The Government of Wallonia is awarding an additional €2 million for the production of video games “made in Wallonia” to Wallimage Gaming, reports L’Echo on Thursday.
Created in 2022, Wallimage Gaming, the gaming department of the Walloon audiovisual investment fund, was initially endowed with €2 million. The scheme is part of a bigger effort in Wallonia and Belgium to encourage the video game industry.
On the federal level, the country also instated a "tax shelter" for the gaming sector in 2022, extending cinema and artistic investment to video games and offering tax incentives for companies to invest in video game production.
Last year, Wallimage Gaming launched three open calls directed towards gaming studios to develop new productions. It received 37 applications and selected 14.
In total, these projects generated nearly €5.8 million in expenditure. The government grants provide partial funding for projects, which goes up to 50% for entertainment games and 85% for artistic games.
The grants support the production of video games “made in Wallonia” and the creation of companies. In most cases, the intellectual property belongs entirely to a Walloon studio.
Among the studios selected for the previous calls are Abrakam Entertainment, Fishing Cactus, Badass Mongoose and Rablo Games.
The Flemish Audiovisual Fund has its own scheme dedicated to sponsoring video game production, with an annual budget of €2.7 million.
The gaming industry is on the rise in Belgium. Last year, it had a total economic value of €582 million, according to BelgianGames, an umbrella organisation representing the sector.
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However, the sector remains underdeveloped, according to Le Soir. Out of the 110 companies listed in 2021 by the Belgian Game Association, 57 had between two and ten workers, 35 were single-member and more than half had been in existence for less than five years.
Ghent studio Larian (creator of the Divinity game saga) has several hundred workers and offices in five countries, but that remains the exception.
