Since our launch in 2015, the UK Games Fund has supported close to 200 independent game projects with grant funding of up to £25,000. With calls for applications to Round 8 now live (the deadline for applications is Tuesday 2nd November) we’ve been catching up with our portfolio of funded companies.
Growth, investment and commercial success are the themes that have emerged from our recent portfolio check-in. With the likes of Purple Yonder and Wabisabi Play both announcing huge project milestones recently, investment news from industry stalwarts such as Stormcloud Games and milestone acquisitions featuring the likes of Coatsink and Auroch Digital there has been a hive of activity of late.
“UKGF support was instrumental in the launch of Huey Games as a company, giving us the platform we needed to build our studio.”
Rob Hewson, Huey Games
As we approach our sixth anniversary as a Community Interest Company, we’ve gained a real sense of the potential impact of the springboard provided by our grants for own-IP development. It’s great to see when projects we support go on to secure publisher deals.
“Through the UKGF we were able to showcase our game to publishers, hire a new staff member, and achieve great feedback from the public on our project and it’s gameplay. We found working with the UKGF to be a very positive experience.”
Ben Ward, Supergonk
Of course, not all projects make it to market. Success is hard won and regardless of our support not all projects make it to market, having pivoted to other services or disbanded. Many, however, have reported huge growth in studio size with the average across the responses given to be a 45% increase in staff numbers since their initial application was submitted.
“Although our funded project (back in 2015) was not actually published, the support from UKGF was vital to the survival and growth of our company at a critical time, and we have gone on to tackle a variety of other projects (including developing our own games and work-for-hire/consultancy projects), grow the team and move to bigger and better equipped premises.”
Martin Turton, Clever Beans
This boost to the ecosystem, and the fact that there’s more to come soon is testament to our company purpose: our remit is to support the UK’s early-stage games development and digital interactive business and creative ecosystem in terms of both companies and individuals.
Thanks to the continued successes of our portfolio companies – both the UK Games Fund and Tranzfuser programmes have helped to secure significant GVA. We’ve supported around £14m worth of early stage projects and the wider leverage (excluding some of the big ticket acquisitions) is thought to be in the region of £20m.
Six years of UKGTF is a major landmark for us but knowing that our portfolio will soon top that 200 mark is what drives us to continue in our mission to support the talented and creative ecosystem that is UK independent games development.