Scans game builds for third-party SDKs and maps them to COPPA, GDPR-K, and app store policies; studios pay $149-$399/mo for compliance audit and fix lists. · App Store Compliance
DEAD SLOW · CAUTIOUS
6.2 ShipScore / 10
Automated, owned SaaS is strongest; demand unproven and niche-sized is weakest.
Condition: At least 5 kids/family game studios must pre-commit at $149+/mo after seeing a sample audit of their own build.
Part I — The Verdict what the instruments read
01 — The ShipScore breakdown
Control
7
C7 — static build scanning needs no gatekeeper; store policies are inputs.
Entry barriers
6
E6 — FireCert $5k, BasinCheck $1k stalled; SDK-to-regulation mapping database is a moat.
Need
5
N5 — $6k combined MRR, no Reddit signal; FTC Apitor action hints at pain.
Time-freedom
8
T8 — automated scans and fix lists; policy database upkeep is ongoing.
Scale
5
S5 — kids-game studios are a narrow global niche, not mass market.
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 $199/mo (assumed category price), you need 419 subscribers for a $1M/yr pace.
Nearest tracked rivals on that curve:
FireCert
$5k 6%
BasinCheck
$1k 2%
Part II — The Evidence the receipts, good and bad
03 — Rival scan — corpus tracks 2 similar, 1 stalled under $2k MRR
FireCert — Verified $5k MRR in adjacent compliance; could add an SDK-kids module.
BasinCheck — Verified $1k MRR; it has stalled, but it shows cheap me-too entrants exist.
Epic Kids Web Services — Epic offers developers free compliance help that could undercut paid audits.
04 — Demand evidence
FireCert verified $5k MRR and BasinCheck $1k MRR show small existing spend in compliance tooling.
No Reddit demand signals were found for these keywords.
X chatter is negligible (<10 likes), with scattered complaints that COPPA age gates eat ~25% of dev time.
FTC/DOJ action over the Apitor toy SDK collecting kids' location shows enforcement risk exists.
05 — Risks
Demand is unproven. Studios may treat compliance as a one-time pre-launch check, which leads to churn after the audit.
Liability exposure if the audit misses a violating SDK and the studio is fined.
Keeping the SDK-behavior database current across versions is costly manual work.
Free tools from Epic, the app stores, or SDK vendors' own disclosures could commoditize the scan.
06 — Kill switches — what kills this with one decision
Apple/Google native SDK privacy scanning — If the stores ship built-in privacy-manifest or kids-category SDK checks, the core paid scan becomes free.
Platform bundling (Epic/Unity) — If a game engine bundles free COPPA SDK auditing into its build pipeline, studios lose the reason to pay.
Part III — The Plan if you insist on proceeding
07 — What this scan can't tell you
The evidence cannot show whether FireCert or BasinCheck actually target game SDK scanning or something adjacent.
The evidence cannot show studios' willingness to pay monthly versus per-release.
The evidence cannot show the size of the kids-directed game studio segment or its existing compliance spend.
Scores judge the market and business model — not your ability to execute. Verified MRR = independently tracked revenue; reviews/upvotes = platform-reported. Judged 2026-10-07.
08 — The wedge & the next step
Run a CI-integrated scan that flags kids-unsafe SDK versions on every build, using a continuously updated SDK-behavior database tied to FTC enforcement cases.
Cheapest next step: Scan 10 public kids-category APKs this week, publish the SDK violation findings, and pitch the affected studios a $149 audit.
Not quite it? Spin the model
Business-model variations of this idea, engineered to beat 6.2 — different vertical, audience, model, or wedge. Same harsh scale. Pro feature.
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