Ukie's primary goal is to represent the UK's video game industry, and as of December 2017, represented over 395 video game companies worldwide. The association provides strategy and advice for developers and publishers, collects and publishes retail date for UK video game sales, and lobbies and meets with members of the government to help establish policy related to video games. As ELSPA, Ukie provided voluntary age ratings for video games released in the UK from 1994 until its replacement by
Pan European Game Information (PEGI) in 2003. One of its more notable activities was to help petition the UK government to use the PEGI rating system rather than the
British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). Prior to 2012, video games were exempted from being required to be rated by the BBFC, unless they contained sexual content, nudity, or violence, though developers and publishers could voluntarily submit their works for review. Works that exceeded certain ratings could not be legally sold to minors. The ELSPA worked with the
Video Standards Council (VSC), a government organization that was created to form a code of practice for how to inform consumers about content ratings in games and other video formats. ELSPA had recommended that as an industry standard, any game not needing classification by BBFC to be otherwise classified under the PEGI system, with the VSC helping to determine appropriating ratings. In March 2008,
Tanya Byron published a report commissioned by Prime Minister
Gordon Brown, colloquially called the
Byron Review, describing potentially harmful effects of video games on children, a debate over how to better label video games arose, and recommended that parents need to be given more information than the BBFC's rating alone. In 2008, ELSPA started a large push to getting PEGI as the approved system, while in the interim petitioning the BBFC to color-code its ratings labels to approach the same color-coding used by PEGI. The UK Parliament passed the
Digital Economy Act 2010 into law, and required by July 2012 to transfer the rating of video games from the BBFC to the VSC (outside of games that contain strong pornographic content) and officially adopting the PEGI rating system, along with legal enforcement of selling mature titles to minors. The associate continued to work with the VSC to help establish how the PEGI rating should be displayed on packaging and other materials, and provide awareness to consumers and parents of the new change. Ukie has campaigned and lobbied for the availability of
tax relief for the UK games sector for many years. In 2012, they offered recommendations to the government consultations based on responses and opinions from over 200 video games companies in the country. A tax incentive scheme was scheduled to be included in the
March 2010 United Kingdom budget by the outgoing
Labour government, however it was not finalised and introduced until 2014 when the
European Commission approved the decision. resulting in an estimated £188 million per year for the UK games industry. In January of that year, Ukie CEO Dr Jo Twist OBE called on the UK games industry to submit their thoughts on VGTR as part of a community survey to be submitted as part of the government's consultation. ==See also==