ComplyPlay

Automated compliance checker helping indie game studios verify age-ratings, loot-box disclosures, and monetization rules across Steam, App Store, Google Play, and console platforms before submission. · Game Compliance SaaS

DEAD SLOW · CAUTIOUS

5.6 ShipScore / 10

Time/productization strongest; need weakest — zero verified spend by game studios.

Condition: Only build if 5+ studios prepay for a multi-platform pre-submission audit at $99+/mo.

Part I — The Verdict what the instruments read

01 — The ShipScore breakdown

Control

C6 — direct B2B SaaS; reads public platform rules, no gatekeeper lifeline.

Entry barriers

E5 — no tracked leader in game compliance, but rules-checklist is cloneable.

Need

N4 — zero Reddit signals, no in-space MRR; corpus rivals are unrelated social tools.

Time-freedom

T7 — productized checks, but policy updates need constant manual curation.

Scale

S6 — global indie devs, but small budgets and episodic pre-submission use.

What the five commandments measure

C — Control	Do you own the customer, or does a gatekeeper stand between you and revenue?
E — Entry	How hard is this to copy once it works? A rival's existence isn't the question — the durability of their advantage is.
N — Need	Is demand proven with money rather than vibes?
T — Time	Can income detach from your hours, or did you buy yourself a job?
S — Scale	How far does it reach without linear cost?

Scored on the evidence below, against CENTS as we've adapted it plus a Buffett-style moat reading of every rival — the same referee for every idea, including the ones we generate ourselves. The verdict follows the arithmetic: we never relabel a score to make it read better, and the weakest commandment is always named. The exact rubric stays in-house so the scale can't be written for.

02 — The pace test — $1M/yr

At $99/mo (assumed category price), you need 842 subscribers for a $1M/yr pace.

Nearest tracked rivals on that curve:

HeyReach

$1.4M 100%

X · active

Postiz

$213k 100%

↑ moat widening · +12%/moX · active

Flibbo

$100k 100%

X · active

DropPop

$28k 33%

A rival's moat trend is its verified-revenue trajectory, not its rating — a 4.9★ incumbent with eroding revenue is a different opponent than a widening one. How it's computed →

Part II — The Evidence the receipts, good and bad

03 — Rival scan — corpus tracks 5 similar

HeyReach	verified MRR $1.4M · CENTS 6.6 · X-chatter: some (x)	X · active
Postiz	verified MRR $213k · CENTS 6.6 · revenue trend: widening (+12%/mo) · X-chatter: some (trustmrr)	↑ moat widening · +12%/mo X · active
Flibbo	verified MRR $100k · CENTS 5.6 · X-chatter: some (x)	X · active
DropPop	verified MRR $28k (trustmrr)
Distribb	verified MRR $23k · CENTS 6.2 · revenue trend: stable (x)	→ moat stable

AgeWallet — Already shipping SaaS age-verification for app-store/COPPA/GDPR — nearest direct overlap.
AppNexus (age-rating compliance update) — Existing app tooling bolting compliance on; incumbent distribution beats a new point tool.
AppCheck — Flags App Store requirements already; could extend into ratings/loot-box checks cheaply.

04 — Demand evidence

No Reddit demand signals found for these keywords — demand for the paid product is unproven.
X chatter on the exact topic is 'almost none'; AgeWallet posts draw ~0-15 views.
Corpus rivals (HeyReach $1.4M, Postiz $213k, Flibbo $100k) are adjacent social tools, not game-compliance spend.
Real regulatory pressure exists — Brazil under-18 loot-box ban hitting live-ops — but as press/player complaint, not studio purchase evidence.

Domain archived since 2025-07.

05 — Risks

Indie studios are price-sensitive and treat compliance as one-off per launch, not a subscription.
Platform rules change constantly; wrong advice creates liability and rejected submissions.
Console/Steam/app-store policies are opaque and partly NDA-gated, limiting automated verification.
Platforms or ratings bodies (IARC) could ship free self-check tools, zeroing the product.

06 — Kill switches — what kills this with one decision

IARC / platform-native rating questionnaires — Free official pre-submission checkers make a paid third-party layer redundant.
Console NDA terms — Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft restricting cert-rule redistribution blocks the console half of the pitch.
App Store / Google Play policy API changes — Rule sources moving behind manual-only docs makes automated checks stale and untrustworthy.

Part III — The Plan if you insist on proceeding

07 — What this scan can't tell you

Cannot tell whether studios budget for compliance separately or bury it in QA/legal spend.
No visibility into publisher/porting-house workflows, which may already cover this internally.
Corpus contains no true in-space comparable, so no revenue benchmark for game compliance SaaS.

Scores judge the market and business model — not your ability to execute. Verified MRR = independently tracked revenue; reviews/upvotes = platform-reported. Judged 2026-09-11.

08 — The wedge & the next step

Target multi-platform publishers and porting houses shipping to loot-box-regulated markets (Brazil, Belgium, EU) — jurisdiction-diff reports they can't hand-track.

Cheapest next step: Offer 20 indie/mid studios a $199 paid manual pre-submission compliance audit this week; count prepayments.

Not quite it? Spin the model

Business-model variations of this idea, engineered to beat 5.6 — different vertical, audience, model, or wedge. Same harsh scale. Pro feature.

One evidence-backed gap a day, free

Close — but conditional. Every morning the engine files one mined gap, scored on the same harsh scale as this one. Free at 7am AEST, unedited.

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Monitor this idea

Weekly re-scan against the live corpus. If the market moves this ShipScore by a point, or flips the verdict, you hear about it. Free while we're small.