And, like many others, we didn't want to sit back and do nothing. We wanted to use our skills as the accountants for the games industry to try to make a difference to studios, and, in turn, their employees. We don't just mean impacting the bottom line, we also mean positively impacting employee lives as a direct result of our expertise. How are we aiming to achieve this? By helping inject much-needed cash into studios, in a bid to try to minimise layoffs.

To that end, we're super-excited to announce we've created a specific arm of our practice called "VGTR Specialists". This allows us to provide dedicated support and expertise to games companies to allow them to more easily claim back cash from the UK Government's highly valuable Video Games Tax Relief ("VGTR") scheme.

Here's a (simplified) real-life example that we saw only yesterday, which will help set the scene as to how much of a game-changer this tax relief can be:

A games studio spent £200,000 a year for the last two years on game development costs in the UK/EEA - so a total spend of £400,000 over two years. The founder reached out to us, having heard about VGTR/VGEC (VGEC is the "new" VGTR). A rough calculation indicated that he would be able to claim back £80,000 - in CASH - under VGTR, as a loss-making studio. This critical cashflow injection will go straight into continuing to pay the team's salaries, directly avoiding layoffs. Needless to say, the founder was beyond delighted - especially when we mentioned there were no upfront costs involved.

If you haven't come across VGTR or VGEC before, you'll probably have quite a few questions. You'll find some answers here:

https://lnkd.in/e-fugkr8

Of course, like all things tax-related, there's certain criteria that need to be met, and we can help navigate that.

If you have come across VGTR/VGEC before, but you're not convinced you're claiming it to its full advantage, we can also help with that.

Please do reach out if you'd like more info, or just want to have a chat about what this could mean for your studio.