News

Ukie welcomes Kickstarter UK launch as great opportunity for the games industry

Games and interactive entertainment trade body, Ukie, says the launch of Kickstarter in the UK is a fantastic opportunity for games businesses to raise funds through crowdfunding. Ukie has been promoting crowdfunding as a viable way for games businesses to raise finance and published a report in February this year with Osbourne Clarke to recommend how different models, especially equity based ones, could be better encouraged in the UK.

Ukie CEO, Dr Jo Twist said. “Crowdfunding gives games businesses a fantastic way of raising money for their ideas. Crowdfunding is also a fantastic way to generate metrics to not only understand the appetite for their idea but to generate interest from other investors. The games industry has raised more money on the US version of Kickstarter than any other content category this year, prompting them to call 2012 Year of the Game, and its launch in the UK is only to be welcomed as it will make it even easier for games businesses based in this country to make use of the platform.

“Having Kickstarter in the UK will also raise the profile of crowdfunding more generally. There are already lots of other UK based crowdfunding platforms operating and government should recognise them as a sector and update financial regulation around equity based crowdfunding that will let the platform operators operate as efficiently as possible in the UK and make the regulation fighting-fit for a growing digital economy.”

Many Ukie members have used crowdfunding to raise money to produce their games, including Revolutions Software’s latest Broken Sword and Six To Start, with their iOS hit Zombies Run. Six To Start CEO, Adrian Hon said: “Games and crowdfunding are the perfect match. We used the US version of Kickstarter to generate the money that we needed to create Zombies Run in the first place, but we had to jump through various hoops to get our project on to an American funding platform. Having Kickstarter launch in the UK will allow British businesses much easier access to its donations based crowdfunding platform’.

Peter Donnell

As a child in my 40's, I spend my day combining my love of music and movies with a life-long passion for gaming, from arcade classics and retro consoles to the latest high-end PC and console games. So it's no wonder I write about tech and test the latest hardware while I enjoy my hobbies!

Disqus Comments Loading...

Recent Posts

Rumor: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Will Outperform NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti by 15%

According to rumors, the AMD Radeon RX 9070 Series is expected to launch in the…

46 minutes ago

NVIDIA RTX 5080 and 5090 Sell Out Instantly, Scalpers Resell at Sky-High Prices on eBay

Today, NVIDIA launched the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090, its latest graphics cards. However, availability…

54 minutes ago

Apple Reports Record-Breaking Q1 2025; Revenue and Profit Rise Despite iPhone Decline

Apple has announced its financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2025, which coincides…

1 hour ago

New Update to No Man’s Sky Brings Trillions of Planets

It seems that every time I return to No Man's Sky, there is always a…

16 hours ago

Intel Releases Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.6557 Beta

Intel has just released its latest Arc graphics drivers, bringing them up to version 101.6557…

16 hours ago

Microsoft Reports Strong Growth Driven by AI, While Xbox Struggles with Hardware Sales

Microsoft has released its financial results for the second quarter of 2025, showing strong overall…

19 hours ago