The Top 50 UK Game Makers of 2026

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• Squad Busters
• Hay Day

In these lists, the number 50 spot is sometimes reserved for something a bit more unique, like a studio with potential to make its way up the list in future years. Last year, Supercell officially established a new London studio following the 100% acquisition of Space Ape - a developer that is no more after being fully subsumed into the mothership.

Led by GM Lasse Seppänen, the team employs around 100 staff and has worked on titles like Hay Day and the ill-fated Squad Busters. It’ll likely be some time before we see a brand new game come out of the team, but it’s an exciting moment for the UK’s games industry to see a major developer open a new branch in the country. It’s a reflection of the sector’s talent base and a bet that they can help power Supercell’s next era after a substantial restructure.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Tencent

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• Mindset Go
• Beneath The Six

It’s not often a developer comes up with something truly innovative that sets a potential path for global success. Scratch that - it’s a common marketing strategy. But with developer Magicave, it feels like that could just be possible.

The team, which includes CEO Harry Holmwood and creative director Ste Curran, launched two games in the past year: Early Access turn-based roguelike Beneath The Six and venn diagram-based puzzle game Mindset Go.

Magicave hopes the latter can be the new Sudoku - and it has bags of promise. The title is available as a mobile game and on the web. Meanwhile, it also struck an exclusive partnership deal with The Observer newspaper to make the leap from mobile to print, with weekly puzzles published each week to enjoy offline. Mindset could just be a name to remember for the coming years.

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• Dead Reset
• Sker Ritual
• Into the Restless Ruins

Flying the flag for Wales’ games industry, the aptly named developer and publisher Wales Interactive was formed back in 2011 and has crossed an array of genres in that time across all platforms.

It became most famous for its work in the revival of the FMV games genre, thanks to games like The Bunker, Late Shift and Five Dates. The company has reimagined itself yet again in recent years with the successful release of zombie survival FPS Sker Ritual in 2024.

In 2025, it published titles across various genres including Little Army Studio’s Slasher: Origins, Ant Workshop’s Into the Restless Ruins and its latest FMV game Dead Reset with Dark Rift Horror.

Never a studio to rest on its laurels, it has a host of games slated for 2026, including the recent release of Heart of the Forest, April's Hazard Levels and the upcoming Deathtrap Dungeon: The Golden Room.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Dark Rift Horror

Ant Workshop

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• Trash Goblin
• PowerWash Simulator – Wallace & Gromit Special Pack

As co-owner Nicholas Lovell wrote, Spilt Milk was once days away from not being able to meet payroll. It was also turned down by 76 publishers. Back in 2023, Spilt Milk Studios, which has worked on games such as Tango Fiesta, King of Crabs and Picture Everything, launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for “wholesome, cosy shopkeeping game” Trash Goblin.

The campaign proved successful, earning the studio nearly £95k, above its £70k goal to develop the game. Meanwhile, the company also picked up extra money to invest in its operations from the UK Games Fund/

Trash Goblin saw a full launch on PC in 2025 and continues to receive updates. Not just releasing Trash Goblin, Spilt Milk also partnered with FuturLab to make the Wallace & Gromit Special Pack for the hit game PowerWash Simulator in what was an award-winning year for the studio.

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• Town to City
• The Precinct
• Draw It

Kwalee is a chameleon of the games industry, constantly adapting to new genres, business models and platforms. After it was founded in May 2011 by former Codemasters co-founder and CEO David Darling, the firm eventually found success in the hypercasual genre.

The company has been a regular in the Top 50 Mobile Game Makers list over the years, thanks to hit titles like Draw It, Airport Security, Hunt & Seek and many more driving the number of downloads across its portfolio to over one billion.

In 2021, the company expanded its publishing operations to PC and console. In the past year it has published Galaxy Grove’s Town to City and Fallen Tree Games’ The Precinct, among other titles, as it expands its portfolio across platforms, setting itself up from a transformation beyond the world of hypercasual mobile games.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Galaxy Grove

Fallen Tree Games

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• Idle Obelisk Miner

Hailing from County Armagh in Northern Ireland, Checkbox Entertainment is a mobile games developer behind clicker Idle Obelisk Miner.

The studio isn’t exactly shouting about its performance to date, picking up an estimated $11 million from player spending across the App Store and Google Play to date, according to AppMagic data.

But with the release of version 2.0 in December 2025, and subsequently a record-setting month where it amassed an estimated $1.1m - the first time it hit seven figures, the game has shown its potential to scale. That’s off the back of a modest 933k downloads to date, too, which by wider industry standards, isn’t exactly setting the UA hose to full blast.

Flying under the radar right now, Checkbox Entertainment is a studio with bags of potential that’s worth keeping an eye on.

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• Love & Pies

Trailmix was first set up in 2017 by Carolin Krenzer and Tristan Clark. The duo helped set up King’s London studio (also on this list), which created the $2 billion hit mobile game Farm Heroes Saga.

Off the back of that experience, they set about forming their own studio with Trailmix, with early backing by Clash of Clans developer Supercell. The Finnish outfit came back later to acquire a majority stake in the studio for $60 million in 2022.

The company’s flagship title is merge game Love & Pies, which has earned an estimated $96 million to date across the App Store and Google Play, per AppMagic estimates.

In 2023, Trailmix opened a second studio in Berlin, while in March 2024 the studio was named as one of Tech Nation’s Future Fifty companies.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Supercell

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• Stumble Guys

Based in UK games industry hub Dundee, Tag Games was first established back in 2006, one of the country’s earliest mobile-focused developers. This year, it will celebrate its 20th anniversary.

Over the years, the company worked with its own IP and top licences, including games such as Angry Birds Action!, The Game of Life, Prison Architect Mobile and Moshi Monsters Village.

