UKIE plans to make UK crowd funding legal

Industry trade body UKIE will publish a report next week outlining how to make crowd funding legal for UK games firms.

It wants to change legislation so that publishers and other games companies can receive money from large numbers of individuals, in order to fund new projects.

The news comes after US developer Double Fine received more than $614,000 from individuals today who are willing to fund a new point-and-click adventure project.

UKIE’s Crowd Funding Report – due on February 17th – will explain how UK law could be changed to facilitate crowd funding. At the moment this funding method is currently restricted in the UK by the legal and regulatory framework.

UKIE’s CEO Jo Twist said: Double Fine’s Kickstarter project has today shown the huge potential of crowd funding to benefit games and interactive entertainment businesses.

We need the UK to be able to take full advantage of crowd funding and UKIE’s Crowd Funding Report, due next week, will outline exactly what needs to be done for this to be possible.”