News UK government to reject tax breaks for games

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/12/09/uk-government-to-reject-tax-breaks-for-game/1

The UK government is expected to reject requests for tax breaks for the games industry.

 

i dont think anyone is going to see any tax breaks this time round

the government and the Bankers ****ed up big time and we are going to have to pay for it

 

fkwts

 

It really doesn't. Compare what we offer here to what's offered in Canada, Australia or places in eastern Europe. It's pathetic.

The situations are not quite comparable, anyway - it might actually be more worthwhile to put money into games. The film industry cannot, without rules governing imported film, ever hope to compete against the US. The games guys can.

P

 

Absolute joke.

The games industry is so unbelievably misunderstood by the politicians. They think it's a minority of people that play and those that do are weirdos or kids. Nowadays the majority of gamers are in their 20s-30s have jobs and have disposable income. I'm 23 have a good job, have a social life but like to relax playing games rather than watch telly like most of the population.

Comparing the games industry to the films is a good one as generally games are cheaper to make than a film and sell for more money. The games industry is still growing and is only just hitting the mainstream now after a few decades of being for kids and a minority of adults. Therefore there will be profit there for companies who do it right and tax for the government in the future. Bad decision by the government, short sighted ignorance at its best.

Personally I'd rather spend £30 on a game than on a couple of DVDs or going to the pictures, there is definitely room for growth of British games but as usual politicians haven't got a clue.

 

Tax breaks? With £175 billion budget deficit, I don't think so.
Being Labour I expect him to massively raise taxes with just a few spending cuts. He won't have the balls to make the spending cuts needed to get the public finances back in the black.

 

On a side note the Labour government announced £12billion savings by cutting spending. Yey!

On another note, Labour borrowed £175billion this year to drive UK.com even further into debt and despair ...

Waste of time even thinking about what Labour are doing at the moment, petition Conservatives like I've done, seeing as they will be making the decisions soon enough.

 

Um, if you factor in government pensions and other commitments then the debt is closer to £1.4 Trillion. I have also seen a figure of £2.2 Trillion, but I think that was a bit inflated.

Investing money into 'safe' industries that are performing well with growth is where the money should be going, they are doing something right. The games industry fits this profile and we do have some talent here, would be a shame for that to leave.

Still, the bankers are still nice and comfy and can still afford the extortionate cost of fuel for their cars and houses. Wouldn't want them leaving would we.

Oh, and which startlingly astute economic adviser came up with fixing a crash due to over-use of credit by.... getting credit. Honestly, we really should find other jobs for the intellectually challenged.

 

I dont see why the Movie industry should get anything.....if they made movies people actually want to see instead of all the grim depressing art house crap they constantly make, they would actually make money.

Also, as soon as British actors get noticed, all they do is piss off to America, leaving the UK film industry in the lurch.

 

Couldn't agree more. The reason this happens is that the only funding that's really available is lottery money, and the only way to get any lottery funding for something is to somehow persuade the people in charge that it's for a "good cause". It is for this reason that we end up subsisting on a diet of Ken Loach "it's grim oop north" pseudo-documentaries about one-legged gay unemployed miners. Disclaimer: Ken Loach may not ever have made a film about one-legged gay unemployed miners.

If we actually had a film "industry" in the UK it would be somewhat self-sustaining and be able to make its own decisions about what gets funded, as opposed to being beholden to do-gooders at the lottery.

 

Good point, well made.

 

I'm sick of all the mawkish "grim up north" movies. Its not all cloth caps and whippets on strings up here, we got hooked up to the national grid recently, so things are looking up.

The games industry in the UK should have recieved tax breaks years ago, in the days when we could say we were world leaders in the field. Can't see it happening anytime soon now though.

 

Yeah, a party that takes all it's policies from the Daily Mail is REALLY going to help the games industry!

 

I hate that expression....Bankers....it's salespeople & investors that messed up, not the wee woman sitting on the other side of the desk processing your pay-in slips, not the operators at the end of the phone, not the IT people that keep those systems live. I'm fairly sure it was the tories that allowed (actively encouraged) the convergence of banking and investing in the same organisations, that's where a lot of this came from in the first place. A brief study of economics might help.

Where that statement fits in with tax breaks for games developers I do not know - there is more of a direct parallel with the music "industry" outside of the partially funded academy routes, where innovation is stifled in favour of mass market appeal, & what tax breaks do most musicians get? none that I ever found.

No matter how good or bad our economy is, no political party will throw money at the leisure industry, which (rightly or wrongly) is what the games industry is percieved to be.

UK Governments, all as bad as each other....until we get write-ins as well as the multiple choice of who's least worst we have no democracy.

 

Who is this dumass on the photo?

 

I'm well aware of all of this its just become the agreed descriptive term for the people that screwed up ofc Ethel had nothing to do with the buying or selling of Large quantities of debt

 

I agreed with you comment apart from this. Can people stop spouting this **** yes, the tories went this direction back in th 90's when it probally was the right thing. The fact is Labour was in power for the last for the last 12 or so years, it was up to them to change the system not matter if tom dick or harry supported it. I really love it when thatcher gets blamed for todays problems. She hasn't been in control for how long now? Its not as if the tories abandoned ship and damaged the steering, its more they got removed and the new captain fell asleep at the wheel before jumping ship and letting his 2nd in command hit the iceburg.