Value of Support Provided to Ubisoft Singapore and KPIs to Ensure Local Talent Development and Leadership Placements

4 Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song asked the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry (a) what is the total amount of Government subsidies, grants and other financial support provided to Ubisoft Singapore from 2008 to 2024; (b) what specific key performance indicators and conditions are attached to the support provided in terms of local talent development, leadership roles for Singaporeans, and knowledge transfer; and (c) what mechanisms exist to claw back subsidies if companies fail to meet these conditions.

The Minister of State for Trade and Industry (Mr Alvin Tan) (for the Minister for Trade and Industry): Mr Speaker, the Government has a suite of economic incentives and tools to attract investments, and support companies to grow and transform their businesses. Companies that receive Government support are required to meet key outcomes, such as job creation and local employment, business spending, or fixed asset investment. The level of support and conditions vary depending on the nature of the project. The Government has mechanisms to claw back subsidies from companies that fail to meet the imposed conditions.

We are unable to disclose the details of agreements with individual companies due to confidentiality clauses and commercial sensitivities.

Mr Speaker: Mr Giam.

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song (Aljunied): Sir, can I just ask the Minister of State some supplementary questions? What key performance indicators (KPIs) and conditions were attached to support in terms of local talent development, leadership roles for Singaporeans and knowledge transfer? And what are the mechanisms that he mentioned that the Government has to be able to claw back government funding if companies do not fulfil these obligations? And has the Economic Development Board (EDB) ever clawed back public funding given to foreign companies who do not fulfil their obligations?

Mr Alvin Tan: Sir, I thank Mr Gerald Giam for his questions. As I mentioned, we cannot comment on individual company agreements. But I would say that for the claw-back mechanisms, companies may be subject to potential revocation of their existing incentives or claw back of its associated benefits in the event of breach of terms and conditions. But I wanted to assure the Member also that the Government ensures prudent administration of tax incentives through a rigorous process that includes those claw-back mechanisms but also a pre-approval evaluation and also regular monitoring.

With regard to Ubisoft and the broader games sector, those are applied, but the Government has been supporting and, indeed, growing this ecosystem. With regards primarily to the question about building up local talent in this space, I thought it is useful to share a few nuggets.

First, probably the Member knows, Ubisoft has been established for about 15 years. They have trained over 780 Singaporeans and Permanent Residents (PRs). There are local leaders who have been developed, and I have met a few of them. Paul Foo is a creative director who has been working at Ubisoft for many, many years. I met with Justin Ng, who is a producer, and their teams produced a few titles, including the upcoming anticipated title, Assassin's Creed Shadows.

They have also onboarded about 150 interns over the last 15 years and have been producing content. I talked about Assassin's Creed Shadows. The local team of Ubisoft Singapore and local developers have been working on the games in two regions, as the game is featured in Japan in the samurai era. So, they worked on the Omi and Wakasa regions. And over 80 Ubisoft Singapore developers and members were involved.

Broader to that, recently I was also at Koei Tecmo Singapore's 20th anniversary. They launched Three Kingdoms HEROES, which is on Apple Arcade, and they also worked together with our local Institutes of Higher Learning, for example, with Nanyang Polytechnic. So, I met with some of the developers who are doing a diploma in animation games and visual effects. There are two, for example, Goh Jia Hui and Lu Shi Ya, have been working on these games that these studios have been developing and are based in Singapore.

So, I think, overall, we support this ecosystem. We have also seen the good flow-down impact on creating very new and exciting jobs on the game developer space and we will continue to do so.