Grants in Information Technology

The VPF program assists digital game companies and key creatives in Victoria in creating and publishing a variety of engaging high-quality digital games. It offers funding for the pre-production, production, and post-production phases of game development for PC, consoles, mobile, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), or extended reality (XR).

Screen Australia will provide grants of up to $150,000 per successful application for production of a digital game with a budget up to $500,000. The initiative will run for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 financial years. Higher budget games are likely to be able to receive Australian Government support through the announced Digital Games Tax Offset.

The Digital Games Tax Offset (DGTO) offers a 30% refundable tax offset for qualifying Australian development expenditure (QADE) from 1 July 2022 for eligible game developers. The offset is available for the completion, ongoing development, or porting of digital games, subject to eligibility criteria, including certification by the Arts Minister and at least $500,000 of qualifying expenditure. The offset is capped at $20 million per company (or group of connected or affiliated companies) per income year. Applicants must have an an ABN and be either an Australian resident company or a foreign resident company with a permanent establishment in Australia.