Gamescom 2020 – Germany would take 50% of the burden off the shoulders of smaller and larger players in the video game industry with state aid.

Taking advantage of the framework of Gamescom 2020, the Cologne video game fair, the German Government has just announced a new and ambitious financing program for the video game sector in the country. A measure that will offer your studios an aid of up to 50% of the development costs of their projects, without the need to return it, ranging from the smallest productions to the large Triple-A games that come out of their industry.

The aid is granted from 100K euros, and its percentage decreases the higher the cost.

As reported in Games Industry, the Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Andreas Scheuer announces this aid program that was born from a 2019 pilot program, which limited aid to projects of up to 200,000 euros. However, in its final version, the new measure will grant aid of up to 50% to all eligible projects that exceed 100,000 euros in the budget, with a decreasing percentage depending on the total cost of the project. Thus, developments whose costs are between 100,000 and 2 million euros will be financed up to a maximum of 50% of their total cost.

Projects between 2 and 8 million euros will receive between 25% and 50% of their cost as aid, and projects above 8 million will be eligible for a maximum of 25% aid. However, any development project that reaches costs of 40 million euros or more will be assessed individually by the German bodies, to grant aid based on “its innovation, its cultural relevance, the economic impact and the available means”.

„Germany may finally become a competitive headquarters for game development.” – Felix Falk

For its part, the development of a prototype – unlike a game already defined – will also have government aid if its cost is between 30,000 and 400,000 euros. In both cases, to qualify for the aid of this program, companies must have their headquarters in Germany or have offices in the country. “The launch of a major video game fund means that Germany can finally become an internationally competitive headquarters for game development,” says Felix Falk, director of the German video game industry association, and organizer of the fair.

“This is the starting gun for our return,” adds the manager, also an organizer of Gamescom 2020.

Source: 3DJuegos

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