Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based Founder operating in the PC Games space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Dan Houser
Co-Founder and Vice President of Rockstar Games
Co-Founder and Vice President at Rockstar Games.
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About Rockstar Games: Rockstar Games is a multinational video game development and publishing company.
Akin Babayigit
Co-Founder of Tripledot Studios
Akin Babayigit is currently a co-founder of Tripledot Studios, a mobile games studio based in London. Before starting Tripledot, Akin was an active investor & advisor to various companies in the gaming space as well as serving as the Head of Business Operations & Special Projects at King Digital Entertainment. Before his experience at King, Akin was the head of Facebook Audience Network in EMEA.
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About Tripledot Studios: Tripledot Studios is a mobile games studio that develops casual mobile games such as solitaire app and several puzzle games.
Eyal Chameides
Co-Founder of Tripledot Studios
Eyal Chameides is the Creative Director for Product Madness, where he oversees and coordinates the creative teams working for Product Madness across the globe. Knowing from an early age that he never really wanted to be a grown up he has a background in fine arts and computers as well as a BA in Game Design from RMIT. He spends most of his time thinking about Batman. Over the past ten years Eyal has directed the design and execution of dozens of titles across multiple platforms, initially for consoles and then for Social and Mobile at Product Madness.Throughout his career Eyal has overseen, managed and guided creative teams in Australia, UK, USA, Israel, China, India and the Philippines.
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About Product Madness, Tripledot Studios: Tripledot Studios is a mobile games studio that develops casual mobile games such as solitaire app and several puzzle games.
Lior Shiff
Co-Founder and CEO of Tripledot Studios
Lior Shiff is a co-founder and the CEO of Tripledot Studios, co-founder and Chairman of On The Spot Development. and co-founder of Luna Labs. Until December 2015, he was Managing Director/CEO of Product Madness, which he co-founded in 2007. Lior spearheaded the successful sale of Product Madness to Aristocrat at the end of 2012. Product Madness is a leader in the Social Casino segment with revenues of $400m/year. Lior is an active advisor, speaker, and investor in the mobile games space. Previously, Lior worked at McKinsey & Co. and in The Israeli NSA, where he managed an R&D department of 40 engineers. Lior holds a BA degree in Computer Science, Accounting and an additional BA degree in Psychology all from the Tel Aviv University. He also holds an MBA from Stanford University.
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About On The Spot, Tripledot Studios: Tripledot Studios is a mobile games studio that develops casual mobile games such as solitaire app and several puzzle games.
Sam Mathews
Founder & CEO of Fnatic
Sam Mathews is an entrepreneur most known for his exploits in the gaming community. Best known for founding Fnatic, the worlds number 1 professional gaming team, managing over 25 professional video gamers with big name sponsors such as title sponsor MSI. He founded UGAME in 2008, a focused social network providing a complete gamer profile, as well as linking niche gaming content sites together through one user base and offering a platform to share user content around gaming.
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About Fnatic: Leading esports performance.
Matthew Warneford
Founder & CEO of Dubit
Matthew Warneford is the CEO and Founder of Dubit.
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About Dubit, WEARVR: Dubit is a game studio that specializes in games for the metaverse.
Florian Stronk
Co-Founder & CEO of Magmatic Games
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About Koyoki, Magmatic Games: Magmatic Games provides expertise in developing online games for entertainment.
Imre Jele
Co-Founder, Creator-In-Chief of Bossa Studios
Lifetime gamer and game-maker. Throughout his colorful career, Imre has covered a wide range of genres and platforms and is most known for his work on RuneScape and at Blitz Games Studios.He is co-founder of Bossa Studios, winner of Best New Studio Develop Award, creator of Surgeon Simulator 2013, BAFTA winner MonsterMind and BAFTA nominee for Merlin.
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About Bossa Studios, British Academy of Film and Television Arts: Bossa Studios is a games developer and publisher, creators of BAFTA-winning Monstermind, Surgeon Simulator and Worlds Adrift.
Roberta Lucca
Co-Founder, Chief Marketing Officer / Brand Chief, Board Director of Bossa Studios
Unconventional Entrepreneur. BAFTA winner.Obsessive Learner. Founder and Chief Brand Officer at Bossa Studios.Previously founded WonderLuk and BOLDR. Created and launched over 20 products and brands in the last 15 years across multiple industries — Tech, Games, TV Broadcasting, Luxury and Mobile. I love challenging myself and others to be bolder every day and do things differently. BBC, Sky News, The Guardian, Evening Standard, Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Management Today, Financial Times, Disney Channel, Venture Beat, Telegraph and Wired are some of the publications my companies, products and I have been featured. Top 35 women under 35 by Management Today. Top 30 Women in Games. Everywoman’s Entrepreneur of the Year finalist.
