Ukie, the trade organization for the UK video games and digital entertainment industry, conducted 15 roundtable discussions with over 50 businesses along with two surveys with a combined 300 repsonses. The purpose of these studies was to explore the impact of COVID-19 on the UK games industry.
This week, the organization published its findings suggesting minimal disruption to the industry, with video games businesses proving “remarkably resilient” during the crisis. This is according to Jo Twist, CEO at Ukie.
The key stats published in the report are as follows:
- 45% of games businesses have seen their game revenues increase since the crisis started, while another 4% reported significant increases.
- Overall, productivity never fell below 80% even during the worst of the COVID crisis.
- 80% of games companies are not planning to reduce headcount in response to the crisis, with 63% of businesses feeling confident they won’t have to consider closure in the next six months.
- Only 24% of games businesses needed government financial support during the crisis, with just 17% using the furlough scheme.
- Around a quarter of games companies kept hiring new people despite the crisis.
- Moving forward though, 56% of games companies are expecting difficulties securing investment in the coming six months as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, with 24% believing that these difficulties will be either significant or potentially business critical.
- Furthermore, 67% of games businesses expect that future publishing deals will also be negatively impacted and that delays may impact upon their bottom line.