“Government support has moved from a nice-to-have benefit to a priority”: The Mobile Mavens on where games studios choose to build

• “Government support isn't just beneficial here. It's structural.” - Claire Rozain.
• “We still have too big a funding gap between concept stage and scale stage which makes it very hard to develop new innovative ideas.” - Oscar Clark.
• “When other regions package funding with talent access, investor connectivity and ecosystem support, it increasingly influences where the next team, project or studio will land.” - Joanne Lacey.

Government support has become an increasingly decisive factor in where game studios look to build and grow. 

With development costs rising, investments tougher to come by and strong competition between studios, incentives such as tax reliefs and access to funding are playing a larger role in shaping the global games landscape.

We asked our Mobile Mavens how important they feel government backing has become when deciding where to establish or expand a mobile games studio and whether support is now essential to staying competitive. 

Here's what they had to say.

Claire Rozain

Founder SisterSoundFR & CEO at RZAIN consulting

Government support isn't just beneficial here in France. It's structural.

France has one of the most developed public support systems for games in Europe, and it genuinely shapes where studios choose to build. The CNC (Centre National du Cinéma) treats video games as a cultural industry alongside film and animation. That's not symbolic. It translates into direct funding through the FAJV (Fonds d'Aide au Jeu Vidéo), tax credits via the Crédit d'Impôt Jeu Vidéo (CIJV) covering up to 30% of eligible production costs, and access to broader creative industry programs like the CIR (Crédit d'Impôt Recherche) for R&D.

What makes France distinctive is the philosophy behind it. Games are classified as cultural works. That means the support framework isn't purely economic, it's tied to creative ambition, narrative quality, and cultural contribution. To qualify for the CIJV, your game needs to pass cultural criteria. This incentivises studios to build games with real creative identity rather than pure copycat mechanics. In an industry flooding with AI-generated content and clones, that's a competitive advantage most countries don't offer.

The talent pipeline matters too. France has world-class game education programs (ENJMIN, Supinfogame, Isart Digital, Gobelins) partly funded or supported by public institutions. The result is a dense, skilled workforce concentrated around Paris, Lyon, Montpellier, and Bordeaux. That's why I have relocated to France to develop a studio focusing on games to evolve equality of gender, Studios don't just get tax credits. They get access to graduates trained specifically for game production.

Which types of support have the greatest impact? From what I see operating here, the ranking is: tax credits first (they directly affect margin and make studios viable at smaller scale), talent programs second (they solve the hiring bottleneck), and direct funding third (competitive but transformative for studios that get it, especially at prototype and pre-production stage).

Does a lack of incentives push teams elsewhere? Absolutely. I've seen studios consider Canada (Quebec's tax credits remain aggressive), the UK (Video Games Tax Relief), and increasingly Saudi Arabia where sovereign capital is reshaping the landscape entirely but none of them match France social values and redistribution. When your margins are thin and your CPI is rising, a 30% tax credit isn't a nice-to-have. It's the difference between sustainability and shutting down.

Is government backing essential to staying competitive? For independent and mid-size studios, yes. The mobile market is consolidating fast. The top 1% of publishers capture 92.5% of IAP revenue. Without structural support, smaller studios in high-cost European countries simply cannot compete on UA spend alone. Government support gives them the runway to build differentiated products, which is the only viable strategy when you can't outspend the giants.

France's approach of treating games as culture, not just commerce, is increasingly relevant in 2026. As AI commoditizes production and the market floods with undifferentiated content, the studios that will endure are the ones building with creative intention. France's incentive structure rewards exactly that.

Brian Baglow

Founder and director at Scottish Games Network

Government support has moved from a 'nice-to-have' benefit to a priority. In the mobile sector, where user acquisition (UA) costs are skyrocketing and app stores are ever more competitive, the financial and regulatory environment of a region is now a primary aspect for investment and business creation.

At PGC London in January 2026, we saw three members of the UK Games Council state on stage that if they were founding their studios today, they probably would not choose the UK as a location precisely because of the lack of support for the games sector.

