Research from tutorial feedback (Game industry)

 Home - TIGA

September 28, 2023 - Press release describing proposals put across by "TIGA" to the government for the "August statement" addressing important issues including the cost of living crisis. 

The proposals promote boosting the games industry in the UK including establishing funds and programmes. 

September 25, 2023 - Press release commenting on Unity's announcement that Personal plans will remain free, the "runtime fee" cap will be increased to $200,000 etc. The CEO of Tiga says "It’s good to see that Unity now plan to partially reverse a policy that could have been very damaging to the future of many games studios. "

Aside from these two posts, most of the recent news is about awards. 

There is another post about the Runtime fees from the 21st of September including a letter sent to parliament, which includes: 

"I am writing on behalf of TIGA, the trade association representing the UK’s video games industry, concerning plans announced by Unity, the game engine provider, to introduce Runtime Fees from January 1st 2024. The Government has recognised the creative industries as one of the UK’s five priority growth sectors. It is vital, therefore, that the tools and technology infrastructure strengthens our world leading video games industry. 34 per cent of the UK’s studio population (620 studios) focus primarily on mobile game development. These studios employ almost 20 per cent (3,867) of the games development workforce. Many of these studios will use Unity’s games engine. Unfortunately, Unity’s plans will harm many of these UK game studios."

It also describes the fees: "According to Unity’s announced plans, Runtime Fees will charge developers each time their game is installed once certain thresholds are reached. The fees will be levied on existing games and not just games launched from the beginning of 2024." The letter goes on to explain how this would be disadvantageous for smaller game design studios and how "The market for games engines is insufficiently competitive.". 

I was also told to look at "Skill set" but when searching online I assumed "ScreenSkills" was the website being mentioned  Careers, jobs and skills training in film, TV, VFX, animation and games - ScreenSkills 

I could not find any recent news about the games industry on this website but I did find a useful PDF 

Image source: Games career map - ScreenSkills

The PDF also shares information about the games industry but this is mostly dated to 2018. At this time game sales were at a record high and were increasing. There was also an increase in hardware sales including VR.

By searching "UK Games industry" in the news section of my search browser I found these recent articles 

It's interesting to note that both of these articles are by "Metro" 

When searching "UK Games industry job cuts" these articles also appeared (as well as a few more articles from Metro). 

In the Article titled "The games industry as a whole has cut over 6,000 jobs in 2023 so far" Written By Michael Beckwith The games industry as a whole has cut over 6,000 jobs in 2023 so far (msn.com)

It explains how some big companies like "Epic Games" who according to the article "laid off roughly 16% of its total workforce after discovering it had ‘financial problems.’" (This link is to another Metro article, but the main source was this Twitter post: Immature on X: "Tim Sweeney addresses Epic Games Layoffs... #UnrealFest https://t.co/49t4Tf20SA" / X (twitter.com) < In this Twitter video Sweeney Talks about the financial difficulties and how 3% of the engineering team and 30% of the business/sales/marketing team were laid off. ) 

The article goes on to mention that a possible reason for the layoffs is that "the industry isn’t making as much money from investments as it was during the days of the coronavirus pandemic." and that more people were hired during the pandemic because of this. (Suprise surprise this link is another Metro article... I think I am starting to see a pattern here.) 

Overall in my opinion this article seems a bit of an over-exaggeration, considering the few sources (aka links) were to other Metro articles or to websites that (in my opinion seemed not the most reliable). The most reliable source from the ones I looked at was the Twitter video which shows the CEO of Epic Games talking about the struggles and layoffs. The article also doesn't mention what will happen to the people who have been laid off. 

In an email from the CEO of Epic Games: Layoffs at Epic - Epic Games (Which was used as a source in one of the Metro articles sources) it mentions how there will be support provided to the laid-off employees. Obviously, it is not good to lose your job and I have very little knowledge about people getting laid off, however, the support being offered seems reasonable and the fact that this was not mentioned in the Metro post makes it seem somewhat biased from my perspective.

The most reasonable explanation from the article is the fact that the game industry experienced a boost during the pandemic due to everyone being at home and having more time to spend games (In particular I remember Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch being promoted a lot during this time) and because things have been going back to 'normal' people have less time to play games so by looking at the short term changes they seem negative but in the grand scheme of things, there might be a different story. For instance, it would be interesting to compare the current state of the game industry to the pre-pandemic state as well as how many additional people were hired over the pandemic in comparison to how many people are now being laid off. 

The article titled "The video games industry is broken and will not survive for long" (from Metro) seemed much more biased since it was a reader submission and had minimal sources to back up what was being said. 

Over 6,100 gaming jobs have been cut in 2023 (so far) | VentureBeat This article is much less biased and states the facts much more clearly. This includes a graph that shows the number of lay-off rounds per month and some information that puts the amount of cuts into perspective including how tech companies laid off 240,000 employees, which is much greater than the 6000 from gaming companies. 

However, this makes me question how many gaming jobs were cut in previous years? (I presume it is greater this year considering these articles are talking about it, but it would provide better context to put the number in reference to. I did try searching "Gaming jobs layoffs in 2022" but the first few search results were about 2023) The only article I could find with a quick search was this from May 2021: Even After a Boom Year, It’s Hard to Hold Onto a Job in Gaming - Bloomberg Judging from the information from this article the game industry as a whole is ever-changing, most likely due to games constantly gaining and losing popularity.

Also, the majority of these articles link to ** Game Industry Layoffs Blog ** (videogamelayoffs.com) this website was helped to be made by the same person who wrote the "VentureBeat" article. 

Another flaw is that although I included "UK" in my searches the "6000" used in the majority of these articles is referencing global game industry layoffs within 2023. 

The "Comprehensive list of resources" mentioned in the image above includes a link to Explore - The UK games industry (gamesmap.uk) which shows games companies in the UK (Which includes 2000+)

Accessed 10/10/23

There are also 700 Games related job listings for the UK on Indeed. Obviously, some might not be applicable to me, but there clearly are game companies looking to hire within the UK. 

Game Development Jobs - 2023 | Indeed.com Accessed 10/10/23