Then in 2023, mobile games giant Scopely, behind smash hits like Monopoly Go, swooped in to acquire the studio as part of its strategy to bring in ‘best-in-class teams’ to its operations. Given its expertise and history handling IPs, it’s no wonder Tag Games was set to work on party game Stumble Guys, which has run through a series of big licensing deals, including the recent Miraculous Ladybug partnership.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Scopely

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• Little Nightmares III
• The Casting of Frank Stone
• Directive 8020

Like many studios in the business, Supermassive Games contended with another challenging year for the games industry, laying off around 36 staff in 2025.

Despite these challenges, the Nordisk Film-owned developer has continued releasing new games each year, flying the flag for the horror genre with titles like Until Dawn, The Quarry and The Dark Pictures Anthology over the years.

In more recent times, the studio released The Casting of Frank Stone with Behaviour Interactive in September 2024 and Little Nightmares III with Bandai Namco Entertainment in October 2025.

Next up for Supermassive Games, which is approaching 18 years old this year, is sci-fi survival horror title Directive 8020, the fifth entry in The Dark Pictures Anthology, set to hit console and PC platforms in May 2026

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Nordisk Film

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• Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
• Citizen Sleeper

Jump Over the Age is a one-person studio run by British developer Gareth Damian Martin. Their games include adventure title In Other Waters, narrative RPG Citizen Sleeper and its 2025 follow-up, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector.

The titles have a distinctly stylistic visual identity, achieving critical acclaim and a host of awards nominations from the likes of The Games Awards, the BAFTA Games Awards, winning the Social Impact Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards 2023.

The Citizen Sleeper series has been a huge success story for this UK indie, with the titles played by more than 2.5 million players across PC and console. For all the challenges of launching new games in a crowded market and the large studios on this list, developers like Jump Over the Age are keeping the indie dream alive.

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• After Inc.
• Plague Inc.
• Rebel Inc.

Ndemic Creations is most famous for its hit strategy title Plague Inc., which has amassed more than 200 million downloads to date. The game remains popular well beyond its 2012 release and became particularly famous during the real-world global COVID-19 pandemic.

After Inc. is the latest title from the developer, released on mobile in late 2024 and in Steam Early Access in June 2025. Instead of causing the end of humanity like in Plague Inc., this title tasks players with rebuilding civilisation after a zombie apocalypse. The strategy title is described as a mix of strategic simulation, survival city builder, and mini 4X.

After Inc., which is currently slated to leave Early Access in early 2026, has picked up more than 3.5 million players so far and was one of the top paid mobile games of the year worldwide in 2025.

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• Love Island: The Game
• Big Brother: The Game
• The Traitors: Interactive Game

Fusebox Games is a studio that just keeps on growing. Following a record year in 2024, the developer smashed it out of the park with an even more impressive 2025. Naturally, the title leading the charge for the interactive fiction specialist was Love Island: The Game, based on the hit British reality TV show.

According to AppMagic estimates, the title amassed a record $5.4m from player spending in a single month in July 2025 - which took place during season 12 of the show. It’s no wonder Indian games giant Nazara snapped up the developer in 2024 for $27.2 million.

Since that purchase, Fusebox has secured a couple new licences, including Big Brother and Bigg Boss. The studio has also picked up the rights to make a mobile game based on the smash hit TV show The Traitors, with a mobile title expected to launch in 2026.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Nazara Technologies

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• Hell Let Loose
• Date Everything!
• Golf With Your Friends 2

Team17 was first founded 35 years ago in 1990. Historically most famous for the Worms franchise, Team17 has evolved into a publishing label backing hit indie titles for years.

At the start of 2025, the publicly traded Team17 Group rebranded as Everplay Group, consisting of the development and publishing operations at Team17, educational games studio StoryToys and German simulation games developer Astragon Entertainment.

In December 2025, it acquired a 20% stake in Bulkhead-owner Super Media Group as part of a consortium-led takeover of the company. It’s now partnering with the Battalion 1944 developer on new title Wardogs and is exploring co-development opportunities for future titles in the Hell Let Loose franchise.

Despite falling revenue in the first half of the year, Everplay said by the end of 2025, overall revenue was flat, while gross profit rose 10%.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Team17

StoryToys

Astragon Entertainment

Super Media Group

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• Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun
• Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War
• PAW Patrol Rescue Wheels: Championship

Roundtable Interactive Group emerged in 2025, an evolution of the Outright Games Group. The company owns a quartet of UK businesses. One of those is kids games maker Outright Games, which has worked with key licences from Paw Patrol and Barbie to Bratz and Dora the Explorer. It also owns Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun developer Auroch Digital, acquired from Sumo for an undisclosed sum. The studio has a busy 2026 lined up, working on Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2, Warhammer Survivors and Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War.

Elsewhere, the group owns GameMill Entertainment, another developer trusted with licences from Hot Wheels and Goosebumps to Fast & Furious, as well as multiplayer games platform Coherence.

With this current crop of studios and big releases on the horizon, we’ll see if the foundations laid now can provide new successes for the year ahead.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Outright Games

Auroch Digital

GameMill Entertainment

Coherence

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• CSR 2
• CSR 3
• Borderlands Mobile

NaturalMotion has had a challenging year. Early in 2025, publisher Zynga announced it was shutting down the long-awaited Star Wars Hunters, with the game taken offline on October 1st. The title marked an expensive failure for a company once snapped up for $527m back in 2014.

Drag racing game CSR 2 is entering its 10th year in 2026. While the game continues to perform admirably given its decade on the market, 2025 marks the lowest revenue return at just over $50m, according to AppMagic estimates. That still makes it the third top grossing racing mobile game in the world after Tencent’s Speed Drifters and NetEase’s Racing Master.

CSR 3 remains in soft launch, while the studio has also tapped the Borderlands Mobile licence. Zynga’s studios have had a renaissance in finding new successes in the past couple of years - can NaturalMotion do the same?

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Take-Two Interactive

Zynga

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• Total War: Warhammer III
• Total War: Warhammer 40,000
• Total War: Pharaoh

UK strategy games specialist Creative Assembly is going through something of a reset. It hasn’t launched a new game since Total War: Pharaoh in 2023. It’s got a busy slate, though.

