This week, we speak to Nick Poole, CEO of British trade body UKIE, about its latest survey, which reveals that the UK appears to be in decline as a location game developers would recommend, with 38 per cent of respondents considering it "great", down from 66 per cent in 2021.

Next, we chat to Prideful Sloth about the early successes of cozy city-builder Go Go Town! and why the idea of "micro-triple-A" works for the Australian studio.

Then recommendations for more views on TikTok in Social Commentary and some Extra bits to keep you stimulated, as well as highlights from the current issue of Edge.

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."

Go-Go Town!, Prideful Sloth's just-released cosy city-builder, has worked. Developed in a climate of brutal discoverability issues for indies and arriving after two years of PC Early Access, the self-published Go Go Town! hit over 2,300 concurrent players on Steam during its July 17 launch weekend, and briefly swept the regional Switch 2 digital charts, getting to second place in the US and number one in the UK and Japan. 

Not bad for a company with five employees. 

The Australian developer has shipped three commercially successful titles – Yonder (2017), Grow: Song Of The Evertree (2021) and now Go-Go Town! – without ever growing much beyond half-a-dozen people. 

The Brisbane studio briefly scaled up for Grow, reaching nine in-house staff and around 14 full-time equivalents once contractors were added. It didn't stick. 

"We just looked at the numbers and the team size and we found we were spending more time managing and less time working," co-founder Cheryl Vance tells Knowledge. 

"We set up the company because we liked making games. We made a conscious decision to pull back some of those roles, which is always an unfortunate thing." 

The studio settled at five, a size Vance describes as suiting "the type of management style that we have as directors" and one that keeps "the dinosaur studio", whose youngest member is 41, as nimble as possible: "That team size and dynamic is nice because it makes the team more reactive to things," she says. "The bigger a team gets, the less reactive you can be." 

Self-published by choice, not necessity 

The studio's setup has been a happy accident of sorts, the current industry climate favouring smaller teams with lower costs. The reactivity the "dinosaurs" gained from staying small has bled into publishing and marketing. 

Go-Go Town! is self-published, following a publisher's exit from the market partway through development. The studio worked with 505 Games on Grow, its second title, but not this time. 

"Generally speaking, we prefer to be self-published," Vance says. The issue, for her, is less about publishers doing a bad job than about pricing consistently intangible work: "When you sign a contract with publishers, they want to know what you're delivering. It's very concrete. And they have this nebulous thing that they're doing, and you can't ever ask what the value of that nebulous marketing thing is." 

She's careful not to generalise: "I can't say they're all bad. There are definitely good deals and good people and good relationships out there," but "a lot of the people getting into those deals, it's because they need the money."

Prideful Sloth is in the enviable position of being financially stable after previous successes. That independence allowed for two years of Early Access development for Go Go Town!, which Vance says the studio would repeat without hesitation. The game entered a private playtest around 15 months into development, moved into full Early Access once the team had "a solid MVP", and used the two years that followed to rebuild core systems, such as tutorials and the tech tree, based on recurring feedback. 

The changes were substantial enough that the eventual 1.0 release broke compatibility with existing saves. 

"It was kind of like, 'We can support your saves, or you can get three months' less development on the game,'" she laughs. "We figured people want three more months of development on the game." 

Review scores have climbed since launch, which Vance takes as vindication of the Early Access process. That experience underpins the advice she gives most readily to smaller teams entering the cosy genre (or, as she's keen to point out, any genre): don't commit to a direction before it's been tested. 

"You need to do your market research… Get to a point where you can vet and sanity check as soon as possible if it's a viable project," she says. "Test your audience early and find out: is it a good game? Will people start latching onto it?" 

Different KPIs, not smaller versions of the same ones 

Directing Go Go Town!'s development in this way is the result of a ruggedly independent outlook formed since Prideful Sloth was formed 11 years ago. Vance, who worked in triple-A companies such as Activision Blizzard and Ninja Theory before founding the studio with Joel Styles and John Northwood, is now part of a tiny, massively experienced team maturing into a bona fide self-publishing success. 

"As employees, it was great to make those big games, but you still just got a salary and somebody else got the good dollars," she says. Prideful Sloth is not chasing Palworld-scale numbers, but has, in her words, "done OK enough" to raise staff salaries on this project. Control over the studio and its products is the compensation: discretion over spend, including on physical events, which she treats skeptically: "Physical events don't return, we know this – but it's an opportunity space, and you have to be OK with spending money for an opportunity that may never eventuate." 

Prideful Sloth has a year-long post-launch roadmap for Go-Go Town!, covering fixes and further content, which will bring total development time to five years. Beyond that, Vance says the studio has no shortage of ideas for its next mainline title, but wants a shorter "palate cleanser" project first. Its shape, she says, is still undecided.

SOCIAL COMMENTARY

Highlights from industry chat channels

What was it about 1666: Amsterdam that made creative director Patrice Désilets put himself through years of legal wrangles and associated difficulties in order to realise his dream? "It's a really good question," he laughs. "First, I knew that we had something. Then, when Ubisoft eventually kicked me out of the office, my partner and I went to have a sandwich. When we received the bill, it was $16.66. I was like: 'OK, let's continue'." 

The coincidences didn't end there. Further instances of serendipity helped to reassure Désilets that the 1666: Amsterdam project was worth pursuing, and in Edge 426, out now, he and his colleagues at Montreal's Panache Digital explain how they've pushed towards the finish line on an idea that first stirred into life towards the end of the PS3/360 era.  

In other features, Hideki Kamiya's Collected Works guides us through his celebrated CV, from Resident Evil to the forthcoming Okami sequel, while in The Making Of… we talk to Blue Manchu about the creation of Void Bastards, and in Time Extend we rewind to the GameCube launch for another run at Super Monkey Ball. Dan Marshall's Size Five Games is the focus of our Studio Profile slot, and elsewhere we check in with Fumito Ueda to discover some of the inspiration behind the forthcoming Gen Atlas.  

As per tradition, our post-Summer Game Fest edition is a preview special, featuring 100 forthcoming games to watch, while new releases such as Star Fox, Rhythm Paradise Groove, Beastro and Gothic 1 Remake arrive for review. 

Edge 426 is in UK shops now and available to buy online here.

We'll be back next week. In the meantime, don't forget to share your feedback with us by email ([email protected]), and follow us via Bluesky and LinkedIn.