Time to Play looks at the potential impact of a tax credit for the British games industry.

Key findings

• The UK games industry is a world-class sector under increasing pressure
• Most external finance sources surveyed consider the UK video games sector to be an unattractive prospect for investment at the moment
• The reasons for this are lack of scale, and an excessive emphasis on traditional, high-risk retail business models instead of network gaming and direct-to-consumer propositions
• Respondents in this category are unanimously positive about the impact of a tax credit on the scale and/or number of investments in UK video games projects
• Half of them would change their attitude towards investing in UK video games companies if the tax credit for cultural games was introduced

Nesta commissioned Games Investor Consulting (GIC) to survey 30 leading British video games developers, publishers and sources of funding with the aim of producing robust evidence to inform future government initiatives to support the UK video games sector. 

Following the directions set out in Digital Britain, this survey has focused on the potential impact of a tax credit for culturally British video games along the lines of those measures already available for the UK film sector and the French video games sector.

Author

Games Investor Consulting Limited