The developer is working on Total War: Medieval III, revealed during the company’s 25th anniversary showcase. It’s also working on Total War: Warhammer 40,000, its latest use of the Warhammer IP, this time taking to the science-fantasy universe. Outside of the strategy realm, the company is also developing a sequel to Alien: Isolation. All that despite a wave of layoffs hitting the company in 2024.

The studio’s work isn’t all future-gazing, however. Total War: Warhammer III was one of the top 100-selling Steam games of 2025, at the time of writing has 35,000 concurrent players on Steam, and continues to receive new content as Creative Assembly keeps the game alive for its legion of fans.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Sega

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• Shadows of Doubt
• Core Keeper
• Len's Island

UK publisher Fireshine Games kicked off 2025 with the appointment of Brian Foote as its new CEO. Since then, the company has continued on as one of the country’s hottest publishers in the PC and console realm.

Over a decade on from its formation in 2014 as Sold Out - and a rebrand to Fireshine Games in 2022 - the company’s shift from physical to digital has paid off handsomely. It has published success titles including ColePowered Games’ Shadows of Doubt and Pugstorm’s Core Keeper, the latter of which has attracted over four million players worldwide.

Fireshine continues to sign publishing deals, recently partnering with four titles: Food Truck Empire, Isle Goblin, Dawn of Defiance and POPUCOM. The company’s set up for what it hopes will be another successful year in 2026.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

ColePowered Games

Pugstorm

Flow Studio

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• F1 Clash
• Matchcreek Motors
• Top Drives

Specialising in racing-themed mobile games, Hutch has grown substantially over the years to more than 140 staff across three locations, working with major IPs including Forza, Hot Wheels and F1. By the end of 2025, it named COO Andrew Watson as its new CEO.

Its top titles include Rebel Racing, Top Drives and F1 Clash, accruing hundreds of millions in revenue and downloads over the years since it was founded in 2011. In the past year, Hutch’s work for the new F1 season and increased player interest around the F1: The Movie drove daily active users to their highest level in three years outside a season reset.

The studio’s latest title is match-3 game Matchcreek Motors. The title is said to be in an early scaling phase, accumulating an estimated 3.4m downloads and $3.7m to date, per AppMagic.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Modern Times Group (MTG)

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• Undisputed

Exciting new studios finding success is exactly what the Top 50 UK Game Makers list is all about - and Steel City Interactive exemplifies just that.

The team released its first title, boxing game Undisputed, across PC and consoles in October 2024 and hasn’t looked back. The title has proven successful for the developer, with the studio growing its team by 37% over the past year and opening a new Leamington Spa office as it looks to carry that success forward and build on it. Embedding itself into the boxing world, it has signed an exclusive Muhammad Ali license until 2037, while it’s also signed a DAZN partnership.

Such has been the team’s stellar year, it punched above studios like Sumo Digital, Rebellion and Playground games to win the award for Large Studio (for teams with 50 staff or more) at the TIGA Games Industry Awards 2025.

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• Dream League Soccer 2026
• Score! Hero
• Score! Match

First Touch Games intentionally flies under the radar, rarely raising its head to build its profile and receive the accolades it deserves as a top UK developer. Instead, it busies itself with the important matters of development.

Over their lifetime, its titles such as Score! Hero, Score! Match and Dream League Soccer - now in its 2026 edition - have garnered hundreds of millions of downloads over the years.

According to AppMagic estimates, First Touch Games had its best year ever for player spending in 2025, accumulating approximately $45 million and 100m installs. That’s a startling accomplishment with Score! Hero first launching in 2015, Score! Match in 2018, Dream League Soccer in 2019 and Ultimate Clash Soccer in 2022.

Coming up to 15 years after it was founded, the Oxford studio is finding its best form yet.

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• F1 25

Codemasters is perhaps not as loud as it used to be as one of the UK’s longest-running and well respected racing game developers. The company’s focus over the last few years has been the F1 series, with F1 25 launching back in May 2025.

Parent company EA said the release delivered a 27% year-over-year increase in net bookings, showcasing an improved performance over its predecessor. The title was also able to leverage Apple’s F1: The Movie with a collaboration bringing cinematic content to the game.

The franchise is getting a reset in 2026. A paid expansion that brings changes such as new regulations, cars, teams and drivers is set to come to F1 2025, while the series gets a gap year before returning in 2027 as a “new and more expansive F1 experience”.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Electronic Arts

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• Descenders Next
• Descenders
• Little Rocket Lab

One of the themes of the Top 50 UK Game Makers 2025 is the number of publishers working with small to mid-sized teams putting out some of the most innovative and successful titles on the market.

One such company is No More Robots. Its founder Mike Rose - a Steel Media alum - says the publisher had a great year in 2025. The company, perhaps most famous for publishing RageSquid’s Descenders, had a busy year working on Descenders Next, Konafa Games’ Starless Abyss, and Teenage Astronauts’ Little Rocket Lab.

As well as the new releases, Rose says the company looked after its back catalogue, a portfolio that includes the aforementioned Descenders, Springloaded’s Let’s Build a Zoo, and Brave At Night’s Yes, Your Grace.

The team remains “small and lean” at 12 staff and continues to perform and find gems despite a challenging few years for the industry at large.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

RageSquid

Konafa Games

Teenage Astronauts

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• Ghost Town

Independent Guildford-based developer Fireproof Games rose to fame in the mobile space with puzzle game series The Room. The franchise, which now spans across platforms including virtual reality, has sold over 18 million copies.

In 2025, Fireproof doubled down on VR with single-player puzzle-adventure Ghost Town. The game, set in London during 1983, follows the story of a ghost hunter on the search for her missing brother.

The title won critical acclaim, picking up Best Puzzle Game and Game of the Year at the TIGA Games Industry Awards 2025, and Best AR/VR Game at the Unity Awards. It also picked up a nomination for Best VR/AR game at The Game Awards, capping off a stellar year for the developer.

Entrenched in the puzzle genre, Fireproof has proven astute at developing hit games across platforms.

