Video game developers union membership in UK soars after thousands laid off

Around 900 of the estimated 11,100 job losses in the workforce last year were in the UK's 5bn a year industry

Mass redundancies in the video game industry, with thousands of developers losing their jobs, have led to a record surge in workers joining unions, organisers have told the Observer.

The fledgling Game Workers branch of the IWGB union saw its membership jump by almost half between December 2022 and December 2023 as job cuts worsened in the sector, including at the studios behind bestselling games such as Fifa, Skyrim and The Witcher.