Notes from the Beach: What Develop 2025 Really Told Us

You don’t necessarily go to Develop: Brighton expecting revelations. You go for the meetings, seeing friends old and new, and, if you’re significantly more party-going than I am these days, the hangovers. But this year felt a little different. Not just in tone, but in intent. And if you were paying attention — really paying attention — there were some big industry insights hiding in plain sight.

I spent most of the week speaking with leaders and some of the brightest people from across the industry. And what I heard, over and over, wasn’t doom or disillusionment, it was clarity.

The Shift: Less Hype, More Core

The mood was surprisingly upbeat (and dare I say optimistic?). Certainly, the most positive I’ve seen the exec crowd in three years. People have taken stock and re-evaluated things. There’s a big push on returning to teams focused on the stuff that really matters – finding the fun! – then developing with a core team and outsourcing the rest. No more throwing bodies at problems who “can work it out” nor scheduling nightmares designed to keep team members productive and with hands on keyboards.

There’s also a noticeable move away from “just create a homage to what’s trending.” For the past few years it was “I want a shooter like that one (but better)” or “give me a Battle Royale.” This year? It’s “show me something different.” And not in a fanciful, blue-sky-thinking kind of way, just simply in a “how do we attract new players rather than trying to steal the same old ones from other games?” kind of way.

Big games are still happening. But they’re fewer, sharper, and with more thought behind them. Free-to-play barely got a mention. Everyone was talking about paid products. Which brings me to mobile.

Mobile’s New Mood: Subscriptions, Segmentation, and Staying in Your Lane

For years, every big console or PC publisher had a mobile strategy. This year? Radio silence. Nobody’s pivoting to mobile. Nobody’s pretending they’re about to crack it. They’re focused on their core and leaving mobile to the mobile specialists.

And those mobile folks are gearing up for a different kind of fight. Everyone’s obsessed with subscriptions now; their own subscription platforms, their own ecosystems. Some of that makes sense (Halfbrick’s “come join my party” approach has legs because it’s just sooo collaborative). The rest?  It sounds like an unwinnable battle: we can’t all be Netflix.

Discoverability remains the albatross. App stores are clogged with lots of new products and AI-churned copycats trying to game the system. So mobile studios are doubling down on data, but not in the old sense. It’s less “how’s this title doing?” and more “how’s the whole portfolio behaving, and how do we use that to drive players across games?”

They’re not looking for AI segmentation, flashy dashboards, or snake oil. They want clean, scalable analytics pipes that work across all their titles; something that works now, not next year.  Then they’ll build upon that solid base for the next iteration.

What the Partners Are Saying

From partners and service providers, the refrain was consistent: “We don’t want to hire. We don’t want to fire.  We want to scale.” And not just in tech, either. In recruitment, in support… all of it. Why hire and fire, and risk headcount when you can flex with trusted partners?

But here’s the kicker, for the first time in years the major platforms and tech vendors aren’t trying to own the whole stack and have teams and teams of niche specialisms that they can’t occupy for chunks of the year.  Everyone wants an audience, and cross-play is the golden ticket. Even the platform holders seem to get it now.

The other recurring theme was a return to real collaboration. Not just Slack channels, Teams links and quarterly offsites — proper meatspace collaboration. Studios and execs are starting to realise what they’ve lost from not having brains in a room together.

AI: Buzzword or Battleground?

AI. Everyone was talking about AI. Most of it was vague, fearful, or straight-up magical thinking.

There’s a massive gap right now between the promises being made and what’s actually viable. Some of the providers are pitching AI features that cost twenty cents per interaction per player. No one’s going to build a profitable game like that.

The smarter conversations were around what’s safe, legal, and economically sound. Things like our own Snappy AI – an air-gapped AI tool for internal use, helping developers assess their work and in turn write better code without training on customer IP or violating anyone’s rights.

The persisting problem is that most studios don’t know where to start. What’s legal? What’s ethical?  What’s fair?  What’s going to bankrupt them? There’s a hunger for clarity and we’re already being asked to run AI briefings to help studios’ leadership teams make sense of it all.

If you’re embedding AI into your games and you don’t know the provenance of the models you’re using or what contracts govern them.  If you’re building a 10 year franchise where the base of the game is built by AI… good luck!  You’re building skyscrapers on sand.

So, What Now?

Despite what has undoubtedly been a tough period (and it still is), there’s a pulse of optimism running through the industry again.

Studios are getting smarter. More collaborative. Less reactive. We’re seeing real bets being made on new IP, on accessibility, on doing things the right way. Atomfall (from our friends at Rebellion) is a brilliant example of this – confident, decent humans investing in making something new and inclusive. That’s what courage looks like.

The UK games industry is still punching above its weight. And the fact that UKIE and TIGA are now collaborating hard: That’s real progress and amazing news for the UK Games biz as a whole. The big tech companies will keep doing their thing. But it’s the smaller studios, the service providers, and the smart partnerships that are keeping the heart of this industry beating.

If you’re building something bold in mobile, backend, or anything in between, and want to chat about how we can help you do it better, faster, and more safely, get in touch. I’m always happy to have a proper conversation (preferably on the beach, but I’ll settle for a call 🙂).

This article was originally published on LinkedIn by Stuart Muckley.