"For all the championing everyone in the UK games development sector has done – even Develop through our increasingly popular Industry Excellence Awards, which services all of Europe – it’s clear that Great Britain
ain’t so great on the global stage we once dominated."

You lying hypocritical cretins. You've done nothing of the sort. You've consistently run "Canada specials" and consistently talked the industry in the UK down. Your Develop awards are nothing more than an old boys' club back slapping event. You're a UK company, you're based here but you've done nothing for the last few years but go on about how great Canada is for games development and how poxy the UK is.

I despise you. You're one company I'd LOVE to see go under.

Why? Because Canada is America's hat.

You're entitled to your opinion of course.

And IPs are easily traced.

Did you have this opinion of us when we handed your studio an award not so long ago?

Develop is a global publication so, um, we're of course going to cover when one region prospers.

Why, you going to call up my boss and whinge? And you have no idea where i work. Grow up, you imbecile. How many British studios do you rely on for advertising, yet you spout crap on here about how the UK sucks and elsewhere is brilliant. You're scum.

How you lot sleep at night is beyond me.

Well now you're just trolling. And we've never said the 'UK sucks'.

Quite shocked by Hmmpf's comments. Who's a grumpy pumpy then!

RE: the UK industry, Keep the faith! There's still plenty of exciting stuff happening here, just in different areas.

The big business is obviously going to go where it makes most financial sense to set up, there's no advantage to them setting up here, but the games industry is much bigger than the AAA's. Creativity isn't in any way related to money. (If anything, LESS money breeds creativity)

Oh well done Michael outing a poster whose comments you don't like! Either live by the promise of anonymity or don't bother, but outing someone!

I haven't actually outed anyone. I checked the authenticity of the post as it was abusive. But on the other hand, hypocrisy and cruelty - that's not something that should be tolerated, don't you think? All of Hhmpf's posts are, actually, pretty mean spirited - a few had been removed previously because they stepped over the line and were outright libelous. Remember: this is our turf. He/she expected they could try to bloody someone's nose without recourse.

That's what is so galling about the original post. Develop does, and has, championed the UK's ability to make great games. We pushed the Games Up campaign when we didn't have to, have banged on and on about tax breaks, give awards to companies that use those same awards to boost their status/sell their business.

But we aren't the tourist information board - we aren't the ministry of propaganda. The sector is facing a real crisis at the moment, and the migration of talent and money to Canada isn't helping/is contributing to that. So we aren't going to ignore it - we'll cover it and talk about it. If you want things to be ignored then go to the less-focused games sites. You can post bile or shallow industry commentary there.

We'll I'll happily state publically that I think it was unprofessional of *you* Michael to respond the way you have.

Defend yourself by all means, moderate if you really feel the need, but implied threats just reflects poorly on yourself and your organisation.

I'm sure the majority of your punters expect some trolling and carry on from public forums by now.

It *is* your turf but as guests we are not obliged to hang around. We come here because you're supposed to be a professional source of information about our industry. We expect to see you respond in a professioal manner at all times or the value of the information/services you provide comes into question.

It was a vindictive thing you said, despite the original post being angry, full of hyperbole and troll like.

It actually presented an opportunity to respond well and shine. I'm disappointed.

All fair points - noted.

The 21-page article is interspersed with full page adverts for Canada and the companies based there.

This is where the story appears, in my humble opinion, to pass the boundary between covering the story and advertising on behalf of Canada. Despite the inappropriate tone of the response from 'Hmmpf', I think Develop would do well to listen to his points and see if they can afford to ignore them.

Canadian companies, development firms and studios advertised alongside the piece because we were writing about Canada, not the other way around.

There are a lot of studios in there who don't advertise. We've been telling readers we were writing about Canada all year - it's on our forward features list.

To recap: We've covered the Canadian market more and more as it has grown to prominence - starting with a big piece I wrote about Montreal about four years ago. Since then, yes, we've written about it more and more. Because it's fast-growing sector. Since then, yes, more and more Canadian studios have advertised with us. Because it's a fast-growing sector. It really is as simple as that - is there a symbiosis? In a sense, but writing about a sector and those companies in that sector having the money to promote themselves, well... Because it's fast-growing sector! Not because we decided to just start 'advertising Canada'.

We're fully aware that we have a UK heritage - the next issue will address the questions the November issue raised about what happens on our home territory. But as I said above, Develop is a global publication.

You can keep trying to make this a 'Develop' thing all you like - the ugly truth is that the UK is suffering as Canada continues to prosper.

Canada has a lot of agencies that go out and aggressively promote its clusters - what does the UK have? David Cameron hosts an event talking about London being 'the UK's Silicon Valley', then completely ignores the London-based trailblazing UK games firms... Strikes me as a real mismatch.