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• Forza Horizon 6
• Forza Horizon 5
• Fable

If it can stick to its release slate, 2026 could be Playground Games’ biggest year yet, with the studio set to launch two games for the first time in its history. This year is set to see the release of Forza Horizon 6, the first entry in the series since 2021.

It’s worth noting that Forza Horizon 5 was a top 50 seller on Steam in 2025, while that title and its predecessor were among the most played. That’s the power of the franchise and why you should take note of the series’ comeback potential.

Outside of the world of Forza Horizon, fantasy action RPG Fable is currently scheduled to launch in 2026. It’s been a long wait for Playground’s first foray into a non-racing game and the revival of the franchise would be a welcome boon to Xbox. Aside from Rockstar North, 2026 could be Playground’s year.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Microsoft

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• Vampire Survivors
• Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors

“A solo-dev stroke of luck somehow turned into a 25+ person game dev adventure.” That’s how Poncle describes itself on its website.

The developer made a major breakthrough hit with roguelike bullet hell shooter Vampire Survivors, which first launched on PC in 2022 before heading to console, mobile and in 2025, virtual reality via the Meta Quest headset.

The game is still played by thousands daily. In October 2025, Poncle released more DLC for the title in the form of Ante Chamber, a collaboration with another indie hit, Balatro.

On top of that, Poncle opened a publishing arm in 2024, launching Nao Games’s Berserk or Die and Doonutsaur’s Kill the Brickman last year.

In April 2026, it released its own new game, turn-based deckbuilder Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors. The title surpassed 500k wishlists on Steam ahead of its launch.

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• Monument Valley 3

Ustwo Games is one of the UK’s most treasured studios thanks to the critically acclaimed and commercially successful Monument Valley series. Monument Valley 3, of course, launched in December 2024 in partnership with Netflix, leading the developer to secure third spot on the first-ever Top 50 UK Game Makers list in 2025.

Surprisingly for onlookers, Monument Valley 3 vanished from Netflix’s library in July, before heading to PC and consoles that same month. The game finally made its return to mobile in December as a try-before-you-buy release and bringing with it The Garden of Life expansion, accruing an estimated 1.7 million downloads to date, according to AppMagic estimates.

Few studios know how to bring such polished, charming and innovative experience to mobile like Ustwo Games and its Monument Valley series.

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• Project Zomboid

Project Zomboid, developed by The Indie Stone, might just take the award for longest game in Steam Early Access. First launched on Steam in 2013 - and its first version released before that in 2011 - years later, the title is still in active development.

But that’s not a criticism - that’s by design. The team has been busy adding a plethora of features to its highly ambitious isometric zombie survival game. According to its Steam page, the studio estimates the game is 75% complete, with major plans to add a “far-reaching and in-depth NPC system” and an emergent story engine.

It was one of the top 50 most-played Steam games in 2025. At the time of writing, it had hit a peak of nearly 55,000 concurrent players. The title is already enormously successful - and the studio isn’t done yet.

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• Mafia: The Old Country
• Mafia: Definitive Edition

Hangar 13 was first established in 2014 and has since expanded to house offices in Brno, Prague, Novato and Brighton, UK. 

Since the latter studio opened in 2017, the developer, a subsidiary of 2K Games, has released action-adventure game Mafia: Definitive Edition, tennis title TopSpin 2K25 and 2025’s cinematic Mafia: The Old Country. To date, the Mafia franchise, which was first launched in 2002, has sold more than 34 million copies over two-plus decades.

Situated in a key UK games hub, Hangar 13’s Brighton team houses around 100 staff, with The Old Country’s game director Alex Cox based in the city. The title took the series to 1900s Sicily and is reported to have shifted more than 1.2 million copies, while Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said the game outperformed expectations.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Take-Two Interactive

2K Games

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• Golf Clash

Manchester-based Playdemic made its name with golf simulator Golf Clash, a title that has garnered an estimated $1.3 billion in lifetime revenue - developed right here in the UK.

Perhaps one of the great acquisitions in the games industry’s history, Warner Bros.-owned TT Games purchased Playdemic just before Golf Clash took off back in 2017, with the aim of working on mobile games based on the LEGO IP.

But Golf Clash became a billion-dollar hit, with Playdemic later snapped up again by EA for $1.4bn in 2021. Nine years after the title’s global launch, the game is still generating more than $6 million per month, according to estimates, showing it’s no flash in the pan, but one of the industry’s much-coveted forever games. Golf Clash is also a survivor of a culling in EA’s mobile portfolio, which says a lot about the value it continues to bring.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Electronic Arts

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• Balatro
• The Rise of the Golden Idol
• Abiotic Factor

Published by PlayStack, LocalThunk’s Balatro was one of the big global gaming sensations of 2024, eventually making its way to mobile in September of that year.

At the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2025 in Cologne, the title took home the Pocket Gamer People’s Choice Award. Meanwhile, PlayStack was nominated for Best Publisher in a competitive category that included Scopely, Miniclip and Zynga. That’s among a host of other accolades the title received at various awards shows, including The Game Awards.

So how do you follow up a breakout hit like Balatro? PlayStack has kept itself busy with releases like Color Gray Games’ The Rise of the Golden Idol and Deep Field Games’ Abiotic Factor. It’s all working for the company - interim results for H1 2025 show revenue up 52% year-on-year to £30.7 million, off the back of what was a record 2024.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

LocalThunk

Color Gray Games

Deep Field Games

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• Still Wakes the Deep
• Escape the Backrooms
• Star Wars: Galactic Racer

Secret Mode is an award-winning publisher first founded in 2020 as part of Sumo Digital. The company has published titles including Still Wakes the Deep, A Little to the Left, Wobbledogs and Eternal Threads.

With Sumo’s move to focus exclusively on co-development, Secret Mode broke away in March 2025 with a management buyout from leadership and Emona Capital. It now operates as an independent publisher focused on PC and console - though we’re told it’ll also look at mobile titles, too.

2025 saw the publisher continue to find hit titles, including Fancy Games and Blackbird Interactive’s Escape the Backrooms. Looking ahead, Secret Mode has picked up the publishing rights to Fuse Games’ debut title Star Wars: Galactic Racer, set to launch in 2026.

