Publishers, funds and investors
What the codebase says about the schedule
A studio's plan is a statement of intent. The code is a statement of what the plan will cost.
Most technical diligence on a games or XR deal looks at the team, the plan and the build. Those are the right things to look at, and they share a limitation: each is a description of the work rather than the work itself. A vertical slice demonstrates that something can be made. It says very little about what the next two years of changes will cost.
A Unity codebase answers that question fairly directly, if someone reads it. Whether the project can absorb a new developer, whether a feature lands in one place or in five, whether the parts everyone avoids are avoidable. These are visible, and they are usually the difference between a milestone schedule that holds and one that slips twice and then gets renegotiated.
The assessment is the same review we run for a studio, written for a different reader. A studio's report is a plan of work. Yours is a statement of risk, with the findings put plainly rather than diplomatically, because you are the one deciding.
What it answers
The questions it is built around
- Can this team ship what the deal assumes, on the schedule the deal assumes?
- How much of the delivery risk sits in the codebase rather than in the plan?
- If the current lead developer left, what would that cost in months?
- Is the milestone slipping for reasons that will recur, or for reasons that have passed?
- What would it take to make this maintainable by someone other than the people who wrote it?
- How much of the schedule assumes AI keeps delivering at the rate it started at?
When it is used
Three points in a deal
Before signing
An independent read of the codebase alongside the pitch and the build, while the terms are still open.
When a milestone slips
A slipping milestone has a cause. Establishing whether it is in the code decides whether more time will fix it.
Before an investment
Engineering risk priced with the rest of the risk, on a fixed fee and a written report.
Assessing a studio?
Book a call. Tell us what the deal assumes and we'll tell you what a read of the codebase would settle.
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