What would an European exit mean for the UK games industry?
quad damage
From developers to retailers, this is what leaving the European Union would mean for one of the UK's most important creative industries - http://www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-eu-referendum-games-industry
People of the UK and expats, you have got to get out and vote this week!
People of the UK and expats, you have got to get out and vote this week!
Replies
it would be interesting to see what a split from the EU would mean for the right to stay of those who moved there for a job under pre-referendum conditions yet are not after citizenship.
https://www.facebook.com/UniversityofLiverpool/videos/1293361974024537/
I would say the UK is a different case because they are moving from a EU Member to a Non-EU member and as such they will have to make all new trade deals.
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Yeah, I have watched the "BREXIT THE MOVIE FULL FILM" it has some interesting content but is obviously very pro exit.
The clip about the Swiss model is also intesting.
I do sometimes wonder if the Elite dump all this stuff on our laps to make us feel like there is some control of our fate and society as a whole.
Britain would have to ask for joining the EEA, or make deals like Switzerland, which will take a while. Until then Britain is like every other country outside Europe that has no special deals with the EU: While Britain is still in the WTO, it's more or less on the same standing like e.g. Burundi or really anyone else out there who's in the WTO.
The idea that leaving the EU will solve all your problems is just ridiculous, yet there are other regions in Europe who think that building a wall around their country will somehow fix everything. Whoever thinks that, and refers to Norway and Switzerland, should take a close look at the deals and treaties those countries are in. Nevermind that Norway also has much fewer people than the UK and much more oil to spread around.
In the games industry we should probably know best how much we can gain through collaboration and bringing international talent on board - and not because we save a buck but because having actual talent on board makes a difference.
I'm going to skip on writing a breakdown of money sent to Brussels, money that comes back from Brussels, total video game investment and total video game tax relief credits for the UK because it's not a political forum. Also, I don't really care because I don't live in the UK
The UK has not.
I work for a French company (Ubisoft) and my wife is Portuguese. However, even if I didn't have such a strong connection to the EU i'd still be voting to remain. I've followed the debate very closely and in the beginning I wanted to find out if the Leave campaign had anything to offer that could sway my vote, just in case a leave vote might be better for the country as a whole. The leave campaign have completely failed to sway my vote, they can't provide facts and the people that are at the front running for the campaign are... well lets just say, they aren't very nice people and they have some very "dodgy" ideas. Their arguments are based on immigration and economy, As if leaving the EU will magically fix these issues. It won't.
That's not to say the remain campaign is perfect mind. They have plenty of flaws and they cant make guarantees either, but I do believe that we should remain within the EU and work to fix things as part of the single market and not leave and have zero say in it what so ever.
A group I follow closely on Facebook are the "Scientists for EU". Here is their review of the Brexit Movie. I highly recommend watching his other vids and following on FB. https://www.facebook.com/scientistsforeu/
Anyway, at this point I just want to get it over with and hope to god we remain in the EU. I do fear that my job will be at risk and I know for a fact that my annual income will be lowered by extra expenses due to my wife's nationality, etc.
Btw, my wife has lived and worked here for 10+ years. Paying taxes pretty much every day she has been here. She doesn't get to vote while people who have been on benefits since they left school or people in prison do get to vote. Boils my piss!
Also, a video to lighten the mood, while debunking the Leave campaign "facts".
not correlated statements but interesting
the old world has only fear to bring to the table .
"Professor of European Law at the University of Liverpool, Professor Dougan provides his viewpoint on the EU referendum, and discussed the facts and figures circulated by both the ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ campaigns."
Please note that stated below are my opinions from research I have personally done over the past few months along with my general knowledge of the EU and should be taken as such. These are my personal opinions and not those any company I represent.
