TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Facebook Gaming increases audience share; China regulators launch mental health initiative targeting gaming; Pokemon GO generated USD$894m (£684m) in 2019; and Hamburg launches €2.08m (£1.77m) developer fund. Facebook Gaming increases audience share Facebook Gaming increased its audience share of its streaming market by 210% year-on-year during 2019, reaching 102 million total hours watched in December alone, according to figures released in the Q4 State of Streaming report by [...]

Video game tax credits have been withdrawn in the Canadian province of Alberta after just one year. Tax credits – also known as tax breaks – have existed in the game industry for many years, but have in recent months come under increasing scrutiny from those that deem that they are sometimes equatable to tax avoidance. In Alberta, the New Democratic Party rolled out its ‘Digital Media Tax Credit’ scheme local game developers in 2019, writes CBC. However, the NDP lost the [...]

UK inflation growth slowed considerably through August 2019, with the falling price of video games highlighted as a significant factor. While UK inflation growth hit 2.1% in July the same year, through August it slowed to a rate of 1.7%, as reported by the government run Office for National Statistics (ONS). As detailed by the BBC, the stalling growth saw the pound go down 0.41% against the dollar to USD$1.2450. The ONS report points to the ‘recreation and culture’ space causing the largest [...]

TheGamingEconomy’s Daily Digest brings you the trending stories in gaming. In today’s news: Anger over tax relief for Rockstar North; calls for industry to counter ‘skin betting’ sites; Valve disables TFS inventories due to item-drop bug. Anger over tax relief for Rockstar Rockstar North is facing criticism after it was revealed that the Grand Theft Auto developer has not paid tax in the UK since 2009 despite receiving £42m in subsidies aimed at ‘culturally British’ games in the last three years, according [...]

The UK’s Migration Advisory Committee has recommended to the nation’s Government that several video games industry roles be added to an official list compiling careers in which the country sees shortages of appropriate talent. As reported by Gamesindustry.biz, the near-400 page ‘Full review of the shortage occupation list‘ report spans all industries and roles. If the recommended games industry and related roles were added to the ‘shortage occupation lists’ (or ‘SOL’), it would be made easier for companies to hire from [...]