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Our second round of funding closed on Monday 18th April, having been open since January. The number of applications has once again been record-breaking with an astounding 235 submitted.

“The high level of response to our second round of applications clearly reflects the shifting scale and nature of the sector. Our team also ran the previous Prototype Fund from 2010-14 which attracted 300-plus applications over its four-year life. We’ve exceeded that in just six-months over both rounds of the UK Games Fund. We believe that this demonstrates a steadily increasing number of new, independent development teams with commercial ambitions, representing a significant proportion of the UK’s talent base. It’s crucial that we identify the best of these and support them towards creating economic value for the UK”

Paul Durrant, CEO

During the call for applications, the UK Games Fund team toured the UK hosting workshops and spoke at third-party events to help enable would-be applicants better understand the application process. This has undoubtedly affected the number of applications made as the volume has more than doubled from the launch round.

Interestingly, the split of start-up studios/established companies that have applied is fairly well distributed across the UK.

From previous experience of managing the Prototype Fund, we’ve seen a marked increase in applications from the regions outside of London indicating real sector growth (or at least potential for growth) in these locations. Encouragingly for us, we’re hitting our targets of reaching out to all corners of the UK with the UK Games Fund.

Further analysis of the applications so far has uncovered that 12% of those named as lead applicants are female – a figure still far too low for a sector that is managing to make some inroads to gender-balance evidenced through the IGDA’s recently published statistic stating 22% of the gaming industry is now women. However, we can report that of the 235 applications made, 38% of the proposed workforce are female.

Applicants are reminded that the UK Games Fund Team will be in touch in due course with regards to the progress of their applications.