While I usually try to not be political on Polycount, as this directly affects the UK games industry I feel I can make an exception in this case & although this post doesn’t cover only gamedev related issues, the broader economy does have a direct impact on our sector so I feel that it is still relevant. I have tried my best not to be inflammatory and present the facts as best I can and I realise that this is a pretty wordy post so I apologize in advance...I wanted to try and cover as much as reasonably possible.
I will be voting remain on Thursday for a few reasons. Firstly, I feel strongly European and think that in a global world the last thing we need is increased division and separation. Secondly, I am a huge advocate of freedom of movement in the EU for both personal and professional reasons. The games industry is, on a worldwide scale, very small when compared to other sectors that generate similar revenues & depending on which figures you count the UK has is the 3rd or 4th largest game development sector in the world. We need the ability to move freely within the industry because there isn’t enough skilled manpower to go around & having a points style immigration policy will hinder the acquisition of global talent. If we base the requirements on those of the United States, then if you don’t have a degree you can pretty much forget moving to pastures new unless you have 6-8 years of experience in a studio. Freelance work doesn’t really count as it’s incredibly hard to prove.
The vast majority of financial experts are saying that there would be a large GDP penalty to the UK economy if we do indeed vote to leave on the 23rd (to the tune of around £20-40 billion per year by 2020). Let’s assume for the sake of argument that this figure is reasonable. This loss to our GDP would have to be made up by either higher taxes, increased borrowing or cuts to services. Higher taxes & cuts to services hurt everyone; especially those on lower incomes and services are already stretched very thinly. Higher borrowing is a possibility but would likely affect our credit rating as a country, which would eventually increase interest rates and would ultimately still have to be paid off by either increasing taxation or cutting services. I should note that this £20-40 billion is the estimated figure that our economy would be stronger by had we voted to remain within the EU.
It’s also likely that voting to leave would put the UK into technical recession, as investment dries up and sterling weakens while international companies decide what they are going to do regarding the imminent situation (investment wont flow normally until investors know where the goalposts are). Considering that the UK lost over 10% of its game development workforce during the 2008 recession, it would be very hard for us to take another hammer blow as we have only recently recovered back to our pre-recession peak (late 2013).
Once we are at the EU table negotiating our exit (more on this further on) it’s extremely unlikely that we will get anything close to the current deals in trade without accepting freedom of movement or having to pay a fee to the EU, which are two of the three main pillars of the leave campaign.
So broadly speaking we can assume that if the UK were able to negotiate a similar deal to Norway we would still have to pay around the same amount as we do now albeit 6% less, which is around £500m per year.
With those figures in mind we should be reminded that Norway is also part of the Schengen area, which guarantees freedom of movement from within the EU (even though they are not member states,) and Norway has to implement EU laws related to trade in order to be able to export goods to within the area while simultaneously not receiving any EU funding or negotiating the laws in which they must follow. They are essentially paying a fee solely for access to the single market. Perhaps that extra £500m a year doesn’t look so bad after all as it pays for a seat at the table?…
Of course, this is assuming that we will pay something close to Norway at all as the UK economy is almost 6 times larger than that of Norway’s and as such there is no precedent for such a negotiation.
The third pillar of the leave campaign is the wish to regain an apparent loss of sovereignty from “unelected bureaucrats” which is disingenuous at best. Yes, we have surrendered a certain amount of sovereignty to the EU, but we have also gained a share in the sovereignty of 27 other nations and Parliament is still ultimately sovereign as the government can choose to leave the EU at any time by invoking Article 50 (without a referendum). Furthermore, the majority of laws in the UK are also made, on behalf of the government, by the civil service who are also “unelected bureaucrats” and are almost an order of magnitude larger than the entire staff of the EU. Seems a little two faced to complain about a “foreign” system that we are quite happy to have at home with no one batting an eyelid.
New EU laws must also be given consent by elected MEPs before they are made law and since 1999 the UK has voted ‘Yes’ for 95% of those laws (3% abstention and 2% voted ‘No’). If there is an EU law that we don’t like, then we should blame our MEPs and vote them out rather than complaining these laws are forced upon us by a tyrannical EU. We (the UK) voted for these laws after all.
