to its 2023 30 Under 30 Europe list in Sports and Games.

shapez 2 moved the formula into multiple 3D layers and space platforms. With partial funding of about €538,000 from the German federal games fund, it entered early access on August 15, 2024 and left early access with its 1.0 release on April 23, 2026, followed by Update 1.1 in June 2026. tobspr Games has grown into a fully remote team of about 20 people across nine countries, still independent and focused entirely on factory games; its next title, the shapez puzzle spin-off puzzlez, is planned for 2027.

Springer's path from free browser games to a self-published Steam franchise is a model for developers who want to grow a niche genre into a sustainable studio without giving up ownership.