Record job losses despite an industry on the rise – what’s going on in UK gaming?
“I had just woken up and I got an email that said, ‘We’re going to have a company-wide meeting’. I knew right away.”
James, not his real name, was visiting his family earlier this year when he saw the message.
“I started thinking about everything I was set to lose.”
He had worked as a game designer at one of the UK’s biggest video game studios for nearly a decade. It was a job he loved and had dreamt of since he was nine years old. But recently he had been worried.
All around him, friends in the gaming industry were being let go.
“My mind was racing, what could I do? I wasn’t going to be the only one job-seeking at the moment because there were so many layoffs. They all happened at the same time.”
He went to the meeting, where his worst fears were confirmed. The company’s chief executive said around 25% of people at the studio would be cut. James was one of them.
“It was rough,” he said, shaking his head.
Gaming is an anxious world right now. There’s been more than 8,000 jobs cut globally since the start of this year and in March, the number of available jobs in the UK hit a record low, according to the report Games Jobs Live.
But in London, as the BAFTA Games Awards 2024 rolled around last week, gamers could just enjoy themselves.
It was a night of glitz and glam with a black-tie dress code. The red carpet was laid along London’s South Bank and hundreds of gaming’s elite turned out.
Baldur’s Gate 3 actor Neil Newbon poses on the red carpet at BAFTA Games Awards 2024.
The team behind Baldur’s Gate 3, the dungeons and dragons hit that went on to scoop Best Game, wandered the carpet taking selfies.
Nadji Jeter, the actor who played Spiderman in the latest game version of the comics, had come to London for the first time for the event.
“Oh my God, I’m so nervous,” he told Sky News, before going on to win the leading role trophy for his performance.
Comedian Phil Wang, who was hosting the night, swooned over legends whose games he’d played as a child.
Phil Wang hosts the BAFTA Games Awards 2024. Pic: BAFTA
But the gaming world is tight-knit. Workers often have to move to new cities and towns for jobs, so colleagues can form a huge part of people’s social circles. The redundancies weren’t far from people’s minds.
“Seeing people in the industry that I adore, who work hard and are damn talented, seeing them struggling is really rough,” said Baldur’s Gate 3 narrator Amelia Tyler.
“I think we’ll pull ourselves out of it, but it’s going to take a while.”
Mass redundancies have hit the industry hard for the last two years. More than 10,500 people working in video games around the world lost their jobs in 2023. More than 8,500 jobs went in 2022.
People hoped things would improve in 2024 but four months into the year, another 8,000 jobs have gone, and the UK is far from immune.
More than 8,000 people have lost their job in gaming in the first four months of 2024
Around 1,000 people across the country have lost their jobs since the cull began, according to Ukie, the industry trade body. That means more than one in 30 people working in video games in the UK is affected.
Swen Vincke, the founder of the studio that made Baldur’s Gate 3, didn’t pull any punches.
“It’s a stupid thing to do. There’s so much institutional knowledge that’s being lost and it just doesn’t make sense because it’s a thriving industry.
“There are more and more people that play games, so you should cherish the developers that are working in it.”
He’s got a point. Over 40 million people regularly play video games in the UK alone, and the UK industry is growing – it’s now worth £7.82bn to the economy.
So what’s going on?
One expert, George Osborn, who writes the Video Games Industry Memo, said there are three problems at play; COVID, delays in publishing games, and the cost of living crisis.
During lockdown, 61% of us played video games, according to Ofcom. Pic: iStock
“The video games industry has been hit by the COVID effect later than everyone else,” he said.
During COVID, when people were shut in their houses with nothing to do, video game sales soared. In just one year, the industry brought in 21% more money around the world, raking in £27.6bn more in 2020 than 2019, according to the global accounting firm PwC.
In response, the industry swelled. Games studios grew rapidly and hired more staff.
“That created a bubble in the industry and there was an overinvestment into games by investors who have since been burned because the market hadn’t been quite set,” said Osborn.
The lockdowns ended, people went back outside and they stopped buying as many games to fill their time.
Then there came the delays. At least 60 major games had their release dates delayed in 2021.
Most didn’t explain why but developers have since talked about the difficulty of working on these kinds of games remotely and in lockdown. When the games did start to get released, they flooded the market and made it harder for smaller games to get seen.
