David Braben, the founder of Frontier Developments and the chair of Skillset’s advisory board, has issued the current UK government a stark warning: start throwing its support behind the industry or risk losing domestic talent to more welcoming countries.

According to Braben, the UK government needs to follow the examples set by Canada and France by introducing development tax breaks for domestic studios.

“We have been told it wouldn’t be possible to do what’s been done in Canada, and yet the French have,” he said in a newly published interview. “So something like that very quickly, very easily. Look at Canada – the net cost of the scheme is equivalent to something like half a billion UKP to the government but the net inward investment is something like one and a half billion. So the Canadian government has already seen a very, very big return. Now, we are building an outstanding industry, a key potential industry for whichever country it’s established in. Which is why so many governments see this, and unfortunately the playing field isn’t level. All we are asking for is a more level playing field. We want to stay in Britain if we at all possibly can, and certainly our intention is to do so. But, that's because we’ve had a number of successful games. It’s getting harder. And there’s a danger that we’ll fall below critical mass. That's the problem we’ve got.”

Braben also said that the recent establishment of a parliamentary group to support the games industry merely offered potential for an improvement of current conditions, rather than any immediate benefits to the sector.

“We’ve had a group of us engaged with politicians over the last three years, and each time they say, ‘Right, we’re taking it seriously, we’re establishing this committee,’ we don’t actually see action. It’s all promises of something being done in the future. And I think the thing that speaks volumes is the Digital Britain report. No mention of the games industry, except we were a big part of the figures – which is the size of digital Britain – and we had one mention in the report, at the end of a paragraph, to say yes there are challenges for the industry or words to that effect. We are not really yet being taken seriously by government. It’s gradually changing by degrees. But actions speak louder than words, and we haven’t seen very many actions."