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
Use of drones to fly weapons into prisons has become a ‘threat to national security’, watchdog warns
The use of drones to fly drugs and weapons into UK prisons needs to be tackled “urgently” because it has become a threat to “national security”, the chief inspector of prisons has said.
Charlie Taylor added that police and the prison service had in effect “ceded the airspace” around HMP Manchester and HMP Long Lartin to organised crime gangs who are using the gadgets to deliver contraband to inmates.
The two high security prisons hold some of the most dangerous men in the country, including terrorists and organised crime bosses.
Mr Taylor’s warning comes after inspections of HMP Manchester, based in the city centre, and HMP Long Lartin, in Evesham, Worcestershire, found both prisons had “thriving illicit economies” of drugs, mobile phones and weapons.
Inspectors also found that basic security measures such as protective netting and CCTV had fallen into disrepair.
Some inmates at HMP Manchester, a category B jail which holds a small number of category A prisoners, had burned holes in windows so that they could receive regular deliveries by drone, the HM Inspectorate of Prisons watchdog said as it published the findings of the inspections.
It added that many of the drones had “increasingly large payloads” which “had the potential to lead to serious disruption and even escape”.
Mr Taylor said: “It is highly alarming that the police and prison service have, in effect ceded the airspace above two high-security prisons to organised crime gangs which are able to deliver contraband to jails holding extremely dangerous prisoners including some who have been designated as high-risk category A.
“The safety of staff, prisoners and ultimately that of the public, is seriously compromised by the failure to tackle what has become a threat to national security.
“The prison service, the police and other security services must urgently confront organised gang activity and reduce the supply of drugs and other illicit items which so clearly undermine every aspect of prison life.”
The latest warning comes months after an inmate at high-security HMP Garth in Lancashire told inspectors the prison was like an “airport” because there were so many drones flying in drugs.
Inspectors found prisoners had been using the elements from their kettles to burn holes in their “inadequately protected” Perspex windows to allow the “entry of drones laden with contraband”.
Prisoners burned holes in their windows at HMP Garth. Pic: HM Inspectorate of Prisons
The inspections at HMP Manchester and HMP Long Lartin, which took place across September and October 2024, also revealed other serious concerns around safety and security at both sites.
Mr Taylor felt the situation was so bad at HMP Manchester that he issued an urgent notification for improvement to the Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood.
At Manchester, 39% of prisoners tested positive in mandatory drug tests, while at Long Lartin, 50% of those who responded to the watchdog’s survey said it was easy to get drugs and alcohol.
Violence and self-harm at both prisons was also found to have increased, which the watchdog said was partly driven by drugs and the accompanying debt prisoners found themselves in.
Meanwhile there had been six “self-inflicted deaths” at Manchester since the watchdog’s last inspection in 2021, with a seventh taking place after the most recent visit.
It is now one of the most violent prisons in the country, with a high number of serious assaults against prisoners and staff.
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Many officers “lacked confidence, were demoralised, and were struggling to manage experienced prisoners who were serving long sentences for serious crimes”, the watchdog said.
Manchester was also found to have a chronic rodent infestation, while there was widespread dirt, damp and litter at both sites.
Prisoners at Manchester were also found to have used torn-up foam from mattresses and pillows to keep out the cold.
Inspectors found 38% of prisoners there were locked up during the working day and poor attendance at education and work was further fuelling the boredom, drug-taking, self-harm and violence.
At Long Lartin, which houses both category A and B prisoners, a continued lack of in-cell toilets for many prisoners led them to use buckets and throw bags of excrement out of the windows, many of which were not cleared up, the watchdog said.
The Ministry of Justice said in a statement: “This government inherited prisons in crisis – overcrowded, with drugs and violence rife.
“We are gripping the situation by investing in prison maintenance and security, working with the police and others to tackle serious organised crime, and building more prison places to lock up dangerous criminals.”
Reform UK has grown in support to within one percentage point of Labour according to a new poll for Sky News by YouGov which suggests Britain has entered a new era of three-way party politics.
Sir Keir Starmer looks set to spend the parliament locked in a fight with two right-wing parties after Labour support dropped sharply in the first YouGov poll since the general election.
The poll shows the Tories have now been pushed into third place – two months after Kemi Badenoch was elected leader.
The data collected over the weekend puts Labour on 26%, Reform UK on 25%, Conservatives on 22%, Liberal Democrats on 14% and Greens on 8%.
This is a huge switch from the general election, when Labour was on 35%, Conservatives on 24%, Reform UK on 15%, Lib Dem on 13% and Greens on 7%.
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This is the first of YouGov’s weekly voting intention polls for Sky News, shared with The Times.
It reflects a drop in satisfaction with the government, a rise in support for Reform UK, and shows how the Labour vote has split in all directions since the election.
Labour has retained 54% of their vote at the general election – 7% have gone to the Lib Dems, 6% to the Green Party, 5% to Reform UK, 4% to the Tories – while 23% of those polled did not say, did not know or would not vote.
Reform UK’s vote has grown since the general election at the expense of all other parties, with 16% of voters who backed the Tories at the ballot last year now saying they’d support Reform.
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The judgement on Sir Keir’s first six months in office is damning, however.
Some 10% say the government has been successful while 60% say unsuccessful.
Older voters have turned away from Labour. Just 14% of over 65s would now vote Labour, down from 22% around the time of the election.
However, there are signs the Tory party remains a toxic brand. Reform UK are the least unpopular party, with a net favourability rating of -32, Labour a touch worse on -34 and the Tories down on -45.
YouGov interviewed 2,279 voters in Great Britain on Sunday 12 January and Monday 13 January.
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