With a blockbuster licence, new-found independence and continued form in finding successful titles to publish, 2026 could be another stellar year for Secret Mode.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

The Chinese Room

Fancy Games

Blackbird Interactive

Fuse Games

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• Farm Heroes Saga
• Candy Crush Saga

King has a well established London studio working on titles such as Farm Heroes Saga, a match-3 title that has quietly earned more than $2 billion in lifetime revenue. According to AppMagic estimates, the game continues to be a solid performer in King’s portfolio at $6 million per month.

As we noted last year, the team also contributes to the Candy Crush Saga franchise, with the original continuing to be one of the top-performing mobile games in the world, ranking as the eighth top grossing title in 2025, per AppMagic data.

Despite King’s ongoing success - albeit with an inability to release new hit games to rival its top performers - it was reported in 2025 that Microsoft was cutting 10% of its staff, impacting around 200 employees.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Microsoft

Activision Blizzard

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• Phasmaphobia

Kinetic Games’ ghost hunting game Phasmaphobia is a certified global hit with more than 25 millions sales in five years.

The title was first released in Steam Early Access in September 2020, going on to launch on PS5 and Xbox in 2024. In 2026, the title is searching for a new audience when it comes to Nintendo Switch 2.

What’s even more impressive than hitting 25m sales? The game is still in Early Access, with the full version 1.0 currently slated for the second half of 2026.

Such is the game’s success so far, it has been turned into a board game through a partnership with Lost in Cult, while horror specialist Blumhouse has signed a deal to produce a film based on the IP. That’s the same studio that worked on the Five Nights at Freddy’s adaptations.

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• For the King II
• Human Fall Flat
• Dungeons of Hinterberg
• Badlands Crew

Curve Games is one of the UK’s top publishers, releasing titles such as IronOak Games’ For the King II, Microbird Games’ Dungeons of Hinterberg and No Break Games’ Human Fall Flat across platforms. The latter has been one of Curve’s largest successes, shifting over 58 million copies to date.

Not just publishing, Curve has its own in-house studios, too, including the aforementioned IronOak Games, based in Vancouver, and Brighton-based Bomber Crew developer Runner Duck.

Its success saw the overtures of India’s Nazara Technologies, which acquired the firm for £21.7 million last year. Curve forms a key part of Nazara’s international expansion, giving it a strong foothold in the PC and console arena. As the Indian firm’s CEO Nitish Mittersain put it, Curve brings valuable IP, global market access and a highly experienced team into the fold for the company.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Nazara Technologies

IronOak Games

Runner Duck

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• Sea of Thieves

In the UK’s games industry, thanks to its illustrious history of making classics, Rare is historically a national treasure. In 2018, the famous studio stepped into the world of games-as-a-service with Sea of Thieves, an action-adventure multiplayer game set on the high seas that brings back some of the classic Rare humour and charm.

In 2024, the title surpassed 40 million players across Xbox and PC, with Sea of Thieves also now available on PlayStation 5. It remains Rare’s flagship game and still has the ability to attract over 10k players daily on Steam, according to Steam Charts. That figure doesn’t include other platforms of course, notably Xbox and Game Pass.

Rare had been working on adventure game EverWild, first revealed in 2019. However, the game was cancelled in 2025 amid sweeping cuts at parent company Microsoft.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Microsoft

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• Jurassic World Evolution 3
• Planet Coaster 2
• F1 Manager 2024
• Planet Zoo

An ongoing theme of this list is the studios formed decades ago that are still releasing new games. One of those is Frontier Developments, the developer behind Elite Dangerous, Planet Coaster, Jurassic World Evolution and more.

The last two years have seen a few major releases for the company, including F1 Manager 2024 and Planet Coaster 2 in 2024, and 2025’s Jurassic World Evolution 3. In its first two weeks, base game sales hit 500,000 units. Those sales were stronger than expected and higher than JWE 2 generated in the same period.

Frontier saw growth across its portfolio in the 2025 financial year. Planet Coaster 2 sold more than 600,000 base game units by the end of the period, while the Elite franchise grew by 76% year-over-year, with premium DLC revenue rising by 150%. The studio’s biggest-selling game, Planet Zoo, is getting a sequel in 2027.

SOFTOGRAPHY

• Train Sim World 6
• Train Sim World 5

Dovetail Games has cracked the code for turning niche interests and hobbies into commercially successful titles across a range of interests.

Its Train Sim World franchise, which saw the release of TSW 6 in 2025, has accumulated over €100 million in consumer spending to date. In parent company Pullup Entertainment’s 2024-2025 financials, 2024 entry TSW 5 was said to have outperformed its predecessors in terms of revenue, acquisition and activity thanks to a regular cadence of DLC.

Amid a challenging few years for the industry, Dovetail Games actually increased its headcount during the 2024 to 2025 period, employing 182 staff as of March 31st, 2025. In February 2025, the company appointed longtime execs Gemma Brown and Rob O’Farrell as co-CEOs, marking a new era for the company. In 2026, Dovetail is expanding with new IP Metro Rivals, set in the near future on New York City’s Metro system.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Focus Entertainment

SOFTOGRAPHY

• Bitcoin Miner
• Idle Mine

You might not be familiar with London studio Fumb Games, but its rapid growth deserves recognition in the Top 50 UK Game Makers. The company wants to build the future of rewarded games. To that end, it’s launched games including Bitcoin Miner and Idle Mine, which reward players with real Bitcoin. To date, the company has paid out $3.1m to players at the time of writing.

Fumb Games doubled its revenue in 2025 - and that follows the 10x revenue jump the studio had in 2024. The company now claims to be driving tens of millions of dollars a year. Formed in 2016 - starting as what CEO Paul West says was a side-hustle on evenings and weekends - Fumb Games is now one of the hottest UK developers, excelling in its own niche.

