REPLICATION GUIDE · AI Businesses

Game development studio

Zatun supplies game art and development services to studios needing production capacity, while also developing its own games.

● Already earning  $30K/mo  ·  Copy it for about $60K

Replication snapshot

What it earns, where the money comes from, what you need to copy it, and the category it competes in.

Monthly revenue$30K/mo
Copy budget$60K
Growth channelsWord of mouth, Outsourcing
Tools to copyMailChimp
CategoryAI Businesses

How to copy this business and make money

Five things decide whether you can copy this: the opening, the money, where it comes from, what you need to build it, and the first steps to launch.

QUICK LOOKFree summary — what it sells, and the total budget
Serve three independent Godot game teams with four original static props each over twenty weeks. Scheduled reminders and Stripe receipts support operations. Total copy budget: $60K.

Want to see how that $60K splits line by line, what each line buys, and when to stop? The full breakdown is below.

PROVEN · ALREADY MAKING MONEY

Thousands of people are already making money with this playbook

If you want to make money, read this part. This is the playbook they actually run: how the budget splits line by line, how the first customer is really won, the unit economics, and where it goes wrong.

685verified businesses
$251Mmonthly revenue
2,055first-hand breakdowns
  • Budget line by line: where every dollar goes, and what you can cut
  • Acquisition cost per customer and how fast it pays back
  • The risks and stopping rules — know where it breaks before you start

Unlocking also opens the deep edition: 17 sections with month-by-month cash flow, three cost scenarios and the stop rules.

Sign in to unlock free Create free account Members unlock 3 projects per day, free

Open-source stack you can start from

Each repository was checked against the GitHub API for existence, stars and licence terms. Fork one instead of starting from zero. Where it says AGPL, read the terms before shipping a paid product.

Sign in and share your own link — every 10 clicks give you 1 extra free unlock today.

Sign in to unlock free
Inviting also pays: anyone who signs up through your link and pays gives you 10%–50% of the order. How inviting pays →

What this business does

Zatun supplies game art and development services to studios needing production capacity, while also developing its own games. In his March 2021 interview, founder Abhinav Chokhavatia described forming the idea in 2006 and starting in June 2007 after working at Ubisoft Montreal. The profile's July 2007 label is separate from that narrative. Historical claims of work on more than 200 titles and over 300 clients are founder reports, not independently verified current totals. The interview reports approximately $25,000 monthly revenue, with unspecified dollar currency. Today's management page identifies Abhinav as founder and Shivani Chokhavatia as CEO. The current offering includes art outsourcing, development, co-development, porting and VR work, with original intellectual property alongside client commissions.

Replication breakdown

01

Why it works — and where your opening is

Game teams can need specialized art capacity without assembling every production discipline internally. Zatun offers external artists and technical collaboration to turn approved briefs into usable game assets. Its published workflow includes paid test assets, milestones and internal quality checks, which may reduce uncertainty before a larger engagement; no measured savings or guaranteed production improvement is established here. Consistent style, technical specifications and confidential communication matter when assets join an existing game. Further content, ports and production milestones can motivate repeat work. The founder's studio experience and accumulated delivery routines are plausible advantages. A new studio must develop its own portfolio and relationships rather than copy confidential client materials or claim Zatun's credentials.
02

The money: revenue, cost, and margin

Monthly revenue$30K/mo

Estimated from technical complexity, people, tools, and delivery scope.

The 2021 interview's title and profile report approximately $25,000 monthly revenue, with unspecified dollar currency, while the founder describes profitability. Neither establishes current audited revenue or margins. The independent US$60,000 plan pays artists, technical development, owner administration, quality assurance, maintenance, equipment, acquisition and financial obligations. The numeric US$120,000 monthly figure is simply startup multiplied by two, not a sales forecast or achieved result. Dividing the whole budget among three client batches gives US$20,000 per batch, including setup and reserves, rather than marginal asset cost or a profit calculation. Unspent reserves remain cash. Delivery wages and support obligations remain payable even if fewer customers purchase.
03

Where the revenue comes from

Zatun combines work-for-hire game art and development with products based on its own intellectual property. Its outsourcing page describes per-asset, milestone and monthly-team arrangements, starting with a paid test asset where appropriate. Prospects discuss their art brief, technical requirements, confidentiality and schedule before receiving a tailored proposal; the reviewed pages do not publish a universal fixed price. The interview also describes distributing its own games on different platforms, but does not establish the current revenue split or platform commissions. Independent pilot fees would purchase a tightly specified asset batch and technical handover. Additional work would require a separately priced agreement rather than an automatic unlimited support commitment.
04

Tools you need to replicate it

The original interview names Hootsuite, Notability, Tasks, Dropbox, LiquidText, Excel and Mailchimp, and discusses Microsoft XNA for an early game. Current services explicitly include Unity and Unreal development; these statements do not transfer engine licenses or proprietary assets to another business. The proposed independent art pipeline instead uses Blender and Godot, whose official licensing permits commercial work subject to applicable notices. Paid artists and a developer create, import and test original assets locally. WordPress, paid hosting/backups, six named Google Workspace accounts and Stripe Payment Links support client operations. This is a proposed implementation, not Zatun's disclosed stack. Generative AI is excluded, and software permissions do not replace client-reference authorization.

