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5 Reasons Türkiye’s Game Subsidies Are More Mature
Subsidizing the cost of being wrong (UA refund)
Subsidizing the platform tax
Subsidizing operational cost
Subsidizing growth talent
It’s cash refunds, not just tax credits
UA refund: In search of Product Market Fit, UA spend goes on creatives, ad networks, target audiences. The Govt reimburses 50% to 70% of eligible UA spend on platforms like Meta, Google, TikTok, and Unity.
Platform tax refund: The state covers 50% of Apple App Store and Google Play commissions on overseas sales. I have not found another government doing this.
Infra refunds: The state covers hosting costs for delivering your game to overseas users, including AWS and Azure bills.
Growth talent: TÜBİTAK R&D grants cover developer and engineering salaries. A separate export incentive framework subsidizes marketing, sales and BD salaries, which lets you bring on overseas talent to upskill local teams and sell your game harder.
It’s CASH refunds, not just tax credits: A tax credit requires profit, a refund does not. This is a non-repayable, Turkish-Lira-denominated cash grant covering 50% of eligible internationalization expenditure, paid against invoices you have already cleared.
These schemes absorb a massive chunk of the financial risk required to test a game on the global market. It gives a studio the runway it needs to experiment, survive the soft-launch phase, and hit product-market fit.
P.S. Credit to the Türkiye officials, this is how you back an ecosystem.
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tCARe, CARtic P