I watched 12 gaming studios die the same way.

I’ve watched something like 12 gaming studios die the same way. Here’s the playbook they all followed to failure.

Step 1: Build their own engine
“Unity takes 30%!” So they spend 18 months building tools instead of games. By the time they ship, competitors using off-the-shelf tech have already captured the opportunity.

Step 2: Hire like a big studio
20 people before soft launch. Nice office. Full marketing team. Burn rate: $300-400K/month. Revenue: $0.

Step 3: Chase perfection
“Just one more month to polish.” That month becomes six. Meanwhile, player preferences shift, marketing costs spike, and that innovative mechanic isn’t innovative anymore.

Step 4: Ignore the data
Soft launch shows 20% D1 retention. “Our game is different; we need to spend more time to make sure our players understand it.” No. If they don’t get it on Day 1, they’re gone.

Step 5: Go dark
Stop sending investor updates. Delays in answering emails. They’ve started hoping the problem fixes itself.

The studios that survive do the opposite:

• Use proven tech
• Stay lean until PMF
• Ship fast, kill faster
• Trust the data, not blindly relying on gut
• Communicate when it’s hardest

The brutal truth? Most gaming studios die because they cosplay as a big games company instead of acting like a startup.

Your job isn’t to build the perfect game.
It’s to find product-market fit before the money runs out.

Everything else is vanity.