Breaking Change raises £1M to bring AI-assisted simulation tools to game studios
What's the deal? Breaking ChangeDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Chepstow-based startup building software tools for the games industry, has secured more than £1M in funding to accelerate development and begin piloting its platform with game studios.
The company is building infrastructure that helps studios model, simulate, and maintain complex in-game systems — things like vehicles, weapons, progression mechanics, and economies. It combines simulation technology with AI-assisted authoring, aiming to replace months of bespoke engineering.
The funding package includes £735,000 in equity investment led by the Development Bank of WalesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and HaatchDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, plus an Innovate UK Growth Catalyst grant. The Development Bank invested £350,000 from the Wales Flexible Investment Fund, with Haatch contributing £285,000. Saola VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and games industry angel Dr Tomas RawlingsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → also participated.
Why now? Player expectations for deep, dynamic game systems keep rising, but the tools studios use to build them haven't kept pace. "The games industry is at a real inflection point," said co-founder and chief executive Dr Jonathan Quinn. "Our platform is designed to remove some of the biggest technical barriers."
The funding will let Breaking Change expand its team, advance its simulation and AI R&D, and start pilot projects with studios later this year ahead of a wider commercial rollout.
What could go wrong? Game-dev tooling is a crowded space, and Breaking Change is still pre-commercial. Convincing studios to adopt new infrastructure mid-production is notoriously difficult — the company will need strong pilot results to build traction.
It also faces the challenge of scaling from a small Welsh base into a global market dominated by established middleware providers.
The signal: The mix of backers here is telling — a corporate development bank, an investment fund in Haatch, a government grant from Innovate UK, and a games-industry angel in Dr Tomas Rawlings all converging on a pre-commercial tooling startup. That breadth of support suggests conviction that game-dev middleware is ripe for disruption, even at the earliest stages. For Breaking Change, now classified as "early growth" on Dealroom, the real test will be converting pilot partnerships into recurring revenue before the next raise.
Read more: newsfromwales.co.uk
