The figures which were published by HMRC originally forecast that the amount that would be paid out would be £35m but £180m has been claimed by games developers in the 12 months to March 2021. This is a 414% increase.

In 2020-2021, 55 claims of more than £500,000 equated to 16% of all claims made. Averaging at £2.8m per claim, these claims were worth £156m, or 87% of the total amount paid out. This is an increase of 7% from last year’s figures where claims for over half a million were worth 80% of the total.

Almost half of all video games tax relief claims was for under £50,000, these claims were only responsible for around 2% of the total amount paid out.

According to the HMRC, since the video game tax relief programme was introduced in 2014, with the intent to promote British values and foster innovation among small independent games developers through subsidies, the claims have been made for 1,640 games.