LOCK IT DOWN: WHY SECURITY


IS A DEV STUDIO ESSENTIAL Matt Simpkin talks to Stuart Muckley, CEO & Founder of Code Wizards Group, about why the boring side of game development is just as vital


From left: Matt Simpkin and Stuart Muckley W


hen a publisher comes a-knocking, every studio wants to be ready. It’s all well and good standing there with your polished build and your immaculate pitch deck, but the factor that


increasingly decides who gets the deal isn’t creative at all. It’s security. Boringly. Over the last five years, breaches, leaks, and ransomware attacks have


turned what used to be a polite footnote in contracts into a pre-condition for doing business. The biggest publishers now demand proof that studios can protect their own intellectual property and, by extension, the IP they’re about to take on. “Security has gone from a tick-box exercise to a trust exercise,” says Stuart


Muckley, CEO of Code Wizards Group, whose Studio Wizards team helps studios prepare for publisher scrutiny. “If you can’t demonstrate you’re taking it seriously, you’re signalling that you might be a risk before you’ve even started.” It’s a lesson that some teams only learn the hard way. Muckley recalls


working with a mid-sized developer who were rightfully proud of what they had built, but everything came to an awkward halt when a platform partner asked for evidence of compliance. “They had amazing engineers but no documented process. Nothing was centralised, no audit trail, and everything slowed down while they tried to prove what should have been obvious.” For young or fast-growing studios, the story is common. But even among


established devs, we’re increasingly seeing remote pipelines, contractors scattered across time zones, tools stitched together in the cloud. In many ways, it’s never been easier to build a game, but never harder to keep one contained. And that can be a costly problem…


52 | MCV/DEVELOP October/November 2025


THE INVISIBLE MILESTONE The turning point usually comes when a studio lands its first big deal. Suddenly, NDAs mention penetration tests, access policies need to be in writing, and you start seeing your publisher’s security team on calls asking things like, “Who can reach source control?” And “How are backups encrypted?” “Publishers have been burned before,” Muckley explains. “They’re not


trying to make your life difficult; they’re protecting themselves from attack.” And, by extension, they are protecting you from being the wrong end of a hefty lawsuit after being culpable for a breach. Some small mercy is how many of these requirements overlap. You could


be dealing with Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, or Valve, the fundamentals are mostly the same: know who has access, control where assets live, and be able to prove it quickly. It’s the proving it that separates studios that breeze through audits from


the ones that suffer and sweat. “It’s not enough to be secure,” Muckley says. “You have to show you’re secure.” It’s not merely compliance; it’s insurance against a very costly fallout.


FROM PATCHWORK TO PLATFORM Code Wizards Group has made something of a speciality out of helping studios feel confident in their systems, processes, and evidence of compliance without disrupting any actual dev work. The Wizards have supported multiplayer migrations, backend builds, and infrastructure projects for a host of partners – Indie to AAA – and the same security principles apply: simplify, standardise, and automate wherever possible. The starting point, Muckley says, is cultural rather than technical.


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