A new survey, State of Play NSW 2025, has discovered that indie game developer studios based in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, are in dire need of additional funding.
The survey found that 95% of indie game developers in the state require extra funding and 73.7% of developers have considered moving states to access better state funding and games industry ecosystems.
According to the report, these indie games require $150k on average to make, with salaries, contractors and marketing to pay for.
In total, 61 NSW-based Indie studios were interviewed in the survey, with each being an established NSW Studio or solo developer working on commercial games with fewer than 50 employees.
The survey found that government funds for digital media are heavily weighted in favour of television and film makers.
The NSW government formed Screen NSW back in 2009 to help give funding to local creators of all digital media, rebranding from a focus on just television and film.
However, the report claims that digital game makers didn’t receive any support until 2022 in the form of tax rebates for medium to large scale game studios.
The report showcased a seeming disparity between funding for games studios compared to TV and film studios, with statistics collected between 2023 to 2025.
Screen NSW’s games seed fund offers up to $30k per application, while the screen development fund has already confirmed $650k spent across 31 projects.
But the real disparity is in the number of funding options, with the following benefits offered to TV and filmmakers but completely unavailable to game developers:
- The production fund (up to $850k per applicant)
- Made in NSW fund (up to $1 million per project)
- Regional fund (up to $175k per project)
- Community film opening night (up to $5k)
- 6-month paid placement for emerging talent
- 11 paid internship opportunities for people with disabilities
- audience development program ($5k-50k)
- New studio facilities ($7-8 million)
Game devs do have access to similar international travel funding, but not domestically. Devs also have the same $2k strategic opportunities (events) funding, IP in motion fund (up to $5k), digital rebate (10% on expenditure of $350k+ and industry development program which offers between $5k to $150k – though games was only added to this on June 18th 2025.
One survey respondent commented on these disparities in funding, claiming: “Games make so much more money than Film and Music combined, yet we get the least amount of support.”
Many studios seemed to not know about the limited funding options either, with 39% of responders unaware of the Screen NSW fund, and only 42% were aware of the Screen Australia fund.
And of the 61 studios surveyed, only 3% had successfully been granted funding in either EGF or NSW Seed Funding.
On top of this, NSW-based studios appear to be underfunded compared to other Australian states with NSW devs able to access $30k in funding per project, whereas projects in Victoria can receive up to $500k.
The survey found 71% of the interviewed studios had considered moving to another state. Only 16 of the 61 studios surveyed stated they had not considered moving.
Of these respondents, 61% quoted state funding opportunities as a motivator for possibly relocating, 49% mentioned gaming networking and connections, and 20% also said they had considered a move to live closer to talent.
