The short version
- Martin Klima, co-founder of Warhorse (the Kingdom Come studio), expects publishers to move development to cheaper countries.
- He named "Central and Eastern Europe, maybe China, maybe India, maybe East Asia in general."
- He said it in a week of Western layoffs: Ninja Theory is being closed, and Supermassive cut more than 70 people.
- India already does a lot of this work. What it mostly doesn't do yet is lead the projects.
What he actually said
Klima's prediction is about cost, not talent. Publishers under pressure look for places where the same work costs less, and he listed Central and Eastern Europe, China, India and East Asia as the likely destinations.
Western coverage reads this as a warning for developers in the US and UK. From here it reads differently.
Where India stands today
Big publishers are already here. Ubisoft has studios in Pune and Mumbai, EA has a large team in Hyderabad, and Rockstar India in Bengaluru grew out of Rockstar's 2019 purchase of Dhruva Interactive.
Most of that work is support: art, animation, QA, porting, live-service help. It's real craft, and the people doing it are good at it. What's rare is an Indian team owning a big game's direction from the start.
The money is mostly mobile. Lumikai's latest report puts India's gaming market at $1.5 billion in 2025, growing 17%, with 555 million players, down about 9% after the 2025 online money gaming ban removed that category. Every one of the top 10 grossing games here is a global franchise.
The upside
More outsourcing does mean more jobs, and more people who have shipped a big game. That experience is exactly what studios like SuperGaming (Indus) and Tara Gaming (The Age of Bhaarat) need to hire from.
The catch
Work that arrives because it's cheap stays only while it's cheap. If a studio is chosen on cost, pay, deadlines and job security tend to follow that same logic. Klima's own framing makes the point: publishers are moving work to cut the bill.
The question isn't whether India can do the work. It's whether the work that comes builds anything that stays.
What to watch: whether the next wave of work here comes with credits and creative ownership, or only with invoices. The Age of Bhaarat, a Ramayana-inspired action game from Pune studio Tara Gaming, is the clearest test coming.
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