Sumo Group chief executive Carl Cavers receives OBE in New Year’s honors list

Sumo Group co-founder and CEO Carl Cavers has been appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the King’s New Year’s Honors List.

Receives the OBE for services to the video games industry.

Cavers has spent 30 years in video games, including management roles at Gremlin and Infogrammes before founding Sumo in 2003 with Paul Porter, Darren Mills and James North-Hearn.

Sumo is best known as a work-for-hire studio and has created high-profile games including Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed, LittleBigPlanet 3, Sackboy: A Big Adventure and Crackdown 3. It has also supported the development of titles such as Forza Horizon 2. ., Hogwarts Legacy and Call of Duty Vanguard, and increasingly develops and publishes its own projects, such as Snake Pass and Still Wakes The Deep.

Sumo is a frequent winner of GamesIndustry.biz’s Best Places To Work awards, particularly regarding its work with education and youth. In 2021, it was acquired by Tencent in a $1.27 billion deal and, despite some recent restructuring, remains one of the largest development groups in the UK.

Outside of Sumo, Cavers supports the gaming business in general. He is active in mentoring and networking groups in the North of England and is vice-chairman of games industry charity SpecialEffect.

“I am honored to have been recognized in the Kings New Year Honors list with an OBE,” Cavers told GamesIndustry.biz.

“2025 marks my 30th year in the games industry and 22 years since I co-founded Sumo Digital alongside Paul, Darren and James. The sector has changed a lot in the last three decades, but the passion, enthusiasm and creativity that radiates have not slowed down, and despite some tough times, it continues to mature into a global phenomenon. There are many people I want to thank, too many to list here however, it is the people in our industry that make it great and that are at their side and are recognized by making a This contribution is truly an honor in itself.”