Face the facts, and stop trying to shoot the messenger. Develop is reminding people what's going on here. Like I said before, if you want wall-to-wall smiles and inoffensive editorial about the industry then go elsewhere.

"Face the facts, and stop trying to shoot the messenger. Develop is reminding people what's going on here. Like I said before, if you want wall-to-wall smiles and inoffensive editorial about the industry then go elsewhere."

This is quite puzzling. The whole piece on Canada is exactly as you describe, 'wall-to-wall smiles and inoffensive editorial'. This is in stark contrast that with the slightly loaded front page headline:
"Will the last developer to leave Britain please turn out the lights".

Perhaps including in the article a few points on what isn't so great about Canada, and more importantly, some concepts that the rest of the global development community can learn (unless its purely tax breaks as implied by the article) might have gone some way to making the article more useful to everyone whilst keeping the facts straight.

Nobody is pretending that everything in the UK is fine. Everyone gets it, we have to deal with it on a day-to-day basis. This is not a point of contention.

Tone is a horribly difficult thing to portray via text and this probably stems from people reading things differently. Just as you are ready to jump to the defence of the publication when someone has criticised in a poor tone, it appears people are finding the tone of this issue objectionable (my concerns are relating to the cover and the Canada article).

Please read this with a friendly tone as I really am not aiming to aggravate, simply trying to illustrate why quite a few people are aggravated by the piece.

Anyways, its Friday, hope everyone has a good weekend :)

I see your point.

My response to you Danny really wasn't at you. You make valid points above. Yes, the overall editorial is about Canada generally - I was talking more about the contentious point the original article (our editorial, cover, the 'six things' piece), which is clearly what has touched a nerve. So your point stands from that point of view, what wasn't really how I saw things.

Likewise, my tone isn't meant to be that confrontational - if I seem incensed, it's because the overall approach to the whole issue from a vocal minority (not you, clearly - you're reasonable ;) is that we shouldn't have taken this angle. I find that crazy - as if we should ignore it.

All noted for the future.

While I can't argue with most of the articles relating to Canada/UK, its the tone that I find depressing (not to mention the front page!). That's not a criticism, but its certainly close to the bone for developers in the UK.

This country has a problem with confidence and when aspiring developers like myself come across some of these articles it can be pretty demoralizing; I guess I'm saying that the UK has a bit of a lust for failure, when you hear things are bad all the time you start believing it...

Valid points.

While we were intentionally being provocative, it wasn't to depress.

We want people to react, to be aware of what's going on - but ultimtaely we want people to fight back.

The next issue of the magazine will look at the situation, and what can be done about it.

How do you explain your six reasons "article"? That seems to be nothing more than an advert for Canada - you weren't "exploring" the reasons, you were stating them as if they were fact. How do you square that with claiming to support the UK industry?

Can you confirm whether your sales team called Canadian studios to sell advertising space on this issue? Can you also confirm whether, as a matter of course or specifically on this issue, your sales team offers/offered positive editorial to advertisers?

You want Develop to confirm if a magazine went looking for advertisers? Are you stupid?

Sometimes it's good to be told.

But fair enough let's drop that one, as you're obviously quite defensive, which makes me wonder who you really are.

How does Develop defend the six reasons article as journalism?

If you read the pages about each of the four regions, you'll see that all of the six points are touched on. It's a brief summation uniting the themes a lot of people in the region talk about. There wasn't enough room to cite each example and where you could find it - as I say, it's a summation.

So how do you want me to defend it?

Is it inaccurate? No.

Is it provocatively presented? You bet!

It's "accurate" in so far as it presents the positives. But then you could say the US is the world's biggest economy. And say nothing about the fact that it's mired in debt. Doesn't mean it has a bright future.

I'm sorry Michael, but it reads just like an infomercial to me. And I know I'm not alone in the industry in thinking that. Far from alone. Develop absolutely dropped the ball on that one.

As for not shooting the messenger, it's a valid question to ask the extent to which the messenger has been rewarded for delivering the message, but we'll leave that one. And you may bristle at that comment, but it's still a fair one.

Instead of picking at each other, try to see who's the actual enemy... i.e. who grabs the drops, when the creative team should get some. You've guessed right: vultures, which means salespeople&co.

A delgation of Games Industry people have been invited to visit and talk with politician about Powering the UK Games Industry later this month.

I'm glad develop has said what they have about Canada. It may spur the UK Government into assisting the industry.

Rumour has it that a big announcement is imminent from the UK Government, maybe they've already read the article!!!!

Isn't the game industry very tied to tax breaks (like many other industries)? And various governments change the breaks they give these types of companies. At the moment Canada has some good offers. The UK will respond.