As soon as Article 50 is invoked we then have 2 years to negotiate an exit while still trading under the current terms, unless unanimously agreed otherwise by other member states. If no deal is reached or extension given, then we would have to fallback to WTO tariffs, which would each have to be negotiated line by line for each product or service we export. It is not a case of simply copying and pasting current trade agreements. We would also be forced to renegotiate pretty much all our trade agreements for partners outside the EU as the majority of our current treaties are at the EU level (we would be starting from scratch essentially). The WTO has estimated that these tariffs would come to around £9 billion for imports and £5.5 billion for exports per year. Add this to the cost of renegotiating & implementing new trade regulations as the entire of UK service sector and industry as a whole would need to learn new rules which all costs money.
On a personal note it blows my mind that some people seem to think that the EU is some magical entity that suddenly appeared or that it has turned into something that we didn’t vote for. It evolved from the EC, which we joined on our 3rd attempt in 1973 after initially applying for membership in 1961 & 1967 (both times being vetoed by Charles de Gaulle) and our elected officials made the decision to sign the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 which turned the EC into the EU. Nothing has happened in this regard that the UK didn’t agree with. The EU isn’t something that was forced upon us.
Why should the UK remain within the EU?
Simply put we are more prosperous within. Since joining the EC/EU in 1973 the UK has seen unprecedented growth in its per capita GDP of (103%), beating Germany (99%), the USA (97%) and France (74%) during the same time period. The same also holds true for median household income which has risen by 79% compared to 16% the USA, which means that the working class & UK middle class has gotten richer while in the EU, not just the 1%.
Around 45% of our export trade goes directly to the EU, to a tune of £230 billion per year, and has grown by an average of 3.6% each year since 1999.
We also have the EU to thank for our excellent employment rights that guarantee us minimum paid annual leave (28 days for fulltime), maximum working hours (48pw unless agreed by the employee) and the ability to reclaim vacation time if you become sick while on holiday. Yes, it could be that we might have had these rights had we not been in the EU, but now they are cemented within a treaty that would have to be renegotiated and ratified by 27 other nations if the UK feels the impulse to remove them.
The UK is the primary global financial centre in the world and the UK has been the worlds biggest net exporter of financial services for the last decade (300% larger than that of the USA who are 2nd) and trade 41% of global exchange trades (more dollars are traded within the UK than the USA). We provide 17% of all international bank lending worldwide, more than any other centre, and have a large trade surplus of £62 billion per year.
Why is this important? The UK is home to over 250 foreign banks and over 1400 financial services firms that are majority foreign-owned and all of whom currently have access to the single market. Currently The City of London currently pays around £63 billion in Tax each year (11.6% of total UK tax receipts) and employs 4% of our total work force. Having access to the single market allows the UK services industry to grow each year, pay lots of tax and invest within the UK.
And last but not least we are able to freely travel and work without let or hindrance to other countries within the EU on a whim. This enables all citizens of the EU to work in the UK and for us to take jobs in other countries that perhaps we would have not had the opportunity to otherwise. Unfortunately hiring someone who needs a work permit or a VISA is a gigantic pain in the ass for employers as well as an expensive legal process. I’m sure many of you have friends who have moved from Europe to the USA to work at large studios and what a laborious and long winded process that can be. It’s not unusual for such things to take months of application, reapplication with no guarantee of a working VISA at the end of the process. As European citizens we can choose to relocate to another state within the EU in a matter of days at minimal cost to ourselves and potential employers.
