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TIGA say employment in the sector fell for the first time since 2011 during the year ending September 2025
The UK games industry is "seeing a decline of unprecedented scale and speed" according to the latest research done by video games industry trade association TIGA. According to TIGA's report, 1,537 development jobs were lost overall in the sector during the year-long period leading up to September 2025, marking the first downturn on that front in 14 years. Meanwhile, studio numbers have fallen and startup companies are struggling.
After 14 years of uninterrupted growth, we are now seeing a decline of unprecedented scale and speed," TIGA CEO Dr Richard Wilson puts it. "Without decisive policy intervention, the UK risks losing thousands of highly skilled jobs and ceding ground to better-supported international competitors. Enhancing the VGEC could create thousands of development jobs, improve studios' financial strengths, enable the development of new IP and put the sector back on the path of growth."
Delving into the data from the association's latest Making Games in the UK survey, the total number of people working in UK game development dropped from 28,516 to 27,347 between May 2024 and September 2025, with the number of freelancers growing during the same period. In line with that, the number of active companies in game development has now dropped to 2,110, having peaked at 2,175 in 2023, while the number of new startup studios is at "the lowest level in 15 years".
"Games company mortality stays high" reads another thoroughly depressing sub-heading, with 206 companies having shuttered during the year being tracked. TIGA also found that bigger studios accounted for the most job cuts, with "studios employing 15 or more staff [having] shed nearly 1,800 roles". That's arguably not too surprising given that the more people a studio employs, the more people they have potential to axe, but it does show that it it's simply a matter of smaller studios not being able to keep their heads above water or land a hit in a crowded medium with more games competing for players' attentions than ever before.
One of the couple of bright spots in the numbers cited by the association is that console-focused studios have weathered the storm best, with their employment rate falling by 2.1%. PC-focused studios, on the other hand, have seen a 13.2% decline, making them worse hit than both console studios and mobile ones, with the latter having dropped by 12.9%. Meanwhile, studios with just one to four or five to 15 staff saw their headcounts grow between May 2024 and September 2025, so the smallest fish in the pond are still managing to expand as they'd hope.
As they're wont to do, TIGA argue that these numbers are evidence the UK government should imcrease the tax relief they offer UK game development companies via the Video Games Expenditure Credit (VGEC) scheme. This, the association reckon, would help create more jobs while offsetting itself in terms of the government's books by generating more tax revenue from studios.
Though, UK tax incentives for game development not being as generous as TIGA reckon they should be is only one of the factions the association pointed to as driving factors behind the bad times, with "sluggish global games sales, poor access to finance for early-stage studios, [and] pandemic-era over-investment followed by restructuring" being the others. All of those, especially the latter two, seem a lot trickier to solve or offset in the long run.
English (US) ·