Tax Breaks not just cause to bring Avalanche to UK

The UK’s long awaited tax breaks for game developers are expected to attract foreign studios to the UK, but it is the intense competition for talent which concerns Avalanche Studios.

The Swedish studio behind Just Cause 2 opened an office in New York last June, hoping to take advantage low competition for a large talent pool.

"We set up the studio to increase profile and be an attractive employer," Avalache co-founder Christofer Sundberg told Edge.

"We see the setup of that studio as a marketing effort, and it is paying off massively."

Sundberg conceded that tax breaks made the UK "a more attractive place to set up a studio," but the move to New York was not about profit.

If profit were the primary concern, Sundberg says Avalanche would have joined the landslide of studios into Canada, which has enjoyed games industry tax breaks for some time.

"Even though there are tax breaks, we need to look at what the recruitment possibilities are and what the competition is," he says. "That’s why we will never set up a studio in Montreal, for example.

"Not only is it a boring place, it’s packed wth publishers with way more money than we could ever dream of, so the competition is just too hard."