To summarize, no the EU isn’t perfect, but not governmental body is. We can either vote to leave and sufferer the potential consequences or vote to remain and work with our European neighbours to shape an EU that people are happier with. Personally I don’t think leaving is worth the potential risks for such a small amount of money (relative to our GDP) and I’m certainly not going to vote leave because we might get our old incandescent light bulbs back or more powerful vacuum cleaners with go-faster stripes (but then again I’m not voting remain so I can cut my roaming charges while in the EU either). There is a much larger picture here and unlike our usual general elections where if we make a mistake we can come back in 4 years and vote the current government out. The choice on Thursday will shape the future of our country and how we look at, and are viewed by the rest of the world.
So joining the EEA after leaving the EU would be an even worse deal, not to mention it would probably mean losing any previously negotiated rebates and opt outs that the UK currently enjoys.
As for the games industry in the UK Brexit has me terribly worried. I have studied, worked and lived in the UK for 7 years before eventually leaving two years ago. In my experience UK game studios rely heavily on EU workers and as it is now, game development education in the UK (or anywhere really) is simply not good enough to fill the needs of the largest game development hub in Europe.
If Brexit were to happen I can see a lot of the studios moving over to Ireland, continental Europe or just getting out of the EU entirely in favor of US and Canada.
Great summary and great gathering of information. A big part of the problems with the EU is (and this is nothing specific of the UK as it happens everywhere) that the goverments and politicians present the it as the enemy or at least nothing that the nations can control or influence. Far too often the blame is attributed to the Union, while simply not mentioning that the memberstates represented by elected parties are making the calls. The only gremium that people don't vote for is the Commission. The parlament is directly voted by the EU-citizens, and the Council of Ministers is made of ministers of each country - so bascially exactly the same people that won their elections at home. Funnily enough as a Croatian in Vienna after 26 years of living here (and paying taxes) I have more influence on who is sitting in the EU parlament to represent Austria than who is going to sit in the Austrian parlament.
The EU needs a lot more PR-work to get the less seen and often taken for granted benefits presented to the public. They make it far too easy for those oposing the union.
A last thing as I heard it a couple of days ago the comparission of the EU to Nazi Germany, Nepoleon and so on based on the idea of 'big states' that failed. How can you compare the union that is based on a free decision to join to nations that were build on war and conquering? The absurdity of this claim gets only surpassed by the irony that the EU was created to prevent wars among France and Germany and succeeded in doing so to an unbelievable degree. We take it for granted that there is a cooperation among European states, but if you look back into history you will never see such a long phase of peace in central Europe. That achievement alone is far bigger than most people realize.
You're most welcome!
Yea, we always have options if everything goes really pear shaped.
@Biomag
Thanks for the kind words
Yea, that's a great point actually. Much of the problem is one of perception and that people see large amounts of money getting sent abroad without realising what it gets spent on. They really need to hire a new PR dept.
It amazes me that people consider the EU a failed project too. Europe has been in a perpetual state of war since the 11th century with only the last 70 years being ones of relative peace, which is exactly what the EU was created for initially. I guess people need to have at least a passing knowledge of history for that to really sink in and the majority of people don't really look back past WW1.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36383211
Looks like a lot of Europeans want the biggest army in European history.
At the same time many if not the most members of the Union are also members of the NATO coalition and therefore they cooperate already in military operations worldwide even with nations that aren't part of the Union.
I agree we are living in the most peaceful period of history and there are benefits to the EU, but it is easy to get complacent.
I'm not sure it will work like that in practice unfortunately.
We dont have enough home-grown staff to man the positions that we currently need filled and exiting the EU it will only make it harder to hire. Add to that the likely recession, reduction of investment within the UK and the likelihood that the current 20% percent tax break for developers will be questioned as to its affordability and we have the perfect storm pretty much.
the only things that might change are the small rules that EU applies, like what shape a cucumber has to have etc, those small things that no one will have time to touch, all other agreement will in time be up for discussion again only they lose all the benefits they got from earlier agreements plus this time around EU will be really hard on them to show other EU countries what happens if you leave.
Is it just me, or did this all happen rather briskly . . .
I will se myself out.