Iron Galaxy is headed for Music City. The company announced this week that it's opening a new office in Nashville, TN, with a plan to invest $950,000 in operations and to create 108 "tech industry" jobs.
This will be Iron Galaxy's third office. The other two are located in Chicago, IL and Orlando, FL.
Iron Galaxy founder Dave Lang told Game Developer that remote work will be available to employees who join the new Nashville office--but they will need to reside in Davidson County. A physical space in downtown Nashville will be opened sometime in 2023.
So why Nashville? Lang said the motivation was Nashville's "deep roots" in technical and creative fields. "We believe we can tap into both of those and build a foundation for a fantastic game development studio," he said.
There is also of course the fact that Nashville's cost of living is far lower than other current tech industry hubs.
Iron Galaxy's expansion into a fairly game-development-light part of the United States is exciting, but there concerns for prospective employees that run parallel to the land scramble happening in Texas. The Campaign for Southern Equality notes that Tennessee legislators passed five bills in 2021 targeting transgender youth in school athletics and other programs.
In fairness to studios choosing to open in the area, Nashville itself does boast a large LGBTQ community, bolstered by the music industry and the nearby Vanderbilt University.
Tennessee also passed a law outlawing abortion after 6 weeks of pregnancy in 2020. That law is currently blocked.