SaaS for video games is an untapped market

My friend made a SaaS for video games (an online ads network for Roblox, think virtual billboards in-game) and within a year he and his cofounder were bought for ~$30 million.

I was aware of those tools, but wasn't aware how popular they are. How are they monetizing?

I have another idea, but I don't find the time to pursue it, and if it would help somebody to start a business with it, so be it.

In the recent years, Godot, an open source game engine saw a huge rise in popularity, but what it lacks is a proper asset store like Unity's, where people can sell assets (graphics, audio, scripts, systems, etc), and without a way to monetize your work, people are not motivated to contribute with high quality assets (it has an asset library, but 90% of what is in there is either unmaintained, low quality or virtually hobby projects with no instructions, thus unusable for serious projects).

I really wish there was a better way to just pay for some system (eg. a level management system, or leveling system, some fancy camera movement systems or a library of cool ready to use shaders) and then just integrate it into your codebase, and have it working with some minimal configuration and tweaking.

Also, another thing that is missing, is more monetization and integrations: unity has a virtually built in game analytics system or ad system where you can earn money. That could be done too as a business for Godot developers.

Important to note that game developers using Godot, even though they are mostly hobbists and still labeled as indies, they are ready to drop some bucks on things that will speed up their development or make their game better faster. The Steam registration per game costs 100USD alone, to not say that they are also paying freelancers (most of the time) for art or buying assets online.

This is the market I'd go for if I would have the time (I am currently involved in other projects).

My biggest worry always surfaced whenever I sought to construct anything comparable.

Legally, I'm not sure what these websites stand for or whether they are allowed to exploit the resources, names, or data of another business or game

What tool did you use the get the usage statistics for these sites? Is it all similarweb? Is it all the free version of similarweb?

I think there are a couple questions worth asking:

1. How many unpopular sites are there for each popular one you listed. ie - is it a winner take-all-market or even highly competitive?

As someone who used to be really into games I'd often see sponsored posts/video segments pushing stat tracker apps for whatever game I was into at the time. I guess it's a good sign that there's apparently money in the space, but it also makes me think that there may be a lot more competition than an indie hacker might be able to deal with. I have no data or hard evidence to back this up, just a gut feeling I guess.

2. Are gamers really willing/able to spend enough for this to be worthwhile? Not to beat the B2B vs B2C drum too hard but I wouldn't think they'd be big spenders. If not I guess ads or sponsorships is a viable route to monetization though.

I know this is an older post, but just wanted to say thanks for publishing it! I've been working on a calculator/database MVP for a game set to debut this year. I'm starting small and focusing on one game, but I see the potential for this site to become the source of some good tools for the theorycrafting community.

Anyway, when I looked through the forum and groups here on IndieHacker, it seemed like what I was trying to do did not fit into any pattern of what other Hackers were doing here. But this post was the first on IH I saw that encompasses my area (making tools for game players rather than tools strictly for game developers).

It's also great to see others how have current/previous experience in this niche. Makes me feel (a little) less crazy for making a go of it.

I made a game server SaaS focusing on mods & configuration software for Valheim and launched last March 2021, we were able to scale to $100K ARR at ValheimServerHosting.com and trying to push this narrative now at Hostari.com

It is absolutely difficult to retain users from a B2C perspective, customer retention is a huge problem unlike B2B SaaS where the lifetime values are huge and fairly consistent (it is possible to get net negative churn month-over-month).

The games sector is totally below radar among Indie Hackers.

With explorative, digital native users who are willing to pay for software that brings them benefits, the market is really alluring.

I'm wondering if there are ideas that don't focus on a specific game. Otherwise, as a non-gamer it's hard to bring up the motivation to dive deep into a niche. Let me know if you have any!

I would love to hear about better monetization ideas for some of these other than ads that ultimately ruin the product. Premium memberships? Private, paid platforms? Sponsors instead of ads?

I'm exploring new in-game marketing channels and experimenting with Microsoft Flight Simulator ✈️👨‍✈️

I designed a livery or paint job for my Airbus A320, and flight simmers can download it for free. It has been downloaded 54 times so far.
Instead of using traditional channels like Facebook and co., I think this could be interesting in the future 🤓

If you want to know what the plane/paint job looks like, here it is https://flightsim.to/file/39398/gatherin-80s-synthwave-livery

Let me know what you think.

kind of reminds me when Google started in the late 1990s...
tools and apps for search engine optimization were created, such as Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, and Similarweb.
Back in the 1990s, probably no one took these SEO companies seriously, and now they are massive corporations.

Great article, thanks

A friend of mine is a Fortnite creator, and he used an app called GatherIn to host his 100-player Fortnite tournament.
He tried using Google Forms but GatherIn was better for organizing a big tournament.
I guess it's like a Calendly or Google Calendar for gamers 🤣

For my gaming and Discord community, we started using GatherIn https://www.gatherin.app/ as well for scheduling raids and planning big game events.
If gamers take many things so seriously, like raids, I guess they need serious solutions 😜

So many exciting things happening in the gaming world.

I've got a SaaS for collectors/enthusiasts and I agree the market is big. GGApp is another tracking SaaS and the founder is doing well, last I saw around $20k ARR. There is an open source tracking app, Playnite and at least a dozen others. A lot of my users tell me they like InfiniteBacklog too. Unfortunately for me, these are outpacing my development as they have teams so I'm not quite sure if I'll continue with what I have, pivot, or double down on collectors specifically. I'm also not actively working on it and doing solo consulting.

I used to play a lot more games than I do now. I remember back when Destiny came out, a big pain point was finding Fireteam members. So someone made DestinyLFG (looking for group).

One challenge is that gamers expect most stuff to be free. So it can be hard to monetize beyond advertising. I've had luck with a patreon-style membership system that I experimented with, but I'd use Stripe SDK to make it more integrated if I continue with it.

Great article. Thanks Drako. I honestly had no idea there's such a huge opportunity exists around gaming stats.

I remember there are also betting platforms for competitive games. Like CSGO Lounge and DOTA2 Lounge where you can use skins to bet on the outcome of a pro match. The DOTA one had 500K visits in September.

This is really nice and insightful , never knew gaming communities were that popular , do you mind sharing the script that you use to find keywords doing that on Reddit , or maybe put it as a service , I think it will really be useful

This makes me wonder what other SaaS opportunities exist that aren't game-specific but rather console/platform specific

absolutely right

This is so insightful. Thanks for sharing. I remember something similar is/was made for CS:GO. People trading in-game skins often looked on sites to check past sale prices, wear of the skin, etc. on these sites and then proceed to actually buying/trading it

Thanks for sharing this @Darko, what an eye-opener. I was aware these tools existed, but I didn't appreciate just how popular they've become. I imagine popular games are already covered for these kinds of tools so breaking into those ecosystems would be a hard nut to crack. But I'm now eagerly researching games I've played in the past to see if there are any gaps that could be filled.

Whenever I wanted to build something similar, my biggest concern appears.

Legally I am not sure where these websites stand for or whether they can use another company's/game's assets/names/data

Any idea on this? What kind of data can be used or not from such a game like these?

These tools can be hard to discover because more experienced players use them. If a game has 5M players and 20% progress towards "more experiences" then that's a significant audience.

Wasn't aware such tools exist, I'm not a big gamer myself. Thanks!