The video game development industry enjoys tax breaks in quite a few countries across the world, including Australia, Canada, China, France, South Korea, Singapore and the US, while the UK only offers a small benefit for limited research and development tasks.
Consequently, many companies have been relocating their game design businesses out of the UK, and encouraging the country's talent pool to go with them. This is something trade association Tiga has been petitioning the government about for quite some time, in an effort to stop the decline of the UK games industry before it disappears altogether.
Tiga CEO Richard Wilson is now offering his organisations help to secretary of state for culture, media and sport, Ben Bradshaw, in making a case for tax breaks that will help the UK games industry compete on a level playing field.
"Tiga stands ready to meet with the secretary of state and his senior officials to provide him with any further information that his department needs to make the case for enacting further tax breaks for the video games industry within government," Wilson explains.
In his open letter to Lord Mandelson dated March 11th 2009, Wilson warned that the UK game development industry fell from third largest in the world based on revenue in 2006 to fourth position in 2007 and is expected to fall to fifth place in 2009.
Perhaps the offer of a complimentary duck pond/boating lake for the second and third homes of all MPs in favour of supporting the UK games industry would help bolster support?
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