Maria Sayans, CEO of Ustwo Games—the studio behind Monument Valley—has revealed plans to reduce development costs by relying more on contractors instead of full-time hires. In an interview with Game Developer at London Games Fest, Sayans explained the shift as the studio adapts to a changing market.
Following Netflix's removal of Monument Valley games from its service and a decline in major partnerships, Ustwo is focusing on creating "meaningful single player experiences" for PC and consoles. The studio has already begun porting several titles to Steam and Switch without publisher support. However, Sayans noted that lower development budgets are essential moving forward.
“We saw a lot of potential for the Monument Valley IP to be reset and reinvented for PC and consoles, but it became clear that our development budgets were too high for a safe break-even,” she said. The studio has been producing games over three- to four-year cycles with budgets between £7 million and £10 million, and needs to cut costs—especially for new projects outside the Monument Valley series.
“For example, if we did something like Alba or Assemble With Care, we would have to do that for a lot less money,” Sayans added. “There are people doing really well in those spaces on PC with much smaller budgets, which we’ll never achieve because we’re based in London and have employees with pensions and so on.”
She admitted the studio had been “too romantic” about providing full-time employment and long-term job security. “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.”
Sayans confirmed Ustwo will change this balance. “Going forward, we’ll have a core team, and any growth will come through contractors—something I hate about the industry. I’ve been in games for 20 years, and those of us who started in the early 2000s had it very good. You want to give that stability, but I think that's a shift in how we work with people going forward.”