SOFTOGRAPHY

• RuneScape: Dragonwilds
• Old School RuneScape
• RuneScape

Jagex is most famous for the MMORPG game RuneScape, which has been running for 25 years. The game was split in two: Old School RuneScape, which keeps the game firmly rooted into 2007, and standard RuneScape with all new features and updates.

RuneScape is one of the most successful UK-made games ever, surpassing $3 billion in lifetime revenue. One thing Jagex has never quite been able to do historically, though, is break out of its flagship game.

In 2022, Jagex acquired developer Gamepires, developer of multiplayer online survival game Scum, which busted out of Early Access last year. There was another key milestone for Jagex in 2025 - the in-house developed co-op survival crafting game RuneScape: Dragonwilds hit Steam Early Access, which has sold one million copies. Perhaps 2025 will be remembered as the year Jagex finally broke new ground.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Gamepires

SOFTOGRAPHY

• Battlefield 6

EA-owned Criterion Games is one of the UK’s oldest development studios, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. The company is perhaps best known for its work on the Burnout series and a number of entries in the Need for Speed franchise. Its last racing game was 2022’s Need for Speed Unbound.

Over the past decade it’s worked on titles with other EA studios, including Star Wars Battlefront, Battlefront 2 and Battlefield 1, V and 2042. Last year, as part of the Battlefield Studios group that also included DICE, Ripple Effect Studios and Motive Studio, it launched Battlefield 6, a major triple-A first-person shooter that has been heralded as a successful revival of the series.

In a global industry, some studios fly under the radar as triple-A games tap multiple studios on big-budget projects. Criterion Games deserves recognition for its work on those major blockbusters.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Electronic Arts

SOFTOGRAPHY

• Football Manager 2026

Sports Interactive is one of the UK’s longest-running studios. First founded in 1994, the developer worked on the famous football sim Championship Manager for a decade before rebranding to Football Manager and signing a deal with publisher Sega. In short order, it was then acquired by the house of Sonic in 2006.

Football Manager is the best-in-class football management sim on the planet, developed at Sports Interactive’s London HQ. For over two decades, the game has found enormous success with annual installments steadily adding new features and club updates. Not just popular with players, Football Manager’s exhaustive database of the world’s footballers has even seen the game used by clubs to support their recruitment.

In 2023, it was announced that Football Manager would be moving to the Unity engine for FM25. But the series’ grand debut built on the new engine didn’t take place on time - the title was delayed and then eventually cancelled.The studio said the game was pulled due to a variety of challenges and that it would not be able to achieve the standard required to launch. It was a shock moment for the company and the world’s top football sim.

But later in 2025, Sports Interactive was back with FM26, and this time fully integrated women’s football into the database. Despite criticism in some Steam reviews, that hasn’t stopped the title being the 21st most played game by current users on Steam at the time of writing.

Meanwhile, in just a month and a half on sale, it swiftly found its way to being a top 50 seller on Steam in 2025.

After a challenging year and doing the unthinkable: cancelling an annual release, Sports Interactive has laid the foundations for the years ahead, a course correction for one of the UK’s most famous and successful studios.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Sega

SOFTOGRAPHY

• Two Point Museum
• Two Point Campus
• Two Point Hospital

Two Point Studios has its roots firmly set in the UK games industry’s past. One of its co-founders is Gary Carr, former chief creative officer at Lionhead and lead artist at Bullfrog. Another is Mark Webley, an ex-programmer and project leader at Bullfrog, who later co-founded Lionhead. Ben Hymers, too, has worked at famous British studios, including Rare, Creative Assembly and, as is a running theme, Lionhead.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that the developer’s first game was Two Point Hospital, a spiritual successor to the classic simulation game Theme Hospital, with the same wit to boot. Following its PC release in 2020 - and launch on consoles in 2020 - the title reportedly brought in five million players, a figure that includes Xbox Game Pass.

So how do you follow up a hit game steeped in nostalgia? The studio released Two Point Campus in 2022, this time setting up players in the role of managing a university campus. It reached more than one million players within two weeks of its release.

In 2025, the developer was back in the simulation space again with Two Point Museum, with players taking on the role of a museum manager. GameDiscoverCo said after that just after its launch, the title had hit 14,000 concurrent users on Steam, while it currently has ‘overwhelmingly positive’ English reviews. As you might expect, Two Point Studios continues to support the game, releasing Zooseum DLC in December 2025, adding a new museum location and a variety of wildlife exhibits.

While Two Point Hospital remains the company’s biggest success, Two Point Studios has grown out of its Theme Hospital roots and has firmly made a name for itself as one of the UK’s premier simulation game developers - a field that has some notable competition in the country - while sprinkling in its own personality.

SOFTOGRAPHY

• Sniper Elite: Resistance
• Atomfall
• Sniper Elite 5

Rebellion is one of the UK’s oldest studios at 33 years old after being formed in 1992. It’s become best known for the Sniper Elite series, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2025. Following a seven-year wait for a sequel after its 2005 debut, the franchise has received regular releases since 2012.

In 2025, it launched Sniper Elite: Resistance featuring a new lead character, but with the same action-stealth sniper gameplay set in the World War 2 era that has all combined to make it the company’s flagship game series. Back in 2020, Rebellion said the franchise had attracted more than 30 million players. It has since shifted Sniper Elite 5, a VR entry called Winter Warrior and the aforementioned Resistance.

Last year, Rebellion broke away from Sniper Elite with the release of action survival game Atomfall, set in an alternative history following a nuclear disaster in the north west of England. Within its first month, the title attracted over two million players and was reportedly Rebellion’s most successful launch ever - not bad for a company that has been running for more than three decades. Stats for the game’s first month also revealed that players had drunk over 500,000 cups of tea in the game, reaffirming the title’s very British roots.

Atomfall has since received two expansions, the Wicked Isle and The Red Strain, with a sequel or spin-off said to be actively considered by the studio.

Elsewhere, Rebellion has also released Speedball in 2026, a new entry in the Bitmap Brothers’ series. The company-at-large is also working on sci-fi animated film Rogue Trooper, based on the comic series that was also released as a game. The movie is being built with Unreal Engine 5 and is directed by Duncan Jones, whose previous credits include Moon, Source Code and Warcraft.