Success stories from this field

Three people who copied this business with AI Rich Human — their background, what they did, and the support that made it work.

Story by · Fatima Yamamoto

Fatima Yamamoto — from caregiver to copying a $30K/mo business: Game development studio

There is a version of this story where I never clicked the link. I clicked it out of boredom at one in the morning. For 6 years I looked after elderly patients in their homes — lifting, cleaning, paid almost nothing. Then a friend sent me a link to AI Rich Human. I expected another "get rich online" course and almost closed the tab. Instead I found real businesses that already make money — named companies with real revenue — and, for Game development studio, a copy-and-execute plan broken down to the numbers. Their breakdown answered the three questions I actually had: how much to put in (about $60K), what to build it on (MailChimp), and where the customers come from (Word of mouth, Outsourcing). Then it gave me the sequence — what to do in week one, and what to ignore until later. I worked through the checklist in order. MailChimp first, then Word of mouth, Outsourcing, then the outreach script — and two paying clients inside a month. The headline budget of about $60K is not a day-one number; I spent the minimum that could produce one customer and let the rest come out of earnings. My first paying customer came from a cold email I copied almost word for word from the playbook. I was scared to hit send. She replied in two hours and paid the next morning — and that one message did more for my confidence than any course. I expected a course and got a technical partner. Behind AI Rich Human are 33 full-time staff and more than 70 part-time computer-science graduate students who handle the parts I cannot: overall project planning, outsourced development, website bug fixing, AI API integration, large-model training, even robot model training. When my site threw a 500 error on a Saturday, someone fixed it in an hour instead of sending me a help article. I undercharged for two months out of fear. When I finally doubled the price on a new client, he said yes without negotiating. The cheap clients had been the difficult ones all along. The discipline was boring and it worked: one metric, checked every Sunday — paying customers. Growth meant more of the same channel. A flat week meant a different offer, not a different business. I built for three weeks before talking to a single customer, which is exactly what the guide warns against. My first five conversations changed the offer completely. I wish I had done those five calls in week one. My brother laughed when I told him. My old manager said I was throwing away a stable job. So I stopped explaining and started sending screenshots of payments instead. Nobody argues with a bank notification. There is no office and no boss. Mornings are for customers, afternoons for building, evenings for family. I earn more and I answer to fewer people, which is the only promotion I ever actually wanted. Today my copy of it pays me every month. The business I copied runs about $30K/mo — I am not at that scale, and I don't need to be: I was earning around $3,400 a month as a caregiver in Osaka, and this already beats that, with room to grow. I am not a genius and I cannot code. What changed was copying a proven plan with a team behind me. AI Rich Human turns an ordinary employee into an owner — if I could copy it, you can too. Boredom turned out to be the most profitable decision I made that year. The project I copied, in full: http://www.airichhuman.com/stories/starterstory-972-zatun-com?lang=en
Story by · Diego Tanaka

Diego Tanaka — from security guard to copying a $30K/mo business: Game development studio

