<\/p>\n
A survey from games recruitment firm Skillsearch has found that overall, 44% of respondents have considered leaving the industry due to redundancies. In the UK, 76% said they will be or are considering job hunting outside of the industry in 2026.<\/p>\n
The annual Salary & Satisfaction survey collected responses from 1,000 respondents across the UK, Europe, North America, APAC, and MENA regions between November 12, 2025 and February 24, 2026.<\/p>\n
22% of respondents had been made redundant in the past year, and 12% said they had been made redundant more than 12 months ago. The leading causes of redundancies were reduced investor funding, budget cuts, and a lack of projects.<\/p>\n
Only 35% of respondents said that they or their studio had been unaffected by redundancies, while 28% said their studio had made layoffs, but they weren’t personally affected.<\/p>\n
Of those who had been laid off, 45% have since secured new employment. However, only 27% said they feel secure in their new role.<\/p>\n
In terms of the time to find a new job, 21% said they were able to secure employment in less than a month, while 33% said it took between one and three months, 20% said it took between four and six months, 19% said it took seven to 12 months, and 8% said it took more than a year.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Art was listed as one of the “most impacted areas of redundancy.” Other impacted areas include senior roles, companies with more than 250 employees, and people with 10+ years of experience. The UK was listed as the most impacted country.<\/p>\n Many professionals in key regions are considering new roles in 2026, citing concerns about job security, compensation, and opportunities for more challenging projects. 53% of people would consider relocating for a new job if it offered a higher salary and relocation package, though job security and cost of living remain concerns. 38% have declined offers due to inadequate relocation packages.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, the survey found that nearly half of game professionals are concerned about increased AI use, and 64% believe it negatively affects industry creativity.<\/p>\n Respondents’ top concerns about AI were job security, loss of creative authenticity, and ethical use. They also highlighted benefits such as increased efficiency, cost savings, and greater output from smaller teams.<\/p>\n More than half of respondents reported that they or their company have adopted AI tools, while 29% said their company has ethical AI policies or guidelines.<\/p>\n Looking at the overall workforce, it remains predominantly male at 74%, with the majority of respondents falling into the 25 to 34 (39%) and 35 to 44 (37%) age groups. 66% of respondents are in permanent employment, while almost half have over ten years of industry experience.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the UK, which accounts for 43% of responses, average salaries were \u00a3199,833 for C-suite roles, \u00a3110,442 for directors, and \u00a330,357 for junior positions. Director-level roles in programming and business operations are the highest paid, at \u00a3130,963 and \u00a3112,495, respectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A survey from games recruitment firm Skillsearch has found that overall, 44% of respondents have considered leaving the industry due to redundancies. In the UK, 76% said they will be or are considering job hunting outside of the industry in 2026. The annual Salary & Satisfaction survey collected responses from 1,000 respondents across the UK,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[6769,77,4804,4759,5369,6771,6770],"class_list":{"0":"post-6853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news","8":"tag-considered","9":"tag-games","10":"tag-industry","11":"tag-leaving","12":"tag-professionals","13":"tag-redundancies","14":"tag-result"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}