AI Shakes Up Turkey’s Gaming Industry: Jobs Are Disappearing, Solo Developers Are Rising

AI tools have brought about major changes to the gaming industry, especially Turkey’s once-thriving mobile gaming sector. Artificial intelligence now helps individual developers and small agencies create games independently, reducing the need for large teams. At the same time, solo developers are finding it difficult to turn a profit.

Rest of World writes about how this change has made the market more competitive and led to the loss of jobs for junior developers, artists and screenwriters.

Until recently, the mobile gaming industry in Turkey had been growing exponentially. There were over 800 active game studios in the country, making it the largest game development hub in Europe after London. In 2021, more than half of the top 10 mobile games on the App Store were developed by Turkish studios. Companies like Peak and Dream Games have reached billion-dollar valuations, attracting a slew of young talent like Emirhan Gül to the industry.

After college, Gül joined a gaming startup and quickly burned out because the pace of producing one game a week didn’t suit him, Rest of World reports. After leaving and turning down an offer from a U.S. company, he founded his own studio in early 2025. He discovered that using Claude Code, he only needed two full-time employees—a fraction of the team at his previous job. Artificial intelligence tools, which cost a few hundred dollars a year, have significantly sped up the process, he says.

Meanwhile, growth in Turkey’s gaming industry has stalled. The number of new startups fell from nearly 200 in 2021 to just 30 last year. Jobs are disappearing, and larger gaming companies have become reluctant to hire entry-level workers.

“Instead of hiring five junior programmers, my developer friend does all the work himself using AI,” said Nazım Adaklı, a lecturer at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul.

With generative AI, a person no longer needs prior programming or design experience to develop a game. This has led to a rise in the number of solo developers and small studios in Turkey and elsewhere. For example, Ender Tınkır left large studios like Peak and Dream Games to start his own. He actively uses AI to create prototypes and generate visuals, as well as write code.

“Many of my Turkish developer friends who left companies like Peak or Dream have started their own solo studios using AI,” Tınkır said. His studio, Play On Studios, released its first mobile game, Zen Mahjong, using Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI Codex, and Claude Cowork. “Two years ago, I would not have imagined that I would be able to make a game myself,” he said.

According to Tınkır, AI is breaking down barriers that have previously prevented people from turning their ideas into products, and he predicts that the number of products developed by individuals or very small teams will increase significantly in the coming years.

While AI opens up new opportunities, it also has its downsides – only a fifth of games make a profit. At the same time, AI tools have made it easier to copy games and are crowding out concept artists, scriptwriters and junior developers.

Güven Çatak, founder of Bahçeşehir University’s Game Lab, noted that junior developer positions have almost disappeared for his students. “The previous career path, where you start at a big company, gain experience and move up to a higher position, is becoming a thing of the past,” he said. Lecturer Nazım Adaklı advises his students not to wait for offers from big studios, but to start their own companies while they are still in university.

However, this makes the situation even more competitive. Game designer Begüm Ceren Onar, who was laid off after her team's years of work failed, is cautious. Her former studio decided to use artificial intelligence to generate ideas for new products and laid off 17 of its 20 employees. "More and more people are developing games independently, but most of them don't make a living from it," she said. "Quantity doesn't always mean success."