According to industry body UKIE, the UK video games industry is projected to generate £8.76 billion in 2025, up 7.4% on the previous year. Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider, and Football Manager were all created here.
Yet while the French government publicly celebrates studios like Sandfall Interactive, which has been nominated for 12 BAFTAs for Claire Obscure: Expedition 33, British developers are facing a record employment recession and investment drought driven by an AI gold rush.
Two Point Studios, which was founded in 2016 by British developers Bullfrog and Lionhead veterans, began operations from a Farnham, Surrey location with eight staff members. The company currently has approximately 50 employees.
The studio’s third BAFTA Games Awards nomination for a British award came after its most recent game, Two Point Museum, received nominations for Best British Game and Family Game at this year’s ceremony.
“We wanted to remain a very bijou, boutique studio,” co-founder and director Gary Carr told BBC Newsbeat. “We’re not too big; we’re just keen to remain a sensible size where everyone feels included.”
Design director Ben Haskins said the development scene in Guildford and its surrounding towns in the south of England remains one of the most collegial in the world. Studios including Supermassive, Hello Games, Glomade, and Ustwo all developed within the same network. “We’ve all worked together at one point or another,” Haskins said. “We take care of each other.”
Inside a studio like Two Point, optimism coexists with a harsh reality. Industry body TIGA has warned of a “record fall” in employment and a “collapse” in new start-up formation in the UK sector. According to sports writer and journalist Alana Pierce, the reason for this is largely structural.
“Most of the investors who are fueling the games industry have clearly run into AI quite a bit,” Pearce told BBC News. Publicly traded companies, he said, are “very nervous about making anything that isn’t almost guaranteed profit”, an almost impossible bar to set in a market competing with TikTok, AI apps and an ever-expanding library of rival titles.
This squeeze runs from major publishers to independent publishers. “All the big companies, but it goes all the way down to the indies as well, were just scared,” Pearce said.
Announced during the London Games Festival, the government’s new £28.5m Games Fund offers grants of up to £20,000 for new studios and up to £250,000 for companies looking to scale up. Creative Industries Minister Iain Murray admitted that the importance of video games to the British economy “has been ignored for too long”.
According to Adam Riches, the indie developer who developed Loco Motive, the independent studio received “really generous” funding, receiving an IGF nomination from Robust Games. Christopher Dring of The Game Business described the research as “a strong statement from the government that it is taking video games seriously as an economic and cultural force”, although research funding was limited compared to what the government provides for film and television projects.
The BAFTA Games Awards will take place on April 17 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. The Claire Obscure: Expedition 33 nominations, combined with the current state of the UK industry, will create a dual event at the ceremony that will reflect the current identity of the sector as well as honor its achievements.
