London's UGC Gaming Moment
- Stephen Dypiangco
- Jan 26
- 4 min read
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The energy around UGC gaming in London is real, and you could feel it the moment people walked into the room.
Last week, Max Power Gaming brought together 100 people for a UGC gaming mixer in London. There were developers, brands across entertainment and sports, brand studios, traditional gaming companies, a creator accelerator, gaming lawyers, investors, tool providers and more. The room was full, loud, and energetic. Everyone was standing, moving, reconnecting with people they hadn’t seen in ages (or ever IRL) and meeting others for the first time.
What made the night special was the hyper focus on the UGC gaming space, which is woefully underserved. When you consider how big the sector is, how fast it's growing and how much of an impact it's making across youth culture, it's astonishing that more of these events aren't happening around the world.
Below are the most interesting takeaways from the evening and what they say about Roblox, UGC gaming, and community building going forward.
A Community That’s Been Built Over Years
This event didn’t appear overnight. The seeds were planted years ago. Ed Barton and Danny Spronz from Moonbug attended the first RDC mixer I organized in 2023, which had roughly 15 people. They returned for the 2025 RDC mixer, which grew to 150 attendees. After that event, they suggested doing something similar in London and helped make it happen.
Moonbug connected me with Nick Allan from law firm Mishcon de Reya, who jumped aboard as a sponsor. GameAnalytics, who sponsored my RDC mixer came on board again, which was great.
This matters because community doesn’t magically exist. It’s built through repeated effort, trust, and showing up over time. And none of this happens without partners willing to support it.
Huge thank you to Moonbug, Mishcon de Reya, and GameAnalytics. Without their support, this event simply don’t exist.
Why the Room Felt Productive
The room felt warm, familiar, and productive for one reason: everyone there cared deeply about UGC gaming.
This was not a broad Pocket Gamer Connects crowd. In fact, I’d estimate less than 20% of attendees even went to the conference. Most people were already in London and already working in UGC gaming.
We intentionally curated the guest list and left out large parts of the traditional mobile gaming ecosystem that wouldn’t have been a fit, from payments platforms to generic mobile tools.
By making sure we had the right people in the room, we drove high relevance. When everyone in the room is either building, advising, investing, or actively learning UGC gaming, conversations go deep fast.
London's UGC Gaming Scene is Fragmented
Roblox is massive, and people working in the ecosystem are spread across every major city. London is no different. The problem isn’t talent or activity. It’s cohesion.
In the room were:
Developers like Uplift Games (Adopt Me) and Muneeb (Catalog Avatar Creator)
Studios building branded experiences like The Gang, Karta, and Feenix
Platform executives from Roblox and Twitch
Brand advisors like GEEIQ and Livewire
Brands already active in the space, including Manchester City, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Moonbug
These people are doing impressive work in the space, but they rarely collide. That’s the gap Max Power Gaming is trying to close.
Usernames Before Real Names
One of the best moments of the night captured the uniqueness of this ecosystem.
I introduced Muneeb and Luke Shadwell, creator of Rtrack (recently acquired by Gamebeast). They didn’t recognize each other at first.
Luke asked for Muneeb’s username.
“Muneeb.”
Luke immediately recognized who he was.
When Luke shared his username, Muneeb recognized him too.
We had Roblox veterans, deeply familiar with each other’s work, meeting for the first time in person. On Roblox, reputation is often built around handles, not job titles.
The Community is Craving Connection
What stood out most wasn’t any single conversation, it was how badly people wanted to be in the same room.
Many attendees shared how rare it is to find spaces like this in London, where people working in UGC gaming can actually meet, talk shop, and build relationships over time. Several asked directly whether we’d do this again. Others followed up afterward to stay connected.
One person even suggested hosting similar gatherings in places like Turkey, where there’s real UGC gaming talent but few opportunities to bring the community together in person.
The message was consistent: the work is global, but the connections are still local, and people want more of them.
Safety Is Still Top of Mind
Safety came up repeatedly in conversations, particularly on the brand side.
I shared my own perspective with attendees: safety will remain one of the most important issues shaping Roblox’s future. It will be especially interesting to see how new safety features, including age-based chat limitations using facial recognition and AI age estimation, perform in practice.
Safety is an incredible hard problem to tackle, but I appreciate how the company is going after it head on. If Roblox is able to make substantial headway in making their platform safer for all users, that will unlock even more growth for the platform and creators.
Brands want to engage. They just want confidence in how the platform is evolving.
What Comes Next
London isn’t the end of this story.
This mixer was part of a broader effort to create more consistent, high-impact places for the UGC gaming community to come together in person. Based on the response in London, that need is only becoming more obvious.
Over the coming months, we’ll continue this work around several key moments:
Kidscreen Summit
GDC
Los Angeles
New York City
And a return to RDC
Each of these gatherings will look a little different depending on the city and the audience, but the goal remains the same: bring together people who are actually building, investing in, and shaping UGC gaming.
Final Thought
UGC gaming is already global. Its communities just haven’t caught up yet. London showed what happens when you give that community a place to meet. The energy, the curiosity, and the demand are all there.
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