Politics and videogames don’t always see eye to eye with each other, but it’s always nice when a positive or even neutral story concerning the two comes along. TIGA, the trade association representing the UK videogames industry has today called on the Conservative Party to include the introduction of Games Tax Relief in their set of policy proposals this week.
What the Games Tax Relief will essentially do is move our much beloved industry closer to receiving the benefits of tax relief, similar to what British films currently get. To qualify however, the game in production will have to pass a cultural test, scoring against criteria of ‘European heritage and game locations, languages, innovation, narrative, and location of development and key development staff’. Interestingly, these criteria caused trade website MCV to speculate a couple of months ago that it would make sense from a tax point of view for Rockstar to base the next GTA in the UK.
Jason Kingsely, Chairman of TIGA and CEO and Creative Director of Rebellion, said: “The UK videogames industry will be interested in examining the Conservative Party’s policy agenda for our sector. It is absolutely critical that the Conservative Party gives a clear commitment to introduce Games Tax Relief at the earliest opportunity, if elected to Government, after the General Election.
“A commitment to Games Tax Relief is the litmus test for all politicians in this election campaign as far as the videogames industry is concerned. Only if Games Tax Relief is introduced will the UK videogames industry be able to compete on a level playing field with our overseas competitors. All other policy proposals are entirely secondary to Games Tax Relief.”
It would be really good to see such changes come through soon, as it has been pointed out before now that a lot of the British talent in the videogames industry has been moving abroad where the tax relief is better.
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