Countries/Policies That Help Games Studios?

lukepham101

Hi all,

Recently the Australian government cut the minimal funding and support they give to the local Australian games industry.

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/05/government-funding-for-games-pulled-the-australian-games-industry-reacts/

Basically this leads to my question which is what do other other countries give and do to game studios in order to prosper? I know things like tax breaks, grants and such are all ways to make it easier for people to start studios and create jobs in turn. There's always talk of Canada being this holy land for game development because of the stuff the government does to help them out, though I'm not entirely sure if that's true now. I'm very curious to know since here in Australia it's pretty counter-intuitive to make games and almost no incentives to start a company besides the fact you love games and you want to stay in Australia.

Cheers everyone in advance!

ExcessiveZero

The UK has tax breaks but you have to meet a large ammount of point scoring criteria, tbh I think the game industry has to, and many companies have, stop tax hopping studio locations.

Staff want stability in their lives if you are shuffling country every 3-5 years that stability will not be found, and you will lose quality staff members, I can't even fathom how the shuffling costs, visas, cost of new hires and location can even offset these tax breaks which alter from country to country, time from time.

I think its nice if the country has some tax breaks but I don't think its the best policy to shop around for such things.

LMP

To my understanding Canada isn't universally great for games development, it's on a province by province basis, with Primary provinces being Quebec, Ontario, ect... though, Alberta doesn't give a damn about video games because of their oil sands.
Quebec subsidizes up to 37.5% of labor costs.

inflict3d

I read that Lithuania has some interesting program of gamedev-support.
Information from CharlieOscarBiz CEO - Sergei Klimov (twitter.com/sergeiklimov)

StephenVyas

In Canada, Vancouver is pretty good at.... sending game studios on over to ontario :icon60:

JEmerson

I've begun (this week so nothing to report yet) researching this myself from a public policy perspective (centering on the USA market and how to make it more attractive to new market entrants). Might be quite some time before I have anything to report as it is a side project. But if (when) I do, I will make sure to include it here.