The French government has launched a major push to poach British game developers in the wake of Brexit, promising subsidies, tax breaks and loans to creatives who make the move across the Channel.
The new campaign, “Join the Game”, sees the French government highlighting the scale of its home-grown games industry, promising similar support to anyone who wants to relocate – and hoping to capitalise on the fact that the UK will shortly not make much sense as the base for “European operations”.
“In only a few years, video games have become France’s second largest cultural industry, behind books and ahead of cinema,” the French Directorate General for Enterprise, which is leading the campaign, says. “It is one of the most dynamic sectors in the French economy, with more than 5,000 direct jobs.” Video game revenues totalled €4.9bn (£4.4bn) in 2018, it added.
Some of the world’s largest games companies have strong links to France, from publisher Ubisoft – founded in Brittany in 1986 by the Guillemot brothers, one of whom, Yves, remains the company’s chief executive to this day – to developers Quantic Dream, Dontnod and Arkane.
In enticing British developers to come and join them, the French government is promising its various support mechanisms to the industry at large. A video game tax credit offers a tax break on 30% of production expenses, up to a total of €6m a year; the video games support fund offers subsidies for creating original work, for producing “technically ambitious” prototypes and for community events; and an equity loan scheme allows companies to borrow up to €2m, to be paid back contingent on company growth.
The campaign is likely to have an appreciative audience among the British gaming industry, where concern about the impact of Brexit on access to talent, markets and funding is widespread. In November, Ian Livingstone, the founder of Games Workshop and one of the leading lights of Britain’s industry, warned: “By removing certainty and many of the existing benefits of EU membership, it is feared that Brexit will hinder the UK industry’s ambition to be the best in the world.”
A survey in March 2017, released the day after Britain invoked Article 50 and confirmed its intention to withdraw from the EU, revealed that more than two-fifths of the nation’s games companies were considering relocation. Fifty-seven per cent of UK games companies employ workers from the EU, and at those companies EU workers represent, on average, a third of all employees, according to UKIE, the industry body that carried out the research.
