Irish Gaming Industry Excelling, According to SIRO Gaming Webinar Hosts

A panel of SIRO Gaming experts gathered today to discuss Ireland’s progress as a gaming community and highlighted some areas of struggle in the process.

There are around 2 million gamers currently in Ireland, approximately 700,000 of which are active e-sports competitors. The primary issue for these gamers, as explained by Head of Product at SIRO, Alex French, is fibre broadband connection speed, but it is not an issue that is going unnoticed.

During the worst of COVID-19 restrictions, not only for those participating in e-sports tournaments but for those hosting and attending conferences, remote work was something the gaming industry had to get used to making the permanent switch to. The standards in place originally for fibre broadband at that point were not near enough to keep up to speed with the industry requirements in Ireland.

French had an optimistic outlook for the solution to this issue, he outlined how there will be three different companies building fibre broadband in Ireland by the end of the year, and said that the figure of 55% represents the projected year-on-year progress. He also mentioned how we will shortly move to a standard of 1GB latency, and within 5-10 years the gaming industry in Ireland will have more fibre broadband than they know what to do with, looking at up to 10GB speed.

Irish Gaming Industry Adjusting to Lag

Brenda Romero, award-winning game designer and co-founder at Romero Games, moved to the west of Ireland back in 2014 to develop her gaming company with her husband, John, who is the other co-founder of their company. She used the video game, Quake, as an example of an aspect of e-sports that is particularly dominated by Irish competitors, but mentions how this is made possible by Irish gamers’ ability to adapt to the lag in game-play resulting from the consistently poor fibre broadband speed.

Romero: “I think Quake is the best example. The best Quake players are here in Ireland because they have managed to get used to the lag and been able to play around it, that’s what has put them ahead of competitors in other countries”.

Trevor Keane, co-founder and head of e-sports at EPIC Global Agency, was another member of the guest panel at the seminar. He used another point to exemplify the progress of the gaming industry, stating that Zelda is “offering a prize pool of 40 million” for their e-sports competitions.

Keane primarily works with the sports gaming sector and has worked with Leicester City footballer Christian Fuchs, along with an unnamed Manchester United player and England International to set up their own esports teams.

As an example of Ireland’s success in the sports gaming sector, he used Tyrone Ryan, a FIFA esports player who won the first-ever e-league set up in Ireland. French described how this feat puts Tyrone Ryan “in the elite amongst FIFA e-sports competitors”.

The Romero’s, French, Keane and VP Consumer Tech, Content and Business t IDA Ireland, Catherine Slowey were all in agreement that the tax credits in Ireland are a huge incentive for gaming and tech companies looking to set up in Ireland but explained how it would hugely boost the country’s profile if they could follow Canada’s lead in paying gamers’ salaries.

Romero (John): “While the tax credits here in Ireland are great, Canada is currently paying 40% of gamers’ salaries. What would be even better than the tax credits, would be if Ireland could contribute to what Canada is doing”.