SOFTOGRAPHY

• Woodoku
• Solitaire.com
• Project Makeover
• Wordscapes

Last year we ranked Tripledot Studios at 11th place in the Top 50 UK Game Makers 2025 list. The company largely flew under the radar over the years, despite its ambitions of being the “next Activision Blizzard”.

Though it raised some $116m in a Series B funding round in 2022, valuing the company at $1.6 billion, the developer quietly went about much of its operations. Tripledot’s ad revenue-led business was responsible for titles like Woodoku, which AppMagic estimates has accumulated over 169m downloads, and the likes of Triple Title, Solitaire.com and Blossom Match.

In June 2024, PocketGamer.biz revealed Tripledot had acquired Get Color developer Zephyr Mobile. The studio’s portfolio also included Hey Colour and Math Crossword, with its titles said to have reached more than 100m people.

But that was just a taster of what was to come. In May 2025, Tripledot signed a transformative deal to acquire AppLovin’s games business for $800 million, formed of $400m in cash, while AppLovin took a 20% ownership stake.

The move instantly made Tripledot one of the biggest mobile games publishers in the business. It took on companies such as Lion Studios, Belka Games, Machine Zone, Clipwire Games, Magic Tavern, PeopleFun, Leyi, Athena Studio, ZenLife and Zeroo Gravity.

The company now houses 12 studios - with 10 of those coming from the AppLovin deal. It spans across 23 cities with more than 2,500 employees, while the company’s portfolio serves 25m daily active users and was anticipated to bring in annual gross revenue of nearly $2bn. No longer focusing on just ad revenue, its library covers IAP-heavy titles, too.

Thanks to the acquisition, Tripledot is much closer today to fulfilling its ambitions of being the next Activision Blizzard than it was a year ago. Of course, it’s a long road to scale to those PR-fuelled heights, but the company can now lay claim to being one of the world’s top mobile publishers. Can it make the most of its new empire?

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Lion Studios

Magic Tavern

Zephyr Mobile

Belka Games

PeopleFun

SOFTOGRAPHY

• Travel Town - Merge Adventure

Co-founded by former Wooga product lead Florian Steinhoff, UK developer Magmatic Games is a name you might not recognise, but it’s the developer responsible for one of the most successful mobile games of recent years. In fact, it may just be the most successful mobile title in recent years to come out of the country.

That title is Travel Town, first released in 2021 as a fresh competitor in the increasingly popular merge games space. Since then, it has gone on to bag over $850 million from player spending worldwide across the App Store and Google Play, according to AppMagic estimates. In 2025, it was the number two highest grossing merge game globally, sandwiched between Microfun’s Gossip Harbor and Seaside Escape, and above former leader Merge Mansion from Metacore.

Establishing a footing as a new player in the puzzle space is no easy feat, making the achievement all the more impressive. The title’s potential was enough to see Coin Master developer Moon Active acquire the studio and title.

It’s not quite clear the role Magmatic plays right now on the game - it’s listed on companies house as providing sales and marketing, general and administrative, and research and development support services to Moon Active. But the studio’s creation of one of the world’s top-performing puzzle titles deserves recognition, another bright spark in the UK games industry’s impressive array of companies.

Travel Town is not yet quite the juggernaut that is Coin Master, but the title generated an estimated $26m in gross revenue in December 2025, establishing itself as one of Moon Active’s most lucrative titles in its portfolio.

Magmatic is an example of the breadth of the UK games industry - it’s not just about the heritage and expertise in the console and PC space. There are businesses covering a wide array of platforms in the country and, depending on what the future holds for Magmatic, hopefully shows the promise of the UK for mobile in the coming years.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Moon Active

SOFTOGRAPHY

• No Man’s Sky
• Light No Fire

The story of No Man’s Sky’s recovery is a well trodden one. Following a tricky start to life (read: criticism and backlash that the title didn’t live up to the marketing hype), the space-faring title of exploration and survival has won over even the harshest of critics.

The studio ranked number one on our Top 50 UK Game Makers list for 2025, and coming up to 10 years after No Man’s Sky made its long-awaited debut, Hello Games continues to add new updates that substantially expand the gameplay. One example is 2025’s Voyagers update, which introduced new habitable, multi-crew starships, as well as new multiplayer missions and a ship-building community expedition.

The continued development of the game with free major updates is still proving fruitful financially - the title ranked as one of Steam’s top sellers for 2025. It also continues to be one of the platform’s most-played games to boot, too. The title currently has a ‘Very Positive’ rating for reviews, showing just how far No Man’s Sky has come in the eyes of its playerbase. Few titles have seen such a remarkable turnaround - and it all comes down to Hello Games’ hard work.

Up next for Hello Games is another title based around procedural generation: Light No Fire. The game is set on a single planet, this time adopting a fantasy theme but bringing together the same elements of exploration and survival into a multiplayer experience. Studio co-founder Sean Murray called it even more ambitious than No Man’s Sky. There’s no word on a release date as yet. If it were to launch in 2026, it would be yet another major title coming from a UK studio in what could be a banner year for the country’s industry.

Hello Games has also stepped into publishing recently, partnering with another UK studio, Ghost Town Games, for co-operative title Stage Fright.

SOFTOGRAPHY

• GTA V
• GTA Online

A running joke in the industry is that Grand Theft Auto V has been one of the top selling games every year - despite releasing all the way back in, would you believe it, 2013. Sure enough, in 2025, it was among the top 50 sellers on Steam, while GTA Online continues to do the business for Rockstar, though sales have declined.

According to recent figures from publisher Take-Two, GTA V has sold-in more than 220 million units to date. Overall, the franchise has sold-in nearly 460m units.

2026 could be the big one for both developer and publisher: the much-hyped and much-delayed GTA VI is currently slated for a November 19th launch. The anticipation is at fever-pitch, with its trailer breaking the YouTube record for biggest non-music video debut with over 93m views in 24 hours. The second trailer is claimed to have reached 475m views across platforms in the same time frame. The franchise is unlike any other in games and could set records if it finally launches later this year.