However, support is defined as more than just funding. Through our work on the Level Up: Scotland's Action Plan, we identified and highlighted that a lack of a unified national strategy creates fragmentation. For a studio, the decision to land in a city or a region isn’t just about the initial cheque - it’s about the ecosystem infrastructure around games.

Does the talent pipeline connect to industry? Is there recognition and support for games from a business and a cultural perspective? Is there a high-level strategy to support games beyond the consumer market? Without a cohesive government roadmap that treats games-tech as a strategic national utility, even major funding is just a temporary benefit in a volatile landscape. It cannot solve the many challenges facing the games ecosystem, without a wider strategy in place.

A lack of competitive incentives doesn't just encourage relocation; it practically mandates it for studios looking to scale. We are operating in a hyper-competitive global marketplace where other nations are playing a much more aggressive hand.

While the UK’s recently doubled UK Games Fund is an excellent step forward, we have to look at best-in-class global rivals, such as Finland, Turkey, Malta, Australia and Ireland. Each offers a different range of support beyond prototype funding and has a greater level of understanding and support for games. 

Games remain a high value economic 'niche', rather than a vital piece of the country's digital infrastructure. We're not seen as a transformative technology, with a role to play in education, healthcare, or other national priorities. Without that context and the high level strategic vision, the UK cannot compete effectively with the growing number of regions and countries around the world who have already started to integrate games into their wider economic, cultural and social goals.

Is government backing essential? Yes. In 2026, a region without a dedicated strategy or Games Action Plan isn't just "less competitive" - it’s effectively invisible to the global market.

Oscar Clark

Director at Arcanix

This is a complex one as I am delighted that we have seen significant improvements to games funding from government (and also for tech start-ups like for us at Arcanix)

We are extremely grateful for the support we have had from Scottish Enterprise and Innovate UK who have been fantastic and they have enabled us to build a team in Scotland and a prototype which allowed us to get VC and Accelerator funding. But we decided to go to Belgium (and the EU) to get that funding. We were delighted that ForsVC (currently the most active games funding VC in Europe) and IMEC.istart, a technology accelerator in Belgium saw the potential in Arcanix, our platform, to help live ops teams make better decisions.

We still (and will continue to) have a team in Scotland and try to contribute where we can to the Scottish (and wider UK) industry but the post-Covid and post-Brexit scene remains challenging for getting the investment teams like ours need. And it's not just about funding but the support/insight and commercial environment that sustains a team - the opportunity in the EU and Belgium were too good to ignore and for us having both a UK and Belgium entity has proven to be invaluable - allowed us to go from the initial idea to having clients using our platform.

Here in the UK there are an array of good options from grants, and even prototype funds, as well as the SEIS and EIS incentives for investors. I miss the kickstart program which gave young diverse people the chance to get started, with many of their hours paid through subsidy - it was amazing! Something like that to help the vast loss in talent in the industry due to recent waves of redundancy could be a huge benefit. 

But in my honest opinion we still have too big a funding gap between concept stage and scale stage which makes it very hard to develop new innovative ideas. There is (I feel) a huge burden on the original creative team in games and that has compounded as the cost of development, of user acquisition and of getting 'proof of traction' have exploded. At the same time the bar for what is considered 'good' has also just raised and raised.  Unlike Film and TV, there is no form of pre-sale or other payback for that investment - just sunk cost born by the creator. And despite being the largest form of digital entertainment I remain with the feeling (perhaps unfairly) that we are considered the 'unwanted step child' of the creative industries.

Plus we now have the hidden barriers which smaller developers are facing in terms of regulatory burden. Complying with the Online Safety Act and all the Data Protection requirements is non-trivial and to do it properly incurs a disproportionate burden for smaller, less experienced teams. As you can imagine this is all very challenging and creates a damping effect on the potential we could otherwise see.

I believe in UK talent, but I don't always feel that the UK Government appreciates the commercial, cultural, skill development and soft-power that investing more in games could deliver. If you are determined to make games I think you have to keep your eyes open for options in terms of grants, subsidies, funding paths and access to talent. There are great options here in the UK - but they also exist outside of the UK

Elina Arponen

CEO & Co-Founder at Quicksave Interactive

Government support has been highly influential in shaping the success of the Finnish gaming industry. Many large and successful studios received R&D grants or loans in their early days and have since paid those benefits back many times over through taxes. Overall, supporting the gaming industry has been a very profitable investment for the government.

