Apple Arcade, the subscription games service featuring games funded and exclusively offered by Apple, will bolster its local content this week with the introduction of a new Australian game. The addition will mean Australian and New Zealand titles make up 10 per cent of Apple’s total offering, despite Australia’s games industry in general falling behind in the international market.

Research published earlier this year showed income generated by Australian game studios totalled just six cents for every dollar made by the booming industry globally, with developers and the national peak body pointing to a discrepancy between Australia and every other developed nation when it came to federal support and tax incentives for video games.

But while some developers have turned to state governments for funding and support, others have looked to platform-holders like Apple which are increasingly wanting to lock down exclusive content for subscription services.

“Apple has probably funded more of the game studios in Australia than any government has over the last couple of years,” said Ashley Ringrose, head of SMG Studio, which developed the Apple Arcade game Sp!ng releasing on Friday.

SMG, which has around 30 employees across offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Los Angeles, is known for mobile games including One More Line and Thumb Drift, as well as console titles Death Squared and Moving Out. Last year it created space shooter No Way Home for Apple Arcade. Ringrose said that compared to making free-to-play games that relied on getting players to pay, striking a funding deal with Apple was less risk and potentially less reward, but it made his teams much happier.

“With free-to-play on mobile, a lot of the time you spend is like ‘how do we monetise players, how do we keep them engaged?’ Because obviously the longer you keep them engaged the more ads they see, or the more things they buy,” he said.

“With Apple Arcade you remove that whole section of thinking, and you’re just talking about fun gameplay the whole time, not what’s the gameplay that’s going to extract the maximum amount of money out of people.”

Aside from affecting design, operating free-to-play games requires ongoing work to make sure everything from ad operation to download size is optimised for maximum impressions. For smaller teams, Ringrose said, this is a significant amount of work that could otherwise be put to making the game better.