He said while the DGTO was a massive milestone, more could be done to streamline Australia's immigration system. Ron Curry is the CEO of the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association, which represents and lobbies for the local industry. The offset will allow games studios to get a 30 per cent rebate on developer wages, in addition to the existing wage rebates offered by the states. Revenue has more than doubled in the past six years - from $114 million in 2016 to $284 million in 2021 - according to the latest data from PwC.Īnd the federal government wants to supercharge this progress, with the recent passing of a new landmark tax law called the Digital Games Tax Offset (DGTO). Revenue doubles LoadingĪustralia's games industry has made a lot of progress on the back of indie hits.

'So yeah, we definitely needed that at the time.'Ĭult of the Lamb was released in June last year and Julian Wilton said it sold over one million copies in its first week of release. 'And it actually meant that two of the other people working on it could get a bit of money while we were just finishing that off because they were quite desperate at the time, just because the last game we worked on was quite a big flop.

'It wasn't much, but it just really took that demo to the next level,' he said. Made by just two developers in Adelaide, it went on to sell over 3 million copies and garner massive critical praise.Īnother indie hit, Cult of the Lamb, came out last year from Massive Monster, a small team based in Melbourne. Side-scrolling action-adventure game Hollow Knight, released in 2017, was a watershed moment for the industry. From a flop to a hit Loadingīy the mid-to-late 2010s, Australian-made games with more depth and production value had gone viral. Today, games made in Queensland receive a 15 per cent rebate on developer wages and 10 per cent in Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. 'One of the other things that happened after the GFC, or around that time, is that it became much easier to release your own games and to reach the market yourself without a publisher,' said Clara Reeves, now Hipster Whale's CEO.Īustralian states soon began to introduce various grants and subsidies for studios to encourage growth in the industry's ongoing rebuild. 'As soon as the App Store hit, and the iPhone … I was lucky enough to see the seismic change coming right over the horizon,' he said.Ĭrossy Road made $10 million within three months of release and in the years since has been downloaded more than 200 million times.

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