A game priced like a SaaS app with subscriptions
A game for players that uses SaaS-style pricing with monthly, yearly, and lifetime plans.
Problem it solvesOne-off game sales make it hard to keep covering ongoing costs.
StressAgenda made a game and priced it like a SaaS app after changing from a one-off payment to subscription tiers. They report over £1k in revenue, around 10 subscribers, and around 3 lifetime purchases, with little marketing beyond ad-hoc posts online.
How they grewAd-hoc posts online; shared stats in an AI founders WhatsApp group
StressAgenda
u/StressAgenda
Made a game, pricing it like a SaaS app - over $1k in revenue, so far. I've made like 10 apps in the last 2 years, for my latest I had an idea for a game and have been building it for the last \~5 months. Launched it a few weeks after starting building it. Initially priced it as a one-off payment on the app stores of £4.99. I'm in the UK, so I do all my costs & pricing in £'s, but the app stores convert it into the relevant local prices. I got something like 150 sales, it was paid only, no free usage. Not bad, but I realised that I would need to keep getting new users every month in order for it to pay for itself, just to cover costs. I switched it to a subscription (already paid users got to keep lifetime access, they saw no change) at £3.99, but I don't think anyone signed up. I'm in a AI founders WhatsApp group so I shared some stats about my game and asked for advice on pricing. Someone who works for a well-known tech company sent me a long voice note with advice on how to price: * monthly, yearly & lifetime price * experiment with different amounts of free usage to see what converts best I did basically exactly what they said as I have no reason to have an opinion otherwise. I guess the three different pricing tiers create anchoring. Now, I've had something like 10 people subscribe, mix of monthly & annual, and I think 3 people buy lifetime purchases. The monthly price is still £3.99, the yearly is £24.99 and the lifetime is £69.99, which means that people are paying more for my game than a AAA title like Grand Theft Auto, which is pretty cool. My game still doesn't cover its costs, it has quite a lot of AI generation in real time and heavy server loads for rendering programmatically generated maps, based on the real world. But, it is forecast to cover costs and I've done basically no marketing, apart from ad-hoc posts online. I'm spending my time improving the game: adding new features & fixing issues. But, it seems to be going well and I have a community of players giving me feedback. I have never built a game before and have zero experience of working in the game industry, but I have a pretty good knowledge of what is possible with technology, e.g. mobile cameras, GPS, APIs, AI, and have a good intelligence for what is fun, I think. I don't take advice from how traditional games work really and just priced it how I wanted to and it seems to be working.
- Revenue
- over $1K
- Subscribers
- 10
- Lifetime purchases
- 3


