UKIE lobbies to make crowd funding legal in the UK

The UKIE games trade body is drawing up a report to call for crowd funding initiatives, such as the Kickstarter programme so effectively adopted by Double Fine earlier today, to become legal in the UK.

The new report, due to be published on 17th February, will call for changes in legislation that will allow game developers and other interactive entertainment businesses to use crowd funding to help finance their projects.

As it stands, crowd funding in the UK is restricted by the current legal and regulatory framework.

"Double Fine's Kickstarter project has today shown the huge potential of crowd funding to benefit games and interactive entertainment businesses," commented UKIE CEO Jo Twist.

"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."

As previously reported, Psychonauts developer Double Fine today launched a Kickstarter page to raise money to fund a new adventure game. At the time of writing it has hauled in nearly $900,000 in under 24 hours - more than double the $400,000 it was initially seeking.