The UK games industry is the fourth largest in the world and bigger than the country’s film and music industries combined.
But beneath the surface lies an industry built on toxic crunch culture, union busting and a constant threat of layoffs.
Despite being valued at over £5 billion, layoffs are constant in the games industry and the last few years have seen them becoming more and more common.
As with much of the tech space, layoffs are often attributed to vague ‘market shifts’ and ‘restructuring’.
According to the GDC State Of The Games Industry 2025 report, one in ten developers worldwide has been laid off in the last year.
Within the UK specifically, this year has seen layoffs from Rockstar Games, Build A Rocket Boy, Avalanche Studios, Turn10, Rare and countless others.
In reaction to the state of the industry, the UK Government has founded the U.K. Video Games Council to support studios and drive growth, similar to Scotland’s existing Games Strategy.
However, some have criticised this new council for largely being comprised of massive studios and existing to further their growth rather than protect the thousands of developers they employ.
Layoffs have also been tied to acts of union busting, most recently with Rockstar Games, which terminated over 30 employees at the start of November, all of whom supposedly had ties to a potentially forming union within the studio.
However, Rockstar claims that these terminations were linked to the leaking of confidential information, although no leaked information has been found in relation to this claim.
Union busting is not new to the games industry; however, allegations of union busting are difficult to prove without legal action.
The above issues are further compounded by the existence of AI, which threatens to replace roles all across the sector.
Generative AI is now used in more than half of all game studios served in one way or another; however, opinions on it are mixed even within the industry.
Some studios mandate the use of AI, while others ban it outright, but these decisions are often made by the higher-ups.
In a survey of developers, 30 per cent of them believed that generative AI was having a negative effect on the industry, while only 13 per cent believed the impact was positive.
There are countless other issues facing the industry, over 40 per cent of developers work more than 41 hours per week, for example, but very little is known about the work culture in most studios, as strict non-disclosure agreements prevent developers from speaking out.
For an industry as profitable as this, employees deserve to work safely and comfortably, without constant fear of being laid off.
But it will likely be up to the government to intervene and implement changes in legislation.
Until that happens, developers will be stuck in a parasitic industry that exploits them for all their worth and gives nothing back.
Feature Image Credit: GDC
Features Editor and Head of Podcasting.
Fourth-year Journalism and Politics student.
Primarily focus of Politics, Technology, Gaming and Pop-Culture
