OUT OF THE SHADOWS

Co-development is now a huge part of triple-A game production. Can it provide safe harbour at a turbulent time for the industry?

- LEWIS PACKWOOD

Who made Hogwarts Legacy? Glance at the game’s box, or its listing on any digital storefront, and you’ll see that it was developed by Warner Bros Games – or more specifically its Avalanche Software subsidiary in Utah. But that’s only half the story. Huge chunks of the game were in fact made across an assortment of UK studios, including Red Kite Games in Leeds, D3T in Runcorn, and Studio Gobo in Hove.

These are just some of the UK companies working in what has become known as co-development, with triple-A games now depending on it. Both D3T and Studio Gobo worked on Sony releases in 2024, the former on the illfated Concord, the latter on this month’s Lego Horizon Adventures. Meanwhile, Red Kite contributed to EA’s Knockout City – as did Stellar Entertainment in Guildford, which has taken on many co-dev projects for EA, including Need For Speed Unbound and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

The examples stretch on and on, but the point is clear: compared to the profiles of the titles they work on, these studios work in relative anonymity. It’s unlikely you’d even know they had a hand in these games unless you were dedicated enough to stick around right to the end of the credits. “We are quite well-known in terms of the industry,” says Studio Gobo’s Xu Xiaojun, “but we are not known by the players. We did four or five years on Hogwarts Legacy – we did a really significant portion of it – and people see Hogwarts Legacy as a Warner Bros creation. And rightly so, because it’s their vision.” Missing out on the limelight doesn’t seem to any create friction, then.