The chair of the UK games industry trade body Ukie and the CEO of Monument Valley studio Ustwo Games say it’s becoming less viable for smaller studios to retain long-term employees.
In an interview with Game Developer, María Sayans said the studio has been making games that cost between £7 million and £10 million, with production cycles lasting 3-4 years, noting: “We need to lower that.”
The boss explained that Ustwo Games currently employs just under 30 people (down from a peak of around 40 while Monument Valley 3 was in development), before suggesting that the studio shouldn’t have hired so many full-time employees, and should have hired more contractors instead to ensure less of a long-term commitment.
“We’ve been a little bit too romantic about the idea that we should have employees and give people long-term job security,” Sayans said.
“I think that got us into a place where, reaching the heights of Monument Valley 3 [production], contractors were always a relatively low percentage of our employee base. I think that’s something we’re looking to change going forward.”
Sayans suggested that Ustwo would hire more contractors in the future, noting that this wasn’t something she ideally wanted to do but that the industry is now headed that way.
“I think going forward, we’ll see that we’ve got a core team and any growth will come through contractors, which is something I hate about the industry,” she said.
“I’ve been in the industry for 20 years, and those of us who joined in the early 2000s, we had it very good. You want to be able to give that kind of stability […] but I think that’s a shift in how we want to work with people going forward.”
According to Sayans, by employing more contractors and co-development teams, studios can keep their budgets and cash reserves more stable.
Ustwo recently said it was pivoting away from mobile to become a PC-first studio, because it believes the platform no longer offers a “solid base to build a long-term business around.”
Founded in 1989, Ukie is the UK’s leading trade body for the UK games industry, and represents over 2,000 games businesses supporting 73,000 jobs across the UK.
Last year, it noted that “there are currently 26,000 people employed directly in the video games industry in the UK, compared to the European average of 2,000 per country”, and that “each employee in the UK games industry adds an average of £113,000 in economic contribution – nearly double the national average”.
Ukie published an Employee Benefits Report in 2024, which stated that the industry is “striving to support its people despite economic pressures”. It added: “As the industry develops, the opportunity lies in creating benefits packages that not only retain talent but genuinely enrich working lives.
“With better communication tools, improved employee feedback processes, and a continued focus on long-term wellbeing, the sector can set a benchmark for the wider creative industry.”
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