Money Money Money
Lockdown causes UK video games revenue to hit $5.7bn in 2020
Market saw a 14.5 per cent increase year-on-year, digital rose by 16.5 per cent
Switch It Up
Animal Crossing: New Horizons continues to dominate the UK charts
Multiple Nintendo Switch games have stormed the charts
Proving Popular
Mobile gaming in the UK has been on the rise over the past year
"Mobile gaming has exploded in the last 12 months as people across the UK have spent more time at home"
Going Mobile
Mobile is the primary platform for developers in the UK
"Mobile remains the most popular platform for UK games studios, but the proportion of UK development studios focused primarily on this category has been steadily falling"
Growing Industry
Nearly 80% of UK developers work outside London
"The video games industry can play an important role in levelling up the economy"
Get Some Candy
The UK crowns its first Candy Crush Saga champion
Adam ‘Tango’ Holland is a Guinness World Record holder
Opinion Tick Boxes
UK's call for views over loot boxes and gambling
Consultation runs until 22 November
It's Mario
Super Mario 3D All-Stars jumps its way to the top of the UK charts
The third best launch of 2020
Back In Business
The National Videogame Museum will reopen on August 22nd
It was forced to close due to COVID-19
Game On
Esports firm Vindex to buy Belong brand from GAME for around $50 million
Plans to invest $300 million over the next five years
Bouncing Back
The UK games industry is showing resilience against the coronavirus
45 per cent of businesses have increased revenue
Banned
The UK bans Huawei from its 5G networks
"The UK can no longer be confident it will be able to guarantee the security of future Huawei 5G equipment"
Switching On
Nintendo Switch sales have more than doubled in the UK since last year
Likely due to the lockdown
Gambling
The UK's House of Lords calls for loot boxes to face gambling regulations
DCMS first investigated the issue last year
Loot Boxes
The UK government is asking for evidence to determine if loot boxes are a form of gambling
Concerns are rising over child gambling addiction
Need Funding?
The UK Games Fund selects 38 studios for funding
Mobile studios include Panic Barn and Jolly Good Games
Mel-lionare
Former King chairman Mel Morris tops the 2020 UK gaming rich list
Worth over $1 billion combined
Thank You Nhs
Ukie launches new initiative for NHS workers, Games for Carers
Over 85,000 games will be made available
See Eu Later
What do UK mobile game developers think of Brexit?
Post-referendum discussion from the UK mobile games industry
Brum Brum
Zynga expands NaturalMotion with new Birmingham studio
Will focus on racing games
Expansion
UK dev Exient expands headcount as it focuses on new license deals
“The success of Lemmings has borne this out”
Gotta Collect 'em All
Tencent spends $30 million acquiring 10% of UK studio Sumo Digital
Invests in Sheffield co-developer
Huge Suck-cess
Luigi’s Mansion 3 hoovers up the competition to become Switch’s biggest launch of 2019
Places second in overall charts to Call of Duty
Soft Launch
RuneScape enters early access on Android
Supports cross-play with desktop
Loose Change
Coin Master cashes in over $500 million in global revenue at $6.20 per download
Moon Active’s title has surpassed 81 million downloads
Uk Powerhouse
NorthEdge Capital acquires Curve, Kuju and Testronic for $113 million
Roll-up rolled up
High Kpis
Warhammer Combat Cards boasts Day 7 retention of 34% and 15% payer conversion
TCG off to a great start
Stock Sold
India's Reliance Entertainment reduces ownership to 14.2 per cent of Codemasters
Racing firm's CEO Frank Sagnier says that OnRush has been played by 2.5m people as of March 2019
Galleons
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite makes $300,000 in first 24 hours from US and UK
Tops US App Store however can’t match the numbers of Pokemon Go
Data
UK games industry gender pay gap widens
Median hourly wage for women drops 4.78 per cent, mean figure down four per cent
Blitz Meets Socom
How Forces of Freedom is shooting for mobile eSports success
Reinventing the coffee-break
On The Map
New UK Games Map shows country's 2,000 games companies
Showing the true scale of the British games industry
Tiga Findings
Games industry contributes $1.6 billion to UK GDP
Growth across the industry at an all-time high
Fast Forward
Shifting gears: the making of CSR Racing 2
GM Julian Widdows on making racing social
One Special Day
UK studios making 15 July One Special Day by offering revenues to disabled gaming charity SpecialEffect
Bossa Studios, Tag Games, and many more on board
The Big One
Save the date: PG Connects London 2017 is go on January 16th-17th
Call for speakers, Super Early Bird tickets - we're all set
A New Chapter
Traditional book publishing meets gaming as Hachette UK acquires Neon Play
UK's second largest publishing group diversifies
A New Strategy
How Space Ape's next games take an either/or approach to market trends and passion for gameplay
COO Simon Hade on playing with new genres
Iap Inspector
Join the club: Monetisation and VIP privileges in RAID HQ
IAPs from the players' perspective
Tranzfuser Infusion
UK Games Fund's student competition Tranzfuser announces its first entrants
20 teams competing for a chance to pitch their prototypes
A Cat Reborn
Why we ditched "esoteric" UI and fixed poor retention to give Lumo's Cat another life
Steve Stopps on creativity in the right places
London Calling
Pokerist dev KamaGames expands with new London office, hires Daniel Kashti and Sam Forrest
Appoints new CMO and PR
Looking Ahead
How Fierce Kaiju got in on the ground floor of VR and avoided making its "Barbie game"
From Blast Furnace's ashes
What's Next?
Updated: With CSR Racing 2 still in soft launch, studio boss Jason Avent leaves
Boss Alien loses boss
Outside The Box
Her Story is brilliant but the UK game industry needs to gets to grips with games-as-a-service to have global significance
Time to break out of niche
Listen To Your Players
Are you making the most of your user reviews? Not without Player XP
CEO Garry Barter on isolating helpful reviews
Rebooting
Peak mobile hits iPhone graphics chip outfit Imagination Technologies as it cuts a further 200 jobs
UK company reorganising
London Law
Miniclip's lawyer Brian Chadwick leaves to head Cooley's European Digital Media Practice
His work there is done
Studio Profile
How Kuato Studios is teaching kids through mobile games
London's studio wants to teach through fun
Triple-a To Free-to-play
From Fable to BattleHand: How Another Place moved from triple-A console to mobile games-as-a-service
The London studio's co-founders explain its life so far