In-House Team or Outsourced Studio: The Real Burn Math for a Seed-Funded Game

An in-house mobile team and an outsourced studio can cost the same per month and buy very different things. In-house buys capacity you keep and fixed cost you carry. Outsourcing buys output you can start and stop. The right answer depends on how many months of runway you are protecting.

Why this matters

The month your seed money lands, burn rate stops being theoretical. Every hiring decision sets a floor under it that is hard to lift later.

Most first-time founders model this once, in a spreadsheet, before anyone is hired. The model is usually too kind to the in-house option, because salary is the only line anybody fills in.

This is that spreadsheet with the missing rows added.

What an in-house mobile team actually costs per month

Start with the smallest team that can ship a mobile game without outside help. Four people: a Unity developer, an artist, a designer who also produces, and part-time QA.

Now build the monthly cost properly.

Take your local fully loaded multiplier, apply it to each salary, then add the fixed lines. Do that before you compare anything to anything.

The honest comparison is not salary against invoice. It is fully loaded monthly cost against invoice, over the same number of months.

What the same money buys from a studio

A studio rate already contains every line in that table. It covers salaries, taxes, tools, machines, and the bench that absorbs somebody leaving.

That is why a studio rate looks higher than a salary and frequently is not.

The second difference is shape. In-house cost is flat whether or not there is work in front of it. Studio cost tracks the work.

• Ramping up takes a conversation, not a hiring round.
• Ramping down takes notice, not redundancy.
• A missing skill for three weeks is a three-week engagement, not a permanent role.

The hidden costs nobody puts in the spreadsheet

Six lines go missing from almost every model.

1. Time to hire. Filling four roles well takes months, and that is runway spent producing nothing.
2. Management load. A four-person team needs somebody running it. Usually that is you, and it is most of your week.
3. Idle specialists. Your artist has little to do during an engineering sprint, and the salary runs anyway.
4. Single points of failure. One person leaves mid-build and the schedule moves with them.
5. Tooling and pipeline. Somebody has to build the build system, and that is real weeks.
6. The wind-down. If the game does not work, you carry a team you cannot instantly stop paying.

None of these appear in a salary comparison. All of them come out of the same runway.

When in-house genuinely wins

In-house is the stronger choice more often than outsourcing advocates admit.

Choose it when the game is a live service you intend to run for years. Institutional knowledge compounds, and handing it over repeatedly costs more than the salaries do.

Choose it when the core technology is the company. If your differentiator is a bespoke engine feature, it belongs to people who stay.

Choose it when you have already found the loop that works and the job is now years of iteration on it.

When outsourcing genuinely wins

Outsourcing is the stronger choice while the answer is still unknown.

Choose it when you are still proving the game is fun. Prototypes need range, not permanence.

Choose it when the work is bursty. Art volume, level content, and porting all arrive in waves.

Choose it when speed matters more than owning the process. A studio that has shipped the genre starts on day one at a pace a new team reaches in month three.

Choose it when your runway cannot survive a wrong hire.

The hybrid most funded studios end up running

Most funded teams do not pick a side. They settle on a small permanent core with a flexible outside layer.

The core is usually two or three people: whoever holds the design vision, a lead engineer, and a producer. Volume work and specialist work sit outside it.

That shape keeps the knowledge that matters in the building, and keeps the cost that varies actually variable.

What we would do

Model both options across the same twelve months, using loaded cost rather than salary. Then ask one question. If this game turns out to be wrong in month five, which model lets you change course?

Early on, keep the fixed floor low. Hire the roles you cannot rent, which is nearly always design vision and production. Rent everything else until the loop is proven.

Once the loop works and the plan is measured in years, convert the outside layer into hires one role at a time, starting with the role you have used most.

The short version

• Compare fully loaded monthly cost to invoice, never salary to invoice.
• In-house sets a fixed floor under burn; outsourcing tracks the work.
• Hiring time, management load, idle specialists, and wind-down are the missing rows.
• In-house wins for live service, core technology, and proven loops.
• Outsourcing wins while the game is still a question.
• Most funded teams land on a small core plus a flexible outside layer.

Run the twelve-month model before the first offer letter goes out. If a second pair of eyes on the numbers would help, tell us what you are building and we will walk through it with you.

Related reading: Ten Questions to Ask a Game Studio Before You Sign, Your First Milestone Is Wrong, and How Much Game Does $50K Actually Buy.