UKIE CEO Nick Poole bullish on games industry's investment prospects

Games is a growth sector with a strong track record in the UK, said a bullish UKIE CEO Nick Poole kicking off The Funding Formula conference today.

He highlighted what he thought was the strong investment case for the country’s games sector: the need to allocate capital mixed with the top games from UK developers and a market of people that still want to play great games.

UK studio Rockstar North is set to launch the biggest game of the year in Grand Theft Auto 6, while companies like Playground Games launched Forza Horizon 6 and Fuse Games released Star Wars: Galactic Racer this year.

Poole said the message for investors this week is that “in the long-term, a bet on games … is always going to be a winning bet”.

He also highlighted the recent "unprecedented recognition" of the sector from the Government, though noted it would have been nice to see that reflected in the recent Budget.

UK market data

Following Poole on stage was Aream & Co founding partner Kartik Prabhakara, who presented some data on the state of the UK’s games industry.

He highlighted it as the sixth largest games market globally, filled with creative and technical talent - in both games and AI - with decades of IP.  He claimed the sector employed more than 73k people and was home to 1,444 games companies.

As well as the aforementioned studios, developers and publishers based in the UK include Facepunch Studios, Jagex, Tripledot Studios, Dovetail Games, Rare, Team17, Frontier Developments, Codemasters, TT Games and many more.

Overall, the UK games market in 2025 was said to be worth $11.6 billion in 2025, with 60% of spend coming from PC and console, 35% mobile, and 5% on other platforms.

Prabhakara also showed charts detailing UK publisher performance by IAP revenue and average MAUs. The UK ranked ninth for IAP revenue by publisher HQ at $2.6bn (down 7% year-over-year) and 10th for MAUs by publisher HQ at approximately 500m (down 5%Y Y/Y).

PocketGamer.biz is a media partner for The Funding Formula.

You can learn more about the UK games market and investment landscape at Pocket Gamer Connects London on January 18th and 19th.