EGX Full-Ride Fund hopes to send marginalised game devs to EGX 2023

Radical Forge’s Dan Ahern has announced the EGX Full-Ride Fund, a program to send low income or marginalised game devs to the EGX London Expo that will be held later this year.

The EGX Full-Ride Fund hopes to raise enough money to send five UK-based game devs that are new(ish) to the industry to the show, and will include their travel, accommodation, food, and other essential costs and remove the barriers to access that they face.

At the time of writing, the fundraiser has raised over £2,000 GBP, which means that it will be sending at least two people to the public-facing industry event that provides ample opportunities for networking. 

If you’d like to apply for the EGX Full-Ride Fund, you must meet the following criteria: 

• You have to be over the age of 18 before 10/10/2023.
• You must currently live in the UK. 
• You must have a maximum personal income of £25,000.
• You must have been in the industry for less than two years in any capacity (full time, part time, solo developer) or be a student studying towards a qualification relevant to the games industry, and aiming to get a job in the industry as soon as possible. 

Those that receive the fund will be chosen through a GDPR compliant selection committee that will be paid by Ahern out of his own pocket, rather than from the donation money.

“I believe enabling this social mobility is important,” said Ahern. “The games industry suffers from a serious affordability issue when it comes to industry events, directly blocking low-income and marginalised people from enjoying the same opportunities as their industry peers. Networking events with high ticket prices being held in expensive cities that require unaffordable travel and accommodation costs isn’t good enough anymore. If event organisers won’t band together to fix this, someone else has to.”

If you’d like to donate to the EGX Full-Ride Fund’s fundraiser, you can find it here on JustGiving.

Applications for the EGX Full-Ride Fund itself haven’t opened yet, but will do soon.