Record job losses despite an industry on the rise – what’s going on in UK gaming?

Published

1 year ago

April 17, 2024

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“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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.”

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, 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

Four charged after £7m of damage caused to aircraft at RAF Brize Norton

Published

5 hours ago

July 2, 2025

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Four charged after £7m of damage caused to aircraft at RAF Brize Norton

Four people have been charged after £7m of damage was caused to two Voyager aircraft at RAF Brize Norton.

The investigation into the incident early on Friday 20 June was led by counter-terror police.

They have been charged with conspiracy to enter a prohibited place knowingly for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK – and conspiracy to commit criminal damage.

The four charged have been identified as:

• Amy Gardiner-Gibson, 29, of no fixed abode

• Daniel Jeronymides-Norie, 35, from London

• Jony Cink, 24, of no fixed abode

• Lewie Chiaramello, 22, from London

They will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court later today.

A 41-year-old woman arrested last week on suspicion of assisting an offender has been released on bail until 19 September.

Meanwhile, a 23-year-old man detained on Saturday was released without charge.

Last month’s incident at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire was claimed by the activist group Palestine Action.

Yesterday, MPs voted to proscribe the group as a terrorist organisation.

The legislation passed with 385 MPs voting in favour, while 26 were against.

UK

No 10 backs Chancellor Rachel Reeves and says she ‘is going nowhere’ after tearful appearance in Commons

Published

13 hours ago

July 2, 2025

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No 10 backs Chancellor Rachel Reeves and says she 'is going nowhere' after tearful appearance in Commons

Rachel Reeves has not offered her resignation and is “going nowhere”, Downing Street has said, following her tearful appearance in the House of Commons.

A Number 10 spokesperson said the chancellor had the “full backing” of Sir Keir Starmer, despite Ms Reeves looking visibly upset during Prime Minister’s Questions.

Politics latest: ‘A moment of intense peril’ for PM

A spokesperson for the chancellor later clarified that Ms Reeves had been affected by a “personal matter” and would be working out of Downing Street this afternoon.

Politics latest: Reeves looks visibly upset in Commons

UK government bond prices fell by the most since October 2022, and the pound tumbled after Ms Reeves’s Commons appearance, while the yield on the 10-year government bond, or gilt, rose as much as 22 basis points at one point to around 4.68%.

Downing Street’s insistence came despite Sir Keir refusing to guarantee that Ms Reeves would stay as chancellor until the next election following the fallout from the government’s recent welfare U-turn.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch branded the chancellor the “human shield” for the prime minister’s “incompetence” just hours after he was forced to perform a humiliating U-turn over his controversial welfare bill.

Emotional Reeves a painful watch – and reminder of tough decisions ahead

It is hard to think of a PMQs like it – it was a painful watch.

The prime minister battled on, his tone assured, even if his actual words were not always convincing.

But it was the chancellor next to him that attracted the most attention.

Rachel Reeves looked visibly upset.

It is hard to know for sure right now what was going on behind the scenes, the reasons – predictable or otherwise – why she appeared to be emotional, but it was noticeable and it was difficult to watch.

Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, Ms Badenoch said: “This man has forgotten that his welfare bill was there to plug a black hole created by the chancellor. Instead they’re creating new ones.”

Turning to the chancellor, the Tory leader added: “[She] is pointing at me – she looks absolutely miserable.

“Labour MPs are going on the record saying that the chancellor is toast, and the reality is that she is a human shield for his incompetence. In January, he said that she would be in post until the next election. Will she really?”

Not fully answering the question, the prime minister replied: “[Ms Badenoch] certainly won’t.

“I have to say, I’m always cheered up when she asks me questions or responds to a statement because she always makes a complete mess of it and shows just how unserious and irrelevant they are.”

Mrs Badenoch interjected: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

The prime minister’s watered-down Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill, aimed at saving £5bn, was backed by a majority of 75 in a tense vote on Tuesday evening.

A total of 49 Labour MPs voted against the bill – the largest rebellion in a prime minister’s first year in office since 47 MPs voted against Tony Blair’s Lone Parent benefit in 1997, according to Professor Phil Cowley from Queen Mary University.

After multiple concessions made due to threats of a Labour rebellion, many MPs questioned what they were voting for as the bill had been severely stripped down.

They ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to Universal Credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Ms Badenoch said the climbdown was proof that Sir Keir was “too weak to get anything done”.

Ms Reeves has also borne a lot of the criticism over the handling of the vote, with some MPs believing that her strict approach to fiscal rules has meant she has approached the ballooning welfare bill from the standpoint of trying to make savings, rather than getting people into work.

Experts have now warned that the welfare U-turn, on top of reversing the cut to winter fuel, means that tax rises in the autumn are more likely – with Ms Reeves now needing to find £5bn to make up for the policy U-turns.

Asked by Ms Badenoch whether he could rule out further tax rises – something Labour promised it would not do on working people in its manifesto – Sir Keir said: “She knows that no prime minister or chancellor ever stands at the despatch box and writes budgets in the future.

“But she talks about growth, for 14 years we had stagnation, and that is what caused the problem.”

UK

Prosecutors consider more charges against Lucy Letby

Published

16 hours ago

July 2, 2025

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Prosecutors consider more charges against Lucy Letby

Prosecutors are considering whether to bring further criminal charges against Lucy Letby over the deaths of babies at two hospitals where she worked

The Crown Prosecution Service said it had received “a full file of evidence from Cheshire Constabulary asking us to consider further allegations in relation to deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital and Liverpool Women’s Hospital”.

“We will now carefully consider the evidence to determine whether any further criminal charges should be brought,” it added.

“As always, we will make that decision independently, based on the evidence and in line with our legal test.”

Letby, 35, was found guilty of murdering seven children and attempting to murder seven more between June 2015 and June 2016 while working in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital and is currently serving 15 whole-life orders.

She is understood to have carried out two work placements at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, where she trained as a student, between October and December 2012, and January and February 2015.

Police said in December that Letby was interviewed in prison as part of an investigation into more baby deaths and non-fatal collapses.

A Cheshire Constabulary spokesperson said: “We can confirm that Cheshire Constabulary has submitted a full file of evidence to the CPS for charging advice regarding the ongoing investigation into deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at the neo-natal units of both the Countess of Chester Hospital and the Liverpool Women’s Hospital as part of Operation Hummingbird.”

Detectives previously said the investigation was looking into the full period of time that Letby worked as a nurse, covering the period from 2012 to 2016 and including a review of 4,000 admissions of babies.

Letby’s lawyer Mark McDonald said: “The evidence of the innocence of Lucy Letby is overwhelming,” adding: “We will cross every bridge when we get to it but if Lucy is charged I know we have a whole army of internationally renowned medical experts who will totally undermine the prosecution’s unfounded allegations.”

On Tuesday, it was confirmed that three managers at the Countess of Chester hospital had been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter in a separate investigation.

Police said the suspects, who occupied senior positions at the hospital between 2015 and 2016, have all been bailed pending further inquiries.

There is also an investigation into corporate manslaughter at the hospital, which began in October 2023.

A public inquiry has also been examining the hospital’s response to concerns raised about Letby before her arrest.

In May, it was announced the inquiry’s final report into how the former nurse was able to commit her crimes will now be published early next year.

Earlier this year, Letby’s lawyers called for the suspension of the inquiry, claiming there was “overwhelming and compelling evidence” that her convictions were unsafe.

In February, an international panel of neonatologists and paediatric specialists told reporters that poor medical care and natural causes were the reasons for the collapses and deaths.

Their evidence has been passed to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, and Letby’s legal team hopes her case will be referred back to the Court of Appeal.