This article was originally published on 31 July 2026 - read the full issue

By Alex Spencer

That the UK game industry is in a difficult position right now is no great secret. But it’s useful to be able to quantify the subject – which is where the UK Games Industry Workforce Demographics Survey comes in. Based on responses collected between November 2025 and January 2026, this is the first such report from industry body UKIE since 2021, and its first to look at job losses. So, just how bad is the problem? 

According to the survey, just 38 per cent of respondents would recommend the UK as "a great place to work", a collapse from 66 per cent in 2021. Worse, 22 per cent of UK game workers were affected by a job loss in the three years from 2023–25. And that may well be a lowball estimate. 

The survey – sent out by participating UK employers but with the majority of responses coming through an open link shared in various industry groups online – is "likely to have missed those who lost their jobs and did not find a new job in UK videogames," as UKIE CEO Nick Poole pointed out in his executive summary, published alongside the report. 

Sticking to the numbers as reported, however, it’s worth noting that things grow noticeably worse for anyone in a marginalised group. "Job losses were not experienced equally by everybody," as Professor Mark Taylor, the report's research lead, put it while presenting the results on stage recently at Develop in Brighton. 

Thirty per cent of trans workers were affected (versus 20 per cent for cis) and 26 per cent for those who identify as LGBTQIA+ (18 per cent for straight). Among ethnic minorities and non-British white ethnic groups, the figure is 24 per cent (20 per cent for white British workers). 

Taylor cautioned that "I do not believe that organisations have been going through and systemically making redundant people who are part of marginalised groups." While he doesn't have any hard data to confirm it, Taylor’s suspicion is that these discrepancies are more likely connected with the seniority and type of role occupied by people in these groups – which is, of course, a diversity problem in its own right. 

Plugging the brain drain 

Catching up with Poole for the recording of UKIE co-organised showcase For One Night Only, he acknowledges the scale of the problem, but is keen to note that it might not be all bad news. 

Poole points to the stat that half of all respondents who left a job in games (including those for whom the move was voluntary as well as involuntary) began a new role within three months. "I'm quite encouraged by that data, because our big fear was a massive brain drain," he says. "What we're finding instead is what you tend to find after an economic shock: lots of people are starting up new things." 

One place in which UKIE's study does suggest such a loss of talent, however, is in the number of workers from other regions. The 2021 survey showed that 20 per cent of UK game workers had EU or EEA nationalities, down to 16 per cent by 2025, while staff from the rest of the world dropped from nine to eight per cent.

We ask Poole a question that may have an obvious answer: what has caused that European number in particular to drop so sharply? "I wonder what could have triggered that about seven years ago," he responds, referring to the UK's withdrawal from the EU in 2020 and its impact on freedom of movement. 

"We're a global industry. Talent is everywhere. We need to make great gains, which means being able to access that talent," Poole says. "A big part of the case to government, from our point of view, is, 'Let's bring down some of the frictions that have turned up in the last six or seven years,' whether that's the cost of visas, which has been increased significantly – I think wrongly – the complexity of international trade, and so on." 

But Brexit and its consequences cannot account for this entire dropoff, Poole argues.  

"It's not as simple as saying we put barriers up, although we did. Some of it is that you've got growth in other European territories, and so people are finding roles for themselves back home, in a way that maybe previously they would have come to the UK for.” 

What’s wrong with the UK? 

And what about the negative sentiment towards the UK industry – could that be putting people off working here? After all, according to this study, just 38 per cent of people would recommend it as a great place to work, down from 66 per cent in 2021. Thirty-five percent said they actively disagreed with that statement. "That indicator is probably the single clearest message to come out of this survey," says Poole. It is, he adds, "a totally natural response to precarious job circumstances." 

Perhaps more troubling, this sentiment increasingly seems to be turning into action. Eight percent of respondents said they are looking to leave the UK game industry within the next 12 months, almost half of whom said they’re seeking to leave "as soon as possible" (three per cent, up from just one per cent in 2021). Workers from EU and EEA countries, or from ethnic minority or non-British white backgrounds, are more likely to be looking to leave in the next year (11 per cent, in all cases – and it’s worth noting that, due to the phrasing of the question, this could mean either that they wish to stop working in the UK or in games as whole). 

Poole pushes back against the suggestion that this negative sentiment might be a contributing factor in the reduced number of European workers in the UK game industry. 

"[The UK is] still a great place to work and live," he says. "The cost of living [is high], OK, but there're still lots of benefits here. Things like the tax incentives, yes, they could be better, but they're still good enough to make us an attractive destination. And the UK has maintained its standing as a place for quality, for making great games. What we're not doing so much of is the AI race to the bottom and Web3, crypto stuff. That, I think, we’re happy to leave to other territories." 

Optimism for the future 

Poole's time in Brighton for Develop leaves him feeling optimistic about where the industry is headed: "You’re seeing deals being done, publishers increasing the amount that they're putting into early-stage games, £28.5m going into prototyping [via the government's UK Games Fund, launched in April]. But the narrative about the industry is still in this very negative place. I think that narrative is going to always be maybe six months behind the reality of where the deals are actually at." 

One reason for that lag, he says, is that "a lot of the companies that are doing well are keeping quiet about it, because it's bad form to be celebrating when people are suffering. I think what we're seeing is absolutely not a falling back of the UK industry. I think we’ve gone quiet about our successes. 

"That's something we can do more about, and something we're trying to do with For One Night Only. We're trying to say, 'Look, we've still got this incredible industry, all this incredible product – let's get out there on the front foot and celebrate that, while also being very open-eyed about the realities of some of these industry trends. We're all about supercharging the industry, and a lot of that is about being visible, being confident, and projecting to the world."

This article was originally published on 31 July 2026 - read the full issue