Alan Wake 2 was one of the biggest games to be released in 2023. Pic: Remedy Entertainment
In 2023, blockbusters The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake 2, Resident Evil 4 and Super Mario Bros. Wonder all came out, selling millions of copies each. It was a good year for the big games but much harder for everyone else.
James, the developer who was made redundant, said there was an expectation from his bosses that sales would remain at the same level as during COVID.
“It felt to me like the industry is still growing. It just wasn’t growing as much as they would like it to.”
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Like the rest of the world, gaming is also being hit by the cost of living crisis.
“Video game prices haven’t changed very much in the past five years,” said Osborn.
“That’s meant the cost of making games has gone up quite a lot while the market has softened, so even though the industry did really well last year, it wasn’t enough.”
Things might be looking up…
But there may be light at the end of the tunnel. Ukie has released figures that suggest the industry is growing again.
It hasn’t reached pandemic levels of growth, where double digits were the norm, but last year, 4.4% of value was added. Ukie’s chief executive Nick Poole, was keen to send an optimistic message.
“When you look at the way games are crossing over into other parts of our culture, what we’re seeing is an industry that’s come of age.”
And for James, there was good news too. Although he lost the job he had thought was stable, he has found a new studio to work at in a city where he has friends. For the first time ever, he asked about the company’s finances in his job interview.
“Maybe I was a little bit naive but I started in this industry in a booming time, so every job felt secure, it was just about what they could offer you. Now it doesn’t feel the same,” he said.
Sam Lake (R) poses on the red carpet at the BAFTA Game Awards 2024. Pic: BAFTA
Sam Lake, creator of Max Payne and Alan Wake, had some wisdom to share after over 30 years of work.
“I would like to be hopeful. In my experience, with all these things, it’s a pendulum swing. Things get worse and more troubled, or financially we struggle, but so far at least, we have always swung back.”
UK
Hundreds of NHS quangos to be axed – as plans unveiled for health funding to be linked to patient feedback
NHS funding could be linked to patient feedback under new plans, with poorly performing services that “don’t listen” penalised with less money.
As part of the “10 Year Health Plan” to be unveiled next week, a new scheme will be trialled that will see patients asked to rate the service they received – and if they feel it should get a funding boost or not.
It will be introduced first for services that have a track record of very poor performance and where there is evidence of patients “not being listened to”, the government said.
This will create a “powerful incentive for services to listen to feedback and improve patients’ experience”, it added.
Sky News understands that it will not mean bonuses or pay increases for the best performing staff.
NHS payment mechanisms will also be reformed to reward services that keep patients out of hospital as part of a new ‘Year of Care Payments’ initiative and the government’s wider plan for change.
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Speaking to The Times, chief executive of the NHS Confederation Matthew Taylor expressed concerns about the trial.
He told the newspaper: “Patient experience is determined by far more than their individual interaction with the clinician and so, unless this is very carefully designed and evaluated, there is a risk that providers could be penalised for more systemic issues, such as constraints around staffing or estates, that are beyond their immediate control to fix.”
He said that NHS leaders would be keen to “understand more about the proposal”, because elements were “concerning”.
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Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “We will reward great patient care, so patient experience and clinical excellence are met with extra cash. These reforms are key to keeping people healthy and out of hospital, and to making the NHS sustainable for the long-term as part of the Plan for Change.”
In the raft of announcements in the 10 Year Health Plan, the government has said 201 bodies responsible for overseeing and running parts of the NHS in England – known as quangos – will be scrapped.
These include Healthwatch England, set up in 2012 to speak out on behalf of NHS and social care patients, the National Guardian’s Office, created in 2015 to support NHS whistleblowers, and the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB).
The head of the Royal College of Nursing described the move as “so unsafe for patients right now”.
Professor Nicola Ranger said: “Today, in hospitals across the NHS, we know one nurse can be left caring for 10, 15 or more patients at a time. It’s not safe. It’s not effective. And it’s not acceptable.
“For these proposed changes to be effective, government must take ownership of the real issue, the staffing crisis on our wards, and not just shuffle people into new roles. Protecting patients has to be the priority and not just a drive for efficiency.”
Elsewhere, the new head of NHS England Sir Jim Mackey said key parts of the NHS appear “built to keep the public away because it’s an inconvenience”.
