Pricing Your Game Development Services

Most freelance game developers undercharge. Not slightly — often by half. The usual cause is quoting against the cheapest person in the Discord instead of against the value of the work.

Here is a more useful way to think about it.

Do not compete on being cheapest

There is always someone cheaper. Frequently they are cheaper because they will not finish.

Clients who pick purely on price are also the clients who scope-creep hardest, respond slowest, and dispute most. Competing at the bottom means winning the worst work.

Compete instead on the things a nervous client actually wants: clear communication, a portfolio of similar jobs, and a track record of delivering. Those justify a higher number more reliably than any discount wins work.

Work out your real hourly floor

Before quoting anything, know your minimum.

Take the monthly income you need. Divide by the hours you can realistically bill — for most freelancers that is 20–25 hours a week, not 40. Admin, quoting, revisions and support are unpaid.

Then add margin for the platform fee (10% on ModForge) and your own taxes.

That is your floor. Quoting below it means paying for the privilege of working.

Estimate honestly, then add the buffer

Break the job into concrete tasks and estimate each. Then add 30–50%.

This is not padding. Your estimate covers writing the code. The real job also includes:

• Understanding what the client actually meant.
• Testing against their existing setup, which will surprise you.
• The revisions in your package.
• Support after delivery.

Developers who skip this buffer end up resenting jobs they priced themselves into.

Structuring tiers

You can offer up to three tiers per service. The mistake is making them "small, medium, large" versions of the same thing. Structure them by scope and speed instead:

• Basic — the core deliverable, standard timeline, one revision. This is your entry point, not your loss leader.
• Standard — core plus the integrations most clients end up asking for anyway, more revisions. This should be the obvious best value, and it is where most orders should land.
• Premium — everything, faster delivery, more revisions, and post-delivery support.

A useful rule: Standard around 2× Basic, Premium around 3–4× Basic. If almost everyone buys Basic, Standard is not compelling enough. If nobody buys Premium, it still earns its place — it makes Standard look reasonable.

Only Basic is required. Two well-differentiated tiers beat three vague ones.

Define what is not included

Most margin is lost to scope creep, and scope creep is a documentation failure more than a client failure.

Write explicitly:

• Exactly what is delivered.
• How many revisions, and what counts as a revision — fixing a bug is not a revision; changing the design after approval is.
• What is a separate paid job: new features, integrating with systems not mentioned in the brief, ongoing maintenance.
• What you need from the client to start.

When a client asks for something outside scope, the answer is not no. It is: "Happy to do that — it is a new milestone, here is the price." Clear, unresentful, and it turns creep into revenue.

Delivery times

Quote the time you can hit on a bad week, not a good one. Delivering early builds more goodwill than any discount. Delivering late costs reviews.

Faster delivery is worth charging for. A client who needs it this week genuinely values speed — sell it as a Premium feature rather than absorbing it as a favour.

Getting your first orders

Nobody has reviews at the start. Options that work:

• Price the first two or three jobs at the low end of your range and be explicit that it is introductory.
• Over-deliver on those specific jobs, deliberately, to bank strong reviews.
• Then raise prices. Do not stay at introductory rates because it feels safe.

Raising prices costs you the clients you least want to keep.

Get paid properly

Work through escrow. The client funds a milestone before you start, so you can see the money exists before spending a week on it. You deliver, they approve, it releases — and if they go quiet, auto-release protects you.

Never take a job where you work first and trust that payment follows. If a client insists on moving off-platform to "save the fee", they are asking you to give up the only protection you have. That is not a discount; it is the setup.