Developers criticise the new Law on Audiovisual Activities.
The Cluster of Croatian Video Game Developers (CGDA) has submitted its criticisms and comments on more than 20 articles of the proposal for the new Law on Audiovisual Activities, which is currently in the public consultation procedure, reports Jutarnji List on December 14, 2017.
“If the changes in the law are not visible in the implementation activities which are to be conducted by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC) and its National Programme, then these amendments to the Law in the programming period 2017-2020 are purely cosmetic and maintain a ‘status quo’ on the issues of new audiovisual activities,” announced the cluster in a press release.
“The article 3, according to the new draft, includes the development of video games as part of audiovisual activities, while article 2 defines the purpose of the Law as the promotion of the development of audiovisual activities and the promotion of audiovisual creativity on the national and international level.
The purpose of the new Law is to regulate and promote all audiovisual products. However, the decision to include multimedia and trans-media works, as well as video games, as part of the audiovisual industry cannot be seen in specific activities and obligations of bodies which are charged with the implementation of the law.
Bearing in mind the kind of staff employed by the video game industry, who are mostly young and highly educated people that Croatia is losing daily thanks to emigration, the need to introduce IT classes as a compulsory subject in school, the fact that the video game industry exports almost all of its production, the growth of Croatian computer video game developers and numerous other positive features of activities related to video game production, we want to emphasise the need for accepting our comments.
The Law as it currently stands includes the video games industry just formally, without defining any specific steps and obligations that should be transposed into the HAVC’s rules and regulations, which would demonstrate that the Republic of Croatia recognizes current trends in the world and is firm in its decision to build its own system in order to keep in step with the digital world,” concluded the Cluster of Croatian Video Game Developers.
Translated from Jutarnji List.