“We’ve made it really hard, and we’ve probably all been on the end of it,” he told the Daily Telegraph.
“The ward clerk only works nine to five, or they’re busy doing other stuff; the GP practice scrambles every morning.”
A haul of cocaine worth nearly £100m has been seized at a UK port, authorities say.
The haul, weighing 2.4 tonnes, was found under containers on a ship arriving from Panama at London Gateway port in Thurrock, Essex.
It had been detected earlier this year after an intelligence-led operation but was intercepted as it arrived in the UK this week.
With the help of the port operator, 37 large containers were moved to uncover the drugs, worth an estimated £96m.
The haul is the sixth-largest cocaine seizure in UK history, according to Border Force.
Its maritime director Charlie Eastaugh said: “This seizure – one of the largest of its kind – is just one example of how dedicated Border Force maritime officers remain one step ahead of the criminal gangs who threaten our security.
“Our message to these criminals is clear – more than ever before, we are using intelligence and international law enforcement cooperation to disrupt and dismantle your operations.”
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Container ships are one of the main ways international gangs smuggle Class A drugs into the UK, Mr Eastaugh said.
Cocaine deaths in England and Wales increased by 31% between 2022 and 2023, according to the latest Home Office data.
Elsewhere this weekend, a separate haul of 170 kilos of ketamine, 4,000 MDMA pills, and 20 firearms were found on a lorry at Dover Port in Kent.
One of the 20 firearms found at Dover Port. Pic: NCA
Experts estimate the ketamine’s street value to be £4.5m, with the MDMA worth at least £40,000.
The driver of the lorry, a 34-year-old Tajikistan national, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of smuggling the items, the National Crime Agency said.
Sir Keir Starmer has said fixing the UK’s welfare system is a “moral imperative” after the government’s U-turn.
The prime minister faced a significant rebellion over plans to cut sickness and disability benefits as part of a package he said would shave £5bn off the welfare bill and get more people into work.
The government has since offered concessions ahead of a vote in the Commons on Tuesday, including exempting existing Personal Independence Payment claimants (PIP) from the stricter new criteria, while the universal credit health top-up will only be cut and frozen for new applications.
Speaking at Welsh Labour’s annual conference in Llandudno, North Wales, on Saturday, Sir Keir said: “Everyone agrees that our welfare system is broken, failing people every day.
“Fixing it is a moral imperative, but we need to do it in a Labour way, conference, and we will.”
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Starmer defends welfare U-turn
Sir Keir also warned of a “backroom stitch up” between the Conservatives, Reform UK and Plaid Cymru ahead of next year’s Senedd elections.
He said such a deal would mark a “return to the chaos and division of the last decade”.
But opposition parties have hit back at the prime minister’s “imaginary coalitions”, with Plaid Cymru accusing Labour of “scraping the barrel”.
Reform UK said the NHS “isn’t safe in Labour’s hands” and people are “left waiting in pain” while ministers “make excuses”.
Voters in Wales will head to the polls next May and recent polls suggest Labour are in third place, behind Reform and Plaid.
Labour have been the largest party at every Senedd election since devolution began in 1999.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has not ruled out making deals with Plaid Cymru or Reform at the Senedd election.
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At the conference, the prime minister was joined on stage by Wales Secretary Jo Stevens, First Minister Eluned Morgan and deputy leader of Welsh Labour Carolyn Harries.
He described Baroness Morgan as a “fierce champion for Wales” and “the best person to lead Wales into the future”.
Sir Keir said the £80m transition board to support Port Talbot steelworkers after the closure of the plant’s blast furnaces was a result of “two Labour governments working together for the people of Wales”.
He described Nigel Farage as a “wolf in Wall Street clothing” who has “no idea what he’s talking about” on the issue.
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The PM said the Reform UK leader “isn’t interested in Wales” and has no viable plan for the blast furnaces at Port Talbot.
“When you ask him about Clacton, he thinks he’s running in the 2.10 at Ascot,” Sir Keir joked.
“He’s a wolf in Wall Street clothing.”
Mr Farage has said his party wants to restart the blast furnaces at Port Talbot.
Around 20 tractors were parked on the promenade in Llandudno ahead of the speech, as farmers gathered outside the conference to stage a protest.
It was later followed by a pro-Palestine demonstration of around 200 people, with around a dozen counter-protestors also in attendance.
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