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Brexit has ‘definitely caused issues’, says Sega’s European boss Jurgen Post.
Sega is a major investor in Britain. It owns three UK studios and its European operations are based here.
Post says the major concern is with its high number of European staff, and whether it will be able to comfortably bring in foreign talent in the future.
Brexit has definitely caused issues, in the sense that our workforce is very international,” he said.
Between Creative Assembly, Sports Interactive, Sega Europe and Hardlight, we have a workforce that is about 27 per cent from Europe. I’m one of them, right? So there was definitely a bit of a panic and people are concerned about what will happen.
I don’t think it’s a short-term issue. I think people working within the studios and within Sega, they will be safe, I am confident about that. It’s more about the future. How easy will it be to get people from Europe? We are constantly trying to find people for our growing studios. Creative Assembly has 450 people right now and is still growing. We are constantly looking for people, and from that point-of-view, looking at the future, I am a bit concerned.”
Post adds that the EU vote has already had a negative effect when trying to win over talent from abroad. You can definitely feel that people are concerned about coming to the UK,” he said. You also have people who are, maybe, unhappy with what happened in the UK and are thinking about moving back to wherever they came from in Europe.”
For more from Post, read this week’s MCV.
