Despite the post-COVID move to home work, 97% of game job vacancies advertise working on site

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has seen the industry adapt to working from home over the past year, 97 per cent of current vacancies in the game industry advertise working on site in an office or studio.

That’s according to Games Jobs Live‘s March 2021 report, which reveals that, of the 1,793 current job vacancies in the industry, the majority still list working in the office or studio in their advertisements.

In terms of locations, 56.4 per cent of the job opportunities are outside London and the South East. London still has by far the most open roles than any other city, though, with 444 open positions currently.

London is followed up by industry hub Leamington Spa (260 open roles), Brighton (145 open roles), Guildford (128 open roles), Liverpool (106 open roles) and Manchester (106 open roles).

Of the available jobs, coding and art specialties offer the most open roles, with 662 open code roles and 436 open art roles at UK companies. The least available jobs are in writing (7 open roles) and audio (4 open roles). Though the report covers the figures from the last month specifically, and so some of these findings are not necessarily signs of an overall lasting trend.

The UK’s top three studios for job vacancies right now are Ubisoft (95 open roles), Playground Games (100 open roles) and Sumo Digital (120 open roles), for a total of 315 roles at these three companies alone.

Quite a few UK studios are on big recruitment drives right now too, with 25 UK games companies currently advertising 20 or more job vacancies.

While some may be disappointed about the apparent desire to move away from home work post-pandemic (I’ve been working in bed for the past year now and I refuse to stop), Games Jobs Live sees significant room for optimism. Not only are there a large number of job opportunities (depending on your discipline, anyway) but it’s a sign of huge growth in the industry – as studios expand and take on larger projects.

Additionally, although London and the South East do still dominate (with 474 open positions in the region), there is still a decent spread of job opportunities across the country – with jobs available in the North in cities like Liverpool and Manchester. Games Jobs Live also notes that there are positions available outside of the usual industry hubs, such as London and Leamington Spa.

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