No-deal Brexit would 'devastate' UK gaming industry, says report

A hard or no-deal Brexit threatens to cause serious harm to Britain's gaming industry, which contributes almost £2bn a year to the economy, a report says. Because the industry works across borders and competes for highly skilled international talent with other high-growth areas such as AI research, it stands to suffer in the event of a harsh Brexit that leaves the nation disconnected from the European economy, the campaign group Games4EU argues. "UK interactive entertainment will be harmed by a hard Brexit … and devastated in a no-deal Brexit," said the report's author, Jas Purewal, a digital entertainment lawyer. "This will make it harder to recruit talent into the UK and over the longer term may aid a brain drain of talent out of the UK and into the EU or elsewhere." Ian Livingstone, the founder of Games Workshop and one of the leading lights of Britain's games industry, said in an interview that the games industry "ticks all the right boxes for the knowledge economy – high skills, high tech, high growth, IP-creating, regional, digital, 80% export in a global market worth $120bn per annum".