Steel City Interactive

Steel City Interactive is a Sheffield-based independent video game studio founded in 2020 by brothers Ash, Asif, and Asad Habib. The studio was built around a single, clear-eyed conviction: that boxing — one of the world's most popular and culturally rich sports — had been without a serious dedicated video game for over a decade, and that there was a huge, underserved global audience ready to be reconnected with the genre. The founders had no prior games development experience. They built the studio from scratch, recruited a team, developed proprietary technology, and set about creating Undisputed, a boxing simulation game with an ambition to be the definitive title in the sport.

Undisputed launched into early access in 2023, backed by licensing partnerships with the WBC, Ring Magazine, CompuBox, BoxRec, and a roster of over 100 professional fighters including Muhammad Ali, Tyson Fury, Canelo Alvarez, Katie Taylor, and Claressa Shields. The game quickly earned the backing of the boxing world and garnered widespread praise from fans starved of an authentic simulation experience. It surpassed one million units sold globally, placing it among the most successful independent sports game launches in recent memory. Steel City now employs more than 70 people at its Sheffield studio.

In 2024 the company raised £15 million from London Venture Partners, Novator Partners, and a group of business angels to fund the next generation of its boxing franchise. The raise reflected strong investor confidence in both the product and the team's ability to build a lasting franchise in a category they had essentially revived from scratch. Studio founder Ash Habib was named among the 50 most influential people in boxing in 2023.