2014’s minimalist puzzle game Monument Valley was once a poster child for what many saw as the promise of mobile gaming. Creators would be able to explore and refine a broader range of ideas and aesthetics on the pervasive and democratized platform relative to console and PC gaming. Instead, that game turned out to be one of the notable exceptions to an onslaught of casino-like, attention-hogging apps. Following Netflix’s Monument Valley 3 rug-pull in 2025, developer Ustwo Games is pivoting to Steam and also to contractors. It says hiring so many full-time game makers has been a mistake.
“We’ve been a little bit too romantic about the idea that we should have employees and give people long-term job security,” CEO Maria Sayans said in a new interview with Game Developer. “I think that got us into a place where, reaching the heights of Monument Valley 3 [production], contractors were always a relatively low percentage of our employee base. I think that’s something we’re looking to change going forward.”
Monument Valley 3 was supposed to be a reboot for the team whose recent releases included the conservation adventure Alba: A Wildlife Adventure and the tactical sports game Desta: The Memories Between. It was published by Netflix and would appear as a subscription exclusive on mobile. The London-based team swelled to 40 people during the peak of development, however, and then the streaming giant removed the game from its service six months after launch as its own strategy around gaming completely shifted.
“I think going forward, we’ll see that we’ve got a core team and any growth will come through contractors, which is something I hate about the industry,” Sayans said. “I’ve been in the industry for 20 years, and those of us who joined in the early 2000s, we had it very good. You want to be able to give that kind of stability […] but I think that’s a shift in how we want to work with people going forward.”
Not exactly the inspiring message you’d want to hear from one of the members of the Ukie Board which “steers Ukie’s strategic decisions, providing leadership and accountability to ensure the success of our work in championing the whole of the UK games industry.” According to Sayans, the whole of the UK games industry will now include more contractors and fewer people able to make game development their full-time vocation.
Big studios are increasingly leaning on outsourcing and co-development to bring down costs as competition for players’ time, attention, and money increases. Now, apparently, smaller ones like Ustwo Games are, too. That might slow the financial bleeding in the short-term, but it’s not the basis for creating a thriving game industry in the future. The Monument Valley maker was previously accused of union-busting back in 2019. Ustwo Games denied any wrongdoing at the time.