In his Budget of 24th March 2010, the Chancellor Alastair Darling delivered the news that the British games industry has long awaited, announcing a tax credit for games development, similar to that available for film. The government accepted the plan proposed by TIGA and written by GIC (in close collaboration with Osborne Clarke) in the report Investing in the Future in 2009.

Stephen Timms, Minister for Digital Britain, provided the political capital for the decision in his role as a Minister at both DCMS and the Treasury. Ian Livingstone from Eidos and Richard Wilson from TIGA lent critical momentum to the dash to get the tax relief into the budget over the last 4 weeks. Using data from GIC, they demolished the final complaint from the Treasury, that staff losing jobs in UK studios would not leave the UK. A timely TIGA survey provided data that showed that many jobs were lost to Canada in 2009, and Develop's salary survey showed that most British games staff would happily work overseas.

GIC has worked on this area of policy for over 4 years and is delighted with the decision. We would like to thank all the contributors to the ground-breaking Games Up? campaign in 2008, namely SCEE, Microsoft, Activision, Take Two, Frontier, Eidos, Codemasters, NCsoft, Realtime Worlds, Ubisoft, Blitz, Sports Interactive, Exient, Relentless, Media Molecule, Splash Damage and Qantm. The campaign, which GIC founded and managed, changed the political environment around gaming, resulted in TIGA's All Party Group on games, quantified the economic impact of the games development sector at over £1bn per annum and won the support of mainstream newspapers. Games Up? was organised by Jamie Macdonald, SCEE; David Braben, Frontier; Richard Wilson, TIGA; Mike Rawlinson, ELSPA; Ian Livingstone, Eidos; and Rick Gibson, GIC.

We look forward to feeding into the consultation process about designing the tax relief over the summer of 2010 and hearing more from government about how the tax relief will be designed to help British studios.

You can read more about the news story in Develop here, here and here, as well as in GI.biz here and here. The decision also received widespread coverage in traditional media, such as the BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, the Telegraph and the Financial Times.

GIC's work on this subject has been extensive since 2006:

Playing for Keeps (started in 2006 and was released in 2007) set out the competitive environment for British studios and profiled the impact of tax credits in other territories on British studios

The Games Up? campaign (in 2008) lobbied the government around tax credits and skills. The campaign, which GIC founded and managed, was supported by the vast majority of the industry but was only possible due to the generous benefactors listed above. Games Up? brought in a new political climate for gaming, delivered political support on all sides of the House, and won plaudits from mainstream newspapers, radio and television.

Raise the Game (in 2008) for NESTA updated the data in Playing for Keeps, and looked at the impact of tax credits in other territories in growing their local studio sectors. It set out the case for extensive fiscal stimulation to stop the coming decline in British studios.

Time to Play (in 2009) for NESTA presented the results of a survey we conducted of leading industry figures concerning the impact of a tax credit.

Investing in the Future (in 2009) for TIGA was a collaboration with Osborne Clarke which made a comprehensive case for tax credits, assessed the cost and impact of a tax credit and proposed a cultural test, in response to the Government's call for evidence in Digital Britain. This is the plan that the Government accepted in March 2010.