Auto-generates age-rating questionnaires and platform certification checklists for indie game studios launching across multiple storefronts, sold per-title subscription. · game developer tools
Condition: Only revisit if paying studios confirm cert-failure pain beyond free IARC coverage.
Part I — The Verdict what the instruments read
01 — The ShipScore breakdown
Control
5
C5 — sells direct, but content depends on NDA'd console cert docs.
Entry barriers
4
E4 — no tracked leader or funding, but checklists are weekend-cloneable.
Need
4
N4 — zero Reddit/X signal; Flibbo $100k, DropPop $28k unrelated to game cert.
Time-freedom
6
T6 — productized SaaS, but checklists need constant manual platform-update upkeep.
Scale
5
S5 — global but tiny buyer pool: budget-thin indie studios, per-title spend.
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 $39/mo (assumed category price), you need 2,137 subscribers for a $1M/yr pace.
Flibbo — $100k verified MRR shows corpus spend exists, but not in game certification — no read-through.
DropPop — $28k verified MRR (trustmrr); adjacent tooling proves category viability at small scale only.
Polsia / Probo (X chatter) — Compliance-autopilot pattern being built for SaaS; same playbook could pivot into game storefronts.
04 — Demand evidence
Demand evidence is effectively absent: zero Reddit signals, near-zero X chatter on the combined topic.
Corpus tracks only 2 similar products (Flibbo $100k, DropPop $28k) and neither is a game-cert tool.
No funded companies tracked in or near the space — no investor validation of the wedge.
X notes on Apple/AppCheck age ratings and MAGNE.AI device certs showed low engagement.
Domain archived since 2018-08.
05 — Risks
IARC already generates multi-storefront age ratings free via one questionnaire — core feature is commoditized.
Console cert requirements (lotcheck/TRC/XR) sit under platform NDAs; republishing them invites legal takedown.
Indie studios launch rarely and spend little; per-title subscription churns to zero after ship.
Checklist accuracy decays with every platform policy update — ongoing manual research burden.
06 — Kill switches — what kills this with one decision
IARC / ESRB / PEGI — Any expansion of their free questionnaire coverage erases the product's headline feature.
Platform holders (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft) NDA enforcement — One legal letter forces removal of the cert checklists you're charging for.
Storefront submission portals — Native pre-submission validators shipped in-portal make an external checklist redundant.
Part III — The Plan if you insist on proceeding
07 — What this scan can't tell you
Cannot tell whether tracked Flibbo/DropPop touch game certification at all — names give no read.
No visibility into how often indie titles actually fail console cert or the cost per failure.
Unknown whether publishers, not studios, hold the certification budget and buying authority.
Scores judge the market and business model — not your ability to execute. Verified MRR = independently tracked revenue; reviews/upvotes = platform-reported. Judged 2026-08-17.
08 — The wedge & the next step
Sell console pre-submission failure prevention to porting studios and publishers, not free-IARC age ratings.
Cheapest next step: Interview 15 indie porting/publishing QA leads this week: ask cost of last failed cert cycle and current tooling.
Not quite it? Spin the model
Business-model variations of this idea, engineered to beat 4.8 — different vertical, audience, model, or wedge. Same harsh scale. Pro feature.
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This one got a skip. Every morning the engine files one mined gap that could be a yes — idea, score, and what holds it back, free at 7am AEST. Unedited, like this verdict.
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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.