PC and console studios: claiming back the cut Steam already took

Most writing about Türkiye's IT incentives, including ours, leans towards mobile. That is where the money and the exits have been. It leaves PC and console studios reading around the edges of guidance written for free-to-play, wondering how much of it applies to a premium title that sells once and has no in-app purchases.

Nearly all of it applies, and one part of it works better than studios expect.

Commissions you never actually pay

Steam takes its 30% before the money reaches you. So do the console stores. There is no invoice, no payment leaving your account, and nothing that looks like a claimable transaction, which is why premium studios often assume this item is for someone else.

Article 31 of the circular answers it directly. Where the platform deducts its commission from sales revenue, the deducted amount can be made the subject of a claim, and bank-certified documents showing the platform's transfers to you are accepted as the payment evidence.

That converts the single largest cost line of a premium game into a claimable item. Under Article 22 of the Decision it is reimbursed at 50%, capped at 20,000,000 TL a year and 4,000,000 TL per title, which is about $84,000 of support on one game at roughly 47.7 TRY to the dollar. Up to ten titles a year qualify, so a back catalogue counts rather than just the new release.

Two conditions come with it. The invoices or statements have to make the specific game identifiable, since costs that cannot be linked to a particular title are not supported. And the claiming company has to hold the platform account itself and sell the game there in its own name, which is the detail that decides most of these claims.

Ratings and certification

This is the item PC and console studios use and mobile studios rarely think about.

Article 7 covers certificates, ratings and accreditations obtained for overseas markets, at 50% and up to 4,000,000 TL a year, about $84,000. Shipping on a console means age ratings across territories and a certification process for each platform, all of it required to sell abroad and all of it recurring with every submission and resubmission.

For a studio launching on three consoles across several rating boards, this stops being a small item.

Marketing a premium title

Article 17 covers advertising, promotion and marketing aimed abroad for a specific game, at 50%, rising to 70% where the campaign targets one of the Ministry's target countries. The annual cap is 50,000,000 TL and the per-title figure is 15,000,000 TL, about $314,000.

Premium marketing looks different from user acquisition. It concentrates into a launch window, leans on creators, press and events, and often runs through a publisher. The item does not mind the shape. It covers promotion of the title aimed at players outside Türkiye, whether that is a paid placement, a creator campaign or a trailer produced for overseas release.

Where a publisher runs the campaign and bills you, the ordinary rules apply: the invoice has to be addressed to your company and paid from its account.

The costs that run all year

A premium studio spends for years before it sells anything, so the steady items matter more here than they do for a live-ops business.

Hosting, Article 16, at 50% up to 5,000,000 TL a year, covers the backend behind multiplayer, matchmaking, telemetry and updates. One condition applies only to this item: if the game also has a Turkish-language version, support is calculated on half the payment.

Software licences, Article 31 of the Decision, at 50% up to 2,500,000 TL a year, covers software you buy or rent for the business. The circular ties this to an approved list rather than to the category, so the engine, middleware and tooling you use need checking against that list rather than assuming.

Trade fairs, Article 13, at 50% up to 1,500,000 TL per event, doubled for events the Ministry classes as prestigious, and rising to 70% in target countries. PC and console studios live at these shows more than mobile studios do, and a stand plus travel for two representatives is inside the item.

What a year looks like

Take a studio finishing a premium title, with a back catalogue still selling:

• $260,000 in Steam and console commissions across the catalogue
• $700,000 marketing the new title into the US, UK and Germany
• $95,000 on ratings, certification and submission across three platforms
• $140,000 on hosting for online features
• $110,000 on two trade fair stands

Commissions return $130,000 at 50%, inside the annual cap if it is spread across several titles rather than concentrated in one. Marketing returns $490,000 at the 70% target country rate, against a per-title cap of about $314,000, so the cap is what binds. Certification returns $47,500, hosting $70,000, and the two events about $63,000 once the per-event caps are applied.

That comes to roughly $625,000 back on $1,305,000 of spending, without the studio changing anything about how it was already going to build and launch the game.

When the per-title cap starts to hurt

The worked example above shows the pattern for a premium studio: the annual caps sit unused while the per-title cap does all the limiting. That happens because a premium launch concentrates a year of marketing into one game rather than spreading it across a portfolio.

For a studio in that position the per-title figures are the numbers to watch. Marketing stops at 15,000,000 TL per title and commissions at 4,000,000 TL per title in the Standard Programme, regardless of how much annual headroom is left.

The Branding Programme is built for exactly this shape. Its per-title marketing figure rises to 25,000,000 TL and commissions to 8,000,000 TL, and the number of supported products doubles. On the example above, that would move the marketing claim from about $314,000 to about $524,000 on the same spending.

Entry needs three years of trading and an average of $1.5 million a year earned from customers abroad, which a studio with a selling back catalogue and a major launch may well already meet. Check it against your own last three years before assuming the standard caps are the ceiling.

Where the differences lie

Nothing in the programme is written for mobile specifically. The items are defined by what the spending does: reaching players abroad, delivering the product, getting it certified for other markets, showing it at events.

What changes for PC and console is which items carry the weight. Certification carries far more weight. Hosting recedes unless the game is online, and events move up the list. Commissions arrive as deductions rather than invoices, and that is handled explicitly in the rules.

The one thing worth attending to early is the platform account, since the commission item depends on your company being the account holder and the seller of record. The calculator covers the items above against your own numbers.