How hard is making money with a game generated with the help of an AI? What do I need to know?

I have a unique game idea, there is no game like this, but the niche is very big with passionate players all over the world.

I'm not a developer, but I'd like to try it out using Claude or Gemini. My game doesn't require 3D graphics and nothing like that, it's more related to tables, info to read and pick, so the chances of bugs are lower. I don't have experience with it, can someone guide me about the biggest challenges to make money with it? Should I make it available for free and monetize with ads or just sell it for a fixed price?

If an experienced member can help me, it would be appreciated.

Think of making somethinc compatable with itch.io as they ahve a huge userbase, and you can tap into all the interactivity features they have for users to be found, and market your game. If it doesn't need 3d graphics, it can probably be browser based, and for that you can use godot, and then publish a html 5 setup to itch.

Build an MVP first and see if people actually want it. If it gains traction, you can always improve and decide on the best monetization later. Good luck!

RussianBroski said:

I have a unique game idea, there is no game like this, but the niche is very big with passionate players all over the world.

I'm not a developer, but I'd like to try it out using Claude or Gemini. My game doesn't require 3D graphics and nothing like that, it's more related to tables, info to read and pick, so the chances of bugs are lower. I don't have experience with it, can someone guide me about the biggest challenges to make money with it? Should I make it available for free and monetize with ads or just sell it for a fixed price?

If an experienced member can help me, it would be appreciated.

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Not a dev either, but I'm also interested in all these things. Just with an AI, you can't achieve 100%. You need to do a final polish. (balance, feel, polish) Where most people quit. Banner ads or pop-ups will absolutely kill the user experience. You can include ads on the loading screen. Many games give rewards for watching video ads (Time-Limited rewards).

You could make it entirely for free, no ads. When you reach a substantial amount of happy players, you can sell it for 4, 5 or 6 figures

Panther28 said:

Think of making somethinc compatable with itch.io as they ahve a huge userbase, and you can tap into all the interactivity features they have for users to be found, and market your game. If it doesn't need 3d graphics, it can probably be browser based, and for that you can use godot, and then publish a html 5 setup to itch.

Click to expand...

Thank you for sharing Godot is actually a good suggestion

Deadite said:

You could make it entirely for free, no ads. When you reach a substantial amount of happy players, you can sell it for 4, 5 or 6 figures

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I will take that into consideration

If you create a free ai game you should start monetization by offering maybe a shop into the game where the peoples can buy items to look more cool or help with some benefits........ that will be my approach but definitely you can build a entire free game now with ai and monetize later

Go free w/n ads/light IAP, not fixed price - nobody's droppin $ upfront on an unknown game from a first-time solo dev w/ zero track record, but the real biggest challenge ain't buildin it it's distribution/discovery so figure out how ur gonna get in front of that passionate niche audience b4 u even finish the MVP, that's where 90% of indie devs fail, not the tech

Something will bite you before monetisation does: both platforms you would launch on now require a generative AI declaration, and the rules differ in a way that matters for your specific game. Steam narrowed its policy in January 2026 so AI coding assistants used during development are explicitly exempt, and only content that ships and is consumed by players needs disclosing. Your game is tables and text to read and pick, which means the text IS the player facing content, so if Claude or Gemini writes that copy it is disclosable, whereas using them purely to write the code and authoring the game text yourself keeps you outside the requirement. itch.io is stricter and matters more given Panther28's suggestion: disclosure is mandatory, it applies a searchable AI Generated tag with sub tags covering text and code, users can filter those out of browsing entirely, and untagged AI projects stop being indexed after a grace period. So the practical split is to let the model write the engine and write the content yourself, which keeps you out of the filter on the exact platform you were planning to launch on.