VANCOUVER — In one of the glass towers dotting Vancouver’s Coal Harbour, one of the world’s most popular gaming platforms recently opened an office for about a dozen staff.

Roblox hired most of its employees in the city as its virtual-world building platform became a mainstream hit amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The hot game developer’s presence underscores the city’s rising status as a Canadian gaming-industry hub, and the local pressure to recruit and keep top talent.

“I think it’s just one more spoon in the soup,” said Peter Greenwood, chief financial officer of Vancouver-based Blackbird Interactive and board member at DigiBC, the interactive- and digital-media association of British Columbia.

Vancouver is now home to more than 170 development studios, according to the Vancouver Economic Commission. In 2019, these companies employed 7,300 people in the province, according to DigiBC.

Roblox is now one of those employers. Founded in 2004, the company, whose platform allows independent developers to build games, found huge success during COVID-19 lockdowns as more people looked online for entertainment and discovered a virtual community. It said bookings (the company describes this as primarily the value of virtual currency purchased)  increased 171 per cent from 2019 to 2020, according to its financial filings. It went public in March on the New York Stock Exchange.

Headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., Roblox leases additional office space in the U.S. in Virginia, and internationally in Canada, according to its prospectus dated March 2, 2021.

The company confirmed the existence of its Vancouver office through spokesperson Rachel Ferguson. It’s located in one of the Bentall Centre towers at 505 Burrard St., according to a City of Vancouver business licence issued Feb. 4. 

Nine people work at the location, according to the licence, though that’s likely grown since. On LinkedIn, at least 14 people list Roblox Vancouver as their workplace. The job titles include several software engineers and data scientists. Nine started in March 2020 or later. Roblox was approved to fill five positions under the federal government’s Global Talent Stream program last year, according to data released by Employment and Social Development Canada.

The company declined an interview request and declined to answer questions via email. “Roblox is heading out on its summer recharge,” wrote Ferguson. 

The Vancouver office would make up a small fraction, a little more than one per cent, of Roblox’s total workforce. It had 1,054 employees as of the end of March, according to its most recent quarterly results.

Roblox’s Vancouver expansion comes amid a heated market for game developer talent in the city. “I don’t remember it ever being easy to hire,” said Joshua Nilson, who co-founded East Side Games about a decade ago. 

In part, the difficulty comes from the number of players jostling for talent. The province’s gaming industry boasts a few titans—most notably Electronic Arts Canada, which was born out of Burnaby-based Distinctive Software. In 1991, Electronic Arts acquired it, changed the name and built a sprawling campus. Other smaller players grew over time. East Side Games, for example, went from roughly a dozen employees to over 150.

Meanwhile, as the pandemic pushed more people toward gaming, a wave of mergers and acquisitions have swept the local industry, said Greenwood. Vancouver’s A Thinking Ape, Piranha Games and Phoenix Labs were among the studios snapped up. “There’s a lot more funds available to game-development studios who have been acquired,” Greenwood said, noting that parent companies have often doled out money to help acquirees grow. 

Local industry growth and the M&A frenzy are pushing wages up. “There’s no question that there’s pressure on pay,” said Greenwood. Several Blackbird employees have received job offers from different companies and felt swayed by higher salaries. “We have to be able to react to that.”

In some ways, attracting talent to Vancouver and the surrounding area isn’t a challenge. There’s the draw of working at big companies, like EA Canada. The province also boasts an attractive lifestyle. “It’s where people go on vacation,” said Nilson, pointing out the easy access to the mountains and ocean, and what he described as great coffee, beer and food.

In that context, it makes sense to Greenwood that Roblox set up shop in the city, too. “I’m surprised every company in the world isn’t in Vancouver.”

Still, in the short term, Roblox’s addition combined with the local industry’s mergers and acquisitions create a “painful” outlook for independent studios, like Blackbird. The increased number of employers looking for the same type of people to fill their vacancies will result in attrition and added costs, said Greenwood. “The short-term pain is going to be very real.”

But, longer term, there may be a silver lining. World-class companies bring world-class talent, he said. Eventually, a virtuous cycle develops—much like the one that’s been credited with spawning a herd of unicorns in the province. People will come to the city, work at companies like EA Canada and then move on to flex their creative muscles at different companies in the ecosystem or start ventures of their own, said Greenwood. 

Nilson, who himself worked at larger studios before co-founding his venture, agrees. “I think, in all, it’s beneficial.”

With files from Murad Hemmadi in Ottawa