Pakistan's game developers are quietly building one of the country's most valuable export industries, earning an estimated $400 million to $480 million a year, according to a report in Dawn's Business and Finance Weekly. Independent estimates put the figure higher still, at $500 million to $600 million.

Animation, graphics and games now account for 10.5 per cent of the $4.6 billion in IT exports Pakistan recorded in fiscal year 2026, according to State Bank of Pakistan and Pakistan Software Export Board figures cited in the report. The Pakistan Software Export Board counts more than 300 game studios and over 12,000 developers in the country, most of them earning from international markets.

Rules meant to govern the industry are holding it back

The report says the industry's growth is being held back by the rules meant to govern it. Exporters must convert half of their foreign earnings into rupees, face caps on incoming transactions, endure slow remittance screening, and pay a 27 per cent tax on the top-ups they use to buy advertising on platforms such as Google and Unity.

That matters because games are a thin-margin business. A typical game earns a profit margin of only 20 to 25 per cent, industry insiders told Dawn, so the cost of bringing money home and buying advertising eats directly into what studios can reinvest.

State Bank rules for IT exporters let a company keep the higher of $5,000 a month or half of its export proceeds in foreign currency. For studios that need to spend heavily on advertising abroad to get their games noticed, developers say that is not enough.

Studios say the real industry is bigger than the estimates

Syed Bilal Qasim, project director at the Centre of Excellence in Gaming and Animation (CEGA), a Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication project backed by the Ignite National Technology Fund, told Dawn that game development is now the dominant industry in Pakistan's creative-tech sector, with an estimated value of more than $200 million. He added that the real size is likely much bigger than published estimates, which range from $200 million to around $450 million.

Mobile games make up around half of the total market, according to a Pakistan Software Export Board report cited by Dawn. The Express Tribune reported last December that Pakistan ranks as the second-largest mobile game developer in its region, behind Vietnam, employing around 18,000 people.

The domestic market is growing too. A separate report notes industry estimates of around 51 million gaming users in Pakistan, nearly a fifth of the population, with the local video games market worth over $227 million, mostly from mobile games. In July 2026 the federal cabinet approved the country's first National Esports Policy, and in October esports was formally recognised as a sport.

The question now is whether the rules around export earnings, remittances and advertising costs will be eased so that more of the money Pakistani studios earn abroad actually reaches home.