‘It is helping’: How Brexit is boosting Dublin’s gaming industry

It's an ill wind that blows no good and many in business are hoping that Brexit will have some upsides.

Now one of Ireland's leading games developers has said it's already benefitting his industry. Uncertainty around Britain's exit from the EU has caused tech talent to flock to Dublin, according to Richard Barnwell, founder of game developer Digit. "At the moment we’re seeing it helping because we have an influx of talent coming over from the UK who are nervous," he said on this week's episode of All In. "This is European talent so the European citizens that are interested in staying within the EU zone. They are naturally looking to move so right now we have an increased number of applicants coming over from the UK than we saw beforehand."

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Digit, the developer behind Star Trek Fleet Command, is leading a growing pack of games developers in Ireland. Richard, who himself is originally from the UK, chose Ireland for the business in part because of the wealth of talent here. "Ireland just as a country has the DNA to be a great games development country," he said. "I mean, it’s very strong technically, always has been; there’s a really big history of middleware technology which has very similar transferrable skills. [It's] great in art, great in animation; I mean the animation industry here has already proven itself so I would love to think that we’ve been a bit of a catalyst for it. "There’s a few other [companies] appearing so I’m pretty confident that we’re going to see probably between 30 to 50 other games developers within five years actually shipping titles and that’s huge." Richard is the Trailblazer interviewee on this week's episode of All In, JOE's brand new business show.

All In, backed by AIB, is available everywhere you get your podcasts and on YouTube every Wednesday