About us

We are a boutique video game studio, devoted to making games with stories at their heart, founded in 2009. Since, we’ve grown to more than a dozen staff, and moved from a converted Victorian chapel in Greenwich to a converted Victorian foundry in Southwark, London. GamesIndustry.biz named us the UK’s best small games business to work for in 2017.

Best known for Fallen London, our free-to-play browser game, we launched Sunless Sea in February 2015 as our first full-blown video game for Mac, PC and Linux. Its sequel, Sunless Skies, is currently in Early Access and due for release in 2018. We also made Dragon Age: The Last Court for BioWare. We make games that we love, and our profits go back into the studio. We’re in this for the long term.

 

We are not currently hiring, but will link to active positions here.  

We operate a relaxed and open office culture, with realistic expectations of our team. We treat overtime as something to be used only in emergencies, and we don’t crunch. We use productivity tools (like Slack) to drastically reduce the amount of time spent in meetings or slaving over a hot inbox.

We don’t tolerate harassment of our staff. Our community and player guidelines are robust and we have support available should any staff become the target of harassment.

We regularly host Failbetter and Friends drinks around London, and have an ongoing Crusader Kings game over semi-regular evenings.

Benefits and Perks

We can’t compete with big developers on free saunas and skiing trips, but we’ll only make you an offer if we can match or improve your salary. We offer 25 days’ holiday a year, and we all work from home one day a week. We have BUPA health insurance. We celebrate babies and children! We have better-than-statutory provision for all parental and adoption leave. We also subscribe to a childcare voucher scheme. Flexible working is available to all staff. If there’s a conference you’d like to speak at, we will support you to apply and sponsor you to attend. There are numerous other perks to working here, not limited to: time off for volunteering, free games, frequent cake, venetian masks, rats.

Our office is in a converted Victorian foundry, 5 min from Southwark and 8 min from Waterloo.

Watch @failbettergames for new opportunities. If you’re an international applicant, please make sure you already have a working visa. If you’re a writer or narrative designer, we have a specific submissions process for writer-designer roles. Not there yet? Here’s our advice on getting started in games writing.