It still plays an important role, and especially now, as private funding is harder to come by. Game investment hasn’t fully rebounded, and studios need all the support they can get. For new studios, relocation can also be costly, which creates friction to stay where they are. That said, it makes a difference when a country provides support, particularly through early-stage grants.

Funding alone is a limited motivator (unless the sums are significant), but countries with thriving gaming ecosystems and otherwise supportive environments can benefit even from modest funding availability.

The most effective form of support is direct grants, followed by government-backed soft loans, and then other programs such as travel and talent support initiatives.

Pascal Clarysse

Author “The Slingshot Formula", CEO Big Karma

Government subsidies can come in many different forms, some more useful and relevant than others for video games studios.

The corporate tax breaks are the most common, but also the least appealing in my view, with a few noteworthy exceptions. Tax breaks only apply to game studios after they found a smash hit, and even then smart accounting, growth marketing and forward-investments in the next title are a better way to deploy the exceeding profits than to simply pay taxes. Especially when you take into consideration how extremely easy, seamless and legal it is in the globalised digital world to just move your IP-holding parent HQ to one of 17 pure tax-havens that offer 0% rates across the board, or to the State of Delaware.

The noteworthy exceptions are the variant in which "the government pays you cash if the credit exceeds your tax bill." That's a smartly disguised non-dilutive grant if you ask me (albeit delayed) - I believe that France, Canada and the UK are currently running this practice. When it comes to tax incentives with practical effects, tax-shelter laws (Belgium) and tax deductibility for investors (SEIS in UK) generally yield more meaningful outcomes for the eco-system.

The most impactful (and least frequent) are the non-dilutive grants, which are available in nations that genuinely want to help startups. Non-dilutive means it's extra capital that doesn't affect the cap table. In some countries, it's even non-refundable. And even in the event that it must be paid back, it's usually at generously favorable terms for the startup (such as: "when the company is profitable and with a 1.xx% annual interest rate").

In my first-hand experience, I've encountered 3 different mechanics to activate such grants:

Fund-Raise Matching: "For every Euro you raise, we'll match 50~100% in grants." Finland was famous for its TEKES R&D incentives (now called Business Finland), which has helped many Finnish startup studios get started during the Finnish golden age of the last decade and a half. which has helped many Finnish startup studios get started during the Finnish golden age of the last decade. Not just because of the extra cash in and of itself but also because of the air of confidence it gave to regional investors: "if I cut this team a check of 300k, they'll get another 150k from Tekkes anyway." It psychologically feels like a discount :-) Malta has the same mechanic in place through "Malta Enterprise", and I believe a few other EU nations as well. There is a cap, which is systematically in six-digits across Europe.

Local Employment Sponsoring: Canada is famous for them - you can get 25-40% refundable credit on labor in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec. Similarly, Malta Enterprise also offers up to 75% of payroll in long-term loans for any local full-time hire on the archipelago, including anyone who relocates from overseas for the job (which implies that one must spend at least 183 days physically on the ground). Colombia has a similar policy for local hires although it's much more complicated to obtain it administratively (the staffing commitment is much more rigid, which doesn't always fit with the turbulent reality of early stage startups). This is of course not relevant if you are running a remote distributed force in multiple countries, but if you are looking to establish a local studio (could even be a daughter company), recruitment incentives are very welcome.

Project-based grants: the CNC in France for example provides direct selective grants for "artistic" or technically innovative games. Uruguay, Chile and Colombia also have similar programs although for much smaller amounts that only enable the production of a "first prototype". In my experience, these grants are always much more tedious, time-consuming, paperwork-heavy and protracted to obtain, with varying criteria from one territory to the other. It seems to be the core component of the new UK fund announced this week as well, with amounts varying based on which stage your studio is at.

Note EU member states always have a relatively low cap for national subsidies programs because the European Union doesn't allow "unfair" competition among member states and so the domestic help can only be "de minimis", as the lawmakers defined it, which at the time of writing is set at the threshold of 300,000€ over a rolling period of 3 years.

