How Game Makers Like EA Mine for Tax Breaks

Sometimes it seems like the U.S. government's relationship to commercial video games is mostly adversarial, as when public officials vilify or move to censor games (even when the results are mixed). An anonymous reader writes with a reminder that the business side of the games business has a much cozier government link, as reflected in this excerpt from the New York Times: "Because video game makers straddle the lines between software development, the entertainment industry and online retailing, they can combine tax breaks in ways that companies like Netflix and Adobe cannot. Video game developers receive such a rich assortment of incentives that even oil companies have questioned why the government should subsidize such a mature and profitable industry whose main contribution is to create amusing and sometimes antisocial entertainment." Since filling out even a simple return can be rather game-like, maybe they're just doing what they do best.