As a teen, Emirhan Gül was a keen gamer, so he was thrilled to join a gaming startup in Istanbul as a developer after university. Over five months, as Turkey rode the wave of mobile gaming, he worked on the design of 23 games, and soon experienced burnout.
“Budgets were high, there was a lot of work, and they hired anyone, even if they didn’t know much,” the 24-year-old told Rest of World. But “the idea of churning out a game a week didn’t really appeal to me much. It wasn’t a culture I particularly enjoyed.”
At the time, the mobile gaming industry was booming in Turkey. The country hosted more than 800 active game studios, making it the biggest game development hub in Europe after London. In 2021, more than half the top 10 mobile games on Apple’s App Store were developed by Turkish studios, including Peak, the country’s first unicorn. In 2022, Dream Games, Peak’s rival, became the second unicorn.
These success stories led aspiring developers like Gül to study gaming and enter the industry. After leaving the Turkish startup, Gül turned down an offer from a U.S. firm, and founded his own studio. With Claude Code’s launch in early 2025, Gül realized he needed just two full-time employees, a fraction of the nearly dozen workers in his previous job.
“I’m the only developer in my team. When we started, I had to write all the code myself. I also have to manage game design, social media, investment meetings, and the like,” he said. “With Claude Code, I can do all that easily. It really sped things up and helped me a lot.”
For Gül, the $200 annual fee for Claude Pro is worth it. Artificial intelligence tools have lowered the barriers to entry for solo developers like him. But as more gaming companies adopt AI tools, more than a quarter of workers in the gaming industry have been laid off worldwide in the past two years, according to a recent survey.
Instead of hiring five junior programmers … my developer friend does all the work himself with AI.”Nazım Adaklı, Bahçeşehir University
Globally, the video gaming industry is worth more than $500 billion, with mobile gaming making up half of the sales. Big tech companies such as Sony Entertainment, Microsoft, and Tencent dominate, and they are also downsizing: Microsoft Xbox said earlier this month that it is eliminating more than 3,000 jobs, or about a fifth of its workforce, and divesting five of its video-game development studios.
Growth in the game development industry in Turkey has also stalled. The number of new gaming startups fell from nearly 200 in 2021 to 84 in 2023, and to 30 last year. Jobs have dried up, and bigger gaming companies are reluctant to hire entry-level workers, Nazım Adaklı, who lectures on AI in games at Istanbul’s Bahçeşehir University, told Rest of World.
“Instead of hiring five junior programmers at the startup where he works, my developer friend does all the work himself with AI,” Adaklı said.
With generative AI, a person does not need any programming or design experience to develop a game. In Turkey and elsewhere, AI tools are sparking a surge in solo developers and small studios. In 2023, for the first Turkey event on Steam — the U.S. based digital distribution platform for computer games — there were 67 applications from small and independent studios with two or three employees. A year later, the event drew 254 applications from such studios.
Ender Tınkır is one of the solo developers who left a big studio to strike out on his own. At Peak, he worked on hit games such as Toon Blast. Two years later, at Dream Games, he helped develop the blockbuster games Royal Match and Royal Kingdom. In 2022, as ChatGPT launched, he decided to go solo, he told Rest of World.
“AI has become part of my daily work. I use it actively in many areas, from prototyping and visual variation to coding and iteration,” he said. “Many Turkish developer friends who left companies like Peak or Dream have started their own solo studios with AI.”
Using Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI’s Codex, and Claude Cowork, Tınkır’s Play On Studios released its first mobile game, Zen Mahjong, earlier this year.
“Two years ago, I couldn’t have imagined that I could make a game by myself,” Tınkır said. “In just two months, I developed a game without any involvement in coding, design, or product decisions.”
The barriers to turning people’s ideas into products are disappearing.”Ender Tınkır, a solo developer
In June, an investor approached Tınkır to start “an AI-powered mobile game company,” he said. The new studio has a workforce of two.
“In the next few years, the number of products developed by individuals or very small teams will increase significantly,” Tınkır said. “The barriers to turning people’s ideas into products are disappearing.”
Still, only a fifth of gaming titles make a profit. Meanwhile, AI tools have made it easier to clone games, and are displacing concept artists and writers, and junior developers, Güven Çatak, founder and director of Istanbul’s Bahçeşehir University Game Lab, told Rest of World.
Junior positions “have tanked” for his students, he said. “The earlier path of ‘I’ll get in a big studio, gain experience, and then move up to a senior position’ has become a thing of the past.”
Adaklı is advising his students to waste no time. “Waiting to be hired by big studios is a mistake. … They are creating games, and making deals with publishers while still at college,” he said.
“I tell my students, ‘Right now is the worst time to enter the game industry to find a stable job, but it’s the best time to start your own venture, to realize your own idea,’” he said.
But with everyone able to develop and release games with ease, the industry is even more competitive, Begüm Ceren Onar, a 34-year-old game designer, told Rest of World. Onar was laid off from an Istanbul-based gaming studio in December after a game her team had worked on for years flopped. The studio decided to use AI to generate ideas for new products, and laid off 17 of its 20 employees, she said.
“More people are developing games on their own, but most are not making a living off of it,” she said. “Quantity doesn’t always mean success.”
