Interview

UK Government calls 'emergency meeting' to fight back against EC's Games Tax Relief block

Byron Atkinson-Jones reveals the response

UK Government calls 'emergency meeting' to fight back against EC's Games Tax Relief block
With the European Commission setting out its intention to investigate the UK Government's planned Games Tax Relief – including whether it's even needed – developers counting on catching a financial break have been left hanging.

Not that the Government isn't taking action.

Independent developer Byron Atkinson-Jones was recently called into an emergency meeting with Government officials and trade bodies UKIE and TIGA to discuss how the industry can react to the EC's investigation.

Speaking exclusively to PocketGamer.biz about the Government's reaction, Atkinson-Jones reveals just where the UK will look to fight back, and why developers are wrong to think they'll need to fit their games with Hackney cabs and cream teas in order to qualify.

Pocket Gamer: You were called into an emergency meeting with the Government about the European Commission investigation into Games Tax Relief. What would you say was the Government's response?

Byron Atkinson-Jones:
The emergency meeting was a brainstorming session which included members from the Treasury, Department for Culture Media & Sport, UKIE and TIGA. I was there because Andy Payne - UKIE chair and fellow games dev - had requested I attended it.

What has basically happened is that the EC has announced that it was going to do an investigation into the UK request for games tax breaks and gave thec country 21 days to come up with a response to that.

We were to be the initial seed to that response – to work out a plan forward to come up with the actual response.

I must admit that I was a bit surprised as to just how seriously the Government was taking it.

I, like I'm sure many others were, was pretty convinced that this was something that the UK games industry had lobbied for and the Government was simply paying lip service – as it turns out our Government is quite serious about this.

Others have suggested to us that, given France has previously deployed similar forms of tax relief for its creative industries, the EC's action is somewhat unfounded. What's your take on this?

It might seem that way, but what a lot of people are missing is that the EC didn't want to give tax breaks to France. They were begrudgingly given and France had to fight for them. Apparently the investigation lasted something like 12 months.

We knew that getting tax breaks was going to be a fight to get it through the EC, so this response isn't really that much of a surprise. The question now is if we have the guts, the data and argument to stand up to them and fight for it.

In order to do that we as an industry have to realise the potential value on what is being offered by our Government. How often do they volunteer to give money back to us? The UK Government recognises the contribution made to the UK GDP.

We are very good at creating digital exports, we just need to make sure that they represent our amazing culture and don't get made 'American' each and every time.

What do I mean by this? Well, put simply, in order to get funding some games have to make a design decision to base the game in the USA in order to pass the USA based decision makers.

Some people are worried that the cultural test means putting British things into games but as it stands currently most of the more commercial games are having to have American themed games with American characters in order to get published, so by proxy this kind of thing is already happening.

We have a unique style in the UK and it's something we should be proud of and something we should preserve. Tax breaks could allow us to do that.

On the issue of that cultural test, what form do you think this 'test' will take? Like you say, some developers seem concerned they'll be forced to put London buses and telephone boxes into their games...

I hear this a lot. One of the shining examples of the success of British Tax breaks is the film Les Miserables. It was made with the tax breaks the UK film industry currently gets.

They have to go through the same kind of cultural test in order to qualify for those tax breaks – in fact the cultural test devised for games tax breaks was based upon the film one with some slight modifications to make it more applicable for games.

Regardless if you thought Les Miserables was a good film or not I don't remember seeing a single London bus or telephone box in it, in fact I don't remember seeing a single British thing in it.

Where Les Miserables did qualify was that it was completely made in the UK using UK based staff and as such it promoted the UK as a centre of excellence to make that kind of block-buster film.

If your game was made in the UK with UK based staff then chances are you will already pass the games culture test – without having to put a single London bus or a telephone box in your game.

That's not to say that you can't also pass the cultural test if you also feature British elements into your game. Ever wonder why the recent re-make of Total Recall featured Australia and London? It was because by doing that it also qualified for UK film tax breaks.

What this shows is that there is more than one way to pass the cultural test and it by no means comes at a cost to your artistic integrity or compromises in design decisions.

What are you allowed to say about what was said in the meeting? George Osborne has since reaffirmed his commitment to the tax breaks – do you think this is something the government will see through?

The sort of things we covered were big questions like whether games are part of British Culture and if so, how did we go about proving this - and from there it was largely a debate about what exactly constituted culture and what examples we could give to back that up.

If anything, I get to say that I had a meeting with the Government that day to debate culture – which has to qualify as one of the more bizarre things I've had to do in my career. But it was really encouraging.

I certainly got the impression from the meeting that the government was very serious about seeing this through. There was a clear commitment from the Treasury and DCMS that this response needed to go out and it needed action fast.

If they weren't serious about it they could have formulated a lacklustre response on their own with simple e-mail input from the industry but instead they acted fast and got us all into a room together.

I'll be completely honest, when I first got the response to this meeting request I had my doubts. I thought it was just a general UKIE or TIGA call to have a chin-wag about the EC's response and I turned it down.

I wasn't going to go, after-all what could I possibly have to offer in this meeting?

Then I learned a bit more about the meeting and it occurred to me that if the Government is going to this trouble to try and help us then as an industry the least we can do is stand up and fight for it.

I still didn't know what I could offer but that didn't matter, what mattered is representation.

I'm glad I went, I was the only indie or micro-studio present in this meeting with the government out of four industry people. This proves to me that these tax breaks aren't just for the medium to large companies but they are for us small developers too.

Personally speaking, what do you think the tax relief will do for the industry? Isn't there a risk that other governments will react in the same way, putting everyone on an even keel again?

What's the worst that could happen should we get the tax breaks?

Some companies who pass the required tests get a heap of money back from the Government that they can then use to make more games.

To be brutal, for us smaller micro-indie studios, that could make the difference between eating more than one bean on toast one day and having to give up game development to get a 'proper' job.

As to the question of what would happen if other governments react the same? Well, that's already happened - there are plenty of governments already giving favourable tax breaks, so the worst that could happen on that front has already happened before we got ours.
Thanks to Byron for his time.

With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font.