Fixed Price or Hourly? How Game Dev Contracts Work

Fixed price feels safe. Hourly feels flexible. Both are fine, and both go wrong in ways worth understanding before you sign anything.

The real question is not which is cheaper. It is who carries the risk when the work turns out to be harder than everyone thought.

Fixed price

One number for an agreed scope. You know the cost on day one.

Where the risk sits: with the studio. If it takes longer than expected, that is their problem.

What that costs you: they price that risk in. A fixed quote always includes padding, because a studio that guesses low goes out of business. You pay for certainty, and certainty is worth paying for.

Where it goes wrong: scope. Fixed price only works if "done" is defined precisely. When it is not, every conversation turns into an argument about whether something was included. In the worst version, the studio is quietly incentivised to do the minimum that technically qualifies.

Best for: clearly defined projects, first time clients, anyone who needs a number for a board or an investor.

Hourly

You pay for time spent.

Where the risk sits: with you. If it takes twice as long, you pay twice.

What that costs you: potentially less, since there is no padding. Potentially far more, if the scope drifts.

Where it goes wrong: nobody is watching the clock. Weeks pass, invoices arrive, and nothing recognisable ships. Hourly with no cap and no milestones is the most dangerous arrangement in this article.

Best for: ongoing work after launch, live-ops, or genuine research where nobody can honestly estimate.

What actually protects you: milestones

The model matters less than the structure around it. Milestone payments fix most of what goes wrong in both.

The idea is simple: the project is split into chunks. Each chunk has a deliverable you can see and hold, not a percentage in a document. You pay when it arrives and works.

• Week 4: playable prototype of the core loop. You install it and play it.
• Week 8: full content build. You play the whole thing.
• Week 12: store ready. It is submitted.

If a milestone does not arrive, the next payment does not either. That is the whole protection, and it works with fixed price or hourly.

Never pay for a percentage of completion. Pay for a thing you can put on your phone.

What we do

Fixed price against a written scope, paid across milestones, with a playable build every week.

We do it that way because it makes the deal honest on both sides. You know the number. We carry the risk of our own estimates, which is a strong reason for us to estimate carefully. And you can stop at any milestone and take everything with you, because you own it all.

When scope genuinely changes, and sometimes it should, we requote that piece before doing it. Not after.

Terms worth checking either way

• What "done" means, in writing, including what is excluded.
• Who owns the work at each stage, not just at the end.
• What happens if you stop. What do you keep?
• Who fixes bugs after launch, for how long, at whose cost.
• How change requests are priced, agreed before the work starts.

Questions we get asked

Which is cheaper? Hourly, if everything goes perfectly. Fixed price, on average, once you account for the times it does not.

Can I switch models mid project? Often yes. Fixed price for the build, hourly for updates afterwards, is a common and sensible combination.

What if I do not know my scope yet? Then pay for a short paid discovery to define it, and fix the price of the build afterwards. Do not sign an open ended hourly deal to figure it out. See what drives cost.

Get a fixed number

Tell us what you want to build. You will get a fixed quote against a written scope, and a plan you can hold us to.