If a startup wants to obtain higher subsidies within Europe, you have to go through the centralised EU Horizon Program but that's only in the case you have major provable social impact with the technology you are developing, or create a new vertical, or tick certain cultural checkboxes and have conducted academic research to prove your case. Such social impact and brute technology programs also exist also in the US, but the vast majority of video game studios are not eligible. 

Some Latin American countries offer variants of the above, but with lower amounts due to the current economic realities of these markets. Brazil is probably the most innovative and creative of the continent when it comes to governmental support.

Considered by many as the new center of gravity for mobile gaming studios, Turkey offers one of the most aggressive and developer-friendly subsidy ecosystems in the world as of 2026. This is largely driven by Presidential Decree No. 10962 that went into effect on January 1st of 2026, and which consolidated multiple fragmented programs into a unified framework.

The Turkish model is unique because it doesn't just fund the making of the game, it also heavily subsidised the User Acquisition funnel, enabling studios to self-publish and fund their early stage growth to the next level. This is really advantageous to stay independent for as long as possible, keep all IP inside the country's borders and maximise valuation until exit.

Looking further East in Asia, the incentives can be much more significant in big markets where video game development is considered strategic. The country-specific mechanics can vary a lot based on cultural specificities. Japan Focuses on "Cool Japan" initiatives.

The METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) provides subsidies for digital content overseas expansion and localised R&D grants for "Next-Generation" tech. In China, regional tech parks like Chengdu or Shanghai offer rent subsidies and "talent awards" for high-performing studios. India also operates on the state level, with Telangana and Karnataka offering land subsidies, power rebates, and "Mega Project" capital grants.

In South Korea, massive direct investment via the KOCCA, a $687M National Growth Fund for media and games, including "Future Strategy" grants for indie devs.

This is not meant to be exhaustive. These are just the cases I know of, while I'm convinced there must be other countries, states/provinces or even cities offering similar incentives.

Joanne Lacey

Advisor at Mode 7 Collective

With recent UK Government funding announcements and increased regional-level activity, support is shifting from a helpful incentive to a more structural part of the ecosystem and is essential for regions to remain globally competitive. However, it depends how well regions will integrate investment, talent and market access into a coherent growth pathway, rather than treating incentives as a standalone lever.

The “supercluster” thinking in Scotland’s Games Action Plan combines funding, talent pipelines and shared infrastructure, rather than relying on tax relief alone. Turkey’s model also stands out because it targets the real pain points of studios by subsidising growth, not just production. Studios can reclaim UA  and marketing spend, alongside support for platform fees, analytics tools and other operational costs, lowering the cost of scale.

From a studio perspective, government support is still an enabler rather than the primary driver. A lack of incentives won’t automatically push studios abroad; but when other regions package funding with talent access, investor connectivity and ecosystem support, it increasingly influences where the next team, project or studio will land.

Stuart De Ville

Director at Fribbly Games

From an indie studio perspective, government support has shifted from being a ‘nice to have’ to something much closer to a strategic consideration. It’s rarely the sole deciding factor, but it absolutely influences where and how studios choose to grow. When margins are tight and risk is high, even modest support can meaningfully extend a runway or unlock opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

A lack of incentives doesn’t automatically drive studios to relocate, but it does create friction. Founders are increasingly aware of what’s available globally, and when other regions offer clear, accessible support, it naturally becomes part of the decision-making process. This is particularly true for early-stage teams who are more flexible in where they base themselves and more sensitive to financial pressure.

In terms of impact, tax reliefs and direct funding tend to be the most immediately valuable, especially when they are easy to access and well-communicated. However, talent development programmes and community infrastructure are just as important long-term. Sustainable ecosystems are not built on funding alone, but on networks, skills, and opportunities that allow studios to grow beyond their first project.

What matters most is clarity and consistency. Support mechanisms that are difficult to navigate or unpredictable in delivery can be as limiting as having no support at all. Governments that succeed in this space tend to treat games not just as a creative industry, but as a serious economic sector worth long-term investment.

Ultimately, government backing is becoming an important part of staying competitive at a national level, but it works best as an enabler rather than a crutch. The goal should be to reduce risk and unlock potential, not to define it.