Of course, Rockstar North doesn’t just develop GTA. It also worked with other Rockstar studios on Red Dead Redemption 2. That title was one of the top 24 sellers on Steam in 2025. Circana claims that between April 2018 and April 2025, RDR2 was the best-selling game in the US based on dollar sales. Globally, that title has sold-in over 79m copies.

Overall, the series, which includes the Rockstar San Diego-developed Red Dead Redemption, has sold 106m units to date.

You could argue that every year is Rockstar’s year, given the long shelf-life of its blockbuster releases. But 2026 could be extra special if it actually sticks with its release schedule. There’s a reason other publishers move their big launches - no one wants to compete with the GTA VI juggernaut.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Take-Two Interactive

SOFTOGRAPHY

• 8 Ball Pool
• PowerWash Simulator
• Puzzling.com

A theme of a few companies in this year’s top 10 UK Game Makers is names that fly under the radar but that have built enormously successful games and businesses. So enters Miniclip, the Tencent-owned publisher which has a major presence in London.

The name is already well established thanks to the glory days of web gaming. But unless you’re in the business, consumers probably don’t know just how far Miniclip’s empire reaches. In 2022, it acquired Sybo Games, the studio behind one of the world’s most recognised mobile games: Subway Surfers.

In 2024, it purchased FuturLab, the Brighton-based developer behind the wildly successful PowerWash Simulator. That studio has just released one of 2025’s biggest new Steam releases: PowerWash Simulator 2.

By the end of the year, it splashed $1.2 billion on Cyprus mobile games developer Easybrain from Embracer Group. At the time, Easybrain’s portfolio of casual, puzzle and logic titles, which includes Sudoku.com, Pixel Art – Color by Number, Blockdoku and more, had generated more than 1.5bn downloads. Earlier in 2025, it expanded into hybridcasual after picking up Eatventure studio Lessmore.

Other studios in its portfolio include Turkey’s Masomo, Netherlands’ Gamebasics, and UK developers Eight Pixels Square and Supersonic Software - as well as its subsidiary Appynation, which looks to have now become Puzzling.com.

Miniclip is one of the most astute movers in the business when it comes to M&A. The company is always keeping up with industry trends and steadily expanding its portfolio to ensure it can withstand industry headwinds. It’s able to maintain old hits, too, with mobile flagship revenue generator 8 Ball Pool continuing to rake in the cash nearly 13 years after launch and Subway Surfers looking as popular as ever.

That’s why it ranked 28th in our global Top 50 Mobile Game Makers 2025 list, and why it’s now number two on the UK Top 50. It’s a global business, but one with firmly established foundations in the UK’s games sector.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Tencent

Futurlab

Sybo Games

Easybrain

Eight Pixels Square

SOFTOGRAPHY

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Rematch
• Pacific Drive

London-based games publisher Kepler Interactive was only established in 2021. The firm formed with seven games companies as founding members, including: A44, Alpha Channel, Awaceb, Ebb Software, Shapefarm, Sloclap and Timberline. Its CEO is Alexis Garavaryan, also the chief exec at Kowloon Nights. At its beginnings, the publisher raised $120 million from Chinese games giant NetEase.

By the end of its first full year in operation, Kepler Interactive took over $50m in revenue, which it said reaffirmed the rationale for building a collective business model that harnesses the creative and independence of its member studios.

Over the years, the publisher has launched successful games from its founding members and other studios, including titles like Sifu, Scorn, Tchia, Pacific Drive and Cat Quest III. It’s invested in various studios and signed publishing partnerships with successful titles.

But, with respect to the successes the company has already achieved, 2025 was a year that Kepler took things to another level as the global publisher for Montpellier studio Sandfall Interactive’s critically acclaimed RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The game has sold over five million copies, is one of Steam’s top-selling games of 2025, and has been a feature of many a Game of the Year list. The title, including its voice acting cast, received 12 nominations in total across various categories at The Game Awards 2025, and picked up a record-breaking nine accolades at the show.

Elsewhere, Kepler published Sloclap’s online multiplayer football game Rematch, which has scored more than one million sales since its June release. Its 2026 slate includes Shapefarm’s Orbitals, Frictional Games’ Ontos and Tactical Adventures’ Solasta II.

In a few short years, Kepler Interactive has become one of the UK’s top publishers with a clear identity that puts developers first. The future looks bright for the company and its collective of studios.

ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

Sandfall Interactive

Sloclap

Ironwood Studios

SOFTOGRAPHY

• Rust
• s&box
• Garry's Mod

Last year, No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games ranked first in our Top 50 UK Game Makers list. For 2026, we’ve chosen Facepunch Studios.

If you think of the country’s top developers, Facepunch is perhaps not always top of mind when it comes to name recognition. And yet, for 20 years it’s been responsible for some of the most played games on PC.

Released in 2006, Garry’s Mod, based on the Source Engine, continues to be one of the most played games on Steam. At the time of writing, it ranked 69th for concurrent players. When the world’s top publishers have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in forever games - and many failing - this title has kept on going for two decades.

Facepunch followed up that success with survival game Rust in 2018. Competing with the very top titles on Steam, at the time of writing it ranked as the fifth game by concurrent players at over 160,000 users.

That puts it above Grand Theft Auto V Legacy, Apex Legends, Warframe and Battlefield 6 on the platform, among others. The Facepunch team are masters at building successful games that last.

According to its own website, over 21 years Facepunch has sold 47.5m games and 60.6m skins and items.

2026 is set to be a big year for the studio. It’s teamed up with Tencent’s Level Infinite on Rust Mobile, bringing the sandbox experience to the small screen. Pre-registrations currently sit at 2.7 million ahead of the full launch, with a closed beta taking place in December.

Meanwhile, it’s working on its next big title: s&box. The title is described as a spiritual successor to Garry’s Mod and a love letter to Source 2. The source code is available under the MIT Licence.

A studio known for patience, quality and building long-term successes, Facepunch is our number one choice to top this list.