Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of UK Research and Innovation's (a) Convergent Screen Technologies And Performance in Realtime (CoSTAR), (b) Creative Catalyst and (c) creative industries clusters programme on support for UK video game development studios.

The recently published Creative Industries Sector Vision sets out the Government’s ambition to maximise the potential of the creative industries. It details our plans to grow these industries by an extra £50bn and create a million extra jobs by 2030, and build a pipeline of talent and opportunity for young people through a Creative Careers Promise.

The Sector Vision was developed in partnership by government and industry, and includes £77 million in new government spending on top of the £233 million of existing public funding since the 2021 Spending Review, including specific measures to support the UK’s thriving video game industry.

The Sector Vision announced an additional £5 million investment in the UK Games Fund (UKGF), to provide content funding to high-potential UK games studios, allowing them to develop their intellectual property, boosting their ability to attract investment and reach their next stage of growth.

The Create Growth Programme (CGP) supports a range of creative businesses, including video games companies. As a result of £10.9 million in additional funding announced in the Sector Vision, the CGP will be expanded to cover 12 English regions outside of London, supporting over 2,000 creative businesses to access private investment and scale up.

The Sector Vision also announced an additional investment of at least £50 million in the next wave of UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Creative Industries Clusters programme. This funding will be used to identify and support at least six new clusters specialising in creative subsectors, building on the existing nine clusters supported by this programme. One of the existing clusters includes InGAME, a research and development (R&D) centre for the video games industry led by Abertay University.

The Convergent Screen Technologies and performance in Realtime (CoSTAR) will establish a new national R&D infrastructure for the next generation of screen and performance technologies, including virtual production.

Additionally, over 200 creative companies across the UK have received a share of £10 million of innovation funding from the first round of Innovate UK’s Creative Catalyst programme. Of these projects, approximately 10% are innovation projects based directly with the UK games sector.