Ustwo Games, the developer behind the acclaimed Monument Valley series, is pivoting toward a leaner workforce built around contractors rather than permanent employees. CEO Maria Sayans unveiled the shift at London Games Fest, citing financial pressures that have forced the studio to rethink how it operates.
The move comes as Ustwo faces a challenging landscape. Netflix removed Monument Valley games from its streaming platform, and lucrative deals with major publishers have dried up. The studio has responded by porting existing titles to Steam and Nintendo Switch without publisher backing and charting a course toward PC and console releases focused on single-player experiences.
But scaling that strategy requires dramatically lower production costs. Ustwo has historically operated on budgets between 7 million and 10 million pounds across three- to four-year development cycles. That spending model no longer pencils out, especially for new projects outside the Monument Valley franchise.
"If we did something like Alba or Assemble With Care, we would have to do that for a lot less money," Sayans said. "There are people doing really, really well in those spaces on PC for much smaller budgets, that we will never be able to achieve because we're based in London and have employees with pensions and so on."
The contractor shift represents a frank acknowledgment that the studio's commitment to full-time employment and long-term job security has become economically untenable. Sayans described that commitment as "too romantic" for the current industry climate, signaling a willingness to abandon workplace stability as a business necessity.
Going forward, Ustwo plans to maintain a smaller core team while sourcing additional capacity through contract workers as needed. Sayans expressed ambivalence about the change, noting her two decades in game development included an era when studios routinely offered permanent positions with genuine security.
"I think that's a shift in how we want to work with people going forward," she said, acknowledging the tension between her industry experience and current financial realities.
The decision reflects broader pressures reshaping game development. Rising production costs, publishing consolidation, and changing platform economics have forced many studios to recalibrate their spending. Ustwo's public acknowledgment of the tradeoff, however, pulls back the curtain on a shift many in the industry have been quietly making.
Author Emily Chen: "Sayans is being honest about something the industry has spent years avoiding: full-time stability in game dev has become a luxury good that only mega-studios can afford."
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