At the Develop conference in Brighton this week, talk turns from cancelled deals and job cuts to replicating real human experiences and telling stories about diverse characters
F
or anyone looking to gauge the mood of the UK games industry in 2025, there has been only one place to hang out this week: the bar of the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in Brighton. It’s in this building that the annual Develop conference has been bringing together developers, publishers, students and journalists since 2006 – and during the three days of talks, roundtables and keynotes, it’s in the bar that everyone meets and unloads their theories and concerns about the state of the business.
This year, after many months of cuts and closures, the mood has been dour. On Tuesday, I spoke to many coders, artists and studio heads who have had games cancelled, staff axed and deals obliterated; several senior developers predicted that the recent savage cuts to staff numbers and game projects will lead to a gaping black hole in the release schedules of many triple-A publishers in late 2026 and 2027. Grand Theft Auto VI was always going to be huge; now it’s looking like the only game in town.
But there has been optimism at the event, too. An excellent panel discussion entitled Why Cultural Recognition is Crucial to the Future of the Games Industry saw Nick Poole, CEO of the trade body Ukie, welcoming a more positive view of the industry among politicians and policymakers in Westminster. “Three years ago, understanding of games was scant, but just recently there’s been a massive amount of recognition,” he said. “Suddenly, politicians are talking to us about the educational reach of games; the power of games for young people as a channel of self-expression; we’ve seen the first games being prescribed on the NHS as a treatment for anxiety and depression – there’s a recognition that the cultural echo of games is far greater than the economic proposition.”
