What is Ukie Worldwide?

Ukie Worldwide is a campaign from us that aims to celebrate the UK games industry in an effort to support investment into, and within, it. 

It will tell the stories within the UK industry in an interesting way, explain why the UK is such a great place to build a games business, demystify our sector and encourage investment and partnerships with companies across the sector.

Why are we launching the campaign now?

Ukie Worldwide aims to put our brilliant businesses and games into the shop window, helping them to build meaningful partnerships or generate business changing investment that drives growth across the UK.

We're using our existing programme of trade events as a launchpad for the campaign. This programme enables UK games companies to establish meaningful partnerships with publishers, developers, service suppliers and investors from across the world.

The programme includes access to international trade shows, inbound and outbound trade missions, webinars and market data. The programme includes significant support at three major games trade shows – GDC (USA), gamescom (Germany) and China Joy (China). Ukie also helps games companies to secure Governmental grants to support their attendance at overseas trade shows.

In 2019, over 280 UK games businesses participated in an event within the Ukie International Trade Programme and secured export business wins of £94m and foreign direct investment of over £500m.

With overseas travel curtailed during the pandemic, Ukie pivoted all activities to virtual solutions and has run virtual trade missions with companies in China, USA, Japan, Russia and LATAM.

The world is re-opening and we know that UK games businesses need to do business globally to succeed. 

Why is the UK a great place to make games?

The UK is a great place to make games for a number of reasons:

1. We have a long track record of success, stretching for over 40 years.
2. We're home to over 2,000 businesses of all shapes and sizes, meaning we've got the right companies for you to invest in, support or work with.
3. We have an enormous talent pool of over 73,300 employees, receiving education in over a hundred dedicated games courses across the country, to draw on.
4. The UK is a nation of players, with over 37m players spending £7.16bn each year.
5. We're the home of world leading professional services, giving your games company access to leading financiers, legal expertise and more.
6. We have a world leading programme of policy incentives, including VGTR and SEIS/EIS, to support investors of all levels.
7. We're the gateway to the world, offering an ideal base for companies seeking to benefit from our market, from Europe and retain close ties with North America.
8. We have a track record of creating highly valuable IP and businesses, meaning you can back the creativity of our sector with confidence.

How will you tell the story of games industry success?

We're using content, events and data as ways to tell our industry story in engaging, and sometimes surprising, ways.

As well as pointing to existing research the shows the scale and size of the UK industry, such as our consumer market valuation or research exploring the size of our economic contribution, we'll be launching new research to track the value of investments in the country.

We'll also nestle all of this under the Ukie Worldwide banner - and link to resources on this page - to help you find out much more about our wonderful sector.

Check out our showcase of the best British mobile and PC games over on PCGamesN and Pocket Tactics.