Speaking to GamesIndustry, Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere talked about how his team has benefited from recent tax breaks that have been instituted in European countries, especially France, where their development team is located.
“We established a tax break in France on January 1 last year, so we have a whole year of projects that have been submitted and received breaks, and it’s been very interesting – because for the first time we have a clear picture of what’s being produced in France. I know, for instance, that out of the 110 project submitted, approximately 40 per cent passed the famous cultural test and have been granted tax breaks.
“The total of the budgets that were submitted were around EUR 170 million – the first time we know how much is being produced in France, and taking into account we probably don’t have 100 per cent of the picture here, maybe that number is EUR 200 million of game development budgets. That’s quite a high number, and shows how dynamic the development community is in France.
“The tax breaks for 2008 are about EUR 15 million, so that’s a lot of money… but on the other hand you have to compare that number with the EUR 700 million that the French film industry is getting – those are numbers that are quite considerable.”
If France never gave out tax breaks, would Quantic Dream never take the risk of creating Heavy Rain? Nobody may ever know, but, the staff here at PlayStation LifeStyle are sure glad they got a tax break.