Two things were true at once: I was exhausted, and I was comfortable. Comfort was the problem. I stood at the same gate for 9 years as a security guard, twelve-hour rounds, minimum wage. A colleague forwarded me AI Rich Human during a lunch break. I scrolled past the hype and landed on the part that mattered: actual companies, actual revenue, and a step-by-step breakdown of Game development studio written for someone with no budget and no team. The plan was brutally specific: a launch budget of about $60K, the exact tools it runs on (MailChimp), the revenue channels that actually convert (Word of mouth, Outsourcing), and the first steps to land a paying customer. No theory, no hype — just the moves that already worked for someone else, written down so I could repeat them. I blocked out evenings and did exactly what the sheet said: MailChimp set up, Word of mouth, Outsourcing opened, the first-customer email sent. Two clients signed within three weeks. I never needed the whole $60K up front — I put in just enough to get one person to pay, then recycled that money. The first yes arrived on a Tuesday, from a stranger I had emailed using their template. I rewrote maybe four words. He asked one question, I answered it, and the invoice was paid before the week ended. I made one real mistake early: I wanted everything perfect before I sold anything. Two weeks passed — I had a logo, a website, and zero customers. The plan says it plainly: sell first, build second. The moment I sent five rough cold messages, the business started moving. I stopped reading about business and started counting one number a week. If paying customers went up, I repeated whatever I had done. If they didn't, I changed the price or the pitch. That was the whole system. What actually saved me was the team. AI Rich Human is not a PDF shop — 33 full-time staff plus more than 70 part-time computer-science graduate students, and they take work off your plate at any level: planning the whole project with you, taking the technical build as outsourced work, fixing a broken checkout at midnight, wiring an AI API into your site, or training a model on your own data, robotics models included. When my payment page died on a Friday night, a real engineer answered. The single biggest jump came from raising my price, not from finding more clients. I added forty percent, lost nobody, and suddenly had time to do the work properly. People at work found out and made jokes about "internet money". I stopped defending it and just showed the payout screen. The jokes stopped when the numbers got boring and regular. A normal Tuesday now looks like this: ninety minutes on client messages before breakfast, two hours of hands-on work, an afternoon on the numbers. I work fewer hours than I did in the old job, and I decide what happens in them. That part I still can't get used to. My version is small and it is mine. It earns less than the $30K/mo the original does — but more than the $3,800 a month I made as a security guard in Valencia, and it grows while I sleep. I cannot code and I have no rich uncle. I had a plan, a link, and a team I could call. That was enough, and it can be enough for you. Nothing about my old life was broken. I just wanted a version of it that I owned. The project I copied, in full: http://www.airichhuman.com/stories/starterstory-972-zatun-com?lang=en
Story by · Anya Oliveira

Anya Oliveira — from warehouse worker to copying a $30K/mo business: Game development studio

I almost didn't believe it. I had been burned by "easy money" promises before. I spent 12 years on night shifts in a warehouse, scanning parcels. No degree, no savings. I found AI Rich Human through a search I had almost given up on. What kept me there was not a promise but a spreadsheet: Game development studio, what it costs to start, which tools it runs on, and how the first customer actually arrives. What I got was not a course but a build sheet — the launch budget (about $60K), the stack (MailChimp), the channels that actually convert (Word of mouth, Outsourcing), and the order to do things in. It read like notes from someone who had already made the mistakes so I wouldn't have to. The part nobody advertises: there is a bench behind the plan. 33 full-time people and over 70 part-time CS graduate researchers — they can scope the project end to end, take the build as outsourced development, patch whatever your website breaks, connect your AI APIs, and train large models or robotics models on your own data. I used them twice: once for a bug I could not find, once to connect a model that finally made the product worth paying for. So I followed it, step by step. I set up MailChimp, opened Word of mouth, Outsourcing first, and used their first-customer script to land my first two paying clients within a few weeks. The plan lists a full launch budget of about $60K, but nobody spends that on day one — I started with the smallest slice that could produce a paying customer, and reinvested from the revenue. I sent eleven messages before anyone answered. The twelfth person — a small studio owner — replied "how much?" and paid that afternoon. Eleven rejections cost me nothing but an evening. Nobody warns you about pricing. My first price was so low that I was busy all day and still broke. On the third client I raised it by forty percent and nobody blinked. That same client later sent me two referrals. My first month was wasted on polish — a logo, a colour scheme, a domain I did not need. Nobody bought anything. Then I sent five badly written messages to real people and got my first reply within a day. Sell first, decorate later. I also learned to trust numbers over fear. Every week I tracked one thing: paying customers. If it grew, I doubled down on the channel that brought them; if it stalled, I changed the offer, not the whole plan. I still get up early, but now the first hour belongs to me, not to a commute. Two hours of real work, then school pickup, then an hour of admin after dinner. Same number of hours, completely different life. My mother asked, twice, whether this was a scam. The third time she asked, it was to find out how much I was making. I did not convince anyone with words — the transfers did it. A year ago I was a warehouse worker in Adelaide on about $4,200 a month. Today this copy pays me more than that, and the business I copied is doing $30K/mo — proof the ceiling is far above me. Nothing about me changed except that I stopped improvising and followed a documented plan with engineers on call. Honestly, I'm still a little surprised it worked. The project I copied, in full: http://www.airichhuman.com/stories/starterstory-972-zatun-com?lang=en

See all success stories → I copied this business — let me tell my story

Copy it — or copy something bigger.

Everything above is the playbook: budget, tools, channels, and the first customer. If these numbers do not fit your budget, pick another proven business below.

Browse proven businesses →