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About BOLDR Effect, Bossa Studios: Bossa Studios is a games developer and publisher, creators of BAFTA-winning Monstermind, Surgeon Simulator and Worlds Adrift.
Henrique Olifiers
Co-Founder, Gamer-In-Chief (CEO) of Bossa Studios
Henrique Olifiers Co-founded and leads Bossa Studios, a multiple award-winning games company in London, makers of the BAFTA-winning Monstermind, Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread, amongst several other titles across all digital platforms. Bossa is also a leading Virtual Reality studio in Europe, hosting VR Meetups for the past three years. As a hobbyist, Henrique is a Maker passionate about 3D printing materials, robotics and human-machine interfaces.
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About Bossa Studios: Bossa Studios is a games developer and publisher, creators of BAFTA-winning Monstermind, Surgeon Simulator and Worlds Adrift.
Simon Hade
Founder & COO of Space Ape
Simon is Co-founder & COO of mobile game developer Space Ape Games in London ($11m VC funding over 3 rounds, $55.8m investment by Supercell in 2017). Angel investments include game developers Gumbug Games, and music content creator platform Voisey. Past jobs include early product roles at Skype and Playfish (acquired by EA).
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About Space Ape: Space Ape is a mobile gaming company dedicated to creating the highest quality games for players.
John Earner
Co-Founder & CEO of Space Ape
John Earner brings extensive expertise in online gaming to his role as vice president of product management at Playfish, where he oversees the daily service operation of the company’s growing portfolio of live popular social games. Prior to Playfish, John was with Sony Computer Entertainment America where he designed the micro-transaction business model for PlayStation Home, Sony’s free-to-play virtual community, which he also helped launch. John also was a project leader at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a leading strategy consulting firm, where his role focused on online gaming. Before BCG, John was an officer in the United States Navy. John earned a MBA from University of California at Berkeley and holds a Bachelor of Science from Stanford University.
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About Playfish, Space Ape: Space Ape is a mobile gaming company dedicated to creating the highest quality games for players.
Debbie Bestwick
Commercial & Legal director and Co-Founder of Team17 Software
Debbie is an industry veteran with over 27 years in the games industry, and one of the founding members of Team17. Starting by heading up the Sales and Marketing department, she went on to become responsible for all of the Commercial and Legal aspects of the business – working globally with top tier games distributors, publishers, developers, and license partners. Team17 has released over 70 games across 30 platforms and won numerous industry publishing and developer awards, as well as being the owner of the legendary Worms franchise. Debbie has pioneered Team17’s leap into digital publishing working with a large number of Indie studios globally, and is the majority shareholder of the business.
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About Team17 Software: Team17 is one of the world’s fully independent video game developer and publisher.
Alex Zoro
Founder and COO of PixelToys
Alex loves games. He’s been playing games for as long as he can remember, even back before disk drives when you had to load from tape or type the entire game in yourself first by hand. Alex has been developing games for well over a decade, beginning his career at Rare before co-founding FreeStyleGames in 2002. Alex left FreeStyle in order to found Pixel Toys and use his console development experience to bring high quality entertainment experiences to a wider audience.
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About PixelToys: Pixel Toys is a developer and publisher of digital games and entertainment.
Mal Duffin
Co-Founder of Out Of Tune Games
A software engineer, again with over 20 years experience in 3D coding, has worked globally in the games, education and marketing sectors.
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About Out Of Tune Games: Out Of Tune Games creates and develops interactive online games.
William Blears
Co-Founder of By Gamers For Gamers
Will Blears is the Co-Founder at By Gamers For Gamers.
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About By Gamers For Gamers: We’re here for gamers of every level, providing unbiased reviews of the latest tech and games to help you run the best games possible.
Jonathan Burroughs
Director & Co-Founder of Variable State
Game developer and co-director of Variable State, an independent video game studio based in London and Dublin.
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About Variable State: Variable State is an independent video game studio based in London and Dublin
Daniel Rocha
Co-Founder and Studio Head of Jaw Drop Games
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About Jaw Drop Games: Jaw Drop Games is a game development studio working on GUN JAM, a rhythm FPS.
