Live funding ask from team, months, and go-to-market - with a composition stack and slip/cut sensitivity so payroll alone never looks like the whole raise.
Planning sketch only. Not a studio bid, publisher term sheet, or sales forecast.
By Ahmet C. Toplutaş·Site owner & editor · Lifestyle & games tools
Last updated May 21, 2026 · Reviewed May 21, 2026 · Planning estimates only - not tax, medical, or investment advice
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Founders often quote team × rate × months and call it the budget. That is payroll burn — necessary, incomplete. A funding ask also needs production overhead (tools, assets, contractors), go-to-market (marketing + publishing setup), and contingency for the slip you have not admitted yet.
Investors and publishers read the stack, not the headcount line. A pitch where salaries are 90%+ of the total signals underfunded discovery, no marketing buffer, and no room for the three-month slip that hits most first-time ship dates. Payroll is the floor; the ask is what gets a build to storefront with air in the tank.
This page answers a planning question: roughly how large is the ask if we keep this headcount and ship date? It does not predict Steam wishlists or App Store rank.
Decision framing: “What cash gets a build to storefront?” - not “this number means the game will succeed.”
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The panel’s composition stack splits the ask into payroll, overhead (~38% of payroll as a planning proxy), marketing, publishing, and 12% contingency on the rest. Marketing and publishing percentages apply to production (payroll + overhead), not to payroll alone — so GTM scales with team size even when headcount is the story you tell friends.
Overhead covers engine seats, middleware, asset store purchases, and contractor spikes — replace the 38% proxy with your quotes when you have them. Contingency sits on personnel + overhead + GTM; it is the line that absorbs slip without immediately cutting scope or quality.
Monthly burn in the panel divides total ask by months — useful for runway slides. It is not the same as monthly payroll; overhead and GTM are front-loaded in real life even when this model spreads them evenly for planning.
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Schedules slip. Headcount is the other lever. The sensitivity chips recompute the ask for +3 months or −1 FTE without rebuilding the sheet — then apply the change if you want it locked into the live inputs. That is the unique job of this panel versus rent ladders or feels-like Δ strips.
Slip adds payroll, overhead on that payroll, GTM on the enlarged production base, and contingency on the new subtotal — compounding, not a flat “three months of wages.” Cut one seat saves the same chain in reverse, but may slow content velocity enough that slip risk rises anyway.
A three-month slip on a four-person indie often moves the ask more than shaving a few dollars off the blended rate — time is the silent co-founder.
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Break-even units = funding ask ÷ (player price × net after a 30% platform cut). It is a floor on copies if every dollar of the ask must come back from that SKU — not a sales forecast. F2P / $0 price disables the unit line on purpose; mobile mid presets are about the stack, not premium SKU math.
VAT, refunds, regional pricing, chargebacks, and live-ops spend are out of scope. Steam’s 30% is a planning default — rev share tiers and console fees differ. Tighten those in a real P&L after the raise conversation.
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Example A — small indie. 4 FTE · 14 mo · $65/hr blended · 15% marketing · 5% publishing · $19.99 price.
Payroll ≈ $630k → with overhead, GTM, contingency, funding ask ≈ $1.17M. Payroll is ~54% of ask — marketing + contingency visible in the stack. Break-even ≈ 1.17M ÷ (19.99 × 0.70) ≈ 84k units. Tap Small indie, then +3 months slip — ask jumps ~$250k+ before you change the pitch deck number.
Example B — mobile mid. 12 FTE · 12 mo · 35% marketing · $0 price.
Marketing slice dominates the stack by design — discovery is the bottleneck, not stringer geometry. Break-even units show n/a; the point is total ask and monthly burn, not premium copy math. Tap Mobile mid.
Example C — solo jam+. 1 FTE · 4 mo · $45/hr · $9.99 price.
Ask ≈ $53k (payroll ~$31k + overhead/GTM/contingency). −1 FTE chip is disabled at 1 head. Break-even ≈ 7.6k units at $9.99 — achievable on paper; discovery is the real gate. Tap Solo jam+.
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No. Payroll burn is what the team costs each month. The funding ask also covers production overhead (tools, assets, contractors), go-to-market (marketing + publishing setup), and contingency. The panel’s composition stack shows how those slices stack on top of salaries - raising “six months of salaries” rarely funds a shippable game.
They answer two planning shocks without rebuilding the whole sheet: slipping the ship date by three months (more payroll + overhead), or cutting one full-time seat (less burn). The Δ on the funding ask is the point - schedule and headcount move the raise, not just the sticker price of the game.
They are illustrative planning sketches from common public ranges, not bids from a studio. Location, outsourcing mix, engine licenses, live-ops, and union rules can swing totals by multiples. Replace team size, rate, and months with your spreadsheet before treating any number as a term sheet.
Funding ask ÷ (player price × net after platform cut). Default cut is 30% (a Steam-like planning share). It ignores returns, refunds, VAT, wishlist conversion, and post-launch live costs - so treat break-even as a floor on units, not a sales forecast.
Percent-of-dev is a common first-pass rule for indie pitches. Discovery-heavy mobile or premium PC launches often need a separate GTM plan (influencers, key art, trailers, festivals) that does not scale neatly with headcount. Raise the marketing % when discovery is the bottleneck; lower it when you already have an audience.
No. This page sizes cash to make and announce a build. Fun, retention, reviews, and luck decide revenue. Use it for runway and raise conversations - not as a guarantee of Steam charts.
LIVE FUNDING ASK
Burn ≠ ask ↓Scope presets
Fully loaded planning rate.
0 = F2P / no unit BE.
Updates live. Payroll burn ≠ funding ask. Planning sketch, not a studio bid.
Funding ask
$1.2M
$83,522/mo average burn · payroll alone $45,032/mo · 54% of ask is salaries
COMPOSITION STACK (ask slices)
SENSITIVITY (slip / cut)
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